nation. the first is the continuing and accelerating threat of sequestration. the second is the problem of sexual assaults. these are threats to our military, body and soul. and we must front the first to erase the damage of rational budget cuts to our national security.

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[captions copyright national able satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [applause] >> all right now. this is my -- go ahead and have a seat, guys. this is the 115th, by our count, community dinner that i have held since i first start running for the senate back now, what, seven years ago. we do them steadily.

we have kind of got routine down. everybody gets something to eat. i speak very briefly and then it is just a discussion. if you a question, if you have a comment, this is rhode island, we even accept rude remarks. the whole package. please put your hand up and give us a chance to get the microphone to you. who is running the microphones ere? the hand mics. all right. these gentlemen will get the hand mics around. one other thing that i'll say is i know everybody doesn't love public speaking.

and whether it is because you don't love public speaking or whether it is because what you want to talk about is more personal than that, or whether we simply run out of time, if for some reason we don't get to you, don't worry about it. one of my rules for these community dinners is that i try to be the last person to leave. so i'll stick around and if you want to talk about something that you don't want to talk about in front of everybody, that's fine too. thank you all very much. obviously this is a challenging time to be in washington. the economic recovery is still very slow and it is particularly slow here in rhode island. and we're trying to do things to get the economy moving more quickly, but we're trying to do so in a time when there is enormous conflict. and dissension in washington. and the one thing that i want to tell you about that, because it is my job to report back to you on what i see, and what's going on around me, is that what i see is not actually a lot of conflict between republicans and democrats.

what i see is immense conflict, bitter conflict within the republican party. you have a tea party contingent that has one set of views. you have more moderate republicans who have a different set of views. they are really almost at each other's throats now. you have flat-out conflict on the floor of the senate between republicans. you have fights within the caucus. among republicans. you have one group raising money against the other group and it is really very, very contentious. we're kind of bystanders to that fight, but we experience the effects of it, because when one party is that divided and there is that much anger and conflict, it is very hard for them to help with getting legislation passed.

so we have had had our troubles there, but we are pushing very, very hard. senator reed and i had dinner several months ago with president obama and there were 12 of us around the table and the president was talking about any of the difficulties. he pointed out one area where he thinks the republicans are willing to work with us and that is on infrastructure. that is an important opening. because if we can get that done, that is a big deal. there are so many roads that need work in rhode island. there are so many brings that are past their appropriate life or need repair and maintenance. there is so much water work that needs to be done, both sewage and clean water piping that needs to be done. nationally, we have $600 billion worth of just water work that we ould be doing. we have got $6 billion of it done in the stimulus. 1%. there is a lot more. we need to do it sooner or

later. the stuff is in fact old and need to be replaced. it will help rhode island more than other states because we have been around a while. we have a lot of old infrastructure. we need the jobs. we need to get after that. i think that is an important window and i'm working very hard with my colleagues to try to find a way to get a good infrastructure bill through the enate. we got a water infrastructure bill through and we need to get some ones for roads and brings. -- bridges. the last thing i'll mention is healthcare. we are closing on being able to stand up the insurance exchanges that were in the affordable care act. that should be a really good deal for everybody. where they come up, we have seen prices come down and it is for the very obvious reason, that if you have an insurance exchange. it is like a market. you can go there and you can find what's for sale, what the price is and you can match things side by side, because

they have to match in order to qualify. so you can know what you're dealing with. and you can find out, ok, which gives the best price and that makes the insurance companies have to compete on price. most of the time, when what insurance companies do is compete on trying to get the business of a really big usiness. if you're a big business you get really good rates for your employees. if you're a small business, maybe not so much. if you're on your own, and trying to buy insurance, you pay through the nose. this brings everybody together. so you don't have to be a big business to get a good price. the market will work and we hope it will bring prices down. i'm very pleased with the terrific job that elizabeth roberts has done moving us forward on that. so there are a lot issues i know that interest you. we can talk about any and all of them. i just wanted to open with those two and if anybody wants to lead

off with a question or a comment, i will gladly do that and as we do that, let me find ian lang who is here. ian, where are you? right in the light. ian is working, actually at the health exchange. and that has now been stood up and if there are any specific questions, i just wanted to make sure that we had ian here, because with that coming on very soon, he is there to answer all sorts of technical questions and try to help. i wanted to recognize ian as well. thank you, ian. thank you for the great job you guys are all doing. >> my name is ken. i'm a retired fire captain and i have worked for the senator since he first ran and you have always made me proud, and i told

