suppression efforts going on around colorado? what my politics are. voter id requirements has passed? >> there is a movement to pass a voter id laws similar to pennsylvania that is being spearheaded by our secretary of state. i think that goes back to the question of demographics. people are aware of the shifting demographics and our state. while there are formal barriers, we see some indications of informal the thames to suppress the votes in predominantly minority communities. >> i don't see that. with all due respect, i don't agree. >> this could come down to a state like colorado and there could be challenges around new

laws passed. to reiterate, there is a lot left to happen. thank you all for being here to hear this fascinating discussion. we look forward to seeing you at the debate and on election day. [applause] >> the road to the white house coverage continuing on c-span2, the second and final day of the republican platform committee meeting. currently will break and resume shortly. coverage throughout the afternoon on c-span2. you can also comment on twitter. c-span is convention coverage begins next week with live gavel-to-gavel coverage of the republican and democratic national conventions. beginning on monday, the gop convention getting under way in tampa with new jersey governor chris christie delivering the keynote address. mitt romney will close out the convention on august 30 with his presidential nomination acceptance speech.

today, president obama will stop in columbus, ohio on c- span.org and in reno, nevada, at a community college. we will have that campaign appearance tonight at 8:00 here on c-span. >> from time to time i will watch the proceedings in the house and senate floor. interviews with people of interests i have. i have the c-span app on my ipod. sometimes of the timing is right, particularly in my american government class, i can get the live feed from the floor of the house or senate and have them watch out for five or 10 minutes and try to provoke conversation. >> burnie davis watches on comcast.

grotty as a public service by your television provider. -- brought to you as a public service by your television provider. from chicago, the national conference of state legislatures legislative summit on job creation and how to make the u.s. more globally competitive with ceo's of state farm mutual and caterpillar. help bridge the gap of unfilled position in today's job market. john engler moderates the hour- long discussion. >> this party will hear from some of america's most important corporate leaders. two are among the most iconic and successful corporations in america. the third is, or used to be, one of us. their subject, the business of creating jobs is one of the most important topics in our country today.

careergler's political is as distinguished as his business career. he was a house member, senate majority leader, and governor of michigan. one of the nation's most industrial, most important industrial states. he later became president of the national association of manufacturers, the largest industry trade group in america up representing small and large manufacturers in every industrial sector in all 50 states. he is president of the business roundtable. please join me in welcoming governor engler to the stage. guest: guest: >> thank you so much. a great introduction of the focus on the legislative years. i looked back of 20 years' service in the michigan legislature, a while ago now, in fact, i realized when i was a

member in the minority in the house and senate and then as a senate leader, i have been out of the legislator longer than i was in, so i am certainly beijing, i guess. -- aging, i guess. one of the things i thought about was the career i had would be impossible to replicate today due to term limits. i watch this effective term limits across the country with just a nothing but strengthen our resolve that legislative bodies need to have members who have experience and expertise in incredibly difficult complex issues that you're confronting today. we got a pretty difficult issue we will talk about, a pretty important one. our panel discussion will address one of those that i

believe is the number one issue facing our nation, the number one issue in the election that will be capturing everyone's attention by november since the olympics are over, i guess, and i think the number one issue for the foreseeable future for our country, perhaps the most important obligation of a nation is how do people find in climate and jobs. we will talk about the business of creating jobs and that has to be an important for anyone elected. i would suggest that at any level. there was a poll that sort of captured all of this just a week ago, at usa today gallup poll with amazing numbers. 92% of americans regard creating good jobs as extremely or very important priority for the next president. from my business perch, i might say getting treated in the

private sector and we approach here today because of their leadership responsibility in their personal lives stories -- personal life stories, they know all about this. i expect you as legislators often are men and women with a lot of experience in this competition for jobs, because there is the creation of a job and there's also the location of a job. you battle each other for investment and jobs, whether it is a manufacturing plant, are in the facility, a call center. there's a pretty significant push for jobs around the country. i think that probably has not changed. it intensifies in tougher times. part of my message in washington, members of congress

come from the states, and these must come from the states. as they think about this competition, they understand the state they came from probably was competing with other states. but what is happening in the world, our states are competing not just with each other, but with many, many other nations. that competition stepped up. sort of like the olympics, if you're born to win a jobs competition, it often takes years of dedication and it just doesn't happen by accident. you don't just get lucky. the right strategies are required to be part of that plan and then you have to have the tenacity and the toughness to see them through. when the strategies come to gather, it is a wonderful thing. you see states coming -- becoming more competitive and as

a result, they're having success in terms of job attraction and private sector job creation, they become the places we all want to emulate. they win the contest as best states in which to do business or, as i have said, best places in the world to do business. our two illinois-based ceo's today are at the home of companies with global reach. they understand what it takes to compete successfully. they have done it, leading their companies over a period of time. there in the business of not only making our return for their investors or shareholders, but also in the business of strategically growing those businesses and hiring people. they have got opinions. we have doug oberhelman, the ceo of caterpillar.

it is the epitome of a manufacturing-based operation. 50,000 employees in the u.s., 127,000 worldwide. that also has our international engagement committee, on the frontline of the trade debate that we take part in. he is also the current vice- chairman and in january will become the chairman of the national association of manufacturers. doug oberhelman has become one of the most powerful advocates in america for the right investment strategies, the right business climate, and the right way to create jobs and certainly that includes jobs through trade as well. then we have the chairman, 68,000 employes, 18,000 offices in u.s. and canada. another global business in the

entrance business, part of the amazing service sector that supports this country, you get to know all the sectors of the economy from the smallest mom and pop store to the largest companies in america. ed has led all -- state farm mutual for years and has been the kind of leader who has been willing to give back to his country. he currently is the chairman of the u.s. chamber of commerce board of directors. he has been one of our leaders of the business roundtable for a number of years. one of the most important business education leaders in america. his passion is probably well known to many of you. at this point, i want to bring doug oberhelman and ed russ for. we will talk about creating jobs.

the way we will do this, double neck opening comments and introduce ed, then we will try to answer some questions and have a little bit of a dialogue. ladies and gentleman, doug oberhelman. [applause] >> thank you, governor. on behalf of caterpillar and those of us in illinois, welcome to chicago and illinois. we are very large employer in illinois. almost 24,000 people in this state. very proud to have you here for this very interesting conference this year. it is always fun to be on the stage with the governor. we should have some fun on the subject he spoke about this morning. i hope you all know caterpillar.

i will be brief in my comments about us. we see construction sons and those little yellow slow down signs, think of us-- construction zones and those little yellow slow down signs, think of us. i think i'm the only one who slows down even soar to see what is going on. do that forroud to our country and around the world. we have an office in at least one employee in every state in this country. we do quite a bit of manufacturing in the west as a well as around the world. we make industrial turbines in california, a giant 400-ton mining trucks and illinois, we produce in north carolina. cliff opened a manufacturing design center in south dakota. we make excavators in texas. i can go on and on, but i think you get the point. we are a big and proud and great

american manufacturer able to take care of lots of opportunities around the world. we're spending a lot of money and capital. this year, the last two years, we will spend almost $10 billion around the world, over half of that right here in the united states for expansion. we have announced 35 new factories somewhere in the world in the last two years, and about half of those were right here in the united states. we have added, since the end of the great recession, i guess, two years ago almost, 15,000 american jobs -- must our manufacturing jobs -- right here in this country. we are quite proud. we do a lot of investing in research and development some statistics she may not know, research and development is critical for manufacturing. it represents the u.s. manufacturers really perform two-thirds of all rnd in the nation, with a lot of

innovation. at 90% of all in this country, from manufacturing. about two-thirds of all u.s. engineering jobs are created by manufacturing. in our case this year, we will invest about $2.3 billion in research and development and the vast majority of that over three-quarters of that will be right here in the united states. so we're pretty proud of all of these investments and proud of our american heritage and where we're going, but we're also very proud of our opportunities around the world. i had a great, a few months ago announcing a new factory in georgia -- a great time a few months ago announcing a new factory in georgia. i will announce in texas, a new assembly plant. we will cut the ribbon on that in a couple of weeks. while we are investing here, we are also investing at around the world. i think it is great news for all

of us that we have these opportunities. it is no secret that as we choose investments and where to go, what is involved. i want to spend a couple of minutes on that because i know it is important for this audience. what we think about when we choose a location for an office building or manufacturing site? we look at a lot of things. first and foremost, what to our customers need and want in that location? the excavator plant in texas is a big one. we needed a u.s. location. we wanted to avoid the freight and supply chain timing back to asia for our customers in this country, and that is important. what do they value? secondly, infrastructure. being the chairman and ceo of the largest infrastructure or one of the largest infrastructure providers in the world, this is somewhat of a

self-serving comment. we need infrastructure in this country. we needed not just for american jobs and the benefit of my company, hopefully, but all of our competitors around the world -- every country is investing more as a percentage of their gdp infrastructure than we are. down the road, our children and grandchildren will have to compete with that more and more and it worries me. but it is important when we pick a site, whether it is texas, georgia, or wherever, are their port facilities? can we get supplies in and out? how reliable is the power grid? that is becoming more of an issue in this country and outside this country. but the biggest piece of our selection process is our work force. is there a local work force that we can use that is killed in what we need? are there universities and community colleges? will they work with us?

a manufacturing job in this country is far different than one when i enter the workforce almost 40 years ago. they are high-tech, highly trained, for the most part, all of the mundane tasks are performed by robots today. everything is computerized. we need people who can run those today. a statistic for you, in this country, we reject six of 10, six out of every 10 applicants that apply for our hourly production jobs in this country. basic education or drug testing. imagine the cost and waste to society for someone that reaches 25 years old or whatever age and 60 percent of them do not qualify for basic manufacturing job. what a waste to our society. we are feeling really big in terms of training, educating our workforce to compete in the world in which we live today. i am sure ed will have a lot more to talk about that later.

high-school dropout rate is 30%, which implies our education system is not working. i don't have to tell you all that. but we are the customers of that education system that we see failing in this country and other competitors around the world are exceeding in the education system, much like we used at a competitive advantage. it is a big problem. supply base is an interesting one. is there a local group of suppliers or can we develop suppliers in a new manufacturing location that and support our facility? that goes into our look in terms of where we decide to locate the facility in the u.s. or elsewhere. kind of a big one, sort of taken for granted, but really a problem today, general business climate. is the state fiscally stable? other legacy cost, pension and medical costs, under control, or

will we look at a spiraling amount of either tax increases down the road or benefit cuts for our people that retire from power plants eventually? we don't need a balanced budget in every state today, we sure need a plan for every state to become fiscally solid in a period of time as soon as we can get there. that really ways on this when we site factories in this country. that has a lot to do with where we site factories. our employees have to be happy. they have to be readily available to come to work every day. if they're worried about their pensions for medical care down the road, it is an issue. that is a big one that all of you have a great say in. all of these come into play when we talk about citing factors in this country and elsewhere, but 95% of our customers in this country don't live here. we're only 5% of the world's population. my generation, my parents' generation and many others lived

in a world where the united states was the king. our economy was the biggest, and still is today. most of the purchasing power resided in this country. that has changed dramatically. 95% of our opportunities are outside the country and we as americans have to deal with and compete on an international stage more than we have ever done. some things i talk about are an indication of that. where do we want to invest in manufacturing? all of these things come into play. as a statement here at the end of these comments, we need an economy that is growing. we really have to all work together today to make sure that happens. we will have comments on that in q&a. growth cures a lot of bills. we of not releasing growth in this country in a decade. we need to turn that around 3 lots of other things that are being worked on, the need more of this is primarily on -- in washington.

ed, i look forward to your comments. thank you and good morning. [applause] >> thank you. i need to talk a moment about his comments. i remember growing up as a youngster and traveling on a family vacation across the country. i realize -- this was pre- interstate highway system. as a little kid, i would be sound asleep in the backseat of the car. if you wanted to get mighty dead sister's alert, my parents would be all "waterfall." -- if you wanted to get my two sisters alert, parents would yell "waterfall." if they wanted to get my attention, they would yell "caterpillar equipment." at the end of the day at my business, the have a paper policy that is becoming

paperless, the that is big and you can touch and work with. let me take a few minutes and share a little bit of background, your anger touched on, but with state farm. state farm was started here in illinois in bloomington 90 years ago this past june. it was started by semi retired farmer. hit a crazy idea in 1922. roads were still gravel and usually impassable in the winter. the entrance was still sold on an annual basis. he was thinking, farmers cannot drive half the time, roads are impassable, said the car is sitting in the barn. maybe farmers should pay less for insurance. crazy little idea that kind of hatched the energy of more girl

in the 1922 and, june 7, started a little company called state farm mutual, the smallest company in the industry at that time. that crazy idea moved toward today we insurer over 40 million cars, and nearly 20 million rental or homes across the u.s. and into canada. we have flooded the industry in terms of customer base and otters since 1942 and homes since 1964. we employ over 65,000 employees across the country. we operate, as the governor pointed out, about 18,000 agents who are very engaged locally in many of your communities where you are from and across the states you represent. this gives us a most unique powerful footprint across the

country, local communities, and in state. we are very involved in looking at communities, looking at states. we invest sizable amounts of dollars each year through charitable donations or other programs, in essence, driving a focus of how to rebuild safer, stronger, better educated communities? in addition to the dollars that we provide, we are investing time and resources as well. we have worked with a number of you in state legislatures and looking at, how do we enhance building materials, building codes, building safer, stronger homes and dwellings in your communities? we have reached out to a number of groups through the years in helping drive auto and highway safety. coming out is the interstate highway system was built, state highways were upgraded, how we bill them safer and make them -- we tend to forget back in the

