manic stress disorder, and not because they are veterans, but because of something serious happened in their childhood. there -- this is an old, that can cause a lot of problems and can cause problems for decades or for life. if childhood trauma was a thing that you look for in schools and treated, yeah, you could save a lot of substance abuse, a lot of later violence, a lot of later social problems and things like that. most of the people who are going into this clinic for help have a highly treatable disorder that they have had for a very, very long time and that could have been caught earlier. the other thing is with things like ptsd, the longer it goes -- schizophrenia, bipolar -- the longer you let it go without any treatment, and the more trouble that the person gets in, the more isolation that they end up with in terms of being

ostracized from society and alienated from friends emma the harder it is to treat. the longer you let it go, the more expensive and more problematic it becomes. early screening could do a lot to take care of them. host: mac mcclelland, you talked to a lot of people and went to different places and visited with the mentally ill and different programs that are out there. what do these people tell you about what they need, what they want from state government or federal government? , i think,istance would be the key. a little bit of validation in terms of not being scared. if you ever interview homeless people on the street, what they will tell you is that the worst thing about it is how many people will walk past them and just completely ignore them and pretend like they don't exist. i think a lot of the mentally ill, both in my family and otherwise, feel like people just don't pay any attention to them and try to pretend like they don't really exist, and that kind of isolation really can

make a problem worse, in addition to just being totally dehumanizing. , inttle bit of humanity addition to a little bit of assistance. i think that one follows the other. host: mac mcclelland, contribute and writer of the "mother jones" cover story, thank you very much for talking to our viewers this morning. we appreciate it ri. guest: thank you. the: now we bring you to bipartisan policy center, where they have a panel set up with different views. you saw headlights about the cost of immigration reform. it is happening over the weeks. they have douglas holtz eakin, who says it cost benefit of the country, and heritage with robert rector, etc. live coverage of the bipartisan policy center. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute]

week, we were interested in working with all parties to find a apprehensive solution to this issue. bp forc -- bpce

for putting this panel together. i would like to introduce julie davis, national reporter for bloomberg to get us started. >> i will start with dr. lynch. he has taught since 1998. he is also a senior research fellow at the center for american progress. he is a research associate with the economic policy institute, a nonpartisan think tank created on the exclusion of policy low and middle income workers. recent work looked at granting legal status, concluding that legalizing undocumented immigrant could boost gdp anywhere from one point $3 trillion -- boost gdp depending on the time frame for granting citizenship and he graduated with a degree in international and development economics from

aorgetown university, earned master of economics from the state university of new york at stony brook and received a phd stony brook.at to his left is douglas holtz- eakin, president of the american action forum. he is a former director of the congressional budget office and most recently was a commissioner on the congressionally chartered financial crisis inquiry commission. previously he served as chief economist under former president george w. bush and he was the policyr for economic under john mccain's economic -- presidential campaign. he is researched wide policy and entrepreneurship. " is the author of immigration reform, economic growth and the fiscal challenge" in which he argues immigration

reform would raise gdp per and would reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion. to his left is the director of research for the center of immigration studies, a washington, dc, based research institute. testifiedtten and before congress extensively on the disco impact of immigration including -- on the fiscal impact of immigration. degree inasters political science from the university of pennsylvania and a doctorate degree from the university of virginia in public policy analysis. last but not least, we have robert rector, senior researcher at the heritage foundation. he has three decades of experience studying poverty, welfare programs and innovation in america.

costntinues to examine the of welfare. it is also focused on how to fix the broken immigration system both today and the last time congress considered a broad overhaul in 2007, looking at the broad impact to taxpayers. his recent paper, the fiscal cost of unlawful immigrants and amnesty to the u.s. taxpayer concludes that the lifetime deficit would be $6.3 trillion. he holds a bachelor's degree from the college of william and mary. so, and now would like to turn it over to our panelists for some brief opening statements, and then we will have an inch in discussion about where they agree and disagree on the questions -- and then we will have an interesting discussion where they agree and disagree on

the questions regarding immigration reform. >> the basis of my analysis starts from an understanding of the redistributive nature of government -- the type of analysis that i do does not apply only to immigration, but to government in general. i look at the total taxes paid in unary category of taxation and all of the the benefits received by individuals excluding interest and national defense and i measure, essentially, how much income is redistributed from the upper class to the bottom half of the population and my calculations, which i have done for over half of a decade, show that there is roughly $1 trillion transferred from the top to the bottom, not particularly controversial. the second thing that i showed that is not controversial, that kind of starting -- startling is that government is larger than people imagine. the average household in the united states receives over

$31,000 a year in government benefits, implying they would have to pay $31,000 a year in taxes in order to break even. not many tax hold -- households $31,000 a year in taxes. when you look at the least advantaged households, those with the lowest level of education, where the head of the household does not have a high school degree, they receive over $48,000 a year in government benefits and only pay around $12,000 a year in taxes. there is a net deficit their of -- a year.000 there the other end, households headed by someone with a college degree, they are the opposite. they pay $30,000 a year more in taxes than they take out in benefits. overall we have a massive system of redistribution in which we provide lots of benefits to the

least advantaged americans and do not request much of them in taxes. they pay taxes, and i calculate how much lottery tax and tobacco excise tax -- we have over seven different categories of spending and over 30 individual categories of taxation. it comes up to equal total government spending. at same thing for taxes. it is a holistic analysis. the question these are the amnesty -- vis-à-vis amnesty is you are looking at 11 million people that haven't average education level of 10th grade. once you get behind the deceptive ten-year budget window, all of the amnesty recipients will be eligible for over 80 different means tested wells -- welfare programs, eligible for obamacare, and also

for social security and medicare when they retire, recognizing these individuals have an -- a 10th grade education, giving them access to those benefits is expensive and will not be financed by those individuals themselves. they are in deficit at each stage along their lifecycle. they will also receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes. that is not a bad thing, but when you understand the fiscal consequences, you have to understand the current nature of redistribution. i then look and say what happens if you granted these 10 million to 11 million people access to the benefits, and i use a simple methodology. i look at the current unlawful immigrants, and i assume once

they have access they will pay taxes and receive benefits in the same way and a current legal immigrant he sees them, who has the same -- receive them, who has the same education level. i look at any legal immigrant who does not have a high school degree, and half of them do not, and is maybe 35 years old, and then i look at a legal immigrant who is exactly like that, and i measure what the fiscal deficit is, and the reality is, then, that these individuals -- each household, once they gain access to all of these programs, which they do under this program, each household will run a deficit of around $23,000 a year benefits minus taxes and once they hit retirement, the deficit will be around $22,000 per person. once you legalize, the -- the illegal will

benefits the same way a current legal immigrant does care that is a lot of benefit, a lot of transfer. the bottom line is simple. conservatives say we do not want to have a cradle-to-grave welfare state. we have had a cradle-to-grave welfare state for 50 years. we have had the largest and most expensivethe bottom line is sim. conservatives say we do not want to have a cradle-to-grave welfare state. we have had a cradle-to-grave welfare state for 50 years. we have had the largest and most expensive government retirement system for social security and medicare in the globe, or at least the top five. we also have the most expensive public education system, which is largely free or nearly free to low income households. they get the service, but we do not get very much in taxes. now we take a population of roughly 10 million people with an average education level of 10th grade and plugging them into all of those benefits. they are already partially plugged in, but we fully love

plug them in,- and i am asking what it costs. the average immigrant is 35 years old, and on average they will live an additional 50 years, so that is the timeframe in which these costs will be imposed on the taxpayer. once you look at that analysis and you assume that the unlawful immigrants plug them in, and i am asking what it costs. the average immigrant is 35 years old, once legalized, have the same deficit status as this current legal immigrant with the same education level, these costs unfold year after year, and over the course of 50 years and will receive about $9 trillion in government benefits, pay about $3 trillion in taxes for a net deficit of about $6 trillion that somebody else has funded byneeds to be increasing the deficit. it does not mean that these people are bad or evil or that they are lazy. one of the myths behind this is

a lot of people think if somebody comes here and works they inevitably would be not taxpayers. -- net taxpayers. that has not been true since the 1920 past. -- 1920 costs. the largest tax credit is the earned income tax credit and it is only available for people that work --. it is unfortunate, but given the fiscal status of our country we cannot afford to throw away $6 trillion on individuals whose claim to those resources is simply that they came here and violated our rules. we cannot afford to do that as a nation. it is an unnecessary burden on u.s. taxpayers we should not create.

>> thank you for inviting me here. let me start by saying that when you think about the issue of threeation, there are basic issues that often get confused, but they are not really the same thing. let me run through them briefly. there is the impact of immigration on the aggregate -- the overall size of the u.s. economy, and there simply is no question immigration makes the economy bigger, by well over one dollar trillion a year. -- $1 trillion. if anyone says it does not make the gdp larger, that is false or $1gdp is larger by over trillion, however an overall larger gdp is not necessarily a benefit to the native lauren population -- nativeborn

population. pakistan has a larger gdp that island, and nobody says pakistan is a richer country. what matters is per capita gdp and per capita income. there is a way to estimate immigration process impact on of the capita income nativeborn. there is the immigrant surplus that shows about 98% of that tora gdp, that extra added the economy from immigration goes to the immigrants themselves in the forms of wages and benefits. there is a tiny benefit to the 2/10eborn, equal to about of one percent of gdp. thes caused -- called immigrant surplus.

you could argue it does create a benefit to the nativeborn, but it is very small. so, that is the second issue. accept the idea that there is an immigrant surplus, you have to accept the redistribution of income that immigration creates. this has to do with future flows or allowing illegal immigrants to stay. the best preachers -- research shows it is redistributing about $4 billion in the u.s. economy and mainly from the less educated to more educated workers and owners of capital. immigrants are not evenly distributed throughout the economy. about 6% of lawyers in the united states are foreign-born. about 49% of the hotel maids in the united states are foreign- born. us-for that 800 or 850,000

born hotel maids, immigration creates a lot of job competition, as it does for the millions of meat and poultry processors that are u.s. born because about 60% are us-born, but 40% are immigrants. for immigrants, it is another low immigrant occupation. for english language journalists, it is even lower, so they do not face a lot of job competition, but for nannies, maids, bus drivers, it is very large. they are the losers, and the winners are the more skilled and the owners of capital. the fact of the business hard toy fights so keep immigration hard and you have a regular -- relatively lacks an unenforced immigration law suggests that a large portion of that redistribution goes to them. they pay lower rages and retained in the -- wages and

retain it in the form of higher profits. there is the impact on the overall size of the economy, which is almost irrelevant as to whether it benefits natives. there is the immigrant surplus, which should be positive, but it must come with the redistribution and you have to decide how you feel about taking money away from the less .ducated and the poor that is a "in. one of the groups that will the immigrants themselves. and there is the 30 issue of the fiscal impact. three things matter -- the education level of the immigrants, the education level of the immigrants and the education level of the immigrants. the fiscal implications depend s themselves.