you that. it is unfortunate, that if i was in a union and i ran for president and you defeated me, what i would do, in america, or the school council, if you become president, i am going to back you. it is my union. what can i do to help you? but we seem to have a thing here, that i lost. we're all americans. however, i'm going to get up every morning and think what i can possibly do to destroy the winner. what can i do to prevent jobs to make him look bad? say no to the infrastructure. what can i do to make more people unemployed so -- this is the united states. that is not the way things are supposed to work. the representative of the house, boehner, the head of the house says we're not here to pass laws, because laws help people. he says we're here to repeal laws. unfortunately he has done lousy

at that job too, because in five years, he hasn't repealed any aws. so all i'm asking you, senator, and i spoke to you a little earlier, is only thing i'm asking for you is because everything you have done so far is do not give in to the debt ceiling terrorism. i call it terrorism because that is absolutely ridiculous. i guess i was talking -- gabby gobble at the times, i don't know why they publish him. for the last 13 years he has been wrong on everything. he finally got one right two days ago. he had a picture of the elephant the republican with a gun over its head. over its head, it said debt ceiling. i said get me a glass of water. i'm going to pass out. i said gary gobble said something about the republican party. that's all i'm stg you is to

stand strong and thank you. >> i can promise you that i will. [applause] i can also promise you that a lot of republicans will stand with me. this is another one of those issues where it is not all the republicans together wanting to do this. there is a group of extremists who are making this threat. and many republicans disagree with them. i -- know a senator from north carolina. his name is richard burr. he is a republican. he is as conservative as you can imagine. but he is also a responsible person. he was asked about this idea of voting against the debt limit and crashing the credit of the united states of america as the

threat for the repeal of obamacare, which nobody actually wants. they can't win on a vote, so they want to have -- operate like you would like take a hostage. and what richard said, he was actually overseas visiting the troops. they put a microphone in front of his face. he said that's the dumbest idea i've ever heard. so when a conservative republican is saying that is the dumbest idea i've ever heard, i think it is pretty safe that not only will i stand up, but so will many of them. that's very important. thanks, ken. yes, sir? >> thanks, senator. my name is ryan from west greenwich. i'm a small businessman. >> congratulations on your son. >> thank you. we have a family also. when we don't have money anymore to operate our business, to pay dditional people, to pay for

things of this sort, we have to let people go, to avoid bankruptcy. we stop spending money. whatever it is, we just stop spending money. the u.s. government right now isn't stopping. they are increasing debts. they are doing stimulus. yes, it helps some people, but it is also costing him and his future everything. they won't be able to afford this. his children won't be able to afford it. i don't like the future that my children and my grandchildren will incur. >> that is a very fair comment. let me make two points about that. because it is a really good point. if that was all that was going on, you'd want to say yeah, we got to get the debt down and we have got to get the deficit down. the deficit is already coming down because of the economic recovery. we have to do it more on the long-term debt, we have to get down also.

there are two considerations about this that i think are important to that discussion. one is we're still in a recession. e're still recovering. and if you look over in europe, they tried to basically cut their way out of the recession. and followed the so-called austerity principles. and what happened is that their economies actually got worse. and our g.d.p., our gross domestic product isn't climbing much, but it is climbing by 1% to 2%. theirs are actually falling. our unemployment is higher than it should be, but it is single digits and even in rhode island it is around 9%. just under 9%. in a lot of those countries, greece, italy, portugal, it is 17%. it is 27%.

so there are -- when the economy goes bad, families spend less. businesses spend less. municipalities spend less. states spend less. that contracts the economy further. the federal government's job, i think in that time is to counterbalance that by spending to offset it. i think our economic results are better. now that's a short-term thing. as soon it is an economy begins to take hold, you need to be ready to dial that back, but you do have to get through the down period continuing to spend. i think if we had followed the republican prescription of all of those cuts that they wanted in the middle of the recession, we would look a lot more like than we do -- portugal than we do now, economically. we would be in real dire

straits. the second point is if you look at the big issue that crushes the deficit, is healthcare. everybody agrees on that. paul ryan, who is probably the most conservative budget cutter in washington says if you're going to be honest about the deficit, it is really healthcare and president obama, another side of the equation said if you're going to be honest about the debt, it is really healthcare. so if you want to get after this, you really have got to get after healthcare. and to me, the issue in healthcare is that we have to make it way more efficient. and we can. we really can. we espn 18% of our gross domestic product, 18% on healthcare. in europe it is about 11% on average. why are we spending more than half as much than they do in europe when in europe it is free health care for everybody and here we have people left uninsured? we have all of these problems in our healthcare system. it is very, very unfortunate. the national institutes of medicine say that you can save

