tomorrow morning. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

and a quick look at the presidential schedule today. president obama is in vegas where he hosted a round take with teachers, a campaign event in which you can watch live on line. he depths nevada and heading for new york city, including a basketball event and an appearance with michael jordan among other hoop stars. mitt romney is in iowa following the president's three-day trip to the state. he is holding a rally at la claire and he heads to little rock, arkansas with a fundraiser with supporters. mitt romney in newman tomorrow where he's scheduled to announce a new energy plan during a campaign stop. we'll have live coverage of that, tomorrow, 1:00 p.m. eastern. and some news from the white house yesterday. the president telling congressional leaders that he would be extending the two-year

federal pay freeze until next april unless a budget is agreed to by congress before then. according to a story, a president to in his letter reiterated the report with a .5% pay raise to take effect january 1. under the law passed in 2010, salaries were frozen through 2012 although employees could still get raises based on promotion. >> i'm not in the habit of breaking my promises to me doesn't and neither is governor palin and when we tell you we're going to change washington and stop leaving our country's problems for some unluckier generation to fix, you can count on it. [applause] [captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org--] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national and satellite corp. 2012] the strength, experience, judgment, and backbone to keep our word to you.

[applause] >> you understand in the election, the greatest risk we can take is to try to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result. you have shown what history teaches us, that at definding moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from washington, change comes to washington. [applause] >> our countdown to the convention continues with less than a week to go with our live gavel to gavel coverage of our republican and democratic convention live on c-span, c-span radio and streamed on line on c-span.org. also, 2008 presidential nominee senator john mccain and former

governor of florida, jeb bush. >> from time to time, i watch the proceedings of the house in the senate familiar and interviews with people that are of interest i have and c-span app on my ipod so i can check your schedule. sometimes if the timing is just right, i can just get the live feed from the floor of the house of in the senate and have them watch that for five or 10 minutes and provoke some conversation. >> burnie davis watches c-span on comcast. c-span, brought to you as a public service by your television provider.

>> the c.b.o. predicting a $1 punt 1 trillion federal deficit for 2012. that's the fourth straight year exceeding it. details coming up with cbs director douglas emmen dove. yesterday, the former director barry anderson gave his long-term view of the country's debt situation. he spoke before a group of accountants in washington, d.c. yesterday. peaker, ndson. barry is just a treat to hear. he previously was a senior budget official at the organization for economic cooperation and development in paris and at the international monetary fund. for over 30 years, he has been

active in budgeting r the united states as the deputy director and acting director of the congressional budget office, as the senior career official at the white house office of finance and budget. ease welcome barry anderson. [applause] >> thank you very much. i have had the opportunity to speak at a variety of different conferences before. i just wanted to mention my good friend paul. i am looking up to see who will next speak so i can defer all the really tough questions to him or her. i look forward to your questions after this. this is a good time to be talking. i will be talkinabout the fiscal cliff. i did this speech a while ago, about a month or so ago, and

that had a different view. i had a view at that time that we did not wt to be in that blue '58 thunderbird. now i think our leaders a trying to get a seat in the car. i will explain that to you in a minute. in the past month, things have changed here. i want to get to that. the way i look at our current budget situation, we seem to be following movie titles quite a bit. we have "the perfect storm." the fiscal cliff. what i fear is that we are going into the year of living dangerously. perhaps some of the statistics we have seen recently on growth and unemployment and on investment iicate we may already be in that because of the uncertainties because of the fiscal situation we have. what i'm going to talk about

today is our fiscal future. i will try to talk about it from three different perspectives. the near-term, the perfect storm or the fiscal cliff, and what were facing over the next couple of months. the median-term, the next year. but importantly, the long-term. our major fiscal problem is that the u.s. faces a problem of fiscal sustainability, not an immediate problem of borrowing money. quite the contrary. right now, the treasury may be lending money at interest rates. people are wanting to lend us money and are willing to accept a very rigid very long returns. -- [to accept] very low returns. i would like to begin with lking about quotes. the first one i want to do is paul simon.

a song from 30 or 40 years ago. when i think back on all the stuff i learned in high school, my lack of education has not hurt me none. what i hope to do this morning is help you read the writing on the wall just a little bit. if you found it confusing before in terms of budgeting in general, do not be surprised. that was my intent. i have traveled all around the world. i have been to paris. our system may be the most transparent system in the world. i believe it is also perhaps the most complex. complexity trumps tranarency evy time. what i try to do is help you

read t writing on the wall. my next famous quote is, budgeting is the art of saying no. there is an art to it. it really takes some skill to determine why the governo decide what to say yes or no about. there is never enough of anything to satisfy all that want it. the first lesson of budgeting. i confess i am an old-time budgeteer. i want to spend one more moment on my background. you have already been told i have been in paris for five years. i had 30 years doing the trifecta here in washington. the thing he did not mention is that i was a member who is not

an accountant. i may be the only in the u.s. i think they learneduite a few things from me. paul mentioned some of them about the value of the balance sheet or what it can do and what it does not do. it did give me a perspective. when i went to paris, we had a meeting of budget and accounting people. of the meetings we ran in paris, that was by far the biggest attended. i am very proud to say the budget people and accounting people spped physically attacking each other. mentally, they still did. they began to listen to each other a little bit. i hope we got some progress. one more thing about me, i am

not a republican. i am an s.o.b. i can criticize both sides. sometimes athe same time. as this picture indicates, it reflects my views, it seems to have become very lonely at the middle of the road now. the people on the right have gone further on the right and the people on the left have gone further on the left. people on the left and right are so far off the middle road, i am not sure they can see us or care about us. there are some trends in the u.s. i hope will repopulate the middle road. i think most of us who are independent and take a look at both sides can hopefully produce a better situation than going to one side or another.

i am going to start at the back. i said i would do it short, medium, and long. let's start with the long-term situation. here are budget projections. they go out as you see until 2085. the reason i am doing this is because i believe doing these long-term projections is a very good thing. i have found in my experience that if you make a forecast that goes out 18 months, you will be held to whatever that forecast is. if you do one for 75 years, nobody will know. [laughter] that is not a major reason. if you go out 75 years, it paints the picture of where you need to go, not exactly what amounts need to be, but where you need to go. this chart does it. it is not mine. it comes from president obama's omb. if you can see, the nature of

the problem we face is primarily in that line. medicaid. the fact of the matter is, our long-term fiscal sustainability problems are because of social security, medicare, and medicaid. primarily, the health issues. as you can see, as a percent of gdp on these projections, that is what is driving those deficits. the deficits are what is driving the debt. the debt is what is driving the interest costs. the bottom-line gives a debt as a percent of gdp and shows we are at a percent of 35% just 12 years ago. under the omb projections, there are other folks who might

say these are optimistic, but under those projections will be the 77% in 2020. a fellow who was a chief economist and an ecomist at the university of maryland did a study a year or so ago. what they tried to do is take a look at debt as a percent of gdp. and say, how big can it get or is there a relationship between the size of the debt as a percent of gdp and our economic growth? they did over many decades and over many countries. a range. 60 or below is clearly good. countries who had debt at a percent of gdp at 60% or or below grew faster than others.

90% or above was clearly bad. 90% or greater clearly had a worse economic growth than others. between 60% and 90%, it was more muddled. this was a very good study. it gives us some benchmarks. in the sense that, maybe we do not want to go above 90%. maybe we want to get toward 60%. this chart here shows clearly what our direction is. it is what our problem is that we are facing, not borrowing money to finance the deficit today, but really the long-term fiscal sustainability. with that, i want to move on to say, ok, now that we know what the problem is, what are the solutions? i did this chart a few weeks ago before congressman ryan was named as vice-presidential candate.

here are some numbers here from omb, congressman ryan's proposal. i am focusing on t long-term. look at what the final right- hand column says in 2015. it emphasis that the nation -- the nature of our problem is medicaid. that drives up interest rates and push -- puts our debt at clearly unsustainable levels. what does president obama and congressman ryan propose to do about it? what president obama proposes to do is to hold medicaid and medicare spending considerably below the 12% of gdp. can he do it? i am going to address that in a

minute or two. let me leave that as a question mark. as you can see fro congressman ryan's proposal, he is even lower than the president's budget. heoes that through a premium support mechanism. i am trying to help you read the writing on the wal that is a budget. it is the limited amount the federal government will contribute to medicaid and medicare programs. it is clearly a budget. ryan's number there is accurate in the sense that this is wt he will spend. what does that mean for the consumer and how muche or she will have to spend? that is another matter. there something truly under listed about congressman ryan's budget.

you can see two dozen 50 has 40% gdp. defense right now is nearly 40% gdp. what happens to the rest of government? that may be a step too far for congressman ryan. i do not know that number is a realistic number. i am not trying to endorse the obama budget. i commented on the ryan budget being unrealistic numbers. let me talk a little bit about the ama budget. let's take a look at the u.s. relative to the rest of the world. this chart indicates that we spend far more than anybody else in the world on health. but it also indicates that we do not necessarily get better results.

the dot usa on the far right all by itself. you can see under one measure, life expectancy at birth, we are only at eight years. look at all the countries that spend considerably less and yet have higher life expectancies. life expectancy is not the only measure. it may not even be the best measure. but it is one legitimate measure. other measures such as infant mortality would indicate similar problems. the viability of certain cancers after it has been detected, the united states would yield better results. the u.s. is not worse in every case. but it is very, very clear that we spend a whole heck of a lot more than anybody el.