1960's or so, many highways were somewhat of a death trap. simple things, the way they were designed did nine too much to improve safety aspects. great things have come out of the effort through state farm in the industry. making cars safer air bags, seat belt restraints, cars that basically minimize the amount of injury to the occupant when there is that unfortunate accident. communities are an important part of our organization. as we reach out and that young drivers coming into the work force, getting a driver's license, we are very much involved in helping parents with youthful drivers, helping you make a connection that parents can use to help a young driver

become a safe driver. next month, state farm will host a new program called "celebrate my drive." it is an event to be held across the country. it will be focused on rallying communities to support teenagers everywhere as they learn to drive and get ready for the road ahead. while we work to prepare students for the time behind the wheel, we also want to support them in the classroom and help enhance the formal education. looking at from a public policy standpoint, we at times can all debate the merits of a reform tax code or how regulation may or may not be best structured. i have to tell you today and echo some of the, as the previous speakers have made, a major underlying contributor to our country's slow economic growth is, unfortunately, our students' lack of proper skill

sets required by today's american business. the lack of skilled workers in the marketplace is creating a huge competitive gap. one that frankly needs to be filled in order for us to grow, create jobs, and, frankly, compete in the global economy. today, businesses of all sizes and shapes are searching for skilled employees ready to take on the challenges of working in the 21st century global economy. skills that such as verbal and written communication, critical thinking skills, an issue to come innovation there really, how to rebuild that intellectual curiosity is going to be so critical for the young generation today to continue to compete and succeed into the future. our world has fundamentally changed on us. i was sharing earlier a couple

of colleagues in the back and a colleague of mine who several years ago, his three sons, the oldest two or 16 and 17, the youngest was 13. the youngest look at his older brothers and said, "what was it light growing up before broadband?" my generation, "was like living with a party line?" party line takes on a much different connotation today. but within the u.s., today, there's an estimated 3.1 million unfilled jobs available for skilled workers, many within our organization, within caterpillar, and others across the nation. about 140,000 of those are right here in illinois. we must be all in, be it from private sector or public sector, in driving a competitive

educational environment for a multifaceted approach and looking at, what we do to help schools really provide the educational experience that our kids need to succeed in the world of our mission is to help customers face everyday life and realize their dream. but the economic realities and concerns over employment are making it increasingly difficult for people to achieve their life dreams. the challenges and issues we face today as individual states and country -- individual states and companies must take on the importance of this education issue. no longer are these problems once that can be passed on to next generations or to kick the can down road. coming in this morning, that kick the can down the road

analogy is like looking into the right hand rearview mirror of your car and changing -- objects may be closer than they appear -- consequences of not addressing this are much greater than they appear perhaps today. it is incumbent upon all of us to work together and find workable solutions. states are great incubators in finding work. we don't need to reinvent the wheel but we must be about addressing this issue. i applaud what you all do day in and day out in the public policy arena and dealing with constituents back home and the politics of your local base. business has a key role to play with you in conveying the context and importance of what it is as we will be talking

about this morning to create an environment that drives job creation, at long term fix that, it for companies, states and that it is important for our nation. i appreciate what you do day in and day out and i look forward to sharing perspectives with you. [applause] you. [applause] well, doug, thank you very much for excellent presentation, and that gives you a perspective from the manufacturing company and a service sector company. there's issues that are common. different -- very different businesses, but let me start with this because these are state legislatures and people influencing stot government, and try to break down -- we've got a half hour to have this conversation, but it does strike me that today, and, doug, you mentioned 5% of the people who

live here, 95% of the customers are outside. some more domestically focused, but there's a competitiveness among states, and then there's a competitiveness among nations, and state legislatures influence national policies to an extent, but they are key in terms of a state's competitiveness. is there a way to look at this, when you're making a decision, and you think about competitiveness among the 50 u.s. states, how do we look at that, and what ought to be -- we heard education and, you know, lateral base in your case, and infrastructure needs in both cases. do you look -- and the state's own fiscal ability. how do we evaluate among states, states get rated, and then what is it that we as a nation need to be pays attention to if we're going to win against a location.

europe's got their problems today, but other parts of asia, not just china, but malaysia or i indonesia, vietnam, or south america and brazil. two parts to this. let's start with the state, but i also want to -- can't leave out the national government because the taxes and the regulatory burdens from washington are dwarfed what any of the states are imposed, and so kind of give me the outlook. >> i'll be happy to start on that. really, i think it comes down to two things -- two basic things right now. one is education. all three of us talked about it. everyone's aware how critical it is. we are falling further behind. there's a loot of great initiatives out there for us as a society. we need to reprioritize its importance. secondly, national government

debt, state debt, county debt, municipal debt, you can't pick up 5 newspaper today and not read about doubt. we've dug the hole so deep it's going to take a generation to dig out of, but in some states, they started it, some cities started, the national government has not started it. in fact, getting further behind in the debt. i heard a good one the other day, john. the difference between europe and the united states? about six years. that was a frightening thought. >> very scary thought. >> revenue has to be raised. expenses have to be prepped. every legislature in washington knows this, and it's not a surprise to anyone, but nobody wants to talk about it. we are failed by the lack of discussion around that, deep discussion, and then when it comes to states, in my mind, i think we have to move business, and whether it's illinois or georgia, texas, whoever it is.

workman comp's laws, states roll out the red carpet to welcome jobs, and others, you don't hear it so much. it's an attitude. i can tell you as i go around the country and recite different plants, you can tell the states interested because they are first in line with the hand up to tell you how business is. that's critical if we're going to create jobs in the country, and that backs up on tax rates, costs, workers' comp, you name it. that's critical on a local level, state, and national level. then we can talk about competing with china and competing with europe and elsewhere. >> ed? >> john, three things. i would echo what doug has just touched on. i think as you look at the global economy today, many of us, why would you be interested in that? today, in -- if you had not

traveled or had the opportunity to be in asia, india, south america, europe, struggling, but if you don't have a point of reference and context, you are going to be significantly surprised about the reality. another point, we look at budgets. outcome a little bit different. we are a major institutional investor. through the years, we invested in that role and state municipal debt, and i got to tell you from our perspective of working through and doing our own homework in evaluating states and where we put money, deficits, strong financial cliffs, or bad cliffs, however you want to characterize it, grow with us. as we look at this, it's been

part of one how we support local communities and state, and we're feeling an avenue that is shut off because of the financial problems. i think that, you know, any first finance portion, the miracle of compound interest, how, you know, in over a lifetime of 40 years, it can be four to five times what you started with. on the liability side, looking at pensions and other obligations, it's the same dynamics, but the problem is we don't have the support for the liability. i'm concerned very much with where that will lead because as doug said the difference between the europe and u.s. is six years. that is not something you can just pull back from overnight. >> opportunities for state

lawmakers, and it seems to me that the rules that govern how you manage your aggregates and pensions for health care are very different. the standard or i think for legislatures, one of the thing that is there, probably, and part of that strengthening may well be additional mandated transparency with real rates of return, not fictional rates of return. there's a clear understanding of how much that future obligation looks like because today california's in the news again with several other cities in conversations about their fiscal health, and you got one of the reports on one city talking about how reduction per retiree benefits are immediately, and these are unkept promises. i think there is a need for the

states maybe to step up and mandate this so everybody knows what's going on. >> well, that would be eye-opening. those who worked in that know the reality of working, and you'll find out, john, and i'm the first to say, and i think there's no disagreement, it's easier to say it. time is not on our side. trying to keep the consequences of this more -- [inaudible] this is where in coming back and dealing with what we have to deal as businesses and economic reality in the world of which we live. you look right now, and you can argue on fiscal policies within the u.s., interest rates, it's very challenging for industries like state farm, particularly in the life insurance, where you are dealing with guarantees and the interest, and we have a 3% or 4% guarantee on a product,

you don't make up the difference between a 2.5% 10-year bond and a guarantee bid vieter, and -- by the provider, and this could derive from unemployment, conflict, chasing deals, and i think this is something that, you know, the business community, coming together with a, i think, it's an important one to avoid in saying we have got to address the debt issue be it with pensions, aggregations, health, but the fact is that have the discussion in dealing with it, and we cannot afford what was talked about, and let me get this point. we have to have plans for the conversations. that's going to be very difficult, but it is something that the sooner we have that, then hopefully, the sooner we're

on a more sustainable path than before. >> i'll make an observation which is that the transparency standards are not tough enough. we need to get all of the evidence to the people quickly. see what they want to deal with. the public policy consequences of that, however, are going to be painful because, in fact, the public companies are absolutely transparent, but unfortunately, that's forced us to end the client benefit plan, and that's a for us to do caterpillar and private industry, but today, they are virtually non-existent. the only supply and benefit plans we see today are government. it's no coincidence the liability has not been fully recognized by states for that

matter. let's get it on the table and deal with it that the coming bomb on that is really going to be painful because as i said, we have to raise taxes to pay for it, and the citizens have had enough of that in my opinion, or benefits for current retirees to be cut. that time is not on our side. it's a 3wu8 -- dull et. >> transparency strikes me being in education as well, 3 million jobs that are around in the country available for people with skill, and so the ability to scale up, and in this case, we're not always talking about college degrees, maybe a 2-year degree, but specialized skills

that have to be acquired, but clearly, talking about a child in 3rd grade, 68% not proficient in reading. i mean, we can't accept that. we got to fix that. we got to have a science education, and we also got to have a skills focus, and it strikes me that states that want to compete in this area could do a more transparent job of explaning the results and showing what works because it's just that we don't have the same set of incentives that require it to be duplicated everywhere once discovered, and i'm just -- you've done so much work in this area. what are your thoughts, and what states -- this is where

legislate and governance can make a difference. >> you know, john, we've spent more years than we want to acknowledge on this issue. the agitation is so critical. as we said before, it's years, and if we are not getting kids out in the right environment and learning, when do you ever make that up? i think the effort, and i complement the states involved around the adoption debate, adoption of the common core in terms of these are skill sets regardless of where you live in the country or where you live in the world, are critical, foundational steps, blocks, that you got to have if you're going to be able to survive in a world of lifetime learning. >> you mentioned the time and core, and that's a debate in some states, and you've done 5 lot of work.

common core means what? >> common core are fundmental things. math, science, you know, principles that -- these are things that one plus one equals two, environments are where you live. read, write, and math. we can't afford to do that anymore, but that common core, what are the fundamental skills, communication being able to read, write, comprehend, math, science, be what you might call the liberalized, you know, issues, curriculum. states so communities can address that in the way they feel appropriate, but when it comes to the core fundamental skills that are the building blocks for lifelong learning,

i -- i know there have been debates around that, but i got to tell you from an assessment whether or not your kids in your state, your community, or what, if they don't have the fundamental skills, they will be among the six out of ten that are not going to get a job, entry job at caterpillar or at state farm. this is something, you know, we talk about common assessments and the common core, here's a common assessment for years called a preemployment battery which is what got me involved with this when we heard from parents that a son, daughter, niece, or nephew was not employed because they couldn't get through the basic math, reading, and writing comprehensive skills. it's tough for the audience as

we go back and look at the common core and particularly at assessments. we kidded ourselves. we any we are doing well until we read the score. when we realize we do 75%, when, in fact, we may be at 50%. that is a difficult, difficult discussion to have when we're back home saying, hey, we thought we were doing outstanding, and now we're down here. this is something where i think the business community can provide very important support to you when you're back home taking some of those difficult positions to point out if you want the kids in your states to have an opportunity to have a good growth opportunity at a caterpillar or state farm or any other business, these are the skills they're going to need. >> the one thing that appears very clear that in today's economy, if a young person drops out of school, and we still have dropout rates from the urban schools that are pretty high,

we've got dropout rates in the country that are too high. of course, there's just simply no -- there really is no -- today's economy doesn't provide a future. if they dropout, they still have to re-enter at some point. >> yeah. >> i come at the other end of this, sort of the area where they enter the work force, and i think our, you know, as we've gone from the urban civilization, we've lost so many mechanical hands on skills where a lot of people used to go into manufacturing jobs and had it because they worked on the farm or something with their hands, some mechanical aptitude, carpentry, whatever it is, and that coincided with a big push towards four year university education, and i, for one, struggle a little bit with a $50,000 education for a philosophy degree. they are wonderful people, but we can't employee philosophers in manufacturing in the united states. we need a one or two year

technical add-on to a high school, and maybe that's where some of the kids pick up where we have a lot of work with community colleges around the country to ensure some of them can go to work on a diesel engine, and there's a great career there today that we're really missing. >> on that, be it a, you know, a 2-year program, a 1-year program, or just a continuing certificate or something because, you know, as we kidded earlier ring going, you know, what was life before broadband? you think how the skill sets and the requirements, you know, man, i'm great in basic computer language or programming language. well, that's great if you work in a museum, but just how does the skill set i have today is going to be inadequate in three to five years. what are we putting in place to junior colleges or what to where it is more of a -- just a second

nature. you know what? i got to go back in the evening or weekends and upgrade my skill sets. >> doug, when you went to north carolina, one of the things i remember being announced was the cooperation you have with the community colleges and the high schools because it seemed to me, and there's innovate *eu6 things happening in part -- innovative things happening in parts of the country where they part with the high schools earlier. i'm not sure i can did out and get that philosophy degree or history degree, but i want to be prepared, starting as early as their junior year now working with the community college. >> yeah, we've had wonderful luck with that in many areas, actually. in peer -- peoria, illinois, they have a community college working with us, us with them, and the local high school, and they take a person that shows some degree, the four out of ten we could hire, he or she wants to do

something with their hands, sees there's a tremendous career in working on caterpillar equipment so we guarantee that person a jb if they complete the -- if they can complete the program in one of the dealerships around the country. we just can't get them through quickly enough in the colleges around the country, but it's an effort, and it starts with a state that recognizes they got to have kind of everybody lined # up too put out those kinds of people that we can use in manufacturing. we really want manufacturing jobs, and there's not one politician i met that says we don't want one. we turn around, and almost every policy, john, in this country hinders or gets in the way of manufacturing jobs. >> yeah, yeah. >> there's a lot of that involved, and education -- education is what made the united states great. that put the man on the moon. the single school room schoolhouse put the man on the moon, and today, we spend more money than ever, and we can't get it done. >> look at it from spending more

money, and we get a poorer result. the thing that, back on the comment of looking of getting outside the u.s. and see what's going on elsewhere, is when you realize some of our toughest global competitors, growing nations take it to china and elsewhere, they copy what we did in terms of education in recognizing that young people coming in have to have critical sets of skills. it doesn't mean they are flawless in how they are going about it, but they are, you know, you hear, what, 3 # 00,000 engineer -- 300,000 engineers graduate in china versus 50,000 here in the u.s.. there's a pushback, well, a number of are not as competent as ours. 50%, that's still 150 ,000 engineers to our 50,000. do that over a number of years, and you find they have the competitive advantage. >> yeah.

