greater when larry summers stepped aside. that comment is not a treatable to his credentials or is experience or his personality. i thought he was a credentialed person to leave the fed for sure. the the contention of his t ofirmation in the mids trying to avoid a government shutdown and raising the debt ceiling did eight and all of the all of thend contention between republicans and democrats, they have been more than the economy needed to withstand. reducing the candidate pool to couple ofen and a others may change that. i think that simplifies the process a great deal.

that is a necessary supplication in my mind. you are also on twitter. thank you so much for joining us this morning. right now we are going to take you live to a replaying -- grief laying -- wreath laying ceremony and washington, d.c. it is aiming held to honor the yardms of the navy shooting. the ceremony is going to take lace adjacent to the lone sailor that represents all of the people that have ever served and are serving now and have yet to serve. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013]

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>> chuck hagel and the chairman of the joint cheese at the navy doingal north of the -- chief at the navy memorial north of navy yard. they will be conducting a memorial for the shooting at navy yard. taps and that will conclude the short ceremony which to get underway shortly.

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>> also in that group was and raygreener maynard. this is the navy memorial plaza. is inne sailor statue this plaza here which is just north of the navy yard. the navy yard shooting of yesterday was on the mind of steny hoyer this morning. he spoke at a wreck best posted by politico. breakfast posted by politico. thelso talked about withdrawal of larry summers name. here are his comments from this morning. >> i do not know enough about the facts. i lost three constituents. they lost their lives.

they worked at the navy yard. i ensure that it will renew the discussions about access to weapons that can be used to kill a lot of people quickly. we have seen in colorado in the - twoweeks to legislators -t legislators that have the courage to pass legislation that we do a background check so we know he was getting guns. 85% of americans say that is a sensible policy. in a specialalled election. one can analyze who comes out. it does not bode well for asking legislation,e for similar to what went down in the senate.

i am sure we will renew the debate and discussion as it should. >> you appear to have security clearance despite some troubling events. can you tell us anything about how he got that access? is that something few will be looking into? it seems there was some significant breach of security. >> you are right. it is something that must be looked into. we have seen in so many of these instances are that the perpetrators have given previous indication of instability. even inclinations to use weapons and to talk about violence, whether they did so on a website or with colleagues or classmates.

in this case the guy was prone to violence. shot the tiresly out of a neighbor's vehicles. he shot through the ceiling of another neighbor. he was given a general discharge from the navy. there was no doubt that this was somebody that had a record of instability and certainly should been subject to closer in accessparticularly to something such as the navy yard or any facility that has large numbers of people. the economic and fiscal matters before us starting with the next chairperson of the federal reserve. we saw larry summers withdraw his name for consideration over the weekend.

by all accounts he was the administration's first choice for chairman of the fed. do you think it was the right thing for larry summers to do? senategone up to the would even have -- would he have been confirmed? >> i do not know the answer to the second question. there was controversy. i have worked very closely with larry summers when he was deputy .ecretary under bob rubin as secretary at fountain to be extraordinarily competent, knowledgeable, respected and economicly on him for advice and feel strongly of his capabilities. i have not talked to larry summers. my conclusion is that he decided he controversy that would be surrounding his appointment would undermine the

confidence that we need to have in the federal reserve. in a very responsible way he made a determination that he did not want to further politicize or create controversy within the federal reserve. i think you probably did the right thing. he is a person of immense capability and will continue to contribute. >> do you think janet yellen is the best pick for the president now that summers is out of contention? >> i think she would be an excellent appointee. i think she enjoys wide respect. i think she would be somebody who would be confidence building of the federal reserve. there are others as well. this is the choice the president is going to make. i would hope you would make it relatively soon so that we can stabilize.

i think that given the other economic turmoil we are going to the federalhaving reserve as a stable, respected institution gives confidence to the marketplace. >> do think there taking too long? some of the arguments from folk supportive of larry summers is that had they moved more quickly they could have gotten to the senate faster. thewe to the point where nomination not having been made is having a negative impact on the economy? >> i think this will be helpful. 's all of steny hoyer remarks a little later. we are looking at some tweets --

>> 15 years ago but tv made its debut on c-span2. >> love, death, money. main humanee three concerns. we are all students of love. we are fascinated of the subject i theory and practice. theory and practice. we have brought you the top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. authors have0 appeared including presidents. >> i wanted to give the reader a chance to understand the process by which i made decisions and the environment by which i made decisions, the people i listened

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>> looking live at the u.s. capitol with the flag at half staff because of the navy yard shooting yesterday. it is ordered by the administration. the congressional budget office will be releasing a long-term budget outlook. the director presenting the findings, answering questions. is saying the cbo is projecting the federal debt to be untracked 100% of gdp in 2038. congress is back today. the house gavels in in for speeches at noon. at 630 p.m. meanwhile is continuing work on energy efficiency legislation. lawmakers will break for their parking meetings around 12:15 p.m.

the eventsaction to in syria. this is just over 40 minutes. >> to continue our coverage we professor ofhe peace and development at the university of maryland and author of the book the world with their area of eyes. thanks for coming on today. let's start with your take on this agreement by getting rid of syrian chemical weapons. do you believe the obama administration was successful in what they're trying to do? >> i am prepared to give president obama the credit for it. i think this is the best he could have done. the congressional support was not forthcoming. he can call it a strike. you can call it whatever it is. when you strike another country

you open the possibility of a war. it was a case where the theident makes this to nation specifically on chemical weapons. and the assad regime violation. no military strike has chance of taking out the chemical weapons. it would have been dangerous. he did not promise that. there is punishment from permitting him from doing it again. >> achieving the goals? >> obviously the devil is in the details. at least theoretically it is promising. international cooperation without war. is something that the war option never promised. if it is implemented, it does not resolve the syrian crisis. the syrian crisis is bigger than the chemical weapons issue. this is a horrible weapon.