the next chart, and i apologize for being 2007, but they have not updated it yet, to me is one of the most significant i have seen in my years in doing budgeting. it shows how much more we spend. we are spending 16% in 2007, of gdp. the next highest country, france, in which i lived for five years, and i had french health carwhile i was there, is at 11%. 5% difference. i got a lot with the french government when i was there. they are very concerned about the high level of spending they have. when looking at what we have, ey cannot understand how we can possibly be spending so much this was the nature of the problem a few years ago. it is still there. now we move to what president obama has been doing. this chart, which is done by the centers for medicaid and

medicare services, that is the obama administration just a few months ago, indicates what the health care situation for the u.s. will look like over the next eight years. we are going from about 18% of gdp to merely 20%. let me state that another way. they're all kinds of benefits from the affordable care act. from the obama administration's own numbers and from the long- term sustainability issues, it has made the problem worse. if you will notice, i only have one column with numbers on here. i could not find another column that said what would have been the growth and health expenditures in the absence of the affordable care act. might have been hired. it may be that the obama administration actually helped save us money.

i do not know. i cannot say that. i can put thesnumbers out. with respect to long-term sustainability, it made the problem worse. should that be a surprise? i do not think so. we added 30 million people to health care. when i was in paris, all three of my ki lost their jobs. all three of them found new jobs. during that time, you are looking at their health insurance. i was very happy to hear about where we are going here, personally with respect to our long-term sustainability problems, there is not any doubt with respect to health he is the major issue, and we have not addressed that issue through the affordable care act. we need to do mu more. that is the situation we are in. now i will jump back to the long-term where i hope i have laid out some of the issues we

are facing. now to the mium-term. i am frequently asked, what do you feel about continuing the tax cuts that came out of the bush administration? do you think we should continue them? i answer, it is the wrong question. i cannot answer the question because it is the wrong one. i can say this. i have heard concrete public announcements from both the adminiration, from the republicans, from the democrats, from virtually everybody, that our tax system is broken. it is inefficient, complicated, and it does noproduce the right results. president obama has been instructed. we need to have fundamental tax reform.

that is the focus we have. lower the rates. if you take that as where we should be headed, this little cht might be worthwhile. with respect to tax reform, could we get agreement on this? one thing i like to point out is that, if you take a look at your taxes, you have income taxes and you have fica. your employer matches it. how many people who pay taxes have higher fica taxes than income taxes? when the start was done a number of years ago, as you can see, four out of five households pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. four out of five.

yet you hear no discussion of payroll taxes at all. the lower incos pay more than the higher incomes. yet we do not hear anybo talking about that at all. i will go into that a little bit more. this is just a chart that indicates in 2009, any pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. i will go into this a little bit more. the top two levels are 33% and 35%. we go back to 36% and 39.6%. there have been a lot of criticisms. on whether we should go back to

that. present obama has made that one of his signature moves and the congressional republicans are resisting that. the reason why has to do with the curve. laugher -- laffer is one who said there was a relationship between the tax rates you have and the amount of money you collect. i believe that and i will show that right here. here is what the curve looks like. he says at a certain tax rate, you will maximize the economic production of the economy and therefore maximize government revenue. this is one of the major theories on the part of the republicans and i want to state my biases. i bieve in the curve. specifically i believe in three points in the curve. you see that point on the bottom

left where it says the zero tax rate. i believe in that point. you see that point on the right side? 100% tax rate. i believe in that point. and there is some point in between that i believe is there. i've tried to do some research to identify where it was because of the incredible difference is we have between the republicans and democrats about what tax rates are, i have be able to fd something saar with share. not just this theoretical presentation of the curve but what it looks like. it took a lot of research to find this but this will help simplify the political debate we have here. i'm going to go back a little bit. going back to not getting off the cur, taking a look at tax rates in shares. we should be doing in there has been both sides been talking about we should be doing tax

reform. what we're doing tax reform it is a good idea to take a look at what they tax rates and shares are. i put this together here. using cbo data. as you can see, how our system --ur income tax system is very progressive. the highest 20% pay 94% of the share of income. the top 4% pa almost 40% in two dozen 9. i had some people think you made a mistake. you have some negativnumbers there. you have the lowest people having an income rate of -9.2%. did you make a mistake? i did not. the reason that is-is because of their earned income tax is that good or bad?

i am not trying to make the income but it is worthwhile knowing that the system is progressive. that is a-number for income, not for total. the difference between those numbers and why the total is positive is what i mentioned before, payroll taxes. payroll taxes are regressive and much of the progress of any of the income tax. this is to give you an id of what the current tax situation looks like. it was not tmake a judgment about howt should look in the past. in terms of shares and with the incomes are. and with incomes are for that. and i get to social insurance tax rates, the regressivity. we are a progressive system. the poor you are the more you pay. some of you might say that is because we cap social security

tax and it changes every year. that is part of it. if we took the cap of social security tax it would still be regressive. many of the people in the highest incomes get their money from capital gains. things that are not covered by a payroll tax. my reason for this is to highlight something i do not think a lot of people know and to say this should be part of the debate. ok. we have covered that and the laffer curve. now to the near term and the fiscal cliff. i think there are nine different elements of it. they are rarely talked about. i will mention what they are. there is this, worker adjustment and prenotification, something like that. i need to know what it means.

if you are laying off somebody or fe them we have to give 60 days' notice at least. some states is more. the question is what happens on january 2? the sequester is going to cut the funding that a lot of defense contractors and others are going to get. if you have to give 60 days' notice, 60 daybefore january 2 is november 2. that is a law right now. whether it applies not, the department of labor says you do not need to issue blanket notices as one defense contractor did. warn act notices a part of the fiscal cliff. they m be more visible before the election. we talked about the expiration of the tax cuts. there's a series of this. it is not just the top rates. it is also the 10% bracket.

if the tax cuts expire, every single one of you like -- will pay more taxes. it does not mean just those at the top of the income. we currently have the payroll tax holiday and extra unemployment benefits, 2% holiday we have had for two years running. that expires at the end of the year. the amt, the alternative minimum tax. i will talk about that. that does not expire on december 31. that is already expired and i will tk to you a bit aut what that means to you and to the public but that is another element of the fiscal cliff. we have something called the docca fix -- doc fix. the department of hhs determines the amount to payor doctors. there is a law that says as of january 1, the amount paid for doctors and other providers will

drop by 30% on january 1. we know these are going to happen. they are in long now. they cannot be changed unless there is fundamental laws to change tm. there are some things we do not know the timing of. one is the continuing resolution and that applies to how long the funding for fiscal year 2013 is going to be. that is the fiscal year that begins october 1. the other one is temporary assistance for needy families. that is a welfare program that was was drastically reformed in the clinton administration. is authorization expires on some timber 30. on october 1 if it is not reauthorize, over 4 million people will not receive welfare benefits. it could be extended but right now it is one of the elements of the fiscal cliff. and finally, there is the debt limit. i think you know something about

that. the current estimates are that the current debt limit which is $16 triion $394 billion -- 16 trillion dollars, and -- they had certain abilities to extend that out. the reality is that the debt limit is going to put -- be with us in the car as we go off the fiscal cliff, too. all right. a month or so ago when i talked about this i was sayg, this is unprecedented. things they're so bad -- things are so bad, cover such a wide variety of folks, nobody will want to go off the fiscal cliff. i put this little chart together. let's take a look at every one of the players here. does the president want to go off the fiscal cliff? no. he wants to continue the tax

cuts. the affordable care act is a difficult law to implement. it may not be ready. he may be able to trade a delay of this for no sequester. he does not want the sequester. he does not want to cut entitlements. he more than anybody else will want to increase the debt limit. republicans in congress? they do not want to have taxes go up, not just for those below 250. democrats like continuing backed supplemental unemployment assistance. everybody wants to patch the amt and do some tax reform. my friends came out a few months ago and said, if we do go off the fiscal cliff, it will

produce a recession. how the first half of next year, we will have negative real growth. this is unprecedented. we will have an explicit no fiscal congressional action push us into a recession. we may havdone it before inadvertently, but here, we know it will happen. we have been told. they said if we postpone it, with some other kind of constraints to show we are serious to show long-term fiscal sustainability, then we can have real growth. that is the situation. this set of circumstances is so bad, covers so many people, that we are definitely not goinoff the fial cliff.

then congress d a couple of things a now i think we are all riding in that thunderbird together. [laughter] i started getting questions two weeks ago. let's say we actually did the sequester on january 2. does it all have to be taken on that day? do you have to cut all 10% of the second of januy? the answer is no. it can apportion the cuts later in the year. in other words, if you truly believe you can fix it later, you can go along spending at the full rate, not at 10% or less, and not have to take the

cuts until the last six months or three months of the year. what about notices? the department of labor has sa to ignore them. what about the expiration of the tax cuts? little known fact. the secretary ofreasury has the ability to set your wiholding rates. so let's just assume on january 1, the tax cuts expire. every one of you owe more taxes. with a minute. you may say. how does that work? i owe more taxes, i set up withholding, but no more money is coming. will that mean i will have to pay a much higher rate or have a much greater liability on the 15th of april the year after that? yes. that is what it means.

