colleagues, before we began, we must occupy the vote. it is time for us to say not now, not on our watch will we allow the hands of time to be racheted back. not on our watch are we going tonot on our watch are we going to allow the gains made to expand democracy to be rolled back. not now and not on our what are we going to allow a nation that has spent $1 trillion trying to promote democracy abroad erect fences and barries to democracy here at home. not now and not on our watch are we going to be pushed a way from the decision making tables

when it comes to jobs and economic policy. not on our watch and not now. we must occupy the vote. are you ready? we are going to take a short break and then i am going to come back. 30 seconds. this is a townhall. this is a townhall discussion. we are live on the webcast. c-span is taping us tonight. we want to thank all of the social media, twitter followers. let's give them a hand.

if you will, do not leave. stand at ease for 30 seconds. we must occupy the vote. let me very proudly ask you to put your hands together for mr. jeff johnson. jeff johnson, raise your hand. he is our floor moderator. we are proud that he is back with us for yet the second year in a row.

it is my honor to introduce our panelists. first, the blogger me keli goff. she is on msnbc every monday. give her a hand. the activist and writer, mr. kevin powell. the president and ceo of the urban league of greater new orleans, our host for the 2012 urban league's annual conference, and nolan rollins. the dean of the school of education right here at howard university, dr. leslie. fenwick. the activist and a radio host,

at the truth stare, war and -- the truth sayer, warren ballentine. i will have to do this by memory. the leader of the hip hip action caucus, reverend lennox yearwood. a professor here, dr. gregory carr. and very proudly, the winner of our student essay context an alumnus of the urban league,

miss desiree lockee. ahoso, let's give our panel a big round of applause. [applause] i want to start desiree with you hot and kevil powell and pose the same question. you heard the conversation about voter suppression. you know that young people play to this incredible role in the 2008 election cycle. what does 2000 and 12 hold -- 2012 hold when it comes to young people and voting? >> i believe that 2012 is very

important for young voters. we are in a position where we are looking at candidates across the board and people who will represent our best interest as people who were going out into the professional field for the first time. we are definitely looking at the economy and to be will believe will be the best in terms of providing jobs and making sure the economy is sustainable in our careers. that is very important. in terms of voter suppression, as it young people, and this is the first time they're voting in college. for a lot of us, we have not been exposed to the political process on a personal level until now. it is really important to find us information we need so we can be educated voters doing what is best for our future.

>> thank you. >> good evening. is this on? is it on? it is on. good evening. i just spent the last two months visiting 15 different schools. even schools. -- 50 different schools. this generation in the audience, you are the most brilliant, why is generation will ever produce an american history in my opinion. you all have got to take the leadership. it is so critical that you understand what you did in 2008, even if you are not 18. it was the. that put a barack obama into the presidency. -- it was that . enthusiasmthat the barack obama into the presidency. when i was a college student,

this was the work we did, making sure we register people to vote. i hope you'll take seriously the need around the country. you all have to play a role in the agenda for the next four years. i hope it will be the same person. i cannot say that here perce. you have to be active in saying this. it is really in your hands. >> you all talked to lots of people all the time. you also listened to a lot of people all the time. bartz together late gun people, young and -- particularly, young people and voters. what stimulates their interest?

>> thank you for having me here. the hip-hop caucus is always a delight to have them working side-by-side with the urban league, fighting for our people. i think what i hear, is that this is not a game. our mothers are dying. our mothers are having foreclosures. our mothers are getting cancer. our kids are getting as much. this is not a game. right now the reality is if we do not have it now, at this point, then it will have catastrophic results going forward into the next year and next 10 years going forward. >> thank you.

send them to hu. education is so important to this generation. they can have a civil rights movement by facebook or twitter. they can literally start a movement overnight. education is a big piece of that.

they want to have the opportunity. when i went to the not a job application, have you in the last five years ever been arrested. -- when i was growing up, when i went to fill out a job application, it would say, have you in the last five years been arrested for anything. today it says, have you ever been arrested. we have to understand what is happening in this country when you talk about jobs. they go hand in hand. criminality goes in there too. we are getting locked up at high rates.

even the college students are getting locked up at high rates. even when you get this not balanced federal charge, it is like a scarlet letter a. kids are saying what can we do if we go to school, get a degree? we still cannot get a job. now the moment is not just about education. it is about getting the scarlett letter removed from the record. that is why the urban league is so important. you also have to be able to be an entrepreneur and understand the system they operate in. it is global now. >> thank you, kelly. let's give them both a big hand.

>> to answer your question, first i one to a gruesome thing kevin said. -- i want to echo something kevin said. >> the young people put president obama into office. it was not just be spirit of young people, it was the young people. he would not be in office without black women and young people. that is by the numbers. there is something like 5 million new voters and 2 million were under 30. most for voting for the first time. that just tells you the power that you have. the made the difference in a number of swing states, including ohio. despite super pacs, you don't have to write a million-dollar check to make a difference.

this is the first thing i wanted to say. the second thing i wanted to say in terms of issues is something that i have been writing a lot about. one of the issues we have been writing a lot is about the issue of the classifieds. i felt particularly passionate about this. i think about my family history. my grandparents were from the cotton belt. my parents went to segregated schools. the idea that they can have a child grow up and go to a place like nyu. or columbia -- i asked my grandmother, who did she ever think she would see a black president. she said she never really thought about it. that is the world to his growing up in. -- she was growing up in. when we look at this country and how far i have come compared to where my grandparents were, to think that my knees may not be able to cut as far as i have

because of the -- niece may not be able to come as far as i have because of affordability, killed in an injustice, and the advantage -- built in the injustice, and the advantage that people born to privilege have, something that just happened in january that speaks to some of the issues i have been writing about, i get students from e-mails is and what to do what you have done. it pays me to think that. it pains me to think this one i get the e-mails. i do not know that it still be impossible for you to do its. -- that it will be as possible for you to do it. even though i don't come from a rich background, i was able to have a little bit of help from people who care about me to get back initial foot in the door and have a little bit of a leg up. at this point the leg up the people needed, that like is being kicked out from under the chair.

the chair is collapsing on this generation. when you look at cases like -- the supreme court is about to take of the issue of affirmative action again this year. we have all been conned into believing this issue is about race. it is really about class. the real injustice when it comes to admission and graduate schools is really about class. rick santorum and the national review have agreed with what i have to say. anybody who wants to say i'm being a wacky, crazy, a progressive liberal, rick santorum -- he has cosigned the studies that have proven that america has officially been designated one of the least upper the mobile -- an upwardly mobile first world countries on the planet. what does that mean in english

terms that it means that according to five different studies which conservatives have agreed with comment that countries like england, where they have a queen and a queen, it is easier to move up class lives than it is in america. that is what i am hearing from everyone in this room is smart enough to see this. the system is rigged in terms of pursuing the american dream. that is why we're seeing an activist movements. we have the dean of the school of education. we have the professor of african-american studies. question for both of you all, it is this generation of young people different? the same? how? number two,what is an important piece of counsel and vice you get your -- advice you give your

students for trying to achieve success? >> one of the things that concerns me is that they have not had access to african- american teachers. we are not teaching our own as the where one or two generations ago. previous panelist spoke about their parents that spoke at segregated schools. -- who were taught at segregated schools. the value was that you had models with intellectual authority. if you have black teachers teaching black students, relating cultural truths, and credentialed people speaking in a variety of circumstances. today in 2011, 73% of the inner city teachers are white. if the go outside of the inner cities, at 91% of teachers are white. 69% of principals are white. we know the majority of students are african-american, hispanic, and latino.

yet they have no access to a diverse teaching body or leadership in the school district. this is a travesty. we know that there are academic and social benefits that apply to african-american and hispanic children. they're less likely to be referred to special education, more likely to be referred to gifted education, suspended and expelled, and more likely to graduate high school in four years. this country need to diversify its teaching force. [applause] when you asked how is this generation different, it it has not been cultivated by black educational leadership. >> thank you. harlots give her a hand.

-- let's give her a hand. >> we were talking backstage. i think that this generation is different in the same respect that every generation is different from previous generations. to the impact of technology on this generation is probably less different than it was on previous generations. it is probably close to the same. this generation is challenged with image literacy. what it does is it creates a situation where learning has to reflect that new literacy. the teachers we have at howard medical school are embraced with different technologies. they have a different learning

curve. it is the only literacy they know. the second question you asked was interesting. what advice can i give students that the united states -- give student? of the united states has ceased to exist as the organizational core of how people move. the fundamental question of a black citizenship, it does not seem to be a black citizenship. the question of class but surely the question of race. racial capitalism. my advice to students is very similar to the vice houston gave his students.

you have to understand where you are. his thing was social class has to be linked to a right to a job, the right to a living standard. that challenges the fundamental principles. this is the type of education that takes place at acu behind got the back. once you take the united states of america as organizational principle, the conversation gets diluted before it can get concentrated. we have to take this very seriously. i know we do that at howard university.

>> what we will come back to after i pose a question to in nolan rollins. nolan is one of 97 distinguished, well educated, a smart and passionate men and women who lead urban affiliate's across the nation. our affiliate's leaders are economic first responders. they are in the community ha responding to the economic crisis. nolan, in your work as president of the urban league of greater new orleans, this recession has no doubt impacted people. it is there anything that you have seen with respect to the recession as a pride issue? -- that surprises you? and that he may not have expected in terms of this crisis. >> it is interesting. what is happening is we're

beginning to do is destabilize norms that were there. we think about prosperity, there is always this underserved group of people that existed. they're all these programs that were developed, ways to help them move from one economic ladder to the next. what is interesting is that as our economy starts to contract and we start to destabilize these things, we're having a bit of an economic darwinism that is existing. it is existing in an unfair way. you're competing with someone who started. on third base. you are just learning where the field was. you are having to compete with someone that started on third base. we're going to quickly see what we're seeing now. we're going to see this gap in the haves and the haves not. if the nation were interested in being able to compete globally, it would not allow its communities to be

destabilized. what we have to do as urban leaders, it is we have to figure out what smart policies exist to take this market-based approach that someone preaching that everyone is so loving and make it a public good. -- is we have to figure out what smart policies exist to take this market-based approach that everyone is so loving and make it a public good. we keep industry going. these policies are designed and developed to keep industry going. how do we keep community going tax while industry is going, how do we keep community going? if we are really smart about how we utilize them and actually use what they are supposed to do, i think we're going to help the economy. yet to be smarter. >> but get him a hand. -- you have to be smarter.

>> let's give him a hand. >> we are such an amazing people. we have had every moment that you can think about except the economy and our communities. we think of it in two ways, big money are no money at all. i used to think about money like that until i realized something. i grew up in the projects of chicago. i drew up with the kids in the store. where my friend took over for his father, i called him one day. i said how much do you make a year? he told me $12 million. i said you make $12 million a year in the projects of chicago? then i really started to think about it. there are 30,000 families that live within the project.

it just 10,000 families spent $100 a month in the store, that is a million dollars a month. imagine if they knew what they were putting into the store that was leaving the community every day. we do this every day. we say we do not have money to support the urban league. then get on facebook [unintelligible] you bought gucci shoes, but you don't have $20 for the urban league. we are holding up of the dam. -- we want to talk about how the government is holding us down, how the man is holding us down. we are holding us down. we will not put our money together to make a movement happen. but americans aren't broke. we are not broke. we have plenty of money in the hood.

we are just foolish with our money. that is the problem. we have had every economic movement. i have to piggyback on the good brother about not being a citizen in this country. i am going to tell you as an attorney, you are free -- look, look. he can be free because of the emancipation proclamation unless you have been locked up. >> in the 14th amendment, your right to vote is there. >> they take that away from me. >> come on, brother. come on. i am going to get back on top of the intel the tree. it is all about economics. -- i am going to get back on top of it and tell the truth. it is all about economics. if you are laughing at me. i tell the truth. one thing that is going to happen to everybody is that we're all going to die.

if you die, you can leave something for it children in family. the second thing is the urban elite. -- the urban league. we have got to support people who support us. if we sit here and i do not have money, you are disgracing your ethnicity. you are going out in your spending $20 on a hair cut. you're buying gucci purses. when i write a check for gucci shoes, i write a check for the urban league at the same time. >> before you go there, i want warren to follow up. there is a great deal of excitement but there is more than you are doing a run the whole issue of black banking. from eight delusions' standpoint, -- from an illusion standpoint, what are some things you're asking your viewers to do?

>> i am asking them to open up accounts for the black man. we have churches that do $300,000 a weekend. these are the things that we need to be talking about as far as economic development in our communities. the government is not going to save us. this country is not going to save us. the only people who are going to save us is us. if we do not realize that we need to come together and work together, my thing is this. we talk about we need to do this for a education. there to things i have learned. politicians only know one thing, numbers and money. if you have numbers on the wall coming they will listen. if you have money to back it up, and they will listen. right now we're putting our money with everybody else. i am not talking about tearing

black america away. this is the same thing the jewish community does, the arabic community does. we just need to have that same thought process. if everybody in this world signed on together, instead of having $5 i would have $5,000. that is the way we need to think. i'm asking people to open up black banks. i just cut a big deal with nationwide. i want to put something back in the community. this is important to me. we need to do the model are jewish and latino brothers are doing. we can change what is going on in our community and be able to fund housing programs, and national urban league programs, those are getting locked up illegally.

there is so much going on. there too many things to deal with. the one thing that has the community, we can have what we need to change. >> great. great. kevin and then jeff. >> i was glad to say something different but i was struck by the conversation. history is important. history is the people's memory. i want to change some of the way we describe our situation. i happen to disagree that we should criticize our people and let racism off the hook. we have to do both. never let racism off the hook. we are reacting. we have internalized the racism. i did not know any of this black history we talked about. we have this level of compassion for our people.

we have to put into context why the behavior exist in the first place. it is one thing to say we do not spend money. if you look at the last 50 years of our history, there was a classified. what dr. king was talking about, he had an essay called a black power redefined." what happened, they have to move and completely abandon the masses of our people. [applause] >> i can vouch for this. i'm clear about this. i felt like sometimes what we do is we bring into the 21st century the fate conversations.

it is not enough to say this. their leadership -- let's talk about this. crack cocaine in the 1980's. people didn't even think there viable. i am not finished. i hear this everywhere. it is that even call to me to say let's look at what other communities are doing. let's look at the example of our history of economic empowerment. i do not want to go outside any more.

>> the problem with that is back. the reason we're in this shape is because no one taught the history. >> it is our job to teach the history. if the go back in history and talk about black wall street and the reconstruction area, it had to do with the economic movements. he did this. people are willing to spend money. >> let me interject for a moment. >> but this important mission that this is not a heated discussion. >> this is a discussion that is

taking place about where we are what we need to be doing. i am encouraged by it. i think it needs to go beyond the rhetoric to what the strategic moments that we make to honor what i think both of you are saying. i have a question. let me say this. from facebook, its of how to make get young people so that we engaged? i wanted it that a step further and began to talk about it. so much of what we're talking about has to deal with digital space. following if we're what he talked about. it is where young people are. if we are not utilizing

corporate relationships to be able to not just gain access to broader broadband been able to utilize technology to educate people, it is a by way of black wall street. it should be accessible to a generation of than people that are not going to open a book. it is easier for young people to talk about where they are partying rather where they're educated. it is not just talking about civic engagement but education, employment, and empowerment. >> the problem makes us all look illiterate when it comes to dealing with that. the i do not want us to move from the important content

mastery. it is really not unique. we need to be able to stream its. the question of how you deal with leadership, how the deal with that? me to talk about the school. people who work at the highest levels of google and apple, they send their children up to high school. one thing is not allowed in the early grades, computers. we have to be very clear about the importance of mastering reading. we cannot have a move from oral literacy to print based literacy. when you move from morality to literacy, and the people who deal with morality get shut out of what happened next pit we run the risk of losing our content mastery.

everything is not on the internet. you cannot do this with touch. they spent minutes trying to figure out how to turn it on. they had already been a hard wired to that. this is a mind that is no longer going to be thinking about the deeper implications. this is something to the independent on. you have to help me with the. in the classroom, you almost have to shake your teaching styles to address that. you have to help me with this because in the classroom i know when we engage you almost have to shape your teaching styles to the students and then build a breach -- build a bridge to

bring it back to this book. and everybody, just settle down. but you've got to help me. we struggle with this every day. young people can help us with that. >> i would say that part of the thing that we mentioned before was the difference between our generation and previous generations because of the influence of technology and easy access of twitter and facebook. we're also very much a generation of instant gratification. we want change to happen instantly. if we are going to try to enact social change using social media network and everything, we need to make sure that we can have tangible goals quickly that people can see everyone on twitter can make a training have it. that is something where we see an issue going global and people are really getting involved either through retweeting it or using social media. when we are doing that, we have to make sure that as a

generation cannot change takes time -- we have to make sure that we understand that as a generation happens, change takes but there are things we can do along the way. way. >> the technology provides us accent's -- access to information. information, you can pull that up on the computer screen in a second. knowledge is a process, and some -- and an understanding that you gain from an educative process. social media are consumer uses, but the larger issue of thinking and gaining understanding and knowledge are educative process is that we need not abandon for the corporate profit margin. we need to be mindful of that as

a community. >> the syria, egypt, those all get on the covers as models for the changing the story. but the first story that did that was actually the jenna sex. that does not get as much coverage. the reason that story broke, and i want every person who does not know this to know this, because it should be on the same wikipedia page with syria and egypt and iran and all of the other places social media gets credit for the story breaking. the only reason anybody knows about it is because a bunch of john black bloggers conducted a blog-in -- young black blotters attention to it on the same day.

the point that i was making before was something that i was very uncomfortable with. that is, the american community as well as our nation at large discussing the issue of class. sasha and melia, will have advantages that some of us only dream about. the reason we call that a distraction is because people are willing to go to court. over race and affirmative- action and nobody will sue over legacy admissions. that is what i mean by race being a distraction. people want to talk about race because it is something that they can seat.

the fact that there was an entrance and i could not have because i could not afford toall of these things are set up us who are not born into trying to find the seal, but we is. [applause] >> we have to understand that, whether it be the populist movement of the 1890's, whether it be the refusal of poor whites to move with blacks in the union movement in the 1920's and 1930's, whether it be the classism that emerged out of civil rights, the question of race has always been used to defy the glasses.

people are against legacy in court because they'd think that combined with privilege, they will set up -- they will one day have access. [unintelligible] >> let's give our panelists a big round of applause. [applause] jeff johnson. >> my name is randy richards. i am the president of the national league professionals. representing 5000 members nationwide. [applause] we are a training ground for leaders. once you leave college, 21-40, and you are starting in your profession, we provide leadership training and wraparound skills to help you become more proficient at your

profession. we see people come to us who maybe -- may be a truck driver or in various professions. we want to help them with that -- those wraparound skills. what advice do you have for people that may not have gone to college, may not have had that opportunity? what advice would you give them and what is available for them? >> first, i want to commend the yp's. [applause] and this is kind of piggybacking on what joe just said. -- jeff just said. we can approach our people in the spirit of charity.

the power of our movement only comes when we have our family members in our movement. but in regards to what we can do in connecting -- culture is a very important piece to that so that we can connect with people where they are. i know we have occupy but it is kind of hard not to pay homage to the occupied movement. they use technology and twitter. it is so profound and that process.

