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tv   Public Affairs  CSPAN  April 5, 2013 9:00am-2:00pm EDT

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the moderator is even guilty of calling people opposite of the president pro-life. people are anti-choice or anti- abortion. we need to clear that up. conservatives, these are not conservatives. these are confederates. thes matthews started using term awhile back, but he stopped because he did not get support. haveupsets me is when we democrats to begin to explain what is going on in washington and say both sides are guilty of it. it is not both sides. guest: i could not agree with you more. you just touched on something very important and something that we write about at "the nation." there is no equivalence between
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those who are obstructionists 1% and those who have tried to compromise too much. i could not agree more. there was a story in the "washington post" today. it is on the front page. it speaks to your point. called, "maryland those ," something left like that. it is about maryland abolishing the death penalty, marriage equality. one of my favorite politicians is the state senator in maryland. i recommend everyone check him out. d as saying this is about the vindicating rights. when did majority, common sense
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positions, vindicating rights become going left? i have nothing wrong with going left. in this country, it often arouses a response where people do not get to move beyond the term to understand many things are now mainstream. majorities of people support positions are just ticked off. 90% of americans support universal the background checks. other been laying out independent bipartisan issue. i think we need to talk about living wage. we need to expose the faults conservatives as extremists. we need to challenge the media to not buy into this fall's equivalent. i think one of the things we're aeing going on in d.c. is concerted attempt to make government dysfunctional so people outside of washington say that government does not work.
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government can work with common good, but not when it is being runby people who want to government 41%. i agree with you. host: katrina vaden heuvel is writing for the "washington post" and "the nation." let's hear from linda on the independent line. caller: i would like to make a comment. rich people get loopholes and do not partly paid taxes. each time there is a new president, they get a 33.33% raise for all of the government representatives. of course they do not want to vote to make taxes and equality. one more thing i would like to bring up.
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my husband makes $23,000 a year. income for/4 of our our insurance. he brings home $230 a week. the mexicans who are illegal work the same job as my husband. they make a bigger paycheck. they also get a medical card and food stamps. much to get3 too them. guest: it is good to hear from you. my husband is from kentucky. us because ith want to ask a follow-up question. let's let katrina vaden heuvel respond. inest: you are right on being frustrated. the pillars of economic security for millions of middle-class people may get caught.
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the loopholes for the richest stay wide open. there is a role for this bipartisan coalition to gather around a dislike of corporate welfare. progressives always speak out against corporate welfare. i think true conservatives should also hate corporate welfare. it is something called the predators day. the state is sucking up money. it is coming out of strapped states, cities, and federal budgets and going to corporations in many instances, not people. we need to reorient our economy so it works for the real economy and working people. at the moment, it is not a level playing field where the richest and most entrenched and powerful interests are making off like banksters. host: i want to get your
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response to what the chamber of outerce and aflcio hammered for visas. they said they would have to get paid the same wage as american citizens so there would not be any way to undercutting and employers cannot use them during a strike, and also small- business this would get a break. would that help? caller: i think there are so many mexicans here that if food stamps. my husband works a job. there is a man and woman who are mexican. they can work it the same place, but my husband cannot. they still get food stamps. they still get a medical card. they do not have any taxes taken out of their wages so they are making $500 a week. a week, the charges
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almost $100 for our insurance. the last few presidents, they raise.3.33% host: let's leave it there. do you think this would help? guest: i do not know the details of linda's work place. i would have to work -- look into that. is misplaced.ger why is she looking at the mexican family when she should be looking of the way the system -- at the way the system is rigged? i believe the prevailing wage has been worked out in the agreement. we need more demand in the economy. demand comes from people who have a little more money in their pockets. whatever we can do to lift up earlier, tosaid many people work full-time and still live in poverty or near
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poverty. it makes no sense on any level whether moral, political, practical. i think prevailing, living wage is what we should be looking at. is our next caller on the republican line. caller: i will tell you what i believe, what i have seen, and what i think we should do. i believe we should show the illegal immigrants the door. we should pass a law to liquidate everything they have earned in america. give that to the states and federal government. a flood of be illegal aliens going back to the border with their stuff. we would not need to deport them. what i have seen, i have worked on construction sites. i always see spanish drywall and cleaning up.crews i never see black crews.
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it is all of the spanish crews because they get the lowest wages. i think we need a worker's car, a biometric card, because most illegal aliens just want to make money and send it back home. many businesses on the border need to work. so theld have a card employers can be right, illegal right, and it will be fair. guest: i have never seen a policy of purging of benefits anyone except maybe the big corporations. i do not know how what you are describing would help her condition. i think the issue of the i.d. card, i think it has a lot of .roblems
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you find an alliance of libertarians, civil liberties people, others who say that is not the answer. i think you need to lift up workers. there are good studies from the fiscal policy institute and other places that document -- the a.p. announced it would no longer use the term "illegal immigrants. " they bring benefits to the overall economy. your caller is speaking from his death, but purging or liquefying does not seen the way to go. host: you have talked about where you see some of the conflict coming from. we saw a story about how to evangelical groups are calling for immigration reform that would include a path to citizenship. that will playk in conservative circles and
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among republicans? we saw evangelicals come out against paul ryan, the nuns on the bus. communitiesth speaking against the cruel budget and immigration reform. 60% of young evangelicals support same-sex marriage. i think you are seeing an interesting dynamic in that community. i think there is also support among the faith-based committee -- community for environmental protections and preserving the land. as the media and as a nation, we can do better. we were founded as an independent magazine committed to truth-telling,
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accountability, and lifting up new ideas. there are all kinds of alliances across unusual to rain -- terrain it can be crafted to move issues in important ways. we're not seeing that as much in d.c. because a lot of factors. congress, the money, the entrenched interests. in the country, there is more portrayed or media that one sees in traditional politics. may is in fort lauderdale, florida. sayer: i just want to illegal immigration has destroyed my family. they have destroyed the family that made under $30,000 a year. i wake up every morning and
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worry about my children. they do not have jobs. are you going to do about my kids in 10 years that cannot draw social security, do not have a pension, never had a job because illegal .mmigration, they have the jobs guest: with all due respect, i do not think your anger should be focused on undocumented immigrants. i think it should be focused on the economic system that is failing working-class americans. it is failing to invest in the future and job creation, failing retirement security like social security and pensions. that is where the problem is. you get rid of all of the
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undocumented immigrants, you still have a system where your kids in 10 years may live in the dire way you suggested. i would place your energy and anger on the system that is not working and find ways to drive changes that would improve the conditions of your kids' lives. why do fear mongering and blaming? host: you mentioned environmental issues and how there is a lineup among evangelicals and progressives. here is a story in the "new york times" today. it talks about comments he made at the home of an outspoken critic of the keystone echo park plan. he said politics are often comes to environmental issues. we saw a story in the "washington post" that says the public interest in climate iswaning, --ning
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is waning. where does that leave the climate effort? has donee president some very good things on climate, fuel efficiency, plants.n emission but this requires leadership. it is wrong in a bad economic climate to talk about some of issue of howthe many jobs the park plan would plan wouldhe park create contested how many jobs would be created. if you had a real will to create the grain economy and green jobs, if you could shift this country in important and desperately needed ways.
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funded junkrporate- science and misinformation about climate, you are seeing some of those polls. crisis and, the science is so real that with leadership. drive the green agenda and an important way and make it clear you could create jobs and not lose them. it is the job piece that has the president going soft on this. we have a piece in the last by a greatthe nation" climate activist who calls on john kerry because the pipeline decision will need to be made at the state department to stand true to the courage he showed in vietnam when he spoke about bravery and seeking a true alternative that would benefit this country. i think we need to keep driving
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the importance of making change that will allow this planet and country to survive. what is stunning is we have come out of hurricane katrina years ago, now hurricane sandy in my city and this area, we're looking at arctic melting in ways we have never seen, the science is so clear. there are good decisions being made. in general, this is where the fossil fuel industry has a great grip on our politics and economy. we have got to unshackle that grip. host: let's get one more call. go ahead, jim. caller: i would like to the comment on the topic you started the sector with. in the private sector, there is competition.
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when certain business models failed to be competitive, collective bargaining gave us a lot of good. the public sector compared to the private sector, even if it is a vital service or product, there is not competition. the collective bargaining, i am not sure about it. i believe fdr even recognized this. i wondered if you could comment on whether there is a benefit to collective bargaining in the public sector where we might agree there is in the private sector. guest: a think there is a very important role for the public sector to be unionized i think we are seeing it with terrible cuts and state levels. teachers, nurses, first , andnders, police
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firefighters are not hit by collective bargaining cuts. , which economic climate to many portrayed as one where america is bankrupt, you are seeing republican governors up economiced crisis to drive austerity policies. who is the victim of those? public-sector workers. i think they need protection. they need the countervailing force against state power that wants to destroy them in some instances. i think there are some changes -- if we had a robust retirement security program in this country, one could look at the pension system. the pensions are being cut back. worth being negotiated or looking at, but not in the ways we're doing.
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we are shredding things. indeed the countervailing force of bargaining power because we do you need a countervailing force of a bargaining power because public-sector workers need bargaining power. i would argue you need those protections in the private sector and public sector. host: katrina vaden heuvel is the editor and publisher of "the nation." she also writes regularly for the "washington post." thank you for joining us from new york city. next, we look at americans and what they eat. we will look at new numbers on how our diet has changed in the last 50 years. we will be right back. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]
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blacks it is important to remember -- >> it is important to remember the central banker cannot control everything that goes on in the economy. it is very important what writers do. they do shaped the course of the economy's and of the world. at the end of the day, they do have a finite powers they can use. they can say we will put more money into the economy or less. it is a lot more complicated than that. they can regulates banks. the contract to influence things in other ways. but to think that everything that has gone wrong is their fault is wrong. to think that everything that has gone right is -- alan greenspan probably got too much credit for the great moderation and years of strong growth we had in the 2,000's. blame alanto
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greenspan and the federal reserve before the crisis for what we see now. that is probably overstating things. irwin on sunday night at 9:00 eastern. >> where is the predictability in judge borg? what are the assurances this committee has us to where you will be given the background and history? >> as a teenager and in my early 20's, i was a socialist. it hardly seems to me to indicate fundamental instability. as winston churchill said, any man who is not a socialist before he is 40 has no heart. any man who is a socialist after 40 has no head. evolutionat kind of is very common in people. those two characters that you
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saw, one was the einstein of the law and the other was the einstein of the senate. you have two trains passing in the night. he was one of the toughest senators to lobby on anything. was brilliant. .e was a brilliant judge he taught antitrust law. he wrote the book at yale. these two guys were meeting in passing like two trains. never did they come together on anything. 8:00.e on sunday night at continues. journal" host: this morning, we look at the foods and beverages americans consume. we are joined this morning by cynthia ogden, a nutritional
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epidemiologist with the national centers for health statistics. also from national public radio, allison aubrey, food and health correspondent. cynthia ogden, let's start with the basics. what are the major changes we're seeing in terms of americans' diets over the last decade? we saw a change in power is available, particularly in the 1980's and 1990's. the same time, we saw an increase in obesity. recently, we have seen a decrease in calories. there have been changes in terms of how we eat and what we're eating. host: are dividing the phone lines of regionally for this segment. we would like to hear your perspective on what you eat and drink and how is affecting your health. here are the numbers to call.
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is the big takeaway obesity? is that the major change? you started with that one. guest: that is a significant public health concern right now. we saw large increases in the prevalence of obesity in the 1970's and 1980's and 1990's. it has been slow and more recently. that is a big issue related to our diet. host: we can see obesity increase in the 1980's and 1990's. more recently, the levels have plateaued. what is the plateau about? guest: you are starting to see what happens when programs that have focused on better eating in theols, more exercise, president's message has been out for over a decade. you do not see the numbers going down, but the trend is definitely a plateau. this last summer, we saw numbers from places like new york city and philadelphia, places where
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they focus on getting kids active, changing lifestyle and patterns of eating. you can start to see in those cities the numbers are plateauing. host: water the health and policy implications when we look at the rise of obesity? guest: you start to see it costs a lot of money to treat obesity. it has been said 70% of health care dollars is for treating people as chronic diseases. many of these chronic diseases are the largest of diseases. we're talking about heart disease, type 2 diabetes. those are diseases that can be prevented or treated better with a better lifestyle. heavierericans are today than they were in the 1960's. nearly 36% of adults and 17% of youth are obese. how are the studies conducted?
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guest: that is a great question. we have a wonderful resource. it combines an interview with a physical exam. it is representative of the u.s. population. trailer's travel around the country. during the exam, we and height are taken along with blood, and dental examinations, and other things. onse data are based measurements of weight and height. it is important because if you ask people, you can get misreports. host: as you look at the cold hard numbers, what is the take away in terms of regional reporting? do you have a sense of areas of the country that having a harder time with health and weight? guest: there are different
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reports on regional differences. reducing regional differences in obesity. the prevalence of obesity is higher [indiscernible] host: one of the chart we have looked at the cowboys' consumed from cost food and the age range of where people are getting calories depending on how old are. we can see the change in difference between the age brackets. the lowest come from those who are 60 and over. allison aubrey, what do we know about the culture of eat-in -- eating and how that plays into fast food and buy it? guest: americans are eating differently than they were a generation ago. not just in terms of what we're eating, but how we are eating. people tend to snack more. there are studies showing children snack two or three times a day. if you look back to the 1950's,
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the typical american was eating 2.8 pounds of meat a week. by 2006, that number had increased about 50%. we eat a lot more cheese. the typical american eats 31 pounds of cheese a year. we drink a lot less milk. the way these things play out is if you are eating more meat and cheese, that is more saturated fat. the trend line just in the last few years has started to show a downward trend. we're starting to see red meat consumption is down. that is after decades of increasing. it is important to note american eating habits have changed all lot if you look over a generation. it is also important to note that american scene to begin the message. people need to be watching what they are eating and balancing fraught with rebels in fact with
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exercise. -- people need to be watching what they're eating and balancing it with exercise. host: who works on policies in terms of recommending to americans what they eat? guest: what you see is the work of the u.s. department of agriculture and health and human services. they get together every five years and create a panel of scientists. they sift through the body of evidence that has been emerging. the last time this happened was in 2010. remember from the past it was a pyramid. at the bottom, it said to eat six to 11 servings of grain. at the top, is said to be just a few servings of oil or fat. the last time around, researchers and policy makers said, instead of being so qualitative, we're going to focus on patterns of eating. we want this to be simple for people. they changed the icon from the
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pyramid to the plate. the idea is directional. we want to encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables. that is half of the plate. we want to encourage people to eat more whole grains. that is another 1/4 of the plate. we want them to eat more protein, less sugar, less saturated caught, and less sodium. we're joined by allison aubrey cynthia ogden. let's go to the phones and hear from joyce in woodbridge, virginia. caller: i am calling to find out about the fact that the doctors have told us it is not necessary for us to take vitamins, we can get all the vitamins we need from our food. i am concerned about the can chemtrailshe sky --
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in the sky and the toxic chemicals been placed on the food. even organic food is in trouble because of the chemicals. vitamins, howake will we survive the onslaught? why have the doctors changed their views about vitamins? why are they telling us that we can now take vitamins that they prescribe? i do not think doctors have changed their view. doctors may give different advice. as researchers have looked at the body of evidence on taking vitamins and supplements, they tend to see there are not great benefits. before i make a lot of people mad, i should say it is case by case. if you think about the 1980's and 1990's, vitamin e was
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recommended by doctors a lot. steady started to show we did not see a benefit. people over time taking the supplements and 10 or 20 years later, check in to see if it prevented disease or cancer, we cannot measure a benefit. that is when you start to see changing guidelines, when researchers and policy makers look at a body of evidence and start to see not much of the benefit. studies have gone both ways. i would not say vitamins have been ruled altogether. acid is critical when a woman is pregnant. that is why it is in the prenatal vitamins. when you hear that vitamins are not recommended any more, sometimes it is because of the results of the studies who suggest a multivitamin is not as beneficial as once believed. host: how is overweight defined
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today versus how we define it 30 years ago? guest: the definition of overweight or obesity is different in children and adults. it is based on a familiar formula. betweenht is a bmi of 25% and 30% for adults. is above and it the 95% -- is above the 95th percentile. those growth charts are based on the national health and nutrition survey. we're talking about where the data come from. dietswe see children's and the calories coming from carbohydrates. you can see how that breaks down. sugar is 30%. what do you read from this? inst: there is a big push
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public health to limit added sugars in the diet. we're not talking a lot of fruits that naturally contain sugar. we're talking about sugar sweetened beverages and candy. it has been estimated the typical american gets about 350 calories a day from added sugar. the american heart association has said that needs to come down. they are recommending something in the range of 100 to 150 of added sugar per day. that is why you are hearing more about this. in a grocery store, you are starting to see lower sugar in yogurt. there is a lot of awareness about lowering the amount of added sugar in your diet. host: mayor bloomberg has a plan to limit the size of sugary soft drinks. this is on hold right now. 70% in a recent poll said they oppose it. 28% in support. have you reported on the reaction to the proposal?