very heavily on the education of the immigrant. immigrants who come to the united states with very little education tend to be a large fiscal game. this is what robert found in his research but it confirmed something the national academy of science found in its research. they estimated that an immigrant without a high school education is a net fiscal drain .f $150,000 those numbers would be larger if you adjusted for inflation. you see 59% of households headed by immigrants use one of the major welfare programs. by the way, i have not included the earned income tax credit and the additional tax credits. we also see that households headed by immigrants have very little tax liabilities. about 70% have zero very heavily on the education of the immigrant. federal income tax liability. it is not a fully developed model, what it tells you is that when thinking about

immigration it is the education level that matters and through all my research and others, it indicates that illegal immigrants are overwhelmingly unskilled. the illegalf immigrants are thought to have no education behind high school -- beyond high school. about 50% have less than a high school education. thatf the research shows people with bad skill level cannot come close to paying enough in taxes to cover the consumption of services. it is important to note that the fiscal deficit is not the result of the immigrant unwillingness to work, or because they came to get welfare. rather in the modern american economy people with little education do not make very much. education has become increasingly important. it turns out your mother was right when she told you to stay in school because what you make in life is very much determined

by education of what you pay in taxes reflects your income. your eligibility for you and your children also reflects your income. anyone who argues that less educated immigrants or natives can pay enough in taxes to cover the consumption of public services survey does not show what the data shows where they are being disingenuous. one final statistic to highlight that this is not being caused by a lack of work -- if you look at immigrant households receiving one or more welfare programs, 86% of those households had at least one worker during the year. this is not being caused by that. what it will suggest is if we have a large welfare state, you have to have an immigration system that reflects the reality and select skilled immigrants that will not create the distal costs. immigration reform bill, briefly, increases skilled immigration in the future because it will double legal immigration. instead of one million green

cards, under this bill it goes to about 2 million. about half of the increase is unskilled. we accelerate family integration and create new avenues for unskilled immigration. in the past, it looks like half of all legal immigrants have only had a high school education. in the future, and thinking about this, we have to have a policy that reflect these realities. remember, in 1910, federal state -- federal, state and local expenditures were something like five percent of gdp. today, the size and scope of government is fundamentally different and we need an immigration policy that reflect that. with regards to illegals, that means however many we let state, if we decide to do that, each incremental increase increases

the cost. if we let half of them stay, it is more costly than letting one quarter stay. if we let three-quarter stake, it is much more costly than letting have stay. those are the things we have to think about. in conclusion, it is important not to think of the fiscal costs as some kind of moral defect or deficit on the part of the immigrants. rather it reflects the reality of the u.s. economy, the educational attainment of illegal immigrants, were mostly all adults, and the existence of a well-developed welfare state. thank you. >> i want to say thank you to the bipartisan policy center for having this event, inviting me to participate. i have worked with the bpce in the past and it is a place that fosters this kind of dialogue and makes sure that all points of view get represented. ,hat should be applauded

especially in this town. this is a difficult set of issues, and you can look at it from a couple of different dimensions. i will not bore you to tears as a former academic, but once have myensions is the -- favorite senator. for me? thank you. [laughter] 17 dimensions goes across the policy -- one set of dimensions goes across the policy. that is enter and exit visas. a second set of issues has to do with the legality of actions -- can we keep employers on the right side of the law? another site has to do with economics, dollars and cents. it is important in the theme of the event, when you talk about

cost and benefits, to recognize this raises difficult issues in valuation. what is border security worth? this is a fundamental question we face. what is the value we place on having a secure nation question mark the same will be true when these issues in the evaluation of legal issues, internal security, the management -- the name -- the diminishment of illegal activity. they are tough issues. we do not want to hijack the debate over thinks we can measure when there are things that are difficult to measure that might be comparable or more important in the end. we can measure something about budget and economics, and to me, the most central feature of the debate we are having today is for the first time we are recognizing the importance of immigration as an economic policy. it is a demographic fact that the nativeborn ovulation is --

population is having so few children that we will shrink as the population and economy, so by our choices we are choosing the future of the american population, the labor force and .ow fast we will go -- grow that is not the tradition of u.s. immigration law. that is not how we have thought about it. we have also based the laws on tables of family reunification, political asylum and refugee status and we are now out of step with the rest of the world as a result. we have less than 10% of these is granted for economic reasons. competitors recognize immigration is a powerful tool in economic policy. we see a shift in the court visa-granting priorities away from exclusive reliance on principles to include economic

considerations and i agree. compared to the nativeborn population immigrants work more. they work longer. they have more small businesses. they demonstrate the traits of entrepreneurial zeal and upward mobility that we always valued as a nation. we can put numbers on that. i have done back of the envelope calculations and others have as well. that is a key part of this debate -- have that opportunity. it brings with it other parts of the fiscal calculation and we have heard some of that already. i want to emphasize that to me all we have seen in the discussion so far and in the debate is we have proven that an unsustainable american social safety net will be more unsustainable if we put more bodies in it. social security is broken. the current plan is to cut

benefits 25% across the board in 2033. a pretty disgraceful plan. it is a system that needs to be fixed. right now the gap between medicare payroll taxes and premiums paid in, 10,000 new beneficiaries of a, fostering bad medicine in the process. medicaid, bad for the forficiaries that go to er normal caret 33 times the rate of the uninsured. four normal care at three times the rate of the uninsured. it has nothing to do with immigration or decisions we make about immigration. if we had a baby boom and put more americans in, it would fall apart the same way.

it is something that should be recognized, needs to be fixed. we are behind the curve in getting it solves, but it is not an immigration problem. we need to go back to asking questions we want to about immigration -- what can we accomplish on security, on economic growth, and what would we want the future of the american economy to look like? those are the central questions that need to be addressed in evaluating the quality of bills that come through congress. >> dr. lynch? >> thank you. i am delighted to be here. what areas focused on the economic impacts of providing legal status and a pathway to citizenship for the roughly 11 million undocumented or illegal immigrants that are here in the united states. i want to talk about what we know about this. what is indisputable is that undocumented immigrants right

now are earning far less, pay much less in taxes and contributing much less to the u.s. economy than they potentially could. what we know is if we granted them legal status and a pathway to citizenship we would see a tremendous increase in gdp, productivity, earnings and taxes paid. is important to note that the earnings of both nativeborn americans and the undocumented increase, while it is primarily the taxes of the undocumented that would go up dramatically. why does this happen? there are three questions we should be asking. primarilyll, how do we know the taxes of the undocumented that would go up dramatically. why does this happen? there are three questions we should be asking. first of all, how do we know positive economic effects would happen to legalization and citizenship. because there has been a lot of research that has followed millions of undocumented immigrants from before they were illegal to after they were illegal. the best study -- all of these

these have shown significant improvements in productivity. the best study is the department of labor study that analyzed will what happened -- what immigranto the granted legal status under president reagan and the department of labor found within five years, after they had gotten legal status but before any of them acquired citizenship, their productivity and wages increased by 15%. haveous other studies found similar or even larger result in other studies have looked at -- results. other studies have looked at what happens when you go from to citizenship,

12% increase.er another question we should be asking is why does that happen? why does changing the legal status boost productivity? there are many different reasons. i will quickly mention three of them. 12% increase. see that when another question we should be asking is why does that happen? why does changing the legal status boost productivity? there are many different reasons. i will quickly mention three of them. one is that we see that when formally illegal immigrants acquire legal status we see dramatic changes in their behavior, and primarily one of the things we see is a significant increase in their investment in education and training and improving their english language ability, which dramatically increases productivity. number two, we know that before someone is legal they are at risk of apprehension and deportation, therefore regardless of their skill level,

whether they are narrow cultural worker or have a college degree, a 10 to pursue professions -- they tend to pursue professions that are low-profile where they are less likely to be discovered. they go into agriculture, cleaning services and childcare services and we know exactly what happens once they require legal status. many of them move into jobs that are motor closely matched -- more closely matched to their skill set. you might have the nurse from bolivia who was working as a nannyyou might have the, and ons legal status she applies for a job at a hospital and she is earning three or four times more and producing three or four times more. legalization makes the labor market more efficient and productive. thirdly, as dr. douglas holtz- eakin mentioned, one of the things that happens when you acquire legal status, you also get access to things that are key to creating jobs and starting business. you get access to permits, licenses, insurance and credit that you cannot get when you are illegal. we know from numerous studies that newly legalized immigrants are much more entrepreneurial than the nativeborn. a cream or businesses and hire more workers -- they create more businesses and hire more workers. any reform that unleashes this

potential will boost the u.s. economy, productivity and create your job -- create more jobs. thirdly, what is the economic impact? in my research, and for the importance of this discussion today what are the budget implications? in my own research, i was looking at the economic impact of simply one aspect of comprehensive immigration reform -- what happens when you legalize the 11 million undocumented and provide them a path to citizenship. i found that as a bottom line, their productivity would increase by at least 25%. i am at the very bottom. other studies have shown it larger than that. what implications would it have for the government budget? my study, we actually did not calculate the budgetary impact, but for the sake of today's

discussions i went back and did some calculations and came up with numbers that could be compared to the number robert rector mentioned. ande provide legal status citizenship, what will provide -- what will happen to earnings, taxes that they pay, what legal americans pay, and services. when you look at the whole impact, and minimum it will have a positive affect of about $200 billion in the first 10 years. you should compare that number to the astonishing $6.3 trillion mr. robert rector just mentioned. let me say one final point had 's study isrector riddled with methodological errors. when you correct them, you reverse his results. one error that i will be happy

to discuss with him reverses his results and what his study proves is that immigration reform would be a huge in -- financial boom. exactly the opposite of what he proposes. >> thank you. taylor for allowing me to moderate. i want to open it up for questions and answers. i want to start with a step back. this debate is very much in the here and now. there is a bill that came out of the senate judiciary committee. it is going to the senate floor .ext month i would like for all of you to step back and talk about who has done this well in the past -- whether here or around the world in terms of minimizing economic costs and maximizing economic benefits, and is there anything to be learned by policymakers who are engaged in this debate from that experience that we can look at and apply?

>> i would say when you look around the globe that policymakers are increasingly modernanding that each economy is highly redistributive and that in those economies essentially the government is going to redistribute from the better educated to the less educated. there is no moral fault to the recipients, that is really what government has done to the 20th century and is doing it increasingly. ,hen, when they recognize that most of these governments are saying we have to taylor our immigration system to reflect the redistribution. we do not want to bring in people it will be a net fiscal cross and it is not rocket science to understand a college educated person pays about $30,000 a year more in taxes than they receive in benefits. someone who does not have a high school degree does pretty much

the opposite. if you bring in lots of people who do not have a high school degree, someone will have to pay. ask do you believe someone who does not have a high school degree is more in taxes than they receive in benefits, everyone says absolutely not because we have a system where we support the least advantaged american workers by giving them a lot of government benefits and services and not asking them a -- to pay a lot in taxes. the public generally accept that. the problem is when you apply the same system to a population that is overwhelmingly poorly educated -- i would make the comment that we would have the same cost if this is a baby boom growth. we would not, because only 10% of the people that would grow up would not have a high school degree. with the legal immigrants, it is

-- with the eu legal it is over 50%. illegal immigrants, it is over 50%. our system has allowed in a disproportionate number of people who have lower levels of education, and thereby imposed costs on the u.s. taxpayer that are largely unnecessary. we should stop doing that. anything else on lessons from the past or other basis? >> we know the industry worst actress, which is japan -- do not immigrate and -- practice, which is japan, do not immigrate and shrink. put that aside, we look at countries that have looked at reform, but the reality will be that every country faces its own politics. we face our own politics. one of the things that is

important to recognize in this debate is we do not have a debate about a skill-based .mmigration reform we do not have a debate about a temporary worker program. we do not have a debate about legalization. it is the character of u.s. politics that we do bipartisan reform, especially when they are big, and they will as a result much all of those issues. the question we have to answer is not what we think about each of those pieces, but what is the impact of the legislation and how does it change the lay of the land? that has been true in other countries, and certainly of us as well. marks let me follow-up -- >> let me follow-up. if you look at the current bill, and as well as the legalization peace there are programs for high skilled and low skilled

agricultural workers. thosell do you feel that programs, as written in the bills, which have strict limits on visa numbers, floors on wages and the like, respond to the economic needs the united states is facing right now? >> i would argue in a nutshell that the bill is out of touch with the reality american workers are experiencing. we have a bout a 10 million jobs benefit. in the next 10 years, natural population growth without addgration growth would another 7 million. 8is building alliances about million illegal workers -- and this bill legalizes 8 million illegal workers. 14 million individuals will be looking for jobs along with 17 million existing.