there is an effort to move forward, to connect, to unify our people. mad love to you in boston. i had a good time with you in boston. i would recommend two things. at first, i think you should have for people that you like at all times. and i do not care if you are talking about as a professional or what you are doing. have the elder you can talk to

can give you a bit of advice in the field you want to participate in then you have that cat that is your same age. it may not have the same backfield, but you are going through life together. then i have my cousin who, i love her, but he's got five baby mas and everything. want to be like him. mentor. i go around the country and i do things with that. and secondly, i think we need to have a conversation honestly about the realities of the workplace it is a white privilege. racism is real. white privilege is real. rush limbaugh called president obama in monkey and talked about michelle obama. [applause]

but he called a white woman a slut and everybody wants him off the air. in corporate america it you have to go in there knowing -- hopefully it will not always the like this, but you have to work twice as hard as somebody who does not look like you to adjust how to be real about it. >> one of the things i heard randy say, though, and correct me if i'm wrong, is the training component. those young leaders that came before. reverend talked about it being a lunch counter movement. but nobody could march without being trained. it was not enough to be passionate, but you have to go

through a training run apparatus. one of the things i'm interested in that randy asked was, where are some of the organizations and institutions and provisions that are providing the training. >> part of this is an eight- point plan. if you read the plan, there are specifics about job training for disadvantaged youths. what do we mean? people who did not finish high school on time. people who want to get their life together. and we have to recognize that when a high school system is in graduating 3% to 4% of african- american youngsters, they are often locked out and left out. they cannot go to even a

community college. one of the things we do well as an urban league. what one of -- what i think the affiliate's do better than anything else is training people for civic activism. to train people for his third activism is important, but -- civic activism is important, but for young people that maybe have an arrest or did not finish high school on time, we say in our report is that if this nation can spend a trillion dollars on a war in iraq, we can spend a couple billion dollars helping disconnected youths find work and priorities. [applause] >> part of the conversation that

was happening right here is the classic conversation. it is the voice -- dubois, booker t. part of what comes with those problems is the creation of the solution. what i would say from the training standpoint is having this conversation is extremely important, but what do we do with it. how do we define the problem and stay here is the solution to the problem? how do we make sure that the person who may not fit in this room with us, how do we make sure that person has access to opportunity? it will take us to define the problem, to define the solution and create a pathway for communities to be stronger. it is our lunch counter moment.

it is systematic approaches to solving very difficult problems. and we should not be afraid to be smart about it. let's be intelligent about how we get it done. >> as i have a facebook question. olli two states have xtra to write the laws that have passed. what changed, and what do we need to do to address it? >> in the 1980's we literally got on buses. i went to school at howard university and we literally went to the south and reorganize

people to challenge those unfair laws. you all have got to find some that you are going to organize, not just at howard university and campuses around the country, but also in the communities of washington d.c. you have to engage the work on a regular basis. [applause] the other thing i want to say really quickly is that i respectfully disagree that we cannot learn from social networks. i have written 11 books in my life. one thing i am clear about what i am on facebook and twitter every day, this is a very different time not just for young people. is want to stop marginalizing and saying it is just young people. i think we all have a responsibility. that is why i have been trading for the last three days nonstop -- tweeting for the last three days of nonstop. my hope is that they will take the stuff and run with it and

say, how can i go deeper within -- with this thing. in brooklyn, new york, there is an organization called families united for racial and economic equality. their work with people in the housing projects of brooklyn, n.y., and they literally help the people to stand. you are a leader. it does not matter if you are on welfare or have -- do not have a ged. you can transform your housing situation. i love the urban league professionals. i said in st. louis a couple of weeks ago, that we have a responsibility as folks with skill sets and resources and educational backgrounds to go into these communities and show people how to be self empowered. [applause] i believe the role of a leader is to make yourself as capable

as possible. a leader should do one of three things. one, the leader should change the direction of the conversation. number two, if you are a leader, create an institution, an organization, or a business that supports -- or an organization that supports the committee. you have to know the people and love the people and understand the history of the people. it is our responsibility in 2012 to make it as a digestible as possible. meet the people where you are in -- where they are. that is why the urban league is important [applause] >> to answer your question, though, what changed is that president obama 1. -- won.

there were 5 million new voters in 2008 and most of them voted for president obama. >> being that we are from -- remove from a generation that is not see the issues [unintelligible]

how do we educate others on these issues because they are not being broadcast right now. >> how do we reach those folks that are not in contact with folks on a regular basis? we seem to be coming down to some basic point. it is a question of love, compassion for your people, and culture. next week, howard students are leading the alternative spring break initiative here. [applause] they are going to several cities start young. this question is education. new model it.

you model it. hbcu or isn't with the urban league, if they are not at a black church, if they are not at one of those places, you can go places. just like over spring break, they are going to be in chicago, detroit, atlanta, haiti. as individuals, you can intervene in the life of a 6 or 7-year-old. and she models u. and that sparked can lead to an infectious moment. an educational moment is infectious. that child will never be the same. the answer to that question is that each one of oz kendeigh rep to go out and affect -- each one go out and affect those places. is? >> ms. morgan.

>> you are 19? when i was your age, i came home for christmas break. i got into a car because i did not want to drink and drive by pulled over the car. there were four guns in the car and i did not know there were any. the police pull us over and ran our names. i was the on the one who had not been arrested. drive. these two white cops said all four guns belong to me. i sat in jail for six months. everything. i could not afford no attorney. by the time an attorney took my case, she said, did you pray to god? that night i prayed and monday, my mother came to see me. she was in there quietly. i said, what is wrong? she said, i found an attorney $500. it was a 15,000. case at the timewhen we went to

court, the judge apologized to me because the cops live. at the end of the case, the attorney look at me and said, what do you think? i said, i got to repay you. and he said, if you want to do something, do something with your life. at that moment, i decided i wanted to be a lawyer. [applause] true story. i went to law school. while i was an undergrad they started to come to visit me and they started seeing me, how much i was having as an undergrad. so they went and got their ged so they could come to undergrad with me. these same three boys after i graduated from undergrad and went to law school started my experience. -- in law school and seeing my

experience. next thing i know, these same three books -- these the same three boys came after me in a master's program. two are in master's program andone is a law school. i start working in my field and the next thing i know i'm going to a graduation for those same three boys for master's degrees at law school. [applause] never in my mind that i think inviting them to college would change their lives. and as i grew and became older and older, that is when i realized i'm not here to just affecting me. i'm affecting everybody i come into contact with. how do you change and reach out to these other people who are not here? you change by showing them the example that you are. [applause] biget's give jeff johnson a round of applause. [applause]

all of our questions from the floor andplease join me in thanking does array, the winner of the howard lake award. and we want to thank her for her important work in helping desiree along the way. it's one more time for desiree. [applause] [cheers] let's thank dr. gregory for her insightful -- her inside. and reverend schear of the pop caucus. --warren valentine, who you can hear on the radio every day. dossers -- dr. leslie fenwfg, dean of the school of education right here. at howard, preparing and training teachers every day. our colleague, no one rollins -- nolan rollins, president of the school in new orleans.

-- the urban league of greater new orleans. and writer and active as, calvin polland. and blogger and commentator, kelly goff. [applause] i would also like you to know the state of black america, if you want to read it online, is available for free. if you would rather get a hard copy, you can get a hard copy for a small cost. you can get it hardbound or online. we want you to read the state of black america. there are so manyi also want you to join me in a very special thanks to politics 365. jeff is with politics 365, for all that they've done [applause] i want to thank the urban league staff and the staff of the urban league policy institute. let's give them a big round of

applause. [applause] dr. and doctor, dr. and mrs. sidney rabon and his wife. stand up one more time. [applause] the leader of howard university and his wife. we want to thank again at&t for being our sponsor this year. let's give them a big, big hand. [applause] also, to all of theyp's, you came out in large numbers, you set a record. and i want to thank the entire audience and encourage you to look at tonight as just the beginning of this conversation about occupying the vote. the important conversation of what we have to do in 2012. i hope you leave tonight

informed, educated, inspired, and empowered, empowered to go back to your local communities. take this message of during the challenging work and helping people in sustainable economic communities. i hope you will go back and spread the good word of the urban league movement, the urban league movement, the civil rights organization of the 21st century. thank you for coming. i've got an ipad. this thing is nice. and we had a promotion and the winner of the texting promotion ipad winner -- can i get a drumroll?

leah casselberry. [applause] give it up for lea casselberry. [applause] again, ladies and gentlemen, i want to encourage you. the webcast of the state of black america will be available at iamempowered.com. we want to thank c-span for being involved. we have the meeting in the morning, the mark and a monument and a special briefing that i know a lot of you are all going to attend.

-- the meeting in the morning at the martin luther king monument and the special briefing that i know all of you are going to attend. [applause] stand-up harry johnson. ladies and gentlemen, thanks for being with us. good night. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

>> this weekend, the libertarian party selects their candidate at their convention in los angeles and we will have live coverage tonight. there is more tomorrow at noon eastern as delegates vote for their nominee did see live coverage tonight and tomorrow on c-span. our road to the white house coverage will continue tomorrow with president obama and first lady michelle obama. will be in columbus, ohio and coverage begins at 12:55 eastern very second campaign stop is in richard -- is in richmond va. live at 4:35 p.m. eastern at virginia commonwealth

university. >> this building went up in 1943. we see this all the time. think what is the technology. back in the 1890's when they were introduced, they were explained as a railroad bridge on its end. most people were afraid of this thing. you might think we were all loving it. we love in novation but this thing looked a little scary. the guy who had this building was not too happy. he could not rented out or salads. -- or sell s. >> this weekend from cooper union, lectures in history and barry lewis of new york city in the late 19th and early 20th century. saturday night at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. eastern on cspan 3.

former federal reserve vice chair and former white house budget director alice rivlin join former white house chief of staff john podesta to talk about principles for tax reform and are joined by the former michigan governor john engler. they discuss the expiration of the bush-year tax cuts, the national deficit, jobs and the economy at the brookings institution. this lasts about one hour. >> thank you very much for joining us for the second panel. fortunately, we have a star- studded cast here. i will begin by introducing alice rivlin to my left. alice may well have the best budget resume in washington. she was director of the omb, founding director of the cbo and served on the president's commission on fiscal responsibility and was the co- chair of the domenici-redlariv

commission and chairman of the fed for several years. >> john enlger served several terms as governor of michigan and is currently president of the business roundtable. when i was looking at his background, i was struck by the following statistic -- the companies said matt leblanc to the business roundtable of annual sales of not 6 million or a 6 billion but $6 trillion. i think you can speak authoritarian to -- authoritatively to this discussion. >> john podesta has had an impossible number of influential positions in washington, d.c. in the clinton white house, he had several positions and was ultimately the chief of staff. after his time there, he founded

the center for american press and he is now the chair counselor for the center for american progress. john has been an incredible friend to the hamilton projects. we have collaborated on events and he has spoken at previous events and part of the reason we are excited to have him today is when there is a mass of confusion about policy and economic intersection, or john has a unique ability to somehow shed light and clarity on a complicated situation. we also have jim cerbek my colleague at mit and president of the national bureau of economic research and a fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences. he is one of the most influential public finance accountants in the world. one could go on and on about his

accomplishments but i will add that i am fortunate to have him as a friend who was willing to dispense advice. even advice and how to manage our three young children, which i appreciate. i thought i would begin wouldalice. could you give us a sense of this economic moment in time and how big a reform which should be looking for? >> yes, we should be looking for a very big reform for some of the reasons that were talked about in the earlier panel. every once in awhile, we get an opportunity to solve a problem like reforming our tax system that should have been solved a long time ago because something else has to be solved. the something else that has to be solved is the fact that our debt is growing faster than our

gdp because we have these enormous numbers of retiring baby boomers who need health care and our expenditures of the federal government will go up rapidly to meet that obligation. our revenues will not. here's the opportunity to do a really big tax reform that will give us a better tax system. i think it can be fairer. fairness is really important. right now our tax code is riddled with things that not only make it more complicated but much more important, make it less progressive. there are things like the home mortgage deduction which benefits people up the income scale more than people in the

middle or at the bottom. which is built an enormous a large number of very large houses for very high income people. we really don't need to encourage that. we could convert that to a credit. we need to look at our whole tax system and see what of these deductions and exclusions that have accumulated over the years for were the purposes could either be eliminated or reduced to a more progressive reform. in a way that will allow us to have a fair tax system and one that raises more revenue. we need more revenue. we cannot get to a stable debt unless we have more revenue.

>> thank you. i thought i would turn next to governor engler. there is something approaching a consensus that the corporate tax is too high and there are too many [inaudible] it appears to provide a broad outline of a deal. what is the business community looking for in this tax reform? more broadly, what could this offer to the american economy? , to the typical american household? >> that is a great question. i think the business community generally speaking is looking for certainty and predictability to de-risk what are so many areas of uncertainty.

i want to spend a little time on that because the tax debate and the fiscal debate are very much part of they risk and uncertainty that confronts someone deciding on an investment today. there are other risks in other parts of the world but we have moved from a country that could make big decisions and move on to set a direction and chart a path to a country that does not seem to be capable of making very many decisions. it is not just taxes and spending. it is and is policy, health care, housing policy, regulatory policy and you get the points. . there is the discreet question of corporate tax reform, a recognition that today the u.s. has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. that is a competitive factor among nations. as a former governor who was very much in the 1990's involved

with the conversations about competition among states -- i think people get it that states will knock themselves out. they do this from time to time when someone announces they will put a plant somewhere in america and every governor is on the telephone. they are on the plane flying to the headquarters to be chosen. this is how we can help your work force or build you a road. what is not understood in washington and among top policymakers is how vigorous that competition is among nations. virtually everybody -- i was in los angeles and happened to walk by the canadian booth "invest in canada." it is the canadian argument as to why canada makes sense. one fan and ness and his bay have a very low corporate tax rate among other things.

as a michigan governor, bill lot of attention to canada in the 1990's. when we had five years with the unemployment rate in michigan below the national average was that canada was in there for decades. it was 9.7% average for a decade. they changed a number of things and some of those are on our agenda. one of those was corporate tax reform. i believe it is possible to do. we work hard in the committee to have a proposal in front of them that would have given us corporate tax reform that would not have led the world but it would get us back toward average we lead the world today --guyana has a higher tax rate -- corporate tax rate than united states not many others. >> if we had a more competitive

corporate tax structure, what would that mean for the average american family? >> how we get the american growth rate back up? if we are around 2%, that is not adequate. you ne to see the kind of robust job creation that will get that unemployment rate below 8% and get the work force participation back above what is almost an historic low. you need the gdp to get back above 3.5%. a 1% increase in gdp adds about $1 trillion. it is part of the growth agenda. i would say by itself, it is important contribution. a competitive corporate tax rates fixes your editorial problem. bring the trapped dollars home and not the region and not have a tax code were you and go

anywhere in the world and not pay taxes. that can't be the right tax policy for america. >> thank you. in addition to your many academic accomplishments, you also served on president bush paused advisement panel on tax reform in 2005. we heard a little bit from alice about the challenges we face with the budget and the deadebt and about corporate tax reform. can you give us a sense of how we can pull everything together to produce a coherent tax system that includes income tax, corporate taxes, and on previous panel, there was discussion about assumption taxes and environmental taxes -- you have two minutes. >> i should start by acknowledging the folks from

treasury and others who were so helpful in doing the work of that 2005 panel. the recommendations of that panel did not exactly take -- create a wave in washington. i'm not sure we compete in the panel. there were two lessons that i would point to in this. it is really important to think about tax reform as a holistic activities, something which will affect many components of the tax system. we must avoid the risk of getting cherry pit. people might say you put together a plan except for this provision was knees to be pulled out. the essence of tax reform is there are likely to be winners and lower as particularly if we do tax reform in a revenue- raising environment, there are likely to be many rules in that situation. we may be able to get to a system that is more efficient and better for growth and which makes the ultimate burden of the tax system on the tax paying

public smaller. it puts a great deal of pressure on keeping everything together. this is so you can say we have done a whole collection of reform here which ondon't maybe leave you a little bit better off but as soon as the tape components out of that, everything begins to rattle. let me point out the importance of putting the corporate and individual tax on the table together. there are two reasons for that. as the earlier panel suggested, thinking about how you tax corporate tackle -- corporate capital income is likely to be very important in the coming distortions or -- discussions around tax reform. corporate tax as part of the discussion very unique to think about project which began the corporate sector in many cases and collect all the taxes that are levied on them before they ultimately get to their investors. you heard e

rpate and investor tax treatments. you could have a tax-exempt investor investing in a taxable corporation. you could have an s corporation doing a pject is only taxed at the house level. you need to think about what you are doing to the playing field of all those different ways of taxing investment projects. not only does the corporate revenue feature in this, it is important to the distributional analysis. women get to the top 1%, when the congressional budget office looks at the financial district is some level, part of this comes and the amputation of corporate tax liability. if you want to get an accurate measure of a little bird in, you need to feature corporate tax as we did things in 1986 that change the relative tax burden.

l lot of thatata we looked at lying on numrs that areis reported on tax returns. if you change your income is in the corporate sector verse is the healthiest sector, it shows up in differen places. that should have a standard -- a severe impact. >> thanks. we have a lot of work to do to solve all this. podestahy we have john batting cleanup here. i guess we will hit the debt ceiling before the year ends. >> right. >> the debt -- bush tax cuts are expected to expire at year end.

there's an increase in amt, a sequester in defense spending on the policy side. on the political side, i hear there is no election in november. i went and looked up to find out who would win. according to intrade, the president will be reelected and the house will go republican. and the senate will go republican. + we have a lame-duck session. what will happen? [laughter] >> i think it takes someone who been burned some the size of their re to thinof this as an opportunity.

perhaps the circumstance under which you can actually find a way to view this as something of a time where this debate could come together not because it just the economic argument but because of the political construction that the likely results in a deadlock in the lame-duck session but with people with a strong degree of interest in reforming the codes. on january 1, we are looking at a snap back to a code that we looked under in the clinton administration. it goes under the situation in which government -- president clinton governed the country. that becomes a new base line for

this discussion. and a new context in which we look at the ideas that have been already discussed this morning in the panel earlier. most i would say, most importantly, that produces a revenue level that is substantially higher than current policy. current law, what happens if nothing happens and gridlock prevails, which is a good bet in washington, and that is the level of revenue because back to 20.5% of gdp. the earlier panel already described the problems with that in the very short term. what happens in 2013 and so one?

if the economy still has high unemployment, but that eventually get back to 20% g.d.p. under obama's first three years, we have been at 15.8% which is where we were under the truman administration. you begin to have the circumstances under which revenue is at a higher level. the choices you need to make the trade-offs in base broadening and lowering rates operate in a context quite different than when we have operated in under the last few years and really the last decade under the bush tax cuts. that would be my first thought about this. i will adjust say a few other things.

