we will do that by enacting a voter bill of rights. in so doing we will guarantee a voter marked paper ballot for all voting and requiring all boats and be counted.

we will bring same day boat registration to the nation saw no qualified voter is far from the poll. we will replace partisan oversight of the elections with non-partisan election commissions. we will restore the vote of 1.4 million african-american men who are far from voting because they are [inaudible] -- are ex-felons. election reforms like proportional representation that can truly reflect voter sentiment. we will take money out of politics and replace it with full public financing and free and equal access to the public airways.

we will guarantee equal access to the ballot for all qualified candidates. [chanting] >> they do not know what they're in for. they're going to find out.

in summary, the green in new deal is a comprehensive program to pull us back from the brink and move beyond the current state of emergency for our economy and our democracy. there is much more to it. you can go to our website and find out more about it. there is more to be done beyond the universe of the green new deal. that is why i am committed to the emergency actions in other areas as well. we need to bring them home. it is the illegal and immoral wars.

and the soldiers and over zero hundred and 40 countries around the world. foreign policy based on militarism and the protection of oil resources will be replaced by diplomacy, diplomacy based on respect for international law and human rights. i will restorer our imperiled civil liberties by repealing the un-american provisions of the patriot act.

it is not only the patriot act. it is also the national defense authorization act.

and the anti-terrorism act which they protest and direct our police to find a non-violent center. i will prohibit the department of common security from conspiring with local police to suppress our freedoms of assembly and speech. i will also work to legalize marijuana. and put it into a state regulatory framework. marijuana is a substance which is dangerous because it is illegal. it is not illegal because it is dangerous.

finally i will in the bipartisan war on immigrants. i will stand up against discriminatory republican malls like the remanent -- laws like the remnants of arizona.

i will stand up to the racist demagoguery that wrongly blames immigrants for the unemployment brought on by wall street's the use of the economy. i will end obama's communities program. it has deported over 1 million immigrants, heartlessly as butting families and taking thousands of children away from their parents. this issue also gets my blood boiling. with that track record, at the obama white house has been the most nine anti immigrant administration in a century.

it is true obama it did a pre- election for things last month and a temporary work permit to a limited number of immigrant use. this group will face deportation at age 30. it is not a solution. i well issue an executive order to end of the deportations now. i will vigorously support passage of the dream act.

i will work to provide a welcoming path to full equal citizenship for undocumented americans who are vital members of our economy and our community. i will work to replace the corporate so-called free trade agreements which generate economic refugees in the first place. these will be replaced with fair trade agreements that respect workers in this country and latin america.

we need these solutions. the public supports them by substantial majorities in poll after poll. why haven't we got and then? -- gotten them? there are big campaigns that have been waged over the past decade. they have been telling us to just be quiet and voter your fears. silence is not an effective political strategy. in fact, the politics of fear has brought us everything we were afraid of.

what democracy needs is not fear and silence but voices and values. it is time to answer the politics of fear with the politics of courage. as those radicals did when they took on the british east and dumped the tea in the harbor and declared themselves free, like the abolitionist did. women suffragists did with the women's party. in each of these cases independent politics was critical to formulate the political demands with frederick jervis said so famously.

it is essential because power concedes nothing without a demand. and never did. it never will. by bringing this demand into the election, we can advance democracy and justice and drive the solutions into the political agenda. the history of politics is killed was social movements of live with political parties that made history together.

abolishing slavery, the right to form unions, child labor laws, safe workplaces, social security, the new deal and more. it is understanding our political voice encourage. the royal aspirations of the american people can no longer be denied. well have a base from which can build and dry for those critical solutions.

wall street politicians have kept them off the table. we are the only vehicle in this election. we will get people a choice and a voice in the voting booth and allow them to go to the polls and greed for the green new deal and the reforms that will improve our lives. i ask for something much more. help us raise money. help former new green party areas all over the country. help support our local candidates. insure the voice of principled opposition will be heard now and into the future.

stand up and push forward with this campaign. we signal to the world that we the people have taken the stage once more indian knighted states. -- once more in the united states of america. we will create an unstoppable movement. we will not rest until we have turned it the white house into a green house. we will take back the promise of our democracy and the peaceful future we desert.

thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

[applause] >> wow. i humbly accept your party's nomination for presidential candidate. i realize that many of you are taking a chance on someone that you did not know for very long before, but i hope this was an educated decision you made. i realize there are some concerns on some of my stances, but that is one reason i believe the reform party is going to grow immensely and work very well. we have the ability to talk about these things.

and this discussion is important in any growing process. i believe that through the process that we have going here, we are creating a model. and we are showing ourselves to be true to what america needs and what they want out of leadership. i respected everything you said. you are a wonderful opponent. i respected everything you said in the debate. mr. cross, you are an incredible candidate and i am happy to have you at my side. i would say this also. there is a lot that drew me to this party, as i said before. but right now, as i look at the people who took part in this process, i am more proud. i see the vast stand of americans, young, old. there are some of them who are executives, rich or poor.

i see the people who are here in everyday life, those who are actually affected. not the upper, upper echelon. not the super-elites. but those who are affected by the decisions made by government. i promise you -- i will do what i can to represent the ideals and beliefs of this organization. the reform party encompasses and embodies what america is looking for. reform. we have to get this back to a simpler form of government. is simpler form of economics. this is not over-complicated. i greatly appreciate your faith in me at this point. and i reach out to each and every individual with any problems with my stances. i want to work with you. i want to work with you and i

want you to work with me in return. this is the only way it works for everyone. with everyone. if this is a unilateral decision, it will end in destruction. it will end in failure. and that is not what this party is about. this is about success and a better future. something where we can leave something better for our children and they have more than we had. something where we can strive to do better. in every aspect, in every scenario. where we can project a real image of democracy around the world. not the psuedo-democracy we have now and can make decisions in congress within the government and get things done. it won't be a do-nothing government or america.

it is not going to be an america where people look at us and whisper behind our backs on what we think we are or what we used to be. they will look at us as what we are now and how far we will go into the future. the reform party is the greatest party that there is now. we have nowhere to go but up. we are growing. we will be the voice of the middle class and all of america. i am not a proponent of the 1% or 99%, it is 100% of everyone in america. i will not focus on social issues. that's not what we need. that belongs outside of politics. i will focus on our economy. on the defense of this country.

and on making our americans better educated to make the decisions we need made every single day. i will intensify my focus on bringing jobs back to america. people who are working, grinding their hands to the bones, they don't have time to do the research needed. we need people that are going to be effectively integrating themselves into this process. this democratic process. this great, american process we have. it is what sets us apart from other countries and sets us apart from the communists, those who would be considered religious, fanatical countries. we are america. we are great, and wonderful, and

proud. i think the reform party is the microcosm of america. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you so much, andre. that was just marvelous. i would like to give the opportunity to mr. cross, who is our vice-presidential nominee. [applause] >> i am grateful to be nominated for the reform party for vice president. i look forward to working with mr. barnett to help restore america to its position of strength and respect in the world that we ought to be in, and that we have dropped from in the two-party system.

we need a better way than we are doing things now. even the campaign going on largely at the presidential level is personal attacks and slurs. it reminds me of that commercial, "where is the beef." a few policies and positions are set forth, with little detail provided and little focus on how they will do this and turn around the problems we have now. i am sure mr. barnett and i will spend time working on options to set forth before the people to provide alternatives to what we have and solutions to our problems.

we need a government, of the people, for the people, by the people. we have gotten away from that. i am not a politician. i am a citizen candidate. not a great speaker. i love my country. the founders of this country were not polished politicians. they were generals, farmers, scientists, and all sorts of walks of life that stepped forward to help serve their country. we need this attitude, we need to present that attitude before the people so they understand that there is a better way, there is a chance to have a better way through the reform party than giving up hope. the american people, many i have talked to, photographic shops at wal-mart, they feel the same

way. that there is nothing they can do and there is no hope. everything is out of control. the two parties are so polarized that nothing can be done and we just have to go forward and see what happens, when things collapse or crash. that is a pathetic situation and we can do better than what we have with the republicans and democrats. i look forward to assisting mr. barnett with his approaches and i believe that together, we can help to make a path for a stronger america, for ourselves and our posterity. [applause] [captioning performed by

national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> a question on our facebook page. you can call in about third- party elections. i am voting for gary johnson because he will stop government control over our daily lives and balance the budget successfully and delegate powers back to the state where they rightfully belong. ron paul has my vote. especially since the rnc has refused entry to third party delegates and thick in the delegation vote. outside parties are much stronger this cycle. i hope that continues. i hope the parties grow very afraid. i am voting for it gary johnson he is covered in the past as a fiscal conservative and that a promising to do so now. you can post your own comments and see what other viewers are saying at c-span's facebook paid. our countdown to the convention continues until our coverage of

the republican convention. starting monday at 2:00 p.m. eastern and the democratic convention starting september 4. every minute, every speech live on c-span, radio and online at c-span.org. featured speakers include jeb bush this monday night, and new jersey governor chris christie with a keynote address tuesday. congress and paul ryan delivers his vice-presidential acceptance speech wednesday and thursday night, mitt romney. use our online convention hub to watch exclusive video feed. add your comments, connect with other viewers. all at c-span.org/campaign2012. in his news conference where he talks about rape and pregnancy, republican congressman todd akin and reaffirmed his intention to stay in the race despite pressure for him to drop out. he has been meeting with supporters to discuss an on-line

fund-raising drive following bye national republican senatorial committee to withdraw campaign funds from his senate race. this news conference was held in the st. louis suburb of chesterfield. >> a good afternoon and welcome here. mr. akin going to give some brief comments and we will follow up with five questions. >> good afternoon and thank you for coming out. apparently, some people were having trouble understanding our message. i would like to be clear on that

today. we are going to be here through the november election. it will be here to win. there may be some negotiations, but they don't include may. e. before us, we have the choice of two americans. s. the america i represent is the america that has more freedom and more jobs. an america with less bureaucracy, big government, and taxes for the future. the america claire mckastrell has given us is an america with less freedom, bigger government, more taxes, and the same stalled economy we have observed for the last three years. thank you all very much.

>> [inaudible] >> as i talked about during our election, we try to work on an idea of principle. it seems to me that over 15 months, eight of us traveled all over the state. a we had and listeners, barbecues, debates. we were outspent in the media a significant number of times. we were six points ahead. it was an election and i was the nominee. >> [inaudible] >> we try to stick with what is the right thing to do.

that is pretty much what we have looked at. >> [unintelligible] how do you characterize the pressure and the large number of republicans from multiple points of view asking you to step aside? is it a set-up? is there some other reason or a conspiracy? >> one of the things i realized through the years, i may not be the favorite candidate of some people within the republican establishment. but the voters made a decision, it's an election, not a selection. >> what do you think your candidacy says two other candidates that might be under pressure in either party to step down [inaudible]

that's pretty much back to same point. i think what we have to do is look at our own hearts and stand up for what the principle is, not the politics. i think maybe america has gotten into trouble because we pay too much attention to politics and not enough attention to principle. >> is there anyone or anything that could have changed your mind? [inaudible] family, god, anyone that can change your mind? >> mckastrell could withdraw and give the election to me, that might be a consideration. i think the idea of threats, i am not allowed to talk at

length about those. there have been threats on life and on rape. the fbi is looking into those things. if you wanted to, you could go to the district office and give you whatever they are allowed to give you. >> will you have a normal campaign after this? [inaudible] >> think about it a little bit, 15 months ago, the party was not supporting me. we went out to the citizens of the state of missouri, we took our message to them and tried to give them a vision of hope, america has always been a nation [inaudible] >> what about between now and election day? >> new will campaign the same way we did in the past. >> thank you very much.

if you have other questions, you can direct those to the campaign. we appreciate you coming here today. >> in 2013, the defense cuts and of the sequestration would not have an immediate impact of weapons manufacturers but it would force future contracts to be renegotiated. that is one of the conclusions. and the cuts would begin in january and are part of the 2011 budget control act which raised the debt ceiling. the defense secretary said the cuts would be unsustainable. congress could avoid the sequester if it acts budget savings of $1.20 trillion before january. this is about an hour and 10 minutes.

>> i think we are ready to get started. good morning, everyone. i am a senior fellow here for the defense budget studies. thank you all for coming out on a friday morning in the summer in august when everyone should be on vacation. but apparently, we are not. we are seeing some analysis today that focuses on the fiscal year 2013 defense budget that the administration put forth to congress and is now being considered in congress. and also sequestration and what that would mean. i will try to keep it less than

30 minutes and then open it up for q&a. the briefing is divided into two parts. the first will be what is in the 2013 budget request, how was it different from last year, and is it consistent with the strategic guidance for the department? the second part that i am sure most people are more interesting in -- interested in the is sequestration. i have done a little more detailed announced -- analysis of what it would mean in terms of budget authority and out reach. and talk about what it would mean. i will start with an overview of defense spending. this chart shows total national defense spending and inflation in just a dollars in fiscal year $13. the blue part is the base budget, the red part is the funding for iraq and afghanistan that has been on top of that. and so you can see in inflation-

adjusted dollars, defense spending and the projection. that year, the prediction was -- your taking total defense spending/total economic output. gdp has grown steadily.

an average of about 3.2%. it has risen and fallen in cycles several times since then. defense spending as a% of gdp would be 4%. if you take out war funding, it would be 3.4%. if you project through fiscal year 17 like the budget does, defense spending would be about 3% of gdp. this is the lowest it will have been since 2001. the defense is nowhere near 2001. defense spending right now will be about 18.5%. if you take out more funding, it is about 15% of the total federal budget that is

consistent with modern day norms. what does all of this tell you about the overall level of defense spending? three things. it is a relatively high level in terms of inflation adjusted dollars. it is affordable as a percentage of gdp, lower than modern day norm. and as a proportion of overall federal spending and there were substantial shifts. the lines that you see here are what was predicted in last year's budget request. the projected out to 16. the red line is this year's budget request that projects up to 17. i will note a few things here. of procurement, and i got hit

the hardest. there was about a 14% reduction in plant procurements spending in his budget request relative to the previous year. but it was only reduced by about 4%, research and development money was reduced about 3%. it calls ready this a priority, so it got cut by less so it appears to be a priority. it also calls on keeping research and development to maintain our cutting edge in technology as a high priority as well. and research and development was not cut as much. it appears to beonsistent with that. in order to protect those areas of the budget, they had to make

deeper cuts. the cut in military personnel is primarily driven by the reduction in the number of troops and calls for reducing strength by about 100,000 over five years. it also includes proposed cuts in basic pay that will not start until fiscal year 15 and beyond. and increases in the fees paid. when you take the reduction in spending on military personnel accounts. i would want to point out two things here that i think our long-term issues that the department will have to deal with. just assuming that they can keep the plan that is in this budget. there are two big areas of the defense budget that you will have to deal with and it will be difficult. there are military personnel related costs plus the defense health program. it is $168 billion together.

that is about 1/3 of the defense budget. it has been growing much faster than the rest of the defense budget over the past decade. the cost per person in the military grew by 46%, even adjusting for inflation and not including the additional costs of the wars in iraq and afghanistan. we can't sustain that growth. released a report about rebalancing the military compensation system that would allow them to come up with a set of reforms that would both reduce costs that they will need to do end improve the value that are received by service members. right now, they are stuck in a rut where compensation costs keep going and they keep proposing changes to cut benefits and they consistently

get rejected by congress. if we continue on that path, we will approach the point where the defense budget is consumed entirely by personnel costs. it will result in further cuts over time. that is one area that they will have to deal with and i refer you to the july report on rebalancing the compensation system for a good approach on how they can take a new look at this. on the right-hand side, the cost for readiness and training is funded out of the operations and maintenance part of the budget. it goes to readiness and training and you can see here interestingly, i would say, the readiness and budget for the air force and navy are almost identical. it is interesting because the services are very different sizes in terms of people. a very different budget that

comes out to be almost equal. this is another area they will have to take a serious look. nobody wants to cut readiness, but the outlook of the physical environment may force changes like that. you may have to look to a readiness system where some portion maintains a hyper readiness and others take a conscious reduction in readiness in order to free funds for other priorities in the budget. if you don't address these parts of your budget, this is over half. if you don't address the costs and growth in military personnel related costs, you're focusing on the future cuts that are likely to come on things like retirement and r&d. i looked at the budget request by services, to see how each of these services shared.

the army took about 9.3% reduction relative to what was requested in last year's budget. the navy got a 5.2% reduction, the air force of 6.1%. this would appear to be consistent with the strategic guidance as well that calls for a bit to the asia-pacific region and a greater reliance on air and sea power. the cuts are disproportionately heavy on the army. there is the caveat i pointed out in the report here that i think is interesting. part of the reason why the army cuts appear as large as they do in the first couple of years is because the army moved personnel costs from their base budget to the war budget, the overseas contingency operations. these were costs that were previously funded in the base budget. between the army's move and the marine corps included in the department of the navy budget, it is $6 billion of personnel

costs moved to the horror part of the budget. the budget caps that we will get to don't apply to the war related funding. if you designated as war-related and congress goes along with that, it doesn't count against your budget cap. if you move the money back then that had previously been the base budget, it turns out in the first year, the air force takes the largest cut which would be inconsistent with the strategic guidance. i do all of this comparison of last year's budget requests in the fight up to this year's fight. and i am going to tell you to not read much into it. it is not a good indicator of where the budget is headed in the future. the bloc that you see in the middle, it gives you what defense spending actually was in

each of these years in the past, what was enacted into law by congress. each of the alliance show you the projection that came out with the budget request for that year. i have color coded it by administration. ec the last downturn in defense spending, they kept predicting growth in future defense spending even as each year the budget continued to decline. the steepest part of the decline, the budget requests were incredibly inaccurate. the first year predicted 5% more funding than that actually got. last year, they were overestimating what they would get by 30%. unfortunately, we might be falling into the same pattern today. we only know the difference between what they predicted in the first year and what actually

happened. they were off by 5%. again. we could be falling into the same trap. that is why i offer caution. it is not a forward-looking indicator. because it is an election year, the change in in fydp , there is not that much difference. from carter to reagan, they both predict about the same rate of growth, 4%. from reagan to the first bush administration, very little difference. from the bush administration to the clinton administration, very little difference. even from the clinton administration to george w. bush administration, very little difference.