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-- we have talked talked on the air about the sugar ban and the judge striking it down. states are trying different things. the governor of massachusetts has proposed a soda or sugar tax making candy and sugar sweetened beverages more expensive. the legislature in massachusetts let it die last year. it went no year. this year, i do not know that it is any better. to have peoplem write. people do not want to be told what they can and cannot eat. there are other ways to nudge people. researchers are experimenting with ways to nudge people toward healthier decisions. people who get their health canrance through humana
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enroll in a program called vitality. when they buy broccoli, they get a discount. the idea is if you give cash back for broccoli or rebates for healthy things, you might nudge people to get more of the healthy stuff and less of the unhealthy stuff in their cart. joins us from colorado. are you with us? let's go to mike in pennsylvania. caller: i appreciate you taking my call. i have a comment and a question. obviously, this is a complex problem. there is not going to be a simple solution. i realize it is a big problem. my question is, as far as food stamps are concerned because this is a social problem, has anybody looked at the fact that so many people on food stamps --
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maybe there is a relationship between.and obesity going on. i have three daughters. i want to put a plug in for vitamins. i make sure they take vitamins every day. before we let you go, how conscious are you when you go shopping for your family? how much do you think about the kinds of foods you are buying for your kids? it.er: very conscious about a lot of it has to do with family values and individual family responsibilities. host: have you learned about nutrition? caller: just over the years. i try to instill values in my children. reading books, online, all kinds of information, labels. labes and such, all kinds of different ways. host: let's go to cynthia ogden
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and discuss this graph on types of individuals and how many calories they are consuming. guest: i want to follow-up on his question. the relationship between obesity and income is complex. it is not always what people think, that is just the low- income population is obese. it varies by sex and age on that relationship. this graph is related to sugar sweetened beverages. it is the percentage of total calories in the diet from sugar sweetened beverages by income in children and adults. in both cases, is the higher about 1/3 of the population that consumes a smaller percentage of calories from sugar drinks. host: reflect on what the caller was talking about in terms of purchasing.
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guest: studies suggest food stamp recipients or snap dollars do not distribute their dollars much differently from the typical american. there is stereotyping that people on food stamps by unhealthy things. lots of americans by a range -- buy a range of healthy and unhealthy foods. when snap dollars debt load the end of the month, someone may only be able to buy starches' because those things are cheaper. interesting to focus on low income americans, it is an interesting one. the state legislature in florida last year tried to pass a bill that would have restricted the use of snap dollars for job fruit. .hat was not very successful
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if you say you cannot buy a candy bar with spent -- snap dollars, does that mean you cannot buy the ingredients to make a cake for your child's birthday? it becomes a very hard thing to regulate that way. from let's hear oceanside, california caller: of want to illustrate another aspect that has been illustrated. thething that strikes at heart of the matter is that consumers are paying to undermine our own health through the big subsidies that we give to big agra. to be that those subsidies were for the small farmers, local, organic, or healthy. as it stands now, most of the dollars are going to big agra
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that ends up in processed food. that goes back to affordability. we have to shift gears. americans are starting to wake up thanks to people like dr. oz in lightning people. you are seeing more people wanting to do their own organic andens or community gardens get away from processed foods. intove to get more money sustainability and less money going to be processed food industry that undermines our health, increases health care ofts, and lines the pockets andjunk makers pharmaceuticals on the end of it. host: do you practice what you preach? are your values reflected in your shopping habits?
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caller: i have a community garden i participate in. we grow our own vegetables and do not use chemicals which affect the environment. there is a whole dynamic about that. host: let's get a response from our guests. allison aubrey. guest: he raised a lot of interesting points of view. would point out when you talk about big ag. one thing many americans do not realize is we will be needing to or more calories productivity out of each acre of land in production. that is because of the number of people on the planet. you raise really interesting and fascinating points about community gardens and local ag, which is really big right now. there's a huge food movement that is exciting to people that focuses on local food.
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at the end of the day, most policy makers and experts would say that we need both. and theseg farms local food movements as well. host: people are reflected on their own diets. i was raised with fried food only a couple of times a month and to make sure to eat your vegetables. i rarely touched processed food in the middle aisles. conducted on what americans are eating and how it is impacting their diet, how do you get analysis of where the calories are coming from and how americans are making choices about where they sharp shop -- they grow?at what they ask people
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ate in the last 24 hours. you spend time probing about whether they added sugar or snacks. you take time to go through if showing models of the food to get serving sizes. you want to know how much. it is not enough to know they had a hamburger. you want to know how big it was. you want to get specific information about how much of which proves are consumed. it takes time to do that. is inthe next caller michigan. caller: i have a question along with a statement. thank you for taking my call. ascertaindditive of put in our food,
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our bodies do not know what to do with it. excretennot extreme -- the chemical, it will store it in our bodies. we will be killed because of it. it is in absolutely everything we eat. there is hardly nothing on the shelves that does not have a form of aspartame. host: let's get a response from allison aubrey. laws, because of labeling if you do know. if you are trying to avoid it, it does need to be labeled. i understand your frustration. too many things contain this. aspartame has been widely studied over many years. if you look on the national website, you will see the thinking about it. at thenking is that
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levels people get it, it does not seem to add to the risk of diseases in any quantifiable way. they have said that. from what we know so far, aspartame is safe. a lot of people do not agree with that. that is where we have labeling laws. if you want to avoid it, you can. from california. caller: i am going to give some opinions as opposed to questions. i am in the early 70's. --m observing and parents young parents feeding their children. shoulde giving them the free drinks, sodas, ice cream, cakes before the age of three.
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when i was feeding my children, before the age of three, they did not know what a cookie or a cake was. little grinders we could buy back in the 1970's. i would cook my own food and grind it for my child to eat as opposed to buying prepared baby foods and that sort of thing. you mentioned obesity not so much before the 1980's. i was just making the comment the other day looking at some of the movies made before the 1980's. and not obese. in the last decade, i have had
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thatgastric disturbances even my gastroenterologist could not figure what was wrong or going on with me. he mentioned he did test for celiac disease and i was negative. , my it turns out to be is friend said not to eat anything with wheat for six weeks, see how you feel. i did that just to see what would happen. as soon as i started eating wheat, i have the same terrible symptoms. i have become gluten intolerance. i let my doctor knows so they could learn from me what happened with me. he could help other patients.
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host: you brought up a lot. let's get responses from our guests. let's go to cynthia ogden for so she can talk about what she has observed and also the aspect of children's diets. inst: obesity was about 15% adults. 1980's andin the 1990's. one thing that is interesting about obesity is the prevalence was higher in women than it was in then. men have now caught up to women. the prevalence is the same in both genders. the pattern in adults looks very similar in children. however, it has tripled for children over the same time. differencery little by sex. host: we're seeing added sugar from foods and beverages in
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children's diets. what does this tell you, cynthia ogden? allison was talking about how many calories people are getting from added sugars. about 16%h, it is added calories from sugar. in the dietary guidelines, there is arranged for added sugars and fast. it is 5% to 15%. the added sugars alone is 16%. the majority are from food. items look at individual , it is actually sugar sweetened beverages provide the greatest amount of added sugars. callerllison aubrey, our also talked about her aversion to wheat. what are you reporting on that
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these days? guest: there has been a bit of a change. mainstream medicine has acknowledge this category of people you might refer to as wheat and tolerant. c andas tested for celia does not have it, but did better when she took wheat out of her diet. a lot of other people are reporting this. there is more of a recognition about this issue. i talk to a gastroenterologist at harvard who said 10 years ago, we would have said we were not sure it was related to w heat. now there is more of an agreement among gastroenterologists that wheat sensitivity israel. host: she talked about creating baby food for her kids.
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guest: i wish i had time to do that. if you have time, more power to you. that is great. host: allison aubrey reports for national public radio. you can hear her reports across the country and find them on line. foodontributes to npr's blog. our other guest is cynthia ogden, a nutritional epidemiologist at the national center for health statistics. she oversees the analysis group in the national examination survey. what does that mean? guest: epidemiology is the study of health on the population level. it is great applied mathematics. thes looking at relationships between behaviors and disease.
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the group i am involved in is a group of variety of doctors. i work on issues related to obesity. others look at other kinds of issues using the same survey data. host: our next caller is in nashville. caller: do the numbers seem to be greater than polio? why is there no policy statement this is a national emergency or crisis? marchn we not mobilize a of dimes for obesity? mayor bloomberg's statement is not about adults. it is about children. the underlying issue is addiction. we are a nation of addicts. two suggestions, nationalize
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agriculture. there are more people with top secret security clearance and there are farmers. six months, who introduced home economics and civics. home economics and civics. children.ing for if you want your sugar beverage, may i see your i.d.? officially called obesity and epidemic right now? what do the numbers show? than: numbers show more 1/3 of adults are obese. we have seen this increase i have mentioned before. sometimes people do call it an epidemic. academics are often related to
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infectious diseases. -- epidemics are often related to infectious diseases. are thehildren vulnerable ones. there is quite a bit of focus on children in the public health realm. if you look at regulations from the department of agriculture on school lunches and what they are , you will seeve several years back the state of california was an early player. they greatly limited access to sugar sweetened beverages and snacks at school. researchers at university of illinois recently published a study. the result is school kids in california are eating about 160 otheres less than kids in
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states where they do not limit these sugary things in school. you raise a good point. children are the formal ones. a lot of the focus and energy is on teaching kids about nutrition and limiting access. morning, lynn. caller: that is my biggest concern, the children growing up. they will add to the already and healthy nation. i have been involved in health and fitness for over 30 years. you have theon, information out there. everybody knows what they should be eating and not. it comes down to behavior and personal choice. how to go about changing that. i know the millions of dollars that flow into the cbc for their research and the national
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institutions for health, and yet cards people with ebt that can go into the liquor store and buy candy or soda. --y can buy greasy pisa's pizzas. people do not cook anymore. obesity is a complex problem related to what you eat and how physically active you are. there are other contributing factors as well. thinking about the changes that have occurred related to snacking and eating out more often. we're eating out more than we used to. we're spending more of our food dollars on restaurants and fast foods. our portion sizes have increased. what we're eating has changed. beverages, sugar sweetened beverages have increased.
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we have seen a lot of changes. it is a very complex problem related to obesity, both in take and how physically active you are. says it is a sad state of affairs when the government needs a campaign to tell children to go out and play. explain what is happening at the federal level and what the first lady is doing and how official that is. lady has done a variety of different things after her let's move campaign. it has brought a spotlight to the kinds of programs the fda has. to some extent, these programs have been beefed up under the obama administration. schools can apply for grants to serve the apples at lunchtime. there are all kinds of ways schools can use grant programs towards healthier
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choices. the first lady is the honorary chair for a healthier america. you can only do so much in schools. the first lady has made it clear corporate america should step out. they have cut deals with darden restaurants, red lobster, high- end hotels. the idea is that they are trying to make a healthy choice the easy choice. instead of serving coca-cola with the kids' meal at a restaurant or at hotels, you serve milk which is standard. little initiatives like this. there is no one magic bullet. there are hundreds of little things happening. if you look at them as a whole, you may start to see more of a level and out of a pc levels. host: thanks for joining us this
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morning. , thanks to you as well. we will be back tomorrow at 7:00 eastern time. we now take you to the export- import bank annual conference. >> the united states is facing increasing competition from even asia and other countries that we traditionally saw as competitors, higher education. i think that element of our education system and lifetime learning is critical to long- term competitiveness. >> a variation on your team, i am afraid. >> glad i went first. >> i will not have to say much. what i will focus on is talent. basically, how do we educate, .rain, develop, our citizens
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second, how do we attract and retain people from overseas that come to the united states had to work that often have big contributions to make? frequently and are unable to state because of policy issues and other factors. i am not going to talk about enabling that talent to achieve objectives. that is what this conference is about, but that is a critical third leg, obviously. it will be much of the same, talent, talent, talent. we are doing pretty well on exports the last few years, as was almost inevitable after recession, global recession. imports and exports go down. now imports and exports are
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going up. so, problem solved? >> not at all. when i joined the president's export council and the president laid out a goal of doubling of exports in five years, the progress we made in year one, exports grew about 15.7%. about 14%.011, lo and behold we are feeling pretty good about it. 2012, 4.4%. so the trend is slowing. the reason it is tending to slow is we are catching the low hanging fruit, and easier things to do, trading agreements signed, infrastructure change. in order to continue on double- digit expansion, we have to change to address this problem. we have to think about the enablers, a broader set of trade
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agreements, broader enforcement, serious enforcement of those agreements. >> so that we can get into markets that we are now shut out of, for reasons that are not purely about a trade treaty, things going beyond a trade treaty? as we are changing the game, the world is changing -- >> as we are changing the game, the world is changing. a lot of issues around trade where we have to have the agreements signed, have a series enforcement mechanism, which we are improving. and if you do not follow the rules, basically, you are out of the agreement. pencilled thes penalties. we also need to be able to sell our raw the world. this has to do with infrastructure, education is a
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big piece of it. the entire system that makes trade and exports work has to be stepped up another notch for us to get continued double-digit growth. >> one question about enforcement. it has been a real dilemma for the nine it states and the business community. says, andss community force these agreements, open these markets. we have a lot to sell, particularly in the area of services, and we are not getting into foreign countries. other countries do what they do, they slow, drag, have informal ways of keeping us out, and it is time to get tough. basically, the way to get tough is to say, if you cannot let us come into your markets, we are not going to let your stuff come into ours. then the business community goes crazy. we are for free trade.
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if you are not willing to play tough and take some hits, you cannot really enforce these things. how are we going to resolve that? we never really get tough with anyone, except a little bit with the chinese. >> this cannot be handled by an individual country alone. in the past, what the government expected, what infrastructure expected, if somebody was wrong, they would lead the charge. for, alone, is too risky individual company to do. one of the things that the export council works on, one of the things the administration hopes with, is for us to have force behind our words. coalitions of companies that would go against a country, if there are intellectual property violations, for example, in software, intellectual property
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violations. without that, it would be silly, economically, for the company to stand alone. >> does that mean filing a complaint with the wto? >> they work slowly, so we have to figure about 10 years to get something through the wto. we have to figure out how to get this done more swiftly, streamline the rules, the more public and together, so this is the public and business being clear, this is a violation. if you are not willing to play by our rules, we will take the toys back. the business, community is right, we have to get tough with country x. then it comes before the president's inner circle,
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national security advisers -- you cannot do that because we have this thing going on with the army. they are helping us with terrorism, so we cannot do that. how do we resolve that question? world and the new aspect of our competitiveness is the center stage of our national security policy. it is not just about the defense department, a little bit of the state department, and the national security council and everyone else on the outside looking in. we have cyber security concerns, economic security concerns. as a matter of fact, one of the things the president asked me to do with the secretary of defense, secretary of state, was to talk about the necessity for export control reforms. move majorhave to pieces in our structure of our government so that american business is, in fact, brought
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into the situation room, if you will, on the same level of other issues. us have to toward have consequences. one of the things i have learned in the last decade or affinityre is a real for american private sector involvement, generally speaking. but at the governmental level, we are still not where we need to be, i think, in terms of helping american business succeed. >> far from it. the good news is there is a place now being made at the table to participate in conversations early. i do not know how other export councils worked, but i am surprised, on this one, we do work, we meet with the state department, we meet with all government agencies to make sure they understand and that we work together to move the ball forward.
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this is not easy. we will not say we would just be forceful against china tomorrow, but we will make small, incremental steps everyday to make it easier for business to do business around the world -- u.s. business to do business around the world. >> let's turn to one of our human capital types. education. everyone is for education. everyone knows we have an education problem, and we have talked about it until we are blue in the face. we are making some progress but i would not say anyone is happy with the progress of it. so how do we get out of this rut? >> there are a few things. the u.s. is making are still improvements. but i think if you learn the lessons from around the world, there are unique challenges to the u.s. education system. if you look and what has happened in finland, other
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nations -- finland has won the best education systems in the world. it does not pay teachers dramatically more, but they really think of teachers and education almost like business leaders, how do you attract top talent in society to come and do their best in the classroom. one of the things they do is provide teachers a lot of autonomy in the classroom. as we are thinking through what we do, in the u.s. education system, i think we should learn from the private sector more, in terms of education. s, most of our private-sector most areas of u.s. economic life, when we professionalize a field we give them more autonomy and accountability for success. look at then you
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higher education system, the best in the world, that is a lot of what we are doing. one report we recently did at the center was how china and india are ramping up their investment in human capital. one thing we found is that, by 2030, china will have more college graduates than our entire work force. and they are very much thinking about how their work force competes on high skilled manufacturing against our work force. and innovation, a variety of areas. washington becomes very sterile and partisan. when we think about how to move forward, we are competing with countries that are looking at this, looking at education as a whole suite of areas in which
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they are more economically national. you talk about exports. china is moving asia to compete in a much more economically rational way, using the power of the state to compete in the economy. they are thinking about their education system in that way. their education system is an asset of the state to make them more competitive over the long term. it is not just about making people have beer and good citizens. it is about making them good competitors for the u.s. and world. >> you do not think we do that? we shun about thinking of education in partnership with private business, we do not think about it as an economic issue, a national economic issue. there is a lot of partisanship about the federal role around education, what role we should have, in terms of what we should
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test on. core belief becomes much more difficult, much more challenged, in a world where -- countries are competing on a different plane. >> you are associated with the left side of the political spectrum, so let me ask this question. >> we are centrist on many issues -- obamacare. right rightn the now. democratsnk liberal and the teachers union would accept your formula, which i thought was a good one? accountability? you want more autonomy, fine, you have got it. but here is the accountability. we're going to be pretty tough about that. >> i cannot speak for everyone.