>> ed got us going here a little bit. that touches on a favorite subject of mine -- immigration. we have a shortage of technical engineers in this country. we welcome engineers from around the world, young students to come to our best universities, and we won't give them a visa to stay here after they get the best education in the world. we send them back. they had the experience at caterpillar, send them back, five years later, they are across the table negotiating with us with our fiercest competitor, and we trained them. we stumble over this, and we have way shortage of this in the country. >> and immigration, there's another one as you look at the demographic of john looking at failing high schools, and you look at young people who are not graduating from high school or graduate from high school with limited skills. the school failed them. you look at the impact on

youngsters of color, look at demographics, and you look at the fact that we need all young people performing at high levels because of the aging population of this nation. we're not getting it done. you look at this. it is a demographic, a slow happening, but they do, and we -- this is part of -- come back while no child left behind brings different con connotatioo different people, the policy of looking that we have got to bring all young people along in terms of developing fundamental skills because as a society we need them because if they fail at that, then the social cost become horrendous, and the competitive costs or experience we lose is another factor that holds us back. >> i wanted to start sort of

with education and work force, and i'm glad we had the conversation come to this because that's clearly and state and local responsibility to whatever extent washington plays a role, it is, despite what they might think, secondary to what the men and women in this room deal with on a topic that is something that state legislation also deals with, the whole question of incentives, and i kind of wanted to go there because is it possible to -- and this has been a debate. what state level incentives, tax incentives or other -- you mentioned a one stop shopping for permit and the business climate attitude, but are there not probably enough incentives to make up for -- and can't pay enough to produce, but at the

margin, and let's take this to the national level because i think it's hard to send the best state here out against what other nations are doing where there's a national strategy to support a competitor to caterpillar or a competitor to a farm pharmaceutical company. the labs are not far from here, and they are going up against national power houses and other nations. >> yeah, i learned a lot on this in the last couple of years, and on so many new green field assembly plants in the united states. i've learned a lot about incentives over the last couple years. the bottom line on this is that most states because we use consultants that work with you and economic officials, and we all do that, most states' dollar up sentives are not that dissimilar. it's interesting. somebody does here more or

there, but taking the total cost and benefit over ten years, it's not the determining cost. i found that quite interesting because before i got into this, i thought, well, some states will be really aggressive with the money, and some are not, but when it comes down to it, add it up, it's not -- it's not the determining factor. it's sort of the price of admission. if you're not there doing something with your competitive states, you're out. for the most part, most states have a level playing field. then you get into other things. the way we look at it is really around business friendliness. does the state come forward on workers' comp? an example here in illinois and indiana, two states. an engine plant in illinois and a plant in indiana, basically the same work, same sized plant, same number of employees. our workers' comp costs in illinois are five times greater than that plant in indiana. that's a fact. five times.

>> wow. >> same injury, acl injury is five times more expensive in illinois. how can that be when you want to put a thousand people plant, how does that happen? in illinois, it doesn't matter the cause of the injury. playing softball on the weekend. if you come in, we pay. causation it's called. that's one area. business friendliness around local taxes, education, we talked about that. a quick story. when i joined caterpillar in 1975, i was a junior financial analyst. we did tax analysis. tax analysis we did were 35% cost in the united states, 3% statutory generally, 38% all in. japan, at that time, 1975, 80%.

germany 70s. france, 60s. u.k., 70s. you didn't hear anything about china, india, brazil, or anybody else. today, we do analysis, u.s. 38%, headed to 44%. higher in states when that's added on, and all of our competitors are below our tax rate. some substantially. canada, it was always greater than the united states, but now they are much lower than we are. when i talk to politicians, oh, we have to have manufacturing jobs. i follow that up why are we the highest taxed country for manufactures in the world? oh, we can't touch that. you big rich guys make the money. we can't do that. well, it's a competitiveness issue. there's nobody out there today whether it's the labs, caterpillar, that doesn't have an international competitor. state farm, we all do. it's a different world today.

>> a went watch which -- and we watch it while we're in north america, but from an investing standpoint, we're global. this is back on that theme of we are more than any other time in our lives live in a truly, global economy, and i know that it is a very difficult subject for most all of you, not all of you, but when you're back home visiting with constituents around why are these things important? it's because of that global economy that, you know, we have got to continue to judge. >> what's the best place for state legislators to gain awareness? i mean, you got members here that are at risk because they traveled to chicago to come to the national meeting, you know, and there's critics back home saying we shouldn't do that. everybody in business, obviously, gets out, and you have to see what's going on. you mentioned that earlier.

probably not feasible. everybody here go overseas and see what's going on, but it strikes me there's global businesses in there space, and there's got to be a way to get that knowledge up from a competitiveness stand point so any advice? what do they need to do? >> when we can talk to all of you, and at the federal level, the senators and congressmen one-on-one and explain our story at caterpillar, how important exports are, the fact that 95% of the population is outside, and take you through that on a local basis. you don't have to come to peoria. we have plants everywhere. suppliers are in all of your districts. go out, talk to the job creators, and listen to what, you know, and learn from that. we find that we can really help educate. we may not change an opinion, but at least we've had a dialogue and fry to do that often, sometimes with luck and sometimes not so much that. >> doug, one thing, this is not just caterpillar. you have a substantial supply

chain, that small-medium sized -- >> yeah, in our case today, around 150,000 full-time heads at caterpillar in the world. we think about a factor of seven of that in the supply chain. call it a million people. we got another 250,000 with our distribution. call it a million and a quarter. they are everywhere. half are in the united states. there's three quarters of a million people more or less all in your district somewhere dependent on a caterpillar job dependent on global trade, and there's a dialogue that can be held there. >> the -- i would echo what doug is saying, and, you know, it is -- this is one of the important things of partnering a business and legislative, helping us make sure we're attunedded to the dynamics of what you have to deal with back

home, but also our sharing with you the perspective facts, dynamics that, perhaps can help you in creating a better umsing and context back home, or there are times that, you know, i look at the years i've been involved, and there's times every one of you in an elected position, there's times you walk up to that podium, and it can be pretty darn loney, taking a tough position on something, and if you have a business leaders in the community, in the state that can step up along with you and say, you know what? this is tough medicine, but it is critical for us to do, for us as a community, as a state, as a nation. i just encourage through a variety of, be it state round tables, chambers, and that to make sure that you are reaching out and we'll push from a business standpoint from the

business community, reaching out to make sure that we have impactful partnerships to address these issues that we're talking about. >> doug, done in a minute, but just one quick question that i think people would benefit from hearing me because mckensey did work for the president and jobs council and competitiveness, and what struck me in the briefing of the round table is the fact they found the relationship between business and government, as they looked at all over the world, to be the most hostile here. >> yeah. >> that's why i'm delighted there's key business leaders here and have the opportunity to have this conversation, but it does seem to me that that has to change. >> for some reason, and i don't know how it happen, and we talked about this, ed and i, and a lot of business people, the country that was built on private entrepreneurs and business now for the most part hates that society, and resents

it or -- i'm not quite sure what, and we have an obligation because some of bad apples in the business contributed to a bad reputation for business, and we all got to watch that and clean up that, but having said that, i don't know how that's turned, really, in my lifetime where you or a businessman, hardware store owner, car dealer, state farm agent, the pillar of the community, and today, that's changed so much, and we really got to watch that. we have competitors out there all the time. to the point on the contentious relationship between business and government, i don't really see it elsewhere where i go. >> yeah. >> we are welcomed in many other places, and today, we're welcomed here 234 many places, but it's a different attitude. business has an obligation. it's not everybody else's fault, but business. we have an obligation to step up, to be ethical, do the right thing, but somehow that, i think, dialogue has to change, and maybe we have to lead it and

we should. >> well, i think it's a good point to end on there. many of the states here where actually the relationship is business friendly and professional. >> very good. >> i think that's what needs to happen and is the case in other countries. i've heard this repeatedly, it's a bigger challenge in washington today, but everything's a big challenge in washington seems like, even little things are big challenges, but i think that the energy in the inventiveness and innovativeness coming from the states has the potential to be transformative, and so i -- my -- closing with just that i think we've been given good guidance today, good conversation from both ed and doug, and i very much appreciate your participation here, and i just want to say to everyone that we're anxious to work with you, but you keep up the good work because it is something that serves the good example, allows us to try to challenge then people at the national level to copy that for our nation. we're still a country that can

send a, you know, a rocket all the way to mars now and land something on the planet's surface. we can do that, we can do amazing things, but we ought to be able to figure out how to get the people to work and get the country about the business of solving our problems, and business is ready to play a cooperative role. we heard that today. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you, all. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> and this afternoon, todd akin was a guest on the mike huckabee program. he has vowed to state in the senate race despite his controversial comments that

women's bodies can reject pregnancy in cases of "legitimate rate." we will update this story as we get more information can all afternoon, we continue live coverage from tampa of the republican platform committee. they have been meeting all day. marshall blackburn, sharing the afternoon session on immigration. it is scheduled to run late in the afternoon. that is live on c-span to. we're also following some twitter comments. j.p. in miami says that republicans have more to do with unmanned vehicles than women and rape. your thoughts? go to twittered.com.

when the republican convention gets underway next week in tampa, we will have live coverage of every speech. each morning on "washington journal." the democratic convention gets underway the day after labor day in charlotte, north carolina. every minute of both conventions right here on c-span, c-span radio, and streaming that c- span.org. president obama spoke in columbus, ohio. he will be in nevada tonight, 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> this weekend on the tv, beginning sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern, from his 2010 after words in your view, mitt romney from his book "no apology." >> he would be a strong defender of american values, american

principles, human rights, free enterprise, free trade -- those words of apology and the statements have emboldened those who find us as a weekend enemy. >> later in the book, the real romney with michael kranish. he explores the 2002 winter olympics and his years at bain capital. >> the national archives recently hosted a group of former members of congress to examine the factors contributed to the state of the economy and the role of government in the private sector. they also reflect on past economic policies and how the presidential candidates are addressing current economic conditions. panelists include larry pressler and bob clement and mark kennedy. >> on jobs and the economy, a

continuation of the partnership with former members of congress, nonprofit organization that promotes public service and stability in political discourse. this is the third year of our collaboration which is based on our shared interest in preventing a -- understanding of congress and representative government in america. jobs and the economy and pollsters and political scientists remind us of this every campaign season. in the records of the national archives provide evidence of the many ways presidents and congress have grappled to meet the economic challenge of their time. researchers to come to the national archives learn about the origins and implementation of these laws and could possibly research the records of the senate committee on welfare, on public works, on education and

labor, the house committee on public works and others. the records of the house ways and means committee are unrivaled stores, eliminating how the nation has address matters of taxation and finance. in the records of the senate banking commerce and banking committee are critical to understanding our financial history, policies and responses to crises. to give you a 30-second tour, iq recall, the popular slogan of " -- if you recall, the popular slogan of the past. presidents have promised a square deal, a new deal, a great frontier, and a new morning in america. and who can forget the multitude of promises of a full dinner pail and a chicken in every pot? in short, talking about jobs and the economy is the duty of every

president and every congress for over a century. tonight, a distinguished panel of former members of congress, the historians and economist will comment on the past approaches to promote job creation and a healthy economy. it is now my pleasure to introduce the president of the former members of congress this session -- congress association. we are a great fan of hers. she has had a distinguished career, including 15 years of service in the house and a six- year mastership to the organization for economic cooperation and -- promoting by technology and advanced scientific research as global engines of global economic change. please welcome ambassador connie

morella is. [applause] >> thank you. that was an introduction i did not really expect. i approve this message and i would like to thank the arcu archivist for inviting us to his peaceful home. you remember mae west where she once said "to much of a good thing can be downright enjoyable." [laughter] i wanted to welcome those who are here. thank you, members of the community who care about hearing about jobs and the future. thank you, former members of congress who have been with us all day long, from 7:30 a.m. and all through this evening. thank you to the parliamentarian who has also been with us all day and made great contributions to our

various venues during the day. here, at the national archives, we do have a wonderful partnership. some people call it a strategic partnership. i guess it is strategic. it is a wonderful partnership where we have had about three or four events right here in the mcallen fear -- the mcgowen theater. i have such a need your assignment, to introduce a wonderful moderator, and man named hans nichols. he is the white house correspondent for bloomberg television. he focuses on foreign affairs and the international community. he is right here in washington, d.c. he has introduced many political figures and government officials as well as past and present heads of state.

in 2008, he covered the presidential campaign of senator john mccain for bloomberg news. in addition to bloomberg news, is reporting appeared globally in publications such as "the los republic." "the new before he was a reporter, he was a writer on the hill. he will be assisted by members of congress and experts who will be joining us on stage. so i would like to invite mr. nichols to join us. i would like to invite our distinguished panelists, congressman bob clement, congressman mark kennedy, senator larry pressler, dr. noel ruled ferguson, and dr. david

cecilia. now i will turn over the program to our very distinguished moderator. [applause] >> thank you very much, congresswoman. i appreciate it. thank you all very much for joining us. also to the audience joining us on c-span. this is a promising and exciting panel. we have a right of lawmakers and doctors. i will do a brief introduction and we will get their expertise. to my immediate right is congressman bob smith. he is from tennessee, eight terms, served on the transportation committee, former university president in april be interesting to hear your take on what the president says on the role of community colleges and the role of education. on his right, dr. neil richardson.

i have watched her grow other economists and it makes me scared that i am not an economist. and congressman mark kennedy from minnesota can we will ask you about governor pawlenty's overall prospects for being a vp. in the business world, macy's, ideally, he did some m&a. we may get a story about the acquisition of haagen-dazs. and a historian of business and economic history at the university of maryland. we want his overall tate, a historical sweep of where we are historically, in terms of the jobless rate, economic growth, etc. and senator pressler from north dakota. chairman of the commerce committee as well as the senate

finance. it will be particularly interesting in the prospects for individual tax reform and corporate tax reform. i know you probably know where all of the loopholes are and where mistakes have been made previously. i will talk -- i will start with dr. cecilia. give us a painting in broad strokes. >> i am delighted to be here. thank you for having me. end this great opportunity over the course of the 20th centurya little information. over the course of the 20 century, u.s. unemployment rates have ranged between 3% and the highest 10% with the exception of the great depression when it hit 25%.

during the early reagan administration when the far chairman paul volker was trying to wring inflation out of th economy, which led to the 10% unemployment, and then of course come in the last two years. unemployment throughout history was recognized as a very serious, debilitating aspect of american life. but it reay wa't until the 1930s and 40s that the federal government explicitly started to claim serious responsibility for addressing the prblem. first through deal programs and things like the employment act of 1986. it commended the federal government to ensuring maximum employment. the broad index that we use is misleading in several ways, as many of you know, because it

doesn't account for things like discouraged jobseekers, underemployment, ms. employment. but there are other things that weneed to use to interrogate a little bit. there is a national index, which in the current economy, there are parts of this country that have depression levels that face unemployment and other areas that are actually prosperous. you might think of it differently, called unemployment frequency. which measures the percentage of americans who are out of unemployed for any part of the given year. if we look at that, over history, we see that it is an astonishing 21 to 22% in the postwar. we can also think about joblessness has affcted differt fortunes of our population. in fact, before the new deal,

unemployment was kind of more egalitarian. since the new deal, teenage workers, african americans, and women, disproportionally. this could be a little too radical for a panel about what this federal government do to ease unemployment, but the fact is that the unemployment rate has changed remarkably little over the course of the 20th century, with the exception of the great depression. the new deal programs actually did not bring about any kind o revolution in addressing the unemployment problem. even though we do have more forms of insurance and other safeguards. the transit unemployment, particular administration

affiliation, democrat and republican. the record is mixed. and this is because i want to suggest that by and large, unemployment is caused by thngs that don't have much at all to do with the federal government. macroeconomic trends. international forces like energy prices or exchange rates or international trade. those are the things that really drive the unemploynt rate. obviously, the performance of private business sector is very important. but even there, it does not correlate neatly with the unemployment rate. because corporations can perform very well, and yet that does not automatically translate into jobs. we have this phenomenon that is becoming more and more prevalent. so-cled jobless growth. when we think about the federal government's efforts to ease unemployment, it is useful to try to separate out the long-term versus the short term.