this is the case the president made. i think in some ways this is something he can take credit for. talk a little bit about how arab eyes are viewing this deal? is interesting to compare public opinion both from government opinion. public opinion. sometimes we do not understand how different the public is. it is clear that on the issue of you have the governments of the gulf regions and other members of the council who want to see an intervention in syria. they want to see an intervention

, not so much over the chemical weapons ends issue. conflict as serious a big strategic confrontation between then and iran being played out. in syria is a divide that plays this out. large, public opinion by it really since the uprising did not like assad. they favor the rebels. they do not want to see an international intervention. they do not trust them. they think we would be doing it for the wrong reason. be overelieves it would chemical weapons. i think there was a public that did not want to support it. that is why they cannot formally supported despite the pressure from gulf states. then you have egypt. it is the most populous arab state.

it is going through a lot of transition. .e has criticized also that it a sentiment trumps this. syriaorry about this in more than they worry about president assad himself. talk about him sitting on a redline in syria. is there athat issue credibility issue? >> i think it is always overblown. we talk about credibility. what is the credibility we are talking about? do not believe that what you are doing is in the first place over chemical weapons how is it an issue of

credibility? if people do not want you to intervene how is that a question of credibility? allowed his he is opponents to define his words. if this is crossed and then i'm going to intervene militarily. he never said that. he could have framed it differently. i think the issue, the perception is very different. that is where the message is. historically, people forget the 1950s after this in 1950.

i came to maryland after teaching for a long-term at or not university. it was named after the former one of egypt. it can in memory -- it commemorates that.

lines are open. the numbers are on the screen. the cracks can call him. if you are outside the u.s. it is -- we're also taking questions over twitter and e-mail and facebook here it we will start with diana from naples on our democratic line. good morning. you are on. >> good morning. i have just been listening. every morning i have tried to call. i've been listening to the last 10 minutes or so. everything he says i agree with. agreeable.

they have had to look through this ridiculous benghazi inc.. they just got us to this. are just ate people the forefront. it is horrible. the way he is putting it into context i think it is very well. i agree with them. >> we go now to dan from berkeley. good morning. >> hello. go ahead.

>> secondarily i would like to ask a question regarding your analysis of whether the united states would be better off to possibly have ended up on the shia side of the fence in terms of cold war allies. it would be the iranian revolution. the russians ended up developing a stronger relationship. there is a cold war element. >> let me jump in. >> thanks.

i lived there for some time. i am neither sunni nor shia. my family was christian. i am a secularist. i am neither one of these. the sunni tribe is real and invented. you can see it in various places, particularly among religious fanatics. we have witnessed what has happened in iraq and in lebanon. it is also invented in the sense that that division has not explained wars or peace over the years. extremists always use this device for their own reason. you have a fanatical fringe that is defining it.

you see that in egypt where egypt is mostly sunni, 10% christian. and yet they are fearful of the muslim brotherhood. syria, they do not want to see the fringe or the mainstream muslim brotherhood win in syria. there is a conspiracy theory about a possible american invention in order to save the muslim brotherhood in syria. that is the sort of stuff we are

talking about. right after the lebanese-israeli war, hezbollah is a shia organization. even in the context of the competition in lebanon. yes, there is a divide. it doesn't always explain political position. host: the book is "the world through arab eyes." talk about arab public opinion. are americans seeing the true arab public opinion? guest: now on egypt, we have not had any public opinion polls of late in egypt.

we have had an overwhelming media that is now controlled by the government that is pitching one story, that the muslim motherhood is a bad guy. we do not know until we have public opinion polls. this book is based on 10 years of public opinion polling in egypt, jordan, lebanon. it is -- every year we had up to 4000 people interviewed representing the population, principally in the cities across the arab world. what got me thinking about it was after the iraq war where i

was on leave from the university to advise the government on the middle east. i noticed that most of the people in the middle east -- i was mostly talking to elites. i do not have a good sense. i did not do that with confidence. it was after that i started thinking about the possibility of designing public opinion polls. now we have a lot more. we have a good sense. not in every country. i did not do it in syria, given the circumstances. i did not think that was possible. in other places, it is.

host: we are talking with shibley telhami, professor at the university of maryland and taking your calls and questions. helen is up next on our democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for making your comments. i think that president obama did a wonderful job and is doing a wonderful job in reference to syria. their work power leaders out there from russia, iran, and china who could have gone to syria. they did nothing until president obama got involved and he did not rush to judgment. he wanted to prove and then he announced his plan. president putin got involved. as a power country, we should look at these actions when they are taking place because they affect the entire world. those are my comments. i thank the gentleman for bringing this forward. i thank president obama for not going to war at this time.

host: james on twitter has a different take. host: do you think this was an accident? guest: it could have well have been accidental in the sense the administration from the outset when they made the case for a strike against syria never put forth a clear demand for what syria could deliver. when the secretary of state was asked what would syria do to avoid it, he almost said it off the cuff. i recall talking to james baker about the 1991 war. he told me he was trying to make the conditions for saddam hussein impossible.

the u.s. felt its interests would not be served. kerry was probably trying to do the same thing. the russians exploited this. the syrians saw benefits to following up. we will never know if it was accidental. maybe we will at some point. i do not care so much. the president accepted this option. he could have rejected it. parts of the option were put on the table. it takes two to tangle.

it is not just russia. the bigger question goes back to the first caller from hyattsville who said it is the threat of force that generated the diplomacy. in some ways you cannot argue with that. once the u.s. threatened to use

force, it got everybody's attention. in the case of syria, syria is a little country with little resources. their allies had a bigger capacity to retaliate. to learn the threat of other countries may be the same where they are now facing the same environment that syria is. to argue this could be extended to some other diplomacy is a mistake. i think it is a case-by-case basis. eight general lesson is something we have to think about much more carefully than start congratulating ourselves. host: here is chris in alabama's take. guest: i agree with that. host: let's go to angela from california on our independent line. turned down your tv and go ahead with your comment or question.