-- i would just say a few other things. there's a difference between broadening the base and a lowering the rate. if you think about their rates as they currently exist, we have the lowest top rate since world war ii in existence and the lowest capital gains rate since coolidge was president. there is only a certain amount of loring that one can do even as you broaden the base. i just want to make one last point on that topic which is, governor engler raise the issue of canada and the canadian economy which is doing reasonably well these days.

the united states actually had revenue at the state, local, and federal level. if it's good enough for the canadiens, maybe it is good enough for the americans. in 1999 balance the budget and have very strong jobs growth and people were doing well across the income spectrum. people in the middle were doing better. the question, particularly with the wage inequality was not a topic on the table because wages were growing up. >> i thought i would oppose this next question to the whole panel. there are a lot of different ways to judge tax reforms.

three important factors are there a faq on growth, their effect on revenues. i just want to pose to everyone here, suppose we actually do something about that and something changes. what is the probability that we will end up with a tax system that is worse than the one than we currently have? >> it is not zero. [laughter] we have done that before. >> we have a wonderful set of problems and everyone kind of agrees. >> one way is that we could do a really good tax reform which would be positive on all of the things that you mentioned in would be pro-growth.

it would be more progressive or at least as progressive but i would hope for more progressive. what was your other criteria? and it would substantially raise revenue. we could do that. we have that opportuni modelsxist. they came out of the domenici- rivlin, they came out of simpson-bowles. unless we put some kind of safeguard in place that prevents congress from doing what they usually do and quite quickly after the 1986 reform, we risk having things added back in. of course we want to have this

were the program, but we do not want to spend money on it. we want to put that in the tax code and then it erodes again. i think that is a serious danger and that we should do what i'm sure would please governor engler naand his friends, which is to put some impediment on eventual change. we need a tax code that we can really fix. >> your view is we could end up with a better tax code but it could slowly become worse? >> if we are not careful. >> go ahead, john. >> alice is right. the risk is not zero. it is probably far from zero. you could make these changes all temporary for two years. sixty provisions of the tax code expired at the end of last year. we actually do not have a tax cut.

we have an amalgamation of expiring provisions at various times and no one can plan on anything. permanency is a fundamental of reform and then you leave it alone. where we were 25 years ago, after 1986, was pretty good but then they started making changes and undermining it. a broader, flatter, more fair tax system is the direction we want to go in. jim made a point that is really important. the committee of 12 and, when they were trying to get us on an agreement of $1.40 trillion, there was an opportunity to do corporate tax reform may be standing alone, but no -- now we are caught up in the corporate tax expiration, all of the businesses, right in because of the past three revenue. he made another point that it is

hard to tease out, but there is so much income in the top end of the tax cut today. there has to be some kind of equilibrium across the board. we have gotten this rather confused. but there are lot of things you can do that would be problematic and could be more problematic. the other thing is that there is a piece of what the administration talked about, good and bad, the framework that talks about a corporate rate at 20%, but some of the treatment on international income, i do not think we want to be the only nation in the world that requires to subject them to our tax rate. that strikes me as a big disincentive and to the

consequences could happen. neither of them are good. you could end up seeing some companies where suddenly there is no export. we love budweiser but no one ever thought they would be owned by brazilians. if you look at just the tax consequences of that transaction, it made perfect sense. when they put together alcatel lucent, there are tax laws and everything else that worked much better when they were a french company. i like more companies in the u.s. and i do not want a policy that says of the next decade we have more exports. >> michael, i think the biggest risk is that you lock in a very low level of revenue and that all of this discussion about broadening the base, lowering the rate ends up lowering the rate without broadening the

base. that being said, i think we're really in the suit. you build in a huge short stroll deficit after 2013 that will be even more difficult to get rid of, i think. the other possibility, i think, is to begin with a theory that we just figure it out as. along which sets the rate at the front than than than figure out how to get there. that can have very negative consequences on the middle class. if you begin by dropping the top rate as the first part of the equation, and then you build that out by essentially building in come back in targeted at working people and the middle class, i think you can end up with a situation that is even worse. >> and that is a very real danger coming out of this campaign because the candidates

are all saying, at least republican ones, that they're going to lower the rate than they are not going to tell you how they're going to make up the revenue. there will be an eectation -- scenario oft's your "tax reform by december 31st" there is a good chance of the we will hear something. i think true tax reform requires a profit. it requires going through consensus building around the key issues that are embraced in the key results. that is the way we got the 1986 reform. treasury one came out in 1984 and it did not have a full consensus. treasury two did better. then finally there was the senate finance committee with bipartisan support that led to the agreement.

treasury one and two both preserved some treatment of capital gains on the grounds that there were capitalist issues. we ended up with a top rate issue. that is a lot of horse trading to get there. anything that came out quickly, there are things that could happen quickly that may be an improvement and some limitations on tax expenditures were one may put a cap and it would have the effect of broadening the base in a very simple way and generating additional revenue along the way. i think there are many things that could be simple tweaks that could move us in the wrong direction and would give up the very important option about having a serious debate about where we are. >> another piece relating to that very quickly. if you're going to go from a lower corporate rate about tax

expenditures, there is a phase out required. if you screw that up, you can do a lot of short-term damage. >> part of the reason we wrote this was so that we could evangelize everyone in this room so that when you hear in the future, 28% tax rate or what ever, you can turn back and see fort that means progressivity. >> there is a topic that i think is highly related to all of this. there's not a lot of consensus about it, but there are different viewpoints. i wonder, jim, if i can start you off with this? there is a kind of a growing body of research that i'm not

sure that everyone agrees with. we do not reduced the work effort by munch. i know not everyone agrees with it, but i wonder if you wanted to take a stab at it? >> more generally, what degree to tax rates affect both work effort and/or g.d.p.? that is a central part of the narrative. >> that's a very hard question. that's only so much economic research can deliver in answering a question like that. studying the history of tax rates mean we have let relatively few changes and we cannot hold constant all the

other things going on in the world. it is often a response to perceived circumstances in the economy. you discover that the correlation does not do what you would otherwise think. that is the first problem. that is a remarkably low-power way. measuring the powers that work as probably not the best way. if you think about the entrepreneur is are the others that think about the other part of the distribution, apart from

lawyers with very careful billing records, and that is really hard to pin down something like, "what is labor supply what is much harder is to think about what leads an engineer at something like h-p when they leave the firm to do something in a garage and it takes off. we can talk about how tax rates on different parts of that may create an incentive, but if dan you say if you can point to the very simple data series, it is not nearly as easy to do. there are two things i would take away from it. incentives do matter, even at the top of the system, but trying to figure out to take more risk or be more

competitive, there is it plasticity. taxable income response to what the taxable income rights are. when you lower the rates, that is the best example of this and you sometimes generate more realization. it seems to be somewhat sensitive to raise. how does this map in to the underlying economic activity that gets back to the growth we care about? i think the existing body of evidence does not leave us in a place where we can point that systematically that it can strengthen or weaken us.

>> it will not be shocking for you to hear me say this, but i think we have a 16-year experiment with higher capital gains rate from 1992-2000 and then from 2000-2007. before the recession, what did we have? 10 times the job growth, twice the business investment group, median wages and average income going up. i do think the burden now is on the people who keep arguing for cutting particularly capital rates and cutting taxes overall to show why that will not results in what it resulted in the first half of the decade. >> i agree with all of that, but i think it should make us wary

of political claims that, for example, if you were to raise the top rate back to where it was in the 1990's that it would kill a lot of jobs. these assertions are being made all the time and people who make them sound as though they really mean it, but they do not. [laughter] >> that we approach this differently. i'm not sure that is the question i worry about. a look at the day's economy and there are 3 million jobs not filled because people do not have the skills to fill them. that workries me. if a child was born today in the district of columbia, under current spending, we are prepared to help that child be a

productive citizen, what is happening is meeting a success rate that is unacceptably low. we have a lot of other factors, i think, in whether or not somebody works one year longer or not, are works a little bit harder, or wants to do over time. i would like to have those problems verses the ones i'm talking about. the fact that we have the labor rate so low today is because there are not jobs and we have to fix the unemployment rate. what will it take to get growth going? that is what the focus ought to be. their air of a lot of fiscal and tax problems that are important. -- there are a lot of problems

that are important. there is a bigger, broader political set of questions about sending citizens through entitlement reform with a clear message on what you will be obligated to do in terms of your health care and what we're going to do it people need to rely on medicaid. all of those are economic signals that it will impact people's decisions about how much i work, how hard i worked, how prepared i am going to be or understand i need to be with the military leadership saying more than a majority of young people are not eligible to even be inducted into military services. we have a national challenge and did all factors back in. i do not want to make this overwhelming, but we have a bunch of other rules that impact

how we play the game, too, that are just as unfair and uncertain. i do not get too worried about the question you posed about where the incentives live because if we get to the point where that is all we have to worry about, that is one thing. >> let me pick up on what you mentioned there. there is no question that the great recession moved into everyone's living room several years ago and i think collectively it is still in the nation's living room, one way or another. having all these tax events happening at the end of the year, how should we be trying to balance the continuing weakness in the economy with the looming tax threats? in several scenarios, it could be quite detrimental.

>> you have to think about this in terms of whatever changes you're trying to make. there is fear that you have that snap back. you have the looming threat of have a sequester is built in to the statutory provisions passed last summer when the debt limit was last raised. that is another $1.20 trillion in federal spending that would come out over a decade from defense, whether the political system would tolerate that or not, i am uncertain. there is contraction built in to current law. that, again, i think is an argument for spring 2013 is an important moment. i think, because neither party

really wants that outcome, that you could find may be some common ground and that would, i think, have to include phasing in other revenue levels. >> we are in the somewhat fortunate position in the u.s. that the troubles in the rest of the global economy give us a little bit of breathing room in addressing some of these more top physical challenges. the capital markets take a long view and make it make substantial progress in restoring a sustainable fiscal trajectory in 2000 at 13, if we could put a plan on the table that brings forward a general plan for stabilization, but that brings in the governor's point

about transition rules, so figuring out what we're going to do and explain how the capital tax will phase, that is a project that can take a few years to do well, but there's enormous value in giving the market participants a head up on where you're going. because the u.s. is dealing with low interest rates because of concerns elsewhere in the world, we have that opportunity where we can try to take some of those things on. that window may, at some point, clothes and we may not always have the discretion of taking our time to think about these for a while before we need to respond. some of our european counterparts have to do things very quickly because they do not have that breathing room. >> we need to do two things at once. clearly, we do not want to be increase in taxes right now, or any increase, in a weak economy

and we do not want to cut in expenditures, especially in mindless one, as a sequester would be. i would argue that we need to invest more in the short run, pick some of the problems that governor engler was worrying about, the skills gap, infrastructure, but we need to do that at the same time that we phase in in a predictable way the stabilization of our debt on both sides, spending and on taxes. here is our opportunity to do that right. making a really important point. all the speakers have hit on this in response to this question. if you set a certain policy direction and you are phasing in overtime, you still set the direction. that is really important and a big signal. what we have done is we have

created such uncertainty -- two month extension on payroll tax? are we serious? we have a payroll tax to support medicare funding coming on line in january depending on what happens with the supreme court decision. we need to, as a country, have our political leadership be willing to lay down a position and say this is the direction we're going to go in. one thing i observed is you have today's governors of both political parties like gov. christie has democrats leading the house in new jersey. this is a permutation that exists all over and they are working through things because, under law, the state says they

have no choice. they have to balance a budget. they have to present a budget. here we have a perpetual non- budget. we need to be able to start making some longer-term decisions. in doing? , in reforming some of our problems, we do a little bit now but say this is what we're going to do over a long time and it's amazing how the numbers respond. social security, that was bipartisan way back when and it has been quite durable. it has lasted a long time. in terms of ease, because if it is not easy, we do not fix it. just like we do not fix immigration. this all comes together. white the country is riled about is, can anyone play this game anymore? >> you have a range in some

areas, like we saw with the previous panel, they are not all out of fire. >> pick a direction. and go that way. if we get it wrong, we can change it. but we cannot cope with is no direction, no decision, and uncertainty. >> can i say something about the social security reform? one of the ways in which that was achieved without the democrats coming in one to make sure that at least 50% of the closing came in the form of tax increases and republicans want to make sure 50% was benefit cuts. one of the features of the reform was to include social security payments in the federal income tax to a greater degree and the democrats were allowed to count that as a tax increase and they were allowed to count it as a benefit cut. but the two together and they

were both able to declare victory and go home. but certainly sounds to me like it has the same secret sauce associated with it. maybe something can be down there. >> it requires democrats and republicans actually negotiating with each other and that's not happening create >> nodded they want to be reelected. >> we can reach an agreement on the panel. alice rivlin and pete domenici did that once. >> but we were not running for office. of demand forot questions from the floor and i will just imposing 92nd rule on the panel to take one more question. there are a lot of people who say if we are in a moment where we need more revenue, we can raise income tax is one way or another and alternatively, we

can broaden the scope of things that could be taxed. larry summers talked about consumption tax. also an environmental tax that has the benefit of reducing something we do not like very much. why is that not a part of the discussion? >> it should be. i am for a carbon tax. i think it is a two-four. it raises the prices of fossil fuels over time, which we need to do. it is such a polarizing issue. most of the things we're talking about on this panel that i do not think we should put that up front. >> i think it runs a competitive risk. i think a tax on production, a

carbon tax, at a time when we seem to be developing a proliferation of shale gas and fixed construction in the gulf. chemical is coming back. we ought to be taking a advantage of the energy advantages as a nation to really be able to help move the manufacturing back on shore. we're highly productive as a result. why would we put a carbon tax up there has a way of reducing the competitiveness? you can tax anything. i do not think the individuals will not pay taxes, but we have drawn the government.

>> i'm not optimistic. i think it, given what the governor just said, there are other ways of dealing with energy taxes that could have a positive effect. for example, getting rid of the fossil fuel tax preference provision in the tax code. the other way to think about this is shifting from foreign to domestic resources by taxing oil. the effect of moving more gas into the transportation sector. that would definitely have an impact on half of our trade deficit which still comes from importing oil. there are different mechanisms by which we could impose energy taxes that would have a positive it impact. >> two quick things. that discussion needs to be part of a broader energy policy

design debate that goes beyond the tax system. there is a bandwidth issue which is the second point in terms of what we can take on at one time. we have to take on the basic structure of the corporate individual income tax as a part of the fiscal reform challenge. we may as well just to put our attention to that in the near term while we have this moment of tax-mageddon coming up. in come back at some later date maybe not too far down the road to think about the broader policy issues. >> you have an optimistic view of a rational policy as someone who knows a lot about energy. but go to the floor questions. -- let's go to the floor. >> having both sides come to the metal is crucial. what we see here is a symmetry

of a very high proportion of the republican side of the aisle that has signed an agreement with grover norquist not to raise any taxes. when you take two-thirds or even three-quarters of one side out of the bargaining, how do you get to an agreement? >> years ago, i had some credentials in that party. being agnostic now at the round table, let me just say this. there is also symmetry in the works being done by the two houses. it seems to me if you're going to have a traditional legislative debate format that you do what they're doing on transportation. the senate passes their version, the house passes their version and then they have a mechanism called the conference to work out the differences. if only one house is passing legislation and the other is not, it's hard to go the conference.

the answer i get from some is that it is really hard. [laughter] >> i think marty feldstein said it well. when republicans recognize that we are spending through the tax code, then we have no trouble coming together. >> no one has a lower expectation of what the congressional republicans will do than me. coming back to the fact that on january 1st, 2013, we will have a seismic event in the tax code that will restore the clinton- era tax code which is a circumstance if obama is reelected, and i think he has negotiating leverage to force republicans to the table and to the center. >> should we reinstitute the

1986 tax code that was passed under president reagan? what would be the implications? would the republicans support it? >> if you gave me the choice of that code vs where we are today, i would very well go with it because we have a number of things there that were holistic in the with a thought about the tax structure. as gov. engler said, it needs to be responsive to the economic environment we're in. international mobility of capital and the global business environment, we are no longer in in 1986 environment. the other important thing is the near term macro and i do not think you would want to go there without thinking about a phasing in. i do not think that is a likely outcome in terms of where we are going. >> i think we have time for one

last question. >> for mr. engler, do you agree that more revenue needs to be a goingof the tax focode forward? >> absolutely. i would start with a doubling the g.d.p. and getting the ball going. a lot of those are not tax code decisions but they are various policies like foreign-policy. i do not have a problem with revenue. we could raise the gas tax. i never felt i had to apologize for cutting income taxes. i think your tax structure and how the incentives lineup matter the most. as a record but i think the

round table speaking for this organization today, we look at the corporate tax rate and our discussion with the congress, we felt if you scored this the way i would with significant revenue growth, it was a much better tax code. >> join me in thanking the panelists. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> this weekend, the libertarian

party will select their nominee at their conference in vegas. live coverage at 9:00 beginning with a two-hour a candidate debate and a delegate vote for nominees. all live on c-span. wrote to the white house coverage begins as president obama and first lady had to two campaign rallies tomorrow started in columbus, ohio, at 12:35 p.m. eastern on line at c- span.org. we will be live in virginia at 4:35 p.m. eastern from the campus of virginia commonwealth university. >> sunday -- >> i want each book to examine the political power in america. this is a kind of political power. seeing what a president can do in a time of great crisis and

how he gathers them all around. what does he do to get legislation moving in washington? that is a way of examining power in a time of crisis. i want to do this in full. i suppose it took 300 pages. i just said let's examine this. >> robert caro on "the passage of power," the fourth volume in his multi-volume biography of lyndon johnson. join us for the second are the conversation sunday, may 20th. >> next, a state department counterterrorism coordinator on the u.s. fight against how qaeda from a marine corps university conference. this is about two hours. >> will be introducing our keynote speaker this afternoon, the president of the marine corps university, general murray.

he will be leaving us this summer and take over education command and be in charge of all of marine corps education. i can see why. i want to thank him publicly for having been a commander who believes in michigan type orders, who gives guidance, but -- mission-type orders, wyoho gives guidance, but allows so ordnance to carry it out and giving them trust and support. that is very important and i'm sure he will take that to his next command as well. general murray. [applause] >> i kind of thought you were just trying to get rid of me quickly there at the beginning when you started out. thanks to everyone as we start out the afternoon session, for coming here today and taking part in this discussion. i encourage you to continue to do so this afternoon because you have a lot of experience and expertise.