$750 billion every year in healthcare expense. nearly half of that comes back to the federal government to, the taxpayer, through v.a. benefits, medicare, medicaid, all of that. to me, that's where we need the -- to look. how do you bring that number, right now we spend $2.2 trillion on healthcare. how do you bring that number under $2 trillion? if you could? then all of that savings goes into the federal budget. that's the big issue on a going-forward basis. and the battle that we have in washington is that there is one group of people that says we have all of this healthcare expense. let's cut medicare and medicaid and not solve the underlying problem. i think we have to solve the underlying problem. frankly i've been beating pretty hard on the obama administration to be more responsible and accountable about trying to get

down that road further. i'll close by saying we are actually good at this in rhode island. people like to knock rhode island, but this is an area where we are doing really cool things. go to any intensive care unit in rhode island, your likelihood of getting an infection from needles going in and all of that, people always get infections in the hospital, that -- in an intensive care unit because of a program they kicked off on intensive care units, your likelihood of getting a hospital infection is now about zero. they simply don't happen any longer because they have put the procedures in place to prevent it. does that save money? millions of dollars because you're not having to treat the infection, not to mention that people die of them. there is a huge human cost as well. we're paying doctors more to keep you well instead of just how many procedures they can give to you. that is changing way they do usiness.

coastal medical. the doctor in charge of it is steering them in a whole new direction. their patients love it. they are open more hours. you get more support as a patient to keep yourself healthy. there is less -- who likes having medical procedures done to them, really? if you stay healthy, you don't have much of that. it is happening in rhode island. you can see the future happening and rhode island is leading the way. i agree with you. i think we have to hold off a little bit because we want to make sure the economy is back before we start to draw federal money out of the economy. it has to be a time that private money is coming back in. we have to keep our eye on the ball. healthcare. it is the big dollar item. if we do that, we can get back to very sensible levels of debt quickly. but you're right to be concerned. i appreciate that you raised that. i promise not to give such long answers in the future. that is a really interesting uestion. sorry about that.

yes, sir? >> i know you -- [inaudible] >> grab a microphone so everybody can hear. >> do you support elizabeth warren or universal healthcare? something like that, like vermont? if not, why so? do you support universal healthcare in rhode island? >> i think it would be a good idea, and i think it would be a lot more efficient and i think it would be a lot fairer. practically, how do you get there? that is a bit of a problem. i actually wrote along with sherrod brown, the senator from ohio, the two of us wrote in the affordable care act what we call the public option. so people that didn't want to have a public program, they didn't have to, but there was a public option that was available. now we could not get the votes for it and so it failed. i felt strongly enough about it with sherrod, the two of us sat down and wrote that bill

together and i still believe in a public option. you mentioned vermont. there is a waiver in the affordable care act that if a state wants to go to single payer, they can do that. vermont is starting to decide whether they want to go to a statewide single payer system. my guess is if vermont does that and you find the cost come down 25% to 30%, that will be pretty interesting to a lot of other states and people will start saying we ought to think about that. that actually seems to be working pretty well. >> thanks for your response. >> yeah, absolutely. yes, sir? lue shirt. >> hi, senator. steve. >> hey, steve. >> a couple of questions on healthcare. >> yes. >> one with the website that has been set up. the portal.

>> yeah. >> i want to know how secure my data will be when i and others go to enter our data come october 1, if the feds have confirmed security on their end? >> i believe that it is secure. i don't know the details of how hey secure it. if you look at the information exchange that rhode island has running, in the insurance exchange, there will be some information, but not a lot, because you basically, the product goes up and you decide if you want it and you go. where the data is much more personal is in n the information exchange. the information exchange is the thing where let's say you got an m.r.i. or you have to go to the lab and get a blood test, the information exchange allows the lab that did the blood test to

basically post it directly on to your own private electronic health record. so your doctors can see it right away and know what's going on with you and it simplifies things and speeds up the time, but that is really personal info. i've been watching that for years and they have that covered very tightly for leaks. it is a priority that it needs to be secure. >> right. i'm wondering who'll have access to my data once i input it into he system. >> on the information exchange, you select who has access to your data. and you can select by naming doctors and you can select by saying any doctor who is treating me or i think you can even select wide open and anybody can see it. it is your choice. you select when you come into the current care program. >> ok.