in addition it creates huge new guest worker programs. if this coming decade is not the greatest jobs bonanza in american history, we will see what we have seen for the last decade -- an increase in nonwork, persistently high unemployment. some say the immigrants will not come if there are no jobs, but between 2007 and 2012, there was a net loss of about 4 million jobs and we still gave out about 5 million green cards. between 2000 and 2013, new 16sus data shows at least million new immigrants came in and we had a net gain of about 4 million jobs. can that tells us is you stimulate immigration because life is better here, but it does not assess early result in job growth. it has not in the short term and it is not in the next -- last 13 years.

perhaps in the future it might, but we know it does not have to. we have seen low wages in the united states, relatively little or no wage growth for most american workers and a dramatic increase in nonwork. the increases in legal immigration are likely to exacerbate that problem even more. some problems with the numbers he was throwing around. it is not clear there will be a genetic increasing immigration under the bill proposed. using the numbers about how many jobs we created, talking about the job loss 2000, starting in 2007. green cards -- people applied 15, 20n cards five, years ago. when they happen to get them is irrelevant to the economic situation of the time.

those numbers are not reflective of what is really going on in the economy. >> i think it is important to take the long view in this. there has been a lot of criticism of mr. rector's work, is looking over a long time exactly the right thing to do. we do not do immigration reform every year. we do it once every 30 years, if things break the right way. the economics of reform legislation on the basis of current labor market conditions is fundamentally a mistake. it is the case of the american economy is a remarkable thing. it has on average fully employed its people over hundreds of years even though we get bigger and bigger through immigration and childbirth. that is the nature of a successful economy -- it grows and employs people. i have little doubt about the capacity of the u.s. economy to absorb and employ people from

both fronts in the future. so, i think that is important. second, let's get the metrics right. if we take your numbers, 2 million immigrants a year, 20 million immigrants legally, over a decade, that important number swamps the 10 million or 11 million that are here illegally. let's evaluate the legislation on the basis of what it will do over the long haul, and the core there is what happens to high-tech visas, temporary worker programs, and, most important, to our core visa granting system. >> that is an important point. the bill is complicated, and i will say right now what i will say is my initial assessment of the bill, but when i look at the high skilled visas in the bill, and the low skilled categories, and it is extremely complicated,

what i basically see is roughly two low skill workers coming in for every high skilled worker added on in the bill. to characterize the bill as a high skill bill is not true. i think not only would amnesty cost money, but also, potentially, all of the low skilled, legal immigration would also cost money. we have these guestworker programs. all of those guestworkers have access to green cards, can become citizens in the long- term and they get to bring their dependents in with them. costsould impose fiscal very similar to the current illegal population. you would have to pay the kids education and so forth. all of those things have to be factored in. a simple rule of understanding is we expect better educated people to pay much more in

taxes than they receive in benefits and we transfer that surplus to others. therefore, a college-educated immigrant coming in also creates this fiscal surplus of around $30,000 a year. most of the other immigrants, particularly those that have a high school degree or less, are exactly the opposite. a are not tax consumers -- they net taxtax consumers -- consumers. theliterature is clear -- high scale of immigration we have had has driven down the wages of the least skilled, least advantaged american workers, i believe, by around $2600 a year. this is also supported by the work of the immigration economist at harvard, who i think is the best expert on this in the country, and as someone who works with the poor and welfare costs and those issues.

the last thing in the world we should do as a nation is having drivestion policy that down the wages of the least advantaged, most vulnerable american workers. asowe them something american citizens, and we should not be using an immigration policy that makes it more difficult for them to participate in the american dream. >> these are all tough issues when you think about this. on substance, it is important to s valueze that market skills. we are not very good at that. all theool, college, categories that analysts like to use, do not uniformly turned into market valuations. we have found in recent years the u.s. needs a lot of welders. we do not write that down as a high skill. they make lots of money.

the second thing i would say is that from an economics point of view, the current bill, i am not fond of committees in congress writing caps and dictating the supply curve. thirdrings up the reality, which is none of us will like everything about the bill. i view major legislation as the inglorious art of getting together a coalition of the disgruntled to vote yes, and that is what this is. it will not be perfect in every dimension for everybody, and this bill is on track to disgruntled money. >> usually when we do that, it cost the taxpayer of fortune. it works on this issue of the low-wage folks -- this is completely misplaced. the reality is low-wage americans are competing with low-wage people across the

board -- global, and it does not matter whether they are across the street or across the ocean, come petition is there. the moving is not change nature of the wage they are going to receive. it is a complete non sequitur. >> two points on that issue -- he cited the leading economist in this area, which was true about 20 years ago. it has been surpassed since then by better methodologies and data sets, and many other researchers that have done work that far exceeds the work done 20 years ago. if you look at the latest research from the minute economist started -- starting theye mid-1990's, analyzed is it true when immigrants come in they pushed on the wages of low skilled workers, and the answer is no.

in fact, if anything, they found an increase in the wages of low skilled american workers. work that istes more than 20 years out of date. more recent data shows either no a positive affect. >> i disagree strongly. he is to consider the top guy, perry's has been shredded. why his explanation of methodology is wrong. correct it is not just them, it is dozens of scholars. >> there is a paper from christopher smith look at the jobs distillation effect of immigration on workers. there is a lot of stuff out there. we may disagree on what the literature shows, and that partly reflects how contentious

this is. i think most economist find it does adversely affect the employment opportunities and the wages of the less educated, what you would think with common sense, but there is a debate that is not entirely settled. >> with all respect, there is a disagreement here, but we need to understand where people are coming from. david card, it distinguished economist, but his chief claim to fame is research that allegedly shows that raising the minimum wage has no effect on jobs for low skilled workers. most people on the conservative side of the spectrum would find that not very good research. it is essentially the same issue here. >> i want to move onto one issue issue before we open it up to questions from the audience. i am going to raise health care, and then if you would like to respond about who benefits, you can do that.

is well aware, cdo scores things over 10 years, and dr. rector has learned -- looked over a much larger time horizon, clearly one of the hugely substantial costs beyond the 10 year window will be healthcare. i wonder if you can all talk about how you expect those cost to look and how much comes from the affordable care act and how big of a factor that will be in getting this bill through congress. we know the house bill that has been working on this has been hamstrung over this issue. they have been looking at what to do in the absence of giving the affordable care act benefits to the undocumented immigrants when they are in original status. --you could talk about provisional status. if you could talk about the cost and also the cost of the alternative. what would happen in the absence of that in terms of

emergency medical care or whatever the alternative might be? >> i think people need to cbo budget game. every one these bills as a principal that is designed to deceive legislators. >> i reserve time. >> ok. the name of the game is that 10 cbo budget window and attempts to focus the debate there. in each you find that individuals are granted legal status but not given access to benefit -- government benefits for 10 or 12 years so they move beyond the budget window therefore the budget window looks bright. we predicted the deficits of illegal immigrants would go down. they will pay more in taxes, we agree with that.

for the first 10 years, there is not a lot of cost, but around year 12 or so they become eligible for all of these things, including obamacare, and we predict obama care costs will be $20 billion a year. they will also receive a substantial amount of medicaid as some of them become disabled, and when they retire they will get around $11,000 a year in medicare benefits and those are in constant $2010. the actual costs will be higher --ause medical costs go in go up higher than general inflation. it is in part because the legislators cannot face the real costs, which everyone acknowledges occurs when you give people access to these programs. we have over 80 different programs to assist poor people. the adult illegal immigrants do not get those programs -- they do not get obamacare, social security, medicare. they're very expensive programs.

when you put on the -- put them expensive there costs. cbo does not take the budget window. it is dictated by the choices of the congress and the office of management and budget. cbo follows their wishes. the 10-year budget window has cboing to do with what wants to do, and then congress rights laws that in some cases take advantage. the leading practitioner with the affordable care act itself, which was riddled with gimmicks. this is not a cbo problem. this is your congress at work. it is not cbo disguising it. secondly, they do lots of long-st for 100 years,

term budget outlook's -- in every case, it is important to give perspective to those numbers. -- one dollar in 50 years and one dollar now are very different. show it size of the economy. if you look at the kind of spending we're worried about in the heritage study, 2% over that horizon. get some perspective and stay with something people understand. when you think of the affordable care act itself, you know, i just want to say, i have a pretty reasonable track record of thinking this was not the best thing ever made. it is an inhospitable way to greet people to these shores, but that is not the case. we have a law that is unsustainable which will have to

be changed. as with medicare, as with social security, and as with medicaid. that is not an immigration debate. that is about the fact that we have overcommitted in these programs. -- way it shows up any of the immigration debate is because past 10 years and you do the calculation over a 50- year horizon am a you have to then make some tough calls. are you going to recognize that social security is going to be cut in half? i do not think you do, so you are assuming some sort of social security fix. are you going to somehow keep medicare from going bankrupt. if you're recognizing those cuts, you are assuming some sort of form. analysts imagine how it will get fixed, and that tells you that we really do not know what these things are going to look like. that we do know it creates a bigger fiscal problem.

>> you do not know the numbers, it relies on as future reform you cannot specify. >> i cannot assume no apology -- no policy changes. >> i project that the illegals will get something similar to the social security benefit. the basic medicare benefit for the poorest americans, i predict that those fangs will not be cut. ok, i think we can assume that. therefore, as we alter social security and medicare in the future, i think that this population, with an average 10th grade education, were largely

be imposing greater costs that other people have to bear more sacrifices in order for those costs to be borne. it is a simple assumption. we do not know exactly what will happen, but we do know amnesty will make choices in the future be more difficult. >> to do proper fiscal analysis, what you have to do is compare what would happen to the budget in the future if we do know immigration reform to what would happen in the budget if we do immigration reform. if by doing nothing, we are going to run a $7.3 trillion deficit in the future, but by doing immigration reform, we will only have a $6.3 trillion deficit. then you have to conclude that the immigration reform will have a a huge positive impact on the u.s. budget. he does not do it that way.