that is why we have asked you to come here with us today. please, focus our participation this afternoon and again. thank you very much. i would like you to thank the ned minerva and the marie corps university's support for this conference this afternoon. our keynote speaker for today, ambassador daniel benjamin. he is currently ambassador at large and is with the state department as the coordinator of counter-terrorism. a very unique background, a combination that we do not often see. i think it would be beneficial to us this afternoon. in government and private- sector media and as well in academia, and aside from his current position in government,

he has also served with the clinton administration as the director of counter-terrorism and in the office of multinational threats. he has also served as a speechwriter on foreign policy and a special adviser to president clinton. in the media realm, he has been a correspondent for "time" magazine as well as "wall street journal." and has served as a senior fellow at the brookings institution in academia, and also has degrees from harvard and oxford where he serves as a marshall scholar. a great background and very honored to have you with us this afternoon. please welcome the ambassador. [applause] >> thank you very much, general. and thank you for reminding me of the difficulty i have had in holding a job. [laughter]

i have to say that if you are really going to be education command, i envy you that title greatly. that sounds terrific. it is a real pleasure to be back at quantico, and particularly to be here today on this anniversary day. i cannot think of a better place to be that at one of the nation's centers of innovation, thinking, and training about dealing with the threats that we face, a place that has played such an important role in the advances that have brought us so far in the struggle against terrorism. i would like to thank minerva for inviting me to this conference. as far as addressing the question of how terrorist and radical groups and, it is certainly timely and provocative one. anniversaries provide us a good time to take stock and assess where we are. we find ourselves as we get the

one-year mark of the death of osama bin laden. oft mission's success, course, was the result of extraordinary courage and intelligence. and i mean intelligence not only in the sense of the information we had about what was going on, but intelligence about how to conduct, such an operation. it was moreover, a real testament to the american resolve, and it built on the work and determination of countless intelligence analyst, collectors, military specialists and operators as well as a host of counter- terrorism professionals across the government and across many years. over the last week or so, we have seen a variety of opinions expressed in the media and various public fora to take stock in the -- to take stock of where we are in the world before -- concerning al qaeda. many of the questions that you are going to examine in this

conference about how terrorist groups and are, i'm happy to say, is a bit beyond my purview. but i do want to start the discussion with looking at where we are regarding al qaeda, what the environment is in which that network operates, and then to offer some thoughts on what more we need to do to achieve the common goal of reducing the danger from this group. let me begin by giving you an assessment of the threat of landscape. i will start with the court and work my way out word. -- the core and work my way out work. as all of you know, the death of bin laden was a landmark. he was the sole commander and founder for 22 years, and iconic leader and some of his personal story had a profound attraction for violent extremists.

and we should also not forget that he predicated the group's focus on america as the qassam terrorist target. -- as the group's terrorist target. we know that he had to manage all contact with -- when he was not organizing contact, he was directly involved in organizing a strategy more so than we had thought. and as many of you are undoubtedly aware, he was not the only top al qaeda corr leader who departed in 2011. also one of the most dangerous and cable vault operatives in south asia -- capable operatives in south asia left. and the senior operational commander, both of those were killed. in pakistan and in our tiny and -- in mayra taneytown, -- in pakistan.

and in mauritania another was arrested last year. u.s. stronghold in much of the tribal areas have -- has degraded the ability of the group. al qaeda is losing badly, and bin laden knew it. in documents he talked of disaster after disaster. he even urged tribal leaders to go to places away from air photography and bombardment. and in addition to the significant -- leadership losses, they also found themselves having difficulty with getting money, training of recruits and attacks in the region. i think we ought to acknowledge the al qaeda core remains a

threat and we recognize that at any given time it could carry out strikes at u.s. interests at home and abroad. but al qaeda is on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse. of course, its core is not the only story. despite the blows in pakistan that i have described, as well as elsewhere, the global network of al qaeda remains an enduring and serious threat to the u.s. much of al qaeda's activity has devolved into its affiliates, and many individuals remain receptive to its ideology. clearly, much more work needs to be done. al qaeda in the arabian peninsula represents a particularly serious threat. the 2006 christmas day, tent, the attempted bombing in the fall of 2010 have directly illustrated the threat it poses to the united states, its friends and its allies.

it has benefited from lustres -- last year's political crisis in yemen and policies that accompanied it. -- the paralysis that accompanied it. it has maintained control of territory in yemen for its recruits. the yemeni people after election are taking steps towards probability and security. -- stability and security. if the yemeni transition progresses, we will continue to provide security and counterterrorism earned -- counter-terrorism support to combat violent extremism as with a liver humanitarian -- as we deliver humanitarian and economic aid. elsewhere in the gulf in iraq, we have seen the persistence of another aq affiliate, al qaeda in iraq.

iraqi forces continue to toaqi and they have shown -- to confront aqi and have shown substantial ability they have been unable to mobilize the senate committee, which deterred -- which turned decisively against it. -- they have been unable to mobilize the seung-hui community, which turned decisively against it. aqi is believed to be extending its reach into syria. as we have seen in yemen and elsewhere, civil strife creates the kind of environment that terrorists are drawn to. some attempt to manipulate and exploit the situation. the extent that extremists are working with opposition elements remains unclear.

the opposition groups in many cases may not be aware that they are, and many of them have disavowed any desire to cooperate with aqi. in east africa, al-shabab remains the primary driver of instability. in february, ivan al-zawahiri and the al-shabab leader announced a formal alliance. its four soldiers are very much focused on events within somalia. -- its foot soldiers are very much focused on events within somalia. but they are still willing to conduct attacks elsewhere in the region, as we saw on the 2010 bombing in uganda and it continued threat in kenya and burundi and elsewhere. with the assistance of alassane

and some of somalia's neighbors, somalia has made significant gains in degrading al-shabab's capability and degrading it administration over the last year. this is a very important good news story, and probably a better news story than many of us have probably expected after years of frustration in somalia. the death of key leaders and organizations and popularity is a result of its failure to address a basic need during the humanitarian crisis. it continues still to pose a threat to civilians, humanitarian workers and government structures there. alassane has been the historic weakest affiliate. m.o. has been a kidnapping for ransom, or kfr. they have garnered millions of dollars through kfr. these new crown resources,

together with the advantage of taking -- with the ability to take advantage of the instability in the region have strengthen them. while there are recent efforts of the torrid -- tuaregs to distance themselves. boko haram is not an official affiliate, but it leaves the organized group of militants and extremists. they are focused on internal nigerian issues and exporting

-- exploiting the grievances in the northern part of the country. they launched attacks across northern nigeria, including one in august against the u.n. headquarters in abuja that signaled its capability to attack non-nigerian targets. despite having suffered shattering setbacks on a number of occasions, most recently in 2009, a lack of progress in resolving an emmy and grievances, combined with the heavy-handed tactics and has led to the group's resurgence. despite their weak organization, its brand of violent extremism is gaining ground and cannot be overlooked. we remain concerned by a report

of communications trainings and weapons links to our shebaa and al qaeda in the arabian -- al- shabab and al qaeda in the brianne peninsula. -- arabian peninsula. finally, remain concerned about threats to the homeland. in the last several years cannot individuals who have been trained by aq and its affiliates have operated within the u.s. borders. and while they are so-called loan will terrace, they also pose a threat -- lone wolf terrorists, they pose a threat. as a result of its weakened status, al qaeda and especially its affiliate, is pursuing people to conduct individual acts of violence. that has become one of the main thrust of the group at the moment. the last case in toulouse and nabhan represent -- and

montalban represents the challenges we face. at this point, i would like to turn to turn to the larger historical circumstances shaping the battle. over the last year in the middle east, a number of events have greatly discredited the extremist argument that only violence can bring about change. that is physically an aq argument. al qaeda's single-minded focus on terrorism as an instrument of change can be severely de- legitimize it. basic human freedoms is something all of us should support because it is profound in its own right. but from a person -- security

perspective we also have a great deal to gain. democracy can give people a stake in their governance, and thereby weaken those who call for violence. we have no illusions that this process will be painless or quick. revolutionary transformation undoubtedly, paired with the many bonds in the road. we are not blind to the perils. terrorists can cause significant disruptions for states undergoing challenging democratic transitions, and those states are often themselves distracted, weakened, or otherwise by the lack the capacity in their ability to deal with terrorist groups. for example, the philippine revolution profoundly affected some of the poorest families on earth. exiled fighters returning has

significantly changed the situation in somalia and nigeria and chad and mauritania. it has created a vacuum and the north of the country that has provided aqim with greater freedom of movement. while history appears broadly to be going in the right direction, we obviously cannot count on it going in the right place everywhere all the time, as we see -- i should also add, in nigeria. nigeria. it what more do we need to do to defeat or reduce the terrorist challenge? what the same terrorist groups are financing is below of new recruits.

to put al qaeda and like-minded extremists on a permanent path to defeat, these groups will have to lose their ability to recruit new members. how do we stop that inflow of new recruits and prevent those that do take up arms up from achieving their goals? our counter-terrorism successes in the last few years are attributable in large part to the extraordinary amount of international cooperation we've seen over the last 10 years. and although we have not been able to prevent all attacks, we have disrupted dangerous conspiracies and taken bad actors off the streets and disruptive highly cable networks. there is much to be a product as a global network. we have become exceptionally adept at effectively counter terror -- countering terrorism. we have to undercut the ideological and rhetorical underpinnings that maybe extremist world view attractive to some individuals and groups

pa also addressing local grievances and other drivers. we also have an opportunity to build with our global partners to deliver a strategic blow to al qaeda and it's dangerous ideology and put this organization on at half to oblivion. to be truly successful, we have to focus our efforts on its affiliates and also working to make inroads against terrorist recruitment. therefore, working with our colleagues, our focus is on two major lines of effort. first, building are neighbors capacity. second, countering the ideology and blunting the drivers of extremism. we know that when there is a recognition of the need on the part of other states and the political will to address that need, we can help with programs to build the capacity of our partners. and we can develop the

stability of partners with their law enforcement institutions to do a better job of tracking and incarcerating terrorists. you in the military are fully engaged in this effort, particularly through the many training programs that you undertake in countries are on the world. the flagship capacity building effort remains the anti- terrorist assistance program. one of our goals is to build a pleasure trip partner countries, and with law enforcement in particular, and the atf is able to effectively provide advanced training. this formula program has been successful in turkey, indonesia, some countries in northern africa, and jordan.

it is important to note that we are also working to put the capacity building effort atop the international agenda. particularly the international global terrorism form. it is a new counterterrorism body with 39 countries and was launched by secretary clinton on september 22 last year in new york with her counterparts from most of the founding members. it's initiative is a major part of the obama administration's broader effort to deal with 20% 3 threats. its primary focus is on capacity building and relevant areas. it will increase the number of within their border regions. this will help north african countries undergoing transitions to engage with the u.s. and other western countries on politically sensitive issues.

this can be how the western partners can best support the transition away from oppressive regimes to rule of law. platform for its efforts. at the september launch, we saw two major accomplishments that demonstrated the reaction- oriented nature of the gctf. its members mobilized some $100 million to support the training of prosecutors, judges, police and officials to help move away from oppressive tactics of terrorism. this is one of the most hopeful

signs that we can blunt one of the key drivers of radicalization. these programs will assist countries in their transition as they draft a new counter- terrorism legislation and train the key officials necessary to apply laws in keeping with universal human rights. on the counter in violent extremism side, there is a group working to do precisely that. the united arab emirates is going to step up and host the first conference ever on fighting violent extremism. its target audiences will include government policy makers, police, educators, media, online communicators, and other religious and community leaders from around the world. indeed, countering a violent

extremism, this second prong of what we call the strategic counter-terrorism agenda, is at the core of our policy and about interrupting the flow of newwe are working to address the drivers of radicalization that lead people to accept al qaeda's ideology. we are working to ameliorate the conditions that make it attractive. we know that it thrives where there is alienation or perceived or real threat of deprivation. we need to address the underlying conditions and we need to do more to improve the ability of moderates to strengthen their views in opposition to violence. to counter the violent extremist propaganda, we will push back against aq's online and media activities. the center is housed at the state department, but its

mission will be to use public communication to reduce radicalization by al qaeda and its affiliates in the interest of national security of the u.s. efforts through the digital outreach team, which challenges the extremists by engaging on line in arabic or somali through text video and other forms of communication. we know that it involves more than messaging. agency to provide programs. such as encouraging social media to generate constructive that local initiatives. we're working to support skill building and mentoring efforts and the like. we're looking at the domestic power approaches that have a track record of the effectiveness to see if those

can be adapted to the current challenging circumstances. lastly, we must have the capacity to counter radicalization itself. this rehabilitation and reintegration led by the united nations into regional crime researcher at the justice institute. this initiative provides reform where policy-makers, practitioners, independent experts and organizations can share best practices. it is an incubator of terrorists today.

terrorist threats require innovative strategies, and we have seen the nature of our enemies. we need creative diplomacy and ever-stronger partnerships. it is and engaging partners of both bilaterally and multilaterally how to confront this evolving terrorist threat. i hope you agree after this review we have made a lot of progress. quite obviously, there remains a great deal to be done. the historical context is promising. we have real success. now is not the time to let up. it is time to redouble our efforts. [applause]

>> the libertarian party will select its party at its convention in las vegas. we will have live coverage tonight at 9:00 eastern, and more tomorrow at noon. all live on c-span. our coverage continues as president and first lady obama had to richmond for a campaign rally. this will be from the campus of virginia commonwealth university. also, live coverage on c-span. back to the marine corps university for the look at the history of terrorism. this hour-long panel is part of the conference examining how terrorist organizations had evolves over time. -- have evolves over time.

>> to be going after such a dynamic speaker, we will have to step up our game. first, i would like to introduce dr. amin tariz, with their marine corps university, an expert on afghanistan, pakistan. he has written several books on the subject.

dr. tom marks has been doing a lot of work on special operations as well as he has written a number of pieces on vietnam and nepal. >> good afternoon. welcome to my home, my office is right above here. say anything, i am speaking on my own behalf using my .edu account and not my .mil account. i wish i had one of those extinguished insurgencies,

because i met part of this session because the taliban issued two statements as the conference is going on. it is very much on going. first, they have never designated themselves as a terrorist organization. all individuals within those organizations have been indicated as terrorists even though the taliban has not been indicated as such. playing host to al qaeda, the taliban became part of the global war against terror. in a decade and a half, they have emerged as a stronger and more, if not effective,

important military organization today. the taliban is a critical player in determining war in afghanistan. partner, it remains unclear as we speak. "taliban" -- the arabic word talib means speaker or student. taliban or the arabic equivalent really means students.

since 1994, the taliban islamic movement have become internationally known as part of this group that emerged seemingly from nowhere in about october of 1994. the translation of holy warriors, these are people fighting against the soviets in afghanistan since basically 1979-1992. the taliban came from politics in kandohar. with a direct military and political support of neighboring pakistan, it is the financial aid. the leaders of the taliban

claim to be members of former students and members of the group's, although they have come from different groups led by a man that is now dead. or the islamic movement. came from different variations. one of pakistan's main islamic groups [unintelligible] the taliban became the de facto government of afghanistan in december of 1996 when it seized control of the capital kabul and ousted the regime headed by the president.

assassinated several months ago. ironically, he was chosen as the head of the peace council to deal with the taliban. at that time, it has become part of the english language, the least in america. those of you have studied islamic governments, it has a significance. it means commander of the faithful. he changed the name of afghanistan to the islamic emirates of afghanistan. most of afghanistan was more a

previous enterprise and a democratic regime with power consolidated under one figure. he adapted secrecy as a means of control, and a traded that still continues today. in the united states of america, it deals with the adjective with which we speak but whose leader who have not seen or heard of in the last 10 years. no one has seen him alive. the taliban method of governance is a centralized and democratic system that established itself in 1996. he came not through the taliban, he was there before the taliban came in.

it was eastern shora, to make people part of the government. again, the reason i am emphasizing that is that it was not something that they were seeking in initially. in august of 1998, osama bin laden and the taliban refused to surrender him prompted the united states to launch cruise missile attacks and the spear headed an international effort. they were put together at that moment, i would say.

i would say that the ideology of the taliban and osama bin laden was not the same then, but there are some that do see such ideology. they struggle as an international -- i would argue at least to the southern taliban were more nationalist. there were concerns about affairs of afghanistan and not people outside of afghanistan. this still continues. there are people in the movement that are trying anymore nationalist figures that tried the fact that they are

hair and refusing the elements to come to surface is a struggle that we see that ongoing. the removal of the government from power, at the leadership of the organization's fled across the border into pakistan. the last major conventional war was the operation that ended in april of 2002. you have of both of these people out. we know that he was busy making babies. beginning in 2002, and surgeons began operation and propaganda campaigns. by the way, the taliban will not refer themselves to the -- refer to themselves as the taliban.

only in song. and they are invoking back to the days of the 1990's, the anti-soviet groups. they refer to themselves as the islamic americans of afghanistan they became increasingly active in the eastern and southern parts of afghanistan. the lack of cognition by for an objective and efforts in afghanistan process from uncontrolled narcotics raids and the financial support. it is the main criteria of their message.

they were not so powerful, and i agree with that. by 2005, the taliban became a nuisance and morphing into a full-fledged insurgency. and using more and more terror tactics. what we call the taliban --

most of the leadership is in pakistan. but they are mostly in thethese are mostly remnants of the old taliban regime from 1996-2001. the second group, these are part of another group. there are partially in that side. and there is the loose alliance -- supporter of the taliban. he was ousted and took refuge in iran. he has chunks of territory or at least influence in the northern province.

also, it was not to create a nomenclature in washington, what we deal with today are not the old taliban that was destroyed in 2001. the loose affiliation of these groups included criminals. afghan and non-afghan, they cross the boundaries. those that feel they're losing their power of being the dominant ethnic croats in afghanistan. all of these groups hotly term as a whole, they are called enemies of peace and security. since 2009, a majority of those

countries have decided that reconciliation is one of the insurgencies -- bring the the government. officially, we are engaged in and it began in 2001 in kandohar. there were negotiations going on, but the u.s. was not officially in an. one is basically trying to bring in the foot soldiers of the taliban, integration. there. the second is reconciliation to bring leadership into a political agreement.

what the united states wants from the taliban is to denounce violence, cut ties from al qaeda, except the constitutional republic of afghanistan and include the rights of women. this is what we have on the table, and to facilitate this, earlier this year, there was an office open in the persian gulf to facilitate that. negotiations halted because the taliban was not happy about one of the promises, which was to give them a five of their leaders or more. at least the official talks are halted. we can discuss this more in

question and answer. through this democratic process, the united states in the allies usher there, it is a genuine democratic movement. there are forces there, and people that are not affiliated taliban with affiliated -- affiliated with the taliban. india, iran, russia, uzbekistan, in that order. when we discuss with the taliban, it is not just accepting the rules of the constitution, if it is a dominant force or a force within, we will alleviate some

of the concerns of the government and beyond that. as important as it may be, it unfortunately does not have security concerns. what i will leave you with is the concern that we just last night -- president obama signed an agreement between afghanistan and the united states. one of those elements which basically allows us to stay and support the afghan government the don the 2014 withdrawal date -- beyond the 2014 withdrawal date. 1 demand is's # withdrawal of foreign soldiers from the country. so as we move forward, what we should lock forwarded television

two hours ago has announced a new operation. themselves or their handlers know exactly what language to use. the first statement came in pashto. cahow they are doing their pr pretty well, and they have announced their new winter operation. you may have heard there was a bomb attack in the so-called green village. seven people were killed. there were two messages and one that ushered in a new season of fighting and to show president obama that he signed the agreement with somebody who has no authority to sign an agreement. it is by no means over.