caller: i have two questions. is al qaeda on our payroll through saudi arabia? didn't we give chemical weapons to be used on the iranians when there was a war and we never said anything about it? the american people did not know about it. guest: on the chemical weapons, chemical weapons have been used before. they were used by iraq against the kurds and the iranians. nobody made a big deal about that. that is why we have the debate about double standards that we hear. in the middle east when i asked people across the country's what

they think motivates american foreign policy, the top answers invariably, oil and israel and secondary maybe weakening the muslim world. fewer than 10% say human rights or the terrorism issue. the reason there is suspicion about american intentions -- analysis has to go far beyond that. al qaeda -- it is ridiculous to think america is backing al

qaeda. al qaeda is america's biggest enemy. perhaps since its inception. the u.s. has been at war to try to weaken it. the problem is the indirect fear in the u.s. about what happened in afghanistan. it was a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. it was the case that islam is groups including members who joined al qaeda and formed al qaeda to fight the u.s. were the enemies of the soviet union and supported by the u.s. to help bring down the soviet presence in afghanistan. you had something that came back to haunt the international community when that succeeded. we have seen this from the beginning. some of the most respected

fighters and perhaps the most effective fighters have been al qaeda and their supporters. and so the fear is the u.s. cannot manage supporting the good guys from the bad guys. we have heard a couple of days ago the deputy chief of the cia saying the only institution that can defeat al qaeda will be the state institutions in syria. we do not want to break these down. how do we support the opposition enough to force efforts to a diplomatic settlement but yet not break down the institutions in a way that will allow al qaeda and their supporters to take over in syria? it is a tough balance. host: you talked about your travels through the middle east as you wrote your book.

how would you classify the arab- based government? guest: there is no question -- the arab uprising started with tunisia and that was a public empowerment against entrenched ruling dictators for a lot of reasons -- domestic politics, foreign politics. the whole process of the uprising has been a public empowerment against those entrenched powers. we are going through the process of change. not all are equally repressive. they very quite a bit. some are much more moderate in treating their people or providing services.

where you had overthrown governments as in tunisia and egypt, they are going through a process, a process that is very difficult and painful. but i think my own view is it is not going back to where it was. you might go through periods of going back. you have a public that is empowered for the first time. it is only extending and not going backward. i think people expect more and know more. they know how to organize without the need for social institution because of this new instrument.

we are going to watch upheavals. the secular and the religious get empowered. that means we will have turbulence. host: we are talking this morning with shibley telhami, a professor at the university of maryland and also works as a member of council on foreign relations and served as an advisor to the u.n. and as a member of the u.s. delegation to the trilateral u.s. anti- incitement committee. we are taking your calls and questions this morning. michael is next on our republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. what is your opinion on how the average citizen throughout the middle east feels about the

american people, not their government? thank you very much. guest: this is a fantastic question. we know going back decades -- latin americans or africans or people in the third world who were frustrated with american foreign policy. they admired the american people and loved american values. what we see in the middle east in the past decade -- we had what we thought was a clash of values.

when you ask people, name countries where you find most freedom for their people? every country they would identify would be a western country, including the united states. when you asked them what do you want to study, the u.s. was always high up there. overwhelmingly they say policies and not values. we do see at some point after the election of george w. bush that people started asking that question, maybe there is no difference between the people and the government. how could they reelect george w. bush? we started asking specific questions about their attitudes towards the american people versus the american people. there is a gap. they are warmer toward the american people than the government, but that gap has

narrowed. host: let's go to ted from new orleans. you are on with shibley telhami. caller: thank you. given your background, you are aware of the panic -- you might also be familiar with the wesley clark video that states that with a general friend of his -- he was talking about an encounter he had in 2001. a general from the pentagon mentioned that we were going to invade iraq. general clark asked why.

the general answered, i do not know. six weeks later he ran into the general again. i we still going into iraq? we are going to invade seven countries in five years. you are from one of the more influential institutions out there informing public opinion and propaganda. you say that obama did the right thing here. i agree that the instance were the internet and social media is taking over. brezinski says we are in a lot of trouble -- the first time we have a worldwide awakening to

what we have been doing for the past 400 years. the stranglehold you have is now being broken. it wasn't so much obama saw the light. i am 66 years old. i have never seen the american people over 90% on one issue in my life. guest: the iraqi war is a big story. i happen to oppose the war. i thought it was a bad idea. but that is a big issue that we cannot tackle right now. i want to say something about the president's instinct. this is a president who do not want to see entanglements. yes, he escalated in afghanistan. his instinct is not to intervene.

we know he was reluctant to intervene in libya. he is not itching to intervene for sure. it will be interesting to see how his thinking on syria has evolved. there are a lot of people that are human rights activist in his administration. some of them thought it was the moral thing to do. it is a difficult issue about the morality of intervention. i think there are people who make the case for it. there have been episodes where the u.s. has been called upon to

intervene since the beginning of the syrian crisis. whether that played into his thinking and he could compartmentalize that, i think we can get away with it and neighbors he thought it would relieve some of the pressure on him to do something more about iran. that is an issue he wants to resolve diplomatically. i am a proud member of the council. is made up of people in the foreign policy arena, scholars, former diplomats. it is basically a group of people. the organization has become a think tank where you have the scholars who produce policy

analysis. my association with the council is only as a member. i am with the brookings institution. host: robert from west virginia on our democratic line. you're on with shibley telhami. turn down your tv and go ahead with your question or comment. we will go to craig from california on our democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. finally the united states of america, the people were heard. 90% or better gave a no on syria. do you believe or is it your opinion the real directive comes from israel for all of our controls and actions in syria and palestine?