[laughter] can that happen? ye it still can. it has been done before. it is a game of chicken. payroll tax holiday, i do not hear hear support for that anymore. the amt has already expired, but it can be retroactively extended. if they do that, it could give them another year. we're going off the cliff. amt will not hit us right away. we can fix that letter. the continued resolution. have you heard about this? they are talking about six months to take us to april 1. in other words, we will pretend we can get throu all these probms and come back and the new congress will fix it somehow. we will go o the cliff. the debt limit, if you let the payroll tax holiday expire, that produces $10 billion a month.

that might help us a little bit. $10 billion a month is not much, but it may help a little bit. what i have ard in the last couple of weeks is an awful lot of people who say, let's fix it later. wow. i hope they are not right. i hope once the election is over, and i expect nothing before it, that markets basically come up and say, there is a deal to be had. here is a deal we almost had last year. president obama and speaker boehner cut this deal. did you ever buy a car, sit down with the salesman, decide a price, shake hands?

you have been through that, right? he says, i have to go check with the manager. [laughter] obama shook hands with boehner last july. the deal fell apart. i am not trying to say why. they had a deal. revenues $800 billion. entitlements, health, $400 billion. remember my charts. that is where the major problem is. a good start. chained cpi, the way wendex federal programs. $800 billion in entitlements. these are very approximate

numbers. these are the deals they settled on. this sequester accomplishes that. the other stuff fell apart. why do i point this out? they had a deal. they shook hands. it is not impossible for us to get a deal. at least to put the process down for a deal. let's not give up hope. so what would a deal look like. kick the can down the road another year. they could use the budget resolution and reconciliation rules to put a restraint on a future congress of about a $3 trillion along the lines of the obama deal. lower rates and broaden the base will, could, maybe have an

impact on the economy. could things we have heard help? yes. hopefully it is to put about some credibility so the markets do not go bonkers and we see drops in equity markets like crazy. that is my situation on the medium-term, here. i will talk about the amt. if you do not know what that is, let me say, right now, today, you owe it.

but you do not know it. i am fairly sure i am speaking to everyone in this audience. you all will be subject to the amt. you start off with exemptions. then you take your income. then you go to schedule a. then you come out after that. right? that is what you do at the amt. you start all over. you start with your exemptions. then income. then schedule a you come to that thing on taxes. that is the simple way to do it. then you calculate it.

that ishe simple way of doing it. it multiplied times 20%if you owe more without the reductions, then you pay more. what does this mean? the amt is going to hit "marri with children" in states where they pay high amount of income sales and/or property taxes. with those figures on this table. married with children will be six times more likely to pay the empty thaningle folks. 45% with incomes between $75,000.100000 dollars will pay the empty. up from 0.4% last year. in addition, at&t does not hit the high earners because they're

paying at a higher rate. they are already paying at the higher rate. the amt will hit 94% of those, but only 51% of millionaires. this is a theoretical view. can i fix it? yes. up until about the first or second week of january. if they try to fix it after that, it will drive the system crazy. it is coming toward you very quickly. that is why i like the fiscal cliff analogy. i will quit their. i was going to get into the night in paris. i think i will stop here and take questions.

i was going to do comparisons of why i do not want to end this talk as negatively as you might interpret. i spent the last five years in paris. i think i would still rather be here than anyplace else. i will take some questions, first. a number of years ago my favorite budget director was leon panetta. we were supposed to go to japan to talk about long-term fiscal problems. this is almost 20 years ago now. leon could not go because by the time he made the commitment he got named chief of staff. so i went and i was there with my japanese hosts and japan has

the longest [unintelligible] we're looking at our long term longevity and health problems and i said you know, the did not know my sense of humor. you have a problem in japan and we have a problem in the u.s. and put hours together, we can sell each other's problems. he said, really? what is that. you have a problem with a generous social security system and the longest lived people in the world. our problem is we have to much tocco. he did not appreciate the joke and i have not been invited back. life expectancy is low because we do a good job of killing ourselves. we kill ourselves not only by shooting ourselves, by driving fast, but particularly by eating.

i must say after five years in paris, i got used to sizes at reaurants that you did not have to bring a dog back or to adjust to to get home. was different way. ok. between the french health system and our system, quality versus care. i with -- i like to use anecdotes. think about the last time you went to a doctor. here in the u.s. trade to go to the doctor's office anyou make an appointment and open the door. what do you see? i was just in a redness and shall list. finding out i have a freckle on my retina. i did not know such things existed. anyway, they looked at it and said it is not bad, you have to have it checked every year. i go in to the specialist and i open the door. i saw six people talk to and had

service provided by six people before i saw a doctor. in france i have a problem. i go to make an appointment and they did it on line and i did it and my french was a lousy and my medical french was basically nonexistent. i made sure it had a doctor who spoke english ago to the doctor and open up a door, there is a small waiting room. two or three people sitting there, obviously patients. there's nobody else there. i did not know what to do. i stood there and a door opens up and out comes a guy in a white coat. i have been waiting for you. come in. i have my procedure and he said there will be 25 euros. i knew this was coming. there is a copayment.

you pay the doctor in cash. i said i am in budgeting. i am used to a system where there is assistance. you do this on yourself and he said, i have an assistant, e comes in twice a week. the single payer nature of the french system. they are number two in the world but that makes a world of difference. no matter who your assurances or we'll get your service. it is so much easier. they're different malpractice things. my wife was there and my wife speaks very good french but she, like i, was afraid of her medical french so she goes to a good friend of ours and says,

can you recommend a doctor? can you recommend a doctor who speaks english and my friend who was a good friend looks at her and says, i am amazed to would say that. my wife says why? do you think i would recommend to you a french doctor who has not been trained in the u.s.? a lot of their better doctors are trained here, too. it is not that we have a bad system here. our fee-for-service aspect of it are administrative aspects of it coming our malpractice insurance product liability things, another thing i used to say when i compared my home in bethesda with my home in france which was near the eiffel tower, how do you compare the two? my neighbor is not bad in bethesda. there is only one thing ong. there are too many lawyers tread the medical system is high

because we keep a legal profession on it. we're so much worse for ready of others. fee-for-service is the biggest aspect. administrative costs and malpractice insurance are there too. ok. freezing annl something of social surity for a five-year period. social security is an issue. it is going bankrupt from the accounting sense. let me explain social security very quickly. it is called the sisson charity -- social security trust fund. it is an intergenerational transfer. and a successful one. in the 1930's, we had some very poor old people. how to help them left out of poverty, the had not set aside

money and how to prevent this in the future. it was easy. it had old people -- you have old people. if you taxed money from those working and give it to the old, you lift them out of poverty so you have these people working. the original rate was 1.2%. it take 1.2%, a transfer from this generation working to this generation retired and what did it do? it worked. in the 1930's and 1940's, the number of old people in poverty significantly improved because of social security. ok. how do you continue to do this? it is the same deal. it is an intergenerational transfer so when these people who paid, you take a little bit out of the next generation and pay them.

that seemed to be working, to but along came the and all they 65 million others who are card- carrying members of the baby boom. when they started looking at these relationships, they saw that as said like this or like this, it was like this. you had piles of people entering the work force paying far more than what was needed to keep the basic level that was set up as social security. what did you do? increased the benefits to those retired. you increased the taxes. the taxes got up to 12.4%. 6.2 for the employee, 6.2% for the employer. did that work? it worked until the next generation came along and then this intergenerational transfer went from this to this.

that is, you have this amount of old people paying taxes to this amount of retired. i said the problem with the gen and -- they did not like sex. i was corrected by a young person in the audience say that was not the problem. we know how to control ourselves, that is all. in any case from an economic perspective, you are still facing this and it is going to get worse. i am fortunate. live with my 9-year-old granddaughter and we have breakfast any -- every morning and i look at her and say, you got a job yet? i am about to retire and you -- we need the money. we're facing the situation here

and it will be such that in order to keep the benefits for which i so justly deserve, those following me will have to pay either higher taxes or they're going to have to cut benefits. we're facing that situation now. how to do it? extending their retirement ages. in 1983 we did it to you and me. my parents were able to retir at 65 with full benefits. i can i get full benefits until 66. countries are facing this and it may be one of the things. i mentioned the rate at which we used to increase benefits. we now increased benefits on the rate based on wages. not prices. this is something not very well known. what is the difference between was and prices? a lot of our recent history, our

employees become more productive. that increase has resultedn not a perfectorrelation, resulted in higher wages. those higher wages are used to increase the benefits of those who are retired. huh? why should better productivity increase the wages of those retired? what if went to maintaining purchasing power and went to as opposed to increasing it based on wages, we increase on prices. it sounds logical to me. that is what the chain cpi reference is. it has been imposed by the interest groups to try to protect the interests of the elderly. those kinds of interest can be done. it is better than a holiday with

respect to increases in the cost of living for currently -- recipients because there is an awful lot of people who count on social security as their only retirement or a big part of it. ok. on the amt. this has to do with the relationship between the ante in the bush tax cuts. you may know of forbes magazine. and the publisher. he was re big into the flat tax. to heck with this progressive tax rate or whatever it is. let's have one flat tax and some eastern european countries, russia, lvia, and a couple of others went to a flat tax. they went to a flat tax because they had tax evasion, excessive

amounts and the flat tax help them address that issue. my point is that the amt is flat tax. we do not do anything in terms of passing the empty. virtually everybody is going to be paying 28%. and it might take 10 or 20 year something like that but everybody will be paying. there is clearly our relationship between the current >> we will take you live to capitol hill. doug elmendorf briefing reporters on his outlook. just getting under way and live here on c-span. >> 7.3% of the economic output, down from about 10% in 2009. this is the force year in which

the deficit has exceeded $1 trillion. federal debt will reach 73% of gdp by the end of this fiscal year, the highest level since 1950, and about twice since 2007. we are prepared baseline projections that reflect the assumption that current laws remain unchanged. they are designed to serve as a benchmark in considering changes. substantial changes to tax and spending policies are scheduled to take effect at the end of this year under current law. whether lawmakers will allow those changes to unfold will play a crucial role in determining the path of the federal budget and the economy. we have prepared projections under an alternative fiscal

scenario. many policies will be continuing. i will talk about the baseline first and then turned to the alternative scenarios. among the policy changes due to occur under current law, the ones with the largest impact on the budget are the reduction of tax relief enacted since 2001 are set to expire. a sharp reduction in medicare payment rates are scheduled to take affect. automatic enforcement procedures specified by the budget control act to restrain spending are set to go into effect. extensions of unemployment benefits and a reduction in the payroll tax to social security

are scheduled to expire. those sharp reductions in taxes and federal spending and increases in taxes will lead to a dramatic reduction in the federal deficit, trimming it by almost $500 billion next year. that would probably lead to a recession early next year. our forecast shows continued modest growth in the economy for the rest of 2012 but a drop of output of nearly 3%. we anticipate output will expand in the second half of next year and beyond. the unemployment rate will rise to about 9% in the second half of next year in our forecast under current law. those spending reductions will

also lead to small deficits throughout the coming decade and a declining path of debt relative to gdp. our baseline budget projections remain unchanged show deficits close to 1% of gdp. the small deficits falls from 73% of gdp to 58% of gdp in 2022. that's what we think will happen during the baseline. projections under an alternative fiscal scenario that incorporates the following assumptions. all expiring tax provisions except the current payroll tax reduction are extended indefinitely. the index for inflation after