how it will end depends on many issues. not just u.s.-afghan issues, but the regional aspect, the internal aspects, and whether we like it or not, the taliban has gone beyond that cycle. they are empowered to reckon with. whether they assimilate or not it's all an open question. thank you very much. [applause] >> afternoon. it is a pleasure to be here. what i discussed follows naturally on what you saw this morning. that is both the speakers who led off talking about the ira and fmlm highlighted two

groups, which could be said to a bargain in good faith. i would like them to use the what was once officially called the communist party of nepal -- as an example of a group which chooses as a strategic approach to bargain in bad faith the literature that deals with the ends of conflict has focused overwhelmingly on groups which seek to act as spoilers, which you can see in my title. those who benefit from conflict and desire to keep it going, but much less covered have been groups of which we have any number of examples today, that

see peace as a way to achieve their strategic ends. we might include in this hamas, hezbollah, and certainly the maoists. these then are not simply spoilers and are not interested in the peace process per se, but rather are interested in the change in strategic context which can be achieved and therefore can be exploited by participating in a peace process. if we ask ourselves, as we did this morning, why there is an insurgency in nepal, i think you have the answer right here. that is, the land area of florida was more than twice the population and the result

economically of a country that is covered with the himalayas and foothills, is that you have one of the poorest countries in the world. socially, wealth, of course, is huge in its distribution by the caste system, which functions within what once was the world's only official hindu kingdom. politically, you have the normal -- inefficiency and corruption -- that goes with emerging democracy, nepal having been a parliamentary democracy only since 1990. historically, it has never been a colony, and yet, in reality, foreign aid consistently provides amounts that total between 50 -- or this year, almost 150% -- of the official

budget, and all such foreign aid comes with strings. nepal, then, in effect is a mandate of the international order. the result, then, is in millions of people who, if we look at the background of what we are negotiating, find that the political opportunity structure has failed them. they want a better deal. always. in any society, politicians are the ones who articulate the structure of the better deal. leaders are not followers in any organizational set up. in the case of nepal, on the extreme left, it was the radical actors of the communist party of nepal maoists who said only by

completely overthrowing what is can we deliver a new deal for those who desire. the state, in other words, has lost legitimacy. the goal, then, to be achieved is to get a new revolutionary order. violence is used because the existing order is simply not going to turn over the keys to the kingdom, so to speak, to have the systems of social stratification being turned upside down. this will prove critical for what we are going to discuss in a few moments. violence is necessary because the system will not give you its

own demise. if it will, there is no point in continuing violence. if we use the war college formula of fans, ways, means, we know the goal -- a new revolutionary order. the ways, the strategic approach realized in operational arc of this movement was your typical maoist people's war. i'm not going to go into the specifics of it. what is important for us and this entire day to remember is that armed political action designed at the restructuring of the state functions in exactly the opposite manner that regular politics for regular warfare functions.

in regular warfare, shaping, as it is called in our manuals, preparing to battle space, overwhelmingly involves non- violent means, such as information warfare. once you shape the battle space, then you come in with your violence. a regular warfare -- irregular warfare is exactly the opposite. violence prepares the human battle space for the political effort. that human battle space then is both the field of contest, and, of course, it is the means of this armed political movement. it must mobilize a counter state

in whatever form to challenge the state. what this movement then is doing is what any political effort does -- it is mobilizing the people you see here. the few, the proud, the maoists. be an army of one. be a man among men. be a woman among men in a society where gender relations are horribly unbalanced. the new world recruits. it disciplines. it trains. it deploys. it rewards. it even gives you permission to marry. what happens to those who do not want to join this new movement? if you look at the audience here -- i would dare say a

majority -- an easy majority -- have experienced what we are showing here. either in iraq, afghanistan, columbia, southern philippines, the horn of africa. that is -- a new political force interject itself into a global space. local factors, such as teachers shown here, who attempt to resist, must be neutralized. once they are removed from the local political battlefield, the new political force can reshape the political opportunity structure. the maoist officially declared people on the 13th of february,

1996. you have the time line in your packet. during the first five, six years of the war, they lead with terror. the systematic removal of local actors who opposed this new answer to building a better net fall. terror included not only attacking individuals, but also, of course, trying to remove every element of the existing state. but everything was attacked in nepal. much as the khmer rouge did. much as the shining task did. you had even small bands that generated hydroelectricity destroyed simply because they had been built by the government. the weapons were the standard ones. we have seen all over the world

hundreds of thousands, if not millions, available in this asian society turned into ied's, absolutely devastating on soft targets, such as police stations, and, of course, the police and the armed local representatives of the state in any society are the next target. in any of nepal's 75 districts, as you have generated the sort of photos i showed of the teachers, you also have local government armed capacity stripped away. a typical district shown here, began in 1996 with 33 police stations, the blue boxes, securing its 210,000 people. by the time you got to 2003, you only have the two police stations with the blue circles

around them remaining. inside those two jurisdictions, you had 10,000 people. outside those jurisdictions, you had the remaining 200,000 people. this math will also prove crucial to what we're going to get to in the second. a typical action, again won many have experienced here -- a police station where i did research. just 19 men. the town could be reached only by road. the police attacked in the dead of night. 15 killed in the fighting. three critically injured. one was able to hide. the next day, one of the country's four helicopters came in. all it could do was evacuate the casualties and abandon the post.

consequently, when i did research, it was completely controlled by this new movement. already by the middle of 2003, more than half of all police stations had been, as they called it, consolidated, which, of course, meant they had been abandoned. the only card any country has left to play at this point is its military. it is why we place so much emphasis on functioning capacity when we depart with our main forces from afghanistan. the royal nepal army was attacked first by the insurgents, not the other way around, and as it deployed, the insurgents matched the buildup.

one of the defining characteristics of the war in iraq and afghanistan is that it has remained a well mainly small and unit -- remained an overwhelmingly small unit. if you have seen the film "we were soldiers," you see what happened with the battalion. this is what net call confronted as the 2000's began to unfold. a typical attack, november 2002, a reinforced company of 150, found itself attacked by four main force battalions, and for your exit rate battalions of 3000 to 150. basically, the battle of the

alamo. it was able to hold only because the commander of the units won their equivalent of the medal of honor. what this battle highlighted is that if he cannot overrun district capital, you as an insurgency our stock. at this point in time, the group we are discussing controlled 70% of the population, but it could not get the remaining 30% of the population. thus, the movement was faced with a conundrum. how does it take it through the red zone and score? the system gave it its opening. even as you had the military

becoming more efficient, as we see in afghanistan, the same issues that have surfaced time and time again in afghanistan and we see surfacing in iraq -- that is, the incapacity of the political system -- surfaced large to the extent where in february 2005, the only extra systemic figure in effect declared martial law. he declared director royal rule and avoided the prime ministers. this, of course, alienated the legal political parties, of which there were seven. you now have an extraordinary meeting occurring in which the subject of this day's meetings in effect are subject to

scrutiny. what one very persuasive faction of the maoists said was, cassette and we have let with violence. using the three -- or the five lines of effort by which malices peoples -- maoist people's war unfolds, we've been able to get 70% of the way to victory. and yet, we find ourselves blocked now by the royal nepal army. we cannot get the district capitals. we cannot get the national capital region. what we have to do then is to advance, wait, emphasize our other lines of effort. in particular, what the king has done has given us your classic opportunity to emphasize united front activity.

let us make common cause with these estranged political parties, emphasize our other ways of doing things, and, in effect, do a double envelopment around armed state capacity. we can finally neutralize rna by highlighting its own inefficiency, its various errors using what has been called law fair, and we can bring down the government. this strategy proves successful. you had united front action putting millions of people in the streets. the government collapsed in 2006 as the malice moves into areas they did not control. -- as the maoists moved into

areas they did not control appeared a formal peace agreement was signed it does its expansion in the many legal political parties, the marquee having been disestablished -- the monarchies having been disestablish spirit on the surface, it appears it worked out much like the philippines did in the revolution of february 2006. in reality, what occurred was back at the original meeting, the malice -- the maoists had said that peace provides the perfect environment for them to continue the war by other means. the key component of the peace agreement was, of course, that the military would return to barracks, and that the people's liberation army would enter

cantonments, and parliamentary mechanisms would be reestablished. those that had been abrogated by the king. there were only 7000 combatants in the people's liberation army, but you can see what showed up at the united nations-sponsored and funded cantonments. most of these individuals were new recruits, and at least 7000 were children. simultaneously, almost to the day that all of these people flooded the cantonments, half of the people's liberation army -- no less than 1/3 -- moved laterally under orders and became a cadre of a new political action group -- the young communist league. what they did, of course, was function to prepare the human battle space for the upcoming

parliamentary election. put simply, they brutalize, killed, kidnapped anyone who was opposed to voting for the malice. -- voting for the maoist. they shaped the terrain and even the courageous figures in the press to try to cover this found themselves either murdered or in effect run out of town. the result, of course, is when the elections were held, the maoists, not surprisingly, swept the elections. if everything i have said here is known, how could this continue? and, with, of course, policies to the straight graphic i found in a google search -- i mean nothing by the person shown here -- the problem, of course,

is that the international community itself and local actors had so invested in the peace process that by the time elections were held in 2008 and emerged victorious because the opposition parties which had once dominated had been decimated, the position was advanced that with responsibility will, adjustment to democratic routine. that is they would in fact in good faith participate in the peace process. in reality, they did nothing of the sort. they continue to shape the battle space, so we continue have a situation where the second in the movement is the sitting prime minister.

and makes no decisions without consulting the party. in conclusion, we have a situation which is even more extraordinary. the debate's going on with any malice -- within the maoists pit the two figures on the left against the figure on the right. the figures on the left tell the main radical, "why do you keep claiming we have to complete the revolution by overt violence? we now control the state. we control all organs of the state and anyone who opposed us has been eliminated. leave well enough alone, and given a short time, we will

write into the new constitution all of our revolutionary goals. weber, he says, "you are falling for the oldest track there is. power only grows through the barrel of a gun. we must love the streets with our urban the combatants, and we must sweep all before us and then dictate the terms of the peace agreement. this, then, is quite a different kettle of fish from what we see when you have organizations that do in fact evidence a willingness to compromise and a willingness to actually end armed conflict. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. two very good presentations.

now, i think we are going to start doing question and answers, but we will do it in a slightly different way than has been done in previous panels. whoever gets the microphone first gets to speak. >> i would like to take this moment to thank you for this timely symposium and also thank you for a great panel. you briefly touched on the strategic partnership agreements being signed by president obama and president karzai and the taliban's reaction to the -- to that. i would like to make a brief

comment. the importance of this partnership agreement, that there are two scenarios of did a whale calves that they are now analyzing the importance of the partnership agreement in terms of pushing the taliban to come to the negotiation table, especially from the pakistani side. going back to 2009, when the surge started in afghanistan, there was a timeline that the americans would leave by 2014, but now, the partnership agreement that has been signed will commit the u.s. to basically another 10 years, so do you think this would push the pakistanis, who are in a way controlling the taliban, to maybe put the taliban to come back to the negotiating table and maybe reach some sort of an agreement? and if that agreement could be made, what sort of agreement

would that be? >> i wish i knew the answer to that, but i can tell you, looking at the situation -- first of all, the partnership agreement does not have any specific issues of what would happen. it does commit the united states to regard afghanistan as a major non-nato ally. that is a big word because of the edges, but believe if you're not, pakistan has the same status. that is the change on how specifically this would look. the agreement does not have any specific issues here to the extent anything like that happens, the parties will deal with that. there are a couple of provisions. one is that the bases will not be used against others and so on.

we need to see in the negotiation process, but yes, the idea is the united states will stay committed. a ready said the announcement of 2014 prompted the taliban to stay low. we just have to wait it out, and then we have it here the question is -- what kind of afghanistan? one is you have a presence where true international health -- not just u.s. this is a nato agreement. maybe some other partners. you have a government in afghanistan that is elected because there will be an election. the constitution is to be expected before 2014. that controls certain areas of the country. there is an after national army that is controlling specific areas. and then the taliban kind of merge into a power within the areas in the south. that is one scenario. so now, the tool is whether or not pakistan will accept that. who knows?

pakistan wants a stake in the future of afghanistan, and policy seems to say anything but indian influence. so there may be a give and take their. now, we hear a much better relationship -- at least right now. it could swing again -- between new delhi and islamabad. that could have an effect. we cannot look at this as only an american/afghanistan problem. the taliban refused to speak to cars appear they called him a puppet. this is exactly the same scenario with the mujahadin with the kabul government. you are right -- the agreement allows us a foundation over with to be engage them on a scenario that says, "you can come and beat us, when a man but one of the aspects are there? what do other afghan elements do?

you cannot forget the rest of afghanistan. if they feel that the taliban are getting more power, whether it is through the ballot or through a deal, they may not just sit still. i think the case is open. the fact that we are more clear. hopefully in chicago and then in tokyo. you have more clarity on specifics. i think one thing that would break the resolve of the taliban is a longer-term, specific, clear, achievable goal. thank you. >> you mentioned the and been designated the commander of the faithful. could you elaborate on what that

means? with the taliban will accept? is it possible for him to abdicate that title, or 80 people were designated him such say, "that was then, this is now," and therefore, he does not have to have this role? does that mean the expectation is that he or someone with that title will be in a leadership role of the faithful in afghanistan? >> thank you. the reason we have not seen him may play in a positive way because nobody has seen him, and as you have seen in the past few years, both the pakistanis have been able to get some of the leadership of the taliban and get them in jail and thus, a limit their effectiveness.

the idea is that the host control a lot of the movement. as i mentioned kind of in passing, there are elements in the taliban that are looking for leadership, so i do not think he is essential in the sense that someone who is really not there could be there or could not be there. if he is dead today, somebody writes for him, he still is alive because it gives him more power because nobody has seen him. to answer your question, if there is a deal may, there could be a religious title for him where he becomes a guardian of a religious aspect of the country. and suppose we should not forget that, you know, we use that in the military, and i'm glad we do. with: the government of the islamic republic of afghanistan. it is a very islamic constitution, so there could be found something that is them a title, which allows him to

oversee this religion. of course, there's a lot of issues because the afghan constitution for the first time in the history of that country looks at the shia minority and gives them a say in the constitution. how would he look at that? the taliban seem to be -- i see, at least -- it seems to be much softer on the shia. perhaps that will be an umbrella under which you work or people just die. >> thank you. just a question to you, playing off of both of your presentations, what signposts can we look for from the taliban to see if they are negotiating in good faith or not? other any lessons from the paul we could take from that?

and along those lines, at what point are they no longer our enemy, and they become a group we're trying to work with? thank you. >> do you want to interpret that for me? >> let me get this straight -- what you are asking for is signposts then that they are cooperating, right? >> i think that plays into would be key areas of research. that is, your normal metrics are no longer useful. for example, violence is, in

fact, way down because asylum numbers are way up. people have fled. i think when you look at signposts, you have your traditional metrics, such as participation in the system, but i think far more important is things such as being willing to get rid of your militia, to be willing to allow student organizations to function as something other than armed pressure groups. this is very similar when you think about it to the situation you have in lebanon or in in the gaza -- or in gaza, or other areas, and that is the you are not engaging in normal politics and cannot use normal metrics. if you are allowing political forces to field their own armed

elements. i think that is the biggest one -- a willingness to participate in the political process as well as the economic and social processes without fielding armed forces. i think a second one would be a willingness to enable the state, of which the maoists it had, without continuing to carry out, execute a parallel system which bonds the political party, that is extortion, criminality are at an all-time high in nepal, but these are executed through party organs, so you in effect have several nepals functioning, and one has to decide what one will be part of. >> i think we have actually come

to the end of our discussion, so thank you all very much. [applause] >> if you could all be back here by 1500, please. that is 3:00. we will continue then. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> with the senate in recess, " booktv" is in prime time on our companion networked c-span2. at the club 15, on the founder of the girl scouts, juliette gordon low, and it 10:05, michael john winters talks about his biography of jerry falwell. also tonight here on c-span, the libertarian party opposes selection of its presidential nominee at its national convention in las vegas. live coverage starting at 9:00

eastern with a two-hour candidate debate, and more tomorrow from the convention starting at noon eastern as delegates vote for their nominee, all live here on c- span. wrote to the white house coverage continues as president obama and first lady michelle obama head to richmond, virginia, for a campaign rally at 4:35 eastern, from the campus of virginia commonwealth university. live coverage also here on c- span. earlier today, massachusetts congressman barney frank and editor bill kristol took part in it a bit hosted by the american jewish committee. they talked about the upcoming presidential election, america's relationship with israel, and president obama and mitt romney's political views. this is an hour and 20 minutes. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome executive council members linda morrels and john

shapiro. [applause] >> good morning. john and i are delighted to welcome you to the days great debate. this has become an anchor event for the global forum, and the great debate can really be -- is always a place where you can hear first the important issues. two years ago, many of us were here for the memorable debate on iran, and as we heard yesterday, this continues to be a very pressing issue for the community. last year, the event covered israeli relations with jews,

another issue which can be heard in the major corridors of jewish organizations. most importantly, this year, the debate will be on the american presidential elections, an issue that will impact us all and have great implications for the state of israel. and of course, ajc can be counted on to present all sides of the story in depth. >> thank you very much, linda. welcome to all of you. it is a delight to be here this morning. i think it is not going to be too far of a stretch to suggest that our debaters will have some disagreements this morning about the election. [laughter] in fact, i think on many political issues, we might find they have disagreements. but what they do not disagree upon is the importance of being here with us today at the ajc. because what they do believe is in the value of the ajc, the

respect of the ajc, the intellectualism and non-partisan approach to the challenges we face in this world, and the great success of our quiet diplomacy. for that, i thank them for being here today. i think it will be fun. i would like to encourage you now to sit back, watch a great introductory video, and then let the good times roll. so thank you all. [applause] >> i have yet to find [inaudible] >> in the blue corner, a veteran democratic congressman barney frank, famous for his quick tongue and an illustrious political career that has spanned the big issues from civil rights to financial regulation to foreign policy. >> 2005, 2006, people in the

bill clinton, hillary clinton machine saying, cassette and barack obama? are you kidding? what has he ever done? he cannot run against hillary clinton." -- saying, "barack obama? >> on the other end, bill kristol. the coming presidential election in november is one in which ajc 's priorities will be center stage. what is the best approach to iran, given the regime's continued drive to obtain nuclear weapons capability? is the grand prize of an israeli-palestinian peace settlement something that has eluded success of presidents for more than half a century, any closer? and then, continue debate about homeland security. how close is the united states towards reducing its dependence on energy supplies from high style states? over the next hour, these and

other issues will be in the spotlight. -- how close is the united states towards reducing its dependence on energy supplies from hostile states? [applause] >> thank you. thank you to linda and john, and welcome to this year's ajc great debate. i especially want to welcome our viewers who are watching on c- span across the country and around the world. our subject is the 2012 american election. its implications for domestic and foreign policy, it's specific implications for developments in the middle east and for the security of our

democratic ally, israel, its meaning as a yardstick on political attitudes and loyalties in the american jewish community. ajc, it must be clearly stated at the outset, is strictly nonpartisan. we do not and cannot support any particular candidate in any election. but nonpartisan does not mean non-political. the policies we advocate in the united states and around the world, policies to promote peace and security and human rights, our policies that succeed or fail in the political arena. our engagement in the political process could not be more intense. it is because of our active political interest ajc regularly convenes -- that ajc regularly convenes a meeting set the smaller than this across the country. it is why we publish candidate''