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we would, obviously, at the center for american progress. right now we are creating a accountability mechanisms that are rigid and undermining autonomy. to me, is like, how you get the best person in the world in business? how does coup will attract engineers. have you attract business leaders? >> you track them for money. you might want to live this way at ursula. i know how he attracts them. >> part of the reason people get more money is because they can make individual decisions. greater systems of accountability in our worry thatystem, i
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we are repeating the industrial model in the 21st century of education, when we actually to move to different models where individuals have autonomy with accountable results. many on the left would support that because right now they have accountability and no autonomy. at least that would be a step up. >> the other big issue in education is choice. students and parents ought to be able to take their public money, essentially, there voucher -- their voucher, and go to any school, public or private. are you in favor of that? >> i am in favor of what works. >> does that work? >> we have done the analysis of private school charters, public- school charters, which i'm a fan
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of. they have not shown positive results. some of the charter schools are definitely showing positive results, but when you look at broad studies. i think we should do what works. i would be open to these models if they succeeded, but so far we do not have evidence of the succeeding. talkneral, do you want to of energy? fracking is going to save us, right? but certainly,d, technology, with the right science, done by people who are responsible, is certainly a viable option. you do in theould energy to stimulate our exports? >> the first thing that i think needs to be done is to recognize that we are now organized as a government to
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handle, strategically, the concept of energy. we just finished a two-year study -- i was a co-chair in this study with a bipartisan council. partisan, and a very good representation of the entire energy spectrum sitting around a table for the better part of two years coming to grips of what is the strategic path of the future. the first recommendation, the one that is most substantive -- because if we do not do this, we will be right back to where we were. we have not had a strategic energy policy in this country for the last 40 years. the department of energy, the secretary of energy -- this is this is a fact., not a fac the secretary has not been the
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secretary. the best thing would be the president organizing the executive branch so that energy is dealt with one point of accountability and responsibility, and that is the secretary of energy, just as the secretary of state handles foreign policy, secretary of defense handles defense policy. if you do not have a strategic point in our government that is responsible for bringing together the 15 or 16 different agencies that have a lot to say about energy, and the oversight committees on capitol hill, we are just not going to get there. that is extremely important to do. i think you should have a singular director, the national security director for energy security. we also think we should have an quadrangle energy
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review. we advocate for the fact that we need all of our energy. it would be a tragic mistake to say that we have shale gas and oil and it would be a mistake to say that we do not need anything else. has to be the war porfolio. if we get the strategic organization done right, you can advocate throughout the world, leading throughout the world on this very important subject that affects energy for everyone, but also the climate and everything else. it is a big wave for the united states to lead dramatically in the 21st century, but the first thing we need to do is get our house in order. >> let's talk about getting our house in order. now i'm going to play the right wing ideologue. this is america, gentlemen.
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we do not have strategies for anything. that is the beauty of america. the government does not have strategy for business. the invisible hand does it. into economic planning, we are moving on the russia.ard we do not do that. or china. >> i certainly recognize that and i would not dispute that. i agree with the fact that we generally do strategic thinking rather portly, but somehow we muddle through. this 21st century that we are now in is the one that we created, largely, in the 20th- century. we advocated for other countries to be like us, compete with us, bring the private sector to the four and compete fairly. of course, we do not like it
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when other countries have a close parallel between their government and business. in some cases, it is not distinguishable. advocating that is where we should go. but in the case of energy, there is nothing wrong -- as a matter of fact, it is highly desirable for the public and private sectors to come together to say that you need an overarching policy but it should not be too restrictive. it should not choke off -- the winners and losers will be determined by the free market. i thinkn do that -- and we can, and the bipartisan council report generally is that fourth. by the way, with the complete agreement of the private-sector that was represented around a table. that, you will see a way in which you could have a strategy that does not restrict, 11 the private sector involvement, and allows the free market to compete and succeed. interesting, we
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discussed exports, energy, and education. the old model -- each guy for themselves, government stay far away -- just will not work, in my opinion. with the private sector involvement more than that. they need to be the drivers and leaders, but we need an integrated energy secretary. i think we have one on defense. there is strong coordination, private sector, government. it can work. just because we did not do it in the past is not a good reason to not do it on a go-forward basis. the world has changed. there are people all over the will try to be just like us and playing the game a little bit swiftly, fromore a different point of view. i get frustrated when i hear,
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that is not the way america was made. it was not the way that america was made, but we are remaking it. >> education is a great example of the middle ground. wellny is doing pretty economically. it is not china, there is a free market, etc. for decades, germany has said a partnership between the elementary school system, higher education, and businesses. they have a business that trains, really drives the work force, creates a workforce of high and manufacturing. they have engineers, well-paid engineers, and their education system is very much partnered with a private sector to figure out the human capital needs of the private sector, and drives the education system in that direction. is everyone forced to do certain things? no.
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but there is the kind of partnership. when we look at our education system, a community college system, those are things that we may want to learn from. we continue to hear from the private-sector that we have huge gaps, people in silicon valley wanting to hire engineers but cannot find them. maybe if there was a more strategic partnership between our public and private sector on some of these issues, we could be more productive over all. are geopolitical issues on the planet went down that have private sector solutions. but if you could bring those two together, the united states could retain its position of pre-eminence well into the 21st century. >> give me an example of that. >> well, you have an issue right now between turkey, baghdad, washington, and kurdistan.
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it all has to do with the transmission of oil and gas. advocating that is where we should go. turkey would like to wean itself from its dependence on russian energy. they would like a pipeline from the northern part of iraq into turkey, into the mediterranean. the semi autonomous government of the kurdish region, for its own reasons, would like to have the pipeline built also, because they get 17 percent of revenues that go through any pipeline. baghdad, i think, has an interest in getting its 83% of that. they could announce a pipeline being built from baghdad to the mediterranean. washington has a strategic interest in being the arranger and propose their -- >> sounds easy. >> this is a scenario, if all
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the players chose to play nice to politically, relatively few ramifications. it could be that american companies could participate in that kind of development. michael, attaining and attracting talent, particularly. do you want to talk about that? >> i share the view of the panel that it would be nice to come up with an umbrella solution to this. based on our success coming up with umbrella solutions to any issue, i am dubious. something we need to work on, for sure, but it will be difficult to accomplish. but i think there are some micro steps that one could take that would improve our situation. last year at this time, at this conference, rahm emanuel was
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here, talking about a partnership between the community colleges in chicago, businesses in chicago, trade associations, unions, etc. that was really focused on changing the curriculum of those community colleges to specifically focus on not only the jobs of today, but the jobs of the future. i gather that is moving along. promising, an example of a fairly localized approach that will hopefully generate some good success. we have this odd situation our students at universities are foreign. approximately half of them are from china and india. you will not be surprised to learn that many of them focus on science, math, technology,
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subjects that, unfortunately, have not been en vogue in the u.s. for some time. we grant every year 70,000 h1c visas. come to our great universities that we find difficult to retain, given that situation. but it gets worse than that. of that number of visas, basically no country can take more than 7%. oura and china, a 50% of students at universities, yet they are constrained because of that 7% limitation. their focus is on precisely the skills that we need. >> people have been talking about this for years. this would seem like the easiest
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problem in the world to solve, but actually, either party is against h1c visas, so what is the problem? >> what is the problem of trying to figure out our economic problem? [laughter] it seems pretty obvious. but i wantanswer it, you to answer. >> i think the facts are pretty straightforward. tothere the political will, take this stuff on him? house,ar, in the basically it was called s.t.e.m to foreignvisas graduates, providing that they focused on math, science.
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that seems sensible. is it law? >> it is coming pretty close to a deal. >> let me give you an indication of how this town works. this is something that everybody thinks, this is a good idea. but there isn't a battery problem. the problem is half of these visas go to indian firms that use them to bring indian graduates over here, to spend one or two years working in a call center at very low wages, so that they can go back and be able to do call centers back at home. so all we need, to be frank about it, your friends in the republican party to say, we will not do that. >> [laughter] >> it is not that simple and straightforward.
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>> that seems to be what is causing them not to do this very simple thing, which is we do not want those visas to be used by indian outsourcing firms. you want them to be used for the purpose that mike said. >> the issue is broader than that. this is a problem like a problem that the general was talking about, the political will. this is not rocket science, by any stretch of the imagination. we know who the people are, we know what kind of jobs we want them to be in. here is the problem. you have a bunch of people that are interested in other immigration issues. the high skilled immigration issue, we look at it and say, that is clear, let's keep them here. then we look at the low-skilled immigration issue. >> so we are going to hold this hostage until we get this? >> it is part of the discussion
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that we were having earlier. it is not problems. we are not always discussing the problems. we are discussing the deals. this whole thing about the deal -- what are we talking about? let's just fix the problems. it is not easy. you know washington better than anyone on the panel. >> you say that we need an export strategy that has more government, business participation. the government having somebody at the table represents business. so there is a report that says, let's take ustr, commerce, the export controls, a few other agencies, put them under one cabinet officer who has a real clout, the economic development director of the u.s., the way that most are for their states,
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and let the person be at the table. what is the reaction of the two ranking members of the senate finance committee? we will oppose that until we die, because it would mean that loses jurisdiction over the ustr. that is why this will not get done. how do we get this system out of these petty, narrow things to get to the big issue? thisu all say, none of stuff is all that complicated. we could do this. how do we do this? >> part of the issue is we all left some of these guys. [laughter] [applause] sorry, are you a democrat?
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>> i am a centrist. i am perhaps the only living rockefeller republican. >> i have a salton star republican from massachusetts, the same thing. >> we do not have a party, so i had to join one of the others. . this is getting to be a real problem. there are actually hard issues. if we cannoti am perhaps the ong rockefeller republican. do the easy>> there are thingse administration can do. obviously, it is great to consult with congress, things
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that we can do in the interest of the country, and these kind of reorganizations of the debt plate are good and i have to be done. they reflect the environment we are in. a sure sign of decline for a company or country is when it cannot change itself to meet the environment they are in. they do not compete. there are a lot of people that are calling this the era of the decline of the united states. i do not believe that. we have always figured out ways to get out of predicted declines, but this is a serious moment. we have opportunities to do the right thing, and we have to do them. with all due respect to the congress, somebody gave me some advice years ago in ones, and we really have a problem, generally. washington, if you want to succeed, you should be for what is going to happen. the private sector will force this to happen, one way or another. >> i do not want us to be completely cynical about this conversation, but immigration reform is an area in which there are optimistic signs. if any issue is resolved, it will be immigration reform and there will be an h1b resolution.
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there will be more visas, more in the system. maybe even a new system. we will be keeping more of the graduates here. i think the challenge in washington is easy to say that people are really down and petty and stupid, and we seem to have evidence every day of that, in specific examples, but the challenge we are struggling with is that parties are farther apart than they have ever been in any other era. are deep differences on the role of government, whether it makes any sense -- let's remember, we were having a debate last year about whether we should have an export-import bank. businesses were lined up on that issue, it seemed, and yet, a fundamental question about the role of government. that question about the role of
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government took place in an era where a lot of the world is shifting the other way. countries are taking their own capital and investing it in industries to contend again -- compete against us in ways that it is hard to win head-to-head. we can get particularly cynical about these debates, but there are principles animating it, and the country is very polarized, even after the election where one side won by a law. -- a lot. we still have this polarization. we are electing these people, said that as part of the challenge. >> business is far from cynical about this. one of the great things about being in business --[inaudible] if there is a problem with
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education, businesses in gage with local institutions to try to do the best they can. what we found is the gauge a lot. a lot of money and time in caged in grade school all the way up to university. one of the things we are doing is we formed this organization called change the equation, tried to get companies to more effectively use the money they are already using. a lot of work at the business roundtable as well. cynicism is not the name of the game when you actually try to operate a business. we try to work to solve problems. a little help from government is nice, but if not, we can figure out a way to have the turbocharge behind us. imagine if we did. in exports, we have a lot of work, today, to try to lay a system that is fundamentally
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helping small and large companies export their goods and services. that is the goal of the president's export council, part of the ex-im bank. there are private companies in energy saying we are not going to wait, debate over the health reasons of the keystone pipeline. we're going to continue to soplore, so onon and forth. there is not much cynicism until we come here and talk about the problem. when they go back to our home bases, we just work and try to solve problems. >> let's have some questions for this was an experienced panel. there is a microphone over there. all the way over there.
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no questions? >> this is always an odd process. >> my name is angela guzman from atlanta, georgia. i love what you just said. when you talked about businesses going back to their own home base and still working in their communities to be able to change the problem. stated, when they tried to take away ex-im bank, the businesses came together and spoke up, and there was change. so i loved this panel, this has been great. why not take the same concepts and use the platform of our
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export-import and all the businesses who are here, and take on issues one at a time and let all the businesses come behind it, and the money? anyone want to take a stab at that? i could take a stab, but it would be very controversial. >> there is a vehicle that is try to do that. obviously, all the issues are too numerous to take on. one of the things i am pleased about in the current working of the business roundtable is we are stepping back from a million issues and trying to line up around some key issues. education, energy, immigration reform, try to get the voice of , having abig to small
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common voice and a consistent voice around key problems. -- when weim bank had that silly discussion, business did way in in front and behind the scenes, and we made it clear what we wanted to have happen. there is work being done on energy as well, education, immigration reform. on cybersecurity. there are things that are moving forward. it just takes a long time. it just takes a long time. >> the short answer to your question is large parts of the organized business lobby in .ashington became partisan some people who ran those organizations decided they could get more if the allied
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themselves with the republican caucus and house of representatives. for a while, they did. that wound up poisoning the well in a way that now makes it difficult for those organizations to be part of the solution, because they are perceived by democrats as being in the pockets of republicans. that is maybe beginning to change but that has been, i would say, just analyzing, that that has been a problem in the last decade. it was a strategy that worked, and that it worked too well. now it is hard to pull back from that strategy and for the business organizations to be what they usually work, which was quite bipartisan, and provide the political ballast for the political conversation here on these issues.
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they are not the issues that people talk about in the country, -- how they treat h1b visas is not what they talk about in coffeeshops in muncie, indiana. that is how those things are resolved. until very recently, the business community was not providing the ballast. i think they have an immigration -- the chamber sat down with the labor unions and iron out a few things, but that was unusual, for the last 10 years, that conversation did not go on. 20, 30 years ago, that went on all the time. i am way over here. i ask this question the other day as well. since it is global, keeping the economy competitive in global
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market, in my opinion, you need to have a weak dollar. i think it is very important. if you agree with that, is there anything that we can continue to do to keep the dollar at a lower rate, so that we can export more competitively? standards a fairly argument that our currency is overvalued because it is the world's currency, among other things, because it is better than the alternatives, that it causes a problem for us in terms of our balance between imports and exports. who agrees with that idea? some people, particularly export-oriented developing countries, have manipulated their currency, the question. for a country like ours to manipulate the dollar would be difficult to do. the more you do it, clearly, exports are down, we have a lot
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of people that own our debt. the notion that it becomes worth less overtime is not particularly attractive. >> it might help at -- it might help exporters in the short term but it will be very expensive for us to get our debt financed in the future. that made more than offset the economic benefit. >> there is a real conflict there. >> he has covered it all. i agree, this is a place, as a company leader, we tried to stay far away from. we are going to make the best product, provide the best service, and go for it. somebody else can deal with the currency issues. we would prefer if other countries did not to currency manipulation to make it an unfair, fundamentally, and that is the only thing that i would call for. everything else, we will play for it. not getting too involved in
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currency manipulations. >> we had another question over there. i have a comment on the education front. i just turned on the tv at the hotel the other night and a person who came on said that the u.s. education is not geared towards communities. we are looking at individuals. see my child be the best. the community is irrelevant when it comes to educating. in some european countries, public schools is where even the richest people send their kids. here who -- in the community i live in new jersey -- three- quarters of our taxes go to the public-school system, yet 60% of people in that town send their kids to private schools. so too good to public-school is wasting your time. so where will we change the focus to make public education
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thecentral focus of people, middle-class and upper-class, where they have the power to make the teachers teach properly and get the same skills that we need for business? >> if you look at the american public school system and compare it to the world, we -- our schools are on a continuing. our best public schools are as good as the best schools in the world, it is just that the challenge of the american school system, our worst schools are like the schools of kurdistan, which are the worst in the world, literally. on that challenge we have better middle schools, and they are doing pretty pour the compared to the middle schools of finland, singapore, etc.. that makes me look at what are the best public schools doing? it is the case that the best public schools in massachusetts,
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in minnesota -- which i would add, states that are heavily unionized -- they do have the best schools in the country. taxes,hey have property local support supporting them. that leads to equity issues. but they do have strong, local support for the schools, and the wealthiest people in the community, as well as the middle-class and lower income people, all send their kids to those schools. i happen to go to one of those schools, i went to bedford public schools, k-12. there are some private schools, but pretty much the engineers, the ceo's from raytheon, everybody said their kids to public school. you cannot say to a parent, go to an inferior school when you
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can afford not to. that is not going to happen in the united states of america. as a parent, i would not do that with my child. i send my kid to d.c. public schools, and they are good schools. i am proud to do that. but if you have poor schools, you cannot do that. we have to improve the public school system and make it so that parents want to send their kids. you see this in new york city, a concerted efforts of schools and middle class neighborhoods that kids are going to, high end, middle income, low income, all going to the same school. a system where everyone is invested in the school. that will build over time. what the parents have the option and will send their kids to those schools. those schools work and compete as well as any others in the world. >> there is a good example of
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where, at some level, you think we got to have a strategy. maybe we ought to have a strategy where everyone sends their kids to the same school. but this is america. conflicttegy can not with the individual rights to send your kids to whatever school you want to send them to. sort of our problem. we think we know what the solution is, but it runs up against our political philosophy. those are two extremes, but they are not even on the same plane. having everyone go through the same school is not the issue, rich or poor. having every school be reasonable to go to is the issue. every school should have a minimum standard of performance.