2011. arecare's payment rates held constant at their current levels. the original caps on discretionary appropriations are assumed to remain in place. the alternative policies would lead to budgetary and economic outcomes that would differ in the near-term and in later years from those in our baseline. the deficit would exceed $1 trillion for 2013. deficits would remain at large the route the coming decade. revenues would be about 18% of gdp. federal spending would be much

higher, about 23% of gdp. the increase in outlays compares to a historical experience relative to gdp for social security and the major health care programs. it is partly offset for all other federal benefits and services taken together. with such large deficits, debt would climb to 90% of gdp, higher than any time that shortly after world war ii. the economy would be stronger in 2013 and 2014. economic growth would be modest and we would not anticipate a recession. the unemployment rate would move slowly down rather than up.

escalating federal debt would increase the chance for a crisis. the government will lose its ability to borrow at affordable rates. rising debt would hinder savings, reducing income relative to what would occur with smaller deficits. the policies assumed a path of federal debt that would be unsustainable. therefore, the key issue facing policy makers is not whether to reduce budget deficits relative to those that would occur under current policies but when and how. if lawmakers do not reduce the deficit, they will need to reduce that later.

at some point we will need to adopt policies that require people to pay more in taxes, except less in government benefits and services or both. in closing, i want to acknowledge the more than 120 people at cbo involved in the production of this report. the staff of the joint committee on taxation provided the able assistance. i appreciate to those people for their talents and dedication. thank you. we're happy to answer your questions. >> if the fiscal cliff is avoided, the 1.7% growth is weak. why is that? >> the evidence suggests that

the following financial crises, economies tend to have more severe slumps and more gradual recovery. then is the case following recessions do not follow financial crises. in the united states today, think demands for goods and services is being held back by a number of factors. the building of our housing stock leading to the financial crisis. there are a large number of unoccupied houses today, quite a bit fewer than a few years ago because it housing construction has been so weak. assault with good credit have been able to borrow for mortgages and a good rates. there is weaker demand for housing construction then

normally coming out of recessions in the united states. another factor holding down economic growth has been restraint in spending in hiring by state and local governments. normally hiring is a factor boosting the economy and has not been the case this time. there has been a tremendous loss of household wealth in the stock market and the value of homes that people own. despite these factors, we and others have not been able to predict the nature of this recovery. there have been a number of developments that i think outside this country that have mattered as well. the situation in europe is of great deal of concern. that is a risk that would

highlight and their problems have been a drag on this economy and have the potential to be a larger dragon. we do not entirely understand what is going on in the economy. we're in the process of producing a report on the slow recovery, work that has come out of dark forecasting worked that we are trying to explain to people what we do see going on and we hope to have that report out shortly. >> projections of going over the fiscal cliff seemed the worst than they were. why is that? >> relative to the report that we released in may, we have lowered our projection of economic growth for next year. that is primarily due to a

reassessment of the underlying strength of the economy. the economy has been growing at a modest pace for the past few years. we have pushed down a little bit in how strong we think growth would be in the absence of fiscal tightening. fairly small shops can matter and large shocks can matter a large amount. -- fairly small shocks can matter. a large amount of fiscal tightening. , negativelarge shock shock pushed the economy into a significant recession.

yes. t that mentioned the threa we would lose our ability to borrow cheaply. when is the magic tipping point coming or the bond rates are going to spike up? bond rates continue to fall. >> interest rates depend on a number of factors. one is the amount of treasury debt. other factors are important, as well. rates are low right now despite the level of debt for a few reasons. the weakest of the u.s. economy. the preference by many investors to hold -- the rates are low because they reviewed as safer

than many of the alternatives in the u.s. financial system. a second factor is the views of investors of our assets relative to assets in other countries. serious banking and fiscal problems in europe. people are moving out of european markets and into ours. so, between the situation in the u.s. economy and the situation in foreign economies, it is not too surprising that rates are low. in our projection, rates increased gradually. they do not rise very much because we have a recession in

response to fiscal tightening. we think the federal reserve would undergo further action to stimulate the economy and that would hold down short-term rates and longer term rates. by the end of the decade, the rate in our production is back up to 5%, which is closer to a more typical level. it is possible for rates on our debt to spike upwards at some point. when investors have lost confidence in the government's ability, they can start selling the securities rapidly and push up rates very fast. that is a risk for us and we talked about.

it is difficult to know whether there is a particular tipping point or what it might be. it depends on the amount of debt and also on conditions in the international financial system. nd also on investors' expectations for policy-making. i think countries with high levels of debt have much less risk of fiscal crisis than countries with may be somewhat lower levels of debt or people believe it is rising. expectation about policy and confidence in the ability of a government to manage policy are important and that is a hard thing to quantify in some way. >> congress is coming back in september.

what should congress do? >> we do not make recommendations. our responsibility to the congress is to offer them our best assessment on what will happen under current law and what might happen under alternative policies that congress is considering. they need to make the decisions themselves. we talk about different choices that the congress has. it will look in this report at current law base line and the alternative scenarios. that is not an either-or choice for congress. people who have worried about the short-term economic consequences of this sharp fiscal tightening have proposed extending some of the expiring

policies and letting certain policies expire as written into current law. and then more hiring by businesses. we did in long report last fall laying out a collection of fiscal policy options, doing our best to assess the bang for the buck, how strong the economy would be for every dollar and every criteria can matter in the resources as well. we have offered to the congress i hope a clear sense of the different possibilities, but the choice will have to be up to them. we think that economic growth

right now is being held back by the anticipation of this fiscal tightening. both in terms of the possibility of a sharp downturn but also uncertainty about what will happen. it is the expectation of a economy and the uncertainty of what might turn up. the sooner that is resolved, then the stronger we think the, it would be in the second half of this year and next year. we said it was being held down by about half a percentage point from the expectation of fiscal tightening. that remains our view and is

consistent with views of forecasters. hard to know for sure because lots of factors effect the economy. >> your revenue estimate for less than33 billion the government collected. can you relate that to this chart that you have. these extraordinary numbers where you have historically high levels of people being unemployed for 27 weeks or more. this is the new normal with these high levels of long-term unemployment? >> we show a picture on page 31 of the report of long-term unemployment which is on extraordinarily high in this

country. we do not expect long-term unemployment to remain at that level indefinitely. we do think that unemployment will remain higher than it would have been because of the lingering effects of the recession and recovery. people who lose jobs sometimes find jobs fairly quickly but sometimes not. when they do not, it has longer- term consequences for their jobs and for their employability. people lose skills or don't keep up with processes and sometimes employers might not be as good and that could be an employer's decision about hiring them. we expect the employment rate to be a little higher than it would have been in the absence of this

recession and slow recovery. that does hold down output and incomes and tax revenue. in addition to the loss of labor input in the economy, there will be less physical capital because investments have been low in the recession and recovery. it is rising rapidly by it is that low level. we think that productivity will be a little lower than it would have been. there is a box in chapter two that talks about the lasting a fax of the recent recession and the ensuing economic weakness. we think the level of output at the end of the decade will be about 1.5% lower than it would have been.

that corresponds to a reduction in revenue of about 1.5%. other things affect the forecast. the recession and the slow recovery matter for our future economic capacity. principal not the factor leading to wide deficit under current policies. if we had economic growth that was a lot stronger, we would still end up with large deficits by the end of the decade under current policies. >> i wanted to clarify the magnitude of the fiscal tightening. would it be -- the largest reduction in spending or -- >> the largest reduction as a share of gdp in any single year

since 1969. >> 9 to 69 would of been the vietnam drawdown -- 1969 would have been the vietnam drawdown? >> i do not know. the deficit will fall by 3.3% of gdp. the reduction in 1969 was slightly larger than that. >> so it would be bigger than any intentional round of deficits since we started to reduce the deficit 30 years ago. >> i'm not sure what is intentional. the biggest one-year reduction as a share of gdp. >> in the alternative, can you

give any indication of which ones have degraded or have the least impact of economic growth? >> we have not tried to break down the pieces of fiscal tightening. most of the narrowing of the deficit comes from increases in tax revenues. the much smaller share comes from reductions in spending. just by the amount of dollars being moved, the increases in taxes probably have a larger economic effect than the reductions in spending. the effects depend on the policies.