he estimates what it will cost to cover the illegal immigrants without talking about what it would cost if we do know immigration reform. 29 of the report when he tells the for the first $6.3 trillion number does not represent that cost parity explains on page 30 that in order to do it properly, you have to subtract the cost of the unlawful immigrants under no reform. then he said but that is not a serious oversight on my part because the cost of doing nothing is not very significant, only about $1 trillion. you have to ask yourself a question right away, how is it possible that if we do know immigration reform, illegal immigrants cost us $1 trillion. but with immigration reform, it costs us $6.3 trillion? stunning different spirit he

makes an assumption on page 30. he is sent under no immigration reform something astonishing, he assumed that at age 55, all illegal immigrants in america return to the country of origin. they self-support -- they self deport. so there is zero cost. the very he acknowledges that will never happen. he acknowledges it will never happen. why? -- custody and knowledge is acknowledges something anyone can tell you. who have us-born children are u.s. citizens and who at age 21 can ask for legal residency for their unlawful parent. isfact, the legal residency almost automatically granted. he acknowledges that they will not self deport. so the real cost will be many trillions, but he never calculates what those many

trillions will be. he tells you 6.3 trillion dollars. then he tells you only $1 trillion if we do nothing. he later admits it is many trillion, but he does not calculate what those many trillions are. well, i did. i used its methodology, which i do not endorse. it is riddled with errors. what i calculated what it would cost if we do nothing. we do nothing and compare it to what it does if we do immigration reform, his $6.3 trillion. the net effect was a savings of over $1 trillion. his own study done properly, done properly, shows a huge financial boon to the united states with immigration reform. >> my report makes very clear that the net cost of illegals after amnesty or the total cost is $6.3 trillion. it also clearly spells out that i think the baseline cost under current law is about $1 trillion. so the net loss is about $5.3

trillion. >> because you assume at age 55 they all felt deep port. >> no, because i assume they will not get social security and medicare. >> you say it. >> it does not really matter, because if they stay here and do not get those two benefits and the costs are pretty minimum. >> i assume that under the baseline, they do not get social security, they do not give medicare, they do not get medicaid, things like that. if you do that, then the cost at age of are not that large. as i acknowledge in the report -- you know this because very few people in congress know this particular point which is there is a loophole in the law which ,llows an illegal immigrant when their kids hit age 21, to basically get a parent visa and parent green card which

eventually gives them access to all of those things. what i say is depending on how many people access that loophole, the baseline cost could be very -- and is it the baseline cost is actually the hardest thing to calculate, ok, but the bottom line is i'm a they are very expensive. they may be expensive under current law. we do not really know. half of the illegals currently have us-born children. we do not have a lot of that access in terms of the loophole now. we may have a huge amount in terms of the future. bottom line, they made the more costly even under current law than most people understand. --annot see how you can get if half of them get access to social security and medicare through the parent visa, i do not see how you're averse that. it would mean the net cost of amnesty might be a couple trillion. the bottom line, what i recommend in the report is if

you are interested in saving the u.s. taxpayer trillions of dollars, do not allow people to ay because i came here, i had child born in the united states, i didn't have access to become a u.s. citizen is i came here -- i then have access to become a u.s. citizen because i came here had a child and have a huge cash benefit through these parental visas. i can guarantee you that i have yet to meet a single member of the senate or congress who understands that that loophole was there. and if we are interested in protecting the u.s. taxpayers, we should not grant amnesty and we should also close that loophole. >> let's open it up to questions from the audience. right here in the front. >> hello, i am with cns news. you are talking about redistribution. i think that it is true that the countries that have the greatest amount of redistribution have some of the

strictest immigration laws. .ake denmark, for example in denmark, they have really tough immigration, legal immigration laws, not even talking about if you are in the country illegally, but if you want to -- that is because and denmark, once you are a legal resident, you have access to their very generous in a fit of free college, subsidize housing, daycare paid for, and those kinds of things. we are talking about legal immigration. in this country, back in the days of ellis island, one of the considerations was if you're going to be an economic burden on the country, you are not allowed to come in. you had to be up to prove that you would be contributing to the economy. i wanted to see your reactions about that. but what is interesting is that all these sessions are usually about legal immigration around the world.

it is a whole different topic when you are talking about people that are here, interesting that they wrote the law and we are trying to figure out how they can help the country. i think it is interesting. >> i think is an important point, this old law that you cannot, to the country if you are going to be a public charge. no one is a public charge today. some people in congress think this is still a reality. in fact, you can come into the country, your kids can get 80 different means tests and welfare programs, you can access different welfare programs and so forth. if you are legal, you can also get welfare as an adult. no one is dismissed as a public charge. the difference is at the time of ellis island, we do not have a $2 trillion redistributed state. it is true that denmark has a more redistributed state than we do. but we spent close to $1 trillion a year aiding poor people, poor programs. who are the beneficiaries? it is the less educated people.

not there any moral defect, not because they are bad people, not because they do not work, ok, but because we support vulnerable individuals through massive redistribution. we can barely afford to do that for us-born citizens and for legal immigrants. but to try to apply this massive system of redistribution to peoples whose only claim to u.s. taxpayer resources is that they came here and broke the law, i think that is a travesty and i think it is an assault on the u.s. taxpayer that is un- american. , themean, look redistribution issue is obviously very important. but the key is that our system is broken period. it was broken before immigration reform. it will be broken after we finished talking about immigration reform. we're going to have to fix that. it will be way easier to fix that problem which is going to

bedevil this demography for a , at least, a decade it will be way easier to do that anymore rapidly growing, more vibrant economy. we should remember in evaluating the costs and benefits that it is the crucial element that we need to aim for. >> this whole discussion of redistribution, i think, it is not being framed properly or correctly. if you look at his numbers, you'll see that his numbers suggest that roughly 70% of the american population are not paying their way, all those who have less than a college degree are takers, not makers. i actually calculated using his methodology of looking at the 50-year fiscal impact of 200- something million americans, and it came out to negative $66 trillion because the way he assumes redistribution occurs.

i was having a discussion recently with a senior executive of a high-tech company talked about the fact that he would rather pay $40,000 a year to indian computer scientists than $80,000 to american computer scientists. he told me that those indian computer scientists are just about as productive as the american ones. i would much rather pay than the $40,000 in the $80,000 to the american ones. i said, that is right, you can pocket the difference. he says, that is right, $40 million in my pocket. i said, what just happened to your productivity if you do that? well, nothing. you earned 40 million more and you put that income away from the american workers. they do not become less productive. no change in the productivity. it is just who got that income. he assumes that when, for example, wall street bankers tanked the u.s. economy five years ago, six years ago, when

they pay themselves $20 million to create an $8 trillion hole in the u.s. economy, that reflects accurately their productivity. it does not. we are a nation, a very public's organism with hundreds of millions of people -- a very complex organism with hundreds of millions of people doing cleaning services, childcare services, accountants, all of us working together and producing an output. how we distribute that does not notzard that does -- does always reflect the productivity of the workers. >> we have one in the front here -- a gentle man all the way back. all the wayeman back. >> hello, i and the u.s. correspondent from an austrian newspaper. that there is a

canvassing for labor and organizational rights, but that is different. you have a population in this country about the size of the republic of portugal, a huge number of people here and not all of them will solve the port or will be forcefully deported. i would like to get one answer from each of you for what should be done to improve the economic and personal prospects of these people here now, not in 20 years or 30 years but now. what can be done so they can the -- pay taxes, get educational system -- i'm not interested in quarreling about whose study is more correct or more precise. please give us each one thing that can be done to improve things right now. for these people and also for the overall american economy and society. dr.e will start with

rector. >> i am interested in protecting the u.s. taxpayer. first, do not give people access to social security, medicare, obamacare, and 80 different welfare programs because they came here and broke our laws and got into our country illegally. that is a very, very bad way to use the taxpayer fund. the second thing i think we need to do is to keep the promise that we made the last time we did amnesty. in 1986 we gave amnesty and promised it would be a one-time amnesty, we would never, ever do it again. they are not even promising that this time. here, on serial amnesty ok. we promised we would do a one- time amnesty, and in exchange we promised the u.s. electorate that we would make it illegal to higher illegal immigrants. it was not illegal before that

-- most people do not know that. and that we would enforce that rule. that rule has not been enforced for a single day since 1986, , byone day, not one hour either republicans or democratic administrations. this bill makes a genetic reversal. it makes the current employment verification system called e- verify which works very well, and it prohibits states from using it -- put it on the shelf and promises that they will propose a completely new system that will be developed in the future. if you followed this from 1986, that is exactly what they say and every time. always we will do employment verification next year. we will do it at some point in the future. please trust us. that is what they said in 1980 six. amnesty now, please trust us, we will do employment verification sometime in the future. now, 25 years later, they have

never done it. they are offering exactly the same deal to the american electorate again. i say foaming once, shame on me me. full me twice -- full me once, shame on you. full me twice, shame on me. it is exactly the same charade am at the same bogus deal was offered in 1986. >> basically, it is a replay of 1986. absolutely from now on we enforce the law. and we did not. now we end up with 11 million or 12 million. i think the obama administration really enforce the law. but the truth is what they have done is have high deportation numbers coming out mainly of what is called the secure amenities program. we are identifying people in jail. not going out looking for people, not going after employers. then they did some very significant shenanigans. they reclassify people,

captured at the border, and moved into the interior. the obama administration has not deported more people than anyone else. even though that has produced a significant number of deportations, it is everything else that has been allowed to language. for example, you can still work in the united states with a false social security number very easily. we still do not have an entry/exit system to keep track of people who come in on temporary visas. this deal does not obligate a fully functional system. there are the land borders. we try to track people at airports. but atlanta's most of the visa overseeing goes on, it is entirely exempted from that -- but at the land borders. we will get rid of that and create something new and not for five years. still, it never applied to existing workers. this still is not even a really serious promise to enforce the law in the future. all the legal immigrants that got amnesty -- work

authorization, social security numbers, travel documents, drivers licenses, and everything wants the bill passes. it is true, we are going to make them way to go from this green card light they get initially to the full green card in about 10 years. about 3 million looks like they can get in 10 years. ag workers and dream act recipients. the bottom line is the same, amnesty first with a promise of enforcement and the future. that promise is not good. it is set up for another replay because the special interests will slow the enforcement. the business community and ethnic roots say, look, you cannot enforce it on this group, you cannot do it now. it will be put back and put back. so we're set up for another replay. anybody that thinks the law will actually be enforced after this inl passes, i have a bridge

brooklyn. that will not happen. enforce the law first. do it for several years. the port illegal immigrants from within united states. monitor the employers, actually control the border. create an entry/exit system. then tell the american people, ok, we had done this and other some fraction of the legal immigrants that we should give some legal status to. i can support that, but not this. this is 1986 all over again. the question was first from the perspective of those here illegally, what is the best thing for them? take away an ever present criminal element to make their lives better, and labor force protections that every american worker would have, allow them to compete on an even playing field. those are benefits realized for those individuals, no question. allow them to take advantage for the right job opportunity for themselves. pursue jobs, pursue upward

mobility. for the nation, we would benefit from more effectively utilizing that labor rather than .aving it locked away you have heard the skepticism. past a law that could be enforced and thereby make good on the promise that we are not going to be a nation that advocates for implicitly illegal immigration. that is the great challenge of this debate, no question about it. it will never get done and can never get done. a dark cloud will hang over the united states. but i think this is a nation that has proven to be quite practical and its ability to right the challenges. once in the growth in magnitude like this has, we will come to grips with it. we will put on the books a lot i can be enforced and does the things that everyone has talked about. i think that is the chance we have this time around.

>> i would like to echo some of his comments and add to them. for the illegal immigrants themselves, by providing legal status, legal protections, the ability to change jobs am a a long-term commitment for them to know they can stay in the country and get education and that these people who have less than a 10th grade education, a lot of them can get high school degrees. on top of that, i'm sure everybody knows a large number of eu legal immigrants came here as children and were brought here by their parents when they were one old, three years old, five years old. they were raised here, gone to school here, america is their home, their country, what we call the dreamers. they are as american as you or i am. we should allow them to stay. we should recognize that it is hardly about benefits for the illegal immigrants. this is about benefits for the whole nation. remember, we have something like 60 million baby boomers in the process of retiring now.

we only have about 53 million ofldren and grandchildren those baby boomers coming into the workforce. legal immigrants who are here are on average 34 years old. they are going to be paying into the social security system, medicare, medicaid, taxes for the u.s. system when the bulk of the baby boomers are retiring. they will be supporting all of us in our retirement age. they will allow us to do exactly what we have done in the past. elderly americans most need those 11 million immigrants. we see the explosion in productivity and it will be good for the economy. native born as well as the undocumented. >> we have time for one more question. all the way in the back.