guest: the israel question is always important for the u.s.. america support for israel is one of the cornerstones of the foreign policy. whatever you do, ask the question about the consequences for israel and consult for israel on matters that have importance. israel is a big factor in all this, including syria. secretary kerry is in israel briefing the prime minister with the deal with syria. on the one hand, if you look at global public opinion, almost everybody -- we saw it play itself out in the parliament.

that was the only place where the majority supported a strike on syria. on the one hand, it pertains to syria itself. what might happen. they did worry about chemical weapons. the syrians were probably using it was perceived as a poor man's weapon of mass distraction. now they were using chemical weapons more internally. the israelis are worried about them falling into the wrong hands. they have real issues. what will be the consequence for what they see as the biggest strategic threat, which they see as iran.

they supported the president's strike and lobbied for it in congress. when the deal was announced about the chemical weapons with russia, you found they were supportive and saying it was a godsend for israel. they use the argument to make a they use the argument to make a argument that we now need to make a threat on iran. host: what does the deal mean for israel? israel is one country suspected of having some stockpiles of their own. does that put more of a spotlight on israel? guest: i think it does put a spotlight on them. they did not sign the treaty prohibiting chemical weapons. so yes, it does.so they have to do that. so they have to do that?

host: they signed the treaty but did not ratify it. let's go back to the phones. darian is waiting on our independent line. good morning. you are on with shibley telhami. caller: good morning. i am looking forward to downloading your book. i assume i can get it on kindle. guest: yes, you can. caller: i want to get your analysis on the president's speech last tuesday night. the generally accepted critique leadhat the comment by kerry - to the compromise on chemical weapons and the destruction of those weapons -. the president made a, in his speech at the group of twenty.

he implied that perhaps this had been in the works prior to kerry's comment. i am interested in your analysis. guest: i wrote an immediate response about the speech for politico. i do not know if the president was trying to take credit for it. i would not doubt the president was exploring diplomatic options with putin again.i think the president's instinct was not to strike. he was exploring every conceivable option, including some compromise with putin. never did we have such a sweeping proposal of syria

agreeing to disarm itself with chemical weapons. when kerry said it, i thought it was one of the impossible things inat was put on the table. part because the military strike never promised to achieve that. it promised only to hurt them and possibly to degrade their possibilities.but not disarm them. attacking chemical weapons is a problem. i think the russians, there is no question they were very clever.for them, doe chemical weapons of syria - not serve their ally. here is one thing we have to understand. i know everybody talks about their competition with the u.s. or their commitment to a debate -- to a base

in syria. they are worried about al qaeda in syria. putin talks about this issue. >> we will take you live to capitol hill for the long-term budget outlook, just kidding under way on capitol hill. >> showing what would happen to the budget over the next 25 years under a number of different policies. today's report differs from the book we published last year. it includes a wide range of recent data. it has some improvements. the bottom line remains the same. the federal budget is on a course that cannot be sustained indefinitely. weour extended baseline,

have projected federal debt 100% ofse from 73% to gdp 25 years from now. shrunkicit has dramatically during the past few years from now he 10% of gdp to about 4% this year. we expect the deficit to decline further to about 2% of gdp. we expect deficits to grow again. federal spending would be pushed and byhe federal debt growing costs for social security and the major health care programs and the subsidies to be provided to insurance

companies. so large, it would be a large effect on interest payments. projected spending for social security increases because of the retirement of the baby boom generation. it would increased number of people by more than one third in just 10 years. spending for the major health care programs would increase for the retirement of the, baby bombers rising cost of health care per person, and the expansion for low income people. projected federal spending for all other programs taken together declined sharply relative to gdp. 11% ofending has average gdp during the past 40 years.

it is currently below its average i would fall to about 7.5% in 2023. spendingtotal federal apart from social security and interest on the debt, would be a smaller percentage of gdp at any time since the 1930's. the upward pressure on federal spending comes not from a general growth but from growth on a handful of the largest programs along with the rising cost of servicing the debt. federal revenues would increase over time but more gradually than federal spending. ofenues have average 17.5% gdp. they are now a little bit lower.

2038. 20% by widen steadily after 2015. be2038, the deficit would gdp.of that would be more than any year 6.cept 1945 and 184 growing, at would be path that could not be followed indefinitely. we project the economic onto qantas of the policies would affect the long-term budget outlook. the growth will reduce the output and raise interest rates relative to what would happen if the debt were stable. that would lead to wider budget

deficits. 8% of gdp. rise to 10 it would reduce output and income compared to what they would be if the debt were close to what they would be. it would require higher interest and increase the risk of a fiscal crisis. we also show the effects of some alternatives, some that would produce a larger deficits and someone that would produce smaller deficits. if certain policies might be difficult to maintain or debt would beral much greater than 108% of

gdp. we discussed a number of sources of uncertainty and present projections based on different outcomes. is veryection uncertain. under a wide range of possible assumptions, the budget is on an unsustainable path. changeskers consider that would put the budget on a more sustainable path, they will face choices about the policies to be used and the timing of deficit reduction. economic theory does not say what the optimal amount of debt is. a significant reduction in debt would require substantial

ornges in spending policies tax policies or both. if lawmakers wanted to bring 31%, they would need to enact a combination of cuts in spending's that would total about four chilean dollars during the decade -- $4 trillion. lawmakers face difficult trade- offs. a greater accumulation of debt i would increase -- implementing spending cuts quickly would weaken economic expansion and give people a little time to adjust to the policy changes. outputrt-term effects on and employment would be large tlook -- rates loa

are being cap near zero. thank you. we would be happy to try to answer your questions. yes, sir. [indiscernible] 190% of debt by 2038. [indiscernible] factors that go into that projection? >> the extended scenario differs from the extended baseline on the spending and revenue side. the scenario takes away the sequestration and the spending