we do these analyses, we have different things for different policies. i do not know dollar for dollar . the alternative fiscal scenario has deficits that are much larger. changes in tax policy and changes on the spending side. >> getting back to the take away for congress. would you say this raises the stakes for them to act? >> i think the stakes of fiscal policy are high right now. i didn't know anybody who disagrees. we have very serious budget challenges and serious economic

challenges in this country. on the decision that congress makes about policy, that can have profound affect on the budget and the near term and longer term economic output. i think the stakes are high in the fiscal policy decisions that will have to make shortly. >> can you talk about a change in the entitlement programs and costs for revenue? >> we have in this production our forecast for medicare spending. medicare spending has, and lowered the we expected this year. that has been true for several years running. over the past three years, we have marked down our projection

in medicare spending for 2019 by about $100 billion for tactical reasons -- for technical reasons. for the program specific factors come we marked down medicare. the slower growth in medicare spending is consistent with slower growth of health-care cost more generally in the economy. in our projections for from march for the cost of the coverage provisions of the affordable care act, private premiums have been growing more slowly than they had been before. that was one factor that causes us to mark down our projections. we had seemed slower growth in

medicaid as well. what is going on in federal health progrs is not entirely clear. presumably the weak state of the economy is a factor. given the magnitude of the slowdown in national health spending and the timing of the slowdown, which seems to have started before the recession, we think there are structural factors at work as well. the structural factors that are probably happening include slower growth of spending on prescription drugs. there are some patent expirations and fewer new blockbuster drugs. restructuring the way health care is delivered. what is causing that is not completely clear.

that could be due to providers concern about payment rates or changes in the way providers are getting paid in medicare and by private insurers, more household pay more out of their own pockets in deductibles or cost sharing 1 they are getting health services. there are a lot of possibilities. people in the health-care system understand the imperative to find ways to work more efficiently. how to connect up that set of activities is very hard and we do not know to what extent the slowdown we have seen in the federal health programs will persist or not.

>> so you're revenue in fiscal year in 2007 was greater than the fiscal year 12012. has a been a period where revenues have not been recovering to where they have been and is a cause you to change the way you look at forecasts for the next 10 years? >> revenues have been a smaller share of gdp for the past 10 years than in many decades. much of that reduction in revenues relative to gdp is a natural -- of the weakness of the economy. we have a progressive tax code and people that slipped out to

lower tax codes pay lower fraction. another big piece of what has happened in revenue is the policies that have been enacted. the 2% reduction in the payroll tax rates under social security has cost the government money. part of what is going on has been a great weakness of corporate profits, especially in the financial sector. we are a little surprised by how weak tax revenues are and we do not know what is going on there. the detailed tax return data used to parse out data comes out with some lag. we can seize the total amount of revenue being collected.

one factor in the projection is expectation buyouts on the low part of tax receipts fades over time. he tax receipts come back up conditioned on the tax policies that will be in effect. if we are wrong about that, there is some permanent shift and tax revenue could be lower than we think. the labor share of national income and there is a picture on page 43 that shows labor income as a share of gross domestic income. you can see there is a gradual downward trend in labor and come as a share of gross domestic income. it has been quite sharp and this

downturn. we anticipate that labor income will come back a little bit as a share of total income. a large number of people out of work. it is not too surprising that wage growth has been restrained. it is lower than we would have expected. we anticipate it will rebound to stop the closing to the average of the past few decades. that might turn out to be incorrect. we try hard to have our projections be in the middle of the range of possible incomes. we think there are significant risks of the actual budget or economy performing worse or better than we have written down. >> recent reviews show the

potential for more rapid recovery possibly due to the low aboutof -- you're talking the box on the left and they seem to disagree with that. >> i have not read what they have written. we talk about risks to our economic forecast being stronger housing investments that we have written down. a large number of vacant homes. we have had ill level of construction for the past several years. -- we have had a low level of construction. housing -- building could come back more strongly that we think. we mentioned other upside risks.

stronger business -- strong rebound in business investment and hiring. businesses are sitting on a lot of liquid assets. if they felt more optimistic about the future economic path and chose to do more investment and hiring, that could also jump-start a favorable feedback loop in which hired would lead to more hiring and more spending by households and further investment in business hiring. that is related to the comet that is underperforming. i do not know beyond that what they have said. >> i want to get back to the difference between your outlook for next year and why it has done worse. how much of it is due to the

fiscal cliff being steeper than you thought at how much is the general worsening of the extoled economy? >> relative to our production in january, the fiscal cliff is now steeper because congress enacted an extension of the payroll tax reduction to the end of 2012 and an extension to the end of calendar year 2012. that kept the deficit larger in 2012 and it keeps the economy stronger. by boosting the economy in 2012 without boosting the economy in 2013, it has led to a larger fall off. an important reason why we're looking for a more negative of fact, more negative outcome of

the economy than we expected in january. since the january forecast, we have lowered our expectation -- our assessment of the underlying growth of the economy. i have not tried to pars that out -- i have not tried to parse that out. the magnitude of the slowdown in economic activity is significant. with this sharp tightening of fiscal policy, we are looking to start at a reduction in its gdp at an annual rate of about 3% which would represent a significant recession. we are looking under those conditions, the unemployment rate to rise just over 9% by the

end of next year. the contrast is quite stark. we don't have that kind of recession in the alternative. the unemployment rate is about a% next year -- the unemployment rate is about 8% next year. >> you were saying -- >> under the alternative fiscal scenario, 2 million more jobs under current law, according to our forecast. the difference in outcome for next year is very stark. the difference in budget outcomes at the same time is stark as well. the alternative scenario runs up t about $1 trillion.

the next few years and later in the decade, the current law baseline and the alternative fiscal scenario policies have different effects on the budget and the economy. >> how do you get to the unemployment rate under the alternative around 8% -- how do you get to two million jobs. >> the labor force is about 155 million people. one plump% -- 1.1% is not quite two million.

when the economy is weaker, more people stay out of the labor force. the stronger economy draws more people into the labor force and that would be true under our current baseline projections. those extra people are employed and that factor tends to hold up their right a little higher. those pieces together and up to two million. >> you are talking about how and when we deal with the deficit. when will this become a problem, a bigger problem with the economy and financial markets? how long can we put this off? >> well, we do not know how long this can go on for.

the large deficits have a number of negative consequences for the economy. they tend to reduce saving and investment. they lead to larger interest payments. that makes it harder to achieve certain budget outcomes. a third consequence is larger deficits reduce the room to maneuver on the part of the government. people talk about fiscal capacity. that is what i said when i started. 35% of gdp before this recession. it now represents twice as large a share. if the debt stays or rises further, our country were to encounter some further need due

to domestic problems or international problems to spend more and borrow more, we would have less capacity to do that. a larger debt it means a larger risk of a fiscal crisis. when any of those factors will and that binding is someone that forces' actions is not clear. what is clear is that waiting to make decisions until action is forced turns out badly. it having to address a large imbalance between spending and taxes and a point when a country cannot borrow any more ends up acquiring drastic changes that people don't have time to plan for or just to. earlier policy action is better than later policy action.

how quickly one and commence a set of policies is more complicated. the last time people have to plan, the greater risk of knocking a slowly-growing economy off-track. there is a difficult tradeoff is how quickly one element policies to reduce deficits. agreeing on what the policy changes will be is better to happen sooner. any other questions? >> this is your last one until january-february next year? >> that is correct. we release a new outlook for the economy in january of each year.

we anticipate a very interesting and of the year here. ok? thank you very much for coming. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> congressional budget office projected a deficit, the fourth year of a budget deficit over $1 trillion. you can read the entire report. we have linked to would on our website, c-span.org. our route to the white house

coverage continues this afternoon. joe biden is a campaign rally in michigan. live coverage this afternoon at 3:00 p.m. eastern. mitt romney will be in in mexico and we will have a campaign rally at 1:00 p.m. eastern. he is expected to unveil his new energy plan. live coverage here on c-span. the republican convention getting underway on monday in tampa. the stage cost $2.5 million to build and features 13 giant screens. they have installed a national debt clock. weather.com said tampa is the third risk is city. the hurricane center said the trouble storm isaac is getting

better organized as it nears the coast. live coverage of the republican national convention starts next monday live from tampa and will include your calls and facebook comments. daily briefings from national journal, all starting on monday and the democratic convention begins the day after labor day. the schedule for next week -- all that live at c-span.org and c-span and c-span radio. >> what do we say what will look at the dead at antietam? often, stopping in the middle of

the description and saying, it is too horrible. i cannot put that into words. words cannot convey this. >> this weekend, antietam's dead. impact on the soldiers and the images made in the wake of the battle. saturday at 10:00 p.m. eastern. also this weekend -- >> americas will stand up for the ideals that we believe it when we're operating at our best and who want to see this country return to the path of peace. >> more from "the contenders." this week, 91972 candidate george mcgovern. on c-span3.