and then again from the george w. bush to the obama administration, very little difference between the last budget request and the first budget crest of the new administration -- the first budget request of the new administration. the new administration, they have to hurry and get that budget request out quickly in the first month. they do not have time to make a whole lot of changes to it. the best they can do is make tweaks. if there is a change in administration, did not expect the next fydp will show a huge change. the large change ec from a shift in administration is typically in the second request. that is also shown on this chart. sequestration, the thing that everyone is interested in, i

will walk you through the mechanics of sequestration. how you determine the amount in dollars, how you determine the percentage, and then go through emmet and outlays -- and then go through and look at our place. figuring out the dollar amount of the cut. $546 billion for a total national defense spending. that is the budget function. about 95% of national defence spending is the department of defense. that is what i will focus on. because the super committee failed to reach an agreement for an additional $1.20 trillion, you have an automatic reduction that takes effect. that works out to $54.7 billion reduction. that leaves you $491 billion,

the most you can spend for national defense in name fy13 budget. you look at, what did they request? i am assuming that the 13 budget request goes through. that is the level of funding or close to it. if congress appropriates a little more, the cuts would be a little more. this is what the administration requested in total defense spending. $26 billion from other parts of national defence. a lot of that goes to the department of energy. $88.5 billion in war funding. we have a total of $551 billion of national defense spending that counts against the cap.

that would require a reduction of $59.2 billion to hit the cac level. bring it down to $491 billion. dod would receive a proportionate amount of those cuts. this assumes the fy13 request is enacted into law. this would act on whatever level of funding is any continuing resolution. if it is a straight continuing resolution from the fy12 level of changes, it would be about $5 billion higher. you have the dollar amount of the cuts, next step, how do calculate this uniform percentage cut that is required? those are the words in the law itself. uniform percentage reduction.

you start by saying, $56.5 billion. could be more or less. and then you divided by total available funds in the applicable accounts. that includes the base defense budget, oco funding, and this is what dod has projected what would be carried forward. and then you get to subtract something. the president has notified congress he will exempt military personnel accounts. he did to exempt $149.4 billion -- you get to exempt $149.4 billion. if the president had not exempted military personnel accounts, it would work out to 8.1% reduction.

that is the path not taken. >> why are you including oco? >> oco does not count against the cap. it does not affect the dollar amount of the reduction. it does factor into the percentage because that money is in the accounts for the money is coming from. let me see if i can make this clear. the funding does not count against the budget cap, so does not affect the dollar amount of the cuts. when you calculate the percentage, it is in those accounts. the money gets mixed together so it is part of the money in

those accounts. you still have a loophole that you could read designate some funding as oco elated and it will not count against your budget cap. -- related and will not count against your budget caps. if you have an account, when the cut is applied, it is coming out of that money as well. this graph shows ithere is 0 cut for milpers. this is an important note. sequestration ax on budget authority. it cuts budget authority for 2013. uniform percentage cuts, if you break it down, you go to the smaller count levels, there will be a 10.3% reduction. it is down to the program project activity level. there is precedent for this, we have had sequestrations in the past. if you pick the procurement

budget, for example, air force budget line-item. able be cut by 10.3%. -- it will be cut by 10.3%. the department does not have any flexibility. it is formulaic, you applied the cuts as is mandated by the law. what could happen if this goes into effect, the department could come back and say, we want to read program money between accounts and congress could give them the ability to do that. by default, they do not have the ability under the law. where it gets interesting is if you look in terms of outlays. outlays are important because that is when dod spends money. budget authority is when congress says this is how much money you have to spend. we're going to write contracts,

awardees contracts, contractors will perform the work, and then we will pay them. when you pay them, it becomes an outlay. that is what is important to industry. when you cut the budget authority, you'll see a reduction in and outlay. this money goes directly to pay individuals. that money, the rate is very fast. payroll expenses are spent in the first year. more than 95% of military personnel budget authority becomes outlays in the first

year. you spend less than a quarter in your first year. it is a little higher in the second year and it gradually ramps down over the next three years. rdt &e funding, dod spends about half of that money in the first year. it gradually slopes down on the years that follow. this means the reduction in outlays from sequestration will not be uniform across all of these accounts. the account spend the money at different rates. i went through and did the analysis of what will be the reduction in terms of outlays. military personnel is 0% because sequestration does not affect military personnel accounts.

the reduction and procurement will be 3.5% in the first year. family housing, 6.9% reduction. actual dollar amounts, they are in the document we are releasing today. what does this mean? that means there is some question here for the defense industry. the weapons makers, people will make weapon systems, they depend on procurement funding. what this means is they will not see an immediate reduction, of 10%. they will see a much less reduction. there are also some defense contractors who perform maintenance and support services, that type of work is funded out of o &m money.

it will take three or four years before the 10% reduction in budget authority becomes a 10% reduction in outlays for contractors. >> [inaudible] >> three or four years. >> [inaudible] >> procurement. >> pact is an average? >> -- that is an average. >> it can vary from contract to contract, absolutely. there are all sorts of interesting things that would happen under sequestration. >> your analysis is based on [inaudible] >> it is specific to fy13 funding.

>> [inaudible] >> when they come out with the budget request, they estimate based on their budgets what rate they think they will spend all the money. what i have done here is take that forecasted outlay rate and i have backed out of it. if he cuts -- it could very if people change their behavior. contracting officers change their behavior. i am not sure if they will have the ability to do it, or the incentive to do it. what would be affected? do not get me wrong, everything in dod would be affected by sequestration. this is a clumsy, completely

non-strategic approach to cutting the defense budget. this is not the policy. i do not think it was ever intended to be good policy. contractors would see an immediate reduction in new contract awards, contract extensions, exercising of contract options. dod would likely have to go back to contractors and renegotiate their contractors to buy in smaller quantities. let me give you an example. we're planning to buy two virginia class submarines. if the budget authority for that year gets cut by 10.3%, they will not have the money toward those contracts. you cannot buy 1.8 subs, so what do you do? you have to renegotiate your contractors.

they gave you a price before that was dependent on building two subs. if you are only going to build one, the price will be higher. >> [inaudible] the contracts are going to get all distorted. you were going to look at all contracts being renegotiated. >> it is a different beast altogether. sequestration could happen on top of the cr. a continuing resolution would do is freezes your funding at last year's level. if you have a program where you had planned to ramp up funding to go from building one sub 22 subs, you would not be able to do that. if you had a program where you had projected you wanted to ramp down production, you cannot

ramp down either. you have to continue at the previous year's rate. sequestration would happen on top of that. you would have to go back and renegotiate again. sequestration, a lot of things in dod can survive a continuing resolution. in fact, we are used to it. you can delay contract awards until after the cr has expired. or you can ask for an exemption from that. we have dealt with that in almost every single year since 1976, when they started the new budget process we have now. almost every single year, we have started the fiscal year on a continuing resolution. the department, it is not good,

it slows things down, but the department can handle that. sequestration is different. it would create a much larger mess. >> a larger mess on top of what is already -- >> you keep talking about the 10.3%. for fy13, the cuts would be closer to 14%. >> at the 10.3% is the reduction in budget authority for the year. by the time sequestration takes effect, you are a quarter of the way through the fiscal year. he'll have to apply that reduction in the remaining nine months of the year. the dollar amount, though, is 10.3% less than what it otherwise would have been. >> [inaudible] >> right.

in some accounts, that is very important. you are spending money very quickly. if he of all this messiness, it happens, and you have to renegotiate all of these contracts. that would likely cause you to reconsider some of these programs in the future. sequestration, it will not directly terminate programs. making the unit cost go up, reducing the purchasing power across all the different acquisition programs, is going to is goingdod reconsider some of these programs. -- going to make dod reconsider some of these programs. i do not think people are aware of what this would do. dod civilian employees, nearly all of their funding becomes outlays in the first year.

that means a reduction of 10.3%, if you were going to reduce the amount of money spent on them, and the remaining nine months of the year, have to cut by 13.7%. we employ about 791,000 civilians. that means about 108,000 of them would have to be furloughed or laid off. that is a substantial impact. that would have been nearly immediately, within the days and weeks after sequestration occurs. dod would need to control these people. the longer they wait, the shorter amount of time they have to make of that 10.3% reduction. sequestration would slow down

nearly everything else dod dallas. military construction projects, training, peacetime operations, we would have to defer maintenance for things like ships, aircraft, you name it. a lot of things would be affected by sequestration. i think it is also important to note what would not be affected. there are people out there raising the rhetoric about sequestration. it is bad enough as it already is. you do not need to exaggerated. you do not need to use hyperbole. there would be no base closures as a result of sequestration. it is prohibited by the law. no actions taken by the

president may result in a domestic base closure. you cannot close bases as a result of sequestration. in the days of substantial size, you cannot close without explicit permission from congress anyway. no one in the active guard or reserve would get a pink slip. they would not be laid off or furloughed. that is because the president has already notified congress that he will exempt personnel accounts. there are reductions already planned in military industry. those would continue to go through. there would be no reductions in pay for military personnel. your basic pay comic your allowances, retirement, -- your basic pay, your allowances, retirement, not affected by sequestration.

one notable exception, military health care, about 32 billion a year is funded out of the o&m account. that is subject to sequestration. it would be cut by about $3 billion. what would that mean for dod? that is a good question to ask the department. i suspect if sequestration actually happened, i think they would come back to congress very quickly with a reprogramming request to restore the funding. they would have to take that $3 billion from somewhere else in the budget or congress would have to appropriated separately. there are a lot of ways that could happen. i do not know how that would play out exactly.

the defense held program is subject to sequestration. >> -- the defense health program is subject to sequestration. >> is there an annual cap? >> there is a section in the law that gives them a one time reprogramming request. they could come back with a $56 billion reprogramming request and move all that money around. it still requires congress to approve it, though. dod cannot do it on their own. the president cannot do it on his own. >> it does not go through all of congress? >> i need to go back to the law. i can get back to one that. >> that would be the way to resolve the dilemma. >> in my reprogramming request, i will put money back into the

sub program. but then i will have to cut it from someone else. that requires identifying winners and losers. that means some people, districts, are affected more than others. that is a difficult thing to do. that is a strategic thing to do, to go back and seriously reprivatized -- we prioritize what you are doing with your budget. it is by no means certain they would be able to do that. >> [inaudible] >> is a one-time thing. they have their normal reprogramming process they can continue to do, but there are limits to that. that goes to the defense committees.

>> that is not someone else? >> that is in the bca. no immediate program terminations directly because of sequestration. finding that has already been obligated does not affected by sequestration. if you are a defense contractor, sequestration happens on january 2, on january 3, all defense contractors will be working on contractors were funding has already been obligated. what sequestration a facts is the ability of the department to obligate new funding. >> is there actually -- does it turn out to be a good news story in the short term?

>> if congress does enact the cr, the current level of the base defense budget for 2012 is $535 billion. it is about $5 billion more than in is the request. when it comes time for sequestration to hit, you just get cut by $5 billion more. >> [inaudible] >> you calculate the amount of the cuts. whatever the difference is, let me go back to that slide. the cap will not change.

it will be $491 billion for total national defense. dod is 95% of that. if it is $5 billion more. the cap is hard. >> one of the things that lockheed ceo has warned about is the potential for this nightmare chain reaction of chargebacks for all the big time defense contractors to say, the budget has changed x %. you owe less more under our agreement because you have changed our contract. our agreement now has changed by this amount. have you calculated the potential consequences as part of your analysis? is that a big shadow that could be on the other side of this thing? >> that is very true. that would be part of the

process of renegotiating contracts. unit cost would go up as a result of that. it starts down at the subcontractor level and it would ripple its way all the way up to the prime contractor level. you can buy less with the money you have. the $10 billion you plan to spend on the joint strike fighter, when that gets cut by 10%, you have $9 billion. you are not cutting the number of aircraft by 10%, to work cutting it more by 10%. he will not know the exact amount of that until it happens. there is a lot of uncertainty. especially when you get down to the second tier and third tier

level. >> for those people below the primes, they could be looking at losses at that point. if the feds have a hard ceiling about how much they could spend and they cannot make up the differences, they will just be out of luck. >> they would just have to pass those costs on. it would be a reduction in buying power. that would be the end result. whatever widget they were buying used to cost $100, now you buy it at a lower quantity. produce it as efficiently . yo >> when you reopen these contracts, they may have these overruns they may stick into the renegotiated contract. they were the only vendors that could produce that weapon system. d.o.d. is not in a good negotiating position. they will have to suck up

whenever cost the contractors give them. the cost has gone up to $120. i cannot just buy 10% fewer. that will post its way up to the prime contractor. >> your analysis of the impact supports the labor department's statement that contractors are not obligated to tell everybody they may not have a job. >> i cannot say if their interpretation is true or not. you would need to ask an attorney to read the law to see what applies. the outlays for procurement will not drop 14%. outlays for procurement will not happen immediately. there is delayed effect. the people in the defense

industry know this. when they tell you that their labor force will have to be reduced by 10% because of sequestration, it is true. it just does not happen in january 2013. >> can you lay out how sequestration can play out for the f35. what he has raised some alarms about what impact it could -- lockheed has raised some alarms about what impact it could have. i am curious to know how it plays out. they have been stretching it out for a long time. how will this play out? >> it will be disruptive for a program like that. it has faced numerous delays

over the past several years. every budget request has been slipped into the future. they have reduced quantities. programs like that may already be at the breaking point in terms of how you can stretch the without breaking them. that is at the aircraft and component level. they have a test program. it is for the whole aircraft. that is dependent upon having and left -- enough test programming. this has to happen in series. it is the kind of thing if you take money out of it, things cannot happen in the order they are supposed to happen.

>> is it just that f35? they have a mass of programming that they can organize and adjust to take those reductions. they could emphasize the testing and not emphasize other parts. >> the f35 is diffent from other d.o.d. programs. it is multiservice. you have an air force procurement budget and a navy procurement. it is at which level the congress appropriates the money. they cannot move money without permission of congress. to try to pinpoint budget authority would be up to the air force. they have some ability to say if we have 10% less funding this

year to spend on our research and development part, how do we do that? how do we slow this down? how do we arrange the test schedule? how do we optimize within the resources we have? this would slip the program again. with the unit cost going up, forget how many aircraft you plan to buy. in fiscal year 2013, how many did we plan to buy? 29. it would not just be a cut of 10% of that. >> all of the bills have 29. >> cut that not just by 10%.

you have to go back to lockheed and y we negotiated a contract in the past that said we would buy at a certain rate. we cannot buy at that rate. they have a fixed overhead. i have been to the factory. if you are buying 10% fewer production items in a year, their overhead cost are the same. your cost per aircraft will increase. >> a lot of the contractors complain about their procurement being hit disproportionately. you hear people say there is a big difference among programs -- there will be thousands of personnel involved in oversight

of a program as large as the f35 program. have you given any thought to how would the lasting effect ultimately lead to a more efficient pentagon? could it reduce the bureaucracy in the pentagon? >> it depends to the cut. >> do you know how the civilian workforce breaks down? >> i do not have the numbers on who does what in the civilian work force. some of them perform maintenance. some of them do infrastructure support, like mowing the grass. some do administrative jobs. if you have to cut 100,000 of these people, some of them you could just cut the jobs and do less work. some of them he would be

cutting from job functions that need to be done by someone else at that point. you do not have extra money to hire contractors to do it. what will you do? you will have to reshuffle amongst people in the civilian work force and bring in the uniformed military since they are not being cut under the sequestration. the military may be doing some job functions that d.o.d. civilians used to do. it could mean reduced oversight for some programs. in the past, the d.o.d. has made a priority of building of the acquisition. this has hit them as well. maybe they would both people round, change job assignments. that should be part of their sequestration planning. >> is there anything that would prevent them from laying off

people, but may be cut hours? >> for some jobs, they could do that. the 791,000 number is number of full-time equivalents. that is about how much they would have to reduce their fte's. some of you have been getting 40 hours a week. now you are getting 30 or 20. if you are the individual, that is a cut. you will feel that in your pocketbook. maybe it is not as bad as losing your job entirely, but it is still bad. >> they are not discussing any of this planning. have you talked to anyone

inside? >> i have talked to a controller who has testified before congress who said they are not planning sequestration. it would be wise to start planning. we are 130 days away from sequestration when it would go into effect. it has been more than a year since the act has been passed. i would not write it off as if it will not occur. i do not think they are writing it off. there is a reluctance to plan for it because if you to start planning, the real planning they could do -- the reduction is the uniform percentage in budget authority across the accounts. they cannot change that. they can work on a reprogramming package. if you make us cut that 56

billion, we want to reallocate it across different accounts because we went to protect some high priority items. they could start doing that planning. they are likely to get cut. that is the downside risk and why they are not showing their hand. >> what if congress comes back and rewrites the law? how bad is that? can things be reversed?