responses to questionnaires, conduct issue forums at the party political conventions, and regularly and scientifically survey american jewish political opinion. the latest opinion survey was released at the beginning of this week, and we will be discussing it shortly. before we began our debate with congressman barney frank and " weekly standard" editor bill kristol, a word about our format. each event will have five minutes for his statement and two minutes to respond to his counterpart. we will look to the question and answer portion of the debate in which each speaker will have up to five minutes to respond. finally, each debater will have the opportunity to offer two- minute concluding remarks. the time limits will be strictly enforced. now, i will ask bill to kick off this year's ajc great debate. thank you. >> thank you. it is great to be here. i have a long association -- i did not personally, but my family has a long association

with the ajc, and i always had a high regard for the organization. my father worked in a commentary from 1942 to 1942 when commentary was part of the ajc before they moved into their fancy building. it was thought to be a fancy buildings in the mid-1950's when it looked in. i think they were further downtown originally. and my uncle worked there for many years. i remember visiting him also. i think i was the only person in the first bush white house who has several additions of the ajc your book in my bookcase in the old executive office building. it is good to be here to make the case, i guess, for mitt romney and four republicans against president obama. every four years, i dutifully accept invitations to debate prominent liberal and democrats

before jewish audiences. it is always a pathetic scene. [laughter] i have an unmatched record of failures at this effort from 1984 on. i will not even really try. you are all adults. you have probably already made of your mind. i'm sure there are very few undecided voters in this audience, i suspect, i will not bother making much of it hits. this will not be as bad, i predict, as in 1996 when i debated a distinguished jewish journalist. i remember that because the moderator was a woman -- before he walked out on stage, there were about 500 people there -- it was clinton against dole, the height of oslo. the prime minister had been assassinated. clinton was a good friend of israel. dole had no particular affiliation, was not close to

the jewish community. i remember saying before he walked onstage, cassette and i imagine this audience is probably a little bit pro- clinton -- "i imagine this audience is probably a little bit pro-clinton." she said that probably 480 of the 500 were pro-clinton. i think i lost most of the 20 undecided in the course of the evening making my case for conservatism. in 2000 -- this is a true story -- i debated at the northern virginia jewish community center. months before the election year early in 2000, they were setting up in october, we set up to debate the election, and i debated a pretty prominent democratic pollster and political operative from this area. we did not know who that -- we did not know who the nominees were going to be then, and i remember thinking that it would be tough again, but maybe i had a chance because it was not

clear clinton would not be running for reelection, so we had a chance for a fresh look. i remember the day al gore announced that joe lieberman was joining the ticket. joe lieberman had personally spent a lot of time with every single person in the audience at the northern virginia jewish community center, and that was really a wonderful moment, making the case for bush-cheney against gore-lieberman. turns out there were relatives of joe lieberman there, you know? people who had been to his daughter's wedding. it was really a nightmare. i told this story to the lieberman is a year later. joe thought it was funny. the differences between the parties are pretty evident. i do not know that they -- that

there is much specifically jewish about the differences in terms of economic policy and in terms of foreign policy, social policy. we have a central right republican party and central left democratic party, which are divisions, and i hope this election is a policy-heavy, at issue-heavy election. i worry it will not be because campaign operatives takeover in both parties, and we end up with idiotic sideshows and little debate, but the country deserves a serious debate about entitlement reform, tax policy, the best way to stop iran from getting nuclear weapons, the supreme court appointments, all the issues, and i'm somewhat optimistic that now that the republicans are through the primaries, and president obama, of course, did not have a primary -- that is another thing i'm happy about. i'm sorry buddy is here instead of doing what he should have done which is run against president obama to give liberals a voice. obama is liberal about seven things, and it does lead and sailed through nominations.

very unfortunate. more unfortunate, i think incumbent presidents who do not have a primary challenger are more likely to get elected. we try to get people like barney frank and bus fine gold to challenge obama, which work as well as my tends to get used to vote republican in the past, but will have a serious debate. serious argument about foreign policy and national security, which is very important and should not be put aside simply on behalf of economic issues, but also about entitlement reforms, obamacare, and everything else. i did think your poll shows mitt romney doing considerably better among jewish voters then mccain. obama beat mccann in the era of hope and change three and a half years ago. 72-28 among jewish voters. it allocates the undecided -- if you allocate the undecided proportionately. if romney can do as much better

among the whole country as he looks like he will do among jewish voters, he will be president obama, which i think would be a good thing for the country. >> bill, thank you. barney, you will have extra time. >> thank you. let me acknowledge the world full complement bill paid by regretting a i was not done enough to challenge the president -- let big knowledge the rueful compliment. it is only my refusal to run against a president that would endanger the chances of the public policies i want being accepted. i guess that is one more case where i try not to live up to the stereotype that people use regarding me. with regard to the election, there are some very important issues here. we have got to reduce the deficit. the question is -- what mix of policies do you do? there's a very real difference between the parties. i do have one really clear difference, though, with the way

bill shape it when he said there was a center-left democratic party and a center-right republican party. used to be. there has been. unfortunately, the republican party has moved much further to the right. there has been somewhat apart, but the republicans have moved further right than the republicans have moved further left. bill has just testified to that by his day at those of us who are sensible liberals for not attacking our president because he has not been able to get done everything we want. but the fact is that the republican party has moved entirely to the right, so we now have a major debate in foreign policy on the republican side, whether or not the fact that you are gay disables you from being a foreign policy advisor. that has taken us beyond the realm of rationality. if you look at the republican party in house, you said you no longer have a center-right

republican party. i hope you will. i would be proud to work with a lot of republicans, but i find it much harder to do in the current congress, and i hope there will be a resurgence of the more responsible mainstream republicans. as to the election, obviously, on most of the issues -- i say of the spirit just a statistical fact. given where american jews have been in terms of the political spectrum, we start out with a notion that they will vote democratic in the majority. again, that has been confirmed when a 68-32 democratic margin is considered an erosion, as it would be. but the issue has to be framed as this -- given the fact that most jewish americans, on economics, the environment, civil liberties, a woman's right to choose, a whole range of other issues, would be likely to vote democratic, should they instead vote republican because president obama is weaker on israel? i think the answer is no.

one of the questions i had was -- should this be a referendum on obama's policies on israel for american jews? no, for two reasons pure the most important is that there were not significant differences. the notion that somehow president obama has been anti- israel -- i served with the president who did take some steps that were blocking israel in congress. the only time in my 31 years in congress when israel was frustrated and trying to get a policy through the congress was one president george h. w. bush -- or wh -- whatever. i did not mean to denigrate. he bought loan guarantees. israel sought loan guarantees to the one of the great things israel has done, which is to assimilate the immigrants. george bush bought it because they said booking into west bank, the land would remain

jewish was far as the eye could see, forever. i try to ameliorate that by pointing out that at that point, he was very short, very old, and probably could not see that far. [laughter] the fact is that bush was able to block us from getting the loan guarantees, damaging israel. i do not remember anybody in the obama administration being as openly negative about israel as secretary of state james baker when he said, "here's my phone number. if israel wants to make peace, call me." on national television. go back to about a year ago, and you go back and look at the papers, and there was this notion that there was going to be at the united nations a successful movement by the palestinians to get their statehood recognize, and there was a fear -- the assumption was that was likely to happen, and the fear was that america had to be to such a resolution in the security council, but it would have been america and israel

against the world. i would have isolated israel in the way it would have been very negative, and the obama administration went to work in one of the most successful examples of diplomacy i have ever seen. the obama administration pulled out all of its lobbying staff -- some of us helped on the congressional staff -- but the obama administration successfully lobbied to the point where they could not get in the security council a sufficient majority so that we had to veto it. that was a big victory for israel and an unexpected one, one of the few israel has been able to do in the united nations. [applause] i will close with this -- the fact is that obama's credibility to do that was enhanced by the fact that he had been critical with some elements of this settlement policy. the notion that you are only a friend of israel if you agree with everything the israeli government in power does at the time is not just wrong. it is counterproductive. although many of my friends on the right now think you could never criticized the israeli government -- i remember people

attacking them over campaigning and a bunch of other things, but it was precisely because obama articulate it the position that he did that there was a problem with the settlement and there were too many -- it was a mistake in phraseology on 1967, and it think he corrected it, but i believe his separation with the israeli government was one of the things that added to the credibility, so his administration was able to deliver one of the few diplomatic successes at the united nations. >> it is revealing that barney asked to attack the george h. the bush administration. i served in that first bush administration. i argued with president bush. at the end of the date he did the right thing in the gulf,'

this helps israel's security a lot. people were opposed to that war and are not republicans. having bush in the white house was a better thing than having in the whitecaucdukakis house. there were a lot of jews in 1973 that were happy nixon was in the white house. the current republican party is not the bush-baker moderate party. it is a strong pro is rural problem. -- it is a strong pro-israel party.

the obama administration has made a big deal about that apartment building. mitt romney will be a more reliable friend ban president obama. [applause] >> no, it is eight party that is right to ronald reagan. reagan asked congress to raise the debt limit several times. the people who are running the republican party -- and mitt romney willing to accommodate the right wing attached record -- attack rick santorum. this is not a center-right problem. we differ about the most effective way to defend israel. i have been to college campuses, berkeley, brown,

georgetown, yale, to defend israel. i do it from the left. i want to give credit to the netanyahu government. three government leaders have said pro-gay right things from the floor of the house -- obama, clinton, and net and not to -- and netanyahu. the fact is it your position is that you are going to defend what ever the israeli government does, your credibility as a defender of israel is weekend. i do not think it is possible to say it is israel's responsibility to get peace. what it needs to do is make clear if there is not a genuine to-state solution, it is not their fault.

there are political pressures. i believe this pulls them away from what is the most effective international advocacy. i am pleased to do some -- the obama administration has taken no negative actions against the israeli government. what we have is a much more effective way of defending them and the results are clear. >> it is wonderful to have a party frank here to defend -- santorum. i applaud that. >> [unintelligible] >> we will stipulate both of us prefer netanyahu to rick santorum. [applause] bill, let me begin the formal

questioning with you. each election we hear this is the year that jews are going to shift their loyalty to the republican party. ajc has just released a survey. if the election were held today, the jewish vote would split, 61-28, with the remainder undecided. do you make of these numbers? is 2012 finally the year of the republicans? >> no, you would -- i guess that is probably what it would be. there is progress over 2008. jews eventually learn from reality. it takes some time. more jews will be voting

republican this year. it has been a long process to shed old-fashioned of views about a bush republican party and the republican party of the 1930's. i do not tell people how to vote. for the jews, these jewish- americans, 80% cite the economy, and 56% cite health care. of those who cite national security and u.s.-israel relations, 42% voted for obama, a 45% will vote for romney. if jews are liberals, they will vote for obama, as they should, because obama is a lot more liberal than romney. who --se jews

>> the year we are waiting for has already come. 1976, what was the vote then? >> 1980 was the best year. >> we have been below that. the answer is, and those numbers are interesting, i think there has been a misperception of the obama record. he was more critical of the settlements. i have been critical of the sediments. it makes me more effective advocate for israel. i volunteered to travel and i have been to some -- california,

berkeley. i talk about israel's domestic liberalism, compared to its repressive nabors, in every area, but i'd make it clear the settlement call policy is mistaken and weakens is zero. that is what obama said. i will ask anybody to tell, the last time israel scored as well in the u.n. as when we kept them from getting a majority, that is enhanced by this difference. this notion romney would be a better friend of israel for now, there are no guarantees, no warranty on any romney position, probably he would stick with it. i cannot think of a single policy action where obama has not done what was in israel's clear interest. >> the survey found jews remain

where they have been for decades, firmly inside the democratic party's camp. you are frowning, i know. >> i am resigned to it. >> you do not resign from it. we still want to. >> if a majority of jews favor the democrats, what can republicans offer to turn them in a different direction? >> this is not about hawk and magic words. people have to make up their minds. has obama put his political capital on the line? it is labor that is the barrier to immigration reform. there are elements that are bad on that issue. do you think economic policies are working perfectly well?

do you think tax hikes would be good? those are legitimate policy questions. you can make up your own mind. i asked people to take a fresh look. romney is a one-term governor of mr. frank's state. take a look at romney, is v.p. pick, paul ryan, chris christie, scott walker, mitch daniels. you decide whether these people have reasonable public policies. >> barney? >> to be accused by bill speaking on behalf of republicans of insufficient commitment to rational immigration policy is like being called silly by the three

stooges. [applause] i mean that with no disrespect because -- to the three stooges, shemp howard was married to my fther's cousin, babe rank. >> now, that's impressive. >> it has been the republicans demagoguing it, including mitt romney who has moved far to the right on this. there was an extremist, and this is not the reagan republicans. if you look at the house, the way they vote, they have gone far to the right. and the key issue i would have is this. it is one of the differences, i have with some of my republican friends. we differ as to how much we should continue to maintain an active policy of america having

this worldwide goal. here is the problem. i am disappointed when people continue the great mistake president bush made into the some one, two dozen to, and that was important for us to be aggressive in the world and to go in to the world and make war. it is entirely legitimate debate about being in baltimore militarily. but to do that is irresponsible and means this -- we have a difference about military spending. the ryan budget -- the wall street journal praised paul ryan because he was maintaining the military and resisting military spending and cutting medicare and medicaid. that is the wall street journal thanking him. that is the kind of debate i want to have. we are overspending on the military, and that is the trade- off. when you talk about more of an

aggressive posture and oppose any tax increases on anybody, then you are forcing cuts in the quality of life programs domestically, particularly medicare and medicaid. cutyan's budget does not medicare or medicaid. it reduces the rate of growth. the deficit for each of the years of the obama administration will be over $1 trillion. i have been proud to support obama's surge in afghanistan. the total military budget is about $700 billion. it is coming down. you cannot solve the debt

problem by cutting in the military, and it is extremely risky in the world we live in to do so. i am for strong foreign aid budgets, development budgets. we need to be -- do not lead in the world, it will be a much more dangerous world. there is nothing wrong with paul ryan saying we need to sustain military spending and we need to reform medicare and medicaid, and we need -- otherwise we are right to go off the cliff with these deficits. >> yes, the military budget is 700 billion-plus. the s bigger than in mill medicare budget.

i i am quoting the wall street journal. that is from a month ago, an editorial. bill said they are not cutting medicare, but cutting the rate of growth. being the fact that there are going to be more old people and the cost of medical care may go up, we will give them the same amount of money as today, it is not a technical caught. it is a real cut. that is a very big difference between the parties, and it is the republicans' insistence that military spending caught up. wars cost money. we continue to have the full set of thermonuclear weapons to defeat the soviet union in a war. we continue to be defending western europe against i am not sure what, maybe and other mo orish invasion. average european nation spends

less than half of 8% on gdp on the military. we have an excess of there. we're doing other people's business. it is the wall street journal, protect the military against further cuts, that is their description of the ride budget, which ryan access. >> i do not know what you are talking about. we have 75,000 troops in eastern europe. the nukes are costing us very little. those are not the drivers. do you want the ability to deal with iran? if you think that is necessary, you end up with -- >> i do not want to use troops in bosnia. nato, a great move by harry

truman, we continue it. it is a mechanism for keeping european military budgets love. we have a major presence in europe. in terms of the balkans, let the europeans take the lead there. we have wealthy nations in europe with a large population that say leave it all did the united states. no one thing costs a lot of money. let me go back on the weapons. as the price of the ratification in the senate of the nuclear weapons treaty, the republicans, to keep it getting the 2/3 vote, insisted on spending tens of billions of dollars more over the year on enhancing the nuclear arsenal in ways the military does not think is necessary. >> let me move on. let me also say their work cards on their chairs. yet questions you would like to pose, please fill out those cards and they will be collected and we will start feeding them

into the debate. that might go back to israel. the survey shows the obama administration policy has gained ground in the last year, with 50% approving and 40% disapproving. last fall the results were 40% approving, 53%, disapproving. is this election for jewish voters a referendum? >> improving, yes. it is now 58-40, which is bad, and there is a reason it remains bad. the first year or two he picked more fights with israel. he has pressured the netanyahu government not to build an apartment building in jerusalem.

there are other attempts to pressure israel. the reason they were able to do --good job in the u.n. pr they knew it was a total nonstarter and because of obama's addition of the palestinian issue and singing to side with europeans, which made the palestinians think they might get somewhere. they do not deserve that much credit for that. they are better now than they were two years ago. that is important for israel. some of us will continue to pressure them to do the right thing. >> is it a referendum on the israel policy? for 22%, it is particularly bad.

i would say the prize plum -- the problem this something of the president's own making. there was a bad speech and they pulled back from it. the public policy is also important. you have the increasing recognition there has not been a single policy action that has been not fully supportive of israel. obama elevated the notion of statehood for the palestinians. this has been an aspiration for every president, going back to the first president bush, bill clinton, and the second president bush. this is historical. there has been an evolution on the palestinians. i understand the president caused problems by badly worded

speech. i believe however and i think this is a case where you did not say tierce boyfriend, wonderful, good for you. sometimes the best act of friendship is saying you're making a mistake. the settlement policy to which netanyahu has been pushed by the 6 politicsisraeli p has negative aspects for israel in terms of world opinion. it is important to advise him of that, and i would repeat i think bill is denigrating a great diplomatic accomplishment. look at the media reports, months before that vote and the assumption was that was going to win and it would go to the general assembly. i believe it was the enhanced credibility of the administration to stop it. you have seen the effect of a badly worded speech wearing off. >> there's no bigger priority for ajc than preventing iran

from getting nuclear weapons capability. how you judge the president's rec on this matter, and how will and a public -- how will a republican approach differ? >> the last word is always better. >> are being so nice. >> there has been a great deal of continuity here with regard to the iranian and the north korean situation. it is very frustrating. one of the things -- one of the great frustrations to me is you tend to be self-critical, but the unwillingness of russia and china to be more supportive of efforts to block nuclear weapons, and i do not understand it. if i was russia living next door to iran, the notion of somebody who is crazy having nuclear

weapons would make me crazy. that is the frustration and it is a constraint on our policy that we have to do it. given that, i believe the best that can be done. when the obama administration took over i was approached by members of the israeli government asking i intervene to make sure stuart levy continued to be part of the treasury. he was kept on. i believe we are doing as much as can be done keeping the military threat on the table. i cannot and i would stress if you look at the bush administration policy and the obama administration policy, they are very similar because they are dictated by realities. >> the best aspects of the policy toward iran are those where he has continued the bush administration policy.