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>> but the argument is on less everyone is invested in the schools in a personal way, the bad and mediocre one will not ever get better because they are on a downward spiral. anyone who can take their kids out does, and that weakens the whole system. >> i do not agree with you. i go to the harlem children's school zone, parents are involved. they have to be involved. the parents, but somebody has to be involved. the community people go to the better-- it is getting right now -- but it was a fairly bad community. this is as much about will and not being embarrassed to say that we are not doing well and then say we are going to fix it. i was watching this news program about teachers cheating, which was interesting.
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i understood their motivation, but it was a little odd. if you actually want to educate the child, if the customer is the child, then having that customer have a good result that is not release the results, it seems -- it is an oxymoron. the problem now is we literally have a view on the wrong customer. the customer is not the teacher. the teacher is the provider of service. the customer is not apparent. the customer is their kids. fairly monolithic society. we have people from all over the place speaking different languages, different backgrounds, so we have to adjust the system that works in communities. it will be public, some will be public. some people will send their kids to private schools, repeal --
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parochial schools. we have to make sure it is reasonable. the one that we are discussing are the ones that we pay out of tax dollars. i would say, treat them like any other problem. what is the problem, how are we going to solve it, who is the customer? the customer is the child, not the teacher, not the administrators, not the unions, but the kids. if we think about it from that perspective, which jeff tanden did, we will figure out a way to serve the kids. confused andves get political. we should do a lot of what these countries do, but we also have to realize that we are not these countries. >> even in states that are much more homogeneous, our schools are not competing with the best in the world. >> i would agree with that. >> there are lots of ingredients
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to the harlem children's zone, and i wish every child had that, but the question is, if the upper income families are pulling their children out of public schools -- we see this in cities -- it does leave fewer taxpayer dollars for those resources, so how do you make those schools attractive? then the school declines. how do you make the school more attractive? i agree, the best way to do that is to always focus on what the child is learning. that is the number one thing. that is the no. 1 standard. how we get there is the number one issue that politics involves itself in. >> let's thank the panel. we are at the end of our time. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] your seats.ay in
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we are about to begin the next discussion. thank you. we are bringing you live coverage from the export-import bank conference from washington, d.c. they are getting set up for the next panel including tradition
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secretary ray lahood. later this afternoon we will have remarks from vice-president joe biden. the export-import bank is a federally-backed bank with a mission of financing exports and goods and services to international markets. we expect remarks from transportation secretary lahood in just a moment. this is live coverage on c-span. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome chairman fred hochberg and secretary of transportation ray lahood. >> we are going to get right into this panel because we have a full afternoon, a full rest of the morning. we are going to break here, about 11:20 or so.
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the panel starts at 11:30. if you are going to the power break out across the hall in the ambassador's room, you will stay inside the security zone. any other panel, leave enough time to get back and. we are going to end those other panels at around 12:15 to make sure everyone has time to get back inside. if you need to make a call, smarter to do it in the parameter than outside. this man needs no introduction. we are very fortunate -- we were seated next to each other at a program that did not start on time, so we had 20 minutes to get to know each other and became fast friends since. to know the secretary and his wife very well. we have done some traveling together as well. he is a great fellow traveler in the obama administration. year,d just say, last
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working together, the secretary said we want to make sure transportation is helping the export initiative, helping to double exports. we formed an agreement with the maritime administration at the department of transportation to have greater transparency, make it easier for u.s. exporters to ship on u.s. ships, to make sure we stay competitive, and meet delivery deadlines. let's >> good morning. tom is fred's partner. they have the best inner parties. -- dinner parties. if you get an invitation, they are the best. and the best wine. >> let me ask you this question. you are theoretically wrapping up your time as secretary. what has been the best part about the job? >> carrying out the president's
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agenda. the thing about president obama is, he is a big infrastructure president. he has a big, bold vision for infrastructure. we launched for the president his spite -- his high-speed rail initiative. people in america have traveled in europe and asia and they ride the trains on the come back and say, why don't we have them ? president eisenhower had signed the high-speed rail bill. we have the state-of-the-art interstate system. it's the best. what we have tried to do is implement the president's vision for high-speed rail, and for safety in all modes of transportation. safety is a very strong part of our agenda. four,o had the privilege
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right in the beginning, he signed the economic stimulus bill, which for our part really did work. you may have seen articles that it did not work. it did work. we got $48 billion. in two years we took the 48 billion dollars and created 65,000 jobs and 15,000 projects. all kinds of projects all over america. what we do creates jobs. what we do creates economic opportunities. that is what we do at the ot. that is what infrastructure does, whether it is modernizing an airport -- we have great airports in america. whether it is modernizing a road, implementing a streetcar system or light rail system, as we have done in atlanta, detroit, charlotte, all over america -- we create opportunities for economic
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development, for jobs, and we are really improving local and state economies. our best partners are governors and mayors. i have been to every state in the country. i've been to 15 or 16 countries looking at high-speed rail. thegoal and vision for president is to connect america over the next 25 years, 80% of the country will be connected with passenger rail. tot's what we're going leave to the next generation. the next adoration of transportation for america is generation of -- transportation for america is passenger rail. corridor,theast amtrak is making money. they are providing a good service. we've made over $3 billion worth of investments on the court or
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for new equipment, to fix up we infrastructure so that can get a faster train. in california, they have a plan where we have invested $3 billion. they have over $10 billion invested. they're going to have a train from san francisco to san diego, 200 miles an hour, within the next 10 years things to the leadership of governor brown and the assembly and other rail enthusiasts. we are not going to have 200 mile an hour trains on the northeast corridor. were going to have faster trains, and on-time trains. >> how does this job compared to when you were a house member? >> best job i've ever had. i would not go back to the house of representatives if you all elected me. good job.ongress is a it takes forever to get anything done. in four and a half years, we have done a lot of good in terms of putting people to work, building infrastructure, creating economic core doors,
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economic -- economic core doors , -- corridors, economic development. because you don't need to get 218 people to agree with you. still have many colleagues and former colleagues and friendships, but this is a great job. and mainly because the president really believes in infrastructure, and really believes it is a way to get america back to work, moving again, and creating economic opportunity. >> you answered about six of my questions already. think there is a microphone roving around. if i don't see a microphone, i will pick someone who can stand up and speak with a loud voice. any questions?
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what do we need to do on the freight rail side? >> great question. we have created a freight rail policy committee within the department, and we have just the out and solicited advisory committee. so forms of transportation'ss, we can coordinate. the way that they deliver goods all over america, and goods coming from the outside into our country -- we need to make sure there is a lot of coronation between trucking and our maritime industry. the freight rail policy group within the department will rely on this advisory committee which we have just solicited.
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we have lots of interest for this advisory committee to help us put together a very strong coordinated freight rail policy that includes all modes of transportation. ?> is our question back there >> hi. alan levin from bloomberg. >> he's from the media. we need to let these people who actually pay to get in here ask a question. >> let the record show that i differed -- deferred -- >> go ahead, alan. >> you get a free question. >> we don't want to stand in the way of the first amendment here. >> go ahead, alan. >> alan is a great reporter. we have never had a complaint against him.
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>> my question is on the 787 and role in putting it back in the skies. do you have any sense on the timetable that once boeing completes its tests -- >> they are doing the tests now. we have agreed with the tests they are doing. when they complete their test, they will give us the information and we will make a .ecision i know you wanted something more definitive. >> sodas boeing. -- so does boeing. [laughter] we want to be able to assure the flying public that these planes are safe. the plan they put together is a good plan. while we're waiting, safety
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issues. safety is a big issue, one of the most critical issues. >> here is what we say about safety. thousands of people boarded planes, trains, got an automobile today -- got in an automobile today. but they did not think about safety. that's what we think about as the ot -- dot. people don't think about safety, but we do. we want to make sure that when somebody boards a plane, the pilot is well-trained and has the experience, that the plane is mechanically ok. that is what we do at the faa. now that is what we do when it comes to transit systems. that is what we do when it comes to automobiles. we make sure that automobiles are safe. if they are not, we feet automobile companies'
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to the fire. we take the safety agenda is one of our top priorities. we know that people just don't think about it, and take it for granted. it's a very important part of the work that we do. we have people who get up every day and come to d.o.t., and the thing they think about more than anything else is safety. >> have you seen anything in your travels in other countries that we can emulate as far as safety? >> actually, we have a lot of countries coming to the united states to work with our safety people particularly when it comes to cars. we have just taken a group of bus companies off the road because they are fly-by-night companies. we take them off the road. they slap another name on their bus in their back on the road again. is one ofken that our top priorities, to make sure we get those bus companies so their buses are safe, but also that their drivers are properly
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licensed. we do the same with trucking companies. trucking companies do take safety as their number one priority. we have got some fly-by-night bus companies we have taken off the road. we have a lot of folks who come to us because they know that we have the experts in safety. >> a question there, then in the front. >> i have a question about the high-speed rail. i'm from the east coast but i live in california now. -- 200 mile an hour train the east coast is a very dense area. california and the western states are not a dense area. even a 200 mile an hour train, what is the plan to make them cost effective? just because i live in california -- it is kind of losing steam. it probably will happen, but not probably as fast as the administration would like it too. how are we going to make it cost effective for someone to get to separateeles
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cisco -- san francisco when there is nothing in between? on the east coast you have four or five major cities between new york and d.c. >> part of what we're doing in california and part of plan is to tie in transit so that people can use the transit system in makesfield or merced, and sure there is a connectivity between cities where there may not necessarily be a stop -- although there would be for bakersfield -- so that the transit systems can connect. that is what they do in other countries, certainly in asia, china, japan. connectivity, so that people have a way to get to the trains that are running on the court corridor, is part of what california is planning.
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it is an important component of it, so you don't just have a straight line, but there are ways for people to have access to the strains from cities where the train may not stop. in illinois, we have invested over $3 billion in infrastructure there to get trains to move faster, from 79 miles an hour to 110 miles an hour. there aren't going to be stops in my home community of peoria, for example, but were going to provide connectivity from peoria to bloomington normal so that people can get back and forth. that has to be a part of the plan. i know there was a recent poll in california, and i don't know what the question was -- i can tell you there is still very strong sentiment from the people. the people are ahead of the politicians. people want alternatives.
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any of you who have driven in california know what a mess it is on the highways. people would love to happen opportunity to be able to get on for an on-time arrival. that is what the plans are in california. i think it is going to happen. i'm going to take one quick second. we've got a number of our advisory committee members here. to stande one second -- they have done a great job of advising us. [applause] there is another 10 or 12 beyond them. expect thewe truly sequester to have impact on air travel? >> it will have a huge impact.
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there is a recent article that said it had not had any impact. it did not start until april 1. , the faa we have defined $1 billion. .-- to find the $1 billion we had to find $600 million at the faa. we can't move money around. that is a lot of money to find. it makes it very difficult. that is why we are looking at closing towers and looking at furloughing some of our faa employees, which is a very tough thing to do. it is not anyway way to run an aviation system. >> question in the corner there. >> i have had the pleasure of meeting the secretary. i graduated from the united you haveademy, and done wonderful things for the maritime industry.
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you might want to relate that to the list of the gentlemen and ladies here. >> i'm going to keep us moving with questions. >> i am from "business times." the city where i live, the roads .re full of holes why not get other countries to come to america and help our infrastructure projects? america has done so much things for the world. i think the world has to come back to america. >> there are some investors
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from japan and china looking at investing in high-speed rail. from japan they're looking at investing on the northeast corridor. from china they are looking at investing in rail out west. there are people that are interested in making investments, particularly in high-speed rail. that is something we have really encouraged, because we know there is not enough money in washington to be able to fund the high-speed rail. we need the private investment. we know of people that are here in america. let me say word about maritime. we have worked very closely with the export-import bank on this to make sure that the maritime industry -- which .reates a lot of jobs we have tried to update the merchant marine academy, where we have over 1000 students who are training to be -- work in
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the maritime industry, which is a great reservoir and supply of young people who eventually will be in the industry. we have put out the marine to use program, a plan the waterways along our ports, and we have also emphasized our ports. we have funded 19 different ports in the country. we believe ports are a real economic engine and communities. we believe with the expansion of the panel on canal ports, some canals are going to expand your medically. these -- dramatically. this is related to pr-17 in marin. i want to complement the department. it is good to see revival of some of the u.s. flag fleet. we have here some u.s. flag carriers.
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. did study at suny maritime how do you see this revival and bringing back this innovation that the u.s. brought to shipping? >> we have to continue to invest in ports. we have to take advantage of the expansion of the panama canal. he have to implement our marine highway plan. -- we have to implement our marine highway plan. fred and putting together a good agreement on the use of american ships, american companies to transport our goods around america and around the world. it is a priority for us, making it a priority in making sure that the maritime industry has all the tools that it needs to be successful. that is a we tried to do for the last four and a half years.
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-- what we try to do for the last four and a half years. >> let's give the secretary around of applause. i have 13 seconds. [applause] make sure you get back here in time. we have the vice president to wrap up the day. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> we will have more live conferenceom the shortly. vice president joe biden will address the forum. i will start at 12:45 eastern. that will start at 12:40 five eastern. the labor department reported today that the unemployment rate
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.s 7.6% u.s. employers added only about 88,000 jobs in march. that is the fewest in nine months. economicdent's top adviser pointed out that the unemployment rate is before sequester went into effect. quote -- vice president joe biden will speak at the export-import bank conference. that will be at 12:45. c-span3 will be live this afternoon with a cato institute discussion on the war in afghanistan. experts will discuss the challenges of achieving regional stability. that will be on c-span3 today at noon eastern.
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>> where is the perfect ability ? what are the assurances that this committee and the senate has as to where you will be, given the background and history? >> as a teenager and into my ,arly 20s, i was a socialist hardly seems to me to indicate fundamental instability. as winston churchill said, any man who is not a socialist before he is 40 has no heart. and a man who is a socialist after 40 has no head. i think that kind of evolution is very common in people. >> of those two characters you saw, one was the einstein of the law, the other the einstein of the senate.
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burke was brilliant. . brilliant judge he taught antitrust law. he wrote the book. here these two guys were meeting and they were passing like to trains. never did they come together on anything. >> more with tom korologos sunday night at 8:00. >> they had a very political marriage, much like john and abigail. she would lobby in the halls of congress. she was always very careful to say, my husband believes this and my has-been advocates that. advocates that. but she herself was doing the pitch. one of her husband's opponents said he hoped that if james were ever elected president, she
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would take up housekeeping like a normal woman. she said, if james and i are ever elected, i will neither keep house nor make butter. >> monday night, one of the most politically active and influential first ladies, sarah polk. we will also look at martin taylor and abigail fillmore. we will take your comments by phone, facebook and twitter. the needs andn on challenges facing veterans returning from war with linda schwartz. she is the first woman and nurse in her position. this lecture from duke university in early february lasts just over an hour.
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>> good afternoon. welcome to the 50th presentation of the duke university school of nursing event. in 1968, it became officially known as the harriet cook carter lecture. i'm dean of the school of nursing. i'm pleased to welcome all of you here today on behalf of our duke university school of nursing community. as indicated in your program, this lecture is named in honor of harriet cook carter , a compassionate and creative woman who endears herself to the university and the local community through community activities. this year's topic holds a special place in the hearts and minds of our community. many of you are veterans of military service or are engaged in the care of our veterans. may i ask those who have served to stand up please.
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[applause] and those of you who have cared for active service are veterans, also stand. -- or veterans, also stand. [applause] we thank all of you. caring for military veterans represents one of the grand challenges of our time. today our veterans are returning from wars in iraq and afghanistan, facing overwhelming circumstances. not only do they have specialized medical needs, but military personnel who served in war zones are also at a greater risk for alcohol abuse, marital and family conflicts, domestic violence, drug abuse, chronic pain, and suicide.
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they experience high rates of incarceration and make up a disproportionate part of our homeless population in the united states. nearly 33% of adults, almost-- adult homeless men once served in the military. these complex challenges require the support of many across disciplines. our faculties have been in dialogue for well over six months to try to identify ways in which we can make a greater difference. first lady michelle obama and dr. joe biden have enlisted the support of programs throughout the united states into a program entitled joining forces. schools that have agreed to participate, including do, have -- duke, have pledged to educate people to care for veterans and servicemembers facing ptsd,
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depressants, and other healthcare problems. to ensure that evidence is used to implement the best practices of care and disseminate the most current information related to ptsd and the current body of knowledge of how to improve care. we have invited the honorable linda schwartz. commissioner of veterans affairs in the state of connecticut. i first met dr. schwartz while working at another institution of higher education. she approached me wanting my
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support for a project that would help her further explore the long-term impacts of ---- impact of agent orange. she impressed me as a determined woman, someone who would get things done. she is currently the commissioner of veterans affairs in the state of connecticut. the first woman to hold that position in the first nurse to-- position and the first nurse to hold that position. i was right in forecasting her determination. she has taken up this position as you might have expected that a nurse would. connecting people to one another and enlisting resources and advocating. please join me in welcoming commissioner linda schwartz. [applause] >> thank you. when they heard in connecticut i duke, theytodwndown to
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got real worried. duke. [laughter] it is an honor to be here. it has been an exciting experience. i would take a moment to introduce some of my friends who have come today. i would like to introduce linda. harold cutler from the va. and my former boss, dr. john fairbanks from the va. let me explain what a commissioner is. some people thought i was -- i am responsible for thousands of veterans in the state of connecticut. my main home is rocky hill.