>> it can be reversed. if they restore the funding before the end of the fiscal year, this would not be as dramatic. the longer you wait, the more d.o.d. will have to delay or exercise contract options. you open up a can of worms. the longer you delay it, though more warm to open up out of the can. it is not an all or nothing on january 2. this is not like a government shutdown where all of the effects our immediate. the effects will be more gradual. the real exception is d.o.d. civilian personnel. if congress comes back in april with a new administration and they say, we have a different deal.

we will restore that d.o.d. funding, it is not too late. they can still do that. d.o.d. would have time to recover and award contracts like they had planned. >> will the contract be renegotiated toward the end of the fiscal year? will they push that off or address the plans? >> you have to ask d.o.d. that is part of what i think they should be planning for right now -- what are the ones where they will to wait? the closer you get to the end of the fiscal year, the more they will have to do. >> we have had a sequestration before. it was at the end of the 1990's. how were these contracts renegotiated? was it catastrophic? >> it is not helpful because the ones we had then were smaller. the largest one that i am aware of was in fiscal year 1986. that was after they passed

gramm-rudman hollins. it is a little different because the magnitude of the cut is smaller. they knew it when they passed it what it would do with. >> do you have the same dilemmas where people are purchasing hardware and you have to renegotiate the cost? >> we do but to a smaller extent. >> it was not that difficult to do at the time. >> it was difficult. i was quite young at the time. i cannot tell you firsthand. in the early 1990's. the sequestrations were small. it was less than 1%.

you can handle that by sending someone home for a day. >> did they find out then that the money -- they spend more money on the renegotiation? when they had to redo these contracts, they ate up all of the savings. >> it does not eat up the savings. it reduces your purchasing power. if you are going to buy 40 or 50 subs, if you are buying them as a less cost-effective production rate, it will cost you more in the long run. you'll save the money up front. it caps the amount of money you can appropriate. it is near term savings with a long-term consequence. >> it is true of any defense

spending reduction. congress cut the amount of expenditures before all this happened -- a change of the unit costs. >> it is not in the defense expense reduction. it is an unplanned reduction. if you went into this and said, the defense budget will be 10% less a share, let's work up a budget that is 10% less. you could avoid a lot of these costs. if this program is a high priority, i will maintain the production rate. i would not have to renegotiate the contract. i might kill another program. there is some cost with that, contract termination fees. you pay it. it is small. you could make targeted cuts like that and he would not incur all of these extra expenses in the long run and finishing contracts.

>> we will take this down to the 491 level. could they still get sequestration? >> that is a technicality in the law. in the first year, it is a penalty sequester. it will not happen this way. it could. if you appropriate less money than is currently requested, at the $491 billion level for a total of national defense, you get hit with a sequestered of 54.7 billion. it only works that way the first year. it is a penalty sequestered because the supercommittee fails. in the future years, you have

this budget cap. it is still reduced. it is a slightly different level. it grows with inflation. that is different because it does not have to be a sequester. if you come in with a budget request that fits within the cap, no sequestration. you do not have uniform cuts. you could target the cut yourself. you have to have a budget. congress has to appropriate a budget that fits within that cap. fiscal year 2013, you'll get a sequester. it will cut you even if you cut your own budget. there is no incentive for anyone to cut the budget preemptively because you get cut again >> most of the reductions in the bca are reductions to projected

growth. before the sequestration would occur, what have we seen in terms of a real cut in the defense department? everyone speaks as if this is a catastrophic event. it is all reductions to projected growth. there may be some real cuts. have you broken that down? >> i have some of that analysis in the report. if you look at total defense spending including war funding, it is coming down quickly because we are out of iraq. you are seeing a reduction in defense spending in defense outlays. the reduction of war funding will happen as we drawdown in afghanistan. in the base defense budget, 2010 was the peak in the budget. it has declined since then in real terms.

the fiscal year 2013 request is about 2.3% less than the appropriated amounts in fiscal year 2012. that is in real terms. we are seeing a 2.3% reduction. if you look at the projection over the coming years, it is flat. it goes slightly higher than inflation, .o1% over the next five years. do not to read too much into those. >> these are the obama administration's budget request. it projected flat at the same

peak level of defense spending. fiscal year 2011 came up. fiscal year 2012 went down. it is flat for the projection in the future. the reagan administration was projecting growth in defense spending all the way through the end of the administration although the budget kept coming down. the start of that drawdown from fiscal year 1985 until 1986 was sequestration. >> sequestration can affect all of the federal agencies. can you give us insight how it will play out for the other agencies?

there are significant differences because the pentagon buys that. they have to pay people. >> i have not looked at that for other people. if their expenses are primarily paying people payroll expenses, then the outlay rate would be much faster and initially. they would see greater reductions. the way the cut works -- because the supercommittee fails, you take the 1.2 trillion in deficit reduction they were supposed to find over the coming years, divide in half. half comes from national defense and the other from non- defense. divide it by nine. you will save in interest savings. if you spend less of that time, you have borrowed less.

you pay less in interest. you end up with 54.7 billion per year that has to come out of national defense and 54.7 billion that has to come out of nondefense it is not just out of discretionary nondefense. some of it comes out of medicare. i do not know how the formula works out over there. it is over nine years. it is equal cuts over nine years. >> the pentagon has committed to cut over 10 years. >> that was relative to projected growth. that took out all projected

growth and reduced the budget by 2.3% this year and kept it for the rest of the decade. that is where they get the 487 billion. >> if sequestration goes through and the commission comes through in january, he talked about working through the senate. you can have it retroactively applied in january. are there any weird snags with that scenario? >> congress can make their own roles. they can make it go back like it never happened. a few weeks after sequestration has taken effect, it is very quickly after the fact that they are able to push something through congress. it is difficult to do if you have a divided congress. they can do a lot of that before they have done much. the d.o.d. does not move quickly on renegotiating contracts.

they may have notified contractors and started dialogue with them. the d.o.d. civilians may have been furloughed by then. you have to see how quickly they do that. in a down economy, i doubt people will have found new jobs. that would be a difficult thing to do if you have a divided congress. that is why i think you have to start sequestration more seriously. look at the polling results. after this election, we are likely to still have a divided congress.

it still matters how much a majority you have in each house whether you can push this through. whether or not sequestration happens, it has to do with defense we can talk about the real effects of sequestration. that is not what will turn this debate. if that were to change the outcome, it would have done it already. this debate is about taxes and entitlements. what kind of compromise congress can reach on that. >> where do you see fuels costs getting into this? how did you see this working out under sequestration? what happens to these efforts to bring that under control? >> we spend about $15 billion in the defense budget on fuel. it is through o &m accounts. fuel is not discretionary. for the war effort in afghanistan, they will get what they need. it will prioritize ongoing

military operations. the vast majority of it is for peacetime military operations. the air force is the largest fuel consumer in the federal government. you'll see a cut back on things like flying hours for airplanes. cutbacks on steaming days for ships. people would do less if they have less fuel. there will be less training. readiness could be degraded by some amount if we do not do the training currently planned.

>> if you cannot go training, can you save money in other ways? >> you put less wear and tear on the equipment. that helps you on the maintenance side. this will be our last question. >> ppa's has some level of flexibility. can you give insight about what sort of planning d.o.d. should be doing to ensure the best flexibility of those? >> you are kind of limited in

what your budget line items are. the way the congress appropriates the money. some of those budget line items have multiple budget lines to fund that program. your flexibility is a limited within each of those funding lines. that makes it restrictive in the program. there are other budget lines were you go down to the program element level. some of them funded multiple development efforts under one program element. you have flexibility with in that program element on how you allocate the cuts. if you have three different element activities, you could cut one of them or put all of the cuts on that one development effort. it goes down to that program product activity level. o&m accounts tend to be much larger. when you have a much larger accounts, at the budget line item level, you have more flexibility prioritized.

thank you for coming out. have a good weekend. >> starting monday, watch coverage of the republican national convention. next, mitt romney and paul reiser and at a michigan rally. -- paul reiser and that a michigan rally. -- ryan at a michigan rally. >> when i am flying through the major news channels, i tend to be a lot of talking heads, not a lot of substantive talk about

what is going on. that is what i like about it. it is basically stripped of that claire of bias. it is showing us what is happening on the floor of the house of representatives. giving us that insight into how the process actually works. >> daniel watches our programming on comcast. brought to you as a public service by your television provider. >> mitt romney and paul ryan holding a rally in michigan. this is about 30 minutes.

>> thank you, everybody. what a welcome. this is great. look how far back this goes. >> romney, romney.

>> sisters, how are you doing? good to see you. thank you, everybody. thank you so much for coming out. thank you for standing in line, and thank you so much for what you are about to do. you are going to let this man the next president of the united states. it is great to be back home in big ten country. i represent the west part of the western shoreline of lake michigan. you've got the sand and we have a rock. we all come from the same place. i want to tell you something. we got a big decision to make.

we are going to be deciding the kind of country we want to be, the kind of country we are going to have, not just for the next four years, but for a generation. president obama has put our nation on a path to debt, to doubt, and a nation in decline. it is up to us to get this country back on the right track and to retrieve the american idea, and that is the kind of leadership mitt romney is going to provide for our country. the problem we have had is president obama and too many politicians like him in washington have been more

concerned about their next election than they have about the next generation, and that has to end. we need leaders. i see a body over here. you need to send him to the united states senate so we can turn that place around as well. we will lead. we will honor you, michi- ganders, by giving you a choice of two teachers. we will not adopt the issues. we will take responsibility. we will not transform this country into something that it was never intended to believe. we will reapply our founding principles. over the last few years, we have seen a pretty good glimpse of what the president thinks,

of what he believes, where he thinks the country should be. do you remember joe the plumber? it is a belief that the economic pie of life is fixed, that someone's dane it comes at someone else's loss. that is not true. we do not think that that job is to reslice the pie. we want to grow the pie so everybody has a chance at the american dream. there is no other system in the

history of earth that has done more to help the poor, that has done more to give the people the right to rise, to give -- and we do not want to replace that. we want to renew that. remember four years ago when he was talking to a bunch of donors in san francisco, and he said people from states like ours, we like to cling to our guns and religion. i just have one thing to say. this catholic deer hunter is guilty as charged and proud of it. that is who we are. or how about what he gave the other day in virginia. we can probably all say it

together. no wonder our economy is where it is. no wonder 23 million americans are struggling to find work. no wonder unemployment has been above 8% for 42 months. 9% here. no wonder nearly one in six americans are in poverty today, the highest rate we have seen in a generation. the president's notion of a government-centered society with a government-driven society, is not work. it is not working in europe, and it will not work here, and the winner we need to get back on track is mitt romney, and that is why we are going to get the country where it needs to be.

all a the president cannot run on his failed record of leadership, and so he will try to divide us, distort, and distract, demagogue to try to get people to vote for him by default. we are not going to fall for that, and neither are you. we will give the country an alternative vision. we will give the country a choice of features that shows and exactly how we can reaffirm our country. that is why i am so proud to stand with this man, a man who is meeting this moment in history.

a moral compass, a vision for the future, and the ability, the experience, the character and integrity to execute that vision. ladies and gentlemen, that man, with that experience, with that integrity, is the man standing next to me. his name is mitt romney, president of the united states of america. >> thank you. thank you. what a guy, huh? quite a vice president he is going to be. what a welcome. you have touched ann's and my hearts.

wonderful to be at this cider mill and ordered, the have you welcome us on a friday at noon time. it was not easy getting out of work today, and i appreciate you being here to say hi to us. it brings a tear to my eye. it makes us recognize how important you feel this election is. i brought with me to people i am very attached to. one is the one i have been in love with for my whole life, it seems, and i saw ann in elementary school. she was in the second grade when i was in the fourth grade. when she was a sophomore, i noticed again, and this time i paid a lot of attention. we went to a party at a friend boss' home, and she came with someone else. i went to him and i said, i

live closer to ann than you do. how about i give her a ride home for you? sensing i was giving him a favor, i gave her a ride home, and we have been going steady ever since. please say hello to my sweetheart, ann romney. >> hello, michigan. i love coming to a place where i put up my hand and everybody knows what that means. mitt and i grew up here, and this is a special place for us, and we want to have a big w next to michigan in november. i have to say, when i got on the stage and i did not appreciate how many people were here, i

got quite choked up. it is amazing. it is amazing that people in michigan have not forgotten the promise of america and the promise of mitt's father and my father who made their living here, and who came here. both of our fathers came here and made their livelihoods here, and they came from nothing. we know we offer that promise to the next generation, and that is why i get such a response from so many women across the nation who say to me, number one, i am praying for you, ann. i love that. number 2, it is like please tell mitt he has got to save the country.

we are going to save the country for your children so they can have the same promise we had as children. i feel as though we are standing on crape shoulders coming to michigan, knowing that george romney is an institution in this state. how much we love that man, and how i owe so much of our life to the example he gave of service. we're standing on his shoulders today, and we will make michigan and george romney pratt, and i cannot wait for you to hear how mitt lead america to a better place. thank you so much. >> she is quite a woman. she will be quite a first lady, i tell you that. our hearts today are touched by people i know are suffering. you heard there was a shooting in new york city at the empire

state building, one person killed, others injured. the first responders that were there, we appreciate their service and the dedication, and that is true all over the country. we love and appreciate their sacrifice, and willingness to help our fellow americans. an oakland county executive was in a terrible auto accident, still in very serious treatment, our prayers go to him, and also the driver of his vehicle, please include brooks and his family. i love being home, where both of us were born. no one asked to see my birth certificate.

they know this is where we were born and raised. we went to elementary school together, and we went to high school together. we were the cranbook cranes. could we not do better than that? it feels like coming home to see this beautiful state and to see our friends here. it is been quite an experience to watch my dad and mom in their campaign. i got to visit every county in michigan. 83 counties. i went to county fairs. the people of the state responded. they did not always vote party- line. they voted for the person who thought they could get michigan working again. and my dad did, and i will. i have had such an extraordinary experience going

across the country seeing the passion of the american people. we are a patriotic people. i see it sons and daughters in far-off places, i have seen men and women from the state and my state now of massachusetts serving our land. i appreciate those who have it in liberation. those in the armed services, please raise your hands and be recognized. thank you, ma'am. thank you, sir. this is a time when america faces an extraordinary challenges. technology that is being developed by other nations. we face extraordinary

challenges in government, where year after year politicians have been spending more than we have taken in. these challenges we can overcome in one way -- by coming together and being united. it is time to have a president that police in uniting the american people, not dividing the american people. we will be having a convention in tampa. i am told the weather may be a little iffy there. we will be there. we will not just talk about platitudes, small things, we will talk about these big challenges and how we will overcome them. we will talk about the soul of america, what makes this nation and exceptional. we will do everything in our power to bring people together, republicans, democrats, and independents, to understand that our way is the only way for all americans, for the richest and poorest, and everyone in between.

this president tried. i'm convinced he tried. he was heading in the wrong direction is the problem. i saw someone outside the zone here that had a sign that said four more years, and i felt like stopping and saying, you want four more years of 8% unemployment? you want four more years of record numbers of foreclosures and declining home values? you want four more years of trillion-dollar deficits to pass on to your kids? you want four more years of business by gephardt to hire people? do you want four more years of government becoming more and more interested in your lives and businesses?

i do not want four more years of what we have, do you? i want to get america on a different track, of strength and vitality. what i have done is watched the leaders of america's past. the founders had it right when they looked and recognized what would make this nation powerful was not a government under a king or these special advisers in washington that will tell us how to live our lives, how to build our enterprises. instead, by letting individuals pursue happiness in their own ways, which would create the most powerful country in the history of the world. it is the free american people that make the nation is, not the government.

paul said that, he said something the president said, and in part because its so revealing. it revealed something about his views on america that is quite extraordinarily unusual and a departure from america's down the principles. the founders understood that individuals pursuing their dreams are what make our country go, not the government telling us what to do. they recognize that our rights came from the crater, not the government. those rights include it life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. i met at people who did build their business. i met people who got promotions at work, and they aren't that

themselves. i met boy scouts about the eagle scout award, and they did accomplish those things themselves. government did not give it to them. we are in a nation which is found on the principle of individual liberty and greatness. we recognize the spark of divinity in every single human being. we celebrate achievement and accomplishment. this idea that government knows better than free people how to lead america is simply wrong, so we're going to take america on a course which is consistent with that set by the founders. we will keep america the shining city on the hill. [applause] a there are five things that paul and i are going to do, five things that will get this economy going.

i want to see michigan taking off again with huge job growth and rise in take-home pay. i appreciate the work being done by your governor. he is making michigan once again a friendly place for small business and entrepreneurs and innovators. i want to take some of the things he is doing and put them in place in washington by doing five things. number one, we agreed to take advantage of our energy resources and in north america energy-independent. [applause] we have coal, 250 years of it, natural gas that is cheap, oil, nuclear, wind, solar. we're going to take advantage of those energy resources, and that will create three million to four million jobs, 1 million in manufacturing. number two, we're going to make sure that our people have the

skills they need to succeed, that we have the right kind of training programs for our adults. and we have finally fixed our schools and put the kids first, teachers first, and the unions behind. [applause] tober three, we're going have trade that works for america. look, a trade is good for us. it creates jobs. it helps raise incomes. opening up new markets in latin america, really expanding their. one thing i want to make sure we also do -- that is when people cheat like china has been cheating, will crack down on them and not let it continue. [applause] number four, you're not going to get entrepreneurs to take their life savings to open a business or get a business that decides to build a new facility here in

michigan or somewhere else in this country or maybe even a big foreign company who comes here to build a big research center unless they know we're not going to become greece or italy or spain. they want to know that america is willing to deal with our financial issues, so i will do something politicians have talked about for a long time and paul ryan has shown the courage to do -- as are going to work hard to find america to a balanced budget by cutting the deficit and getting it to zero. [applause] number five, i am going to champion small business. i want to help entrepreneurs and innovators to build their businesses and add more jobs. 65% of the jobs created in the last 15 years in america were created by small business. i want to help these small businesses. right now, the president wants to raise the tax on small business from 35% to 40%.