as far as penalties go, who is in charge of assessing -- well, we have already assessed the penalties, at least for 2014. who is going to collect those penalties? >> there is a -- statute that equires releases of public information to be disclosed. and once they are disclosed, there is both a private cause of action where you can go to court and say hey, wait a minute, you released my information and the regulatory agency over the -- whatever it is, if it is the telephone company or hospital, whoever is regulating them has authority to sanction them for having released the information in unauthorized fashion. >> ok. but i'm talking about if i choose or if somebody chooses not to sign up for healthcare, there is a penalty, i believe,

the first year it is $95 or 1% of your income. >> i think the i.r.s. collects that. >> i.r.s.? the i.r.s.? >> yeah. they are the ones who do the collecting. >> that doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. >> no, the tax agency normally doesn't make you feel very warm and fuzzy. >> so they are going to get access to my data because obviously they are going to come collecting the money. >> they don't need access to your data to collect the money. >> ok. well, i guess they will find me somehow. [laughter] and i had one final question on ealthcare. oh, i notice that illegal aliens do not have to participate in this program. can they participate in this program? >> that's a good question. i don't know off the top of my ead.

i think at the moment the answer is no. because if you are an alien who is here in undocumented or illegal fashion, you're not entitled to any federal health benefits, so you would not be entitled to the benefit of the payment that you get to make the insurance affordable under this plan. >> right. >> when that changes, if we pass immigration reform, and at what point people who are on the path to citizenship, can start to claim that benefit, is at this point not certain, because the house hasn't passed a bill yet. >> sure. >> but it could happen after that passes, there is a point at which undocumented folks get the chance to come in. >> finally, when do the federal subsidies end? subsidies for healthcare? i know they start in 2014, right?

>> they are intended to be continuing. >> ok. and that is taxpayer money that foots the bill for that? >> ultimately, yeah. >> thank you. >> you're very welcome. thanks for your questions and thanks for coming out. who else have we got? i'm looking. grab a microphone. >> i didn't come in from the beginning so if you have answered this question, just ignore it. the role of states in the setting of interest rates. >> yes. how that was overturned -- was the case -- until a certain point that it no longer became the case. >> yes. >> if i understand, you have co-sponsored legislation with elizabeth warren that would -- >> reverse that. >> if that is case, if you could elaborate on the status of those attempts. >> no, i would be happy to.

this is obviously not something that makes me very popular with the big banks. but many of you will remember a time when if a bank or somebody else charged interest rates that were too high, it was called usury. and it was actually an offense. and it was a matter, to refer to he police. and rhode island actually had laws, among other states that limited the amount of interest that banks could charge, which is a long, long, long, long tradition. back to the bible days where there were limitations. back to the early codes of -- and both religious and legal codes of justice. there has always been this ability to put a limit on the amount that folks could charge, and in america, it was always a state decision.

and so there would be a state law that said 12% is the max. 17% is the max. whatever it is. ou could decide. so about 40 years ago now, a bank sued and said look, i've got -- i'm in nebraska. and this customer is in minnesota. and i need to straighten out hose law is it my nebraska law or is it their minnesota law? so the supreme court said no, you're the bank. it is your nebraska law. we're going to decide it that way. no big deal, it seemed. but then the banks got smart and they did a little thinking about that and they said hey, wait a minute, if it is the state where i'm incorporated that sets the

law, maybe we can find some states that will get rid of all of their banking consumer protection laws for us. and then we can move there and set up shop. so -- bingo. delaware did it and north dakota did it. do you ever wonder why your credit card is from north dakota? why would they be in north dakota? because in north dakota they got rid of so many of their consumer protections. so now if rhode island passed an interest cap, it would not make a darn bit of difference because of that ruling and because the bank just has to move to north dakota and then they could charge whatever the heck they lease. that's how you get interest rates of 30%. who here has had a credit card that hit 30% interest?

it happens. you fall into a trap. you miss a payment. something goes wrong and suddenly that credit card of yours, boom, up goes the interest rate. 20%, 30%. in the day, that would have been illegal in rhode island. e had a usury law. so what i proposed is a law that would say no. it is the law of the consumer. so if you want to live in a state where you get consumer protection and you get low interest rates, that's your choice. if that limits the amount of banks that will come and do business in that state, that is your choice too. it is based on the person, not the bank, because they have gained that system in order to ake advantage of it. so we actually got a vote on it, i think i got 38 other senators to vote with me.

not even all the democrats. the banks are pretty powerful. so when i resubmitted it, refiled it this year, elizabeth warren decided that she would join it, as you said. so elizabeth is my co-sponsor and we're going to keep at it. one of the things about congress, just because you have an idea that you think is a good idea, you don't get it pass right away. you have to sometimes be patient, wait for the right moment, wait for the right season, wait for the right congress and then you can make your move. so i'm going to keep steadily at that, and with any luck, sir, the time will come when we get it done and we can get rid of these abusive, unjustifiable 30%-plus interest rates and we can have control in the different states of how much consumer protection our people get. i think that is the right way to go. and by the way, all the republicans who talk about states' rights, here would be a good chance to show what states' rights federalists they really are. but so far we're not getting a lot of action yet.