obvisly, there are things the federal government can do in the sht-term to sort of be the economy. actually, when you look at efforts by the federal government specifically targeted toward easing unemployment, as opposed to more general measures to try to make a robust growing economy, there hasn't been tha many end virtually everyone, by the time it was enacted, the recession it was enacted to address was already over. it came too late. many of them were bipartisanship . except for the cases of the major depression or the major recession tday, this actually gives us more time to act. so actually there is more opportunity there for the federal government to take steps, which brings me to the longer term. again, larger macroeconomic

forces and private sector competitiveness in hiring practices, for its part, federal government has had the greatest potive impact, not when we simply spend money for any purpose, john boehner says he could build ditches and build the whole and i don't think that's the way to go. but even if the government had to borrow money to do it, they have invested in wealth producing capacity for the country. for example, in transportation, communication and i.t. infrastructure or in education or in the energy sector. not that the government cannot or should not accept these as unemployment, but to target wisely and carefully and keep the longer term in mind. and i think voters need to do that as well.

thank you. remark one thing jump out at me. jobless growth. that talks about what doctor richardson might be talking abt. >> it is likely to be with you here tonight. and i would like to just pick up on doctor sicilia's comments and the current economic situation. there are 12.7 million americans who are currently unemployed. and that does not count of 5.4 million inviduals who give up looking for work. the economy was rebounding and producing jobs. for the first three months of the year, job creation averaged 226 jobs per month. that is a far contrast to the jobs reduction we are seeing in the second quarter, which is about 75,000 jobs per month. now, to give you some perspective on those numbers.

just to keep the 8% unemployment rate that we have currently, 8.2%, the economy needs to post 90 to 100,000 jobs per month. at our current rate of job creation, we are not even holding steady on what is a high employment rate for the healthy economy. given those facts, what are the key out the -- key obstacles? about 40% of those people seeking a job have been unemployed for six months. not only that, young people, ages 20 to 24 are disproportionately affected by the unemployment rate. this is not just the capacity of of individuality for these people. but long-term, research has shown that for 10 to 15 years after they become employed, they still make 20% less than people

who were employed during this time period. that is a lot of ground to make up. for young people, for their part, they may delay important life decisions. like living in their parents house, order, you know, finding a partner in getting married and starting a family. these have real implications for people. a second obstacle is the mismatch that we see in today's unemployment numbers. the bureau of labor statistics recently, just today, put out a number of 3.6 million vacancies happen in may. for the first time since the early '80sthere is a mismatch between the jobs that are being advertised, which are in the sciences and math and technology. and the jobs that graduates are preparing themselves for. there is also the job polarization. highly skilled jobs are being created, like quantitative systems, and jobs to take care

of our aging population are being created. but those jobs in the middle, the jobs responsible for the upward mobility of the middle class are disappearing. a thd key factor in the job market today is the shift in responses to downturns in the session. back in the 1970s, fir were more willing to saifice productivity and profit keep workers. now it seems like every downturn is a downside, and firms are more willing to lay off workers permanently in order to keep profitability and productivity in place. finally, the fourth key issue going forard is that americans are just much less willing to move to where they are. in the 19s, the average american move at least one time in your -- one in five

americans. now, only one in 10 americans were many are. why is that? first of all, the housing market is broken right now. and it is very difficult to sell your house and moved where the job is. secondly, we have seen a rise in dual career families. it may be possible to find one job in the new location, but finding two may be more difficult. nally, as the population ages, there are so many more social and family commitments to make that make people unwilling to move from their present location. the final thing that is holding back job creation, i think, in the united states, is uncertainty. there are a lot of macroeconomic issues that are still undecided right now. the fiscal clip is one. the wonderworker till spending and perhaps increase taxes going forward. there is t burden of deficit that is also impeding firms for making decisions about hiring workers when they don't know what the tax rate is going to be nextear.

these five things will have to be addressed for job creation to go forward. i would think about running for congress. but since i don't, i will go to my esteemed copanelists were used to addressing these things. thank you. >> i will start with a the senator. i know we couldn't possibly start with it represented a first. you were in the senate for 18 years. one of the bggest sessions we had, the president was in iowa, back-and-forth, a thousand miles apart, but what to do about the tax cuts and want to provide consumers some sort of certainty that their taxes wl not allow. you have been in town for a long time. is there the bipartisanship to actually get a dl to cut something to prevent massive tax increases? >> first of all, i consider myself a member of the house.

[talking over each other] >> neither one. in any event, in tax policy and honest labor issue, our national media in our presidential candidates are not really dealing with the truth. for example, even if we have a sequeste we are still going to have substantial tax increases to get through the spending we ever be done. and we will not admit that. the presidential candidates are talking about 5% here, 10%, some days the president of the united states, if we have a cataclysmic financial event, the president of the united states may say we have to pay more. the wealthy people have to pay much more. the gas tax, as in the

simpsobowles report has to be tripled to suffice what we are paying on infrastructure. everybody knows at revenue has to be substantially increase increased in the united states. as a republican, i think both parties should amend that to the people it is going to have to be done. and we are tossing around these job report percentages. lou dobbs, whose facts are good, and the he had a program on jobs and he showed all the jobs were available. and i can say to you that in the state right now, that anybody could get a job in the oil industry for about a hundred and $50,000 a year. that is man or woman. we have to get past the thing that nobody wants to move anyplace. on theou dobbs piece, there

was a lady in the unemployment line. these are not minimum-wage jobs. these are 18 or $20 per hour. there were six of them within two city blocks where she was and she said that i am a language translator and i don't want to work in a drugstore. so this is very frustrating. we have to become much more honest with ourselves. our politics have to be much more honest. his presidential campaign, neither candidate is talking about the real issues. >> you sound like you think the united states is about to become greedy? >> well, we could very easily. i would predict that unless we do something about the statistical matter, the dy will come the next five years. and we will have a cataclysmic event in the president of the united states will come on and see if we didn't have to do all of these things right now, it will be a very painful thing.

high inflation, for one day will decrease faster than it does now. we are headed for some very hard times and very substantial tax increases and a lot of us are going to have to take jobs that may not be where we want to live or that may ot -- we may be language translators, but we have to work in a department store. >> congressman, do you agree with that five year time horizon? >> i think the difrence between europe and americawhen it comes to the issue is that europe acknowledges that issue and are working on it. i agree with senator larry pressler. my most recent post in huffington post is that we were talking about things that are not the real issues. there is a fiscal clip. the fiscal cliff with the decision on which tax breaks and what we will do with the

increase of the debt limit, and what we are ultimately going to do to solve the deficit, it has not been decided. integrates uncertainty, businesses stay on the sidelines. this economy would not recover until business has the confidence and can only come from addressing the fiscal clip. neither campaign is really talkg about it. until they start talking about it, we would have to open up the discussion. there is a breakout opportunity for either campaign that comes out and says, my first priority is to solve this. i'm going to work with whoever is in congress and whatever one of her party. i'm not going to let anybody leave town, not going i'm not going to do a fundraiser for anybody until it happens and intuitive signed into law. if any member of any one of the candidates came forward and said that they would be the immediate front-runner in anybody who

tried to follow -- i hope somebody takes that across the country right now. >> do you agree with that old prescription? both of these lawmakers seem to be blaming the candidates. how much does it fall on the house of representatives and the senate? >> first of all, i thought it would be disagreeing with larry and mark. but i agree with them. i think they put it very wel. what we need more than anything today is political courage. and that has to happen. i know the students, all this talk about today, about compromise. there is nothing wrong with compromise. that might be a dollar for additional revenue. it might be $5 of cost cutting per dollar of additional revenue. it might be $10. $10 of cost cutting for a dollar

of additional revenue. but the fact is that we need both. if we are really interested, if are really committed to end these budget deficits and balance the budget, once again, i am proud to be able to say, and i know some of the other former members that are here with me tonight, they will probably be able to say that i served over time where we didn't have a balanced budget and it was a good feeling. >> i am too young to remember. [laughter] >> when you talk about these looming facts historically, ve there ever been periods of time like this -- we al know that the bush tax cuts expire -- has therever been a time where there has been a greater consequences for inaction? >> well, yes, we tend to think that our current times are the most challenging and they don't

look that way in the longer view. you know, a lot of things happen . obviously, given the onset of the great depression in action. it seems to be the worst thing to do, and yet the president did it because we have had those cycles and recessions for virtually every 20 years for 150 years. so this is another 1921. virtually everybody thought that. by the time president roosevelt took office, it was pretty clear that this is something different. so this happens all the time. and wesomehow -- no, i will stop there.

historically, we have accepted the narrative that a tax decrease increases employment. that is not historically true. as you said in your historical comment, or levels of unemployment stay pretty much the same. in fact, during some of the biggest tax increases, we have had an increase in employment. i think our national media needs to dig into the facts mourn with all due to the facts of the present company. and i just happen to see lou dobbs, i know he is on a fox channel and that makes him was given to some. but he did a fantastic piece on what the job market rely is. people are not taking the jobs that are available. >> are we stuck at 80%

unemployment? >> it may be. there is recent projections that even under optimistic scenarios, if the country grew jobs by 205,000 per month, we are still looking at eight years before we return to thunemployment rate that we had before the recession. >> and that is a too 3% duty? >> the senator'spoint, that people need to take the jobs are out there. that people need to berained to work those jobs. right now we are seeing the scale mismatch. such is the jobs that were advertised, there used to be where firms were willing to train employees. now, firms want somebody who is ready on day one. and they are willing to wait six months or year. they find a person who walks into the door with a complete

[indible] >> providing that training for middle skilled jobs. it then became a four year university. what role do traditional community colleges have been filling the gap that other companies to? >> we ought to have congressman mark winchester. what a great leader he was in north carolina in this country when it comes to unity colleges. i was college president out of nashville tennessee. and move the college to a four-year accdited institution. i have always said that that is the toughest job i have ever had. when i came out here, people mention that you are a congressman now. but yes, the last 4.5 years they have called me mr. president. i might say about community colleges they serve such a great

purpose. what a great need and what a great bargain that they are. and i think all of us know that young people need more than a high school diploma to survive and compete d get a job. that is why community colleges are so important. these tuitions are going out the roof. a lot of people are an unbelievable debt. and i can see why so many people are questioning, should i go to college at all? i can't afford it, i don't want to put that burden on myself. i don't want to put that burden on my family. we do have a disconnect today about skilled jobs. jobs that are not being filled. >> welders, manufacturers. >> absolutely. and we have to fill that need, and that is just not ppening

today. a lot of people just need more advice and counseling. not only young people, but a lot of adults. that's what we had at cumberland university i started and funded it. working adult degree program. the end it worked. >> would you like to jump in? >> two quick things. there is new workout of harvard. claudia goldin, the investment in education -- the quality is better than anything else that you can come up with. the other thing that i want to mention in which doctor richardson brought up, and congressman kennedy, this issue of uncertainty. other work shows that if you want to predict how well the economy performs, having a high

tax rates were low tax rate is not a very good predictor. with the best predictor is this how often the tax code has changed. so when the postwa none, you had an extraordinarily good economic performance, the tax code did not changfor 25 years. that is part of the problem. it underscores the issue of the gridlock and congress. the biggest risk is if we are not able to get more bipartisanship and have this kind of brinksmanship around around our treasury notes and if we will default. [inaudible] we can't play brinksmanship with

things like that. >> there seems to be a lot of blame in washington. you haveignificant private-sector experience. sometimes the president vetoes the business community. some might use a different verb. he talks about the need r businesses to get off that $2 trillion and start spending. how much of this is on the business community on corporations sitting on cash? >> i think that corpations are sitting on cash because they are waiting for certainty. when you extend tax cuts by year, when we heard that it is less correlated with the level of tax cuts long-term, politicians are waiting for the next election, the business communities will wait until the next election. it is kind of hypocritical for politicians waiting for the next election, or focus on the next election comes when businesses for doing the same thing.

i would also like to take a historic perspective since we are here at the national archives. and think about where we are in our economic development and what kind of economy we have and what needs to move forward. because i teach a lot of courses in world economic forum, rankings of competitiveness. three different stages of economic development has a look at countries around the world. resource drin countri, like we used to be in the 1800s. back then, infrastructure and other things were important. much more important than they are today. then we moved to an efficiency driven economy. how efficient can he you be. and then they moved to innovation economy, where we are today. twelve pillars of competitiveness, the one that they rank than the one that makes the most difference in an

innovative economy, it is a sophisticated production system. read that as a global supply chain for he that is in sourcing and outsourcing. i saw it today, the very first bill and the congress, we saw this earlier here at the archives, with the baltimore citizens petitioning to protect. he was on the political table from the beginning of congress. they were on than whenhey are on now. you are bashing was critical for our economy to move forward to the central and licensed for a global supply chain. and you ask well, it's pretty easy. the second thing is innovation, which requires two things. getting a reward. why am i going to taste this

risk? here a there, when in reality, it is risk-taking that drives an novative economy. we need risk-taking and free and open trade. it is one of the proven tools that has been left in the toolbox. sites approaching the fiscal clip, we need be part of the global economy and lead the global economy, as opposed to cori and being fearful, the person that will leave this economy back to the job growth. >> we talk about the toolbox, the president has free-trade deals, they are moving ahead on the partnership they have invited mexico, we are talking about the pacific -- are you accusing the president of not doing enough on free-trade? >> i would say america is not doing enough for free trade. let me applaud the president when it was given to the congress with a 90 day

requirementin an up or down vote to finally get three builds on what some of our most vital allies. it took us five years to get a trade deal with south korea that we have needed all these years. it is not a great croissants. transpacific partnership is not talked about enough. if you talk about the most -- top-five most of the things that your kids and grandkids employment, it is whether or not the trade deal in asia is going to be in asia trade agreement or a specific trade agreement. we are not talking about enough. is it an asian trade agreement, the printing itself from america, we are going to have far less prosperous economic futures. i applaud the president again for putting forward a specific partnership. i applaud them for putting candidates in mexico in the mix. that needs to be part of the

narrative. move beyond this in sourcing and outsourcing discussion and talk about our futures dependent on this trade agreement. >> i'm glad i am glad you took it to a global term. imagine all you guys have a variety of views on what countries competitors potential collaborators, what other countries are doing well, and what they are doing poorly. when you look at the global footprint of countries that are competing, who should we be emulating? who is really out there innovating? >> well, it's very hard to say. so many countries have gone into this deficit spending business so much. this is not a thing of the 1950s to the present. much of the western world in countries such as india, china has not engaged in that sort of deficit spending. and i suppose we would have to emulate china. that is not a very popular thing to say. but in terms of managing the

fiscal house in managing the business, i think tat we might have learned something from the chinese. that may surprise some. also, let me say that i think we have to beery honest with ourselves. historically, and this isn't part of historical discussion, things like in the presidential campaign, we talk abut the immigration issue on the edges. the fact is th everybody in this room knows tha we will not deport illegal aliens who are here. now or in the future. after the president is authorized to deport those democratic and republican presidents have not. and we are not deport the people you're here. they are going to say. so we should accept that and deal with it. we are going to makehem citizens, and that is what is going to really happen. if we look at ourselves

historically, we are not a country to deport people. therefore, if we let people into the country, they are going to stay with the immigrants are here. everybody knows that, but nobody seems to be willing to say it for a presidential campaign or anyplace else. a whole host of issues. taxes, trade, international matters, we are not having an honest discussion with ourselves. >> congrsman? >> i agree with what larry just said. i agree with what mark said. one of the toughest vote i ever cast when i was a member of congress was on nafta. and most democrats were opposed to that. i will never forget going to the oval office and pleading for my help. [laughter]