that would kill jobs. do not raise taxes on any american. keep our taxes competitive, get them down. make small business the driving engine of economic growth. that is number one on small business, taxes but also for small business, we have to make sure that regulations are up to date and that regulators see their job as encouraging small business, not crushing it. big companies are usually able to deal with all the regulations because they have hundreds of lawyers, but small business cannot. we have to get regulations pared down to size for small business. number three, that big cloud has been hanging over small businesses -- we have got to repeal and replace obamacare with something that gets the cost of health care under control. [applause] if we do those things from those five things, energy, skills to succeed, education, opening up new markets and cracking down on the cheaters in trade, finally getting ourselves to a balanced budget and an opening an era of encouraging small business -- we do those five things and you are going to see america come

charging back economically. we are on because but -- we are on the cusp of an economic rebound of the world will be surprised with what they see in america and in michigan. we can compete with anybody in the world. we will compete. we will win. and by the way, if we do those five things, we will create 12 million jobs and finally see a rise in take-home pay. from our standpoint, we do not want four years of what we just had. we won four years of what i just described, a brighter, more prosperous america with a strong and prosperous future. [applause] >> [crowd chanting "mitt"]

>> this counts. this accounts. paul mentioned it. there are 23 million americans today out of work. 23 million. 8% of our people are unemployed. about 15% are either unemployed or stopped looking for work or cannot get full-time jobs that need them. half the kids coming out of college cannot get a job or a job that is consistent with a college degree. half our kids. one out of six americans has fallen into poverty. the gap between the haves and have-nots have gotten larger under this president, small -- not smaller. this president's policies have not worked. it is important get america on the right track so we can get those people back to work. so our kids will know that when

they finish school, they have got a good job waiting for them. so we pull people out of poverty and build a bigger middle-class with rising take-home pay. there's another reason this is important, and that is because a strong america is not only good for americans, it is good for the world, good for liberty, good to preserve liberty. i was in great britain some time ago and one of the leaders said to me this, he said, if you're lucky enough to be elected president and did you travel around to foreign capitals, you will undoubtedly have rehearsed for you all of the mistakes they think america is making. but please do not ever forget this, the one thing we all fear the most is a weak america. america's strength, strength in our homes and values and families, strength and our economy and strength in our military, america's strength is the best ally peace has ever known.

and paul ryan and i commit to you that every day in office, we will make americans strength our priority. we will do everything we can to strengthen our homes and values, to strengthen our economy, and to keep our military so strong that no one would ever think of testing the might of the united states of america military. [applause] that is our commitment to you. now i need your commitment to me and to us. i need you to go out and find at least one person who voted for barack obama and get them to change their mind and come to vote for us. [applause] we have got -- i do not know, 5000 or 10,000 people here. 5000 or 10,000 votes than they did in michigan. i want michigan to vote for romney and ryan. if michigan does that, he and i will be the next president and vice president of the united states and america will stay strong and prosperous and free and the hope of the earth.

thank you very much. thank you, michigan. thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] ♪ >> a discussion about the role of religion in the 2012

presidential campaign. this is from "washington journal." caller: i think people want to know mitt romney. and part of mitt romney is being mormon. the majority of americans don't know very much about the lds church. when you look to miss rummy, you're saying, what do i know about him? they want to understand a little bit about the mormon church.

host: in 2008, there's a great deal of discussion about the connection in his church, whether obama would have a church in washington. how in tune do americans seem to be it? caller: there was a lot of questions about his background in the mormon church. not so much this time. the same thing with president obama. people want to know the same thing about romney. where did he come from? what kind of values does he have? where did he go to church? there are obviously those interests. both candidates have been vetted. that has not been an issue this time around to some degree. we did see last sunday, for example, both candidates went to

church. i am not sure that was planned. they both figured out that we will go to church on the same day. we saw obama walking across lafayette park. and romney was in new hampshire. i guess both candidates are probably trying to show to some degree that they are regular people. not sure that they will talk about their beliefs on the campaign trail every single day. but like many americans, they go to church. >> we will open up the phone lines and involve you in the conversation could it have questions about the mormon religion and its involvement, it has any, and the political life of the church, how mormons are reacting to been increased spotlight on their faith -- we welcome your participation in this discussion. we put the phone numbers on the screen and you can send as a tweet or you can send us an e- mail and you can do that with the graphics on the screen. thomas will be with us for 40 more minutes and we would like to take part in the conversation.

the recently reported on polling data. eight in 10 voters ok with romney's mormon faith. caller: i found that interesting, especially looking back at previous polls. there were polls that were done in 45 years when george romney for started running for president. what you saw back then was that the% of americans were weary that he was mormon. now we see with romney as a republican candidate that most people are saying, you know, we're not really concerned about that. it is almost fascinating. they are lockstep behind the republican candidate. maybe politics trumps religion. they are happy and excited about him and they want to beat president obama and they want to go for governor romney. host: an article of faith and

the candidates. now want to share use something a treated to mitt romney about this. he set up a " people are certainly free to learn more about my religious beliefs and the practices of my faith. i was very involved in been pastor of a competition where i attended church and have pretty extensive and direction with a large number of individuals and families that were the potential beneficiaries of my counseling advice." are there any misconceptions about any religion. i feel it is the responsibility of the faith itself to clarify those misconceptions. my office is responsible to the needs of the nation and not of my church. let's parts that a little bit more. can you talk about his reference about being involved as a pastor of a congregation. caller: that is a term that most americans deny use. i think that is a term that mitt romney uses because most

americans can understand what a pastor of a congregation is. his title was having been a bishop of the war in massachusetts. he says pastor because there were 400 people in his congregation. he was also stake president which is more like an archbishop. he was in charge of a new wide variety of wards in the boston area. yes, the bishops job is difficult. he is the guy that regular mormons see when have problems. he got to see that. he spoke in a magazine coming out sunday on how we can equate to people who are not as well- off as him. people who need help, need to go to the bishop to get milk or things to survive or help paying the utility bill, but for nothing. you will see ronnie talk about that possibly in his convention speech this coming week. host: is this a fine line for the campaign and the candidates on how much of is involved with the church to real?

it does bring up more of a connection to the church. caller: there is a fine line that he is trying to draw. he does not want to be the defender of the ;ds church -- of the lds church. he says that i am running for commander-in-chief, not the pastor-in-chief. these are the values i was brought up in and these are the things that i worked on with other people in my faith. host: i wanted to put on the table that mitt romney is by far not the only mormon in public life. this is a publication from "church news."

there are 15 mormons currently serving in the u.s. congress, including harry reid, the majority leader, and also other senators, like mark crapo from idaho and mike udall in new mexico. they're both democrats and republicans. it sounds like you can generalize that mormons would tend to be more one party. guest: you will see that there are more republicans than there are democrats. harry reid is the highest- ranking mormon in government right now. there are democrats who are good mormons. i know several who believe that, actually, if you are a good mormon you should be a good democrat. republicans obviously disagree with that. you do not have to be a

republican if you are mormon. the first platform that the republican party had was anti- bigamy, which is the polygamy of the lds church. the relics of barbarism and slavery -- they come around and now we have a mormon nominee. host: we will begin with south carolina. host: we will begin with south carolina. mary, a democrat. caller: good morning. i have a question. a couple months back, i received a "book of mormon." and did some stay with the young gentleman that came by. they work with both, but i am not sure because they did not stay long because i got kind of confused on what they were

trying to tell me. do they believe in both the regular bible that we study or do they actually believe that the "the book of mormon." because there are some weird stuff in here as you really read it that don't make sense to me, especially being african- american. host: mary, a question for you. does the candidates faith shake your vote? caller: yes, because more men and other religions are considered cult religions which are not the standard christian belief that most americans have. i feel that what you believe in religiously is how you perceive yourself towards your fellow man, you know? so i do think that your religion has a lot to do with your outlook on everybody, with everything that you personally.

host: thank you so much for your call. there's a lot to do with in the questioned her first of all, do they believe in the bible? guest: yes. i do not want to get in the position of explaining the lds church. there is no question that mormons believe in "the book of mormon" and the bible. you will see mormons carry around a huge book that they have. these are all books that they believe are part of the canon of the religion. as you mentioned, -- as she mentioned, the weird stuff, i hear this all the time. every religion has some odd stuff. it is not just the mormon church that has something that sounds a little bit different. you have to think about it in different ways. but everything has something that is a little bit odd. the one thing that the mormon religion has is that it is a new faith.

it is 150 years old. host: despite its youth, the mormon religion is one of the fastest-growing in the world. it currently has 14 million plus members. right now, the members of the church comprise about 1.7% of the u.s. population. mary used a couple of words that i wanted you to respond to because there touch points for potential voters, describing -- wondering whether or not it was a standard christian religion. those kinds of perceptions you read a lot about people on the campaign trail trying to address. guest: it is hard to understand exactly what they are trying to infer that this is a cult. yes there are mormons to do six things in temples.

-- who do secret things in temples. but it does not mean that they are doing them because -- if they do it because they believe in god and that is the way they do things. mormons have fought against videos describing them as a cult. it is something that the church is very concerned about being labeled like that. that is one of the reasons they are trying to have an education campaign. you may have seen the i am a mormon campaign. new york was covered with those ads. they are just normal people out there who are mormons. they are not some odd cult in salt lake city with multiple wives.

host: on twitter -- one organization in washington that has us thinking about candidates and their faith is the national cathedral. let's show you the cover story of their summer edition of "cathedral age." on the line with us is the rev. dr. francis wade. how was it that you got the attention of the two presidential candidates and got them to fill out a survey on their religions? caller: part of our mission as the national cathedral is a house to pray for all people. we have been doing that for over a century. we work closely with the government in a lot of ways and with the office of the president.

so the trust level is very high in terms of that. we think, because our job is to facilitate the great conversations, we think, as you all were talking this morning, that these are really important things. that is why we asked the questions. because the trust level is there, that is the reason they responded to the questions that we asked. as part of our mission in raising those questions. they trust us and they responded to us. they were very gracious and very open to our suggestion that they answer these questions. host: did they respond in writing or verbally? caller: in writing. host: you knew that your time would be limited. there must have been discussions on what were the most important things to last. caller: yes, there was. we tried to give an opportunity for this to be revealing because faith tells a lot about a person.

and we think that is important. the two candidates think it is important, too. so the questions were fastened to give them an opportunity to reveal what faith reveals about these two gentlemen. i think they came through with that in a good way. host: would you give us just a sense of your take away from each man's response? illegal time for both. -- a little equal time for both. caller: let me say that there is a great deal of agreement between them. that has not been greatly featured in the recent campaigns. but they do agree. they come off as orthodox christians. governor romney's experience in his faith is that he has really functioned as a focal point of leadership in the mormon church. that has been a very important part of his background, of his

life and what he is about. president obama has drawn great strength from a variety of christian mentors and pastors and writers and that's what a thing. so he has been far more individual and private in his faith formation. when you shake it out, they both are orthodox christians. they -- their understanding of the christian faith and the impact it has on the airlines, in both cases, are well within the green zone of orthodox christianity. they are clearly motivated, both of them, to service to other people. that is a strong part of the christian message. that is a strong part that both of them have picked up. it is important greatly. clearly, they both have different ideas on how to do that. that is with the election is about. but their faith motivates them well beyond the private spiritual devotional life.

i think those things are characteristic. your point about giving them their differences. their differences are not that great in terms of how their faith has drawn them to do. host: those who are interested can find your publication on line. this is a milestone wait for the cathedral. it is the one-year anniversary of the earthquake we had in washington and the national cathedral was damaged. the repairs are very expensive. how was the restoration coming along? caller: it is coming along well. the damage totals $20 million. so it is a substantial enterprise. one reason it costs that much is that the cathedral was built entirely by hand.

you cannot just go and get spare parts for a cathedral and put them back up there. it is also the damage 300 feet in the year. so it is a complicated process. -- in the air. so it is a complicated process. there was a $5 million gift from the lilly endowment, which is a marvelous thing that allows us to take the first steps in restoration. what we have done so far is raise money and use money to stabilize the damage. now we -- yesterday we made the first positive step of positive restoration. if we had $20 million, which we don't. we have $8 million. but if we had $20 million and started on it this afternoon, it would take five years to 10 years to restore the damage. so it is a significant project and a significant issue.

but i think we have made great progress and the lilly endowment has been marvelous in doing that, in helping us and helping the historical trust for preservation. host: stories in the paper this month, a geologist have determined that it was a one in 2000-year event. so you have plenty of time to make repairs. caller: that is comforting to know, when you come to the top and you know that you're up there because of an earthquake, it is very scary. so it is good to know that it is well in hand. two thousand years is a good framework as far as i'm concerned. host: thank you for joining us. there survey with president obama and mitt romney on their faith and how their faith and form their and their approach to policies in their new the issue of "cathedral age." their historic connection with woodrow wilson at the cathedral.

back to thomas burr and our discussion on the mormon religion. let me ask you -- mitt romney's response, he was asked about the role of faith. he writes -- what is your reaction to that? guest: he talked a lot about that. in 2007, he gave a speech, which was quite a gamble, where he talked about how his faith does inform him and what he has done with his faith and try to explain that, yes, he does believe in jesus christ and his church may have different theology than some other faiths, but he does believe in the same way as everyone else. that is something different than many other candidates had

to do. you do not see president obama having to do that on the campaign trail or senator kerrey or other candidates go out and explain that. again, mitt romney could have years ago said, you know, this mormon church thing may be a bit of concern while i am running for president and maybe i should disassociate myself with that or not talk about it as much. governor romney knew that that was, in many ways, who keep -- in many ways, hooky-ish. it really does say who he is. for him, it is something that he has to talk about. host: on twitter --

how does the rough-and-tumble work of a campaign deal with this? guest: i would never say that mr. romney is lying to anyone in any form. you don't want to do anything that brooches the pact you have with god. it is not easy running for president. there are a lot of things thrown at you. there are a lot of things that happen in the campaign world. mitt romney tries to stay above it to some degree. but he has advisers and consultants and ways that they have to do it. if we were to run the campaign as a nice guy, he probably would not get very far today. host: man killed, texas, a republican, edward, you are on. caller: i designed three questions.

i want to present them to thomas. is that appropriate? host: sure. caller: what is the definition of sin? the second question is, what do you represent? and the third question is what is the essence of a -- thought? host: are you concerned about thomas's views on this for mitt romney possible. caller: religion is very popular and everyone is claiming all of these different titles. but i think these are the face it -- the basic fundamentals. let's just go with what is a definition of sin. guest: i am not here to defend the lds. i am not a church official. i will not give a talk about the faith. mormons are very much in the

mainstream of christianity. there are some obviously who do not believe what the lds church believes in. he could go to their website to find out what the church commissions. host: 1 symbol is that people have to serve on a mission. what do we know about mitt romney's mission service? guest: mitt romney served in france for about two and half years at the start of the vietnam war. mitt romney spent his time as a mormon missionary, over there knocking on doors. he obviously learned french.

he was actually in a car wreck where someone died and they were hit by a drunk driver in france. there was obviously nothing wrong with mitt romney at the time. they did write that they thought he was dead for a little while. but he spent his time knocking on doors and traveling and got a lot of doors slammed in his face. it is probably difficult to be in france for two and a half years and not take a sip of wine. as far as we know, mitt romney did not. host: rockville, md.. >> presidential historian and author thomas whelan discovers the history of political conventions and whether the matter. susanna goodman from common cause has the result of a new study on state election practices. washington journal live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> what do we see when we look

at the dead? the responded to this in two ways. one by describing those bodies in great detail. then often stopping in the middle of that the tillich description and then saying it is too horrible. i cannot put this into words. words cannot convey this. >> this weekend on american history tv, harvard professor make an nelson discuss the impact of the images of dead soldiers on the american public during the civil war. saturday at 10:00 p.m. eastern. also, -- america will stand up for the ideals we believe in what we are operating at our best and who want to see this country perhaps above all else we turn to the path of peace. >> more from the contenders. our series that looks a key political figures that i president and lost a changed

political history. this week, 1972 democratic nominee and anti vietnam war candidate george mcgovern. sunday at 7:30. this weekend on c-span3. >> what coupler -- bought coverage of the democratic and republican dentons. your friend wrote seat - row seat. next, acceptance speeches from some of the third-party candidate. nominees and the libertarian, constitution, green and reform parties. as we look at their parties in national elections, quin monson joins us. who are some of the candidates running for president this year and which was the thing could have an effect on the election?

quakes every year we have people declare for the presidency, and most of them, you never hear about, which makes it harder to answer we really haven't heard about many of these. the one that has gotten the most attention, epping, so far is gilly johnson, the former -- gary johnson, the former governor of new mexico who would be the nominee for the libertarians. i think potentially he has some chance to have an effect, typically these candidates don't get more than a percentage point or two in any given state, they have little chance of win -- of winning a state and getting electoral votes but they can affect which of the other candidates wins the state. >> do you see any way they could affect the national election in november at this point? >> i don't see anybody with that kind of traction yet. the truth is, in a close election, very small things can make a different. -- a difference. in terms of johnson, the trouble with predicting which direction he might affect things is that as a libertarian who espouses this idea of personal freedom,

he appeals, i think, to social conservatives on the one hand who want lower taxes and less government spending but he appeals to social liberals who want the government out of personal decisions regarding abortion or gay marriage or any number of other things. so he could end up taking from both obama and romney based on the preferences. i think it's hard to predict. >> what's the third party spoiler effect in national elections we hear about? >> well, it can happen in two ways. it can happen both in terms of stealing votes, and also it can happen in terms of affecting the level of turnout. most of the time we think about it in terms of stealing votes, that ralph nader, stole votes from al gore in 2000. or ross perot perhaps stole votes from george bush in 199 .