caps and goes back to the original spending caps. it takes this brought other andgory of federal spending pushes that backup toward a more standard relationship to gdp. scenario keeps federal revenues around 18% of gdp and closer to the historical average. the scenario can be viewed as taking a set of policies that might be difficult to sustain. they might turn out to be difficult to sustain and seeing what would happen if one reverted to a more standard experience. i would not say it is a more

plausible scenario. it would be quite extraordinary. i do not think you should do that as a realistic projection. is meant to show what would happen under a different set of fiscal policies. i think i should be asking people to say who they are and where they are from. [indiscernible] you look at the other fiscal scenario over the next 10 years to arrive at 31% of gdp. do you factor in what increased taxes would mean to economic growth? alternatives three in the report. one is a particular alternative scenario which has differences

in tax and spending policy. we also look at reductions in deficits. trillion worth of reductions, but not specified if they're on the tax or spending side. for the extended baseline, we look at the long-term effects of the economy and we take into account the amount of debt and .he marginal tax rate for those policies where we have tax policies written down that -- for theseng scenarios, we have not specified particular changes.

we are not trying to lead the congress in particular direction. the economic effects of those scenarios are based on the different amounts of federal debt. >> so not accounting for the fiscal drag because you do not know how that fiscal drag would be made up. >> the deficits would be smaller under those policies. in contrast, we have had different sorts of responses to specific policies. we have picked an average response. we look at how rising debt crowds out investment and reduces output. [indiscernible] the broad term outlook --do

we know what happens -- >> in a lot of questions in that. we show in the back of the report that federal health care spending 25 years from now would be a little more than half a percent of gdp lower in our current projections then it was a year ago. that downward revision comes largely from the revision we made to our spending for nettie care and medicaid within the first 10 years of the projection. in the tenure outlook we released in the spring, we talked about having markdown are projections a fair bit from a month ago. and over the past three years, we have a reduced federal 15%,ing in 2020 by about

as a response to the incoming data we have seen. for the longer-term report, it matters a lot in terms of the cost of the programs. additionally to the downward version of the first 10 years, we have taken on more data. our estimate of the underlying ise of growth of spending now lower than it was. we have a lower level of health care spending to jump off from. reduce thetion is to health spending by about 6/10 of a percent of gdp, which is a significant difference. the affordable care act did a number of things. we think of it in three large buckets. it reduced spending for medicare

and it raised revenues. we estimated that the affordable care act would reduce budget deficits by a small amount. repealing the affordable care act would increase deficits by small amount. they aretry to -- provisions of law that relate to other provisions of law. tore is no natural way separate out the provisions. we do separate out the effect of the expansion of insurance coverage. we have a table that shows a d composition of the growth in federal spending for the major health care programs over the next 25 years. that is in a box of page 25 of the report.

we impose the growth for major health care programs. of the total growth in health- care spending, the aging of the population accounts for 35%. the fast growth per person accounts for 40%. the remaining 26% is accounted by the expansion of medicaid and the creation of subsidies. the insurance coverage provision explaining about one quarter of the increase in health spending relative to gdp over the next 25 years. about 3/5 will be going to people age 65 or older. about a fifth will be going to

under blind or disabled 65. expansion of federal support for health care for lower income people, a great majority of federal health care spending is not related to the affordable care act. you are? >> i am from "the new york times." to your latest numbers account for the states that have rejected the medicaid? >> in our projections from last winter that we released in the about, we estimated that who would have been eligible for medicaid

expansion would in fact be eligible for the medicaid expansion. the total number of people who could have gone on to medicare, we expect 45% would live in states where they could -- where the expansion would occur. about 20 to 25 states and the district of columbia are expanding their medicaid programs. the remaining states are still thinking about it or have decided against expanding. those 20 to 25 states account for about 42% of the people that would've been made eligible for expandedif all states medicare. our projection had a gradual expansion of medicaid eligibility enrollment and a gradual expansion of enrollment in the insurance exchanges.

we expected from the beginning that it would take some time and to sign up for these programs. we had a gradual expansion -- a gradual increase in the number of people enrolled and receiving subsidies through insurance exchanges. with the new projections -- the spring projections and there has been no change in that. we will do new projections early next year. [indiscernible] questions. [indiscernible]

>> on your first question, we projected the budget deficit would be $642 billion. the tax revenues will be a little less than we expected. federal outlays will probably be close to what we expected. the deficit will be a little larger. probably under $700 billion. there are tax receipts coming in this week. that is our sense as of the moment. i mentioned some of the key provisions that matter the most for those numbers. the scenario includes

replacement of the sustainable growth rate mechanism. that is how medicare pays doctors and incorporates the extension of some provisions that are scheduled to expire. such as the higher depreciation allowances. i think the biggest difference comes from turning off these enforcement mechanisms and from pushing back up the other categories of federal spending and from holding tax revenue around 18% of gdp, rather than .et tax revenue rise but not for real income growth. effects ofut the

this real bracket creep on the marginal tax rates and the average tax rates. they pay as a share of their income. the tax system would be quite different with its impact on people. because of the way the law will interact over time. [indiscernible] alternative fiscal scenario. ourollows the concept of ten-year baseline. medicare payments to doctors will be cut by about 25% at the beginning of next year. it was incorporated in the extended baseline projections.

scenario isive harder to sustain. we are showing the consequences of that. this is probably asking you to do apples and oranges math. there is a reduction in health care costs. but then there was a tax law change. how did those compared to each other in terms of the effect on the long-term outcome? law hashange in the tax a larger effect down the road then our vision to health-care year'sg relative to last extended baseline. the debt is a great deal larger.

wouldear we thoughtf debt come down from its current 70% 50% of gdp.ose to %e think it will go up to 100 of gdp over the next 25 years. the primary factor is the change in the tax receipts because of the change in law. gdp.out .6% t5o the change in tax law extended a lower tax rate for everyone except the highest income tax people.