-- traction yet. thank you. [applause] yes? >> i'm miles parker. we have a long way to go on wall street reform. >> we sure do. >> a long way. we have some transparency in the market and in these interactions we still have a very unstable environment. what's happening? >> well, we got a pretty good distance with dodd frank, the bank reform bill. on some of the big issues like separating investment banks from regular checking account main street banks, we could not actually get the glass steagall it was called, the law restored that separated them.

but what we did get was -- to build it at the regulatory level and try to separate those functions. now they have had years to do it. they have been harassed constantly by the big banks. they have made varying degrees of progress and in some cases we gave them some authority and they didn't use it all or they didn't use as much as we would like so i think we need to begin revisiting those questions. i think the most significant one is this business of separating the speculating banks, the investment banks from the regular main street, it is my cherking account, it is my savings account banks. we had that rule in effect for decades and it really protected the banking system. and if a bank that was speculating and dealing in fancy erivatives and all of this weird stuff and went bust, that

was their funeral. you could let them go bust. they were not going to take the economy down with them because they didn't have millions and millions and millions of americans with their day-to-day savings tied up in their gambling, basically. so getting that separation back, i think, is very, very important and i constantly support those bills. i constantly vote for them. i'm a co-sponsor of the new revised glass steagall act. one thing i can say, i'm very fortunate, i think we're all fortunate to have jack reed as our senior senator. i feel particularly fortunate because i get to work with him every day. jack doesn't toot his own horn ery much, so i'm going to give it one quick toot in front of everybody here. that is to point out that at the end of this election in 2014, if jack gets re-elected, he is the number two right now on the armed services committee and he is the number two on the banking

committee of the senate. both chairmen have announced their retirements. so jack reed, if and when we re-elect him, is going to be ble to choose to be either the chairman of the senate armed services committee or chairman of the senate banking committee. >> not both? >> unfortunately he only gets one, not two. you have to leave some scraps for the others, but that will be a terrific opportunity. so that's going to be a great opportunity for our whole state to have jack in that kind of a position. es, sir? >> i'm a science teacher. try to keep up on the current

understanding of climate change. >> yeah. >> i'm one of those people who has come to the conclusion that it is really happening and it is our fault and we're real trouble. -- in real trouble. i know it is going to be a longer term problem than these financial or medical roblems. i was wondering do you -- what do you see when you talk privately to our senators and representatives? do you see any motion towards understanding how serious this roblem is? because what i hear on the air ways is people saying no, it is a controversy. the science community doesn't believe it is a controversy. >> no, people that know what they are talking about don't believe it is a controversy. the controversy is manufactured. guess who is behind the controversy?

the polluters. the oil companies. the coal companies. they put out lots of propaganda about this. what they have figured out, which is very clever, is that they don't have to convince you that it is not happening. all they have to do is put a little question mark in your mind so you think, i think that is controversial, right? so they just try to solve the debate with this is controversial. this is unsure. people are uncertain. this is a level of certainty that anybody would act on in their personal life. al franken is a friend of mine in the senate. we were talking about climate change one day on the senate floor. 97% of the scientists who know about climate stuff say look, this is happening. this is real. this is profound. it is going to change the way we live. we have got to do something about it. franken has a good sense of humor. he says ok. how many people, just take our own senators, how many people,

if their child was sick, would go to the doctor and the doctor said you need this treatment for your child. you think, it is expensive. i'm not sure i really want to do it. maybe there is a side effect. let me get a second opinion. so you get a second opinion. let's say you went and got 100 opinions. you went to 100 doctors to ask them is my child sick and do they need the treatment and 97 of the doctors said yes, your child needs the treatment. three of them said no. who do you go with? 97-3. who do you go with? it is obvious. it is obvious. and what is important about this is that it is mot just theoretical any longer. for a while it was kind of theoretical. how much carbon can you put up. what does it do to the atmosphere? how does it create that blanketing thing? how warm does it get?