[talking over each other] >> i wasn't not smart. [laughter] but i did help him. and i do feel very strongly about fair trade and free-trade and opening up our markets. because i know americans can compet i know the american work can compete. if we don't have our hands tied behind their backs. >> you raise something, o of the criticisms that you hear of obama and the relationship he he has a capitol hill if he does not spend that much work lawmakers on his own. the presidents who served under, how frequently did you socially interact with president clinton? >> yes, i served under four presidents. starting with president reagan and ending with george w. bush. eight of those years were under

president bill clinton. it was a real pleasure. >> did he play golf? >> all, he did. as a matter of fact. that is a real story. [laughter] >> i will just tell you the last part. we were onone of the last hopes. the army and navy country club. right in the middle of the gore campaign. we had a lot of time to spend. [laughter] >> i sent mr. president, i had a tree about 10 feet for me, you might want to move that golf club. and he said bob just hit the ball. i hit the ball, it hit the tree, he came back on the president, should the golf cart, just an inch and he could've gone down. [laughter] >> the next day, tennessee

congressman kills president. [laughter] >> the shot heard around the world. >> thank goodness i'm not much of a welfare. >> those things happened. >> yes, he would even call me. i will never forget i'm even though i didn't vote with him this time around. on the floor of the house. >> but you went within -- and i said this is one time i can help you. but, i didn't mind saying yes, but i did say n. i said no at times, too, ecause abbott district and the state in the country and you have different feelings and you take different positions and you have to stand by your decisions.

>> i just want to come back to an interesting question about who should we emulate. should be emulate china? i don't and we should emulate anybody. because capitalism comes in many differen varieties. i don't think there is one best way. some different ways work very well. there is the so-called scandinavian approach. in that performs very well, but it would not work in the united states because we wouldn't go for that kind of a large social welfare system. the issue in china is always about the government. and the government actually introduces a lot of unpredictability. it has shifted from the 1980s to the 1990s. and actually, there is a lot of evidence that the economy performed worse in china in the 1990s because of that shift. now, we do have an innovative society. it is one of our competitive

strengths. however, i some of you may know this book in circulation and says that we should, you know, cut xes even more because will incentivize people even more. the problem that i have with that is that i don't think people should go out to tart companies and say well, if i'm only going to make $800 million instead of a billion dollars, then i'm not going to try to start this company. the middle class -- the moral ises involved. the middle class has been the engine of economic growth in this country. in fact, we talk about america trying to make a mcdonald's on the world. the fact is that other countries have tried to get into our economy because we have had the most affable middle class in this country. from a purely economic point of view, to the extent that we

continue to grow the middle class, we will possibly end up like reese for whatever model that you want to use remap i will give you two people to emulate. i agree with president obama when he said that health care is our deficit issue. nothing else even comes close. >> do you mean medicare and medicaid? >> health care is our deficit issue, medicare and medicaid -- nothing even comes close. if you look at austria moving to the social security side, a i will come back to health care, e liberal pay passed a mandate that you had to save extra of your earnings. when the conservative par, when in which everything is done under, they are considered part of the liberal party -- when they came into power, instead of repealing that, they said that we are going to let you invest in whatever you want. so you only access social security at 9% of your eanings in your lifetime aren't enough

to give you enough payout to make it more than social security. so 4% of the people are actually drn from the government. so rather than having people when they turn 65, they are are turning it on savings and they have a huge pool to invest in private industry. that is one model that wehould look at. when you look at health care, i would look at business. you look at the grocery store that said says they determined that 70% of health care costs are influenced by behavior. and that they're only three or four big things that account for a big part of that. diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. they came up with incentives that if you don't smoke, if you're not making progress on that, if you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, they take the medications, you do the right things from a behavioral perspective and they give you a lower premium. when everybody else's health

care costs are going up everybody else's were going down. they have incentives andhere is no incentive in our government health care plans, and there are restrictions on what private health care plans can do if we put the same incentives and encourage it for private health care. that would go a long way towards bringing the health care health care costs under control under jefferson under control. is that possible? >> i am stuck on this idea. because honestly, i am kind of listening to the comments that are being made. what is going on is that we are coming off of an addction. there is a withdrawal happening. the withdrawal of easy credit. not only when it comes to that housing market in 2005 to the 2007 housing boom, but the world

kind of fixes themselves to th. china investors -- not jst china, but international investors all over the world. they gave the incentive to manufacture this so that more investors can invest in the american housing market. it gives people the ability to purchase homes they couldn't afford. and now we are in the most painful correction ever. what is real is how much of our economy, not just our economy come for the world economyis driven by this bubble. just recently, the imf took down global growth. they change their projection of global growth. one of the mandates that the imf has told the u.s. is to fix the housing market. why? because we need consumers to start spending again and advise the global economy.

revive the global economy. the fact is the rest of the world depends on the u.s. consumer to spend and to import commodities and products that these countries are selling. and so we can't oversell or under estimate the role of housing and installing u.s. economic recovery, and also stalling global recovery two so have we bottomed out on housing, and if we are on the upswing, i figure savings is for our 5%. germany is 12%. if housing is sort of on a slight uptick, where you see the u.s. savin? >> you know, the house was the savings instment. for millions of middle-class

if it is not in the house and interest rates are almost at 0%, where it is the middle class go to save? more than that, we haven't talked about small business yet. small businesses -- you know how small businesses a generally financed. through vings and home quity. as home equity disappear, so has there been a decline in business. that is an issue going forward as well. >> one thing i heard the president say, particularly when we were coming out of the global recession, wendy's international forums come in talking to foreign leaders, don't count on the u.s. consumer to be the instrument of growth. there has been more difficult conversations with merkel and gordon brown -- i think what i am hearing all of you say is that the u.s. consumer is no longer going to be the engine of growth. senator? >> i think that is a very good

assessment. it is also deficit spending by individuals with privatizing home loans and so forth. and we have gone through a period of time where it has been very difficult. everybody has forgotten about that. about 1950 onwards, we really haven't had a shortage of things in westford we have a sense of entitlement. a sense of abundant goods. and it is, as you said, we are hopefully going to come off the addiction. but it will be very painful, i think. >> as long as we are on addiction, and this is something that we hear the president talk about. addiction to foreign oil, where are you, congressman on the overall hemispheric energy

policy? where are you on crack and? where are you on energy where are you on energy is being a job growth factor. >> we need t look at how we can use our research in the most productive way possible. >> that is a man who is going to run for congress. [laughter] >> i am a big fan of the fact that the incentives for the energy companies come up with something like that, it radically shifted the geopolitical landscape. we have a real possibility of being far more independent than he middle east on our own energy needs.

now, we are finding that we have the cheapest natural gas in the winter. all the things that go down to miss. i think, you know, we are getting way too contentious on the energy and issue at hand. that not only has great economic benefi, but from a geopolitical statur in the world, to have that economy is a huge change. one thing we have to watch out for is they need to preempt regulations that could stifle all this and act in a responsible way to say this is the way we are going to act to address consumers and resident legitimate concerns. >> senator? >> i would like to see,

especially on energy, i believe that e should not lot -- i think both pipelines, the main pipeline that we are talking about, deficit in order we have been trying to build a refinery for 16 years and south dakota. the combination of the rights of individuals in lawsuits and extreme environmenl concerns. we now stand -- we have great wealth. if we could harvest the whale that we have in the alaska area and north dakota area -- and we also have refineries to movement -- we consult with much of the world and pay off a lot of our debt. we are extremely wealthy in that area. i just think it is a shame that we don't break out of the box and really develop that oil and gas and sell it.

>> congressman? >> i am former director of the tennessee valley authority. and we sell electricitover seven states. i felt very strongly that then and i still do now about diversification. >> we were building when i first came on board 17 nuclear plants. >> how many are you building right now? >> which was outrageous. as a matter fact, led the attack by myself. two to one to curtail part of the nuclear program because we were overprotecting and driving up the rates and we would've lost the tva it would've kept moving down that track. it was the right thing to do. but america has an abundance of energy. it is about like a growth policy in the united states.

we've never been serious about the true energy policy. because energy in the past have been so cheap to buy overseas, if we move in that direction, rather than oving towards energy independence. >> well, taking a long view, thinking in terms of the age of the automobile, the combustion engine and fossil fuels -- we are kind of at the end of it. acking could give off an indian summer. because of the synonymy and disaster they are in japan, if they could get off of fossil fuels and nuclear power, it is an astonishing clim, almost any country can do what they can. if they do it, that would be a game changer. every other developed country like us will have to folow them because of economics.

>> when the historians -- i just want to belear on your time horizon, would be 20 years or 30 years? >> no, i think we could extend it for 20 or so years. but the act is that we need the age of fossil fuels as being in a twilight. president obama coming in for his second term. you know, thinking on terms of legacy. the issue hasn't come up yet today. so i don't think that we can just say that we article you talk about fossil fuels, we need an immediate solution. but the longer-term issue, and again, it will be driven by a country like japan. because if they are able to actually pull this off, that we then we are going to have to pull it off as well. >> i would respectfully point out that they're going to keep

it. in fact, italy is buying all thesenuclear plants that are designed by the french. >> and this runs on nuclear energy increasingly. and though japan was traumatized by that. but i would say that has not been the case with france and italy and switzerland. and england. and the united states. i think we should have nuclear energy is a component. we don't seem to be willing to build pipelines and refineries or do the things that we need to do. and if so, we are going to have to have a nuclear component the larger. >> i think larry said it well. what they did, that the united states did not do, is standardized nuclear plants. and where did all this end we

got into retrofitting in the nuclear regulatory commission, the nuclear plants became very expensive. i support nuclear. but i also believe very strongly that we can move forward with diversification and our energy sources. and accomplish argenta. >> commerce and, thank ou. really quickly ce after this, if there are any sort of audience questions, i can keep droning on or we can have a conversation to ask. if anyone has qestions asked, we invite you to go to the microphone and his raise your has. >> is i was going to say we talked about political courage. an election where the person ran against the idea that we are going to have this in japan. i'm not ally sure.

because when you really care about global warming and tracking and all these issues, nuclear is the cleanest form of energy. also, you don't have to worry about where you're going to store it. we have not really had a real conversation about nuclear energy and energy independence and insolvency. >> i agree, which is what i have talked about with fossil fuels. we just now licensed a new one. there was a historical period when it was completely dead. >> if there our audience questions, i would encourage you to go to the microphone. because this is all being recorded by the archives. by c-span. if anyone has a question, please

let us know. if not, i'm going to talk about what senator kennedy was talking about. social security reform. one of the first things that president bush did after he won an election, was to try to privatize part of social security. it didn't go anywhere. what makes you confident you can have some sort of social securityeform in this country, given what happened in 2005? >> well, first of all, let me say that social security is a much smaller problem. but i think you have to approach this, nt putting everything on the table all at once and trying to do something in addition to social security. but if you have local capital, figure out a way to make it work -- something that doesn't cost them too muc consternation -- many people say when it comes to entitlements we need to do

something from a bipartisan perspective. there are really a couple of things that chnge social security make it solvent for extended period of time. social security problem, if the politics out and let them come up with a solution. it's an up or down vote in conjunction with the medicare and dicaid -- it is a fraction of the problem, that health care is. i would suggest - i will give you an example -- of how it has been done in a way that is more official for the economy. >> we have the first questio introduce yourself for the historical record and fire way. >> i am from [inaudible name]. i was just going to ask about you guys brought up a lot of factors. skills and uncertainty, did that worry you about the future

deficits. but from my understanding, a lot of those problems existed 2007, and we didn't have massively high unemployment, whereas the biggest change was a huge shock to aggregate demand. so i would be curious about why those factors do not cause unemployment in 2007. and why you think there i still the driving force of unemployment today? >> that is a very good question. during the 2000 decade, what we have is a distortion in the economy. we had an have an oversized housing market and an oversized financial sector. see that in all areas. the best and brightest students went to wall street more often than they went to medical hool. that distortion had some structural inefficiencies in terms of what was happening with e economy

once there was the recession and once it hit, all of these bubbles, starting with the.com bubble, ending with the housing bubble bursts, you saw the gaps in the economy that dealt with the unemployment rate. for years, upwards of 80% -- that has not happened in a long time. >> senator, i think you wanted to say something? >> we have all these narratives reported in our life that are just not necessarily true. a lot of things happen economically, and it doesn't work out that way. everybody assumes that we have a tax increase on the economy will slow down. that is not historically true, although most people assume that it is. we accept the fact that there is a% unemployment, when in fact, there may be only two or 3% real unemployment. there are jobs available. we accept the fact that we are

going to do something about the illegal immigrants. we are ot. it is not in our dna. it is going to have to be making them citizens eventuly. we seem to deal with all of these prodigies. in this presidential campaign, i am so upset. either obama or mitt romney, and say, listen, the stuff we are talking about is just on the margin. the real issues are best. and we are not doing that. i think you for your observation. >> i would just say that yes, there is some misconceptions about higher taxes reducing the incentive for innovation. if you think of what happened in 2007, we have put so many different issues on the table,

he created so much uncertainty. whether you are talking about the health care bill were the cap-and-trade or what will happen with labor laws, financial regulations, they are all just kind of creating uncertainty. part of the problem was what bush saw -- which was a fraction of what was put on the table by president obama. take them in bite-size chunks that we can wrestle with and get them done. as opposed to putting so much uncertainty that it discourages businesses from stepping forward and solving the issue. >> go ahead, and then we will get to the gentleman to historically, the high point of the unequal distribution of wealth in the country has been 1929. but it went down and we had this