>> yes, i am with the american counsel for immigration reform. i learned when i was a freshman in college, economics 101, that if you increase the supply of any of the factors of production without increasing demand, wages or the cost of that production has to go down. i find myself in never never land here, talking about huge unemployment already and you want to add millions of more workers at the same time as we are having a health -- hell of a time competing with countries moving up the ladder, and we have a crisis. how you can -- how can you conclude that by bringing in more immigrants, especially low- income, low skilled immigrants, it will make things better? it just makes no sense. >> reaction -- first, thank you for taking economics 101. second, as i said before, i do

not think you should evaluate an immigration system that you expect to be durable enough to 'sst for decades by 2013 unemployment problem. if we get to 2018 and unemployment is 7.5% some of we will not be talking about the immigration problem. >> [inaudible] aboutre talking employment. you said people were unemployed. now we get to the wages, the third thing i want to say -- you said it yourself, we are competing with developing countries. the competition is already there. if you change the location and put a different label on its head and say u.s. resident or u.s. haven't placed a versus norwegian, brazilian, or indonesian, moving that supply and the physical location does not matter in this economy. the supply is there.

the competition is there, and wages are there. that is a serious problem for low skilled workers in the global economy. that is a fact. it means we need to better -- to do better on education and skills and the united states. again, changing the location adjustment immigration reform is about is not that issue. that for a large part of the immigration reform, does not even change the location. it just changes their legal status. remember, the 11 million undocumented are already here, already part of the u.s. labor supply. 8 million are working right now. by you changing your status, you do zero, nothing to the supply of labor. but you do increase the productivity of that workforce. you do have a supply shock in the sense that we increase dramatically the production of goods and services in this country, which benefits all of us. >> look, we do not have a shortage of weight -- labor.

real wages have been done for 30 years. as immigration has increased, the less educated in this country have made less. i would argue that immigration has played a role but is not the only factor. i also disagree that it does not matter where the immigrants are. construction is a job done by people here. restaurant workers is a job done by people here. hotel rooms in the job done by people here. any factoring is an area where you face the most, edition aired only about 9% of employment. if you allow the immigrants in, it makes an enormous difference for the people who clean hotel rooms or do construction work. construction workers in the united states generally do not compete with construction workers from china and less the construction worker is allowed here. this idea that immigration will lead to an aid in the aging population is categorically false. we can look at fertility, how many children a woman has in her lifetime.

with or without immigrants, the survey lets us do this. look at the fertility in 2011, all told in the u.s. the average woman had 1.98 children. take out the immigrants, it is 1.88. immigration increased average fertility in the united states by about 5%. twice the level of immigration that the census bureau projects now, they just release estimate showing is that immigration can change the ratio of workers to people who are too old and too young to work i maybe one percentage point. no one will argue that immigration rejuvenates an aging population because they age just like everyone else. average age for nativeborn person, 36 years. immigrants age like everyone else. enoughilies are not big to change the age of structure and united states. a highlyon is

inefficient means for changing the ratio of workers to the ratio of everybody else, according to the census. it will not do it. we have to think about how to deal with an aging society. immigration is a trivial part of it. as you point out, we have a surplus of labor right now. we have lots of people not working, record rates of non- work and unemployment and declining wages. >> [inaudible] fiscal cost of low skilled immigrants. he said correctly that we have a problem with our entitlement system. but immigrants make this issue worse. why? well, because if you look at the us-born population, only about 10% of the people do not have a high school degree. when you look at illegal immigrants, it is 50%. legal immigrants, about 20%. because they have a lower skill ratio, they make all the problems of the welfare state,

particularly when the illegals make it dramatically worse because they tend to be -- [indiscernible] is and thatis, i legalization causes productivity boost. -- i assume that legalization causes a productivity boost. a boost of maybe 10% of wages going up. but let's say it's 25%. let's say there is a boost of 25%. the total goes up 25% including sales and all those things. when you look at this, once they gain access to all these different programs, the amnesty recipients are going to be getting about four dollars of government benefits for every one dollar of taxes is paid. if you boost the taxes by 25%, the ratio is still four dollars. 1.25.ad of 4-1, it's 4- i agree that their taxes will go up.

a substantial increase in tax payments during the first 10 years as the unlawful immigrants, half of them work off the books, begin to work on the books. they will pay income tax. $14 may pay fica taxpayers billion a year in tax increases just there alone from working on the books. however, we also granted them immediately access to the earned income tax credit. the cost, about $12 billion per year. so they will work more, they will pay more in taxes. but the increase in the benefits that they get access to are going to overwhelm that, particularly when you get beyond the 10-year window. >> ok, well, that was quite a spicy discussion we had today. i would like to thank our panelists for joining us here

today. thank you all for attending. thanks to those who are watching on our webcast and on c-span. if you would like to continue the conversation, feel free to jump on twitter. you can also leave comments on the website www.bipartisanpolicy.org. thank you again to walmart. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013]

>> you can see this program again at www.c-span.org. we're also looking for your comments on immigration,, reading a couple of your tweets. to believe the heritage report is to believe that 70% of our americans are a drain on our economy. also at a bipartisan commission rector says he counted the tobacco and lottery texas immigrants paid. this from immigration news digest, the immigration system cannot abandon fairness from the rush to prosecute and punish. again, we're looking for your tweets via twitter at the #immigration. all:00 p.m., a look at the it takes of legalizing immigration.

marijuana. legalization now has the support of about half the country. analysts will discuss the findings of a public opinion survey on marijuana. it is hosted by the brookings institution in the washington office of latin america. that is live here on c-span at 2:00 p.m. eastern. tonight at 8:00, the new york city police commissioner talks with a former cnn anchor about the 16 terrorist plot against new york city that have been thwarted since 9/11 and the city's measures to protect itself. the discussion is from the body 13 new york ideas festival. new york ideas3 festival. 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c- span. >> the public's fascination with frances cleveland really extended to her clothes, and she was a real fashion icon. women emulated her hairstyle. they emulated her clothing. she popularized everything she had and did. this is a dress from the second

administration and in a way this is the most prized piece of all, because this is the inaugural gown. this was her inaugural gown from 1893, and it stayed in her family and became the family wedding dress. and this was used by her granddaughters. even frances cleveland's everyday clothes were very stylish. a lot of them looked like something you could wear now. this is a jacket, a wonderful bolero jacket. black with this beautiful purple-blue velvet. this is a more evening- appropriate piece. and this is a bodice -- would have had a matching skirt. you can see the beautiful lace and sequins, netting, beading. slightly more ornate daytime vest. this would have a matching collar. again, you can wear this with a shirt, waist, and skirt. >> our conversation on frances cleveland is now available on our website cspan.org/firstladies.

and tune in monday for our next program on first lady caroline harrison. >> a discussion now on the use twitter in journalism. the panelists includes a former iranian hostage, the new york post editorial page editor, and a seattle-based ejection journalist to cover the arab spring at the university of called -- seattle-based ejection journalist to come -- who covered the arab spring. at the university of colorado boulder. >> good afternoon. i want to welcome all of you to do one a clock session on forting for freedom frivolity. ie am the moderator of this. i have absolutely no connection to tweets come except i read them, and i have a friend who is a standup comedian who sends out one joke a day as a tweet.

i am happy to share his address if you need a chuckle. i wanted to give you a real .uick touch base on tweeting literally about six years ago i was sitting at this seat with another panel and we were talking about tweeting and it was so new and so stream of conscious, and some of the students were telling us things they were tweeting and i thought, gosh, i do not think i would be interested in that. but it has gotten much better. for those of you interested in the wikipedia-level of research, tweeting actually starts in 2006 in a more formal manner, and it is the founding of twitter by jack emcee who was a college student at the time. -- jack dempsey who was a college student at the time. was a shorton of it burst of inconsequential information or chirping.

i thought that would work as a pretty good name for what we are doing. has tipped mightily since its early days, as you know. , the conference in austin, used it. google was there and twitter was there. they had a huge interactive piece where they put up 60 screens and tweeted all the messages coming out of all of the sessions to further enrich that conference activity. in 2010, 40.1% of the tweets happening out there are pointless babble still. some of the stuff our students were tweeting back in 2008. 37.6%, conversations, people actually having a back-and- forth. 5.9%, self-promotion. passed along value, things being tweeted and retreated.

things become news, 3.6%. then there is spam here you the spam users have figured it out. one of the best quotes i found comes from the professor of internet law at harvard who says -- the qualities that makes tweeting seem inane and half- baked are also what make it quite colorful. with that, i wanted to introduce the panel and get us started. i will tell you a little bit about what we would like to do today. each of the panelists with us today -- i want to do a little bit of a 10-minute lay it all out from their perspective. and then i will ask them after the 40 minute segment if there is something they wanted to respond to from one another. then we are going to bring it to you. there is a microphone right in the middle-of-the-road. given that we're videotaping this, we would love it if you would please walk to the microphone for questions so we can actually capture the whole session.

i have some very short introductions. as i read my packet, saying welcome back as a moderator, here is we do not want you to do -- to not read your monitor. so a tweet. here is who we have today. before you say that -- i should just say, for those who hello?eting -- , if you can hear me, the #is cwa2013. and for this it is the most brilliant panel of all. [laughter] let robertave to george introduce himself. i will start and bring it back

to you. i will start the far evening with our hometown sweetheart, willow wilson, who does not live here anymore, who gives me this introduction. she is a professional genre bender, a casual gamer, a student of religion, the author of critically a cane -- critically acclaimed books and comics. the fellowlow is institute for policy studies and tweets about drug policy culture wars, social justice, and the stuff that amuses him. he likes good, hates that. he wants to start a faction today or tomorrow to him and he is based in motor on the on the -- mordor potomac.

i should know these things. thank you for being here. coming toward me, shane bauer who's twitter bio is, investigative journalist, former -- he is addle east journalist and joins us today from a long trail. thank you for being here, shane. mr. robert george? does my twitter bio say? writer, post editorial blogger, standup comic, dit, a cetera n- i worked it -- etc. i tweet on everything from local politics, national politics, comedy, anything that i find of interest. >> ok.