well, we're already seeing it. go down to newport. go down to the tide gauge that has been there for decades. the tides on average in rhode island are 10 inches higher than they were back when we had the hurricane of 1938 back in the 1930's. so you get another big hurricane like the hurricane of 1938. you know we could. we already did. and it is now throwing 10 inches more of ocean and actually that stacks up because of storm surge. that's going to be a very bad day for rhode island when that happens. the bay is four degrees warmer in the winter than it used to be. that affects a lot of things. that affects the winter flounder. when my wife was a scientist, she was studying the winter flounder because it was so valuable for our fisherman. they patroled up and down the by a catching winter flounder. our winter flounder catch is down more than 90%.

it is 4 degrees warmer. the flounder don't like it as much. they had rather be offshore. the thing that eats them when they are little is the shrimp. some would grow past where to shrimp couldn't eat them any longer. that's how they got to survive. now that's all change. the people who own the orchards in johnston in the northern part of the state, that grow apples and peaches and other fruits, they are seeing their trees bloom in the middle of winter. they have never seen that before. it is changing. it is really going to be very, very serious. so we have got to get on top of it and i think it is going to be a very tough lesson when we have to explain to these young eagle scouts and to their kids why when we knew all of that science, how is it that the american system of government allowed people to ignore what all the scientists were yi and how could the polluters have pulled off such a stunt on the american people?

and that's -- i will tell you that question haunts me. i don't have grandchildren yet, but i have got a 24-year-old and 20-year-old. and 20 or 30 years from now, this is going to be really coming on strong. they are going to be my age then. they are going to be looking around saying dad, what the hell? you knew this. scientists all knew this. all of this stuff is going on right now in our world and you didn't do anything about it? how could you? and i don't want to have to answer that question. so that's why i give that speech every single week on the senate floor. that's why i started the senate oceans caucus to get people orking together on oceans. i have tried pass it now twice, the national endowment for the observations. -- oceans.

trying to get more information because it is really clobbering the seas. this one is -- this one haunts me. yeah? yes, ma'am, sorry. campbell's got you there. >> what you were saying made me think that global warming is from our energy usage. >> yeah. >> so is this anything out there, different kinds of energies to use? >> oh, ya. coal des moving our plants to mexico or china? >> if we just moved the coal plans to mexico or china, that doesn't do any good at all. what we need to do is develop new technology. some of them are basically already here. it is a question of bringing the price down. solar. the price is coming down constantly. wind. we're about to do wind farms offshore. i'm excited about that.

you can drill down and do geothermal. in iceland, it is hot when you drill down so they can really do geothermal. moving to natural gas is a very good first step because that is does so much less damage than coal and oil. and then there are terrific technologies that are emerging, including one company i visited out on the west coast that thinks it has the way to take the nuclear waste that's around all the power plants in the country. we don't have any place to put our nuclear waste. no place. so what they do is they leave it at the power plant and try to bury it some place relatively safe and guard it. there it is. poisonous as all get out. it is going to be poisonous for generations. what do you do with it? this guy thinks it could be used to reburn it as a new fuel and create new power. if we could crack the scientific problem of how you get the power out. not only is that essentially

free power, you're avoiding the cost of having to figure out how you get rid of the darn nuclear waste. so technology ultimately is the solution. and if you think of two things, when it is a -- when it is a natural resource, the more you use it, the more the price goes up. you have got to dig farther to get it. you have to drill farther to get it. you have to go further out in the ocean to find it. it gets more expensive and the rice always goes up. that is the nature of the beast. but when it is technology, this stuff gets cheaper every minute. i can remember when if you wanted to buy a simple calculator. it was like $59.99 for a little dumb calculator that didn't hardly do a thing. now you go to the opening of an insurance agent or a new bank branch, they are giving them away for free. they cost a buck.

so you want to be on the side of technology, not on the side of resources in terms of this. and we can do it. and if we're good at it, we will own those technologies and we will export those technologies and we will be part of -- that will be part of our economic growth in the years to come, instead of importing oil from saudi arabia and propping up dictators in countries that really don't like us, we'll be inventing, which we're good at, innovating, which we're good at, exporting that throughout the world and having our energy future also be our economic future. that is my goal, anyway. two left. tony is saying. ok. es, sir? >> my name is george. my question is for the last three years, the property tax has been going up and up and it seems like there is no

limit. people are getting hurt. so what is the solution? >> well, the property taxes are ostly a municipal problem. so pawtucket, newport, providence, they set their property taxes. that's not a complete dodge, because they set it but they set their property taxes in part depending on how much money the state can provide to support the different municipalities. as the budget is dried up for the state, there has been less money for the municipalities ask any mayor, so they have had to depend more on property taxes so it has been hard on property tax owners. and the states in turn, have taken a beating because there is less federal money coming in because of the cutting that we have done. i think we need to do two things.