>> this weekend on "book tv," mitt romney from his book "no apology." >> the opposite, free trade, free enterprise -- those statements have emboldened those who find us as a weekend and enemy. >> michael krahish explores the early years of mitt romney. part of our ""book tv" weekend on c-span2. >> ruth bader ginsburg participates in the discussion comparing the court systems and constitutions in north america with those in the middle east.

this is about an hour 20 minutes. >> good evening and welcome to our panel. to love you, welcome on this auspicious day what we have an august panel of supreme court justices, members of parliament, and professors of law. will give each of our panelists and opportunity to say a few words and make a few observations and we encourage them to interact with one another in a conversational style, posing questions back and

forth. then we'll take questions and answers back and forth with the audience as well. many of the programs have been dealing with the rule of law, is best when the rule of law is in direct contravention of the rule of power, as we have been hearing in the news. it is appropriate that we take a look and constitutional law as it is in the north american continent and in israel and sewer these folks today have to say about what lessons could be learned and how we can apply what we have to help the other countries in the emerging middle east achieve their goals. this panel is the kind a panel that does not need an introduction.

i would like to mention each one of them by name. we're honored to have a social justice of the supreme court ruth bader ginsburg with us today and next friday will mark the 19th year since you have been appointed to the court. congratulations on achieving that milestone. [applause] to her left we have justice of the israeli supreme court. he is one of 15 in justices in the israeli supreme court and the only member of the court who is an israeli arab and has many observations to make for us today as he has done in chicago. his trip this year and we're looking for to hearing from him. he was appointed to the bench in 2003 in the

springtime. i call upon you before i call upon justice fish who ascended to the bench of the canadian court in august of 2003. i was struck in a biography that was provided to was that you started out by naming who your parents are and nothing that is significant. that told me a lot about what kind of justice you are and we're pleased to have you here today. [applause] another person who is well-known to was in chicago and worldwide is the professor who is here and is an international law expert in the area of criminal law. if you combine the books he has authored in the 20's and add to that the books he has edited, we

come up to an astounding number of almost 75 different books in the legal profession and we'll great deal to you. welcome. and of course we have the great honor of having a member of parliament of the canadian parliament and also the attorney general and minister of justice in canada. he has appeared in many courts and is well known in north america as well as israel and elsewhere. i am sure he will have many observations to make today. one of the reasons we attend the programs is to get our compulsory legal credits taken care of. i have gone to this convention now for 23 years and it is and aspiring and inspiring the exercise when you get out of the office and there are no more

billable hours and you hear the kind of things that are going on because of the rule of law and our profession. we saw a magnificent program uremburg yesterday and made one proud as an american and proud as a lawyer to hear justice jackson articulate the standards that are so important to us. that is the same kind of feeling i get and i like to turn to the justice for about 10 minutes and i will signal you. >> thank you. i will try to give you a short view about the structure of the state of israel. have a constitution until now. it is because of the reason and it is not the time to talk about

it today. knesset decided to enact rules which are superior to regular laws. in 1992, the constitution took place in israel when the knesset enacted two basic rules. one is dignity and the other is the law of occupation location. although those rules, there was no differentiation that the supreme court has arrived to overturn laws enacted by the parliament if they are in conflict with the basic laws in the land mine position of the supreme court in 1995, the court

decided that it has the right to have the judicial review and overturn those enacted by the parliament. that was the first time this rule was given. we have about 11 basic laws and we are waiting for enacting two more basic laws. one is a human-rights basic plot and the other is social rights basic laws. once they are enacted and by government all those, this'll be the constitution of the state of israel. human-rights are protected by the supreme court'. the judicial in israel is independent. by the way of appointing and selecting judges. it is a unique system and our country where the judges are

appointed by the committee of nine members. two members of the israeli of the, two members association bar. they are appointed judges in israel. maybe some day in your country you will be more involved. two members of the knesset and three justice of the supreme court include the chief justice. this is a nine members committee. five out of the nine are not politicians. this is according -- five are the justices of the supreme court and the two members of the association. the majority is not politicians .

the the judges are subject to the law and not any person or institute. we in israel, the judiciary, respect the principle of separation of powers. the government and the knesset may take measures without intervening authorities, but in spite of this, because we did not have the constitution, and in order to protect the democracy and human rights, there should be judicial review of the supreme court rulings of of the government and the knesset. i think this is the right way to serve the public and give the feeling to the public in israel that somebody is listening to them and protect them from

measures taken by the government. icahn said that the supreme court -- can say that the supreme court in israel is one of the busiest in the world. the number of cases filed to the supreme court in the u.s. or canada -- all those countries, between 8100 cases a year. we have about 10,000 cases every year. it is a matter of fact. for this reason, we have 8000 cases every year, 4000 criminal cases, 4000 civil cases. the supreme court opens its doors to everyone.

we have from this 2000 cases every year. it is, i think, unique to our system. it is good for us to give the feeling to every citizen in the country that somebody is listening to him, and sometimes he may apply to the courts without assistance of an attorney. he may write it in his handwriting, deliver it to the court, pay the fees, and have his day in court. good feeling to know that if somebody comes to the court, and

he tells his friends, you know, today, today i appeared before a judge of the supreme court. it is a good feeling to get citizen that he may come to the supreme court. i want to refer to unique things that we have in our system. we have in our system religious criminals. it is the only place in the world where that still exists. we have a medical course for the jewish community, muslim community, and about 10 religious schools for the christian community. we are in the holy land. catholic, greek orthodox, baptists, lutherans, a central,

central -- a etc., it's a truck there is a short story about my community, and one day, one of the party's appealed the ruling of a local criminal in israel to the court of appeals in beirut. because he could not cross the border, the appeal court in beirut held a session without the presence of both parties and gave its ruling and sent it back to the parties. they wanted to execute this ruling in israel.

the court is located in a country that had diplomatic relations with israel. this issue would go to the supreme court. this is a very small example, but for the parties, very important. this is a very small short story, but very sensitive. to conclude, i want to talk about every important development that took place last april, when the minister of justice deliver to the knesset a preliminary draft of the law on legislation. it brought additions to the constitutional structure of israel. the first one to clear that the knesset has the right to create a constitution. the second one is that the

knesset adopted the ruling of the supreme court that basic law was superior to regular law. the third one -- the procedure of enacting basic law by four rounds of voting. the fourth round should be 65 members of parliament, knesset, to enact basic law fifth. the fourth one -- it was given to overturning jurisdiction -- only to the supreme court and a panel of nine judges, not like the situation today, where everyone in the country -- a court in the country can declare a law unconstitutional. the fifth section, amoss controversial -- the most

controversy, is the override section. the first time in israel -- according to it, the knesset may pass a law which was declared by the supreme court and the high court of justice as unconstitutional -- the knesset pass this law for five years. his term may be extended to a limited period -- this term may be extended to unlimited periods of five years. this is an important development. we should wait to know whether it will be a law or not. >> thank you, justice. one of the questions we wanted to pose as the sources of law that your court relies upon. he spoke of relying on a sharia law and so on. can you comment on that?

>> it used to be the ottoman law. ottomans ruled the country for 500 years. then we had the british mandate for 30 years. until the 1980's, when a judge used to go to the origins of the common law. in these cases, instead of going back to common law, you should go to the principles of freedom and equity and israeli heritage. the koran and the new testament -- it is is something we do very often, you know.

it is not a problem for me as a christian arabs to decide the new testament. there is a computer department at a university where a judge -- you may send questions to the department, and my problem is instead of receiving one answer, i receive 20 answers. [laughter] i have to choose the best of them. we used, for example, an oral arguments, if both parties are muslims, eyesi -- i cite the koran. we should vote for compromise. same thing with jews, citing the torah. it is good for us to -- [unintelligible] >> may i ask two questions of

that very interesting talk? one is something new to me, the cent lawndlaw -- re of the knesset. you will be lacking something very important if the only court that is competent to override a law passed by the knesset is the supreme court. the difference in the united states, the constitution is the highest law for a record in the lan, -- for every court in the land. how will it work when no other court has competence to measure an ordinary law or an executive action against the basic law? >> this is just a suggestion. i hope it will not pass in the parliament. it will pass and when we will

come to this, we will try to find solutions. i think that he's better for us as israeli society that the supreme court will be above all. we should wait to see what will do the parliament. >> i have one other question, and it stems from something the former chief justice of the supreme court of israel said. in the united states, you have had your 9/11. we in israel had our 9/11, 9/12, and so forth. in a country that is constantly in need of security concerns, you said that the israeli supreme court is independent. how have you resisted the pressure to give in to security needs and to uphold basic

liberties? >> well, it is a good creston, a difficult question. -- good question, difficult question. the state of law is to fi -- is defined in the state of israel -- we as judges have national security cases brought before us. when we are dealing with these cases, it is not only that we should keep in mind national security considerations. it is one of the considerations , national security, because the court decided more than one time that even in national security cases, the government should behave not all over the law. the law should be for all of us.

one of the considerations should be national security, not all. in many cases, when palestinians are coming to the core asking for help, some of them want, for example, to come to israel sometimes to come to visit their relatives -- then they will not be given special permission. we look at all the circumstances, including the national security reasons, and the relevant -- benefit of the petitioner, and try to find a compromise with the government to give them this permission to come to israel, in spite of the fact that there are national security reasons. as i mentioned, it is not only those reasons. we should keep in mind other considerations. >> thank you both for that. justice ginsburg --

>> to take a concrete case, the ticking bomb case, it was a splendid judgment of the supreme court of israel -- the question was, if the police suspect someone they have arrested of having information about where and when a ticking bomb will go off, can they use, to put it bluntly, torture to extract that information? the answer of the israeli supreme court was torture never. how to implement that decision -- how do you implement that decision? how can you see to it that it is in force by security forces? >> we as judges do not have more than our pencil and paper. we cannot follow up what is

happening on the ground by the police or the government. if somebody comes to our court at a specific case concerning this issue, and then we have the right to check what has happened in a specific case. generally, we cannot follow up our rulings when they are implemented on the ground or not. we do not have this power, unfortunately. >> thank you very much. justice fish, canada has an overripe posit -- override provision. >> that is one of the a two constitutional innovations in the charter. the other is the general limitation clause. i can explain that i am in it. our override, known as the

notwithstanding clause, writes that the federal parliament or legislatures can come in one of its laws, provide that the law will operate notwithstanding that it is found to be in conflict with the charter of rights and freedoms. it can be renewed after five years. that may be seen by some as bad news, by others as good news. the fact of the matter is that the legislative override has practically never been invoked by any government in canada. the federal government has never invoked the notwithstanding clause. seven of the 10 provinces have never attempted to invoke the override.