capthing that congress had not letting happen, many more americans would have been paying some alternative minimum tax right away. congress basically fixed that problem by raising the threshold. the number of people affected by the alternative minimum tax rises but not very much over 25 years. those changes were large in the tenure budget window -- in the 10-year budget window. when there is a gap between spending and revenue, that adds to the debt. next year the interest payment on the debt is higher. these things can snowball. ofse are a little over 1%

gdp today. as interest comes rates return to a more normal level. as debt rises, the servicing costs rise as well. [indiscernible] >> whatever we have done, $2 trillion -- >> there is more work to do to stabilize the debt. i gave a talk last week that --ow a projection of debt i and the projection were made early this year. these are ten-year rejections. 35% of gdp and we

thought it would decline. downturn andnomic would have pushed down revenues. policymakers took deliberate action to help households, stabilize the financial system and the economy. ost.e policies had cause our 2013 projection is a little lower. i pray down the pieces in that -- i break down the pieces in that. we are at a high level of debt relative to gdp.

debt willent law, rise. -- debt inscenarios 2038 -- we set the amount outside the ten-year window. that isn't arbitrary decision. int policy leads to debt 2038 as below the current share of gdp. these are numbers we picked back in the spring. we are not trying to suggest a particular target that congress should have. the fort wayne dollar policy --

policy -- lion trillion would keep debt close to its current high share of gdp. trillion would push debt down. those are still large numbers. raising taxes to an alternative and to cut back on discretionary spending and some of the benefit programs but not to make fundamental changes in either social security or medicare or medicaid or to

collect more tax revenue. that is the basic choice. we have a set of programs. that set of programs will be much more expensive in the future then it has been in the past. we in the society have a fundamental choice. to cut programs or to raise taxes to pay for them. we have chosen to do very little of either. the projections will keep looking like this. >> i am with reuters. a question about interest rates. what does it look like under the scenario you are talking about? announced the signal of tapering programs -- [indiscernible]

view?at changed your checked, thei 80 basisrate was about points above what we projected it would be during the third quarter. we had been projecting that rates would rise quite a bit over the next several years. accelerationas an of something we thought was going to happen within a few years anyway. we would project higher interest costs in the next few years. in our projections from the spring, we had rate coming up a lot anyway. i do not think what happened the last few months we change our projections five years from now.

the market read on interest rates is not much different than it was earlier in the year. inhave seen an increase rates that has come sooner than expected but not something that would change the contours of our economic forecast. to something closer to their historical average, that increase in rates applied to debt has a huge effect on the interest payments. 3% of gdp.about --s that answer [indiscernible] if you picture a projection of interest rates and then leveling

off, we started up sooner than we thought. that would raise rejected costs. we were expecting a large increase anyway. doescreased early and that not change the path further down the road. situation get to a where the deficits are bigger -- itself. has an effect in chapter six of the report where we look at the economic the economicook at effects relative to the extended baseline. we think interest rates would be noticeably higher. we do not have a great

confidence in calibrating that increase. when we project the effects of debt on interest rates, we are drawing from historical perspective. in oneot just headed direction. a permanent upward trajectory, that would be out of line with what we have seen. we do not think we have an analytic basis for quantifying that effect. modelses on our standard between interest rates and debt and gdp. interest rates are higher that matters. we think we have greater uncertainty about projecting the

effects of paths of fiscal policy. >> that path you mentioned can only be cut in one direction. >> in that case we are on the high side. haveassume your studies we wanttal tables -- to focus -- >> that went up on the website 10:00 this morning. >> how do you deal with the evolution of the downward adjustment with the increase in [indiscernible]

that would address a concern of mine. --[indiscernible] we still have a high unemployment rate. [indiscernible] revising our spending projections, we have drawn on our own analysis of the data we have seen and the analysis of outside experts. a number of outside experts look at the causes in national health care spending and have attributed part of the slowdown to the ways in which the loss of

income has affected health care ficheart two the non- -- structural factors. two of my colleagues look at the slowdown in medicare spending and published a working paper in august. they were unable to link the slowdown in medicare spending growth to the business cycle conditions to the loss of wealth. they tried to look at the time series data. much more persuasively they look at microeconomic data, households that have suffered wealth loss. this brings other bad effects in those households do not have any reaction to that household spending.

oft leaves open the question if it is not the recession, what is it? this is and uncertain business. we try to quantify a number of other effects. changes in the payment rates that medicare makes. changes in weather people are enrolled in part a and part b. a whole set of factors they were able to quantify. there is another part of the paper that goes to a number of possible factors that are typical to quantify. they try to pull together the scraps of evidence to see what stories might've been more or less important. it does not lead to a clean, effect."re is the we are trying to make

projections and we want there to be equal chances that we are too high and too low. we have seen slow growth in medicare and medicaid over the past few years. construct projections for the future that balance risks. we might take the recent experience very seriously, given a lot of weight. just the rest of the slowdown -- breadth of the slowdown. it applies across regions and across beneficiaries with high and low health costs. it is a widespread phenomenon.

a second reason is the slowdown has been going on for some time. is half a dozen years or longer. is that we have not been able to link the medicare slowdown to the macro economic conditions. to putre three reasons limited weight in the last few years. the health spending growth has varied a lot in the past. previous periods have been followed by a pickup in growth. some of the stories one has he ard sound like some of the stories that are told today. we cannot rule out that

possibility. a second reason is there continues to be developments in the health care business. i am discussing a paper on thursday that looks at the cost slowdown. they talk about a number of areas where the taxes of health care continues to push in new and expensive directions. lull. have seen a a third reason to put less weight on the last several years is that medicare remains primarily a fee for service system. the incentive for providing more care are still there. there are some good reasons to put substantial weight on what we have seen over the past few

years and reasons to be cautious. we have projections that maintain slow growth of medicare and medicaid spending for several years. but a number of years from now, those rates come back up in our projection. the level of spending remains below what we have said a few years ago. we do not have a widening wedge in the long-term. a you provide some kind of [indiscernible] >> we provided pieces. it is not easy to pull this all together. our projections get revised for lots of reasons.