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i have over 450 veterans. 125 in the chronic disease hospital. i have a support program. in addition to that, i'm in charge of three cemeteries and five district offices. i help veterans get their benefits. with that in mind, as a veteran who served during the vietnam war, my focus has served me well. i want to give you some idea of what we are talking about. the first first statistic -- the first -- the fact that we have 22 million
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living veterans, there are a 2.2ber of women veterans. million. what this bottom graph -- sorry. this graph shows you that it is almost a bell curve. the number of veterans at different ages -- we are having an aging of my generation. contrast that with the number of women veterans. the younger veterans of today are more predominately women than in the past. when i was in the military in the air force, 2% of women by
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law. i could not be married or have a child. in 1976 when my daughter was about to be born and i had to leave the military. but things have changed quite a bit. the tall one here is a vietnam veteran population. you can see that number rise -- let me say something for the actuary table by the va. they've forecasted that the vietnam veteran population would overtake the world war ii veterans -- they were wrong. this should give you some idea
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that we see a decline of vietnam veterans generation. vietnam was the largest mobilization after world war ii. when you talk about a system of care and addressing the needs of people, you have to address people that are 22, all the way to world war ii veterans. my message to you is simple today. we're not doing war in same way as we did in the past.we don't have big va facilities. the heavy reliance on reserves, they are in every town and in every city. there needs do not go away. the concept of asking, have you ever served in the military? is a very simple question. if you look at military service as being an occupational exposure, the first, had he-- have you
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served in the military? the next, what did you do and where were you stationed? this is a card that the va produces. you can pull it off of the website. i think it is too busy. it is something you can put in your pocket. when it means is that if you were asked the question, have you ever served in the military? as a health care provider, your next questions would come off thsi caris card. let me point out to you that there are over 60 million people in uniform during world war ii. there are some unique health exposures that they probably did not even know. when you do an assessment of an individual, they do not know, that it is something that needs to be considered when you look at a holistic approach of who
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they are, where they are, and what they have done. it is very interesting. this was a real poster from the va. it talks about exposure to radiation. down here regarding radiation treatment, you might say to yourself, why do i need to know anybody know?s do you know they use that as a way to -- implants into the submarines so they used to shrink their sinuses while underwater. they could clear their sinuses. they do not know that. it is an important aspect. we're not having a test after this so i don't expect you to remember.
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but i want to be clear on what i hope you take out of this room. only 15% of veterans in america are using va healthcare. again, 15% use the va. where are the rest of them getting their care? >> [indiscernible] [laughter] >> yes, and maybe other places like yale. i do not think we need to replicate with the va provides. -- what the va provides. we need to help veterans identify how to get into the va system if they have one of these exposures or need help. the largest system of health and care in the united states rivals hhs.
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it changes with every congressional season. and changes with every segment of the legislative process. it is almost like a fluid thing. the lord taketh and give it, so does congress. you've got to be sharp about this. let me go back. i do a lot of speaking to veterans. i had a gentleman come up to me and say, i am a veteran, but i do not need the va. he said, because i'm healthy. i said, what did you do in the military? he said, i have this rash all over my trunk that never goes away.i was part of the cleanup crew for nagasaki.
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go over to the va and get into the system. that is the kind of can-do, macho attitude of veterans. it is not just men, but the women's macho attitude as well. we're finding exposure to cold injuries in korea.and the fact that there was chemical warfare experiments used during korea. you look at this and say to yourself, 5.7 million served, but it has been 60 years since the hostilities in korea.-- cessation of hostilities in korea. it is still considered the
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unknown silent war. we're all trying to do our very best to celebrate the anniversary of the cessation of the hostilities because this is a generation -- we feel sorry for them because they have not gotten the recognition. the vietnam war, of course, you can see the numbers of people who served. the most important thing in these numbers is the fact that i'm not telling you that there are over 9 million in uniform,
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but only 2.5 million are being given credit for being in countries. but there is a percentage that has been exposed to agent orange. this is the connecticut, welcome home, for veterans. he had it last year. my boss was a first governor to welcome troops home from vietnam. right now we are celebrating the anniversary of 10 years of war. 7 million veterans living from the vietnam war -- i want to explain to you something. the point is that these are presumptive disabilities. what does that mean? that means the individual came with the diagnosis of prostate cancer and served in vietnam. it was agreed by the congress
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and by the va that this is a presumptive disability. all they had to do was show that they have the diagnosis and that they served in the country. the icu of a local hospital, he was fighting for his life. his wife called to make sure that they knew he was a veteran, so they transferred him to the va hospital at west haven. he sat for eight hours in the emergency room. his wife took him home. because i have nurses and practitioners that work for me. he had non-hodgkins lymphoma. he never knew he could get care in the va system. he said, i knew i was sick, but i could not afford to go to the doctor. it had a good ending because we are able to stabilize him and get him to his home.
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the point is, here he was eligible all those years for that care and no one that talk to him or asked, have you ever served in the military? yes. what did you do? i was in vietnam. you need to go to the va. they will help you with your care and there might be an opportunity to help you with some compensation. when you have a long list of those diseases, and of course, the hepatitis c virus in all the things that happened with that, the debilitating diseases -- i think the most difficult was the heart disease. a study give us a hint. we saw that. now it is accepted at the va, no questions. did they serve in vietnam? did they have this diagnosis? and we will take care of you. women who served in vietnam for
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a long time, there was the suspicion that there was not a lot of data, that some of them were at risk of birth affect.-- data, ion, not a lot of that some of them were at risks of birth defects. they compensate the children of women who served in vietnam. this is a good example of the exposure to a hazard, environmental hazard. and the effect on the offspring. we had more difficulty with proving the link. as we learn, things change and new evidence comes to light.
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operation desert storm, that was the first time that women were really in quote, unquote combat areas. over 41,000 women served. i will share with you that i have the opportunity to meet with a group of women who had returned from iraq. actually, it was not desert storm, but iraq. it illustrates the point. when the troops came back from iraq, it was even bigger than this. i was with the governor and the general. i quickly saw that i was the only woman standing in the room. most people were wondering if i was standing. [laughter] but we talked about when you come back, these are the services and this is what you can expect from the state of connecticut. afterwards for women came up to
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me. they asked me if they provided counseling services. i said, we do not do the counseling ourselves. but we can hook you up with someone who does. i said very gingerly, thinking in the back of my mind that the issue might be military sexual trauma.i asked the nature of the need. they said, we were writing and a riding a humvee and there was a bomb and there was an arm that landed on my lap. when i go to bed at night, i see it's arm and i see my buddy. a transition. don't let me minimize the fact that sexual trauma is a factor. the va and the da deal with 23%
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of the women in iraq and afghanistan have reported that they had been sexually assaulted by a co-worker. if at duke in 23% of women had reported that they were assaulted by a coworker? wouldn't that the an outcry? -- be an outcry? and yet they still continued to serve and volunteer. the heavy reliance is a very important factor. that is why we have been talking about this. when they come home from deployments, they not only have unique health issues, i'm not talking about radiation.
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it is not necessarily that everyone is touching radioactive materials. as a projectiles goes through, it sharpens itself. that is how they can penetrate armor. some people who are cast -- oh, excuse me -- i'm glad i really do not need those. their task is to clean out the tanks. some of them have inhaled the dust. it has an effect on the kidneys. multipler thing is, the deployments. is anyone here have family member who has been deployed? how many times? one? two?
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three? four? five? multiple deployments for people coming and going back. they do not have time to decompress from the first experience before they do i bring thisrience. up ooopenly now. my concern is that i have veterans who have, home -- have come home. someone comes along and tells him that all they have to do is sign this paper to stop the va benefits and they can do another tour to iraq and afghanistan. the idea that the troops are not keeping up the needs of the troops they are recycling
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because there are recruiting quotas, this is something that'll come home to roost. we have no idea idea what the far-reaching effects of multiple deployments are. and not just the militarymembers themselves, but on the family. family. one million children in america have had one or both of the parents deployed since 9/11. one million. they're not in dod schools. they are in your school system. teachers have to become aware of some of the important parts of what deployment means on a family. america is in a good position right now. everyone is thinking about this and is concerned about it. that is wonderful. after vietnam, this is great. this is a game changing moment
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for healthcare and veterans in america. you as a private practitioners, health care people, you're going to be the first line of identifying who these people are. unfortunately the va does not take care of families yet. when you have a healthcare system designed by congress, bringing in the family does not seem to be politically prudent at this time. so, welcome home. i want you to know that i used to work there. we did -- some of this is coming from -- i do not think it has
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changed over the last few years. nothing prepares you for the realities of war. when you're deployed three times, you know the drill. this is what is different about this war and any of the others. -- than any of the others. 8 million people or 9 million people in uniform. here are people reported that a percentage of them have experienced small arms fire. this is a high percentage but have experienced hostile action. -- that have experienced hostile action. during the readjustment study in which i was an interviewer, they went the extra mile to have three groups of people who
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served, people who served in vietnam, men and women, people in the military but did not serve in vietnam, men and women, and men and women from the civilian sector. when i was asking women who served in vietnam, have you ever served in combat and they all said, no, but the next question was, have you ever experienced hostile fire, it yes, everyone said yes. how often? every day. now we're getting a picture of the perception. i love the one answer. how far away would you estimate the fire was? how far away is a football field? they're firing at each other. i was not in combat. it is a mindset that i was not in combat.
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because of the readjustment study, we were able to illustrate that women who served as nurses in vietnam experienced more death and dying and taking care of people than the combat that allowed the va to have a diagnosis of pos ttraumatic stress disorder for women for the first time. you had to have symptoms to be eligible for posttraumatic stress. a great deal of this came from our understanding of what goes on for those in the military. war is not for the faint of heart. 86% knew someone who was injured or killed. 65% saw a dead or seriously injured americans. and 48% admitted they had been
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responsible for killing somebody else. you would not find that ratio in other wars. this is in your face war. so i as the commissioner had many questions about all of this. and there were no answers on google. we found the money to do the connecticut veterans and needs assessment. we looked at, we asked people who had just returned to fill out a questionnaire. and i want to show, because i think it is a sample -- it is connecticut, but at the same time it gave me -- what i did
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with this information in the needs assessment, i went to my legislature and i said i see these needs and we need to do something about it. being in combat is life altering. the importance of camaraderie. let me tell you that that is one of the most important characteristics of this generation. they cared deeply for each other. they did not have to be in the same unit. and many of them feel isolated a -- even in their home town where they grew up. they find that they are more comfortable with fellow military or veterans than they are with anybody else. and i put this one in, the experiences of women are not the same as men. they need to be looked at in a very different way. this was our health -- the health concerns.
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it was not totally revealing, -- excuse me. this is what they actually identified as major problems of not going to the v.a. navigating the system. how do know what is available? i heard that congress has a bill requiring that every v.a. within a state, one v.a., at least one, will have all the services. so you do not have to say, for example, in new england, if i wanted to have, if any veterans in connecticut want treatment for prostate cancer, they have to go to boston. the availability, long waiting times, and i heard today -- great news -- the v.a. is going to be having a weekend and evening hours, and that is a very important thing, because this is also a generation that wants success. they are going to eat up the road until they get to the end. they are going to be doing their job.
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they do not want to spend an inordinate amount of time waiting to see the doctor at the v.a. many of them already have doctors, especially women when they were deployed. they want to go back to the same doctor. and the most important were that they did find terrible difficulties with connecting emotionally with their family when they return. some of them it is just too much. the people that do the work would know, they had a big party for them when they came home and they left because they could not take it. too much. the problems of the spouse or partner, and the absence of the
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military member, they've had to do with less. let me go back to children having problems adjusting. believe it or not, when veterans have on our a little network -- someone said, it's also women. a calendar with pictures ofwomen in iraq and afghanistan. they had a major with two pistols and it said, major so and so is a kindergarten teacher in spokane, he will have it is adjusting to the roles. having served in the reserves myself, i loved when i was doing my reserve duty. it was like a re acclamation to life when you came back to reality. this was one of the things we found about traumatic brain injury.
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in the beginning of the return of the deployed, the v.a. was not doing the screening and exam, test for concussions or traumatic brain injuries. but in our study, 20% of the people there, the experience some d had, some, situation which would have caused us to believe possibility of a concussion. and i didn't say that oh, because you answered yes to all these questions. it just said you really need to go for some better testing. and, so i would just share with you what we found as a high risk for veterans. that's my note up there, and so they had common characteristics. they were the younger veterans, they were less educated. and i don't mean to say, let me just say that many of the people
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n the garden reserve have used waivers in our state. 48% of the people in my sample already had bachelor's degrees. we give the tuition waiver and they can go to college. they were not in a relationship, and here's the zinger -- they're more likely to have been in active duty and they were coming home alone. without the support group. stigma, we ut talked a little bit about this, this is what they actually said. i think the most glaring thing was they don't want to be seen as weak. they want people to have confidence in them. this is men and women both. but also, those who most need help perceive the most stigma. they're the ones who say i don't want to ruin my career.
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nd, actually the low number of 25%-40% that actually get the help, but the fear of the career, when you have the chief of the army get up and say i had post traumatic stress, it's ok. if you think of post traumatic stress has a natural reaction to an abnormal situation, a natural reaction to an abnormal situation, v.a. and they are trying to get rid of the d at the end. it is post stra matt i think stressed. it manifests itself in many ways but it should not prevent you from getting help and help for your family to deal with the symptoms that you are having. that is the federal v.a., and since you're in an area where you know the v.a., you can see there are many, people don't
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know that there are state governments. every state government has someone like me who is responsible to the citizens and the governor of the state, for the care of their veterans. and this is kind of like a wonderful opportunity for us to work with the v.a. and with our own community, to craft a continuum of care. i don't see myself as the commissioner as being in a race or a contest with the v.a. i see that my job is to dovetail with what they have to be sure the veterans in my state receive all that they need. that takes a lot of liasons and networking. but you go forth in the confidence that first of all, you are in the business trying to do the same thing. you believe that the people the people at their hearts.
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so i told you a little bit about what i do. my marching orders come from the governor and the legislator. in the state of north carolina, , have a director, and when i'm apointed by the governor and i'm honored to say i'm serving republicans nor, and democrats, so i must be doing something right. we work with the employment in training, which is a big, big factor right now with the high unemployment. i want to tell you more about something we call the military support program. a state s ago, we sold facility at blue hills. the general assembly set asize $1.4 million to cover the mental health cost of programs that were not covered, and people
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that were not covered by the v.a. 102nd n we had a unit, infantry, a thousand people, cheering the fact that we had someone from every town and city in connecticut. so it brought home the fact that they're going, and when they come back, they're going to be in every town and city in connecticut. so, what we did was connecticut had an experience after 9/11 where we had a great influx and a great need. so the department of mental health and addiction services created a training program to help clinicians in the community to be able to take some of the load off of their department. so, using this concept that you take people who are already in the business of providing mental health, and we gave a training
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program that was 16 hours of what we called military 101. and it was trying to get the clinicians to understand what all the complexities were. and i want you to know, if you ever do this, the best teachers are to get veterans who are coming home to talk about their experience. because, it helps people to understand that they may be in the military mode, but they have not yet crossed over into the civilian world. and i find one of the things, and i'll just tell this story because i love it. this is a marine who was in uniform, and his wife called him up and asked him on the way home, honey can you stop and get my some milk, some bread and some eggs. will do. stops by the stop and shop, the grocery store. he goes in and he said, and i looked around and i asked myself what are these people doing? they're just lolygagging around, going up and down the aisle. i'm here to get my bread, my
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eggs and my milk. so, he just makes a line. so the manager came up to him and said, excuse me, is there something we can help you with? he said nope, i got it, i got my bread, i got my eggs, i got my milk, i'm good. he said, well you're scaring these people to death. [laughter] and he said i had no idea, because i was just in my military mindset. so this program was the department of mental health, maintains the credentials. to be part of this you have to go through the basic training of 101. you have to maintain your license and all the things required by the state. but also, you are in a registry, and a veteran calls you, you must give your word that you will talk to them within 48 hours of that call. so this is all across the state
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of connecticut. and we have a 24/7 hotline, where you call in. hereou say, linda schwartz in connecticut, my brother is having a terrible time, and i don't know where to take him. he's just come home from iraq. and they say ok, these are the clinicians in our network in your town, in your area. these clinicians will see you, your military member, the spouse, the children, the significant other, and we will give you 15 sessions in a calendar year. and if you have no insurance, we have a grant to pay for your care. i want you to know that because of the increase in the concern about suicide in the veteran
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population at large, the department of mental health and addiction service commissioner is a nurse herself. so we talked and the governor has given his blessing. this was started for the returning military members is now for all veterans and their families in the state of connecticut. that is not to take away from the v.a. because what happens is, in the middle of the night you got somebody to talk to. and you've got a plan. the point being that when the clinicians sees them, that this is over their head or they think they need somebody else, we have a referral system all the way back to the v.a. so this is almost like a local triage. the part about the stigma is that many military members will go to treatment with their families. why? because, i'm doing this for my family. i don't have a problem, i'm helping my family. and it gives them a face saving device. i strongly suspect that they too
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receive some help through this, but we have this going now for five years. we've had over 3,500 calls. we've had about 500 people in treatment. and the beginning came from a sale of property, the legislator felt so strongly that they refunded, even in these hard economic times. why? because they feel it's a good investment. but also, it's a small price to pay when you think about what the outcomes might be. this is from our military 101. i'll leave this for you, i don't expect you to remember it. it's important for you to know, veterans expect you to be professional. they're professional soldiers, you be professional. they are used to facts.