without further ado, i want to start at the beginning and allow willow to lay out 10 minutes of .er thinking on tweeting >> so twitter? i was a late adopter. when i first got into twitter, it was from the advice of a friend of mine who is an early adopter on everything. on thisyou have to get twitter thing, it is going to be huge. i said, you want me to create yet another thing i have to keep track of on the internet? this is post-facebook, post the destruction of myspace. everybody had a gmail everything. there were too many dots in my name that were third of there permanently in cyberspace. so i was very reluctant. i got on only because i had heard that it was going to be

the new way that you had to promote yourself as an author and was going to quickly become obligatory. so i got on twitter, discovered that there were a lot of other authors and famous people on there who were early adopters who were actually tweeting themselves, not assistants, not go to people, not robots, but as themselves. , iin 140 characters or less could get a daily dose of steve ashtonr neil gamen, kutcher if that is your thing. i said, you know what, this is actually interesting. i discovered that 140 characters for me was about right in terms of connecting people throughout my day. am veryt writers, i covetous of my time alone on a because writing requires all of

your concentration and is a very solitary activity. so i tend to see e-mails, even the important ones, as something of an intrusion. what if people got in touch with link twitter asking for a or a listing, the limit of 140 characters was very convenient because i could write it in about 20 seconds and then get back to whatever it was i was doing. so that is a pretty frivolous use of twitter, frivolous but interesting. and the true potential of twitter really did not reveal itself to me until the early in what became known as the arab spring. i spend a large chunk of my early mid-20 half living in egypt working as a journalist. my husband is egyptian. we have a lot of friends and families back in egypt. i had been paying attention since the 2005 presidential

elections in that country to the emerging phenomenon of criticism of the mubarak regime on the internet, which began primarily through blogging but then branched out into facebook and eventually into twitter. watching thisme phenomenon unfold that the internet, because things are read instantaneously, is much harder to censor than print media or television media. or this reason, the mubarak regime, and egypt is very rightly afraid of this new technology and the people using it, and as far back as 2005 was in the habit of jailing bloggers and in some cases even torturing them for the sizing the regime. and this was happening when you're in the u.s., the traditional media -- when here in the u.s., the traditional pooing thepoo-

phenomenon and hoping that it yuld go away, and saying gen was texting slackers with no social consciousness. in the middle east for me, it was different, that was that technology truly could be used ,o circumvent the nanny state circumvent censorship in a way that you really cannot do in any other kind of media. i thought, gosh, this is going to go places. this youth culture emerging around the internet that is so incredibly tech savvy him and that functionally skipped the 20th century -- never had fax machines them away and straight from sort of basic lane lines to the tech environment that we know today. so they are in many ways more tech natives than many people who live in what we considered the better developed west. at the time i started writing a novel about a young hacker who

semi--accidentally helped kickstart a revolution by providing security online to a whoever came to him for help. i finished it the week that the egyptian people occupied tahir square in 2011. i got a call from my agent saying we have to sell this book now. a lot of interesting mea culpa hombre stations from there and with people who had told me that gen y was a generation of texting slackers. you know, was it really going to be huge in the middle east, this twitter/facebook thing? don't they still ride camels there? then they were all taking themselves thinking, how could you know? and i was thinking, how could you not know? i think, you know, watching that phenomenon unfold was so astonishing to me because for the first time in sort of the

history of the internet regimes were scrambling to block internet access and cell phone access in order to prevent revolutions from occurring. literally, this was the last ditch effort at the mubarak regime. they shut down all be cell phone service, because a lot of people use their smart phones to go on twitter and facebook to communicate. and to the best of their ability, shut off access to the internet, because it was such a fundamental way for these it waswho had decided enough to come together and to plan where they were going to take the next demonstration am aware they were going to hit the next checkpoint, and they won. , whats what is, i think needs to go down in the history books. this is the printing press version 2.0.

in that moment, the genie was out of the bottle. you can tweet faster. you can take them down. if it takes one hour or two hours to do that, it could have already been seen by millions of people. twitter is sort of the ultimate .n digital one-upsmanship it is difficult to censor. very short, very sexy -- a very cis ink. even as i fallout of the digital -- of the revolution digitally, it is amazing to me how much faster news from the ground geeks out -- gets out via twitter than it does any mainstream media. fox, al jazeera, etc. for me as someone who is interested in what is happening to real people on the ground in

these faraway places, that makes it extremely valuable to me. not just as a tool for staying in touch with the people that i know and love and sing with a are doing him a but also to follow the movers and shakers who are literally giving the world a blow-by-blow account of history in the making. sort mean, that is a very of heavy and ponderous note to kind of end on. i will say this, there is plenty of frivolous stuff that goes on on twitter, but i think that is an echo of what goes on in day-to-day life. to people talking in the checkout line at the grocery store, i think you will find that it is true of 90% of conversations in daily human life. most of what we say about our cars, our kids, our grocery shopping trips are interesting only to ourselves, but twitter provides a platform for us to connect with people who have the same kind of mundane, idiotic

problems that we feel so alone and isolated in. i would say that, of course, probably .1% of the people who use twitter for revolutionary purposes and everybody else is talking about their dog, this is, you know, real-life happening every day. and i think in an age where we are increasingly isolated, this is one of the most valuable tools we have two reach out in the most ordinary possible way and get sympathy for the things that make us feel alone that actually relate -- unite us. i will end on that note in hand it off. bank you. >> thank you so much. [applause] nice start. the have to thank conference for introducing me to twitter, because it was at this conference in 2010 where i first learned to take ritter

seriously. the day before i flew out here to boulder, i stopped stopped at my local best buy, and it happened to be the same day that they introduced the first ipad. there were a couple left and i picked one up, and it would not let me put it down. kind of an impulse buy. i bought -- i brought it to the conference. besidese only person one other who hadn't ipad at the conference. of course i had a google alert for my name. i started seeing all these things on twitter. people kept tweeting things like he hasn't ipad and he will be at such and such panel next. it had nothing to do with the substance, just people wanted to talk about my ipad. i thought, if people are talking about me on twitter, it must be a valid medium. i have been looking at it ever since. it is true, he can be very frivolous. i confess, i have tweeted meals and things like that, pictures of things i have in her and my

cat, chairman meow, has become quite famous. we talk about old technology, telegraph, faxes, and contrasted with technology today. today we have a smartphone that fits in our pocket and we can look at the whole of human wisdom on this one device. but it also has a tremendous upside and potential for social change that we're barely beginning to learn about. some of the pioneers in this are worthy to mention. one of my favorites is a friend of mine who works at media matters now. handle is go angelo. the handle used to be stopped glen beck. he figured out that she was very and aned about glenn beck lot of his distortions, leading people to violence. he said, someone has to do something about the spirit he

took to twitter and built up about 26,000 followers on twitter. along with color of change, another ngo, he started the campaign to get glenn beck kicked off of fox news. he studied each of the advertisers who advertised on glenn beck's show and would send them a direct message asking for them to follow him so he can explain what he was doing. then he would explain that we are not asking you to drop fox altogether but just stop advertising on glenn beck's show because he is causing a lot of harm to society. if theyoration -- ignored him, he would then go public with his twitter and the corporate handles of those corporations and basically got thousands and thousands of his followers to retreat these retweet these things. by the end inviscid campaign, he knocked knocked off more than

300 advertisers from when back 's show -- by the end of his campaign. and the advertising rates for glenn beck's show was a fraction of all the other fox shows. so fox did the economical thing and got rid of him. that shows there is tremendous potential here. and back, and those of you who are older might react to this marvelous really, if i offered you a coors beer and you are moderately liberal, would you react? boycott. i mean, that brand is poisonous and will continue to be poisonous for decades, yet the boycott has been over for very long time. here is where it gets gets interesting. social media skews young and brand loyalty skews young. the intersection gives us tremendous power that has yet to be tapped, because if you poison a brand, if you get a brand to be associated with homophobia, racism, oppression, that becomes a toxic ran and it

sticks with people for the rest of their lives or for a very long time. ,hose of you in college here you get a lot of freebies in college, freed deodorant, free shampoo -- think about it, why do they give you free stuff? if you ask your parents, how many decades have you used the same detergent, the same toothpaste, the same so i'm a right, brand loyalties among once established, last throughout your life. that is why there is so much programming on television and freebies for young people because your brand loyalties have not been established yet. they hope to get market share out of that. you younger people possess a lot of economic clout. combined with social media, you can make a corporations behave. that is something we have not been able to do up until now in terms of viral advocacy. it is a tremendously revolutionary for him in the sense that it is also very

democratizing. i worked on drug policy, my day job, and i send out news feeds at 11:00 and 4:00 eastern time, a series of drug policy news articles every day, spaced five minutes apart. i have lots of journalists to cover this following me. i have the drug czar's office. as well as active this. when they see this deluge of stories every single day about -- that is critical of the war on drugs, they cannot continue in ignorance and represent that the drug war is somehow working. they cannot ignore it anymore. it is in their face. it is very democratizing. so i can talk to journalists directly and offer suggestions or constructive witticism that will shape their reporting.

the same with bureaucrats. the un drug czar on twitter. that sort of thing. expand the conversation in a way that you cannot perhaps do with e-mail. when they see how many followers you have, they are not willing to ignore you. they are more willing to engage you sometimes. a need to be cognizant it is brave new world. a dangerous new world. about twitter and facebook and youtube and other social media -- conflict zones. i became politicized in the 1980's in college. i was doing a lot of writing about central america and the dirty wars there. thinking back to el salvador in the 1980's where the death squads were dragging people out of their homes at night, torturing them, dumping the bodies. they were looking for community organizers, community activist.

they would torture people. maybe some of the names would be accurate. innocent people also got rounded up. lifehese days, your becomes your death warrant in many ways. if you are in a conflict zone like syria. columbia, honduras -- colombia, honduras. you can hack a couple facebook accounts, do something diagrams, and figure out pretty quickly. people in syria have disappeared based on their comments on youtube or social media. twitter is less dangerous, because it appears that everyone has a disclaimer on their bio. not an endorsement. we have to be increasingly

careful about what you're saying. in a nutshell, that some of the upsides and downsides of twitter. we will leave it at that and then we will have the q and a. [applause] shane? >> thank you. this is my first panel. i do not know if this mike is on. is it? >> hold it right up to your face. i first found out about twitter in 2009. i was just in facebook. i was kind of wary. i was not into social media at that time. i was living in damascus. the reason i signed up was mass protests had just

kicked off in iran. way to follow what was happening there some of because the news was telling us this, was to follow it on twitter. twitter was not a threat to be serious government. facebook was blocked, but twitter was not. i signed up and watched these feeds coming through people in tehran and other cities. thisi saw the title of panel, that moment really captured for me that use of freedom, but in signing up, it asks, it wanted to look at my contacts and signed me up for my friends or whatever and i did. most of them were people saying things like, i like hot dogs and things like this. i was like, i hate this. i just kind of watched it so i could pay attention to to run. .- to tehran

ironically i became a prisoner in iran. which i will talk about in other panels. i was kind of off the map. i was in prison for two years. those activists, actually, in a political prison. coming out, one of the things that happens in risen is it is kind of a time warp. your reference point to the world is when you went in. the world moves fast ease days. i got out and suddenly twitter was important. especially as a journalist. you know,nd of -- there is this unstated rule clout is social measured in twitter followers, you know? it was certainly an important thing for news and it was heavily used in arab spring.

i was still noticing it was still kind of this same binary. it was still mostly frivolous. followed person on twitter right now is justin bieber. has more followers than the president of the united states. i read a getting out, lot about what was happening with the rest of the middle ease. reading it in prison through the iranian state media lens. i kind of realized the use of twitter in the west was quite exaggerated in my opinion. i think, i think the west often likes to take read it in some ways for massive events happening in the world, and i think this is one of them. but i also think that twitter was important in a certain way. i think less so than the way it

is going to be talked about in in an organizing tool. twitter created cohesion in a region that is very large and includes many entries. in tunisia, where the arab spring kicked off, there were riots. were not thatia uncommon before this. not only in tunisia. but the difference now is that people were starting to reference it and people in other countries started referencing --on twitter and it had #'s the dates.tags with very quickly there was this regionwide conversation in which people were connecting directly to each other, you know, the countries, in a way that was not really possible before.

the immediacy of it, i think, created the sense that yemenis are following but rain -- bahrain, and it became the sense of one movement. , the importance of twitter, the usage of it, other than the frivolous use, the important use is as a reporting tool. i think that was used in iran. people are recording what was happening as it happens. which was important internally, but it was also important for getting the word out. people in the middle east often tweaked in english, because they are tweeting to the world. the larger media is watching .witter and reporting on it an example, actually, there was an example last week from this

where i watched -- twitter played a role in a situation that had to do with freedom and also reporting. who was anhis guy environmental activist involved in the earth liberation front. he spent time in prison for arson. in his time in prison, he was solitary federal confinement unit, which also had a lot of mostly muslim risen nurse. and other -- mostly muslim prisoners. and also people who had crimes with mostly a political motive. after his release, he wrote a blog. which a lot of people do. and he talked about this new evidence that had come out about his case, which basically proved he was put in solitary confinement for political speech.