that is true in general. [unintelligible] obama has changed a lot. look at cairo speech and his general attitude to the middle east. look at what in june, 2009, with the green movement erupting in iran, with no support. then he looked a couple months ago that you cannot contain this regime with the clear weapons, so they have to be prevented from getting nuclear weapons. the u.s. policy is prevention, not deterring. i have a question whether sanctions will prevent -- i am afraid they will not. i do not think the policy will prevent. maybe it will be necessary to

use force, so the administration has been thinking that through and preparing that, creating obstacles to israel as they feel they would have to do that. obama has moved on iran. , a hopi finishes the job in preventing iran -- i hope he finishes the job in frantic run getting weapons. this is a body in the cairo speech and the film to support the protesters in the streets of tehran in 2009. >> there is nothing to suggest -- i wish bill would spend more time thinking about the military effects on iran. that is unfair to the pentagon. they are seriously dealing with that. i do not think you really meant that. >> the people in the white house are leaking things to try to revet israel -- >> yes there is a question of

restraint about dessert, which is coming from -- there is a question about restraint about israel. the first is inaccurate. second, in terms of the change, i think people over interpret some of the language. policies have always been consistent. that is grudging acceptance that the current policies are okay or acceptable. so you have to criticize the fact that they were not always his policies. i would go to the fact to the advocate of mitt romney attacking anybody for changing positions is a big reach. >> let me pick up a question from the audience. bill, talk about your support for the merged to committee for israel, which has placed

advertisements, and why you think -- how you relate to its importance to turn israel into a partisan political issue. what do you hope to gain? this is a question from the audience. >> is a small organization i am chairman of, which was formed in 2010, when it seemed the obama administration and parts of both political parties, especially the democratic party, were not strong supporters of the traditional u.s.-israel relationship. we put ads in newspapers. we have done appropriately " interventions. in campaigns, we have criticized democrats in the house and the senate. there were fewer republicans in all the policy's

and they spend more time criticizing the netanyahu government as criticizing abbas for the impasse in the peace process, and they spent a lot of time trying to prevent keeping the military option and on the table with respect to iran. i am pleased to have an impact with the emergency committee on israel. there is a strong pro-is year- old democrat in the house, and i think you will see more of the emergency committee activity on behalf of the democrats. it is a fact that the buchanan- ron paul wing of the republican party has been pretty much marginalized. i think it is more of a problem

for the left, and i hope liberals marginalized those elements in their own party as we have tried to do in our party. >> the fact is you're talking about miniscule is bigger than microscopic. the fact is that the democratic party has been overwhelmingly and consistently supportive of a policy that respects israel's writes to end -- right to an independent state. you're talking in the house, 10, 20, maybe 25 votes, a small minority, a couple of republicans, more democrats. the notion the republicans have marginalized ron paul and became a, but the democratic anti- israel wing that is critical of israel -- here is the difference. the question is do people take their differences with the sraeli of any is r

govement -- the transfer this into actions, etc? the answer is neither party boss wing that is excessively critical of israel has had any impact on the policy process. when people take credit for the fact that obama has become more protester, we are talking about an elephant stick. an elephant stick is a guy walking around central park with a big stick and people say, what is that for? that is to keep away the elephants. people say there are no elephants. the other guy says, yes, good stickwork. i have seen no actions taken by the obama administration that are less than fully supportive of israel's needs. >> over the last 16 months we

have seen the collapse of long established regimes. we continue to watch the horror that is syria. as the obama administration has admissionobama -- administration been fast enough? >> there is a tendency that says anything that goes wrong is not our fault. the arabs spring has been a serious set of issues for us. the notion that democracy is a good thing is something i believe in morley, but the consequences -- morally. what is happening now in egypt is troubling when people talk about cutting off the contract.

to have that call into question is deeply problematic. the administration has been dealing with it visibly, including needed this administration, nor any republic administration has shown eagerness to ask the rulers of saudi arabia or bahrain to join. how do we recognized our belief in human rights with concerns about an negative that aspect of what happens? as a matter of democratic principle, it was a good thing that the palestinian authority had elections and hamas won them. that was not such a good thing. that is a dilemma when elections are going to bring about negative consequences. it calls not for a -- a calls

for serious thought. >> could the u.s. steered what is happening in egypt with different policies during the revolution? >> it is hard to say in retrospect. i agree with party on this one. this is a tough choice, and most of the foreign policy committees -- communities -- i am part of the anti-saudi arabian wing of the republican party, but that is a minority view in both parties. there seems to be something about the saudis that cause people to decide it is a wonderful place and we have to be extremely nice to that. if we had more energy development at hope, we would have to be less night. >> it is a cultural relics from

"lawrence of arabia." >> have been on the more hopeful side of those looking at the arab spring. we need to try to shape the public. yet administration fell back. one thing that happened in egypt, a failure of government caracas, they could have done more on the ground in terms of economic development. there were efforts to do more to get serious development aid in, to make sure the egyptian public did not have the duty on the people here to help us or the muslim brotherhood. the u.s. government has not adjusted to realities as well as it should. of the things i have criticized the obama administration for, and this is a government management think, they talk a lot about smart power, they have not reformed big government as much as they should have.

aid is not such a very well run agency, but it's money does not go as effectively to grass- roots as much as secretary hoped -- as much as secretary clinton hoped. the one place where i-- i have written letters to be more forward-looking in syria, where that is a government that is an ally of iran, a terrible government in terms of human rights, a strategic entity of hours, and we should do more to stop the slaughter there and try to evacuate the toppling of the sad government. like what we did in libya. >> here is one of the

criticisms. they're people who say we're not doing enough militarily in syria. at some point, if you are to expand military reach, please raise taxes to pay for it. there is a serious problem with those who are advocates, and i did not mean bill, who are all for doing more militarily, but for about -- getting think i would say, as far as getting aid into egypt, we wanted good old-fashioned walking around money, and that is hard for a government to do that. the point is this, and it is totally non-partisan. not everything that goes wrong is the fault of the incumbent american administration in the world. we have been guilty of it ourselves. we have taken on responsibility, and you read in newspapers, there was this mess

-- where was the american government? it was in washington, try to think what to do. we should not get into the expectation that america can result every problem in the world and it becomes an unfair metrics for any administration. it has been used unfairly against both. [applause] >> the question from the audience about iran. we talk about this earlier. if sanctions against iran do not work, how long should we wait before pursuing a military option, and do you see differences in the time line, the timetables, that a second of what the administration or -- that a second obama or from the administration would apply? >> new administration often do things people do not expect them to do. i believe governor romney has spoken clearly about the unacceptability of iran having a

nuclear weapon. obama has moved to that view, and they did not sound that different from each other. a lot depends on one's judgment about what is acceptable in terms of iran getting close to break up capability. i believe if military force is going to be used, it will be better for the u.s., is our responsibility. barney is right that we cannot do everything in the world. there are certain basic things we need to do around the war, and one of them is to try to maintain some kind of lid on nuclear proliferation. i believe iran getting nuclear weapons would be a game changer in terms of the arms race in the middle east. the ability to put an umbrella

over their terror sponsorship would be harder to deter them. that is a huge issue. i trust the romney administration to handle it, and i hope obama does the right thing if reelected. i hope he will do the right thing in the next several months, in the election campaign. >> accept for the -- except for the unjustified partisan think at the end, there is no real difference. the president has said clearly we moved out containment. that means you take military action because of the other option. as to when, and i think there is no difference between administrations, you are not talking about probably the most serious military undertaking since vietnam. i think in fact taking on the wrong hands, if they have nukes,

is more of a deal that going into iraq. what you are going to have to do is careful planning in conjunction with all middle eastern nations with which we are aligned. israelis, saudis, others will -- theo worry about tha iraqi government we helped install, and we need to do serious thinking. this is one where the president would say to the pentagon, we are at the point where we have to act. they are about to have a weapon. it becomes a complicated technical problem. in the present with the essentially be working with his defense and intelligence establishment. bill has a good point. it is unfair for israel to be

asked to take on this burden. one of the things we learn from the wikileaks cable, which put a lot of people in danger, we learned how scared many of the arab states are of iran. this fear of iran and this wish somebody would do iran goes farnabout beyond the israelis. >> let me turn to a non foreign- policy questions. ajc have been encouraging energy independence since the 1970 posset if we end our dependence on petroleum supplies, is that a goal shared by the president and the governor, and how best can we advance that goal? >> full independence is not

realistic. ears no problem in importing energy -- there is no problem in importing energy from friendly nations. it is not the case that independence -- i do not know if the environmental concerns are to the appeared the degree the environmentalists believe it is legitimate, they are obstructing all kinds of issues. there is no serious question about that. one of the great things that has happened is the natural gas break through news -- breakthroughs. we would be developing more if we did not have excessive

environmental regulations, which the administration has consistently come down on the side of extreme environmentalists. >> we tend to be too negative. we've been making progress. the dependence on foreign oil has dropped some. bill is right. the question is not that everything has to be produced -- and mexico, canada, others. there is more production going on right now than there has been. alternatives are a part of this. one thing i want to say is this, there is this notion that the fact that we have to import oil from the middle east strains of our foreign policy. i have not seen evidence of that pig in fact, and one criticism i have -- we have not seen evidence of that. the fact that it is american

policy contemplating a military attack on nuclear facilities and the policy that american policy has been taught is a contributing factor to the increase of the price of oil. the good news is the fact that what we're doing with regard to iran has not deterred any significant political faction going forward but it did we have to reduce it, but we have over estimated the extent to which there has been a constraint on foreign policy. >> let me ask a question that came from the audience. it comes to the question of america's role in the world, responsibility. over the last few years, we have seen a resurgence of feeling in both parties to turn attention homeward, to fall back from

foreign troubles and foreign commitments. what are the reasons that would justify continued american efforts to remain the world boss reatest power -- the world's greatest power? >> i will start. i am one who believes we can reduce a worldwide military expenditure at no cost to our security. there is an element of people -- there is an argument for restraining expenditures. it is part of america's purpose that america should not be a nation of shopkeepers, that we have this responsibility to be the leaders. i think we over estimate ability

we have to do that. i would be morally conflicted -- do not think we should be trying to build in afghanistan and iraq democratic societies, because you cannot do that with the military. we have a military that is good with stopping bad things. secondly, you have this alliance -- were alliance of our allies by us. libya was a good example because we got the europeans to take the lead. we need to insist in the mediterranean there's no reason why they're paying countries cannot play a more aggressive role. we need to pay more attention to it at time. we have to contail military

spending, and cut domestically. the republican position is no, forget about any tax increases, forget about the military, just to get out of programs that enhance the, the of life here, and that is a very grave error. >> some of the countries we want to assume a greater role in defense responsibility are a little strap themselves, however. >> yes, but we're also strapped. and not talking about poor countries. i am talking about germany, france, italy, a temporary problem, but they pay much less than half of their gdp. they are staff, but if you look at the -- they are strapped, but

if you look at their medical programs, there are people who are giving their own citizens substantially greater social benefits than we give our citizens, and that is because we are paying the military budget. it is fair to ask them to pick up. i ask them to be self- sufficient. >> one of the preconditions for a strong america abroad, which i am strongly in favor of, [unintelligible] on that kept the world would have been immeasurably more dangerous to the degree the u.s. asks allies to get more. you could wish germany, sweden, italy, france sent more in defense. you could wish they could be more responsible in stopping

genocide in africa. those wishes will not be worth much in the near future every europe tries to go to europe and gets europe pay more on defense. i think one of the cases for real reform at home is we need to be strong at home to be strong abroad, but the world in which we retreat, a world in which would cut defense cuts spending by 30%, and yet provide security in most of the middle east, that will keep peace in places like the balkans, i do not think that is practical and as much to higher risk to run, and i think obama should stop the defense sequester right now. at least he has rejected as

people within his own party who want a precipitous withdrawal from afghanistan. >> is there a difference between the parties on an american exception alyssum? -- exceptionalism? >> it is an interesting term. america should stand for american principles. the republicans have a more robust, of icarus -- vigorous, interventionist -- will let barney provide the negative answer. republicans view of america in the world, there are many democrats who share that view. there will be a difference on foreign defense policy between obama and romney. it will not be mcgovern-nixon.

i'm happy about that. i am happy the ad, administration has moved away te then early mcgovern-is view of the world. i worry about a certain aspect of their foreign policy, especially defense cuts, and i think a republican administration with mitt romney as president, joe lieberman as he has come back to the center because of political pressure, partly because of the 2010 secretary of state, will be a better administration. elections. the second term is different it is not just a republican from the first term. talking point to say he was overheard saying to mid solfeggio, -- medvedev, i will have more flexibility after my election. >> are merging into the closing statements. that was almost a closing stand.

if you could continue for another couple minutes, and then we will give you two minutes to conclude this debate. not just for policy, but on other questions as well. if he could wrap up the case for republicans in 2012. >> i want to make the case for being open-minded. there will be convention speeches in august. there will be three debates, i assume, between romney and obama. people should go into those with an honest, open mind, and i think there will be a fair number of undecided voters. people should take a look and decide whose policies they think makes more sense in terms of america's future, and terms of reducing this terrible debt and deficit, and whether the obama administration has been a

successful administration or not, and what a second term would look like as opposed to a romney administration. is to beto a committee tha open-minded, think about the choices ahead, it did not think about george w. bush. i promise not to raise the issue of george mcgovern if barney does not raise the issue of george h. w. bush. take a look at the actual real trust between us in 2012. >> thank you. >> could i ask bill one question? [applause] i was impressed with bill asking people to be open-minded during the election. >> we praise the obama administration for some things. >> i am a partisan. some people are not.

>> if you have decided views about elements of public policy, and you do not know now whether you are going to vote for obama or romney, something is matter -- something is the matter with you. >> that is a full statement, honestly. i know people who do not know they are going to vote for, and they are not stupid people. they are conflicted. that is not an unreasonable thing. >> that is different from the open mindedness. that is different. there are a small number of people who tend to have those conflicting views. what you are saying is be opened and thewhole thing, se fact is most people know now who they are brought to vote for. there are no surprises coming.

i read the focus groups that they do in october of the undecided voters. they're not an impressive group of people. [laughter] they do not know a lot things that a true and more -- they are convinced of fantasies. to talk about the election, i one to say, i think bill is a guilty of campaign by innuendo. not a specific public policy as he showed or talk about or alluded to where obama was too far to the left from his standpoint compared to where he is today. with regard to foreign policy, in fact in the 2008 election, obama was criticized for talking about intervention in afghanistan and pakistan. this is a myth that obama moved to realistic position. there is no change. i would like him to be moving out of afghanistan quicker.

this notion that he was further to the left and moved on israel -- i have seen nothing negative. we have not seen a reagan republican party, and republic party that is to the right of ronald reagan. they say in the ryan budgets, is an assertion, let's increase military spending so we can make cuts from what otherwise would be there in medicare and medicaid. it is a radical agenda in the social area, with regard to the rights of lesbian and gay people, with regard to women reproductive rights. on immigration, they have been militantly anti. the administration has not been more successful in getting a more rational policy, but that is because the republicans have so opposed it. the one encouraging thing

happening now regarding immigration is a little bilingualism is creeping into the republican party, and they're learning how to count in spanish. you have a clear choice between a right-wing disciplined faction on the republican side and an assertion that has made progress in just about all of its problematical issues. i hope people will decide that way. >> thank you, barney frank. thank you, bill kristol. take you for being part of this year's ajc debate. please stay in your seats. where are about to begin the next portion of the program. please stay while i accept the debateers out. >> tonight the libertarian party's election up its presence of nominee at its national convention in las vegas.

we'll have live coverage starting at 9:00 eastern with a debate, and more tomorrow from the convention starting at noon. all live here on c-span. on road to the white house, the obama-es had to richmond virginia. they will be on the campus of cut virginia commonwealth university. >> next about how americans will give back to be men and women who have served in the military. we will hear from jack tak jacobs. this is an hour. >> good morning, ladies and gentlemen. thank you for joining us. we welcome those who joined us

on all these occasions on our heritage.org website if you be so kind to see that your cell phones are turned off. it will be most appreciated. when will post the program within 24 hours on our website for everyone plus future preference. hosting the discussion is the director of our center for foreign policy studies. an accomplished historian, he is a leading expert on defense and security policy. he is a 25-year veteran of the army. he holds a master's degree from georgetown university as well as a master's degree in strategy from the u.s. army war college creek he is a prolific writer.

he has authored the book "wiki at war," "g.i. ingenuity," "lessons from the cold war and preserving freedom." join me in welcoming my colleague, jay carafano. [applause] >> we are in washington, d.c.. there is a tendency that everything deals with our veterans is done by the federal government. it leaves out the rest of us, which is kind of a big deal. the americans that are protected and defended by these incredible people that go off to do incredible things. some don't come back, but many do. they come back and transform us. they are leaders in science and research and every facet of our

lives. there is a question of, what are we supposed to be doing for the rest of us who have not given this a lot of thought. it is kind of a perilous journey and it has the appearance of mount everest, "how do i get started?"

one thing i discovered in looking at the history of america and the veterans are one of the constants from george washington to today -- look at the needs of the veterans, things haven't really changed. the technology has changed and the society has changed. the most obvious, the helping and healing for people that are coming back from war, not just for the service member but for their families as well. that is well understood. there is a second category

which is equally important and that is the transition to the workplace, to education. sometimes it's not just the service member but the family. sometimes the service member does not come back. the transformational aspect. veterans know when to the military and make the military to a better place. they bring these amazing skills, they contribute, and they hone their skills, and they come back out and transform us. they do amazing things and they

need help there, too, into going back and continue to feed that propensity to serve. we wanted to bring together the three representatives that typify these three different things. they are all important and valuable. find one of these kinds of organizations and grab on to them, or start one. i have three remarkable people from three incredible organizations. i can think of every wonderful and positive adjective to say and it would not be enough. i want them to give an opportunity to talk about the organizations and what they do. then we will have time for question and answer. there will be folks with some microphones. feel free to raise your hands and wait for the microphones. then you can state your name and your affiliation.

that would be great. i will talk about the three groups that are represented. the first group is an amazing organization called warriors and quiet waters. john baden is one of the co- founders of the organization. he is the director for research. john is the only member of the panel who is not a veteran. john has an incredible love for the country and an appreciation for what veterans do. you'll be thrilled to hear about at. edie rosenthal is the public- relations director for the special operations warrior foundation. this does something that no other organization does in terms of the transition.

and colonel john baden is with the congressional medal of honor foundation. they share their experiences and the values and the character of what makes great leadership and a great citizen -- it is a remarkable story. i will turn it over to john. there will talk for about 10 minutes and then over to your questions. thank you for coming to heritage. so, john, over to you. [applause] 10 minutes. >> 10 minutes i have. excellent. my wife is back there. we had the good fortune of of living on a ranch in montana.

i went to montana to teach. we had the great luck to buy a ranch 10 months from bozeman. that is relevant to my story. it turns out that for a variety of reasons, a very high proportion of the veterans have either returned to bozeman was like bozeman as a place to retire. the county is a fairly large county approximately half the size of the state of connecticut but only has 100,000

people. it is not a random sample of america. very few people live in bozeman by accident and nobody comes to bozeman to make money. it is a college town that is in the mountains. the town is within four minutes of ski areas. one of the ski areas is a nonprofit. the county has less than 100,000 people. the state of montana has 1 million people. we just made 1 million people three months ago.

we probably have more cows than people and we have more trout than people. when you think of bozeman, you think of yosemite park, people who still enjoy doing things on the outside. 30 years ago approximately, a retired air force general and his wife created an organization called eagle mount. they make a variety of outdoor activities accessible to people that suffer mental or physical problems. they started 30 years ago a program for skiing for people

without legs are people that are paralyzed. that was a remarkable thing. they added kayaking and they have an equestrian program. they take no government money. they have 21 programs, eagle mount. rock climbing -- can you imagine that, without legs? we started talking about what we can do for wounded warriors. this was the perfect place to do it, whatever it was. one of my good friends is a

physician, retired, a military doc, and a historic that is written several books on military medicine. we used to meet at the same health club and we chatted about a variety of things -- it could be about fishing or hunting. how can we help military veterans who have been severely injured? if ever there was a perfect place to create warriors and quiet waters, it was precisely there. how many of you have seen the movie "a river runs through it"? most of it was filmed near our ranch. we were talking about what could

we do, what could be offered these veterans? it turns out because there are a substantial number of very successful and young, active, retired military officers there. a fellow by the name of eric hastings, a marine colonel, and tom o'connor, navy captain, hatched the idea of going to military hospitals and having the staff of the hospitals identify individuals to come to montana for a week and learned to fly fish.