-- 1992, andaffected the outcome in -- because of the swing that those votes to the third party candidate had on the overall outcome. but if the candidate is popular enough and has a lot of charisma, like perot did, has a popular -- populist appeal like jesse ventura who won in minnesota, sometimes they can motivate people to turn out and vote who otherwise wouldn't get involved because they're uninterested orties illusioned -- uninterested or they are disillusioned in politics. >> you mentioned some notable cases. are there any that are thought to have affected the election? >> ralph nader is thought to have affected the election. the reason is that that was so close.

the other person who comes to find 2000 is pat buchanan -- comes to mind in 2000 is pat buchanan because of the way he was on the ballot. that was in some ways more election administration problem than third party candidate appealing to major party voters. but in any case, he got more votes in florida, by far, than expected. and part of that was the butterfly ballot and so on. >> what are some of the qualities that allow a third party or third party candidate to gain traction in an election? >> before we get to that, i think you have to talk about the obstacles. and the calls are what help them -- qualities are what help them overcome the obstacles. the obstacles i think of in two forms, a mechanical or constitutional barrier, we have -- institutional barrier, where we have election laws that allow the plurality winner, the canada -- candidate that gets the most votes, that win the plurality to take all the electoral votes in the presidential case.

this has this winner-take-all effect for -- a plurality rule takes -- has the evket of -- the effect of leading voters to think about the fact that they might be wasting their vote. the mechanical -- the institutional effect and psychological effect interact. there's also a lot of barriers in the american system with third parties getting on the ballot. some states make it easier. you have to get wrureblly -- usually signatures on a petition. but in many states, the numbers are quite high and so the qualities candidates often have to get over those are, they have money, ross perot had a lot of money and was able to buy his way onto the ballot with his personal fortune and hire people to do that for him. or they often have some kind of

charismatic appeal that generates a following. that following is what mobilizes the troops necessary to get them on the ballot. if you have both, and i think ross perot, fair to say, had both charisma and money, then you have a chance to really make a dent in terms of picking up a fair number of votes. >> quin monson, thank you for the information. >> thank you for having me. >>we've got questions on our facebook page about third party leches. -- third-party candidates. margie write, i left the republican party, they are g.o.p. progressive. looking for third party. josh wagner says, i am voting for gary johnson. and tommy winer says, i'll be voting for jerry white of the socialist equality party, and he includes a link to find out more. go to c-span's facebook page, facebook.com/c-span.

>> the look of terror in party selected gary johnson as its presidential nominee at the convention in las vegas in may. he wants to reach 15% in the polls to qualify for the national presidential debate and at least 5% of the vote to secure public money for the party in 2016. january is the vice presidential running mate. here are former governor johnson's acceptance remarks.

i really want to think my parents. they are birth here. my mom is the reason we ended up with in new mexico. she was with the bureau of indian affairs. she got transferred there. she had me doing tap dancing lessons in a tap dancing school that had one boy and 40 girls. she had me playing the piano. i was perhaps the best it's great piano player. i love my parents. i want to thank them both. i want to thank my fiance. i am in love and it will be a white house wedding.

where is kate? [applause] i want to thank my sister and my brother in law. my son eric is here. where are you? eric quit his well paying job in denver to and a half years ago to come and do this with me for two years, unpaid. if that is not as leavitt a gesture at anything i have ever received, it is that. -- if that is not as loving a

gesture as anything i have ever received, it is that. my daughter gave me a call. she said i'm the worst otter in the world. -- worst daughter in the world. because she would not be here. she was the valedictorian out of 9000 students at her high- school. my daughter's car broke down outside of new mexico. jihad for tools with her. she knew that it was the alternator. -- she had her toold wit her. she knew it was the alternator. she went and installed it herself. my brother last night called me up and said i watched the debate party -- debate.

you did great. you got your ass kicked. where is lee? what a gentleman. what a pleasure. what a delight it has been to debate him a dozen times [applause] >> let's get this guy elected. [applause]

we made each other better candidates. i cannot think among us. no one could have been more cordial or gracious or particulate regarding libertarian ideals and beliefs. where do we go from here? this is about winning. this is your decision that i want to ask you the following. please consider january as my running mate. -- jim gray as my running mate. he affords the best opportunity to winning. i want you to know that in this process, we interviewed a lot people and without question, i think he does a better job when

it comes to articulating libertarian ideals and beliefs than anyone else. i go back to the year 2001 i met him for the first time it ended up being the first time of a dozen times that we can across each other. he was very outspoken regarding the war on drugs. he was more outspoken than anyone in the the country and he brought an expertise to this as a superior court judge in california that was undeniable. it is not just drug. he ran at the libertarian candidate for senate in california. he does a terrific job when it comes to articulate -- articulating libertarian ideals. this is your choice.

all i am asking you is to just give him jim gray a listen and i think if you will do that, you will understand what i think we have come to the conclusion on and that is this affords us the best opportunity to win. that is what the goal leads to be. to actually win in november. thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> the constitution party held its meeting. virgil goode won a majority of votes.

he talked about abortion, since this marriage, gun rights, immigration, and the war in afghanistan. this is 25 minutes. >> let me call the meeting to order. thank you. thank you for coming back in here. it is now my distinct pleasure and honor to introduce the presidential nominee, a candidate for the constitution party. it is virgil goode. he hails from rocky mount, virginia. he was born in richmond, virginia, in october 1946. he received his bachelor of arts from the university of richmond.

he served in the virginia national guard. he is an attorney by trade. he served as a legislator in the virginia general assembly and the state senate's. he served 12 years as a u.s. representative in the u.s. congress. he is married to lucy goode. and they have a daughter. i would point out that with this 12 years service in the u.s. congress, he served in federal office longer than barack obama or mitt romney combined. [laughter] with that, for his acceptance speech, let's welcome virgil goode, jr. [applause]

>> thank you. [applause] >> first, i want to say thanks so much to all of you who were targets and supported me and this nomination battle for the presidency of the united states under the constitution party label. when you win by one vote, you know every vote counts. i want to say to those who also ran, it was an honor to be associated. i want to thank joan and daryl for all they have done over the years for the constitution party.

[applause] robbie wells -- thank you. [applause] the energy and enthusiasm exhibited by robbie wells on this campaign has been tremendous.

if he will continue to work with us, if we do not get to the top of the hill this time, we will get to the top of the hill in 2016. [applause] i also want to recognize susan and thank her for her campaign and for sharing with us her life story, which every person should listen to because it is a true pulling yourself up by the bootstraps story under the free enterprise system.

thank you so much. [applause] i am not sure if laurie is still here, but i want to express my appreciation for having the presence that a radio talk-show host has. i hope i can call her up and get some pointers for jazzing up and going with a few well- placed reasonable zingers that will surely get you on radio and television. [applause]

i have to really thank ron. he allowed the delegations to vote for me. thank you very much. thank you for standing for a traditional marriage and for your speech yesterday. [applause] our party offices have worked very hard in bringing about this convention, and getting persons here from all over the country.

i think we all should give the mayor round of applause for their service. -- give them a round of applause for their service. [applause] our party chair is not running again, i want to thank jim. i know i do this on behalf of all of you, for his time, energy, and personal contributions to this party. he and several others have been mainstays in providing funding over the years to the constitution party. he have got to have some funding just to keep the doors open. jim, thank you so very much.

[applause] i will not list all the party officers, and i know they have all worked hard, but i do want to mention specifically our treasurer. [applause] joe has done yeoman's work in the detail that is deemed to ise treasurer's report that if we did that are informative, but also comply with all the federal elections commission

regulations. joe, thank you for steering ness street and keeping us out of trouble. are you ready to take on mitt romney, barack obama, and the establishment in washington, d.c.? if you are, say yes. [applause] jim mentioned that i served in the u.s. house for 12 years. i did. peter from louisiana asked me, i know you cast a lot of votes and a lot of them i agree with, but tell me one or two that you may have cast wrong. you remember that, peter?

and i did. i made some mistakes. it is not too difficult to do. and one, in particular, i voted for the patriot act. i know that most in the room are very much opposed to that measure. i want to say that my association with the constitution party over the last three years has given me a better perspective in analyzing legislation from a constitutional viewpoint. and i want to say that i made a mistake in voting for that measure as it applied to u.s. citizens in this country and to legal permanent residents.

i do not favor, although this may not comport with all federal court decisions, extending constitutional rights to persons from foreign countries or those illegally in the united states. [applause] as president, i would work with the congress to repeal the applications of the patriot act as they apply to u.s. citizens. [applause] i also voted for support for the troops in afghanistan.

i never favored rebuilding the country's with u.s. taxpayer money. like many, who voted yes on those actions early on, i suspect in the u.s. house and senate, you would have very close votes in extending the war in afghanistan. it is time to come home in an orderly and reasonable manner. [applause] we can talk about some other issues. in most instances, i was right in line with the thought of this party and with a significant number of american citizens. i have a pro-life voting record. [applause]

that distinguishes me from president obama, who has one of the most pro-abortion records and positions ever for a president and certainly during his service in the united states senate. i also would like to submit that over time, my pro-life voting record is better than that of mitt romney, who has converted more recently to our position. [applause] with regard to marriage, i have always supported the proposition that marriage should be between one man and one woman. i was in the virginia senate, the u.s. house of

representatives. if you look closely at president obama's position, you can see that he is moving ever slope directly in a direction of pro-civil unions and pro- homosexual rights. if i am president, i will veto legislation advancing the cause. second amendment issues, i have always consistently supported the right of the individual to keep and bear arms. one of the first amendment's that i proposed in the u.s. house of representatives was to give that right to citizens of washington, d.c.

when we were in the apartment of there, it was against the law for us to have a firearm in our apartment for self protection. thankfully, that has been changed in d.c., but we need someone in the executive office of this country who has a history of supporting the second amendment and who you know you can count on one and comes to the right of your cells to defend yourself and have a firearm for protection of your person and property. [applause]

in the u.s. house, i was one of the democrats who did not go along with the democratic leadership. time to vote for our budget resolution. the republican leadership would come by and say, you know, sometimes you just have to vote with us on these on balanced budget resolutions loaded with deficit. i would not go along with them. that was not liked by the senior leadership in either party. now we are in a situation where our debt is $15.70 trillion and a deficit, under the obama budget, is $1.30 trillion, and under the ryan budget, it is $600 billion.

with the constitution party is philosophy and viewpoints, with which i agree, we need to cut now and balance now. [applause] we must have the courage to cut. from the department of education no child left behind to the department of education and general, we could go on and on, and i would say, look at obama's record and mitt romney's record. just on those two issues. education, no child left behind, and foreign aid.

i am for slashing and cutting, and they made before taking a paring knife and slicing off just a thin layer of cheese at the top. obama is not even for that. he wants to throw them out another ream of cheese. go to it, gang. i was honored to be in ron paul's liberty caucus. i support and audits of the federal reserve. i do not think you will get barack obama or mitt romney to even mention the issue. [applause] another area, a big distinction between us and the republicans and democrats is illegal immigration and legal immigration.

i cannot thank the national committee of the constitution party enough for having the courage in the face of political correctness to say, we stand with arizona in support of their legislation. if i am president, you would not have eric holder as attorney general. our attorney general would go and be of friend-of-the-court to say let's uphold what arizona and alabama are doing to control their immigration. [applause] i said during our campaign, i

want to thank robbie wells for having this position, calling for a moratorium, with a few exceptions, on the continuing issuing of green cards when we have unemployment between 8 and 9%. last year, 1.2 million green cards were issued. a significant number work to working age individuals. one we have american citizens that need work, you should not be bringing an so many from foreign nations to take jobs that our citizens have longed for and indeed so they can get off the unemployment line before we extend the benefits of this country to those from other countries.

it is time to put the american worker first. [applause] in the house, i was always a supporter of ending diversity visas. 50,000 persons per year that can come in on a lottery system. you can be from the middle east, africa, asia, where ever. even though you are nowhere near the front of the legal immigration line, you apply for the diversity visa pool, and you get into that lottery system, and they pull your number, in you come. why bring in so many persons, many of you are working age, when unemployment is so high? it is the wrong course for the nation. if i am president, i will sign an work for the legislation to end those of diversity visas. [applause] and other big distinction

between myself and president obama and likely candidate mitt romney, i do not support automatic birthright citizenship for the children of illegals in this country. [applause] eliminating automatic birthright citizenship would also significantly help the budgetary situation of the united states and of several other states. you should not be able to

comment, have a child in this country, get food stamps, get public assistance, medicaid, and some other type of public aid, all that is being paid for by long-term citizens who are paying taxes. we need to end that practice, whether it is by statute or by constitutional amendment. i do not know of another country in the world that is that liberal with regard to illegal aliens having children in their native country. we have one of the most liberal immigration, may be the most, in the world. we need to turn that upside- down. if we do, our budget situation will be enhanced.

most importantly, as my campaign literature says, we need to save america by focusing on the fact that citizenship should matter and should count for something. [applause] the last thing i want to mention as a key distinction between myself and candidate romney and candidate obama is campaign fund-raising. they are hawks and they are adept at getting $10,000 out of couples for the primary and for the general election, and really sharp at getting big money from big pacs. i am not taking, aside from a few leftover funds from congressional campaigns and from my family, no dollars from pacs.

it is time that average citizens had the same voice in this country as the head of google and all of those companies. elect me and the constitution party ticket in 2012 and we would give america the change that is needed and it will not be the barack obama change of 2008. [applause]

>> we are seven the acceptance speeches for some of the third party candidates. next, you'll hear from the nominees of the green and reform parties. as a look at third parties in elections, the director of the center for the study of elections and democracy at brigham young university. who were some of the candidates running this year and which ones do you think can have an impact? >> every election, we have dozens of people to declare. most of the mean never hear about. it makes the question harder to answer.

we have not heard about many of these. potentially, he has some chance. these can still not get more than a percentage point or two in any given state. they have little chance of winning a state and getting any electoral votes. i do not see anyone with that kind of attraction yet. the truth is that three small things can make a difference. in terms of gary johnson, as a libertarian who espouses this

idea of personal freedom, he appealed, i think, to fiscal conservatives and the appeals to social liberals on the other. he could end up taking from both obama and romney based on the presses. -- preferences. >> how much is the third party spoiler effect? >> it can happen in two ways. it could happen in terms of [inaudible] and in terms of affecting below the low turnout. we think about in terms of the boat. ralph nader, ross perot.

if the candidate is popular enough and has a lot of charisma, a populist appeal of some like jesse ventura, sometimes those candidates can motivate people to turn out and vote the would not otherwise get involved. they are uninterested or disillusioned with politics. >> mentioned some of the notable cases. >> i think there is some evidence that ralph nader affected the outcome. that election was so close. the early person who comes to

mind is buchanan. because the way he was on the ballot. he got more votes than florida dead. part of that was the butterfly ballot. >> what are some of the qualities that allow a third party candidate to regain traction in an election. >> you have to talk about the obstacles. the qualities are what help to overcome any obstacles. one is a mechanical defect we have election laws that allow the plurality winner. to take all of the electrical

-- it has this electoral hollywood -- it has the effect of leading voters to give up the fact that they might be wasting their boats. -- you might be wasting your vote. some states make it kilobit easier, so you have to put your -- some states may gets a little bit easier. in some states those numbers are quite high. they have money to hire people to do that for him, or they often have some kind of charismatic appeal.

if you have both, then you have a chance to make a dent. >> we have a question on our facebook page about a third party elections. i am voting for storage alexander. he will close all u.s. bases abroad and bring all the troops back immediately. i am writing a ron paul on my ballot. john warner posts, i think everyone should vote for a third-party candidate. there are more comments on line. you can check them out at facebook/c-span.