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they want the real deal and they don't want to fool around with it. they actually told me this. and saying you don't know is better than giving both his answers, that's from a young man. the problem with the v.a. is their policies are hard to find and how to track. and they work at one place, but it may not be the same thing. so the trust is lost when they don't find it to be just like the marine corps. and confidentially, i know that you all know that, but that's why the military support program, working with private clinicians. but also, a private clinician, when somebody is there to take their call, sometimes you can't find that in the v.a. and you can get to the clinician that might know. so, that's why we have had, if there are limits to the confidentiality, they have to be
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stated up front. it shouldn't be something that they ind out later, and believe professionals fix all problems. that's the military. and i would say this is from them. leave politics at the door, we're not talking about the war. and some clinicians make the mistake of doing that. be available for them. this is not only for friends, the people at church, and the most important thing is, these people existed in a hostile atmosphere. they have qualities that you want to build onto help them face the issues right now. it's called resiliency. but i like to believe that they want to help themselves, and if you could help them get out of this maze, they'll be there with you. and, not to judge. you might have, like i did,
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military sexual trauma. well, at least i was smart enough to ask well what are we talking about here? you don't judge. and you have to start, most clinicians know this, you have to start where they are, not here you think they should be. the independence and self reliance, and don't let pity or anger influence your interactions. so i just want to tell you one more story and we'll take some questions. this fine gentleman up here, his name is jordan pierson. he wrote me an email from iraq when he was first wounded. he was pretty sure he was going to be sent home, and he wanted to know what kind of benefits he would have when he got back to the united states, to connecticut. i told him to look at the website. next day, he wrote back, i went to the website, that's what you've got for the old guys, what about me? [laughter]
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i said what are you looking for jordan? he said when i come home i want to have a house, i want to do that. i said when you come home, i want you to come see me, and we'll talk. i would say six months later, we were dedicating our new facility at rocky hill and one of the legislators came up and asked me could we do a young moment of silence for the marine who was killed in millford, connecticut. and you see the headlines, marine from millford killed. i said i would like to know his name. and she said it was jordan pierson. so, jordan gave me my marching orders. i got to be, not just the old guys, i got to keep up with the young guys. so, with that, i thank you for your kind attention. and i hope that when you leave, .ou learned something any questions? [applause]
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no questions? good. yes. >> [inaudible] >> i will say it all depends on your medical center director. my first medical center director was a guy named roger johnson and we worked well because this dove tailing of not duplicating services, it was not what was happening before i came. but at the same time i had eterans who were going to john
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dempsey, university of connecticut hospitals for all their care and i was paying big bucks. , when the sked contract came up to be renegotiated, i asked john dempsey, do you take a military history? to which the answer was very ongly, we don't wrongly, we don't think military experience has anything to do with this. so, i called dr. johnson up and i said i have 500 veterans here, how can we work together? i actually contracted him in the beginning. provide me .a. to with a part-time psychiatrist because so many of my veterans are been in care at dempsey. and what we did is we evaluated each and every one of them for v.a. care. i had my own clinic by the way and my own clinicians. for specialty care, every single one of my veterans who are in a residential program i enrolled in v.a. health care because i don't want them to stay with me forever. i want them to have that when they leave. and that's how it started out. but, it's more than that.
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with the homeless, at one time i was mentioning earlier today, backlog at the v.a. they had 20 people waiting for nursing home placements. they called me up and said do you have any empty beds? i said yes, i'll take them until you can find placement. i think the thing is, at the heart of the matter is that the individual doing the talking, and it's not the people in washington, it's not the congress. it's the caregivers. it's the hands-on people that make things happen. so this just evolved as a wonderful -- with the homeless also, i have, and i think that's one thing the v.a. has to come to the realization, that states do bring something to the table. you cannot do it alone and you should not do it alone. i have a veteran right now, the v.a.'s homeless outreach team could not place. she is a woman who is 70% service connected.
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she served two tours in iraq and one in afghanistan. she has four children. the youngest is 10 months old and the oldest is 14. they couldn't find a place for her. and i could help, because why? who wouldn't want to help. so we bent a few rules and maybe we didn't look the right way, or signed the right form, but in the end she had a place to get her act together so she could have a life and her children could have a life. i feel in each individual, just as i am very well qualified as a nurse to embark on that to ask the university of connecticut to you use military history. and know what the answer meant. but, it is a partnership that will have to evolve more now than it ever has before, because of the nature of where your patients are. they're in every town and city in your state.
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>> thank you very much. not only for the information but or the stories, which bring -- i think this is about the time, given the recent division to allow women into active combat. i'm wondering, i'm wondering if you have thoughts on what might be anticipated. are they going to be potentially unique kinds of needs from women coming back from combat as opposed to men coming back from combat? >> i just want to show you one picture. no? can we start this over again? the first picture? tell me, are those men or women? they're all women. they're all women. they have been carrying guns, they have been shooting guns,
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they have been in combat roles. the difference is america's now able to give them the credit that they deserve. women have commanded vessels at sea, women are fighter pilots, women are commanders of wings. so, what i see is if women want to take on the challenge of being in the marine corps and being the boots on the ground, forces of the army, then they need to one, be able to make the same grade as any man. we cannot let those standards slip. i do believe, by the way, with so many young women being really into physical fitness and being jocks, that will happen. if they want to take on that challenge, the one thing that has happened with this is when you join the military, they promised you equality, in pay and opportunity. now, america's made good on that promise. the sky is the limit now. it is up to you as the individual. so, you will see.
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but we're seeing it now. we're already seeing some. did anybody see my friend tammy duckworth on the nightly news, when they said to her what do you think of women in combat? she said where do you think i lost these legs, in a bar fight? [laughter] that's her. so, they're flying helicopters. so, i think the thing is that it will be more openly accepted. f we ever see the day that the commandant of the marine corps is a woman, i'm sure i won't be here to see that. but the marines will not lower the standards and the army, i hope, will not. because there's a certain challenge now to be able to accomplish that. and so it could be the goal of some young woman to be that. but, being a member of a flight care, i can tell you that in the heat of things, when things are going on, you really don't care
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if it's a man or a woman next to you. you want to know that the person you're with is confident and capable, and that is, i think, that is also the mark of what women will have, the mark they will have to. >> linda, thank you for that brief and telling explanation. i was just thinking about, you know, another event that happened in your state in newtown, recently. i think it was maybe dr. frued who said many, many years ago trauma recan pit lates trauma. i wonder if you're noticing that what happened to these children in newtown is having an impact on the veterans in the state? > for those who haven't heard, but i actually was with the governor when he heard the news. i was with the commissioner of
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mental health and child and family services. so, i was really part of the mobilization of what would be done. at that time we had no idea. no idea. if you saw, lieutenant paul vance was the spokesperson, i could tell immediately when i saw him, he's a veteran. my director of advocacy, iraq veteran, his nephews were in that school. in the background of many of the shots of newtown was a marine, a friend of mine, and you could see his face. the part that was more excruciating for him was the mental picture of what it must have looked like in that school room. because they know what bullets do to human flesh. they can only imagine what it would do to a 6-year-old.
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and i really actually did get into an argument with someone who was a gun person. i come from the state of ohio, i was raised around guns, hunting is a big thing there. so i appreciate that. but when someone says i love shooting a .50 caliber over the ocean, and i said have you ever seen what that does to a body? no. one of the things about now that is a really big thing is the troopers. many of them are veterans. they started special groups, and i will tell you, i do think that from the v.a.ople were there on site, as well as some of the people from forensics. we have our own forensic mental health in the state of
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connecticut. my friend madeline was there, because her work is very much with children. so, yes, it did call to mind, so much so that we couldn't even watch anymore. but it was the visualization, they know what war is like and what those bullets can do. one more question, the dean says one more question. i see a gentleman in the back. >> [inaudible] how might the conversation around veterans, not combat
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service veterans, how might that affect this conversation? >> well, let me say this, if you had a veteran before, and you said have you ever served in the military and they said yes, what did you do in the military? hey said i was an officer. i can say that you need to hear from your patient. i was sitting in a desk working for a university, and they came by in a flatbed truck with all inse things that reminded me japan they were getting ready to
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transport bodies back to the united states in coffins. i didn't know what was happening to me. it was just a flashback. you cannot, you cannot plan these programs these things. i kept saying what is that, what is that, what is that? my boss said those are our new desks. for me, it was shadows of the past. so i would just say, once you get your foot in the door and know what that person is doing, i leave the rest to you in that nursing practice to explore with them what that has to do and what kind of impact it might have. the other part is, there are some unknown secrets. for example, people in the navy might remember that if you had women running in combat boots that caused hair line fractures of the pelvis, but so you wouldn't know that. but you would know enough to say, to look for those things, ut to ask the v.a.
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they were misdiagnosed and left with these horrifying rumors and someone saying you were not in combat and you don't count. i think that's part of it. we've come so far. and the most important thing is we want to benefit from the lessons that have been learned. so my, my hope is that things like the military support system will flourish. people in all towns and cities will be much more aware and you will incorporate this knowledge into your practice. >> dr. linda schwartz, commissioner linda schwartz,
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and i call her general. and you now know why. on behalf of all of us here, i want to thank you for being with us and thank you for all of the work that you're doing. your education of us and your direct benefit to all those people in connecticut and beyond. >> thank you. thank you very much. [applause] >> it's been an honor to be ith you. >> for those of you who are expecting continuing education credit, i want to remind you to stop at the desk as you leave our lecture hall today. importantly, i'd like to say thank you all so much for being with us today. ok. >> we'll be live this afternoon where we've been showing you coverage of the export-import bank's annual conference. earlier transportation
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secretary ray lahood answered audience questions. and this afternoon it will be vice president joe biden as he addressed the forum starting at about 12:45 eastern. the vice president will be introduced by jenny fulton, the owner of a small business called jenny's pickles. again, live coverage starting at about 12:45 eastern here on c pf span. coming up next, remarks from the is ity group chair on the european economy and cyber security issues. he spoke earlier today at the export-import bank conference, and we will show you as much of this as we can until vice president biden speaks at about 12:45. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome chairman and president of x.m. bank, fred t. hopper. [applause] >> could get kind of used to this, you know? thank you.
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thank you for joining us again this morning. a slightly late start. did everybody have a good day yesterday? [applause] i don't know about you, but i learned a lot yesterday. in the about faith dollar from david rubenstein's panel, faith in latin america, mexico, lot of democratic institutions in latin america, they're poised in that region for strong growth. one of the big innovations we have is big data and how that's going to affect businesses, marketing decisions and how we can make better decisions on how to target our efforts. i heard from the small business panel, small business talking about the importance of, yes, social media, twitter, things like that. we had our twitter feed and the q.r., if you have a smart phone, by the way, i hope
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you'll download the program. because then we're going to do all the surveys online, and that way we'll find out which of these programs you've liked, which panels were worthwhile and we'll try and do more things you like and less of the things you don't like for next year. india, i heard, i sat in the india panel. i was moving fast. my mother said you can't dance at two weddings. i tried to dance at four every hour. one of the take das aways i got from india is the average age in india is 26. the average age in china is 36. maybe a slower growth, some challenges in that market. but long-term, there are a lot of good opportunities in india. it's just been tough to capitalize on some of those. a lot of activity in indian state governments, particularly in the solar area. and not surprising in india, they have an election next year and things slow down before federal elections. no one's ever heard that of in our country, but sometimes
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things slow down just a little bit before the election. i heard about informally we had some conversations with, and you're going to hear from him later, danny rodrick about a lot of nuclear opportunities as countries look about energy security. countries are looking at reducing their carbon footprint. so a number of interesting factors in that. and i heard talked about the balance between markets and the state, and frankly, after the financial crisis, perhaps a little shift towards a little more faith in government and perhaps a little less faith in markets. so those are some of the things i picked up yesterday. we also last evening, yesterday afternoon, we signed an agreement with the dubai economic council. we signed a memorandum of understanding. i was just there, goodness, three weeks ago, so we moved very quickly.
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we signed an agreement to provide financing for up to $5 billion in the u.a.e. worked for the dubai economic council. if you look at the project, that was the size of that project. so could be talking about 18,000, 25,000 jobs, it does depend on the industry. a lot of infrastructure in dubai, power, water, opportunities for small businesses as well we talked about. and today, the u.a.e. is our fourth largest country of exposure globally. number four, right after first mexico, then india, though india's coming up fast, saudi arabia and then u.a.e. so a lot of opportunities there. spurbank, ing with some of you heard, the chairman, for the bankers in here, spurbank has a return on equity of 24.5%. now, i'm not allowed to buy stock and i can't make stock tips, but that sounded pretty
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good to me, i have to tell you. but we signed an agreement less than a year ago with spurbank for a billion dollars and they announced this week the purchase of 12 boeing aircrafts for their leasing company. so that's one of those deals we talked about a year ago and we're closing in on in the next several months. so i'm hopeful that you are also finding opportunities, deals, finding new relationships that you can make here at this conference so you come out of here with understanding of opportunities, but also perhaps an order or two or at least the beginnings of an order. let me give you just a quick wrapup of what we're going to be doing. after this, larry sommers, our former secretary treasury had some airline problems coming down from boston, so i'm going to have a conversation here instead with mike o'neill. we're going to start the morning with that. after that, there will be a
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panel that steve pearlstein will be moderating on competitiveness. i really shouldn't say this, but one of the best panelists we had last year. following that, ray lahood, secretary of transportation and i are going to have a conversation with transportation, infrastructure, how that impacts global trade. seff annie tuman is here, if you haven't met her yet, she's the vice president of customer experience. she's doing focus groups to get input on how we can do a better job. again, the survey will help us. and certainly last but not least is the vice president will be here. that's what this beautiful podium is all about. he'll be -- there will be a big seal on it a little later. so i only will ask you at the breakout session, as soon as can you come back in because you have to get screened before coming back in for the luncheon speech. so the soonest you can get in here, the better. if you have to make a phone call, better to do it inside
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this area, therefore, we can get that luncheon started on time. the om other thing i would just add is the unemployment figures came out this morning. unemployment dropped to 7.6%, the lowest it has been in several years. we added 88,000 jobs in the month of march, and a lot of that again has to do with exports and credits. thank you for attending this morning. i'm going to ask mike o'neill to join me. he's right here. mike o'neill, i got the privilege of getting to know as -- on an advisor committee. he is the chairman of is ity group. -- citigroup. he also ran the bank of hawaii for a number of years. somehow maybe -- probably nicer weather there. and the bank of hawaii was named by "forbes" magazine for three of the last five years as one of the best -- the best bank in the country. >> i think that's right. >> the best bank in the country. so let's give him a roud of
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applause for that. [applause] >> i'm also reluctant to start because it's so long that you have a 30-year perspective on it. but you've been in the banking industry for a long, long time. and now at citibank, one of the largest -- the largest bank in the country still? >> third largest. >> what are the big changes in 30 years? what sort of -- what are some of the takeaways from that perch that you were in? >> well, where do i begin? dramatic changes. by the way, it's 40 years in the industry, not 30. >> i was trying to keep you younger. >> well, i think the environment we are in now is clearly one where the economic prospects are less clear. when i started banking, i think, there was great confidence in the u.s., the u.s. was the locomotive that drove the world economy. that is no longer the case.
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i think another -- another key point that i think needs to be made is regulation, appropriately, in my view, has become a much bigger part of being in the banking business than it was back then. i learned early in my career -- >> you can hear the rest of ese remarks online at cspann corg. vice president joe biden is being introduced by jenny fulton, the owner of a small business that got help. >> good afternoon, chairman, members of the board of directors and ladies and gentlemen. my name is jenny fulton. i'm the founder and co-owner of miss jenny's pickles. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you. our pickle world headquarters is located in north carolina. i am so honored and grateful to
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be introducing vice president biden, our keynote speaker. but before i do, i'd like to share our story. miss jenny's pickles was born after ashley fur, my business partner and i were laid off during the recession. we took a family recipe and, by god's grace, we started our own pickle company. in the beginning, we grew our own cucumbers. we jarred every jar. we formed a partnership with the local ymca to use their kicken. we knocked on doors for stores to carry our pickles. and by the end of 2010, we were in 50 stores. by the end of 2011, we were carried in 200 stores. and by the end of 2012, we are now in over 900 stores. [applause] thank you. thank you. knowing that 95% of the world's population lives outside the
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united states -- >> i was just telling them to sit down. >> yeah, please sit down. i'm sorry. i forgot to tell them. why didn't you tell me that earlier? i'm so sorry. >> i didn't think of it. >> i'm so sorry. i'm glad you're with me. >> i'm glad you're with me. >> i do apologize for that. let's start over, you ready? knowing that 95% of the world's population was outside the united states, we knew that exporting was crucial to our success. we have now been exporting for two years. we have pickles in china. in fact, they left yesterday. which is our second shipment. mongolia, the u.k., and very soon canada. in three short years, exporting has allowed us to grow our staff to 12 employees. that's 250% increase in employment. and by the end of 2013, we're going to do $1 million in gross
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sales. and i hope 20% of you that is in exporting. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. early on, i had the pleasure of hearing x.m. chairman fred hopper speak in north carolina. i was so impressed by his remarks to help small businesses like me export that i was running out to the car and i gave him his driver, chris, a jar of miss jenny's pickles. and today we partner with the x.m. bank so that we can let our foreign buyers have terms, because without the x.m. bank, we could never do that. and because we have partnered with the x.m. bank, we now have our foreign sales increased, and now here's the fun part. it is my great honor and privilege to introduce our luncheon keynote speaker. with president obama, he has worked the last four years to strengthen our economy, to help small businesses like mine, and
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to open the world to american exports. please join me in welcoming our vice president of the united states of america, joe biden. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, this is why we can outcompete anybody in the world. this is the reason. >> thank you, sir. >> you did a great job. >> thank you. good luck. [applause] >> thank you. jenny said to me, good luck. i tell you what, man. i was telling jenny backstage that a lot of you know my ohm state of delaware and know it for the chemical industry and the banking industry. but i remind everybody the single biggest industry back in delaware is agriculture.