this-one, and a case in 1984, in 1986 -- saskatchewan, in a case in 1984, 1986, it was unnecessary, because that was found in any event not to violate the constitution. allbritton inserted an override -- alberta inserted an override it with respect to the definition of marriage. it wanted to provide that the common law definition can alone for a valid marriage. it was determined that the provinces have no jurisdiction over marriage. it is a federal matter. that override was of no consequence either. quebec, on the other hand, has invoked the override on a number of occasions. initially immediately after the charter, the legislature of

quebec provided systematically that its laws would continue to operate. that five-year period lapsed in 1987 and was not renewed. there have been four other occasions where quebec has invoked an override. the only one that attracted attention related to the court's ruling in the case that held that it was unconstitutional to prohibit any language but french in outdoor commercial advertising. in short, we are blessed, because very seldom -- the notwithstanding clause is very seldom been in vogue. i mentioned in other constitutional innovation, and that is generalized limitation clause, section 1 of the

charter. section 1 provides that the charter guarantees all the rights and freedoms set out therein subject only to such reasonable limits as can be justified in a free and democratic society. the way that clause operates is as follows. if a particular state law is found to be contrary to our charter, the government can still under section one justify the derogation of a charter principal, the burden would fall to the government, and essentially, the government would have to show first of all that there is a rational link between a pressing state need or security issue, or social issue , or, to put it differently,

first, that there is a pressing need, second, that there is a rational link between the pressing need and the derivation, and third, the fact that the delegation is proportional in relation to the effect it operates on -- human- rights, charter-protected rights, and freedoms. those two innovations, i think, are important reasons why the canadian constitutional model has had a general appeal in other countries across the world. it provides the middle road between those countries where there is no generalized limitation as in the united states, specific limitations that evolved over time, and the european model, which has

limitations in respect to each right. that is one of the attractions, and perhaps i can say -- do you want me to now? first, let me preface -- before i give you the reasons, what i am giving you reasons to sustain. i think i.t. is true that the canadian constitutional model thas been found to be an attractive model in the last 20 years across the world. i think justice ginsburg has mentioned that no one ever talk -- and that in one of her talks. the reasons, i think, are threefold. there are generalized reasons and particular reasons. the particular reasons relating to the attraction of the canadian law in a particular national context. i will not deal with that now.

generally speaking, there are three reasons. the first is the accessibility -- well, the second is the accessibility. the first is the modernity. unlike the united states bill of rights, enacted in 1791, and the declaration of human rights, 1789, the canadian charter speaks with a current in plac \ -- current voice in a current environment. that is one reason for its appeal as an operative model. the bill of rights, the declaration of human rights, indeed, the man the card, continue to be important in -- the magna carta, continue to be

input and inspirational sources. but as an operative model, the maternity of the canadian charter is an important fact. second, the canadian charter is accessible. internationally, english is still the lingua franca today, but that does not explain why it is more accessible than other english language countries. but it makes the canadian model possib one -- a palatble one. it is also accessible from another point of view in the current era, because of technology. the world has immediate access to all the decisions of the supreme court of canada. i think, as well, that canada has a credibility in the

international community. canada, i am told, belongs to more international organizations than any other country in the world. i said it 3, and like a good canadian, i will give you four. the fourth reason is that canada has worked hard at exporting its constitutional model. there are many programs sponsored by the government involving exchanges, bringing foreign constitution to countries that are not developing and in terms of their identity and history, but countries that are developing from the newly constitutional but if you come from a new framework -- nearly constitutional point of view, a new framework. hence, the pertinent appeal that has been noticed

internationally. >> i think we should make sure that everyone knows that the charter of rights and freedoms .s i1982 that is why it is such a modern document. before that, there was no judicial review for constitutionality in canada. >> there was -- judicial review -- i am glad you asked that question. it touches one of my favorite subjects, and that is that constitutional limitation in canada prior to 1982 and fall almost exclusively the division of powers between the federal parliament and the provinces. the aspect which i find quixotic and delightful is that most, or many, of the major cases have to do with alcohol.

i have written that alcohol staggering influence on the constitution. [laughter] almost as staggering as on the first b mrprime minister -- [laughter] who in a debate was accused of being drunk, and he had a feeling from the crowd's reaction that the country preferred sir john a. drunk to george brown sober. [laughter] the cases read like a liquor board document. consolidated distillers. wines. and so on. a whole list of them that determine the constitutional framework. that is the long answer to your four questions. r -- short question.

prior to 1982, i would not sit there was no -- >> for human-rights. >> there were cases few and far between. one involved a restauranteur who was a jehovah's witness, who systematically provided bail for witnesses who were systematically being arrested by the provincial police in quebec. the response of the then- attorney general and prime minister was to cancel his liquor permit in order to render them incapable of providing bail. the attorney general succeeded in that mission, but was then a personally sued. i am not sure whether that would qualify as judicial review in the sense in which it is used

here. it's certainly resulted in an equally effective and happy ending. the attorney general and prime minister found personally liable. i think it is is fair to say that that had a constitutional dimension that i would include in judicial review. >> may i ask about one confidence that you're court has that the u.s. supreme court declined, the very first supreme court, that you can give advisory opinions? i suppose the most famous one was the secession of or th -- of quebec. can you tell us -- is that one of a kind? or is the advisory -- your advisory confidence invoked

fairly often? >> i think in the almost 10 years, only once, in the same sex marriage case by the then- minister of justice, who should answer for that impudence here today. [laughter] but what we did in that case to the attorney general's chagrin, publicly expressed, was that the government put three questions to us having to do with whether the federal or provincial parliaments had jurisdiction over the definition of marriage. i think one related to whether anyone could be compelled to perform a marriage contrary to their religious beliefs -- for example, prime minister of

irreligion who was opposed to -- tcan a minister of religion opposed to same-sex marriage be compelled to perform that marriage? the answer was that it is federal. there was a fourth question, and that was whether the common law definition was constitutional or not. the court declined to answer that question. it declined to answer that question for reasons that are set out in the judgment. i should tell you that irwin and i were at a session in cambridge at that time where he asked me to explain why. taken aback. my response then and my response now are that the answer is in the judgment. [laughter]

>> me ask you if i can tell you how many times in the last few years your court has used power to overturn a law of the canadian parliament? to hear myself say too frequently to mention, but that would give you the entirely wrong impression. i would say not terribly often, but it is not uncommon. i would think that in some years, not at all. some years, once or twice. therally, though, it isn't law but a particular provision of the law that is found not to be justifiable under the limitations calause. it is not something that happens frequently. we have developed in notion of constitutional dialogue between

the supreme court and the parliament of canada, where we take care of -- not to reformulate or restructure laws when we find them to be contrary to the charter, but rather, to lead them to parliament. parliament is better equipped than we are to modify laws. we do it, but very rarely. parliament has the process to hold public hearings, to understand what alternatives to the legislation which we find on constitutional ought to be adopted. we call that a dialogue. we say sorry, go back to the drawing board, generally. it happens. it doesn't happen all that often. >> can you give your opinion

before the law is passed by the parliament? >> only privately. [laughter] but as justice ginsburg mentioned, it does happen, not often, we are asked our opinion of the proposed statute. it is not -- it does not happen often. unlike the french courts -- >> only one french court. >> yes, but i -- that is absolutely correct, i thank you for taking up on -- >> not really a court. >> someone mccourt me if i'm wrong -- someone will correct me if i'm wrong -- will correct me if i'm wrong. [laughter] it will be a privilege to be corrected by you, rather than my

colleagues, who find it an opportunity difficult to resist. [laughter] it can, i think, entertain a question -- that is not a preliminary opinion. you are perfectly right. i stand corrected. >> just one footnote to what he said. i think that the canadian supreme court decides more than th sid -- sides more than the united states supreme court records abroad. we have to give credit to the one responsible for the austrian constitution of about 1920, and for the institution of their constitutional court, which became the model for the post-

world war ii constitutional court's in europe. he was a great jurist, and the united states was the beneficiary when he had to flee his own country. >> before we leave the bench, i wanted to pose a question. in some communities, there is an aversion to citing laws that has other origins than that particular jurisdiction, whether it is other countries or even some religious law. what would you say is the situation, justice fish, in canada? >> we do not share the version of some justices of some courts. however, personally, although i intend to cite other courts -- i tend to cite other courts, i

always do so, i hope, with care. and judges have to be careful in setting courts of other jurisdictions, with a different backgrounds, different rationale, different enforcement apparatus, and so on. in short, yes, we cite foreign sources. we are not averse to doing that. we are young enough to learn from our elders. >> thank you very much. >> maybe this is the time to ask justice ginsburg, the relationship between the u.s. supreme court and international law. >> international law is, of course, part of our law, but that was set by the great chief justice john marshall. it must be applied on the statute is in conflict with it -- unless a statute is in conflict with it. we have to make a sharp distinction between

international law, which is part of our law. -- international law, which is part of our law, and foreign law. say, a decision by the supreme court of israel or the supreme court of canada. they are not the law of the united states. we can look to their attempts to wrestle with problems that we face, too. not in any sense binding as precedent, but for the persuasive value of the decisions but this book put out by the american society of international law containing comments written by justices, starting with chief justice views on ther