great expansion of the middle class, espcially of the 40s and 50s. then it started declining in the 80s. it is an order of magnitude. corporations are not passing along any of their earnings to workers. they are passing them along to shareholders and that comes back to my point about the middle class. it is just fun sometimes, but it is not a one-si-fits-all answer to all situations. right now, we have a problem. >> next question? >> i am from the center for american progress. there has been a lot of agreement on the panel that the debt and deficit are big issues. when economists think of this in terms of debtor deficit ratio, i think doctor richardson was hinting at this, when people are unemployed, thatcan reduce our

potential gdp. i know that larry summers had a recent paper published by the brookings institution at had been a relatively low interest rate, there are levels of history that suggest that government spending would almost pay for itself. what does congress need to do to get gowth moving again when there is such infrastructure investments they could pay off, investments in education that would be incredibly useful for our economy. >> well, i believe that's one of the economists. >> economist surrounded by congressman. [applause] >> that is a tough question. if you like the stimul was like cotton candy. it was very sweet, and then it disappeared. and i hate to have the solution be more stimulus. because it has to be smart

spending. we have a mirage of infrastructure problems. and we have a labor force, a lot of construction workers who are spending time at home because there is no new task that could be put to work right now. and we have an education sector that could use investment. there are definitely those starving for government funds. those funds have to be directed in a smart way that recruit their investments. and i think that is why maybe congressman for american people are gun shy about more government spending. because they didn't see the results were expected were advertised. >> more fiscal stimulus if you yourself? >> in the national archives, we had a lot of [inaudible]

it was world war ii that brought us out of the depression. so far, there is not much historical support that i see for stimulus really having any kind of signifint impact on the economy. but we touched on something earlier that is vital. and that is we can't be the engines of the world economy. we need to get the developing untries like china and india and brazil, to start uying more american goods. because that is the kind of stimulus that can offset us being in a fiscal constraint it. if we just stop spending, that is going to depress the economy. we need to be doing more training. getting consumers to buy more. that means they need to have better safety nets. the key thing that we need to be focused on more today than the

campaign is how we sell more to china? and we sell more to brazil and india and turkey and africa? we are losing africa to the chinese. we have this myopic internal thing, when in fact, the solution isn't necessarily washington. the solution is doing everything we can to encourage businesses to go abroad and sell more. >> made a historical point. that historians your right may nt to challenge. >> the great depression, it is true that the new deal did not end. however, it is actually a rather conservative effort that fdr tried to balance the budget in 1937 and brouht about another severe debt. doctor richardson reiterated what i was trying to say in my opening comments about investing in wealth produced -- wealth

producing capacity of the country. two programs i have mentioned would be the federal program and the g.i. bill. i think that those had an enormous positive effect on this country. because it educated people for higher skilled jobs and a lot of construction workers back to work and created a highly system and transportation infrastructure. >> i agree with you on the transportation committee. >> yeah, you know, i would've done the obama admintration a different way. i would have done national health care on an incremental basis. i think american people would better understand it. and they would better accept it. because there is an unbelievable amount of fusion, lies, chaos, over national health care. and you could still help people and help cover people.

the pre-existing conditions, taking care of young people on their policy to age 26. selling state insurancecross state lines. transportation infrastructure comes first. that is what we need to do first. it would create more jobs faster. people just like during the roosevelt administration. the wpa. the same economic activity, and i think he would've gotten a lot more bang for your buck than the way we have done it. >> and currently we are about 60 billion analyzed for surface transportation bill? >> 110 billion. the amount is that correct? >> yes, we haven't had a transportation bill since 2009. we have gone for three -- now we have just passed one.

and thank god, made part of it, keeping the interest rate low for students. or it would've skyrocketed to over 6%. >> the lawmakers up here, about 55 billion? >> yes. >> more or less? >> congressman kennedy? >> again, we are talking history. we pass the highway bill, we didn't have a highway bill around the country, now we do. there is a huge proponent of higher education, which we have today. we are not in an efficiency iven or an innovation driven economy. transportation is important, but it is faless important today than encouraging innovation and having a sophisticated supply chain that was the center. one thing on transportation i think we are missing is are building a lot of roads in africa and southeast asia.

do you know why we are not building them? because we have socialized highway construction. and that's only funded by the federal government. so our contractors only know how to respond to a government. they are the ones who are taking advantage of those markets. again, rather than having washington spend money, we are selling to emerging markets and we will be in far better shape because we have taken a citizenship approach towards transportation. we are far worse in shape as far as access and emerging markets go. ..

well, our system really requires presidential. for example, the president had the simpson bowles committee, a presidential committee that met for a couple of years. they reported to the president with much fanfare. report that was signed by even tea party members.

and republicans and democrats. the president did not put those numbers into his own budget that he sent over to congress two weeks later, and deny release in the budget. the president must lead. whoever our new president is, i would like and to start bit -- sending bills to congress. when i first came to the house jerry ford was president, and he had a bl that he would send up there for every subject. it that changed a lot sometimes, and he would veto it sometimes, with the point is there would be someone in the hearing room, and he would give the administration's position on this amendment. that was very helpful in working with the two branches of government because if you just say, you pass something. i'm going out of town. and so, the old fashioned working togetr, is not that they're going out to dinner together, not people putting their arms around each other. it is people working on a

bipartisan basis with the bill submitted by the white house and take responsibility for it and being willing to admit defeat and taken up or down. that we stopped doing both on the presidential side and in congress. that has been an historic cnge . a very dangerous one. >> another question fromhe audience. >> good evening. i am a citizen, luckily, employed. my question actually ties into your lasted meant. what has happened to the political career? guess this is not a statistical question, but it is a basic, i think a lot of citizens are wondering what happened to that political courage. is it tied in? the comments to the media and other media has changed over the past few years. the different channels definitely have a very different spin. they're not really giving them permission that they need. they seem to be going hand-in-hand.

>> the congressman. >> well, these polls have gone rather sophisticated. as you know, there are very few states and play. as a matter of fact, both candid it's don't even have to go because they know what the outcome will be. so -- the raise money and all that, but it is commentary. the way that we have it structured now and the amount of money,nd i wish we could take money out of politics. i am one of those. i just think that it is outrageous bill we have done to ourselves and with the u.s. supreme court ruled not too long ago about no limits. it is just not healthy for america because most people in american never run for public office. they don't want the public

scrutiny for themselves and their family. and therefore, there is no political courage to as i said earlier. people are not stepping up to . don't worry about the next election. worry about the next generation. >> just said to that. ticking off the economist at and citizens had. there is a saying they should never make a permanent decision from a temporary place. at think the most selfless thing a person can do, a decision making to the decision maker can do is think long-term. >> im pleased to have the graduate school of political management at jo's loss to university. we are dedicated to the purpose of helping democracy. how do we get that acquisition jack because advance legislation , how can you do

both? this is a very, very important issue with many factors that impacted. at think the fact that there are very few districts where their word about a general election makes it harder for them to be coming to the table and figuring out. but there is a myriad of other things that result from that. the fact that it is still bifurcated and everyone listens to what they wanted, the facts, ms nbc people, their point of view, one o the best things citizens can do because congress is a reflection, to listen to bo. the editorial pages and the "wall street journal" and the new york times i evaluating critically. because until citizens start looking at both sides of the issue, were not going to make it. another one of t things we

have had with this primary election is there is not much middle left. one of our historians from t archives is saying his favorite aunt figure was henry clay who ran for president and lost because we don't want a compromise of president. if you don't have a deal maker in the house and senate, ted kennedy and president bush that could come together, polar opposites. yoneed deal makers. many things that we need to work on to get to the point of getting past and maureen about the common good. >>enator, did you ever face a primary? >> no, i didn't. fortunately, i never did. i don't know if i could win one today. >> do we have any other questions? we were coming to the clothes.

like to sort of finish up or just ask one final thought to be due to speed around. to ideas for a job creation, and we will start with congressman demand. >> job creation has to happen. we all know that. we know that unemployment is too high. naturally government can do certain things when it comes so the tax code and tax incentives. a lot of legislation still stalemated, not going anywhere. you're not practicing much between now and election time. so i want all of you to watch the lame-duck session. i think that is critically important for all of you because there is going to be a lot of so-called tennant demand between november 7th and january 2nd

so beyond watch there. also, the private sector, you know, still business. they have so many opportunities. i hope they will capitalize on those of virginities. what i am worried about, just like some speakers have already stated, if so many of these particularly large corporations, big business, sitting on unbelievable amounts of cash and not releasing it. a lot of people are suffering. a lot of people are unemployed and underemployed today because of it. >> i know that the message that obama sent abroad is don't count on the u.s. consumer debt lead you out of this, but i would like also the message internally to be, don't count out the u.s. consumer. and i think that is thbest thing that we can do to create

jobs in this country. start thinking of job creation as resources to invest in the american people, to invest in education, to invest in the skill set needed to drive the innovation tt is necessary for us going forward. forget the past and go forward, invest in people. the thing that is the best thing you can do. >> one of the mostamaging things to america's competitiveness is the fact that we are the only industrialized country that taxes earnings. so the caterpillar worker, having to compete with the japanese worker for who will take the dirt to build the big skyscrapers and tax, that caterpillar worker is disadvantaged because caterpillar has to pay tax. with the president talks about when he says that cell and so is

for a subsidy for exporting jobs , it is trying to make that even worse. you have to quit demonizing this and eliminate tax on foreign earnings. we have to do the exact opposite of what the current running start. a level playing field with caterpillar, rather than giving them a head start. the best thing that we can do because right now americans are the worst placed in the world fororporate headquarters. if you're a quarter here you are taxed to death. we could be the central hub of the global supply chain. the best thing that we could do to create jobs in the middle class. >> i remember people saying things like we need an new equivalent to the space program. i think we kind of do.

my vote would be for the energy sector. the private sector is extraordinarily innovative. at the same time, and remember, i was someone who started off by saying tt the federal government really does not have that much influence over employment. i still stand by that. however, there are just ctain things that the private sector is not going to do. i mean, to use a historical example, the vote -- federal government started using standards for automobile mileage , you know, the big three automakers said oh, god, this is the end of the world. you're going to kill us. you know what they did, the invented one of the greatest inventions of the 20th-century, the catalytic converter. they had to in order to meet the standard. it has been wonderful. so i think that the government could play a role in helping to stimulate innovation. i think the big thing going toward is energy and the

environment. there are all sorts of the opportunities there. >> welcome i think that is a very good example, the catalytic converter. we can do a lot of things if we have to, and we have done a lot in the environment, for example. we have developed fracking which is an knew was that of getting oral and gas out that is much less and are mentally damaging. we have also developed new ideas on pipelines which we are apparently not willing to use it, but this is a very good example. a very innovative society. i have great hope for the future the american people will figure it out. i just think we need to have some very candid discussions about worry are in our rear going. thank you all very much. thank you for joining us. thank you for introducing. [applause]

>> and this is the republican platform committee meeting in tampa. we have had this live on c-span to all day. the meeting is ahead of the republican convention being held next week. as a part of the draft platform that will be voted on, the member panel passed a human life amendment today that calls for a ban on abortions. part of the draft language reads "we support an amendment to the constitution and endorsed legislation to make clear that the 14th amendment protection applies to unborn children. "

president obama is campaigning today with stops in ohio and nv. he is scheduled to speak at a community college in reno. you can watch live coverage of that here on c-span beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern. >> i know there are those who criticized me for seeing complexities. some issues just are not all that simple. saying there are weapons of mass destruction in iraq does not make it so. saying we can fight a war on the cheap does not make it so. proclaiming mission accomplished certainly does not make it so. >> three days after september 11, i stood where americans died in the ruins of the twin towers. workers in hard hats were shouting to me, "whenever it

takes." a fellow said, "do not let me down." since that day, i wake up every morning thinking about how to better protect our country. i will never relent in defending america what ever it takes. >> every minute of every party conventions since 1984. a week to go until our coverage of the republican and democratic national conventions. c-span, c-span radio, and streamed online at c-span.org. also, 2008 presidential nominee senator john mccain and former governor of florida jeb bush. plus, first lady michelle obama and former president bill .linton a big >

>> from time to time i will watch the proceedings on the house or the floor and what interviews. sometimes if the timing is right, i can get the live feed from the floor or the house or the senate and have my students watched that for five or 10 minutes. on comcast.avis watches c-span created in 1979, brought to you as a public service by your television provider. >> in late june, the united nations held its rio+20 conference. the conference focused on the pathway to a green economy and sustainable development.

some participants gathered in colorado to discuss the outcome of the meeting. this is just under an hour. >> thank you very much. it is a great honor and pleasure and i was very excited to get this invitation. i spent 36 hours on an airplane to be able to do this. i have got three great panelists here. all of us were at rio+20. i had the pleasure of meeting sylvia earle at rio+20. a part of the "national geographic" family. i learned her nickname is "her deepness." she is a "national geographic" explorer in residence and has started several companies. i think you all know her well. jason clay, i just met now.

he is a senior vice president of the world wildlife fund. he told me he participated in many dozens of events and spoke at many of them and had an active participation in several different areas of the meeting, so it will be great to hear his perspective. then i have been talking with rohit aggarwala. >> close enough. >> who is mayor bloomberg's representative now to the c40, which as the name implies is a group of 58 cities -- [laughter] -- that have sustainability standards. i have been following them for

some time. they were where i am located last year and now hold their annual meeting at rio+20. rohit was mostly all the time over at the c40 meetings. i am american but i spend most of my life trying to become a brazilian. i am what you might call bicultural. i got attacked by the brazil bug, moved there, and lived all of my life there. i was called upon to help create a really big project called the sustainable plan that would include 44 magazines, events, and apps and every imaginable

kind of communication you can think of. we lost our first book at rio+20 in the same place where the c40 was. i am kind of in the sustainability business. i heard nick said he was one of my idols. i think it has to be -- i have been working on this for a number of years, and we did not know what to expect from rio+20. i have been to lots of big meetings. rio was much bigger than anything i had ever seen. now, people keep asking me, was rio a success or failure?

it is too fresh in my mind to really have a well-developed opinion. you at least need to give me another week or so to think about it. i want to tell you a funny story that can give you a sense of it. when i first got to rio, i'm on a united nations mailing list and i had about six or seven reporters there working for me. i get all these e-mails so i am constantly brushed with information about what is going on. there are things going on all over the city. it took us as much as two and a half hours to get from downtown rio to with the event was held e the event was hvent wa

eld. downtown, they had the left wing of everything. you had all of the bulgarians, the venezuelans, and the ecuadorean. together with them, you had all the people who are really protesting. then we had the book launching for "national geographic" with the queen of sweden and the ex- president of brazil and very fancy movie makers. it was a very glamorous event. we had a beautiful, beautiful artistic installation that was built above the fort. it was just amazing. it had neon lights at night showing poetry about humanity. you walk in on the bottom floor

and you had a whole floor of plants they've been since you had to go up hill, it was hot and sweltery. you could feel the temperature difference immediately. up above, there was the cathedral of humanity which had all the books read by brazilian celebrities and had the biggest impact on them. one singer had of course the largest number of books. that was an amazing setting. there were 50,000 people there. we have all the numbers and we will publish them soon on the sustainable planet web site. it was really a huge event. i did not get to see any of the official part of it.