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and pickles are part of that. and it employs a whole hell of a lot of people, and it generates a whole lot of balance and surplus. and an awful lot of it. you know, i kid with people who don't know much about farm economies, and i would challenge you this. you can go to any -- this is obviously an ad lib here. but you can go to any major city in america, walk into a fancy restaurant and sit down to talk foreign policy with the folks in that restaurant or i'll take you to a diner in southern delaware or out in the middle of the midwest and you sit down with a bunch of farmers and they can talk foreign policy, literally. they know. they know more about what's going on because they're -- they know the folks they want to sell to over there. and that's what y'all are about. i especially want to start by thanking fred. fred has has done incredibly
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important work rk and we owe him a great deal. fred, we owe you a great deal of help for the -- what you've done to boost american exports. but every single job you've ever taken on, you've done extremely well. and i want you to know, and i mean this seriously personally and on behalf of the president, we appreciate your dedication more than you know. and it's an honor also to be with all the rest of you this afternoon, to have a chance to speak to so many people on the frontlines of our economic renewal. i understand better than almost anyone, you understand, the sheer potential this global economy affords the united states of america. and you are well aware of the challenges as well. this is a familiar story. in the post war era, post world war ii era, we faced a slightly different set of challenges as a global economy reemerged we knew that institutions and
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rules were needed to navigate through this new world order. and because our parents and grandparents were wise and because they were committed, we did what we've always done best. we exercised our global leadership. we were driving -- we were a driving force behind the creation of the world bank, the international monetary fund, as well as the gatt, as well as the world trade organization. the architecture for the global economic system. our economies and our financial institutions from that period through the mid 1980's and 1990's were also instrumental in establishing the standards for corporate responsibility and transparency and governance. defining the norms that shape the good business practices in an increasingly global economy. and thanks to all of you, participating in that global economy, you all know better than most that this is
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self-evident, and while many americans, too many americans, to those institutions and norms seem to be abtract, but not to all of you. they would help us glow the largest, most successful middle class in all the world. they set the road to economic expansion and shared prosperity in the united states and throughout the world. we didn't just stumble upon our economic destiny. we shaped it. we shaped our economic destiny. and now we have to reshape it. it's a different world. my colleagues are always kidding me and fred's heard me say this for quoting irish poets all the time. they think i do it because i'm irish. i don't do it. i do it because they're the best poets. there's a poem -- there was a poem that yeats wrote easter sunday 1916 about his ireland. that's what irish catholics
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call the last time we tried to get rid of the brit issue. but all kidding aside, he wrote a poem called easter sunday 1916. he used a line in there that better describes the state of the world today than it described his ireland than in 1916. he said all's changed. changed utterly. a terrible beauty has been mourned. all's changed. in the last decade, all's changed. in terms of the globalization of the world economy, in terms of the rules of the road or lack of the rules of the road, in terms of watching emerging nations trying to figure out where they fit and how we fit relative to them and so on. and so these institutions that the affirmative task we have ow is -- is to actually create a new world order. because the global order is changing again. and the institutions and rules that worked so well in the post
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world war ii era for decades, they need to be strengthened. some have to be changed. so we have to do what we do best. we have to lead. we have to lead. we have to update the global rules of the road. we have to -- we have to do it in a way that maximize benefits for everyone, because, obviously, it's overwhelmingly in our interests. this is not a zero-sum game. it's overwhelming in our interests that china prosper, that mongolia prosper, that nations big and large, east and west, in latin america and in africa prosper because, you know that old expression, they asked willie sutton why he robbed banks, he said that's where the money s we want everybody to have a little money. to make sure they can buy. american products. so the paradox -- [applause] >> so we don't view, the president and i and fred, we don't view economic growth as a
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zero-sum game here. that somehow we grow and it's in our interests that other major powers grow as well. that's the paradox in this new global order. so much of our success depends on the success of those with whom we compete. that's the challenge the president and i and the entire administration take very seriously. it's been the center of our economic talks from the day we took office. from our perspective, there are two things that we must do abroad to ensure our strength at home. first, we have to reorient our focus not just toward the greatest threats, but toward the greatest opportunities that exist for us. and second, we have to level the playing field, that old phrase, it's almost overused over the last 20 years, but it's true. we have to level the playing field so american companies and workers can compete in the world that the competition is fair and it's healthy. so the first point, we came
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into office facing the worst financial recession since the great depression. we had to unfreeze the credit markets, reform the financial system, inject demand back into the economy, and while this agenda is far from complete, we've made significant progress with all of your help. the economy is now added private sector jobs every month, disappointing this month, but they nonetheless added jobs. even though we still found that the time there's a need for an ambitious affirmative agenda. we strengthened and signed three free trade agreements. we're working -- we're making historic progress toward meeting our incredibly ambitious goal of doubling american exports, adding two million export-supported jobs by the end of 2014. we reoriented our development strategy to focus on sustainable economic growth. but there's so much more we have to do. the second term, the president and i believe we have to take
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up the task of updating the international economic architecture that serves as the foundation and must serve as the foundation for long-term american economic growth. that's one of the reasons we've dedicated so much attention to asia. we're proud of the role we've played for decades ensuring stability and security in the asian-pacific region. when i had one of my -- a number of my long meetings over a period of 10 days and five in china and five here with the president because they wanted us to establish a relationship, there was -- it was fascinating. they asked about how we viewed ourselves. we are a pa tisk power. we are a pa tisk power. we will remain a pacific power. and he and others acknowledge hat our presence, our -- our influence in the region since world war ii is one of the
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reasons why china has been able -- been able to expand in economic growth in terms and conditions of stability. the world's economic engine has shifted eastward, and we know that it is in asia where much of the opportunity of the 21st century will be found. economically asia already accounts for one quarter of the global g.d.p. over the next five years, the asian pacific may account for as much as 60% of global growth. and that's why through the forts like the trans-pacific partnership, our dialogue with the chinese, indians and others and our enhanced engagement in south each asia, we're continuing to assert ourselves as a resident economic power in the region. think about the opportunity that the transpacific partnership alone represents. 11 rebounds comprising 658
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million people, with a combined economic output of $20.5 trillion per year. we've been working to forge an agreement that will bring together economies from across the pacific, development and developing alike -- developed and developing alike. the trans pacific partners is perhaps the most ambitious trade negotiation underway in the world. it will break new ground on important issues from the challenges of state-owned enterprises, to ensuring the free flow of data across borders, to enhancing regional supply chains, to ensuring transparency in cutting red tape. we're also working to strengthen the environment. the trans pacific partnership is open to countries willing to meet our ambition. stins we started these negotiation, vietnam, malaysia, mexico, canada, all have joined in the negotiations. and we continue to welcome other countries. the interest of other
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countries. including japan. that was a source of discussion when the prime minister was here several weeks ago. our goal is for high standards for the trans pacific partnership to enter the bloodstream of the global system and improve the rules and norms. and by the way, it ends up affecting conduct in those countries as well. as the president and others, the trans pacific partnership leaders have clearly stated we intend to conclude the negotiations this year. our economic engagement with europe, by the way, is no less ambitious. we've built especially deep and robust security institutions that span the atlantic. and now it's time for that economic cooperation to catch up and -- and sink deeper roots. because the truth is, the united states and the european union are each other's most portrayeding partners. and will remain so. the u.s. partnership today
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exceeds $5 trillion, far and away the world's largest. but we know, we know, you know, we can do more. that's why we've announced negotiations of a new trans atlantic trade and investment partnership. this is a big opportunity. a new partnership can build on what's already our leading export market, supporting more than an estimated 2.5 million well-paying american jobs. but this is not purely about basic economic gains. it's about the possibility to drive progress together on shared priorities. that's why we have an ambitious agenda. not only to eliminate tariffs, but also to tackle costly so-called behind-the-border barriers to the flow of goods and services, improved transparency and developed rules and principles that promote global competitiveness. again, i'll keep saying this. when i was in china speaking at
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the great hall of the people and they were talking about our economy, i made it clear when i was recently in germany with the chancellor, in paris with the president, and in england with the prime minister, we americans, we welcome competition. it's stamped into our d.n.a. it is not a problem. it is not a problem. period. and that's the fundamental point with regard to both these trade -- both of these trade agreements. we're talking -- what we're talking about is shaping a new standard that can become the metric by which all future trade agreements are measured. and that's the first part of the question. the second is something i know audience -- this audience unders well. i don't have to tell you as i just stated about competition. you're out there fighting every single day. you know.
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you know that genuine competition pushes our companies and our people to perform better. genuine competition. america welcomes it. as i said, it's stitched into the very fabric of our society, our economic system, and the benefits of healthy competition require a level playing field. or at least a close similarity to a level playing field. we even win when the field isn't quite level. but literally, i mean this sincerely, this is not hyperbole. when the field is level, american workers, the american capitalist system, the american market system, the american ingenuity can and does compete with anyone in the world. on any level. [applause] i have overwhelming confidence in the competitive capacity of
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the american worker. they are the most productive workers in the world today. but we will not fully realize our potential if the game is rigged and there's a lot of rigging going on right now. that's why we're troubled by state-owned so-called national champion competitors that enjoy subsidized financing, cheap inputs, artificially inflating their competitors by restricting foreign investments or trade designed to induce american companies to transfer that technology, their manufacturing as a condition of market access, by procurement rules that unfairly keep american companies from the chance to compete, by, and by governments that steal our intellectual property to benefit favored companies increasingly, increasingly we're seeing wholesale theft of confidential business
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information and proprietary technologies through cyber intrusion. and that has to stop. it has to stop. and as i point out when i travel in other countries and i travel about 700,000 miles worth of other countries in the last 4 have travelled 700,000 miles worth in other countries, i really mean this. when i talk to leaders of other countries about the theft of intellectual property, i point out that they are denying their own people the promise of being able to become more competitive because indigenous capacity to grow creatively is stifled when they engage in the theft of intellectual property. these are serious challenges. they are growing challenges.
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we are taking them on each in turn. we are enforcing trade rules already on the books, bringing a record number of cases to the wto and setting ambitious standards for global trade and working multilaterally to strengthen global financial systems. we are fighting for american companies. i make no apologies when i travel abroad to make the case for american companies. no apologies. part of our obligation is to be an extended chamber of commerce to make sure american companies get an even shot. that is part of our responsibility. we are fighting for american companies, and doing the hard, grinding, daily work of economic diplomacy. these are outside of the public eye. it pays off. days, the usda
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opened taiwan's $8 million fresh potato markets to our farmers. u.s. exports have grown by 1000% in four years. the economic dialogue with the united arab emirates will build $20 billion exports last year. a record-lebrated breaking deal this year, a $5 billion loan that will support more than 18,000 american jobs. these efforts involve everyone from the president down. out aear, i sat to hammer deal to open china's also insurance market and to bust the quota that unfairly limits chinese imports of american movies, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. if you want to play on the world
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stage, you have to play by the rules. as i have said, i traveled the world for the president over the last four years. withwhere i go, i along everyone else, fights for america's economic interests. thate made the case publicly and privately, at a level playing field is not just in our interest. it is in their interest to develop their economy and their countries. an open, dynamic economic system requires systems that are open, transparent, and stare. when countries stick to the rules of the road globally, the build better institutions at home. this requires the kind of reform that can secure any country pose a long-term stability and prosperity.
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we support values we would like to see everywhere. free enterprise, transparency, anti-corruption, the rule of law. we take these issues seriously. we also take seriously the need to attack global business to the united states. in the past, that has been an easy sales pitch. america has the most productive workers in the world. we have the best research universities in the world. we honor contracts and legal obligations. we protect intellectual property. it is about our culture of an ovation. i do not know of any other country in the world, including our european -- it is about our culture of innovation. i do not know of any country in the world that has our culture of innovation. children are encouraged to
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challenge orthodoxy, to not accept it. we do not just encourage it, we teach it. steve jobs in that famous exchange at stanford. he said, what do have to do, be more like you? think different. you cannot think different in a country where you cannot speak freely. you cannot think different in a country where you are not allowed to challenge the orthodoxy. he cannot think different in a country that limits what you can be engaged in. that is why i am is so optimistic about our future. i believe in the 21st century, the true wealth of the nation is found in the creative mind of its people to build and innovate, to create new products and new industries. more than any other country, the united states of america is hard wired for innovation.
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it has enabled generation after it generation to give life to world changing ideas -- generation after generation to give life to world changing ideas. this is made possible by the bonn less capacity of the american people and the immigrants that constantly and rich and revitalize our national fabric. capacity of the american people and the immigrants that constantly enrich and revitalize our national fabric. we have to make sure we are equipped for the coming competition. that takes me to the last point. that is why we are investing so much in education. that is why we are making early education, stem education such a high priority. that is why we have made research and development so critical and essential to our economic agenda.
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we are investing in the cutting edge technology that helps us ensure that the new new thing is not just an old old phrase, is not just imagine here, but it is made here. we want to accommodate the rapidly-changing world. on the scalee jobs we require right now. we also think it is essential to reform the immigration system. every year, we export. every year, our university system generates 40,000 people with ph.d.'s and master's degrees in science and technology that we need. we make sure they are probably escorted back to their country. at the same time, we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on stem education. it makes no sense in my humble
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opinion. seen them back to the country denies them an visas when they have a job waiting for them. we should be giving them a green card with their diploma as they walk across the states. i mean this literally, not just figuratively. if they have a job here, they should be able to stay here. we should want them here. visas soditional h1b that american employers can hire the best and brightest the matter where they come from. our futurems, national competitiveness can be tied to getting a comprehensive education reform bill on the president's desk. those are the things we are doing right now. infrastructure, an investment, education, immigration.
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these are the things. when the president announced the $100 million, if we had our way we would be a $100 billion project. that is not an exercise no matter what these talk-show guys think. brainsuld scan their [laughter] -- brains. [laughter] i am serious. since when did we become the nation extending ourselves. since when is that anti- competitive or anti-business or liberal? ladies and gentlemen, these are the things we are doing right now that continues to make america a place where foreign companies will want to put down
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roots. we have one of the most open economies in the world. we know there are great opportunities for investment in the united states of america. we are determined to make sure foreign investors know about them. for the first time ever, we have an initiative dedicated to helping foreign companies that want to invest in america to figure out how to do so. it is in our interests for that to happen. each of these actions will have another effect, which is the most important of all, the most important to do. i think this audience probably understands it. it will help grow the base of american exports to include the type of products and services that are not exported at the rate they could be. it includes encouraging more ratet way -- first-
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exporters in the united states. reaching the 95% of consumers who live beyond our borders is not just an opportunity for american companies. it is a necessity for american companies. we have already made incredible progress. last year american exports worth 200 -- $2.20 trillion. we have created 6 million jobs over the past 30 months. if we get it right, we can achieve even greater results. i believe we can do this. am referred to in the white house as the white house optimist. i read that all the time. as my grandfather would say, like i fell off of the turn of truck yesterday. in case you have not noticed, i have been here longer than any of them. [laughter]
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i hope you all have not noticed that, but i am afraid it is self-evident. i am optimistic not out not out of-- naivete. i know the history of the journey of this country. unleashed american people who have never failed to meet the challenges. we have challenges that we are tending to. as long as we are in the white house, we will continue to tend to thaem. -- to them. the reason america has been a global leader for so long is not luck. it is not a matter of chance. it is a matter of luck. it is a matter of thinking about the next step. it is a matter of understanding how much it matters.
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we have always listened to the challenge. that is what we have been. it extends into our dna. it is why so many people, as corny as it sounds, why so many people still want to come to the united states. we will rise to this challenge. hopefully, we will be led by all of you in this room. as i have told many foreign leaders. good betsever been a to bet against the united states. against good bet to bet america. fred, you are doing a good job. all of you are in this for yourselves and for your country. i just think the next 20 years, we have a chance to leave our kids and our grandkids in a position where they are clearly,
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unequivocally better position and remain better positioned than any country in the world to be the leading economy in the world. thank you all for listening. i appreciate it. [applause]
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[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> vice president joe biden at the ex-im bank conference. coming up here on c-span, live
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coverage of white house spokesman jay carney. he will talk about the budget, which has called for reductions in social security and more benefits programs while still insisting on more taxes for the wealthy, as well as more on the rising tension in north korea. wait, a discussion on the part religion plays in american politics and culture today on today's "washington journal." host: here is the new york times this morning. social programs are facing a cutback in the obama budget. president obama will formally propose cuts in his annual
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budget to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with republicans and revise prospects for a long-term deficit deal. that is according to administration officials. mr. obama will send a budget to capitol hill that will embody the final compromise that he made to speaker john boehner late last year before mr. john boehner abandoned negotiations in opposition for president obama's request for higher taxes on individuals and other corporations. from the "financial times you see president obama set to outline a curve on tax breaks. it says mr. obama is expected to
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hold his second dinner in two months with republican senators after his budget is released on april 10. the president's budget is expected to move more to the center, including a less generous calculation of inflation and some new government health savings the republicans have been pushing for. the washington times has this headline. the consumer to price index and will reduce benefits. obama's left flank is warning him to keep his hands off of entitlement programs. the president has signaled he will call for tax increases. towill also embrace changes social security and medicare, which means benefits will not grow as generously as they would
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like to see. reish reischauer -- speaking on behalf of moveon from the a move standard to what is called the chain consumer price index would reduce future payments to seniors and future retirees, making it hire -- harder for them to keep up with the rising cost of health care. response. a said -- to hear a headline that social arounds are finding
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a setback with president obama? mr. obama's budget will propose a new inflation formula. our first caller this morning is john on our independent line. caller: i heard the headline this morning. obama never learns. social security is not responsible for any part of the deficit. healthcare is the problem. it's when obama and tom coburn, you could say between $70 billion and about $150 billion year by streamlining healthcare and doing away with the fraud
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which is rampant in medicare, i mean a and obama will be coast. the republicans have paid him already. host: what would you like to see him sent to congress as a budget? caller: i know the rep combo pins want to fight it, but he gives you a clear idea of where they stand to we still have the lowest tax break in 50 or 60 years. it just doesn't work. austerity in europe has been a massive failure. they are in their third
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recession. so i would turn a deaf ear to the republicans. the haven't come up with anything that makes any sense for the general population, particularly those on the lower end of the income scale. host: was good to republicans. welcome to washington journal. caller: i am a social security recipient, retired any years. 77 years old. my issues simply the government is corrupt with our money to my with taxpayers money. we see it in the food stamp program. we see it in the promotion of disability in that area.