it is complicated to do these comparisons. we have said a number of places our projections of growth is about 15% below where it was in the spring of 2010. 2020 ofection in medicaid spending is about 15% where was a few years ago. that is a bigger difference than we have seen so far. it was about five percent in 2012. we have seen some of the slowdown and are projecting it to continue. the cap does not get that much wider later on. newsve taken some of the into our projection of the underlying rate of health care cost growth. there is a chart that looks at

last year's in this year's rejection of health spending growth. this year's is lower. most of that difference comes in the next few years. parallel.are close to [indiscernible] >> this report talks about the prices [indiscernible] i am wondering about your treasuryt for the [indiscernible] >> we plan to produce a volume

of budget options this fall. i will not be more specific than that. that is a daunting task for us. last time we had about 100 different options and a lot of writing to go with it. that work is underway. i do not know what else congress needs from us. --t we mean by fiscal crisis investors lose confidence in the government's ability to manage and will not lend government money at affordable interest rates. we have been clear that it surpasses our ability and we think anybody's ability to predict when such a point might be reached.

how long the nation can sustain ish growth and federal debt impossible to predict with any confidence. every country that has had that problem has different in some way. the united states is different from other countries in ways that matter. we do not have enough experience from this country or other countries for much we can untangle all of the other factors to produce some estimate about how much debt the country could have before it encounters that kind of problem. the answer would depend on what people thought would happen to fiscal policy in the future. it is not a matter of today's borrowing. a matter of confidence in the government ability to make

policy decision. i do not think there is a number out there that is the number. [indiscernible] absolutely. jackie. $4 trillion alternative. window.r 10-year can you quantify how much congress has achieved in that window? >> we have not done that. i highlighted a revision two different categories of the budget. categories there are wether has has not been -- did not try to work out the numbers.

>> there is a statement out of $2.5 trillion. is that in the ballpark? >> i do not speak about other people's comments. if we had an estimate, i would happily share that with you. trillion is on top of that? >> it is a general matter. we are giving congress a sense about where we are going. whatever they have done in the past has been accompanied by a collection of good and bad news out of the world. we have projections about where we are expecting to go into the future. that is what those numbers are based on. >> is there a reason you have

not done that activation? is it impossible to do? >> it is difficult to do. our projections get revised for a lot of reasons. to go back is a little challenging. not impossible, i think. think theis where we budget will go under the laws that are currently in place. whatever the goal was viewed to be three years ago, what matters is the situation as it stands now and what deficit and debt objectives that congress has. [indiscernible]

before.done this it is complicated to do. theur 10 year projection, economic projections are consistent with each other. -- itonomic projections true in most of this document. the basic budget rejections all .old the economy fixed income grows as it has tended to over the past. that is in the first several chapters. incorporaten and the effects of the economic impacts. % of gdp.hes 108

we have done that analysis in the past. there is a version of that in the june report. it whenlexity of doing fiscal policy is on and unsustainable course. that create special challenges. [indiscernible] can you shed any light on the -- [indiscernible] still a good deal of uncertainty about when the treasury will run out of cash. the treasury said it is expected to reach its borrowing limit in mid-october and to have about

$50 billion in cash at the time. that seems plausible to us. we think the treasury will probably run out of cash sometime between the end of october and mid-november, without some change in the borrowing limit. we will be releasing a short report next week that will provide our latest view at that time, including on information we can glean this week. the date on which the treasury will run out of money is likely to be concerned because federal cash flows bounce around from day to day. [indiscernible] >> yes. without some increase in the debt limit, the treasury will be

unable to meet their obligations sometime between mid-october and the end of november. .hat is a good note to end on well, i should emphasize we do the-- we are not engaged in day to day tax management of the government. we watch what is happening to federal spending and revenues. the toolse mechanics, they would have, we just do not know. the projection i offered was ofed on the set extraordinary measures that have now become fairly common. what else treasury may do, i do not know.

too late making certain payments is not something we can speak to making certain payments is not something we can speak to. [indiscernible] i have to think about that more carefully. -- if they end up not selling as much debt, maybe they could sell more on another date. i do not know how to think about your question. sense ating to offer a the point in which we think they would not have as much cash as they would need to make the payments they would normally make on that date. are thee might happen jobs of other people in this

town. ok. why don't we stop there. think you'll very much for coming. if you have further questions, we're happy to answer them. thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> congressional budget office douglas elmendorf answering questions about the long-term budget outlook by the cbo. we have linked to that report on our website. the u.s. house is a gaveling in for general speeches and back later with five bills on the calendar including one giving with native american giving

activities in arizona. that will be coming up later this afternoon, about 6:30. live coverage of the house now on c-span. the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's room, washington, d.c., september 17, 2013. i hereby appoint the honorable david g. valadao to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, john a. boehner, speaker of the house of representatives.