we will get to hear from our distinguished panelists. we had enormous protests going on that stopped all the traffic downtown completely. at one point, the women who were protesting for equal rights were put on their drums and pounding on their drums and they took their shirts off. they were showing their breasts and this of course stopped traffic all over town. it was a big thing. and then playboy magazine discovered the best looking one and she is going to be on the cover of playboy next month. then they discovered she is a lesbian son that there is some controversy painting-- lesbian so there is now some controversy over that. so rio+20 was a real success.

that is just to give you a quick impression paying bank i was very impressed with it from a personal standpoint. i am going to let each of our distinguished guests talk about it. >> thank you, thank you. a big salute to tom lovejoy who planetd japan's blue award, the prized. he is out there making waves. i think we should salute tom lovejoy for all that he is doing for the planet. [applause] it is mostly blue. so, my take on the conference is mostly positive in the sense that it certainly stirred things up, not just in brazil but around the world.

this is an event that happens every decade. to get 50,000 people, people from all over the world talking about issues about how to make peace with nature and how to work within the limits of the planet that has limits and recognizing that. a new book was launched that really dives into the issues of planetary boundaries and how we are at the tipping point of some many things in science and nature. out of think what comes that conference in terms of what is on paper matters nearly as much as the spiritual uplift that has been delivered to the world in terms of recognizing that nature matters.

on the downside, if you were looking for the word that came out of the conference or the tangibles going forward, i sum it up as rio+20 - 40 which takes us back to the stockholm conference. 1982, when about 100 people assembled in london to address the big problems facing the world. it may boil down to four big new issues. nuclear proliferation, and then 2, 3, and four were connected. poverty and the destruction of the natural existence, species

cannot life support, the works of th and the whole works. what follows poverty conflict. overpopulation is an issue that drives both of those things. the big issue of that time was the nuclear threat. move forward to 1992 when it maurice strong was the one who was masterminding much of the action. for the first time, the idea of trying to bring the economy and the environment to the table and recognizing you cannot have a sound economy unless you have a sound environment. if you do not have a sound economy, people will ravage the environment just to stay alive. that is in no way a solution to

surviving. to get all these interest together and realize that nation is a big bank account -- there is, the real world bank. we have to properly account for nature, and we have not been doing a good job of that. my particular interest -- i did not get to 2002 conference. i read that a lot about it, but fast-forward to the present one. a lot of high hopes at this conference were pinned on tangible action -- well at least half the plan that, the part

beyond natural back jurisdictions, 45%, beyond the natural jurisdictions of nations. kholm the stock co conference, nations that have a coastline have a jurisdiction. beyond that, it is the wild west. 183 nations in recent times have come to a feeling that at this conference they could push forward, at least get into motion, a framework or at least a mandate to go forward with a framework for governments of the high seas. it is high time if we do that, because a handful of nations are taking if it belongs to anybody, it belongs to everybody. they are extracting.

minerals are on the horizon. it was such a big deal in the 1980's that it be railed the law of the sea. -- derailed the law of the sea. that puts us at the table so we can be a part of a global committee to weigh in on issues such as the waters around antarctica, the son ssc, -- the sargasso sea. a big disappointment for a lot of us, including those nations, who were overwhelmed by four countries. what were those four countries? they had the final word that suggested this was a matter of some urgency and we would take it up in 2 1/2 years. those countries, venezuela, russia, japan, and the united

states. our excuse is we have not yet ratified all of the sea, and it could complicate matters if we go forward and sign on and encourage this action, and we're not yet at the table. there are other things about the genetic resources that are imagined to be out there that are out there, and there are fishing interests, but it is about if it belongs to anybody, it belongs to everybody. we need to pull together on this. i was given the chance 2 1/2 minutes on behalf of the brazilian-sponsored public dialogue where they had to report to world leaders about deliberations that took many months of meetings and on line input, had 100 individuals who were invited. they represented 10 different

categories -- poverty, the economic issues, the oceans, forests was another, water -- separate from the oceans. we had a chance to take all those deliberations, vote on the top priorities and present them to the world leaders. that was my exposure to the official congress. 2 1/2 minutes to report out. the day before they had already agreed on a language. the best we could do was say please include what we regard as the highest priorities for consideration in the final documents as a footnote. there you go. >> jason, what was your take

away? >> that we set up a bit. my first trip to brazil was in 1972, so 40 years, and i was a social anthropologist doing research on a problem in the northeast of brazil where tenants and sharecroppers had been kicked off a land by landowners with the acquiescence of the military government. the research was not talk about. if i had talked about it, i would have been out of the country or worse. it was done about -- without awareness of the government, and it created a fairly this trust, if you will, of governments. for 20 years and i was working with indigenous peoples and the amazon to sell and buy forest products into the markets, -- ben andand jerry's

jerry's. i am doing work on the ground. what are these governments and companies doing? what will we learn from them? this time i wet. and i think it was a real mixed bag. i was impressed at some things, and yet my of view of government's and their inability or unwillingness to manage the planet has just really gone to a lower level than before. there is probably reasons for this that we should have known. he could not reach agreement in copenhagen. how could we reach agreement on many things, a whole kitchen sink?

sustainable development is everything to everybody. there is other things going on. 65% of the world's gdp is in the process of elections right now. are those politicians going to make decisions about issues like this? no way, it will not happen. we should have known that already. i guess for me, what is interesting in the 20 years between rio and rio-plus-20 is we have shifted to economic services. for all the theory that we have got at all the meetings we had natural capital, the value of natural capital has gone down. the price of carbon, the ecosystem services, governments are struggling to pay. coastal rica has abandoned its payments, and the price of commodities has gone to the roof. look at this gap between what we

are talking about and what exists. as they say in england, mind that. we have got to figure out how to close this gap, out to bring environmental externalities' into pricing. this group in rio was not prepared to do that. they were arguing over words and commas and punctuation marks when we needed more leadership, and it was not forthcoming. >> many companies did sign off on natural capital agreements. >> i am talking about governments. on the other side, companies made in credible agreements, and incredible progress, but as individual companies, but also in groups of 10, 20, 50, 100.

their work for it -- there were corporate commitments ground biofuels. we can get governments to agree with this. there were agreements around taking deforestation out of supply chains, and for me that was the highlight because the u.s. government agreed to partner with 20 of the largest food companies in the world to take deforestation out of their supply chains. four commodities, four countries represent half of the deforestation in the world. deforestation = all the emissions from all forms of transport combined. taking that out of half -- half of that of the table, is amazing. at the same time a year ago we were talking to the global context try to figure out what companies could agree to do in

rio, and one of the things i thought was a no-brennan -- take illegal products out of your supply chain. it is like sugar. none of them want to admit they want them have -- admits they have been in the products. right now in the midst of this global recession we have 35 countries growing at 7% to a da year. global recession is not global. growth is increasing. my concern is in the last 40 years 35 countries have taken land out of protection. 1/2 of those are the -- 1/3 are those. we do not want to be losing

them. yet faced with the choice of feeding a child and cutting a tree, the tree will lose every time. we have to find out when the tree falls in the forest, it is still an importance, and we did not have that system set up yet. >> rohit, you had a different experience. you were at the best part of it. >> the key to being happy at about this is avoid the official venue, do not get an official credential, and did not assume anybody will do anything that you will not do. you do something yourself. we were parasites. we were used as a great forum to talk about what do we do at c 40, where the approach is not to

worry about national governments, but to help cities help each other, and get their agendas that, because virtually all large cities in the world have a climate action of some sort. it might be strong, week, or a collection of actions, but there is no mega city on earth that has not tried to do something. behindission is to get those mayors and governors and city councils and help them primarily by connecting them to ppeers, other cities, that are working on the same challenge. we now have 59 cities that have joined recently. with that brecht of knowledge, there is not really a valuable climate change idea that some city in that 59 has not tried.

we have a huge breadth of expertise we can draw on. we are organizing our entire mission around connecting the dots, figuring out what cities are doing, informed by the fact we believe that the focus on international compacts and on national policies is somewhat misguided. according to our own research, if you think about the big areas of carbon emissions, transportation, buildings as a site of communes -- consuming and it becomes a solid place as an amateur of methane -- solid waste as and the matter of namethane. the federal government is the third or fourth-string player on energy efficiency, which a

handful of exceptions primarily around appliances. you want to talk about land use or whenever, you are at the city or county level, not at the national level, and except for california, not at the state level. you are wasting your time in and national or international framework. solid waste collection is universally something that country's lead to municipalities. mayors to a lot of ability to act. one of the great things is cities are not ideological. la guardia said there is no republican or democratic way to collect garbage. mayors are close to their constituents, so we do not worry about it. united states and china and india say they do not have to say the plan at -- the planet until the other guy does it.

it would never make sense to do that. that was our approach. that is the winning approach for all of us. if we think about rio plus 20 as a place where we were hoping we could agree on a national agenda so that world would get in line and follow the direction, that is a foolish dream. it was not realistic. if we think about it as soviet describes, as ,site, a carnaval, where people used it as a place to set their deadlines, get their things done, to network themselves to generate excitement, then it was a great time. it was a great city. that is the turning point where we are at. whether it is climate, i think the whole world is exhausted. i have not looked to see where the next meeting is because i do not care.

if we think about it more in terms of where are we -- what is it that we can do that is in our own self-interest, and whether it is businesses during straightforward things around supply chain streamlining or city's acting in their own self-interest to make life better for the constituents, which has a by product of reducing carbon emissions or thinking about poverty alleviation in a way that is good for the environment, if we think about it in those terms, we will wind up being a lot happier and in fact making progress. >> one of the things that happened, what we are seeing more and more of is pre- competitive behavior where companies work with each other. coke and pepsi are working together to figure out how to solve diseases.

city governments are working because they have common problems. it is not competition. it is how do we actually manage this planet. how do we drive change. if you wanted to sum up what was going on wasrio, for me it was about how to think rather than what to think. how do we begin to think about solving problems and who can we learn from? those kinds of issues. >> there was a pragmatic notion and the company showed that, the city showed that, there are several areas that show that, but not the national governments that do not seem to be able to be in this area. it was a paradigm shift in companies. keep getting more messages from estle ess guy saying nasti

says we have to calculate national boundaries and calculate that into our pricing. >> that is because green is green. you can see the payoff financially. you can see the downside of business as usual. it makes sense when you think about it that we are starting to think about that and make it a priority. >> most companies have been doing this for a while. since 2008 they have been looking at global supply chains because the 2006 to 2008 price spikes for commodities, as china started buying more, it scared the hell out of them, and companies realized they had to invest in this supply chain or they would not make a profit. how do they manage a finite planet? companies cannot do this by

themselves, but they are the ones that are thinking globally at this point, because it is their supply chains. there is another issue that the not come up in rio and the most disappointing for me was this -- i went into a meeting sponsored by the global compact, but companies, working trying to raise issues. there were five speakers, and the meeting was on production and consumption. it was the only meeting on consumption that i am aware of in the whole conference. five people showed up. five people. this is arguably far bigger an issue that population. population -- we have an end in sight. consumption, there is no end in sight. 2200,talking at least 2300 before we see a cap on that one.

where is the interest? it is not there. , i would like to take questions now. we have a good solid 15 minutes at these. i would like to point out that although the global compact brought to brazil 300 beans of business schools who got together and signed off on putting sustainability into their curriculum, that was a positive step. are there questions? what would you like to know about rio plus 20? i see several hands. do i see five? [laughter] ok, right here. >> when coke and pepsi get

together, whenever to companies of that stature talk to each other, there are anti-trust questions that the government thinks of, so the companies have to be careful. how did they get a pass to discuss these matters? >> the issue they were talking about is greening in the citrus industry, which is taking 10% of the trees per year and killing them. greening is now present in every major area of the world. you are going to be faced with the prospect of going into entirely new areas, clearing a new habitat, and planting 5 million acres of citrus, or you have to figure out how to solve the problem. it was coke and pepsi, other groups, researchers from the u.s. government, usda and, and others, so those are the things

-- that is what has prompted that interest in getting together. none of these entities are big enough to solve these problems by themselves. that is the metaphor. none of the individual entities are big enough to solve global problems trade we have to work on this together, whether it is how paul oil is produced or out cotton is produced or tuna is produced. we have to work on this together. nobody is big enough to solve these global problems. >> in the back, please. two questions. >> it seems the question of this century is can democracies deal with climate change? based on reports, companies did quite well, and it is interesting, and then we hear

doing well, and that raises the question -- i assume governments have to do something because nobody else can make carbon expensive. it takes governments. so the democracies that seem to have problems are the ones that factional politics. parties. does this mean we are -- >> is that addressed to anyone in particular? who would like to field that? >> i will make an observation. we have lots of cities. we're talking about cities -- work is the size of switzerland. there are factions. you have a cities around the world where the mayors' races

are contested by the national party is or what have you. i am not sure if it is endemic to having a party. the challenge is around the number of people you are trying to achieve consensus among the. the larger thing -- and blanking on? it was, plato -- the large extent of the city state was the extent to how far a man could walk and a day. that means he could make a round trip and get home. if you get beyond that, you wind up having more interests that have to be reconciled. why is it that mayors can do so? we do not have the agricultural sector plan a role in local politics. and virtually every country, the

urban dwellers are more progressive and less likely to be beholden to a large interests that have particular stakes. and because their level of action is closer to the ground, there is a greater trust. we all time about infrastructure. most of the time when there is a local sales tax referendum to pay for infrastructure, it passes. is because we do not trust the idea that it will all go to congress and get redistributed. when i know where it will get spent, i will think about that seriously. this is actually the mistake that we have made. we've made the mistake because on ozone it worked. we got lulled into the idea that it was doable again.

that was a narrow set of interest and play. a much broader set of things, you have a local kind of action, corporate action, what ever, that then create an of consensus among key stakeholders that you can that adopt a national policy. the example i always use on that is we think about the interstate highway system as a great thing that congress did in 1957. in fact, in 1957, you could draw on a highway from new york to chicago, and all those highways had been built by states because for 20 years congress could not adopt a highway policy, but the states decided it was in their own self that's interests and the state made sure that the roads connected. once you had that, the national policy was adopted. we see that process over and over again. if cities can do that and the mayors will stand up in support of a policy, if a couple of

leaders can do it because they have figured out that greening supplies chain made sense to them, that makes sense. if you're doing the other way, you're picking up the big end of the wedge. >> in this case you're getting government to create markets. they are not just setting the rules. they're creating the markets. governments do not create markets well. it would be better to have a time period to look at what might work and then create a system. a're in discussions now with few companies to see if there is a way they can begin to buy carbon from their same suppliers. can we bubble those two together to see how it would work? -- can we bundled those two to get there?