one is be very careful about what we're cutting. sometimes when you cut, you cut off your nose to spite your face nd it is not a wise cut. i think supporting the states and supporting municipalities is usually a reasonable way to spend money. cdbg grants and things like that are very, very helpful and allow a lot of flexibility for local communities. i think that is really important. another thing is that as the economy kicks up and taxes come in from other sources then you can be less dependent on the property tax. the property tax is like the last tax standing when people are not coming to the hotels, so there is no hotel tax, people are not buying things so the sales tax is crashing. what do you do? there is the property tax. there is the property owner. you kind of have to stick with that. the more we can get the economy going again, the better off we are. to me, the big jump-start for

that is infrastructure. that is something that we need to spend money on, and you know, people often say, if your family is short of money, you have to cut expenses. so that you balance your family budget and that's way the government should work. not quite right. because of that what we talked about earlier where you have got to offset what everybody else is doing so the economy doesn't crash and you don't have another greece or portugal here. but infrastructure, that's not just spending money. in your own life, that's like fixing the roof on your house that you own with your credit card. yeah, it might be a big expense to fix the roof, but you got to fix the roof. and when it is fixed, your house is worth more and you get that value. it is not like taking a credit card and having everybody go to walt disney world.

you fix something that you own and it adds to the value of your home. the same way with infrastructure, when you fix our american roads and our american bridges and you fix our american water pipes and water treatment plants, that is wealth in this country. and if it is spent wisely, it makes more wealth. because roads and water and utilities allow for development and allow for commerce. you can't let that stuff go. and we have let it go. we have a huge infrastructure deficit and it is just crazy. so i can't do anything directly about pawtucket property taxes, but if i can help make sure that money keeps coming into the state the way it used to so they still get supported and they can support the municipalities and he economy is cruising and

lifting all votes, that's the best that i can do and that is my target. >> that is the point every year, it goes up 20% or 30%. in three years, it has gone up 75%. >> yeah, it is not just rovidence. what i can do is influence their choice that we have an economy that is rolling again and that we're supporting the states and the municipalities so that they don't have to hit the local taxpayer so hard, because it is the local property owner who is the person who has to pick up the tab when everything else is dried up. and it gets very expensive. you're absolutely right. >> before we take the last question, license plate bb 796 has got to move your car, you're n the fire lane.

bb 796. i'm not sure who that is but if you could just please move your vehicle, we need to clear the fire lane. thank you. >> yes, ma'am? hang on. we'll get you a microphone. want to get the microphone to lynn, right here? coming your way. there you go. >> hi, how are you? i'm lynn. i'm from pawtucket. i just had a few questions for you. are you for or against the obama plan and why? >> the healthcare plan? >> right. >> yeah, i'm very for it. i helped write it before it got called the obama healthcare lan. it started in what's called the help committee of the senate and i had a temporary assignment to the help committee to work on that bill. i'm for it for three big reasons. one is a lot of people didn't have insurance in this country. and if you don't have health

insurance, it really affects your life, and it really affects the care you get when you get sick and it actually can make the difference between getting well and not getting well. it can even make the difference in some extreme cases between whether you live or whether you die. so getting people, more people to have health insurance, i felt was a really, really good goal and a really good achievement. the second thing is that the insurance marketplace wasn't all that fair. as i said earlier, if you work for a big company, you got a pretty good rate because the big company could negotiate like crazy. if you were with a little company you got not such a good rate. and if you were on your own, forget it. you were paying top dollar on your own and you were stuck. plus they put little tricks into the policy that said things like ok, now you're sick so by the way, there is a cap and we're not going to cover you past the cap or actually it looks like that disease you have, you had it before you signed up for

the policy and you didn't tell us about it and we're going to kick you off the policy because you didn't disclose, and if it is a pre-existing condition, you're stuck for life because no insurance company is going to cover it. that is a terrible position to be in. people want to be able to move around. i talked to rhode islanders who were literally trapped in their job because they could never get another job because they could never get a new healthcare policy that covered their sickness because it was now a pre-existing condition. they got it on one job and they were trapped with that company for the rest of their lives until they got to medicare and they were safe at last in medicare. basically all of the problems that we could think of with the insurance industry, i think were fixed in there. and the last thing is that it set off a whole array, there were 40 different programs to