>> jill stein is this your screen party presidential nominee. in her acceptance speech, she outlined her green a new deal. it includes a moratorium on foreclosures, for giving student loan debt. the green party has qualified for the ballot in 21 states. this is just under an hour. >> let's have a nice round of applause for the next leaders of this country. nothing ever goes easy for us from the neighborhood.

very few people know, but these guys -- the story gets even better. nothing goes easy for poor folks. they're here right now and they're not going anywhere. [laughter] i bring you greetings from poor and working people in the united states of america. i stand here today as a formerly homeless mother, a single mother, it to children. -- two children. i've probably except to the

green party's nomination for vice president of the united states. [applause] this journey began many years ago for me. watching my poor mother struggle to survive.

i grew up watching farmers lose their farms. i grew up watching indigenous family's struggle for something as basic as their land. something just did not seem right to me. especially that day, when i had to tell my and nine-year-old son that we were no longer going to be living in apartment and. instead, we would have to move into our car. on the cold winter night in minnesota, i lost my home, the car, when i parked my car and a drunk driver hit and total debt. unable to find shelter and the debt of the winter in minnesota,

i face an important decision. occupy a heated abandoned house. i chose to lead and keep my son alive. -- live and keep my son alive. [applause] we moved into that abandoned house. we moved thousands of families into a penthouses for the last 25 years. but something changed that night. my hunker for justice was born. i figured that if me and my son

left to just die on the streets of the united states of america, this had to been happening to other families across my wealthy country. sure i stand today, 25 years later, now i have a burning flame for justice. [applause] we now suffer from the worst economic equality ever. when you look a what is happening in our country. one in every two people are in poverty. 6 million families have lost their homes. we spend more on building

prisons than educating our children. the disabled and immigrants and their elders have been told lao and clear from our elected officials that they just do not matter. >> but ec, they do matter. -- you see, they do matter. 3 so did the 40,000 people who die every day run the entire world. [applause] we, the green party, of the areted states of america, here to take our historic role in history. we will press -- with or profuse to speak under scarcity.

we know we live in a land of abundance. a land that is controlled by income the 1% and the greedy. both political parties are controlled by wall street. we also know that we live in atlantic where people love their children. we will no longer sit by -- we will no longer sit quiet as the united states of america continues to have politicians in the u.s. house of representatives that is proposing cutting 300,000 children from preschool lunch programs. we will no longer sit by and watched as family members are deported.

we are then new and unsettling force that dr. martin luther king spoke of. [applause] the daughter and the linemen and the doctor that will help lead this new and unsettling force to create a another country and another world that values the human-rights of all human beings. it is my distinct honor to introduce my running mate and green party nominee for president of the united states america, dr. joe stein. -- jill stein. ♪ [applause]

>> love you back, all of you. it has been such an honor and inspiration to get to know all of view, or at least nearly all of you, over the past year. together, we are unstoppable. i am so very honored to be your

nominee and to be running on the ticket. together, we are the 99%. this is the year we take our country back. something wonderful is happening across america and i have seen it firsthand, traveling across the country this past year. in the face of severe hard times, people are standing up we areaking now it's, occupying their work places, and now with this election, we are preparing to occupy the voting

booth. the need could not be more urgent. so many people note who are in this room. we are at the breaking point for people, for our economy, and for our homes. the ranks of the poor are swelling. our young people are debt. they're not enough jobs and wages are is shrinking. the rich keep getting richer and the rest of america gets poorer year by year. an entire generation has grown to adulthood knowing nothing but social decline. the two establishment parties have taken turns leading the

way. bush, then clinton, then push, now obama. the party labels change, the policies have stayed largely the same. on most key issues, obama has embraced the politics of george bush and even going further, more free trade agreements that send our jobs overseas. more threats to medicare and social security. more discouraging foreclosures and student debt. more attacks on are imperiled civil liberties, and the rights, medical marijuana, more plundering of the environment, and racking of the climate, and endless illegal. have we had enough?

[applause] that is why people like you and me are standing up in a way the world has not seen in generations. we are a movement that is alive and well as across america and we are here to stay. let me tell you why i am standing not. 30 years ago, i was a new doctor starting not in medical practice. even then, it was easy to see that are broken health care system was failing the people who desperately needed it.

i was especially disturbed by the new epidemics of disease descending minor children. the rising tide of obesity, and diabetes, and an asthma, cancer, and learning disabilities, and not his them and more, these were new. i became impatient with justice dispensing pills and sending people back of the latest -- the very things they're making us sick to start with. everything from pollution to a party to industrial nutrition. if only our elected officials in new -- knew all of the solution set create jobs while saving the environment.

supporting held feasts a sport -- sustainable local farms instead of pouring our tax dollars into poisonous fossil fuel ta? [applause] >> slowly, i realize, if you want to persuade elected officials, forget all that. that does not account. what you need are giant bundles of campaign checks. that was my wake-up call. if we want to protect children's health. the health care we need for the education, we need to first broken political system.

i. nelson i am practicing political medicine. -- i now said i am practicing all political medicine. we have to fix everything that there that ails us. i went to work to try to fix that problem. i joined a broad coalition in massachusetts to get big money at of politics. we passed a referendum to provide public financing for political campaigns.

in the passage by a huge field mark -- margin. our state legislature, repealed block acid as it was passed on an unrecorded voice vote. no one could be held accountable for defying the will of the people. and that was my real wake-up call. if you want to change the broken political system, but we need is not just a new law or a new lobbying effort or a fresh face in the same old corrupt system, we need a new political party that can push people of integrity into office.

[applause] >> we need real public service. listen to the people. that is what brought me to the green party. the only national party that is not fought and paid for -- bought and paid for by public money. here is why my resolve has only grown stronger her over the years. the mother and the doctor, the concerns that captivated me 30 years ago hobbling intensified.

i see that our young people are still struggling in every aspect. stuck and for good health, seats in school, struggling to say stave -- stay safe on the street. struggling to get a job. to get out of debt. struggling to have a climate -- they are losing the battle on every front. when people ask me why i keep fighting political battles in a raid system -- rigged system, i keep fighting because when it comes to our children, mothers do not give up.

or sisters and brothers and sons and daughters. young people have not given up. they are the ones really carrying the burden of this system. if they're not giving up, we are not giving up. we are doubling down and rising up.

we are in movement for democracy and justice -- justice. we are in eviction blockades and banks of america protests. still in strikes to stop tuition hikes. in protest against stop and frisk. the nuclear power plant and civil disobedience to stop tracking. staff the keystone pipeline. [applause] >> they all marked a game over for the climate and we're not going to settle for that. to " alice walker, the biggest way people give up power is by not knowing they have it in the

first place. we know we have got it and we're going to use it. when did days is by having a voice in the selection and a choice at the polls that is not bought and paid for by wall street. because voting for either wall street candidate is a mandate for former years of corporate rule. every vote they received it is an endorsement of the deadly trajectory that we are on for the american people and the planet. it is time to change that

plunged into catastrophe that changed starts with voting for real change. every vote we receive is a vote for democracy, for the 99% i will work to deliver aid brand new deal for america. a package for emergency reform to put 25 million people back to work and jump-start the rain economy. that will put a hole to climate change, and hall to unemployment, and make rewards

for oil obsolete. it is not just an academic idea, it is based on a program that actually works. it is time to bring it back and put it to work. these reforms create living wage, community-based jobs. that means, for starters, jobs and agree area -- jobs in the

green area. i want to tell you about a young man whose life was transformed by this kind of job his name is ricardo and nine at him in massachusetts. like most kids come as causes for to beg to underfunded, and guided by -- donna by less training test prep.

he is then hired by a small green energy business, where he became a true leader. while doing all of that, interest 8 ged program and graduates before his own high school class received their diplomas. he pulls his life together and the community gets lower energy costs and the climate gets a little bit stable for us all.

the new deal and the only creates jobs like ricardo's, it also creates jobs that meets our social needs. let's hire back most 300,000 teachers who lost their jobs in this great recession. let's hire all the nurses we need and a child care and rehabilitation and affordable housing construction.

these jobs would be nationally funded and locally controlled. they are community-based small businesses, and not a big corporations. they are worker owned cooperatives and public services. instead of going down to the unemployment office, keeping go down to the employment office and get the job be need. to be clear, the green at new deal and unemployment in america. this would never occurred to washington politicians, and you

can imagine why. their corporate backers depend on the threat of unemployment to hold wages down. we are committed to improving social conditions for everyone in america. that is why the green new deal guarantees health care for everyone as a human rights through medicare for all.

this not only provides quality comprehensive care for everyone, it will restore your choice of provider of piggybacking control of your own health care decisions and said it you having them made for you by a profit sharing ceo.

it will save trillions. it does not cost us trillions. it saves us trillions by streamlining the and wasteful health insurance bureaucracy and putting an end to run away medical inflation. as part of the green new deal we will forgive the crashing student debt burdens. we will liberate an entire generation of young people who have been turned into indentured servants. we will provide tuition free public education from pre- kindergarten through college. this is an investment and our future.

it pays off enormously. we know that from the g i bill that provided $7 in increased economic benefits for every dollar that we invested. in order to create an economy that works for people we need not only jobs and secure working conditions, we need a financial system that is free from domination by big banks and well connected financiers who hijacked our economy and our democracy. instead we will create a system that is open, stable answers the real economy, not the phony and economy of high finance.

we will and the bailout in the corporate giveaways and ensure the resources are available for investment and our community. through these reforms we will break up the big banks that are too big to fail. we are going to restore the glass-steagall separation of banks. we will regulate of financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.

we will democratize monetary policy to establish public control of the credit creation. we well tax capital gains as income, a tax wall street transactions to stop speculation and put a 90% tax on bonuses for bankers. in order to secure these reforms we must also an act political reform to give us a real functioning democracy.

as you know, we do not have that yet. we must end the domination of our election by big money that makes government for the people and possible. for this reason we need to amend our constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech. those rights belong to breathing human beings like you and me, not to business entities

controlled by the very wealthy. the green new deal will also undercut the power of lobbyists and billionaires' to control elections. we will do that by enacting a voter bill of rights. in so doing we will guarantee a voter marked paper ballot for all voting and requiring all boats and be counted. we will bring same day boat registration to the nation saw no qualified voter is far from the poll. we will replace partisan oversight of the elections with non-partisan election commissions. we will restore the vote of 1.4 million african-american men who are far from voting because they are [inaudible] election reforms like

proportional representation that can truly reflect voter sentiment. we will take money out of politics and replace it with full public financing and free and equal access to the public airways. we will guarantee equal access to the ballot for all qualified candidates. [chanting] >> they do not know what they're in for. they're going to find out. in summary, the green in new deal is a comprehensive program

to pull us back from the brink and move beyond the current state of emergency for our economy and our democracy. there is much more to it. you can go to our website and find out more about it. there is more to be done beyond the universe of the green new deal.

the green new deal is a comprehensive program to pull us back from the brink. move beyond the current state of emergency. for our economy, our environment, and our democracy. there is much more to it. i will not hold to your for the next three hours. you can go do our website.

there is more to be done beyond the universe of the green you deal. that is why i am committed to emergency action in other areas as well. first, i will bring the troops and award dollars home. -- war dollars home. we need to bring them home from

these illegal and immoral wars, including the proliferating drone morris and the soldiers in over a thousand faces and over 140 countries around the world, where we do not need to be. foreign policy based on militarism and the protection of oil resources will be replaced. by diplomacy. diplomacy based on respect for international law and human rights. i will restore our civil liberties by repealing the un-

american provisions of the patriot act. it is not only the patriot act, anziano. the national defense authorization act. the antitrust terrorism act, which criminalize protests and director police to spy on non- filers offenders. -- non-violent offenders. i will predict the department of homeland security and fbi from conspiring with local police to suppress our freedoms of assembly and speech.

i'll will also work to legalize marijuana. and put it into a safe and regulatory framework. marijuana is a substance which is dangerous because it is illegal. it is not illegal because it is dangerous. finally, i will and the bipartisan more on immigrants. -- end the bipartisan war on immigrants.

i will stand up against discriminatory republican laws like the remnants of arizona. i will stand up to the racist demagoguery that wrongly blamed immigrants for the unemployment brought on by wall street of the use of the economy. hardesty splitting families and taking of thousands of children

away from their parents. this issue also gets my blood boiling. with that track record, at the obama white house has been the most anti-immigrant administration any century. even less fortunate group will still face deportation act age 30. this is not a solution. i am taking office, i will immediately issue an executive

order to end the deportations now. i will vigorously support passage of the dream act to -- act and i will work to provide a welcoming path to fold, equal citizenship for undocumented americans who are vital members of our economy and our community. i will work to replace the corporate so-called free trade agreement which generate economic refugees in the first

place. these will be replaced with fair trade agreements that respect workers in this country and in latin america. we need these solutions. the public supports them by a substantial majorities in poll after poll. why haven't we got them? and, there are big fear campaign siddig been waged over the past decade. they have been telling analysts to just be quiet and vote your fears. we have done that long enough now. to see that silence is not an

effective political strategy. in fact, the politics of fear has brought us everything we are afraid of. but democracy needs is not fear and silence, but voices and values. it is time to answer the politics of fear with the politics of courage. as those massachusetts radicals did when they took on the british east india company and dumped the tea in the harbor and

declared themselves free -- [applause] in each of these cases, independent politics was critical to formulate the political demands. it is essential because power concedes nothing without a demand. a denver dead and never will. -- never did and it never will. by bringing that demand into the

presidential elections, we can advance the movement for democracy and justice and drive these solutions into the political agenda. the history of progressive politics is filled with social movements with independent political parties that made history together. abolishing slavery, securing women's rights to vote. the right to form unions, the 40-hour workweek, panicking -- campaign finance laws. that is what this campaign is all about. standing up and reclaiming our

political voice and our political courage. the moment we do, the real aspirations of the american people can no longer be denied. we'll have a base from which we can build and we can start to drive forward those critical solutions that people broadly support. wall street politicians have kept off the table. we are the only vehicle in this election and the foreseeable future. we will give people a choice and a voice in the voting booth and enable them to go to the polls and vote for the deal. but for the reforms that will

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morning in the summer in august when everyone should be on vacation. but apparently, we are not.

we are seeing some analysis today that focuses on the fiscal year 2013 defense budget that the administration put forth to congress and is now being considered in congress. and also sequestration and what that would mean. i will try to keep it less than 30 minutes and then open it up for q&a. the briefing is divided into two parts. the first will be what is in the 2013 budget request, how was it different from last year, and is it consistent with the strategic guidance for the department? the second part that i am sure most people are more interesting in -- interested in the is sequestration. i have done a little more detailed announced -- analysis of what it would mean in terms of budget authority and out reach. and talk about what it wld mean. i will start with an overview of defense spending. this chart shows total national

defense spending and inflation in just a dollars in fiscal year 3. the blue part is the base budget, the red part is the funding for iraq and afghanistan that has been on top of that. and so you can see in inflation- adjusted dollars, defense spending and the projection. that year, the prediction was --

your taking total defense spending/total economic output. gdp has grown steadily. an average of about 3.2%. it has risen and fallen in cycles sever times since then. defense spending as a% of gdp would be 4%. if you take out war funding, it would be 3.4%. if you project through fiscal year 17 like the budget does, defense spending would be about 3% of gdp. this is the lowest it will have been since 2001. the defense is nowhere near

2001. defense spending right now will be about 18.5%. if you take out more funding, it is about 15% of the total federal budget that is consistent with modern day norms. what does all of this tell you about the overall level of defense spending? three things. it is a relatively high level in terms of inflation adjusted dollars. it is affordable as a percentage of gdp, lower than modern day norm. and as a proportion of overall federal spending and there were substantial shifts.

the lines that you see here are what was predicted in last year's budget request. the projected out to 16. the red line is this year's budget request that projects up to 17. i will note a few things here. of procurement, and i got hit the hardest. there was about a 14% reduction in plant procurements spending in his budget request relative to the previous year. but it was only reduced by about 4%, research and development money was reduced about 3%. it calls ready this a priority, so it got cut by less so it appears to be a priority. it also calls on keeping

research and development to maintain our cutting edge in technology as a high priority as well. and research and development was not t as much. it appears to be consistent with that. in order to protect those areas of the budget, they had to make deeper cuts. the cut in military personnel is primarily driven by the reduction in the number of troops and calls for reducing strength by about 1,000 over five years. it also includes proposed cuts in basic pay that will not start until fiscal year 15 and beyond. and increases in the fees paid. when you take the reduction in spending on military personnel accounts i would want to point out two things here that i think our long-term issues that the department will have to deal with. just assuming that they can keep

the plan that is in this budget. there are two big areas of the defense budget that you will have to deal with and it will be difficult. there are military personnel related costs plus the defense health program. it is $168 billion together. that is about 1/3 of the defense budget. it has been growing much faster than the rest of the defense budget over the past decade. the cost per person in the military grew by 46%, even adjusting for inflationnd not including the additional costs of the wars in iraq and afghanistan. we can' sustain that growth. released a report about rebalancing the military compensation system that would allow them to come up with a set of reforms that would both

reduce costs that they will need to do end improve the value that are received by service members. right now, they are stuck in a rut where compensation costs keep going and they keep proposing changes to cut benefits and they consistently get rejected by congress. if weontinue on that path, we will approach the point where the defense budget is consumed entirely by personnel costs. it will result in furer cuts over time. that is one area that they will have to deal with and i refer you to the july report on rebalancing the compensation system for a good approach on how they can take a new look at this. on the right-hand side, the cost for readiness and training is funded out of the operations and maintenance part of the budget. it goes to readiness and training and you can see here interestingly, i would say, the

readiness and budget for the air force and navy are almost identical. it is interesting bause the services are very different sizes in terms of people. a very different budget that comes out to be almost equal. this is another area they will have to take a serious look. nobody wants to cut readiness, but the outlook of the physical environment may force changes like that. you may have to look to a readiness system where some portion maintains a hyper readiness and others take a conscious reduction in readiness in order to free funds for other priorities in the budget. if you don't address these parts of your budget, this is over half. if you don't address the costs and grth in military personnel

related costs, you're focusing on the future cuts that are likely to come on things like retirement and r&d. i looked at the budget request by services, to see how each of these services shared. the army took about 9.3% reduction relative to what was requested in lastear's budget. the navy got a 5.2% reduction, the air force of 6.1%. this would appear to be consistent with the strategic guidance as well that calls for a bit to the asia-pacific region and a greater reliance on air and sea power. the cuts are disproportionately heavy on the army. there is the caveat i pointed out in the rort here that i think is interesting. part of the reason why the army cuts appear as large as they do in the first couple of years is because the army moved personnel

costs from their base budget to the war budget, the overseas contingency operations. these were costs that were previously funded in the base budget. between the army's move and the marine corps included in the department of the navy budget, it is $6 billion of personnel costs moved to the horror part of the budget. the budget capthat we will get to don't apply to the war related fundin if you designated as war-related and congress goes along with that, it doesn't count against your budget cap. if you move the money back then that had previously been the ba budget, it turns out in the first year, the air force takes the largest cut which would be inconsistent with the strategic guidance. i do all of this comparison of last year's budget requests in the fight up to this year's

fight. and i am going to tell you to not read much into it. it is not a good indicator of where the budget is headed in the future. the bloc that you see in the middle, it gives you what defense spending actually was in each of these years in the past, what was enacted into law by congress. each of the alliance show you the projection that came out with the budget requeor that year. i have color coded it by administration. ec the last downturn in defense spending, they kept predicting growth in future defense spending even as each year the budget continued to decline. the steepest part of the decline, the budget requests were incredibly inaccurate. the first year predicted 5% more funding than that actually got.