>> meanwhile, we are neglecting half the planet. there are forces that connect, and what can i say? >> yes, in the back here. >> thanks. conservation international. this is a comment, not a question, but i am more hopeful about some of the government commitments made in rio, because last month the president of botswana, together with conservation international, convened heads of state and ministers of 10 african countries and leaders from the private sector, and those

countries make a commitment to account for natural capital and to be audited on how well they were doing at that. those heads of state took that declaration to rio, and the world bank make them a significant part of their platform, and as a result, as of about 15 minutes ago, 59 countries and 88 private-sector corporations signed an agreement commit to a natural capital accounting. even though it was down on the side, it is a positive step. >> because it was done on the side. >> next door, another question, please. >> to jason and rohit, are we

building a social enterprise model, but we are beginning to see some -- the age of a strictly commercial versuys they age of strictly charitable. we're starting to see progress happening in spite of government. government will not have spine to manage the planet. that is safe to say. an ad not -- if only anin hoc way building is social enterprise model? >> let me take a crack at this. a lot of ngo's have worked on to the element of credible

standards, and the goal is to reward good producers who have good impacts and have less impact on the ground and to make -- give them access to better markets for doing that. that has moved in many different commodities, in many different spheres, but what we are also seeing is most of the companies interested in this and most of the ngo's are focusing on the top 15%, 20%, and that can hold may be the top 50%. who will move the bottom? the bottom, the poorest performing 30%, cause 50% or more of the impacts. they produce 2% of the products. if we did not move the bottom, we do not change very much. we have to take the lessons from what the private sector is

doing and innovations, turned those into business cases for efficiency and for the business model, and sell that the governments said they feel comfortable moving the bottom, because we have to move the bottom. the cannot just be focused on the top. we need regulations. we need that kind of thing. we need a step-wise approach. to guarantee the quality of food that moves around the planet. where is the guarantee of health and safety of the planet? why can something like that come like thatrio? >> pushing the boundaries. >> we have a question. >> kate, from the university of minnesota, my question, having worked in government for the last six years, and seeing

government is not where the leadership comes, they have to get pushed, and i frankly do not trust that corporations will solve the problem because they are not accountable to everybody in ways governments are, and there is an essential difference there. thecurious, expanding on incident that is just happening, how do you see what businesses are doing making government change? i can tell from trying to regulate various businesses, a lot of times they say, we're doing great stuff, you do not need to do it. it is not a company that will come and say we are doing this great stuff, so now you can come in and regulate us. it happens sometimes. our utilities in the senate have said that, they are tried of not -- tired of not having the chance petition coming in to solve the climate. they want to bring other groups

along. can you outline and arc of a credible story of seeing that happening more, regulation coming in behind these companies? >> governments are also big resource owners. as certain players begin to show the profitability of managing resources more efficiently, governments can learn from that. governments by many more of raw materials and many companies do. looking at third-party certification or more sustainable products, governments are huge in the berkshire met. as governments get more involved in these things, they will see efficiencies involved, and they would begin to see where regulations may be needed or where you would want to level the playing field. there are interesting interesting -- into place right now. we are trying to figure out in

dieppe buys -- we are trying to figure out -- india buys more palm oil, and indonesia is cutting down forests to produce it. how can we work with india? it is a different structure. we hit on the idea of companies going to government, there is a 7% tariff on palm oil,. the question is would they be willing to cut that in half for oil.fied palm why should an unsustainable products cost less? they should actually cost more because they cost the planet's

more. they are subsidized by nature. >> i think that is where government leadership is necessary, and that is the test. it is an unrealistic request to ask a political leader, particularly an elected leader, and we see the same challenges in china, which we know there is a lot of negotiation the goes on within the government and the party in china. i think you have to get the first third to adopt good practices, what does that do? it makes it clear that the world does not end if those practices become universal. it also means there is at least a third of the businesses who are incentivized to stick to their competition. and force them because they did

not clean up their act earlier to comply with regulation. there is that moment of truth where the knee-jerk reaction even on the part of a wealth of lead responsible corporation often i would rather do this on my own and congratulate me for how good i am. we see that a lot. that is when the government, political leader needs to say no, but we have to clean up the rest and put this as a permanent practice, and that is the role of government. i do not think an elected leader and cup up a brand-new way of doing things, but if it is cleaning up the bottom third, that is where political leadership can be powerful. >> we will take one more question right here. >> thank you. jamie rhodes.

if all, there is a lot of good examples policies that start off al local levels and move their way up to cover broader areas, and i wonder if you would speak to it and how you think about laying the foundation to move beyond mega cities, and either out to larger geographic areas. with respect to the convention, if he would speak about the collaboration that was announced, the tort initiative on urban sustainability. >> sure. to your first question, i think there is -- we need to stick to our knitting for a little while, right, because i think it is a big risk in almost any enterprise if things start going well, everybody wants you to

expand, when in fact you have not finished the job, and the big risk is not that you will not expand eventually, it is you will not finish your first stop and that would discredit any expansion. before we think about going to medium-sized cities, i am focused on making sure that c40 gets its organization serve its mega cities as well as possible. what we saw in new york is when the big ship moves come other people pay attention and start to follow. you do not need to organize them. we see it in countries where the dominant city is so much more new york ishan in the united states. these are cities where the mayor is the second most important politician in the country, and if the mayor is progressive, the president knows that is potentially the campaign platform to take him out as

president. we have seen that in a budget country where that -- we have seen that in a bunch of countries. the juice announcement you are referring to, we did an announcement that what the other way. c40 took over custodianship of a partnership that the epa had started between rio and philadelphia, and the id is that c40 is better positioned to build on what they have done -- epa will still get a lot of credit for it -- to build on what they have done, take a learnings on the work they did in two cities and use it as the seed of a knowledge platform that c40 look great for all

cities. the epa came to us and said this is not a good role for the u.s. federal government to try to play world wide. you guys are the right organization to do it. >> jason, would you like to say anything? sylvia. you can wrap up for us. >> here is the thing. go back to 1972, three years after the first footprints were put on the moon, where we first had that glimpse of ourselves from afar, when we saw the whole earth for the first time. since then, in many ways we have learned more about the nature of nature, certainly more about the ocean, then all in -- than all of preceding history.

we have learned the limits. scientific literature is full of looking at the trends, lost a polar ice, the increase in co2, the number of dead sons in the ocean, loss of fish in tennessee, the decline of coral reefs, and there were such high hopes that at this conference, but this knowledge base, unprecedented in all of our history, we ran around with cell phones that had more information available to them than galileo or charles darwin or anybody in previous history, the big thinkers. they did not have access to the knowledge we have, and still we seem to be -- to be taking

actions in our self-interest. ok, rio plus 20 is history. we have to think about the next 10 years, the next 20, 40, the next steps. we have chances that are available now, and if we wait for action, we will lose the chance. 50 years ago, 40 years ago, it was too soon to take actions we now know are possible. 50 years in the future, it will be too late. that is i think what should resonate from this assessment of where we are in the greater scheme of things, the opportunities that we have, we cannot let the lack of progress at rio plus 20 drag us down.

this is the opportunity to build on this great outpouring of interest, information, knowledge, corp., and seize the moment. this is the time. >> jason, you want to add something? >> to pick up on your point, in the next 40 years, we have to produce as much heat food as we have in the next 8000. stay around for the next session and we will talk about it. [applause] >> thank you. >> the aspen institute also heard from a panel on ways to address global hungry and the 9 billion people.

this is an hour 15 minutes. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> i would like to say maybe we are saving the best for last. this is for me one of the most interesting question we face going forward, as a farm kid who studied agriculture in college and thought about this issue for most of my life. this question of how we will provide enough food for the people of the planet without also destroying all the capacity of the planet. what we will do is we have a closing panel. i will introduce our panelists, but what we will do is start with a talk by john foley, the

director of the institute on the and vernon -- institute on the environment at the university of minnesota. this is a great way to frame this whole thing, help people get a sense of all of the aspects of meeting this challenge and then we will go from there. jon, please. >> thank you, and thank you for sticking around for this and this discussion. i was asked to describe the challenges we face in agriculture, and this is a daunting challenge because if we do not get agricultural right, nothing we talked about at this meeting will matter at all, period. nothing. it is the biggest problem. that is a bold statement to make at a meeting like this, so i will testify that. there are three facets of how

agriculture is a challenge and what it needs to get right. these are the things we have to get right. if we do not, we're in big trouble. the first is the question of can we feed everyone. today with 7 billion people, we have a billion people who are malnourished. this is not the foundation for a civilization that can last. second, we have the problem of how do we feed the future, which things up at -- with things like population. we have a bigger problem, not just population growth, but of changing demand. it turns out not only our 2 billion more people coming to dinner, but there are 4 billion people now who are becoming wealthier and are looking at the filet mignon in the menu. we're seeing a different situation of more people, but also more meat. if you put those together, we're

expecting a doubling of food banned by mid century. we will have to grow twice as much food as we do today in the next 38 years. that is astonishing. defeat ever buddy today, we have to figure out how do to feed everybody today, we have to figure out how to double this. what does agriculture have to do with that? agriculture is the biggest hammer we're hitting the planet with. energy is not a close second. each. think about these statistics. the amount of land use to grow food. this map shows the extent of the land base used for one thing -- growing food. it is about 40% of the ice-free land. it is the best 40%. it is already a huge impact, and

we are want to double the food supply? how? we have to look at water. agriculture is the biggest user of water. it is up to 90% of the human use of water depending on how you do the bookkeeping. also, agriculture, because it is so big and covers so many parts of watersheds is the single biggest contributor to water pollution. it is extraordinary. agriculture is the biggest impact on land, on water, and also on climate change, by far creek we think about the energy world. if you add up every possible form of energy altogether, it is about 60% of our greenhouse gas emissions. if you look at land use, it is at least 30%. mostly from deforestation, methane from cattle, and nitrous oxide from over fertilize the

fields. nothing changes the climate more than agriculture. way bigger than transportation, industry, manufacturing or cities. it is the biggest factor in the room. again we see this major challenge of beating today, doubling its for tomorrow, and making that plan a sustainable. we have to solve those problems at exactly the same moment. that is the challenge, the big challenge. if you are not depressed by now, you should be. even worse is everything we are doing is taking a bigger hole. if you look at data, look at the science of what is happening now, it is not very good. can we keep up with the demand proved in the last 20 years, this matt has changed. we have grown 3% more farm land

that we have a few years ago, while we are losing farm land at the expense of cities in mid latitudes. we have about the same land as we did 20 years ago. the amount we grow per acre as been going up astronomically. they are not any more. we and rice -0- wheat and rice are seeing major stagnation in yields. all those brown areas for the last 10 years have not seen significant increases. the green revolution 1.0 now running on fumes. we have done about as much as we can. we cannot count on growing more yields, not forever, without major new investments. how do we do this?

that is a huge challenge. we have to stop being in the wrong thing hearing -- being in the wrong thinking. we can grow our way out of this problem -- that work for a long time, but like energy, the best path for energy are the soft paths. not just to drill and build more power plants. we need to think smarter. the directory we are on is not want to do what we want. it is not want to feed the bottom billion of the world. the way we are going now is not sustainable. if we had this big broken system, which has been successful, but will not be able

to meet the needs, what will we do now? that is the challenge. dennis asked me to talk about this. we need to make about new solutions. a group last year published an article that got on the cover of "scientist." there are ways to solve the problem, so i am giving you the doom and gloom part. we can do this, but we have to think differently than before. it is possible to solve this problem. what we asked was, can we find ways to simultaneously be the teacher and underscore and, we have to do this and sustain the planet? we cannot just feed the world and trash the plan that. we have to do both.

there are five strategies that can work here. the first is to stop expanding agricultural lands into forest. jason has talked about this. we see this again and how we are clearing out massive amounts of rain forest mainly for growing new food. this is looking in a place in brazil at soybean expansion. the problem is this is the most destructive thing we do for biodiversity, but also for climate change. this is a huge source of co2. we're not getting a good deal for this. we're not feeding people. this is growing soybeans, which is basically growing chinese pork chops, for animal feed shipped to europe and china. it is getting people convenient

meet. it is causing a big problem. we do not need to do that. if we need to grow more food, we have to do that on the land we already had. let's use the land we have better, and what we can do is focus on the base of the pyramid. this map shows the performance of court around the world, the green areas, places where yields rownhigh places red and b are low.l what we can see lots of places in the world where we can boost food production dramatically. we see them in many parts of africa and latin america, and people forget about europe. eastern europe is the single best place in the world to grow more food. after the crops -- the collapse of the soviet union, yields are 20%.

there are opportunities to grab that huge bread basket without tearing down rainforests trade we can figure out opportunities where they are. another strategy is to go be on this and look at efficiencies, especially of water and chemicals. the green revolution is fuelled by nitrogen and water, plus genetics, but we have to get more efficient. if we look around the world, how much water does it take to make a single food calorie, it takes about about a liter of water to make one food calories. there's a factor of 100 of difference between the worst countries and the best countries. israel has some of the best protection, where these places like india and pakistan and egypt use close to 10 liters per calorie. that is a 100 fold difference.

and when you see this difference in the war, you have the opportunity to fix things. this is true for all fertilizers, everything. there are massive opportunities to grow more with less without compromising food production at all. it is a huge opportunity. the last areas, managing the demand itself. these are the ones that get people up in arms and excited. is about us and our diet and biofuels. it turns out that there is an elephant in the room, the elephant turns out to be a cow. just look at these numbers. when we are taking grains and converting them to carry, it is about a 40% proposition of efficiency. chicken, eggs, 20%, chicken for protein, 40%, but you get to

beef, it takes 33 pounds of corn and soybeans to make 1 pound of boneless beef. farmers will tell you is a to 1 -- 8 to 1. if it is grain fed to meat out bones, it is 33 to 1. 33 pounds on your table. you do not have to give up need. we can do better. it is astonishing how we use crops we grow. the red countries were 90% or more, intended for human consumption. they are feeding people. the places blue and green are feeding cars and cows. in the upper midwest we have ybean anductive soi an corn belt.

60% of our crops are going to consumption, and 5% are going into biofuels. died shift and how we use that 35% for meat is important. it is a huge never in the system. on top of that, when you have food on the plate, 30% of that world wide is wasted. who is here from the i want to waste to lobby? nobody. somebody did raise their hand. there are opportunities on the demand side. the soft food path how we manage the man to do more. it is called being smarter. that is is the good news. we can sustain the planet. it is pretty easy. we know exactly what to do. we know exactly what to do.