, two orit was two days three days after the blog post, he was rearrested. this onund out about twitter, because his lawyers, his lawyers -- he engaged in a lawsuit related to his imprisonment and represented a kind of a human rights legal group called the center for constitutional rights, which i follow. he had beeneted arrested. they thought it was because of this blog post. i read about prisons a lot. quickly, this narrative, very quickly this narrative on float --unfolded. some link on the huffington wroteicked this up and about it. it got into a larger sphere of media. the next today, he was released, because it turned out the blog

-- there actually was a law up until a couple years ago where you were not allowed as a federal prisoner to write bylines. which means you cannot write for public consumption, basically. hadthat will -- that law been declared unconstitutional in 2010. distinction, he got out. which is, in some ways, i think a typical use of twitter. -- i follow people that are sometimes activist. sometimes political orientation, what ever. they are kind of doing their work warts. latter.s up the kind of

it becomes a story. i think i will leave it at that. >> we will pause there. [applause] >> thank you. thank you, shane. andrt can round us off then we will check in on questions and come to you. >> thank you very much. made the observation that lady more followers than the president of the united states, i was reminded of the old story when babe ruth was in an argument with the owner of the team. i'm not sure -- i think this was before he was traded from the red sox to the yankees. i should get this. i'm worth it. i'm worth it. i'm worth it." the owner said, what do you

want? $100,000.said that is moresaid, than the president of the united states makes. babe ruth said, i had a better year than the president of the united states. [laughter] we will leave it there. i find myself using twitter in a number of ways. as a journalist, i have found that twitter has replaced what was once the uber-distinction will tool in our -- tool in our trade, the ap newswire. back in the day reporters would check the wire to find out what was happening close by or in the united states, across the world. they would be checking it every few minutes. particularly assignment editors

would be checking that wire to find out what they needed. now you don't need that. twitter gives you that. twitter gives that to everybody, not just journalists. if you are somebody who knows tout tweeting, but you want find out what is going on, you can follow cnn's twitter feed, fox's twitter feed, msnbc's twitter feed. you can follow individuals. you can follow andrea mitchell if you want to. you can fall -- you can follow sean hannity if you want to. there are more people popping up who do not work for the major news organizations, but they are also putting out turns into,that frankly, an early warning of thefor many

professional journalists out there. a couple of people said -- because people are everywhere, and because i think there was a statistic released a few weeks ago that said in the developing world, a lot more people seem more important for you to have a cell phone than running water. that means those individuals, they are able to -- there are different ways you can tweak and so forth. you do not have to have a smartphone, per se. , youu have a general phone can tweak. you can get into the conversation. in a sense, that has democratized the information flow. it also allows a feedback loop for journalist.

say, youomeone can reported this, but i live right across the street and you got the address wrong. it is like, oh, wow. we did get the address wrong. are a journalist, it certainly made your job harder, because you do not just have the kookook readers -- readers and your organization to read you have thousands of people who are able call you on your stuff if you got the basic facts wrong. the flipside of that is you also have what we call trolls who decide to cyber stalk you in different ways just to make your life more miserable. is actually part of freedom as well. person, you media

become a public figure. twitter allows them to read what you have put out there and criticize you, whether fairly or unfairly. shane also mentioned quite aptly that twitter is something of a crowd source or in a way. r in a way.rce if you are a journalist, you can send out a request and odds are someone who follows you will say, oh, this person knows this or that person knows that. that is always a great way of assisting you tracking down a story. before i was a journalist, i worked on capitol hill for republican organizations and members of congress. made me aurse,

political observer as years go that is where twitter comes in, i think in an ultimately an official way. we are increasingly in a partisan age. part of the bullish aspects of it -- the fullers aspects of it almost live in its -- almost leavens the hard-core ideology. for example, one of the people i follow is a guy by the name of oliver willis. he works for media matters. which is a left of center media checking sites. i disagree with a whole lot of say.oliver has to probably most of what oliver has

to say. however it is interesting that oliver, like me, turns out to be a big-time comic book nerd. if you go to his twitter page, you will see this big great illustration of superman breaking down something and so forth. will tweet about comic books and we will get into these little meme hashtag games about superheroes and so forth. that is not going to change my opinion of what he is saying from an ideological point of view, but it makes me see him in a different light as a human being with varied interests. and in fact, one of the best ways i have discovered that makes it rather fascinating is a person who tweets under the name of darthandrea.

personnot a well-known at all. there was something going on a year and a half ago, two years ago that had to do with a comic book discussion. i used a search engine to follow anyone who put in what this hashtag was. i stumbled across this woman. it was a debate about batman or batgirl or whatever. a i decided to follow her because i thought she had interesting observations. after following her, these are things that i learned about her. darthandrea ist a lesbian married in ohio. she has two kids. they live on a farm. that sheter found out

is a hard-core libertarian, not a fan of barack obama. this is the thing. in all of the analyses that you find in terms of breaking down the electorate, going into the presidential race, the average reporter -- the best political reporter out there would not be able to find this person. it completely and totally breaks down the idea, of because you are a woman or because you have a sexual orientation or whatever, you are supposed to be thinking this way or have this kind of lifestyle. those people are out there. reveals that. the thing was, i found this out because of the "frivolous"

aspect of twitter. it was following a conversation on comic rooks and i ended up following her. that is why i say the idea of tweeting for freedom or -- to use one up of the president's favorite phrases -- a false choice. people think that freedom is a huge pursuit of a political , which isrevolution absolutely important. absolutely essential and so forth. but if you think about it, frivolity is what makes us human. and the ability to be free and to be frivolous and have conversations about sports and knitting and comic books and looking at the kids soccer games. that is part of freedom as well. the frivolity is part of the freedom and twitter is a great, great tool to reveal that to everybody. thank you.

>> thank you, robert. [applause] ok. i'm going to do a quick check in at the table and i want to invite you who have weston's do start bringing them to the center microphone. any of you from willow down to sam ho? reflections you would like to offer before we invite the rest of the room to speak with you? >> about crowd sourcing and twitter -- one of the things that is clearly visible is think aboutedy. the days of young jerry seinfeld. he was on the circuit for a decade, hoping some producer somewhere might take notice and get him a shot at a bigger venue, possibly a show. nowadays, if you are really talented, really smart, really

young even, you can rise to the top really quickly. >> i cut myself off a little bit because i realized i was coming up against the time, but i did want to mention a little bit -- twitter has created its own humorous style, particularly in jokes. games, hashtag somebody will set up something like "suspicious children's books titles," and that will be the #-- i will be the hashtag, and someone will tweet something like "horton hears a

ho." the punchline is in the hashtag itself. people are supplying the other part of the joke. it is completely the print side of humor. you guys ready for participation from the others? >> direct democracy. where do you guys want to go to work? ask your question, please. >> [indiscernible] >> tell me how many times you have been here. >> four times. >> great. your name? >> [indiscernible] >> [indiscernible] >> we can't hear.

close to the microphone. >> without touching. >> it's not on. >> it's not on? >> is it on? >> it's not on. ?> do you want to come up here >> it was turned off. >> am i on now? ok. as someone to the political left, i'm pleased that almost all of the social media actions have been left-wing actions, that i have heard off. , can we expect to see the political right, the media in thecial future, or another way of creating it -- do we believe social media is inherently politically left as a tool or politically neutral as a tool?

>> i would disagree with your premise. i would say there was a lot of social media involved in the tea party movement. that is just -- that is just the facts. on the there are folks ,onservative side who do notice particularly definitely in 2008, but also 2012 with the obama campaign that the left was more organized on social media. the right is very much involved on twitter. one of their favorite pranks though is if there is a certain goes out from the

white house or someone on the democratic side, a conservative will sometimes try to hijack the to get out their own counter talking points, if you will. >> others from our panel? >> i have a conversation with a friend who works for twitter. i was asking him, how people in twitter talk about their role in the arab spring. there is thisnow, question that comes up with the internet in general. especially twitter right now. is it inherently democratic? is not.uld say it i think what happened in the middle east, there is kind of a timeline for kinds of technology. certain people first. others catch up.

starting to advertise a lot. it has not yet ranked tweets like facebook does or anything, but it depends on who is using it, and it can be blocked also. you are notk following the right people. at >> we all need to be following .he right people often our conceptions about why people are doing things, we need to craft policy responses that meet them on that level. >> if you do that, bring your xanax. >> excuse me? .> bring your xanax

it is depressing to follow some people. i have found myself having to from differente politica tweeters, things pertaining to new york city and so forth.

if you say, i just want to follow people who have a background in new york city politics and so forth, you can look at that list as you wish. >> my name is patrick. i am a senior editor. this is my first time here. >> this is my fourth time here. at >> you are spending every year at the conference for world affairs. -- we'restion is talking talking about how twitter supports freedom in general. when we are looking to china as a place that is particularly and i wondered if you guys could comment on whether china has been sustainable or it has not been a success?

expertshina journalism at the table? >> i know a small bit about the golden shield as it is called. the tent that the chinese government has erected over the country. it seems a lot of the time it is pretty effective. the internet is so easy. when it becomes difficult to ask -- to access things on the internet, we make it easy to get there. there is a vibrant hacker community in china. i think the average person who is not necessarily that politically involved or might have political interests, might have at that goal time getting together with those people or sharing information. it might not be worth it to make

the effort to breach those failsafes be government has put in place. there is a passive itty built into the internet honest -- a passive itty -- pasivity built into the internet's. we do not put up any effort. if the new york times puts up a pay wall, i will just stop reading new york times articles rather than paying me money or putting up any effort, etc.. north korea is a good example. i think governments are getting more and more savvy. governments in general, but particularly one that has a vested interest in controlling the occupation access to information. they are getting more and more clever about how to control access not only to particular sites, but also access in general. i think that is probably going to be a big

factor in the next 10 years. athink that will make difference in how we look at propaganda, cyber warfare. you basically have to unplug the internet. that is rapidly changing. if you want to look at a place ,ike egypt or tunisia or libya but the people interested in limiting access to the internet are interested in learning about these incidences even as we are learning how to use technology better. it is going to be an interesting decade in terms of

internet security, for sure. >> anyone else? >> i have nieces and nephews growing up in china. for teenagers there are lots of ways to get around the great firewall. i do not know about average chinese, whether they can do that or how easy it is. there is an assumption that chinese people need to be on our social media and our platforms. the u.s. has some three hundred million people. if you add one billion to that, that is china. why would they want to be on a platform that is based in another country, another culture? why is there a knee-jerk assumption that they have to be on our platform? if the russians developed a really neat social media platform, would you gravitate toward that or do something native to your country? yes, when you consider most people using twitter, chinese