wow. this was an ambitious project and it was a bit hard to sell it to the people at the military hospitals. bozeman is sort of a remote place. how do we do all this? the bozeman area is the mecca of trout fishing. the military veterans had sustained context with their colleagues, manage to identify people in military hospitals who could basically recruit the first group. so, we brought six very severely injured combat veterans to those spent with the idea to teach them how to fly fish, and bozeman is such a remarkable place.

there are a number of people who are professional fly fisherman -- we're talking hundreds. some of them are extraordinarily good. there is an immense reservoir of respect and appreciation for veterans. this is part of the community. the veterans show up, we fly them in in either commercially or sometimes on military planes we started this in 2007. we have had only one person who has fly fished, and only one women. they show up and they are in awe.

they're from houston and baton rouge and from philadelphia and east los angeles and so forth. these are not kids who took family vacations out in these places. they shot and the land in the spectacular plays, bozeman, montana. if they land in june, the mountains are covered in snow. the snow starts coming back in september. it is breathtaking and wonderful. they arrived and we take them to a very high-end fishing. if there leg is off, we make special waters for them.

they get a very nice rod and reel and their outfitted totally. it is not professional equipment but it is better equipment than i use. high-end stuff. the first day we teach these people how to fly fish. they go to a place that has -- that is easy. initially these groups came to our ranch. we have a creek and a series of ponds. we set them up with platform so they can fish in comfort. they do not have to wade in

weeds. it is a transformative experience for them. something like 1/4 to 1/3 say they want to come back. how much or do you want to go? >> i think we're about -- >> that is it? i'm enthused about what we do. i am on the board. i am the public policy adviser. people asked, what do you do? don't take any government money. can you imagine? entirely privately funded.

load that person in a boat and float him down a wild river? >> can you see something quickly about what folks can find on the web site? >> go to warriors and quiet waters. we have a video that is worth watching. thesure you've heard of "weekly standard." i contacted a senior writer. i knew what lure would bring him. i talked to him about warriors and quiet waters. he was just captivated by the program.

i think it is the june 11 issue, "weekly standard," the cover story shows a double amputee fly-fishing. the longest article "weekly standard" has ever run, with lots of pictures. >> it is called "semper fly." >> go to our web site and send us some support. >> thank you. >> thank you. it is my honor to be here. my name is edie rosenthal and i'm with the special operations warrior foundation. we have been around since 1980.

if you were serving in special operations forces -- your navy seals, army rangers, the elite special forces -- and you lose your life in a training are combat mission, we will send your children to college, all expenses paid -- tuition, books, fees, room and board. he threatens many times to fly out but he is never had to do that. our secondary program was to support our wounded warriors coming back from combat. we send them $3,000 overnight to help them defray any cost,

and expected cost whether that is bringing in family members, a wife, a spouse, a grandmother and it can cover day care, pet expenses, whenever they want to use the money for. they get it over night and accused to cover those costs. our board is meeting right now to decide what else the can do to support our wounded warriors. some of the things they need are for long-term care. we have been sending some of the spouses out for a weekend or to get away because the care givers are getting fatigued. that is the least we can do and we are trying to figure out what else we can do for the

care givers. we started a program where we're working with a select number of people so we can get our guys and gals recovering or severely burned or missing limbs, we can get them the sleep number beds. they need hard matches to get into and out of the bed, but while they are sleeping, they may need to be soft. the spouse may not want to have the hard bed or soft bed. nobody was sleeping. we got the feedback. we're making sure they are getting what they need. we have 900-something children in the program and 140 children in college is right now. our goal is for that child to

know that we are there for them. we reach out to them and send them christmas cards and birthday cards and congratulations cards. we make sure they know that their fallen parent will never be forgotten and that we will be there for their children. if they want to go to a technical or vocational school, we are all for that, too. our main goal is that they succeed in life. if you want to be a mason, you'll be the best mason there is. i didn't bring my notes. we are rated in the top 3% of

charities within the country and our overhead is only 5%. we are a small staff with multiple hats. staff is mostly prior military. i am retired navy. it is personal. we get to know the families and to meet the children. we will have 20 families at an event today. you get to meet them, to know them, to love them. >> talk about how the foundation was started. >> the foundation was started in 1980 when president carter sent over special operations team to rescue the hostages that were held in iran. we had a terrible accident in iran. a colonel was on that mission.

the c-130 and a helicopter collided. one member was burnt. they passed a hat right there and decided to do something to take care of the 17 children left behind to make sure that those children are not forgotten. we have grown to over 900 children today. we're all privately funded. no government funding. >> jack. >> thank you for having me here. 10 minutes is a lot of time.

the anchor says, "what you think of that?" they go to a commercial. it is a long time. but it is enjoyable. i spent the last couple days on the air talking about the president being in afghanistan. that is the president and yes, that is afghanistan. i am a military expert. it is a great treat to be with you. it is a great treat to be with a live audience. people are home in their easy chairs drinking beer. there were 400 living medal of honor recipients when i was decorated.

the average age would be in the neighborhood of78 or 79. i'm one of the younger ones except for the recently decorated younger ones. there were some money recipients back in those days. most were the result of the second world war. some were from the first world war, some living with the boxer rebellion. those guys were all gone. all gone now. about 10 years or so ago, we started taking down oral histories so we made sure we would capture the

reminiscences, the feelings, the idea that people were still around. i tell kids all the time -- we talk to schools all the time -- when today is gone, it is gone for ever and you cannot get it back. when you're young, two days, it two years, five years, all the same. then when you are old and decrepit and falling apart, you realize every day is a larger percentage of what you have left and it is finally important to do what you can today. the medal of honor recipients have always spent lots of time talking to public audiences, but particularly the schools. when we had living recipients, we had plenty of assets to be able to do it. medal of honor society was chartered by congress in 1958, but never appropriate any money for it.

it is the small club chartered by congress of all the living recipients of the medal of honor. about a dozen years or so ago, some public citizen happened to be in an airport and ran across a guy -- recently the oldest living recipient -- he died when he was 101. he received his medal of honor for action on pearl harbor day. he was wandering around from airport to airport to deliver addresses to schools, and tell kids about sacrifice and patriotism and so on. as the citizen discovered, johnson was paying for it by himself.

that is what all the medal of honor recipients did. they always traveled around and paid for everything by themselves. he thought it was an abomination, and decided to found the medal of honor foundation with the sole purpose was to support the activities of the medal of honor society. as i said, the number of medal of honor recipients to becomes more and more important that this mission accomplished, mostly to talk to kids. education is the most important thing we do. without it, we would not be here today, and without it, the next generation will not be able to survive. it is important to teach the values that brought us to this point, particularly service and sacrifice. all the medal of honor recipients said the same thing -- we don't want the award for ourselves, we do it for those who cannot. somebody asked bob kerrey, a

medal of honor recipient, used to be governor and senator from nebraska, trying to become senator from nebraska again -- i am not a politician and i don't like politicians very much -- somebody asked him, what does it take to get the medal of honor? people have to be able to see it. people have to be able to write and can't hate you. the paperwork was intentionally or unintentionally lost, and you realize that all recipients know that we represent everybody who has ever been in uniform, and it is the message of service and sacrifice and patriotism that we bring to the children of the country.

we do it because the medal of honor foundation gets the assets from donations in order to do it. without it, we couldn't do it. we cannot send recipients to tell them of sacrifice. a wide gulf has opened up, intellectual gulf, has opened up between those who served. to that end, the medal of honor foundation put together a character development program, an entire curriculum with lesson plans and videos, all of

which were taken from the oral histories of medal of honor recipients. 140-so of them, 140-so of these oral histories. if we did not get started doing this 10, 12 years ago, we would not have 60 people today who we do have. any teacher anywhere can teach all of it, part of it, not just civics and character development. it started out in pennsylvania, 99 school districts there. it is mightily important we get to every district in the country. it is not our sole mission, but damn near our sole mission. let me tell you very briefly my experts talking to kids, which i do all the time.

i was born a cynic, and i'm not getting any less cynical. most kids are not. when you talk to high school kids, especially in inner cities, difficult circumstances, at-risk kids come mother is up prostitutes, live with the grandparents, father in jail, so on -- they are tough audiences. this program gets to them. i remember we shot the video asking kids to give us feedback, and i remember this one real cynical 17-year-old gangbanger -- this had been a bad kid. he had the program in his lap, and he looks at the camera and said, "i did not know any of this." he points an accusing finger at

the camera. "why didn't i know this?" it brings tears to the eyes. i appreciate your having me here. [applause] >> talk for a bit about how people find out about the curriculum and get access to it. >> get access to it, education in particular, very easily. information is on the website. i cannot remember, because my brain doesn't work properly. >> www.cmohedu.org.

>> cmohedu.org, right. you have got to tell the -- >> what is the background of medal of honor? like everybody's background. sylvester herrera did not realize until the day he listed -- medal of honor recipient -- that he was not an american citizen and his uncle had carried him as an infant. an alien from mexico, medal of honor recipient, medic in vietnam. one of the more astonishing stories is ted rubin, hungarian jew in a concentration camp, gets freed by patton's army. they open up more camps, kill the bad guys, end the war. it was not in sure think that

if you got released from the concentration camp, he would survive. starving to death, no food, the rest of that stuff. he made a vow -- if i survive, i will do whatever i can to get to the united states, and joined the army, become a g.i. joe -- his words -- and a united states back for saving my life. his entire family was extended and i can spread to this day, if you talk to him -- his entire family was exterminated in the camps. to this day, if you talk to him, you need subtitles. [laughter] a real character. he cannot speak english at all.

how is he going to pass the armed forces qualifying test? he doesn't -- he cheats. [laughter] gets the highest grade. the jig is up. he winds up in korea. he is nominated for the medal of honor four at separate times. his first sergeant was a real anti-semite, sent them out by himself, hoping he would not come back. 50 years later -- by the way, he was ultimately captured and spent time at chinese concentration camps. he knew how to survive in camps. he had done that before. a bunch of his buddies get together for every in and say, "what ever happened to ted rubin?

i recommended him for the medal of honor." to make a long story a little bit shorter, we wrote it up and got it done. i went to the ceremony in 2005 and met some of the guys recommended for the award, and one of them that sticks in my mind, 82 years old, in a wheelchair, crying his eyes out, points to ted rubin and says "that man saved my life." it is these stories, the notions that we fight to defend the country and commerce commission, but most of all, we fight for each other, the notion of community, service and sacrifice -- it is these stories we try to get out. >> if it wasn't for the medal of honor foundation and the history come i never would have heard that story. anybody can go on the website

and pull out these. that story is so moving. "if i survive, i want to be the g.i. joe." unbelievable moment. when he talks about his experiences in camps in korea, thinking he is just going to die. he is helping them live. >> as a result of his stories on kids, we are successful in importing the notion that you are not alone, you are part of a community, and if you give up, all is lost, but if you don't give up, anything is possible. you can get any, even cynical, kid to think that way. [applause] >> we will have an opportunity for questions to find out more about these remarkable

organizations. my good friend, who has one good hand, i guess. [laughter] >> i enjoyed the conversation. i have pushed the peanut of education ever since i retired and went into consulting. i've tried very diligently to get senior instructors and rotc, ex-military, and at one of them in california, a friend of mine, a marine, and he was a great role model, but he taught in rotc. need to get together and see these kids as well models. the mountain of ignorance of people who don't have any connection with the military, they become a political

appointee, and education is an afterthought. i'm on the board of the national trust for wounded warriors, which is supposed to raise a lot of money in the future. god bless you all for what you're doing. >> may i respond to that? you fixed on the most important thing we have to keep in mind, taking care of wounded warriors, educating people, and so on -- the question of ignorance, at the end of the day. the only thing that will overcome ignorance is education. ignorance is an inertia-ridden characteristic. >> for people who don't know, explain what jrotc stands for.

>> junior reserve officers training corps. the younger you talk to kids about what is important, the more likely they will be to have those values when they grow up. >> one of the things that has surprised us by how well it worked -- after the first two years, we had several of our alums say "i would like to come back, i want to bring my wife. she does not believe how this place changed me." we created a second program got basically a couples program, and a total of 8 -- 4 men and their wives -- they come in for a week at the guys basically want to share this remarkable experience with their wives.

we are hosting one group of them -- i think it is in august, but sometime this summer. the loyalty we have among alums is quite remarkable. >> the connections to education that all three of the groups has -- jack's organization is doing a lot and a budding curriculum education in the school, and getting people into school, and i did not realize that a lot of the folks that go there want to come back -- >> montana. >> other questions? jim? >> thank you very much. i would like to direct a question to you kindly. take a step further on a comment you made about one of the best things "you cannot believe how much this changed me."

talked a little bit about the changes you see, and what that brings to his life going forward. >> one of the things i would recommend is you go on our website, and look at the video, the 11-minute video. very high probability it will make your eyes sweat, but not in a bad way at all. of the several hundred we've had come through, very few have had any experience fly-fishing at all. it is not about fishing, by the way. it is about guys whose orientation has been doing

physical things, and how they are seriously impaired. however, there is something transformative about being in this beautiful, beautiful setting on this water with people who care it, genuinely care, about you. we have a professional guide who volunteers his time and a companion for each of the vets. they are with them will whole time. they just show them love and care and tolerance and success. i mean, 100% of these guys are successful in doing this physical, romantic activity of learning to throw a fly line and actually catching wild trout that you can see. it is such a beaming that come over their faces.

we had a seal that had lost both legs and suffered very serious brain injuries from blasts. he couldn't talk, even. but he is out on a dock -- another friend's pond -- and he catches a fish, and it is is beautiful trout. people are cheering for him, and he cannot talk, but he reels it is in, and the guy shows it to him, and he is crying. i can hardly talk about it. it is it really just a wonderful experience.

it is just swimming in this pool of love. we have far more volunteers than we can use. we have training sessions for volunteers. it is and experience in which it they i just enmeshed in beautiful nature and with people who cared we keep them together it also, by the way. we lease a guest ranch. what we hope to do is to have enough money so that we can build an ada-certified place, a place capable to handle people who are severely handicapped. now we have to accommodate and fudge it, quite frankly. but we would like to have a campaign that would enable us to have our own facility that we would share with other organizations. perhaps with eaglemoutn, perhaps with others.

>> tell us what ada stands for. >> american disabilities act. ramps, bathroom facilities and others that are appropriate. >> the impact on these veterans, showing them that there is future an opportunity and accomplishment -- tell us about the effect on the group as a community. >> one of our problems is telling people no, because this is a program that -- everybody who learns about it says, gee, what can i do to help? you know not everybody can help. we have professional-level guides for fishing. there is a certification program for that.

lots of people think, in really good fly fisher, i would make a good guide. well, no. [laughter] we have professional guides who live close to the ground. they are not rich people, but they give up the opportunity to be paid big bucks a day to donate their services to us, to the men. there are the companions. and there are the moms. the same ladies are there every morning to take care of them, make pancakes, such and such.

their love, their concern, and their money. my first piece writing about this was december 27, 2006. it is fairly new organization. >> other questions? >> let me go back to you for a second. one of the stories that i really appreciate is about the son of the pilot. he was one of the first graduates of the foundation program, and has been an eloquent spokesperson for the program. >> we have a lot of stories. he was the pilot of the c-130 that flew in the desert of iran. his son was 8 years old at that time. he was one of our first

students. he went all the way through medical school. he is now a pediatric oncologist. he wants to be on our board, but he is so busy. when we can, we get with him and his family. another spokesperson we have is a young marine, and he was in a roadside bomb in iraq. he was only 23 at the time. he did not lose his leg and right away. it was severely damaged on the upper thigh. they wanted to take the lead, but he did not want to do it then. but it meant so much to him that we gave him the money that is mom was able to come down from new york to bethesda and spend a month with him there before they moved to new york. he ran a 100-mile race, which he had never done before.

it shows you the character and the grit of these guys. he was severely dehydrated, because the race was down in key west. it was super hot that weekend. he called me -- "i'm just letting you know, i have to stop. my friend is a medic, and i'm hydrating. i'm going to take a little break." "i only have 25 more miles to go." [laughter] my gosh, only 25 miles. he rehydrated himself, and he finished that race, and he raised $100,000 for the foundation. it has to do with the the grit

and the character. he couldn't quit, he would not quit. >> here is what we are going to do. we will take two more questions. the last question, for that audience, folks watching online and on c-span, what should people know about them as a nation and at the veterans? what is the most important thing for them to understand about veterans? after that we will run the murderers' row. >> i run a consulting company. we were severely tried on 6

august with the death of 38 with the shoot-down of the chinook, and 32 special operators. large, horrific impact. can you tell us what your foundation did with the immediacy and the beautiful commemorative service that was done on virginia beach and the beautiful funeral, if i can say that? could you comment on that, please? >> i can. that was a horrible, tragic accident. we have never lost that many special operators in one incident. not only our foundation, but other foundations who all pulled together. it is the team effort. within our foundation, at accident took out a large amount of special operators, and navy seals, combat controllers, and also the conventional forces of

the army and military air crew could normally, we don't cover those guys, but we got together and just said we have to. all of those children are in the program right now, and we will make sure they go to college. in addition to that, we said that we need to make sure that all these families, extended families -- i mean, a huge amount of families and loved ones -- can get to these services. these are not normal circumstances. we hope we don't have another tragic accident like that again. >> we'll start with jack. actually, start with the john. in a minute or less, what to the nation know about veterans and responsibilities? thehe foundation i'm with

stresses the importance of the social entrepreneurship, and we were involved in creating warriors and quiet waters. we have four of the board members. social entrepreneurship is really important in creating warriors and quiet waters, a hard thing to do. maybe it could only work in a place like bozeman. once we have the template built, it can be replicated. my fondest hope was we would build something that could be replicated across the country. not necessarily fly-fishing. you would not be fly-fishing in texas or florida.

i would love to see our program be a model that was reproduced throughout the nation. it could be with any number of things, it is not about fly- fishing. it is about showing love and appreciation for wonderful people. >> my thought -- i think we are blessed. even in our younger generation, we still have people who stand up and say, i will go. that takes a lot of courage knowing they will be going to foreign countries. we are in good hands with our veterans. it is because of the veterans that have served in the past. >> there are two things that come immediately to mind. nobody gets authority and responsibility at an earlier

age more than veterans. people thinking about hiring people, hiring a veteran ain't charity. you are getting the cream of the crop. whenever i think the veterans, you have to think about war. i'm always reminded of the observation. war is a terrible thing, but it is not the worst of things. a man for whom the most important thing is his own personal safety is a miserable creature who is kept free by the exertions of better people than he. we are very lucky to have the people we have. >> i think the incredible thing >> i think the incredible thing about