utility of references to comparative law -- i think you can count majority of the current supreme court members who are not averse to looking beyond our borders. >> if you permit me, on the subject of looking to what other courts decide, americans are not only litigious, but have wonderful courts, at the federal and state level. we can have a criminal law issue or constitutional oath issue -- a good example years ago, where person puts out the garbage in that case happened to contain drug paraphernalia, and relinquishes an expectation of privacy. at issue came up in canada for

the first time in that case. i had a law clerk looked at the american experience. there were 42 cases. it is not considering this president's, but looking to how the court -- considering those precedents, but look into how the court wrestled with similar problems. from that point of view, it is often helpful to look elsewhere, even for domestic law. >> thank you very much. professor, perhaps you can give us your observation after having heard the justices. >> thank you very much. every legal system in the world is derived from what a very famous french jurist referred the family of the legal

system. we have multiple families of legal systems, which have evolved and have inspired national legal systems. consequently, there is a historical continuity, for the most part, between the origins in that migh -- the family of legal systems from which the national system came from, and how it has evolved. justice joubran referred to the applicability of different religious sources to different religious communities. this was under the turkish ottoman empire. for 400 years, it existed. israel, a modern state, follows this system. in return, the system has its

origin in 637, when the second caliph of islam entered for islam and declared that all religious communities would administer their own religious site and their own communities. in fact, it was on that occasion that the law passed in 70 ad on to the expulsion of the jews was rescinded, and the jews returned to jerusalem. you see a historic continuity from 637 to the contemporary application of it. without really the concerned or discomfort by an israeli society, which is predominantly jewish, and the israeli supreme court, of saying, you know what,

if you are armenian, apply armenian and lead you to your matters of personal relations -- apply armenian law to your matters of personal relations, and it does not take away from the predominantly jewish character of the nation. you can see, in that aspect of legal history, a total acceptance of diversity and a total acceptance of the coexistence of diversity in a broader framework. on the other hand, we do find that there is an extraordinary commonality in what many legal systems, including international law, refer to as general principles. here i come back to canada.

i had the privilege of being selected by the minister of justice to be the chief legal expert for the canadian government in the case calle -- this was the only case in canada in 1987 where the canadian government applied the law you, i believe 1983, which allowed the canadian government to prosecute a person who had committed, among others, crimes against humanity. during world war ii. the big question was was this a retroactive law, which violates the charter? the drafters of the law were very astute. they called that retrospective but not retroactive. in order to find it applicable, you must find that the crime in question was a crime under international law at the time it

was committed, that was a crime in canada as well. i found myself with the task trying to prove that crimes against humanity existed before november, because in 1944, -- before nuremburg, because in 1944, they deported 619 jews in the infamous trains to auschwitz and other slave labor camps. the charter was not established. i resorted to general principle s. i went to the number of countries in the world that existed then. there were 74. i look at the criminal code. were the specifics listed in the article of the criminal charter of crimes against humanity contained in this criminal

laws? sure enough, everyone of these laws contain the the crime of murder, manslaughter, deportation, and so on. i prepared a humongous chart with all of the laws and major decisions of the courts an expert opinion from each one of the countries showing that as a general principle of law, it existed everywhere. and therefore, it could be positive law without being positivei n the sense of being written. that was consonant with the common law, which was not necessarily written. again, you can look at the idea of general principles of law as inspiring an understanding of what certain moral and social values in a given society mean, not only by reference to the

local community terms, but in reference to its global terms, if you accept the fact of wanting to be part of a global society. now, my most extraordinary experience in my almost 48 years of teaching was in 1965. the american bar association's past president had established an organization called world peace through law. they had a first convention in 1965 in washington, d.c. there was a big reception. i had been teaching for a year. i met the chief justice of the supreme court of colorado, who was a particularly impressed with the fact that i spoke six languages. things past. the next day, that speakers throughout all of the washington hilton -- "professor bassiouni,

please urgently report to the desk." i was troubled and surprised to find him, who looked at me and said, "is it true, he speaks six languages?" "yes." "tell me, what are they?" "french, german, italian --" "but enough." he took me to a huge room with 50 chief justices of the supreme courts of the world, with the late chief justice warren sitting in the middle. to his right was the chief justice of the supreme court of saudi arabia, who never said that he did not speak english, and he didn't. across him was the chief justice of the supreme court of france, who would never admit to not speaking english -- [laughter]

next to him was the chief justice of the supreme court of italy, who was never asked if he spoke english. [laughter] i was introduced a very briefly , and a chair behind the chief justice and the saudi justice -- i acted as an interpreter. this developed a personal friendship, and i had a great honor of being an aide or assistant to chief justice warren for the next five years, traveling with him to major conferences with justices of supreme courts. at these meetings, as i know some of these meetings continue at yale and other venues, there was a very open exchange. there was a little bit of what we were saying here. how do you deal with the expectation of privacy?

is a garbage can in your part of the country part of it or isn't it? a number of years thereafter, if you look at decisions of courts very wide apart -- to choose the court of south afric -- constitutional court of south africa, a canadian supreme court, others -- you could see references to decisions by the new united states supreme court. you could see references to courts of other countries. you could see citations to offers of other countries. it will not forgive me if i say that, but i am among the few who has the honor of being cited six times by the israeli supreme court. as someone of arab origin, muslim, i take that as the badge of honor. it demonstrates the intellectual openness of the court.

many other courts have used as references of ideas people who come from different cultures and different ideas. well, fast forward a little bit. world war ii, the universal declaration of human rights in 1948, the covenants in 1963 -- i thought i would bring some numbers to your attention. we have 198 countries in the world. 191 countries have written constitutions. 163 countries have adopted these constitutions between 1965 and 2012. this is very important, because the international covenant on civil and political rights has 167 state parties, whereas the international covenant of

economic and social cultural rights has 160 countries. the convention, for example, on the rights of the child has 193 countries. the convention against racial discrimination, 175. the convention on racial elimination of discrimination against women, 187. you start comparing texts of national constitutions post-1965 with the contents of these international conventions, and you not only see a correlation, you see almost exact text lifted from the covenants into the national constitution. now, implicit in that is a process of harmonization of which,l constitutions tende, in turn for the process of

application at the national level, impacts on the national level. the conclusion is that there is a process of harmonization through the importation of international human rights and other norms into national constitutions that seeps into national law, seeps into the application by the courts themselves, and necessarily invite comparison and borrowing from one to the other as application. >> in how many of the countries is the constitutional guarantees of human rights aspirational rather than law to be applied? >> that is a very subjective judgment, because when you look at the texts themselves, the

texts did not make a very sharp distinction in that respect. it is when you look at the application of it that you start seeing a distinction between the two. >> i did have one question from your first remarks about the diversity, recognition of different religious communities, to control matters, say, a family law. one of the sizable population of people who are not affiliated with a particular faith -- i think in modern times, there are more of those that in ancient days. >> definitely so, but in that case, they would be subject to using the civil law concept

approach to they would be subject to whatever national law exists, assuming it has been farsighted enough to devise an alternative national system to those who do not want to be bound by religious system or religious community. >> it would be interesting to hear how that plays out in israel. >> in israel, we have an exclusive jurisdiction to divorce and marriage cases. exclusive. yet federal jurisdiction and inheritance case os, or both of the parties agree to go to -- [unintelligible] we have a parallel jurisdiction and division of property and custody of children, between

the civil court and religious court. in this case, the first goes to the first court. it is running to the jurisdiction, we call a great if it goes to the religious, jurisdiction will be to the first, the religious one. they have the right to give rulings according to be specific religious law of the specific -- without intervention of other laws. despite the fact that the supreme court of the state of israel decides that any specifics of what cases, there should be equality to women, according to the civil law that is not according to religious

law. it was a landmark decision of the supreme court, gives equality to women more than is given according to jewish law. not all the public, but it secular public -- this is a good idea to give equality to women everywhere. >> are you talking specifically about religious law that only a man can give a divorce and women received it? >> yes, this is the situation. i can see that things will be changing. according to jewish law, a man should give divorce, and if he refuses, there is problem. we had a specific case 40 years ago, where the husband refused to give divorced, and he was in jail for 30 years, until he says

yes, you know? [laughter] when he died, his wife insisted to attend his funeral. why? "because i want to see him under the ground." [laughter] >> thank you very much. well, we made several references to one of canada's most appreciated and will mo-- well known ministers of justice and attorneys general. >> we are meeting at an import ant cooperative m -- comparative moment. this is the anniversary of the charter of freedoms, which had a revolutionary impact not only on our laws, but lives. the 22 anniversary of the is really basic law -- israeli

basic law of human rights, which drew upon our basic rights and freedoms. it is the 15th anniversary of the south african constitution, which in turn drew on the canadian charter. i was there recently in south africa, where we had a discussion on the comparative dimensions of the canadian and south african bill of rights. i noted when i was overseas at the time, it never hear about canada when you were overseas trade this time i did, in a reference to something that justice ginsburg -- quoted at that time in cairo, when asked about the united states constitution serving as a model, indicated that she thought that the south african constitution and the canadian charter of rights and freedoms may serve as better models today for constitution-making, in part because of some of the reasons

that justice fish mentioned regarding modernity and the like. the question arises -- why is the charter of rights such a transformative and revolutionary act? taking away from the comparative context for a moment, it just canada -- one has to appreciate that when you look at the canadian charter of life and law, and i am oversimplifying here, but for purposes of time, there are two things that emerge. first is a history of social discrimination, particularly against the vulnerable peoples, that was even at times institutionalized as relatively. discrimination against aboriginal people, the disabled, and the like. second is legal history of discrimination. there was an absence of any constitutional right to