help innovate, to help figure out ways to help deliver better health department care cheaper. to figure out ways to pay a doctor in a different way so you stay healthier. right now the only way a doctor gets paid is when you get sick and when they order stuff for you. guess what happens to a system in which the only way a doctor gets paid is when you get sick and they order stuff for you? they wait until you get sick and then they order a lot of stuff for you. that is an expensive system. what we want is a system that keeps you well. that can answer your question before you have to go to the emergency room. that keeps track of whether you're taking your medication so that you stay out of the hospital. those sorts of things. no doctor ever got paid for doing any of that. that's all changing. if you got a hospital-acquired

infection, we're starting to stop pay hospitals for that. if you took your car to the shop and they dropped it off the lift, would they come to you and say oh, by the way, we fixed your car, but also we dropped it off the lift. here is your bill for all the body work we had to do because we dropped your car off the lift. but if you're a hospital, we gave you a hospital-acquired infection and here is your bill for $30,000 infection, we gave you a bill for curing the hospital-acquired infection. that's nuts, so we cut that off. because what they were doing was, it is called the discharge order. when you leave the hospital that you have a discharge order and you have a discharge plan. well the discharge orders were crummy. the discharge plan stunk. nobody bothered to call your doctor and say they had released

you. there was no follow-up. so somebody would do fine and they would not take their medication and they would not do this and they would not do that and boom, they are back in the hospital. no, no, you have to follow up. you put the discharge plan out. make it a good one. and stick to it. you don't do that, you don't get paid. that changes the behavior. and those kinds of changes are what's going to change the way we do healthcare in this country and that's how we're going to get the costs down and at the e,ave everybody have a better experience and a better outcome. so those were the three big chunks of the bill. covering people, making the insurance industry fairer and trying to move this innovation thing forward. i think we did pretty well on all three. no bill is perfect, and it was a big bill. i'm sure there are bugs in it, but i'm pretty happy with it and i'm standing by. yeah? >> is it also true that -- my

understanding was that congress has up until october 1 to veto that bill. is that correct or am i isunderstanding something? >> the -- exchanges that market where they -- you have to be able to go there and say ok, i want to buy insurance. what are my choices? somebody has to be there and say hoc, here are your choices. that starts october 1. and i think if you don't get it done, they have a year for the federal government to back in. that starts october 1. now the people who want to get rid of the bill would like to get rid of it before f then, i think largely because once the exchanges go up, it will look pretty sensible. and in the same way that people are happy that their 26-year-old could say on their policy and were happy that they could still get coverage for pre-existing

conditions and were happy that seniors didn't have to fall all the way into the doughnut hole, i think people will see this is a pretty good deal. it is a market solution. that's what people should want. that's what the october 1 date is all about. there is a big push to repeal obamacare. well, you know, good luck. they have done it 40 separate times in the house. it is never going to pass in the senate. they want to keep doing it. >> employers out there announcing unless you work so many hours and work full time, we're going to cut your health insurance. i'm on 20 medications a day. i'm on insulin. i get zero help. i have health insurance. now they are saying you have to be full time and they are going to give you two or three hours less so you will not be able to have health insurance at work. i choose to work. >> well, good for you. good for you.

>> because i'm able to work. >> if that happens to you, you now have a choice that you didn't have before. which is that you can go to the insurance exchange, you can even go and talk to ian about it right now. what they will do is say ok, here is your list of options. there are like three levels, gold, silver, bronze of coverage. you say i want great coverage, ok coverage, medium coverage, and then you choose what one you like and then they will say ok, what do you make? and depending on what you make, there will be a subsidy so that you don't have to pay more than -- >> it is a sliding scale. 3% to 10 pblet%. no more than 10% of your income for healthcare. so whatever you're making, you keep 90%. 10% goes for healthcare and the rest gets made up for through the subsidy. so you get covered that way.

i think you'll find, obviously there are going to be a few bugs when you start something new. now you have a choice. if the employer doesn't stick with your coverage, you can go to the exchange and you cannot only get the coverage, but get the support that makes it affordable for you. so that it is affordable. >> why are they making it harder for the working people? >> this should actually make it easier. >> you cannot work where you want and you're not stuck with your employer because because of the health care. >> sorry to interrupt -- i work for the mayor in pawtucket -- the mayor had a community meeting tonight and it ran over and they had quick questions. he asked me to thank you for