people are just as happy tweeting about chinese food and chinese cats on their platform as any. oh. >> i'm sorry. >> for goodness sake. i apologize. i forgot where i was. >> this is a policy matter for these two. inc. you. introduce yourself. >> my name is daniel. i'm a fifth-year senior and this is my fifth time at the cwa. being here.r i was a senior once myself. >> only five more weeks. my question is about the fairly political usage of twitter. i've been up that of a blogger for about a year. i know you guys are established. it is probably different or you

all compared to someone just starting out. oh what have you all found to be the most effective usage of twitter? what trends have you used and seen others use to really get your message and your information out there? >> any recommendations? read suite other people, they take notice -- if you retweet other people, that is a good way to build more followers. otheroften retweet peoples stuff and and i will include their handle it if -- so they can build more followers. in terms of advocacy, that is how you build a movement. but it is also good for social relations, like monkeys that groom each other, you know? [laughter] onif you have been blogging

something of a political nature, of whatever sort, and then you tweet out that link, and you want to -- if it is a conservative nature, you can #tcot.ashtag like top conservatives on twitter. i think the left version of that is #p2. foromeone wants to search what they are talking about, you and a zero int on a whole bunch of other conservatives, and they can do the same thing with #p2 if they are on the left. it is not a bad thing to track what kind of hashtags are out there and put those in your tweets to get some random

people who might not otherwise know what you are writing about. >> any other personal experiences you would like to share on how to best use twitter? thank you so much. >> hello. >> hello. my name is ryan. this is my fourth year here. to ask about i have found personally is it has a very short attention span. an example i want to give is during hurricane hurricane sandy, during the hurricane it though, twitter was invaluable. all of my nonbelieving twitter friends were on twitter that weekend. --n it came to the interest the issues that sandy brought up that were more complex, ,witter went back to the posts and it could be a much more valuable resource for the projects two months later and

things like that. my question is for the panel. that not a problem with twitter, that it focuses so much on the moment? >> should we focus more on the moment? is a distribution jewel. i like reading long things, really. i don't like reading this minute by minute stuff all the time. i think there are two main uses of twitter for me. one is for ongoing conversations. not necessarily conversations between me and someone else, but an issue that is developing, the conversation developing around it. it makes these kind of little minute news items to cause it is part of a bigger story. i also use it -- a lot of people use it to send out a link to other things. at i think it is

very useful for that to have , you know,list of what is the most substantial, where you can click on and go to the most substantial thing. thoseu can comment on longer pieces or what ever it is. >> i think that is right. , everyry information information tool has a certain advantage or certain this .dvantage obviously, the newspaper, for example, any newspaper can get into a story on a deeper level than a minute and a half story but what younews, say is correct though.

twitter is great for breaking news. it is great for getting eyewitness accounts for people in different places. forit is not a substitute those of you who are going to give greater background to a situation. obviously, you want to have all in iran or on the streets of the time,n tunisia at just to give you a sense of what is happening at that moment, but you are going to need people who are really going to put all of that into a bigger picture for the second day story, for the week after, for the month after, and so forth. and then, twitter can then be used to tweak out links to those stories as well. -- to tweak out links to those stories as well. by the way, you do get certain

people -- just like when blogging started to rise, it came from people obsessed about one topic. you do have people are focused on one topic and they will tweet about that particular issue or topic on a daily basis. you can get information from that as well. >> there is a collective aspect on twitter. liking ason facebook, status, you retweet a link, people feel like they have done their duty. it is easy to feel like you have made a difference, done to job by hitting retweet help people get their message out. that is the way that you get things out, help the cause. that is the armchair activism that might make people a little complacent and feeling like

twitter is where their social responsibility begins and ends, when really it is the bare- bones beginning and in order to make anything real happened, you have to hit off of twitter and go on the streets. you is certainly a downside have experienced person hands. >> i think the shallowness, the alleged shallowness of twitter tends to get a lot of disrespect. it does not get the respect it deserves. if you think about how wisdom has to be passed on on -- gone into preliterate society, the industrial province were my family came from was the province where infusion is from. how did you pass on wisdom? froggh oral tradition and herbs. there are cheesy sound bites like axis of evil that does not teach anything, but there are teaching soundbites, teaching proverbs.

i think a good twitter account no such a be concise and boil down the essence of an idea and pass that on. i like following things like yiddish proverbs or african proverbs. i wish someone would start one with confucius proverbs. it is a great way to pass on nuggets of information. >> there probably is one out there. >> i have searched. >> anybody else? i was going to ask each of you what is the most surprising tweet you have ever received? have you ever gotten one that was like, how, what were they thinking i was going to do with that? or has it all been pretty mainstream, useful? >> one guy asked me on twitter if i was going to start a militia? i did not know why. i just tweeted him a question

mark, and he just asked it again. i just backed away slowly. thanks for the question though. >> some do not have verbs or nouns in them or something. i tend to ignore those. there is a favorite tweet of mine that i think embodies twitter. someone tweeting about the egyptian revolution. the tweet was something like -- egypt, 5000 years, democracy finally. thank you, egypt... down with morsi! that was funny, concise, brilliant. [laughter] >> wow. sure if i really have a good response. thatimes you get a tweet

is so psycho and out there, you just sort of roll your eyes and just move on. occasionally you will get, as i mentioned to four, the cyber stalking, the person so obsessed about something or other, you just have to block them or something like that. i can't think of one -- that has pushed you? .> i cannot think of one i remember when i got back on twitter after i got out of risen. tweet,as one sweet -- and this guy said " congratulations. i'm your first roll." a kind of liked that. when i went back on twitter, i would get lots of tweets of

people saying welcome home, welcome back. there was just this thing in my pocket, people constantly reminding me, "welcome back." >> nice. questions? >> my name is caitlin. cwa.is my first >> whoo! >> there is a certain intimacy writing a letter, putting it in the mail, everything. broadcast media are sort of anonymous and so on. i wonder if you have any thoughts about what kind of human relationship exists between the people who are participating in the communication on twitter? say, thankant to

you, willow. willow has to watch the next session. thank you. [applause] back to the relationship of communication. somehad a tussle with people from anonymous. they are anonymous. i do not know if they are the real anonymous or a fake account they keep setting up. a were launching a cyber attack on north korea. i warned them and said, this is kind of volatile and not your typical country. they do not respond to the same kinds of coercion you might typically use on other countries and hard-liners probably do not know who anonymous is in north korea and they just think of this as an attack from the south and you could be sparking something. it is hard to have that kind of back-and-forth with someone who is anonymous. not find that most people i follow are not people who have actual relationships

and the typical world. the experience of social media for me at least. , ii think in certain ways have become friends, if you will call it that, with people on twitter. not like facebook where these are people i either went to high school with or college with or worked with and we united in social media. they are people who followed me and i followed them because either we agree on politics or we fervently disagree on politics but we and wevil discussions learned some things about each other and it is just sort of an interesting -- it goes, as i

said before, the freedom to be frivolous. --king about obama care or having a to discussion about the new york rangers or something like that. you find you have people that you have more in common with than just the political. but, no, we do not necessarily talk about kids and stuff like that. sometimes we do. depending on what the situation is. find outallowed me to more about people and -- these may not be my best friends, but i do consider them friends. some i have met them in person

after following them on twitter. commentseciate your that you have bridged a lot of points of view by following people and building different profiles of information that you wanted to seek out on twitter. also, that old social media joke that facebook is where you lie to your friends and family and twitter is where you are brutally honest to thousands of complete strangers around the world. much more onelf twitter then facebook of late. if there is important stuff i am putting out there, it will go on facebook as well, but i do not feel the need to tens and feed facebook as i did when i was going out with the thing.

>> anybody foreclosing. how to follow you? >> my twitter handle is @robgeorge. that's me. >> mine is shane_bower. >> you can find me on twitter @samhotree. or better yet follow me on grindr. or don't. [laughter] >> too much information. >> was that first name, last name? bios are ineir the booklet. i would like to thank everyone for sitting with us and following along. we hope that you are encouraged to write really pithy fun things to describe your place in the world. inc. you very much. [applause] [captions copyright national

cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> now coming up live today at 2:00, a look at the politics of legalizing marijuana. colorado and washington have become the first to state to legalize the drug and now legalization has support of about half the country. by thent is hosted brookings institution and the washington office of latin america. that will be in about an hour at 2 p.m. eastern. coming up tonight, new york city police commissioner raymond kelly talks with campbell brown about the 16 terrorist plots against new york city since 9/11 and the measures the city has taken to protect itself. here is preview.eview --

>> we have iconic targets. we have places where large numbers of people come together. we are concerned about the event that happened in boston. we have the type of disaffected radicalized young men trying to attack us here in the city. most recently two individuals were arrested in miami. this received very little press. but they are rested brothers -- they arrested people this year. we had a man who was arrested and convicted because he pled guilty, for plotting to blow up the federal reserve bank. he thought he was detonating 1000 pounds of ammo when it was an fbi sting. he was convict did in february. it is a constant stream of

individuals trying to come here and kill us. when you say, what do we worry about, we worry about the whole structure. we have to face the unthinkable. we have to worry about a nuclear event happening in new york. we have worked with the federal government. we have a program called securing the city. we have 15 other jurisdictions in the area that have signed on to provide a radiological protection ring around new york city. so we are not able to say, hey we are worried about that thing only. s that array of threat are out there. we do not see any diminishment of the threat. it really has not changed since 9/11. from theiscussion 2013 new york ideas festival hosted by the atlantic institute and the new york

historical society. you will be able to watch the entire event here at 8:00 eastern here on c-span. on c-span and c- span radio, we were going to take you to a meeting of the national safety transit board. two weeks ago, they released recommendations for drunk driving in the u.s.. among their recommendations lead alcohol the level from .082 1805. what we will do this evening is to give you a chance to see a bit of that meeting. you will see comments from the chairman, debra herdsman deborah hersman. eastern tonight, we want to hear from you. we will be opening the phones and we will be checking twitter.

should it be .08, the current level, or .05, the recommended level by the ntsb. a number posting already. 47% for changing the law across the country. 22% keeping it -- 47% the current law. 22 votes to change the recommendations. that is just what they are. recommendations. they are not a lawmaking body in that regard. they can make recommendations and incentivize states. let's go first up to the comments of the ntsb traffic safety director, who lays out not only the .05 standard that other recommendations by the board. here is a look two weeks ago. >> good morning. before i begin my presentation,

i would like to thank staff for all of their efforts in its last year. staff collaborated with experts and completed a systematic review of countermeasures to identify those actions most likely to result in meaningful reductions of impaired driving injuries and fatalities. this was not an easy task. there were no silver bullets to attack this problem. staff focused on the data and the four sides based solutions. -- and looked for science-based not all the countermeasures proposed may be popular, but they are all necessary. at alcohol impaired driving crashes continue to be one of the country's greatest and most persistent threat to public safety. much more needs to be done. in summarizing this past year's recommendations, the actions needed to reach zero can be grouped into five categories --

laws, enforcement, adjudication, technology, and data. first, we need strong and effective laws that both deter individuals from driving while impaired, and laws to keep them from becoming repeat dwi offenders. staff believes that states should establish a perse bac concentrated limit of .08 -- .05 or lower. furthermore, staff believes that nitsa provide incentives to states that take action in this area. second, i call it -- ignition locks should be provided to all offenders to increase effectiveness of the programs and improve calotte -- compliance with the law.