last year, they were overestimating what they would get by 30%. unfortunately, we might be falling into the same pattern today. we only know the difference between what they predicted in the first year and what actually happened. they were off by 5%. again. we could be falling into the same trap. that is why i offer caution. it is not a forward-looking indicator. because it is an election year, the change in in fydp , there is not that much difference. from carter to reagan, they both predict about the same rate of growth, 4%. from reagan to the first bush administration, very little

difference. from the bush administration to the clinton administration, very lite difference. even from the clinton administration to george w. bush administration, very little difference. and then again from the george w. bush to the obama administration, very little difference between the last budget request and the first budget crest of the new administration -- the first budget request of the new administration. the new administration, they have to hurry and get that budget request out quickly in the first month. they do not have time to make a whole lot of changes to it. the best they can do is make tweaks. if there is a change in

administrati, did not expect the next fydp ll show a huge change. the large change ec from a shift in administration is typically in the second request. that is also shown on this chart. sequestration, the thing that everyone is interested in, i will walk you through the mechanics of sequestration. how you determine the amount in dollars, how you determine the percentage, and then go through emmet and outlays -- and then go through and look at our place. figuring out the dollar amount of the cut. $546 billion for a total national defense spending. that is the budget function. about 95% of national defence spending is the department of defense. that is wh i will focus on. because the super committee failed to reach an agreement

for an additional $1.20 trillion, you have an automatic reduction that takes effect. that works out to $54.7 billion reduction. that leaves you $491 billion, the most you can spendor national defense in name fy13 budget. you look at, what did they request? i am assuming that the 13 budget request goes through. that is the level of funding or close to it. if congress appropriates a little more, the cuts would be a little more. this is what the administration requested in total defense spending. $26 billion from other parts of national defence.

a lot of that goes to the department of energy. $88.5 billion in war funding. we have a total of $551 billion of national defense spending that counts against the cap. that would require a reduction of $59.2 billion to hit the cac level. bring it down to $491 billion. dod would receive a proportionate amount of those cuts. this assumes the fy13 request is enacted into law. this would act on whatever level of funding is any continuing resolution. if it is a straight continuing resolution from the fy12 level of changes, it would be about $5 billion hher.

you have the dollar amount of the cuts, next step, how do calculate this uniform percentage c that is required? those are the words in the law itself. uniform percentage reduction. you start by saying, $56.5 billion. could be more or less. and then you divided by total available funds in the applicable accounts. that includes the base defense budget, oco funding, and this is what dod has projected what would be carried forward. and then you get to subtract something. the presidt has notified congress he will exempt military personnel accounts.

he did to exempt $149.4 billion -- you get to exempt $149.4 billion. if the president had not exemed military personnel accounts, it would work out to 8.1% reduction. that is the path not taken. >> why are you including oco? >> oco does not count against the cap. it does not affect the dollar amount of the reduction. it does factor into the percentage because that money is the accounts for the money is coming from. let me see if i can make this clear. the funding does not count against the budget cap, so does not affect the dollar amount of the cuts. when you calculate the

percentage, it is in those accounts. the money gets mixed together so it is part of the money in those accounts. you still have a loophole that you could read designate some fundinas oco elated and it will not count against your budget cap. -- related and will not count against your budget caps. if you have an account, when the cut is applied, it is coming out of that money as well. this graph shows ithere is 0 cut for milpers. this is an important note. sequestration ax on budget authority. it cuts budget authority for 2013. uniform percentage cuts, if you break it down, you go to the smaller count levels, there will be a 10.3% reduction.

it is down to the program project activity level. there is precedent for this,e have had sequestrations in the past. if you pick the procurement budget, for example, air force budget line-item. able be cut by 10.3%. -- it will be cut by 10.3%. the departnt does not have any flexibility. it is formulaic, you applied the cuts as is mandated by the law. what could happen if this goes into effect, the department could come back and say, we want to read program money between accounts and congress could give them the ability to do that. by default, they do not have the ability under the law. where it gets interesting is if

you look in terms outlays. outlays are important because that is when dod spends money. budget authority is when congress says this is how much money you have to spend. we're going to write contracts, awardees contracts, contractors will perform the work, and then we will pay them. when you pay them, it becomes an outlay. that is what is important to industry. when you cut the budget authority, you'll see a reduction in and outla this money goes directly to pay individuals. that money, the rate is very fast.

payroll expenses are spent in the first year. more than 95% of military personnel budget authority becomes outlays in t first year. you spend less than a quarter in your first year. it is a little higher in the second year and it gradually ramps down over the next three years. rdt &e funding, dod spends about half of that money in the first year. it gradually slopes down on the years thatollow. this means the reduction in outlays from sequestration will

not be uniform acrosall of these accounts. the account spend the money at different rates. i went through and did the analysis of what will be the reduction in terms of outlays. military personnel is 0% because sequestration does not affect military personnel accounts. the reduction and procurement will be 3.5% in the first year. family housing, 6.9% reduction. actual dollar amounts, they are in the document we are releasing today. what does this mean? that means there is some question here for the defense industry. the weapons makers, people will make weapon systems, they depend on procurement funding.

what this means ishey will not see an immediate reduction, of 10%. they will see a much less reduction. there are also some defense contractors who perform maintenance and support services, that type of works funded out of o &m money. it will take three or four years before the 10% reduction in budget authority becomes a 10% reduction in outlays for contractors. >> [inaudible] >> three or four years. >> [inaudible] >> procurement. >> pact is an average? >> -- that is an average. >> it can vary from contract to contract, absolutely. the are all sorts of

interesting things thatould happen under sequestration. >> your analysis is based on [inaudible] >> it is specific to fy13 funding. >> [inaudible] >> when they come out with the budget request, they estimate based on their budgets what rate they think they will spend all the money. what i have done here is take that forecasted outlay rate and i have backed out of it. if he cuts -- it could very if people change their behavior.

contracting officers change their behavior. i am not sure if they will have the ability to do it, or the incentive to do it. what would be affected? do not get me wrong, everything in dod would be affected by sequestration. this is a clumsy, cpletely non-strategic approach to cutting the defense budget. this is not the policy. i do not think it was ever intended to be good policy. contractors would see an immediate reduction in new contract awards, contract exnsions, exercising of contract options. dod would likely have to go back to contractors and renegotiate their contractors to buy in smaller quantities. let me give you an example. we're planning to buy two virginia class submarines. if the budget authority for

that year gets cut by 10.3%, they will not have the money toward those contracts. you cannot buy 1.8 subs, so what do you do? you have to renegotiate your contractors. they gave you a price before that was dependent on building two subs. if you are only going to build one, the price will be higher. >> [inaudible] the contracts are going to get all distorted. you were going to look at all contracts being renegotiated. >> it is a different beast altogether. sequestration could happen on top of the cr. a continuing resolution would do is freezes your funding at

last year's level. if you have a program where you had planned to ramp up funding to go from building one sub 22 subs, you would not be able to do that. if you had a program where you had projted you wanted to ramp down production, you cannot ramp down either. you have to continue at the previous year's rate. sequestration would happen on top of that. you would ha to go back and renegotiate again. sequestration, a lot of thing in dod can survive a continuing relution. in fact, we are used to it. you can delay contract awards until after the cr has expired. or you can ask for an exemption from that.

we have dealt with that in almost every single year since 1976, when they started the new budget process we have now. almost every single year, we have started the fiscal year on a continuing resolution. the department, it is not good, it slows things down, but the department can handle that. sequestration is different. it would create a mucharger mess. >> a larger mess on top of what is already -- >> you keep talking about the 10.3%. for fy13, the cuts would be closer to 14%. >> at the 10.3% is the reduction in budget authority for the year. by the time sequestration takes effect, you are a quarter of the way through the scal year. he'll have to apply that reduction in the remaining nine

months of the year. the dollar amount, though, is 10.3% less than what it otherwise would have been. >> [inaudible] >> right. in some accounts, that is very important. you are spding money very quickly. if he of all this messiness, it happens, and you have to renegotiate all of these contracts. that would likely cause you to reconsider some of these programs in the future. sequestration, it will not directly terminate programs. making the unit cost go up, reducing the purchasing power across all the different acquisition programs, is going to is goingdod reconsider some of these programs. -- going to make dod reconsider

some of these programs. i do not think people are aware of what this would do. dod civilian employees, nearly all of their funding becomes outlays in the first year. that means a reduction of 10.3%, if you were going to reduce the amount of money spent on them, and the remaining nine months of the yr, have to cut by 13.7%. we employ about 791,000 civilians. that means about 108,000 of them would have to be furloughed or laid off. that is a substantial impact. that would have been nearly

immediately, within the days and weeks after sequestration occurs. dod would need to control these people. the longer they wait, the shorter amount of time they have to make of that 10.3% reduction. sequestration would slow down nearly everything else dod dallas. military construction projects, training, peacetime operations, we would have to defer maintenance for things like ships, aircraft, you name it. a lot of things would be affected by sequestration. i think it is also important to note what would not be affected. there are people out there raising the rhetoric about sequestration. it is bad enough as it already is.

you do not need exaggerated. you do not need to u hyperbole. there would be no base closures as a result of sequestration. it is prohibited by the law. no actions taken by the president may result in a domestic base closure. you cannot close bases as a result of sequestration. in the days of substantial size, you cannot close without explicit permission from congress anyway. no one in the active guard or reserve would get a pink slip. they would not be laid off or furloughed. that is because the president has already notified congress that he will exempt personnel accounts. there are reductions already

planned in military industry. those would continue to go through. there would be no reductions in pay for military personnel. your basic pay comic your allowances, retirement, -- your basic pay, your allowances, retirement, not affected by sequestration. one notable exception, military health care, about 32 billion a year is funded out of the o&m account. that is subject to sequestration. it would be cut by about $3 billion. what would that mean for dod? that is a good question to ask the department. i suspect if sequestration actually happened, i think they would come back to congress very quickly wita reprogramming request to restore the funding. they would have to take that $3

billion from somewhere else in the budget or congress would have to appropriated separately. there are a lot of ways that could happen. i do not know how that would play out exactly. the defense held program is subject to sequestration. >> -- the defense health program is subject to sequestration. >> is there an annual cap? >> there is section in the law that gives them a one time reprogramming request. they could come back with a $56 billion reprogramming request and move all that money around. it still requires congress to approve it, though. dod cannot do it on their own. the president cannot do it on his own. >> it does not go through all of congress? >> i need to go back to the law.

i can get back to one that. >> that would be the way to resolve the dilemma. >> in my reprogramming request, i will put money back into the sub program. but then i will have to cut it from someone else. that requires identifying winners and losers. that means some people, districts, are affected more than others. that is a difficult thing to do. that is a stratec thing to do, to go back and seriously

reprivatized -- we prioritize what you are doing with your budget. it is by no means certain they would be able to do that. >> [inaudible] >> is a one-timehing. they have their normal reprogramming process they can continue to do, but there are limits to that. that goes to the defense committees. >> that is not someone else? >> that is in the bca. no immediate program terminations directly because of sequestration. finding that has already been obligated does not affected by sequestration. if you are a defense contractor, sequestration happens onanuary 2on january 3, all defense contractors will be working on contractors were funding has already been obligated. what sequestration a facts is

the ability of the department to obligate new funding. >> is there actually -- does it turn out to be a good news story in the short term? >> if congress does enact the cr, the current level of the base defense budget for 2012 is $535 billion. it is about $5illion more than in is the request. when it comes time for sequestration to hit, you just get cut by $5 billion more. >> [inaudible]

>> you calculate the amount of the cuts. whatever the difference is, let me go back to that slide. the cap will not change. it will be $491 billion for total national defense. dod is 95% of that. if it is $5 billion more. the cap is hard. >> one of the things that lockheed ceo has warned about is the potential f this nightmare chain reaction of chargebacks for all the big time defense contractors to say, the budget has changed x %. you owe less more under our agreement because you have changed our contract. our agreement now has changed by this amount.

have you calculated the potential consequences as part of your analysis? is that a big shadow that could be on the other side of this thing? >> that is very true. that would be part of the process of renegotiating contracts. unit cost would go up as a result of that. it starts down at the subcontractor level and it would ripple its way all the way up to the prime contractor level. you can buless with the money you have. the $10 billion you plan to spend on the joint strike fighter, when that gets cut by 10%, you have $9 billion.

you are not cutting the number of aircraft by 10%, to work cutting it more by 10%. he will not know the exact amount of that until it happens. there is a lot of uncertainty. especially when you get down to the second tier and third tier level. >> for those people below the primes, they could be looking at losses at that point. if the feds have a hard ceiling about how much they could spend and they cannot make up the differences, they will just be out of luck. >> they would just have to pass those costs on. it would be a reduction in buying power. that would be the end resu. whatever widget they were buying used to cost $100, now you buy it at a lower quantity. produce it as efficiently . yo

>> when you reopen these contracts, they may have these overruns they may stick into the renegotiated contract. they were the only vendors that could produce that weapon system. d.o.d. is not in a good negotiating position. they will have to suck up whenever cost the contractors give them. the cost has gone up to $120. i cannot just buy 10% fewer. that will post its way up to the prime contractor. >> your analysis of the impact supports the labor department's statement that contractors are not obligated to tell everybody they may not have a job. >> i cannot say if their interptation is true or not. you would need to ask an

attorney to read the law to see what applies. the outlays for procurement will not drop 14%. outlays for procurement will not happen immediately. there is delayed effect. the people in the defense industry know this. when they tell you that their labor force will have to be reduced by 10% because of sequestration, it is tru it just does not happen in january 2013. >> can you lay out how sequestration can play out for the f35. what he has raised some alarms about what impact it could -- lockheed has raised some alarms about what impact it could have. i am curious to know how it

plays out. they have been stretching out for a long time. how will this play out? >> it will be disruptive for a program like that. it has faced numerous delays over the past several years. every budget request has been slipped into the future. they have reduced quantities. ograms like that may already be at the breaking point in terms of how you can stretch the without breaking them. that is at the aircraft and component level. they have a test program. it is for the whole aircraft. that is dependent upon having and left -- enough test programming.

this has to happen in series. it is the kind of thing if you take money out of it, things cannot happen in the order they are supposed to happen. >> is it just that f35? they have a mass of programming that they can organize and adjust to take those reductions. they could emphasize the testing and not emphasize other parts. >> the f35 is different from other d.o.d. programs. it is multiservice. you have an air force procurement budget and a navy procurement. it is at which level the congress appropriates the money. they cannot move money without

permission of congress to try to pinpoint budt authority would be up to the air force. they have some ability to say if we have 10% less funding this year to spend on our research and development part, how do we do that? how do we slow this down? how do we arrange the test schedule? how do we optimize within the resources we have? this wld slip the program again. with the unit cost going up, forget how many aircraft you plan to buy.

in fiscal year 2013, how many did we plan to buy? 29. it would not just be a cut of 10% of that. >> all of the bills have 29. >> cut that not just by 10%. you have to go back to lockheed and say we negotiated a contract in the past that said we would buy at a certain rate. we cannot buy at that rate. they have a fixed overhead. i have been to the factory. if you are buying 10% fewer production items in a yr, their overhead cost are the same. your cost per aircraft will increase.

>> a lot of the contractors complain about their procurement being hit disproportionately. you hear people say there is a big difference among programs -- there will be thousands of personnel volved in oversig of a program as large as the f35 program. ve you given any thought to how would the lasting effect ultimately lead to a more efficient pentagon? could reduce the bureaucracy in the pentagon? >> it depends to the cut. >> do you know how the civilian workforce breaks down? >> i do not have the numbers on who does what in the civilian work force. some of them perform

maintenance. some of them do infrastructure support, like mowing the grass. some do administrative jobs. if you have to cut 100,00 of these people, some of themou could just cut the jobs and do less work. some of them he would be cutting from job functions that need to be done by someone else at that point. you do not have extra money to hire contractors to do it. what will you do? you will have to reshuffle amongst people in theivilian work force and bring in the uniformed military since they are not being cut under the sequestration. the military may be doing some job functions that d.o.d. civilians used to do. it could mean reduced oversight for some programs. in the past, the d.o.d. has made a priority of building of the acquisition. this has hit them as well.

maybe they would both people round, change job assignments. that should be part of their sequestration planning. >> is there anything that would prevent them from laying off people, but may be cut hours? >> for some jobs, they could do that. the 791,000 number is number of full-time equivalents. that is about how much they would have to reduce their fte's. some of you have been getting 40 hours a week. now you are getting or 20. if you are the individual, that is a cut.

you will feel that in your pocketbook. maybe is not as bad as losing your job entirely, but it is still bad. >> they are not discussing any of this planning. have you talked to anyone inside? >> i have talked to a controller who has testified before congress who said they are not planning sequestration. it would be wise to start planning. we are 130 days away from sequestration when it would go into effect. it has been more than a year since the act has been passed. i would not write it off as if it will not occur. i do not thi they are writing it off. there is a reluctance to plan

for it because if you to start planning, the real planning they could do -- the reduction is the uniform percentage in budget authority across the accounts. they cannot change that. they can work on a reprogramming package. if you make us cut that 56 billion, we want to reallocate it across different accounts because we went to protect some high priority items. they could start doing that planning. they are likely to get cut. that is the downside risk and why they are not showing their hand.