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anyone who earns an income over the years and paid into social security really doesn't count. those are considered conservative. so the government is translating to those -- from those who did and do work to those who don't. and that really is the problem fraud is what we are faced with there is nothing that government really does and the service arena that can compete if it has to go against sector.ate the post office, services, over the years have gone up much faster than comparison of others. the oil companies are supposed to be the villains.
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in the 1915's, you could mail 10 letters for a gallons -- in the 1950s, he could mail to letters for a gallon the gas. today, it is four dollars and $.50 for 10 letters. host: we have another caller from hi linda. what do you think about these headlines we are seeing? caller: i can understand why he allows the republicans to touch social security because the poor people are the ones who got him reelected. that is the only income they got, social security. wouldjust wondering why they want to cut that.
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that is ludicrous to me. at of everything to negotiate with, old people, that is all they got. it's easy to say [indiscernible] their whole entire life that they have worked, 20-30 years. and then they want to touch social security. i think it is crazy for me. >> before i take your questions i just want to let you know about some events next week related to the president's push
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for common-sense measures to reduce gun violence. as the senate returns from the easter recess -- recess to consider such measures, the president and the first lady will hold events in washington, d.c. and at the white house to encourage americans to make their voices heard in this important debate. the president will visit hartford, connecticut and meet with families affected by the shooting at sandy hook elementary school. those most affected by gun violence deserve a vote. on tuesday, the vice president will hold an event at the white house echoing the president's push to pass the gun control legislation. the first lady will speak from her experience as a chicagoan and a mother about providing young people with opportunities to achieve their full potential,
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including allowing them to grow up in say, violence free communities. the vice president will appear "morning joe" on the gun safety debate. with that, i will take your questions. >> a budget question and one other topic. [indiscernible] just the president offered to speaker boehner back in december. -- byffer was rejected by house republicans. i am wondering what the president thinks has changed that makes this a viable option four months later. housewas not rejected by republicans. the speaker of the house what the way from negotiations. the offer the president made to speaker of the house banner was
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seen as a good-faith offer that met -- speaker of the house john boehner was seen as a good-faith offer that had savings from revenue.nt reform and that offer stands. it has been available to .epublicans ever since it is part of the president's budget proposal next week. the president believes we need a broad, balanced approach to our fiscal challenges. we need a budget that reduces the deficit, but also invest in infrastructure and education and innovation that makes the investments that helped the middle class grow, that protection in a class families, that puts in place the building blocks for future economic growth. what the president's budget will
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demonstrate is that it is not an either/or proposition. if you make balanced choices and asked everyone to check in, if you ask the wealthy and well- connected to contribute by eliminating their special tax provisions and loopholes from the tax code, you can put forth a plan that exceeds the goal of $4 trillion in deficit- reduction over 10 years, that stabilizes our debt and invest in our economy, families, businesses. that is what the president's budget will do. >> does he think this is any more palatable to day? let's examine what we have seen from republicans in terms of budget proposals. we have the document produced by house republicans that has been dismissed as fanciful but he
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anonymous. it represents an effort to drastically cut programs that help middle-class families, that costs onto seniors while giving a tax cut to the wealthy. that has not been taken seriously. the president proposal has been discussed this morning -- the president's proposal has been discussed this morning and represents a way to deal with these challenges. the president has been engaged with lawmakers of both parties about the need to find common ground. he has been exploring with republican lawmakers with that common ground can be found. there has been interest expressed by republican lawmakers when it comes to our budget challenges about taking a balanced approach. if we achieve savings through a entitlement reform, we should
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also, in the name of balance and with the goal of a budget that allows our economy to grow and create jobs, ask the well-off and well connected to contribute through tax reform. tax reform was elemental to the proposal the speaker put forth last year. he said he could raise up to $1 trillion in revenue from the wealthy to the process of closing loopholes. it was elemental to the proposal that think republican nominee for president made last year. he said he would go after deductions as a means of achieving some revenue. obviously, there were huge problems with the rest of his plan. president's proposal includes a provision that would cap deductions for wealthy americans at 28%. they are common-sense propositions. thepeaking of revenue,
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president has an inflation adjustment proposal. the president has said he would not raise taxes on the middle class. what are the effects on the so- i that putsin cp people into higher tax brackets faster. is that an increase on the middle class? >> let's be clear. this is a technical adjustment beene chain cpi that had advocated by republicans that mitch mcconnell asked for in a letter he presented during negotiations over these budget issues. the offer the president made to speaker boehner that is incorporated in the president's budget is not the president's ideal approach to our budget challenges. it is a serious compromise
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proposition that demonstrates he was to get things done. he believes we in washington should do the business of the american people by coming together and finding common ground. what this budget will prove is that you can do this. you can deal with our deficit ithout touching -- gutting programs that help seniors and without slashing investments that helped roads and schools. eliminating or cutting investments in innovative research and development, whether it is medical research or technological research that helps our economy grow and improves the health of our citizenry. that is the proposition the president will put forward on wednesday. he believes there is an opportunity to come together as a nation, come together as
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republicans and democrats in washington and get this done for the american people, for the middle class. >> i know my colleagues have more questions on this. i want to ask about the meetings the president will have with leaders in jordan or the uae. is the president trying to coordinate assistance to syrian rebels by having these leaders of countries that have been in the process of helping the opposition in syria? >> it is true. as you saw earlier, we announce upcoming visits from leaders in the middle east, including turkey. hispresident will meet counterparts from the uae and qatar. he has a deep personal interest in the region as you saw from his recent trip. he will use these opportunities
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to discuss the complex developments in the broader middle east, including syria. there are a number of issues for these leaders and the president to discuss, including syria, including his recent visit to jordan, israel, the palestinian territories, including the broader development in the arab spring. he looks forward to these visits. they reflect his commitment an interest in the region and our policies toward the region. >> going back to the earlier question about the budget, speaker john bennett said the president was ignoring republican's -- speaker john boehner was ignoring aboutican's requests revenues. what makes the president think he can persuade republicans to accept the revenues you are putting forth in your budget?
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is going beyond speaker john boehner part of your strategy? >> that is a good question. you are basically asking if we believe speaker john boehner will come to except the proposal that speaker john boehner made in december. achieving less revenue than john bennett said he could achieve by closing loopholes -- john boehner said he could achieve by closing loopholes. we hope that is possible. we think it is the right thing to do. when he talks about holding in time and reform hostage, the proposal he endorsed that the house passed and that chairman ryan put forward eliminates medicare as we know it, shi fts cost to seniors and will it. it is unnecessary.
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it would be one thing if that was the proposition alone. and it was an argument we needed to do in an of itself, shift these thousands of dollars of costs to the scene in america. it is with a proposal that gives tax cuts disproportionately to the wealthy. the president is comfortable saying that this the wrong approach. that is not just his opinion. it is the opinion of the majority of the american people. this is the debate we had during the election. wewas the number 1 debate had during the election. was soundly rejected by the american people. the president is engaged in caucus.tions with the if republicans will entertain the idea of dealing with our
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budget challenges in a balanced way, not just through spending cuts and cuts to entitlement programs, but through a package of proposals at ask the wealthy and well to do to give up their tax breaks and pleases in the tax code, that makes sensible reforms to our entitlements, that strength in those programs, and allowed us to make investments in key areas of our economy, our people, the middle class, so we can grow and expand and create jobs. that is the fundamental principle he is putting forward. it is more a matter of coincidence, but he is having dinner that night with another group of senators and he looks forward to that discussion very much. thereting to north korea,
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are reports that north korea is moving missiles to the coast. i wondered if you have more information as to give that constitutes a threat or if there is a missile tests -- as to if that constitute a threat or if there are missile tests. >> we are monitoring the situation closely. we would not be surprised to see them take such an action. we have seen them launch missiles in the past. the united nations security council has repeatedly condemned them under numerous security council resolutions. it would fit their pattern of on helpful actions. we urge them to stop the provocation and focus on meeting their international obligations and feeding their own people. they are making themselves more
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isolated from the rest of the world and undermining their stated goal of economic development. president'she strongest supporters think this is a terrible idea of eliminating cost-of-living increases to social security. the progressive change campaign says he cannot call yourself a new democrat and support social security benefit cuts. the president is proposing to steal thousands of dollars from grandparents and veterans. your response? >> the president believes the budget he will put forth next wednesday represents a balanced approach to dealing with our deficit challenges and making the necessary investments in our economy and people. protect our seniors. it does not go the republican route of the disarray in social programs and voucherizing
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medicare. it is not the ideal proposal. the president recognizes that we are not in the business in washington of getting everything we want. negotiation and compromise requires a willingness to accept less than 100% of what you want. proposal from house speaker john boehner is embodied in this budget. it is accepted in the context of a broader budget that invests in the economy, zapotecs and assist the middle class and allows us assists theects and middle-class and allows us to grow. we see these ideological an itnts put forward
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makes you wonder whether there is a genuine effort to try to find something that can be agreed to by everybody in washington. compromise is not saying, i will wait here until you come to me. the president will not about medicare.oucherize slash investments in technology and research that will help us grow in the future. he believes if we make andstments, we can achieve reduce our debt. >> when john mccain raised the idea of raising the retirement age, the president went before notaarp and said he would
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do it. what has changed? when did he switched his position? proposing to raise the retirement age. it is not the ideal budget proposal. it is a proposal that represents a good faith compromise position that reflects the offer he made to the speaker of the house that was widely seen as a compromise, good-faith effort that matched republicans halfway. it reflected people's will that we address these challenges in a way that is balanced and fair and that we do not go down the road of doing great harm to programs that are fundamental to the well-being of our senior citizens and harm the well-being of families that have kids with disabilities or that will assist middle class americans trying to get by. it is not acceptable to the american people. >> the $1.80 trillion you are
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claiming, you would replace the $1.20 trillion in sequester cuts. is it to the added deficit- reduction is $600 billion. >> the $1.20 trillion was part of the budget control act, part of achieving $4 trillion. absolutely we would replace the sequester. we would have an additional $600 billion in reductions, which exceeds the goal set by the bipartisan commission. that is a fact. the sequester. the sequester is bad policy. it is designed to be bad policy with negative impacts. it is not the kind of deficit- reduction republicans said they wanted until they changed position and called it a home run. it does not achieve any
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preformed the republicans said they wanted. it does not do any long term benefit to lowry economy. what the president is proposing is that we eliminate the sequester and go beyond that. that is the $4.30 trillion. you are changing the bar here. it is recognized as achieving $4 trillion even with the mass i got through in college. >> the president will give back 5% of his salary. the attorney general. what about the vice president? >> first of all, i will refer you to the vice president's office. the president said, when the sequester was about to kick in, that he wanted to do this. we have made clear that this is a decision everybody can make for themselves whether they are
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cabinet secretaries or other members of the administration or members of congress. we are not setting expectations. everyone, including members of congress, can make a decision as they see fit. you have anything? you are looking pensive. >> how discouraged is the white house today about the jobs numbers? >> you saw alan krueger and others discussing it. we are disappointed that they are not better. this is more than three years straight of private sector job creation. this is thanks to the policies that averted a depression and set the economy back on a trajectory of job creation. when jobs numbers exceed expectations and when they come in below expectations, we have said this. the president will not be
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satisfied until everyone who is looking for a job can get a job. we need economic policies that encourage growth, that reduce our deficit in a fair way, in a way that allows us to continue to invest in the economy. we have work to do. we can put teaches and construction workers back to work. the president had a proposal for families to refinance their homes that would be $3,000 in the pockets of middle-class families. we should move on that. >> how much does the administration believe the jobs report reflects sequester or actual economic impact? >> it is certainly part of the equation in our estimation. there is no question that anticipation of sequester and the fact of sequester would
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have a negative impact on jobs and economic growth. the exact measurement of that, i think the congress will make in the future. our focus is to make sure we do not unnecessarily if could harm on the economy. the sequester is one of those instances. the decision was made by republicans in congress, rather than asking wealthy -- outside economists have predicted that the sequester is not -- if not will cost 750,000 jobs. that would be bad. that would be the result of an unnecessary choice made by republicans in the house who thought that was a better people for the american
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, to reduce economic growth, reduce job creation, then asking folks to give up special tax breaks, cooperate jet owners. these are the proposals the speaker of the house said he supported in december. now he says they are off the table in march and april. >> the white house does not dispute that if the chain cpi were put into effect, it would raise taxes on middle america. >> the chain cpi is how we measure the consumer price index. i am saying it is not the president's ideal policy. it is in a letter from the senate minority leader. let's be clear, as we said all along, the offer was on the table. the president made the offer because he was hopeful that he
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would see commiserate offers to compromise from republicans. he engaged with republicans in the senate in an effort to find common ground, to see if there is a willingness to embrace the idea that we can reduce our deficit in a viable way. if there is, we will be able to get something done. >> there are critics who say this is the worst time to raise taxes on the middle-class and to cut benefits on the elderly and on fixed incomes. the president would say what? of a balanced approach and ask the wealthy and well-connected to contribute their fair share to tax reform, the elimination of special tax breaks that others do not get, we can also include income and reforms that allow us to achieve deficit reduction in a balanced
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way and allow us to invest in our economy in ways that allow us to grow and create jobs. this is not the president's ideal approach. he believes we were sent here to get things done on behalf of the american people and the american economy. he does not believe it is the right approach to take to write and pass ideological documents when there are just a bunch of top lines with a bunch of zeroes. that does not do anybody any good and it does not bring us closer to compromise. there are people who the president believes are open to the idea that we can do this in a balanced way. that means the president is willing to do some limited in time and reforms and continue to protect our seniors.
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the speaker of the house said this was good policy three months ago. gung-ho president as qabout chained cpi -- about i as he is gun control? >> these are two different things. he is looking for partners. ,> you have your list including discretionary spending cuts of $100 billion. when will we see a list of the spending cuts? promise of everyone here that this president's budget will be so much more detailed than anything you have seen from the republicans that it will blow your mind. [laughter] about were asked
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republican support and what has changed since december. what about democratic support? he proposed a way to pay for the american jobs act in 2011. it was rejected. how can you get democrats to support that now when they have rejected it before? >> if the republicans are to move off of their positions, the was the leaders have staked out, that the wealthy should not pay another in the all in effort to reduce our deficits, the president is convinced he can leave democrats to a compromise solution. that was the case in december. it was the case in the summer of
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2011. we have seen the opposite of that, the inability of the leaders of the republican party to bring their lawmakers behind compromise solutions. instead, there are groups within caucuses that have dictated to compromiset been no position should be and that they should be taken. nothing but bad news for the american people. the president believes these are not all ideal choices. or democrats them would make them. it is true with the president's budget. this represents a balanced approach to our deficit challenges. if there is a willingness by republicans to compromise, as opposed to pursuing ideological purity, we can get something done for the american people. cpi, most people
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focus on social security. it affects a whole range of federal programs. meanare saying this will cuts in veterans benefits. or $300anders say $200 a year for some veterans. think the application of these -- this proposal exempts certain categories of vulnerable americans. that was the case last year and that will be the case in the president's budget. i will have to ask you to wait until wednesday. i want to give you something to cover next week. i do not have the specific itemized breakdown of how this works. i would wait for the budget for those.
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this is not what the president would do if he were keen for -- king or what he would do if only people who supported his proposals were in congress. this will protect seniors and helped secure the middle class and give ladders to those who want to get into the middle class. it will provide investment to allow us to grow 10 years from now and 20 years from now. t you to the fda morning after pill today to about does the administration intends to appeal that decision? regardless of the legal question, is it still the policy position of the administration that the pill should only be available to women 16 and older?
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>> on the legal issue, i would refer you to the department of justice, which is currently reviewing the ruling. on the second part of the question, secretary sebelius made this decision. the president supported her after she made in -- it. he believes it was the right common-sense approach to this issue. beyond that, on the legal issue, i would refer you to the department of justice. indication that something has changed? there is a legal argument about the fairness question. are you guys leave you with the policy positions to see f. something should have changed -- if something should have changed? >> secretary sebelius made the decision.
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i would refer you to her office on the policy specifics. the president believes it is a common-sense approach when it comes to plan b and its availability over the counter for girls over 16. this is under review by the department of justice. i expect they will be making decisions about options. his position has not changed. follow up on the point about being sequester. senator harry reid said the employment report proves that our economy cannot afford more policies like the sequester. the think this jobs number is a direct result of the sequester? cell cannot afford more
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phone " -- self-inflicted setbacks like be sequester. you would have to turn in your economics degree if you did not concur with the universally held opinion that the sequester would result in a reduction in job growth. that is a broadly accepted that. i do not think anybody believes we should be embracing economic policies that cause our economy to grow less fast and create fewer jobs. most on capitol hill believe we should embrace economic policies and do the opposite of that. the sequester is bad policy. it was an unassisted said that and it was self-inflicted. i am pointing to assessments made by the council of economic advisers and paul kruger. impact onter had an this and it is hard to assess how much. there are other factors at play. broadly, whe i

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