>>hat if congress comes back and rewrites the law? how bad is that? can things be reversed? >> it can be reversed. if they restore the funding before the end of the fiscal year, this would not be as dramatic. the longer you wait, the more d.o.d. will have to delay or exercise contract options. you open up a can of worms. the longer you delay it, though more warm to open up out of the can. it is not an all or nothing on january 2. this is not like a government shutdown where all of the effects our immediate. theffects will be more gradual. the real exception is d.o.d. civilian personnel.

if congress comes back in april with a new administration and they say, we have a different deal. we will restore that d.o.d. funding, it is not too late. they can still do that. d.o.d. would have time to recover and award ntracts like they had planned. >> will the contract be renegotiated toward the end of the fiscal year? will they pu that off or address the plans? >> you have to ask d.o.d. that is part of what i think they should be planning for right now -- what are the ones where they will to wait? the closer you get to the end of the fiscal year, the more they will have to do. >> we have had a sequestration before. it was at the end of the 1990's. how were these contracts

renegotiated? was it catastrophic? >> it is not helpful because the ones we had then were smalle the largest one that i am aware of was in fiscal year 1986. that was after they passed gramm-rudman hollins. it is a little different because the magnitude of the cut is smaller. they knew it when they passed it what it would do with >> do you have the se dilemmas where people are purchasing hardware and you have to renegotiate the cost? >> we do but to a smaller extent.

>> it was not that difficult to do at the time. >> it was difficult. i was quite young at the time. i cannot tell you firsthand. in the early 1990's. the sequestrations were small. it was less than 1%. you can handle that by sending someone home for a day. >> did they find out then that the money -- they spend more money on the renegotiation? when ty had to redo these contracts, they ate up all of the savings. >> it does not eat up the savings. it reduces your purchasing power. if you are going to buy 40 or 50 subs, if you are buying them as a less cost-effecte oduction rate, it will cost you more in the long run.

you'll save the money up front. it caps the amount of money you can appropriate. it is near term savings with a long-term consequence. >> it is true of any defense spending reduction. congress cut the amount of expenditures before all this happened -- a change of the unit costs. >> it is not in the defense expense reduction. is an unplanned reduction. if you went into this and said, the defense budget will be 10% less a share, let's work up a budget that is 10% less. you could avoid a lot of these costs. if this program is a high priority, i will maintain the production rate. i would not have to renegotiate

the contract. i might kill another program. there is some cost with that, contract termination fees. you pay it. it is small. you could make targeted cuts like that and he would not incur l of these extra expenses in the long run and finishing contracts. >> we will take this down to the 491 level. could they still get sequestration? >> that a technicality in the law. in the first year, it is a penalty sequester. it will not happen this way. it could. if you appropriate less money than is currently requested, at the $491 billion level for a total of national defense, you get hit with a sequestered of 54.7 billion.

it only works thatay the first year. it is a penalty sequestered because the supercommittee fails. in the future years, you have this budget ca it is still reduced. it is a slightly different level. it grows with inflation. that is different because it does not have to be a sequester. if you come in with a budget request that fits within the cap, no sequestration. you do not have uniform cu. you could target the cut yourself. you have to have a budget. congress has to appropriate a budget that fits within that cap. fiscal year 2013, you'll get a sequester. it will cut you even if you cut

your own budget. there is no incentive for anyone to cut the budget preemptively because you get cut again >> most of the reductions in the bca are reductions to projected growth. before the sequestration would occur, what have we seen in terms of a real cut in the defense department? everyone speaks as if this is a catastrophic event. it is all reductions to projected growth. there may be some real cuts. have you broken that down? >> i have some of that analysis in the report. if you look at total defense spending including war funding, it is coming down quickly because we are out of iraq.

you are seeing a reduction in defense spending in defense outlays. the reduction of war funding will happen as we drawdown in afghanistan. in the base defense budget, 2010 was the peak in the budget. it has declined since then in real ter. the fiscal year 2013 request is about 2.3% less than the appropriated amounts in fiscal year 2012. that is in real terms. we are seeing a 2.3% reduction. if you look at the projection over the coming years, it is flat. it goes slightly highethan inflation, .o1% over the next five years. do not to read too much into those.

>> these are the obama administration's budget request. it projected flat at the same peak level of defense spending. fiscal year 2011 came up. fiscal year 2012 wendown. it is flat f the projection in the future. the reagan administration was projecting growth in defense spending all the way through the end of the administration although the budget kept coming down. the start of that drawdown from fial year 1985 until 1986 was sequestration. >> sequestration can affect all

of the federal agencies. can you give us insight how it will play out for the other agencies? there are significant differences because the pentagon buys that. they have to pay people. >> i have not looked at that for other people if their expenses are primarily paying people payroll expenses, then the outlay rate would be much faster and initially. they would see greater reductions. the way the cut works -- because the supercommittee fails, you take the 1.2 trillion in deficit reduction they were supposed to find over the coming years, divide in half. half comes from national defense and the other from non- defense. divide it by nine.

you will save in interest savings. if you spend less of that time, you have borrowed less. you pay less in interest. you end up with 54.7 billion per year that has to come out of national defense and 54.7 billion that has to come out of nondefense it is not just out of discretionary nondefense. some of it comes out of medicare. i do not know how the formula

works out over there. it is over nine years. it is equal cu over nine years. >> the pentagon has committed to cut over 10 years. >> that was relative to projected growth. that took out all projected growth and reduced the budget by 2.3% this year and kept it for the rest of the decade. that is where they get the 487 billion. >> if sequestration goes through and the commission comes through in january, he talked about working through the senate. you can have it retroactively applied in janua. are there any weird snags with that scenario? >> congress can make their own roles. they can make it go back like it never happened. a few weeks after sequestration

has taken effect, it is very quickly after the fact that they are able to push something through congress. it is difficult to do if you have divided congress. they can do a lot of that before they have done much. the d.o.d. does not move quickly on renegotiating contracts. they may have notified contractors and started dialogue with them. the d.o.d. civilians may have been furloughed by then. you have to sehow quickly they do that. in a down economy, i doubt people will have found new jobs. that would be a difficult thing to do if you have a divided coress. that is why i think you have to

start sequestration more seriously. look at the polling results. after this election, we are likely to still have a divided congress. it still matters how much a majority you have in each house whether you can push this through. whether or not sequeration happens, it has to do with defense we can talk about the real effects of sequestration. that is not what wilturn this debate. if that were to change the outcome, it would have done it already. this debate is about taxes and entitlements. what kind of compromise congress can reach on that. >> where do you see fuels costs getting into this? how did you see this working out under sequestration? what happens to these efforts

to bring that under control? >> we spend about $15 billion in the defense budget on fuel. it is through o &m accounts. fuel is not discretionary. for the war effort in afghanistan, they will get what they nd. it will prioritize ongoing military operations. the vast majority of it is for peacetime military operations.

the air force is the largest fuel consumer in the federal government. you'll see a cut back on things like flying hours for airplanes. cutbacks on steaming days for ships. people would do less if they have less fuel. there will be less training. readiness could be degraded by some amount if we do not do the training currently planned. >> if you cannot go training, can you save money in other ways? >> you put less wear and tear on the equipment. that helps you on the maintenance side. this will be our last question. >> ppa's has some level of flexibility. can you give insight about what

sort of planning d.o.d. should be doing to ensure the best flexibility of those? >> you are kind of limited in what your budget line items are. the way the congress appropriates the money. some of those budget line items have multiple budget lines to fund that program. your flexibility is a limited within each of those funding lines. that makes it restrictive in the program. there are other budget lines were you go down to the program element level. somef them funded multiple development efforts under one program element. you have flexibility with in that program element on how you allocate the cuts. if you have three different

element activities, you could cut one of them or put all of the cuts on that one development effort. it goes down to that program product activity level. o&m accounts tend to be much larger. when you have a much larger accounts, at the budget line itemevel, you have more flexility prioritized. thank you for coming out. have a good weekend.

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[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> what's the third party spoiler effect in national elections we hear about? >> well, it can happen in two ways. it can happen both in terms of stealing votes, and also it can happen in terms of affecting the level of turnout. most of the time we think about it in terms of stealing votes, that ralph nader, stole votes from al gore in 2000. or ross perot perhaps stole votes from george bush in 1992 and affected the outcome because of the swing that those votes to

the third party candidate had on the overall outcome. but if the candidate is popular enough and has a lot of charisma, like perot did, has a popular -- populist appeal like jesse ventura who won in minnesota, sometimes they can motivate people to turn out and vote who otherwise wouldn't get involved because they're uninterested or disillusioned with politics. >> you mentioned some notable cases. are there any that are thought to have affected the election? >> ralph nader is thought to have affected the election. the reason is that that was so close. the other person who comes to find 2000 is pat buchanan -- comes to mind in 2000 is pat buchanan because of the way he was on the ballot. that was in some ways more election administration problem than third party candidate

appealing to major party voters. but in any case, he got more votes in florida, by far, than expected. and part of that was the butterfly ballot and so on. >> what are some of the qualities that allow a third party or third party candidate to gain traction in an election? >> before we get to that, i think you have to talk about the obstacles. and then the qualities are what help them overcome the obstacles. the obstacles i think of in two forms, a mechanical or constitutional barrier, we have -- institutional barrier, where we have election laws that allow the plurality winner, the candidate that gets the most votes, that win the plurality to take all the electoral votes in the presidential case. this has this winner-take-all effect for -- a plurality rule

the effect leading voters to think about the fact that they might be wasting their vote. the mechanical -- the institutional effect and psychological effect interact. there's also a lot of barriers in the american system with third parties getting on the ballot. some states make it easier. you have to get wrureblly -- usually signatures on a petition. but in many states, the numbers are quite high and so the qualities candidates often have to get over those are, they have money, ross perot had a lot of money and was able to buy his way onto the ballot with his personal fortune and hire people to do that for him. or they often have some kind of charismatic appeal that generates a following. that following is what mobilizes the troops necessary to get them on the ballot. if you have both, and i think ross perot, fair to say, had both charisma and money, then you have a chance to really make a dent in terms of picking up a

fair number of votes. >> quin monson, thank you for the information. >> thank you for having me. >> taking a look at some viewers' posts, we have questions on our facebook page about third party elections. margie write, i left the republican party, they are g.o.p. progressive. looking for third party. josh wagner says, i am voting for gary johnson. and tommy winer says, i'll be voting for jerry white of the socialist equality party, and he includes a link to find out more. go to c-span's facebook page, facebook.com/c-span.

jim gray is the vice-presidential result. here are former governor johnson's acceptance remarks. [applause] >> i humbly accept the nomination. thank you very much. [applause] i'm going to make a pledge to all of you and that is that none of you are going to regrets what happened here today. [applause] i really want to thank my

parents. they are both here. earle and lorraine. my mom is the reason we ended up in new mexico. she is with the bureau of indian affairs and why we got transferred there. she is the one that in the third grade had me taking tap dancing lessons in a school where there were 40 girls and one boy. i being the one boy. she had me playing the piano. i love my parents and i want to thank them both. i want to thank kate, my fiancee. i'm in love and it will be a white house wedding. [applause] where is kate? where is kate? i want to thank my sister.

my sister and my brother-in-law are here, lori and scott. [applause] my -- my son eric is here. eric? where are you? eric -- where is eric? eric quit his well-paying job in denver 2 1/2 years ago to come and do this with me for two years unpaid. if that isn't about as loving a gesture as anything i have ever received, it's that. [applause] thank you. my daughter, she gave me a call and said dad, i'm the worst daughter in the world. what are you talking about? i'm not going to be at the convention. i'm going to be in brazil for

three weeks. she is there with the ballet. a bit about my daughter. she was valedictorian in bowled, colorado. 9,000 students. my daughter's car broke down outside of new mexico. she happened to have her tools with her. she knew that the alternator. she hitchhiked into gallup and got an alternator and went back and installed it herself. [applause] my brother scott last night called me up and said i watched the debate on c-span. you did great. you got your ass kicked by lee rice. [applause] where is lee rice?

lee rice? [applause] what a gentleman. what a gentleman. what a pleasure. what a delight it has been to debate lee rice a dozen times. >> let's get this guy elected. [applause] >> lee rice said it along the way and it is true. we made each other better candidates. like i say, no one -- no one could have been more cordial. no one could have been more gracious. no one could have been more articulate regarding libertarian ideals and beliefs.

[applause] so -- so where do we go from here? this is about winning. this is about winning. and so this is your decision, but i want to ask you the following. and that is please consider jim gray as my result. -- running mate. [applause] i believe that jim gray affords the best opportunity to winning and i want you to know that in this process, we interviewed a lot of candidates as potential vice-presidential candidates, and without question, i think jim gray does a better job when it comes to articulating libertarian ideals and beliefs than anyone else. goy back to year 2000 when i met jim gray for the first time which ended up being the first time of a dozen times that we came across each other and he was very outspoken regarding the

war on drugs. i think arguably he was more outspoken than anyone in the country on the war on drugs and he brought -- he brought and expert's to this as a superior court judge in california that was just undeniable. and it is not just drugs. jim gray ran it is libertarian candidate for senate in california and i think he does a terrific job when it comes to articulating libertarian ideals and beliefs. back to the criteria for a candidate, that needs to be the number one criteria. this is your choice. i recognize that this is your choice. and all i'm asking you is to just give jim gray a listen, and i think if you'll do that, you'll understand what i think we have come to the conclusion on and that is this affords us the best opportunity to win and

believe me, that's what the goal needs to be, is to actually win in november. [applause] thank you very, very, very much. thank you. thank you. thank you. [applause] >> in april, the constitution party held its national convention in nashville, tennessee where delegates nomnaded virginia congressman virgin goode. in his acceptance speech, he talked about abortion, same-sex marriage, gun rights, immigration and the war in afghanistan. this is 25 minutes.

and honor to introduce the presidential nominee, a candidate for the constitution party. it is virgil goode. he hails from rocky mount, virginia. he was born in richmond, virginia, in october 1946. he received his bachelor of arts from the university of richmond. he served in the virginia national guard. he is an attorney by trade. he served as a legislator in the

virginia general assembly and the state senate's. he served 12 years as a u.s. representative in the u.s. congress. he is married to lucy goode. and they have a daughter. i would point out that with this 12 years service in the u.s. congress, he served in federal office longer than barack obama or mitt romney combined. [laughter] with that, for his acceptance speech, let's welcome virgil goode, jr. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> first, i want to say thanks

so much to all of you who were targets and supported me and this nomination battle for the presidency of the united states under the constitution party label. when you win by one vote, you know every vote counts. i want to say to those who also ran, it was an honor to be associated. i want to thank joan and daryl for all they have done over the years for the constitution party. [applause] robbie wells -- thank you. [applause]

the energy and enthusiasm exhibited by robbie wells on this campaign has been tremendous. if he will continue to work with us, if we do not get to the top of the hill this time, we will get to the top of the hill in 2016.

[applause] i also want to recognize susan and thank her for her campaign and for sharing with us her life story, which every person should listen to because it is a true pulling yourself up by the bootstraps story under the free enterprise system. thank you so much. [applause]

i am not sure if laurie is still here, but i want to express my appreciation for having the presence that a radio talk-show host has. i hope i can call her up and get some pointers for jazzing up and going with a few well- placed reasonable zingers that will surely get you on radio and television. [applause] i have to really thank ron. he allowed the delegations to vote for me.

thank you very much. thank you for standing for a traditional marriage and for your speech yesterday. [applause] our party offices have worked very hard in bringing about this convention, and getting persons here from all over the country. i think we all should give the mayor round of applause for their service. -- give them a round of applause for their service. [applause]

our party chair is not running again, i want to thank jim. i know i do this on behalf of all of you, for his time, energy, and personal contributions to this party. he and several others have been mainstays in providing funding over the years to the constitution party. he have got to have some funding just to keep the doors open. jim, thank you so very much. [applause] i will not list all the party officers, and i know they have

all worked hard, but i do want to mention specifically our treasurer. [applause] joe has done yeoman's work in the detail that is deemed to ise treasurer's report that if we did that are informative, but also comply with all the federal elections commission regulations. joe, thank you for steering ness street and keeping us out of trouble. are you ready to take on mitt romney, barack obama, and the

establishment in washington, d.c.? if you are, say yes. [applause] jim mentioned that i served in the u.s. house for 12 years. i did. peter from louisiana asked me, i know you cast a lot of votes and a lot of them i agree with, but tell me one or two that you may have cast wrong. you remember that, peter? and i did. i made some mistakes. it is not too difficult to do. and one, in particular, i voted

for the patriot act. i know that most in the room are very much opposed to that measure. i want to say that my association with the constitution party over the last three years has given me a better perspective in analyzing legislation from a constitutional viewpoint. and i want to say that i made a mistake in voting for that measure as it applied to u.s. citizens in this country and to legal permanent residents. i do not favor, although this may not comport with all federal court decisions, extending constitutional rights to persons from foreign countries or those illegally in the united states.