the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the order of the house of january 3, 2013, the chair will now recognize members from lists submitted by the majority and minority leaders for morning hour ebate. the chair will alternate recognition between the parties with each party limited to one hour and each member other than the majority and minority leaders and the minority whip each, to five minutes but not beyond 1:50 p.m. the chair recognizes mr. holding for five minutes. mr. holding: mr. speaker, i rise today in honor of national truck driver appreciation week. professional truck drivers in america deliver goods safely and on time to our hospitals, schools and local grossers each day and are vital of both our

local and our national economy. mr. speaker, last week i recently sat down with a number of my north carolina truck drivers and learned that their industry, like so many others in america, is facing a host of new rules and regulations by the federal government that is impacting their ability to retain current drivers and hire new ones. in north carolina right now, mr. speaker, there is a shortage of up to 15,000 truck drivers. these are good-paying jobs that an average salary of $50,000 and include benefits. in these difficult economic times, the federal government must be promoting policies that encourage companies to go out and hire that additional worker. trucking is a great example of such an industry. mr. speaker, professional truck drivers have a vested interest in keeping our roads safe, not only for our businesses but for everyone else that shares the

highway. let's commit, mr. speaker, to find sensible solutions that reduce burdensome regulations and keep our roads safe. thank you and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. pursuant to clause 12-a of rule 1, the chair declares the house 2:recess until

>> just want to welcome you here today. at the peterson foundation our mission is to increase awareness on the long-term fiscal challenges. so we're very pleased to be working with "politico" in partnering to bring these issues, these important fiscal issues to the national discussion. we hosted an earlier breakfast with senator portman and we're glad to have representative

steny hoyer, house democratic whip, andess a leader that's earned respect for both sides because he's worked to find consensus on policies in the fiscal area. we're pleased to have him here today and discuss these important issues. later today the c.b.o. will be coming out with the long-term budget forecast, the update for 2013, and although there's been a lot of talk of debt and deficit over the last several years and though progress has been made, the long-term structural challenges have been made. we've done some of the easiest things, stupidest things with the sequester but haven't done a lot of the important things. so these upcoming fiscal challenges with the debt ceiling and the continuing resolution and some of the issues that are coming in the next several weeks represent another opportunity to get things right and put the nation on a long-term fiscal path that's sustainable. we're very much looking forward to have representative steny hoyer with us today and we welcome him. thank you. >> thank you, mr. peterson. return the mike. thank you for making these

conversations possible and don't have any further delay, i'd like to introduce steny hoyer, congressman and democratic whip. [applause] >> congressman, thank you for joining us. obviously a bit of a tough day in washington today, tragic events yesterday at the navy yard. i think we need to talk a little bit about that to start before we get into the fiscal matters that we'll discuss. question for you, first, is there anything new that you can tell us? obviously you had constituents affected by this terrible event. anything new you can tell us this morning about what you know transpired and then the larger question is, will this event start a new conversation about gun control? is there anything that can be done on capitol hill at this point on gun control given we've seen past efforts fail in this regard, and there are laws

that are currently not on the books that could be on the books that would have stopped something from this happening? >> i don't know about the facts. we'll find out in the coming days. i lost three constituents. they lost their lives that were working at the navy yard. two of them lived in charles county and one of them in st. mary's county, the county in which i live. i'm sure that it will renew the discussions about access to weapons that can be used to kill a lot of people quickly. we have seen, however, in colorado, just in the past weeks, two legislators who had the courage to vote for legislation which simply asks that we do a background check so we know who's getting guns which 80% to 85% of the american public say is a sensible policy. notwithstanding that, these two

legislators were recalled in a special election. now, one can analyze who comes out to special elections, but it does not bode well for asking people to vote for legislation similar to that which went down in the senate just a few months ago. but i'm sure it will renew the debate and the discussion as it should. >> in terms of his access to the navy yard, appeared to have security clearance despite some very troubling events in his background, the alleged shooter. can you tell us anything about how he got that access, is that something you'll be looking into? it seems like there was some serious breach of security there. >> i don't have additional information. you're right. it's something that must be looked into. again, what we have seen in so many of these instances are that the perpetrators have given previous indication of instability.

even inclinations to use weapons. and to talk about violence. whether they did so on a website, whether they did so with colleagues or classmates. in almost every one of these instances we've seen the perpetrators be people who individuals thought were unstable and thought, in this case apparently, this guy was prone to violence. he shot the tires out of a neighbor's vehicle. he shot through the ceiling of another neighbor. he was given a general discharge from the navy. so there was no doubt this was somebody who had a record of instability and certainly should have been, i think, subject to closer scrutiny. particularly in access to a facility such as the navy yard, or any facility that has large numbers of people in it, that

has security concerns in the united states. >> all right. of course, all of our thoughts and prayers go out to your constituents and their families in this difficult time. i want to switch to some of the economic and fiscal matters before us, starting with the next chairperson of the federal reserve. we saw larry sommers, former treasury secretary, withdrawal his name from consideration over the weekend by all accounts. he was the administration's first choice, the president's first choice for chairman of the fed. first, do you think it was the right thing for larry to do to pull his name out of consideration? obviously you are on the house side. if you think he would have gone to the senate he would be confirmed as treasury secretary? >> i don't know the answer to the second question. i worked with him both when he was deputy secretary with bob ruben in the clinton

administration. i found him to be extraordinarily competent, knowledgeable, respected, and i know that the president relied heavily on him for economic advice and felt strongly about his capabilities. i have not talked to larry sommers, but my conclusion is e decided that the controversy that would be surrounding the appointment would undermine the confidence that we need to have in the federal reserve. and so i think in a very responsible way he made a determination that he did not want to further politicize or create controversy within the federal reserve. so i think he probably did the right thing, certainly from his perspective, but he's a person of immense capability and will continue to contribute. >> do you think fed vice chair janet yellin is the best pick for the president now that sommers is out of contention or are there other candidates?

>> i think she would be an excellent appointee. i think she enjoys wide respect and i think she would be somebody that would be confidence-building of the federal reserve. but there are others as well. this is the choice the president will make and i hope he'll make it relatively soon so we can stabilize because i think given the other economic turmoil we're going to talk about, having the federal serve as a stable, respected institution that gives confidence to the marketplace, very important. >> do you think the administration is taking too long in making this appointment? one of the arguments from folks who were supportive of larry sommers, is had they moved more quickly some of the opposition could have coalesced and he would have gotten through the senate faster. are we at a point of this nomination not having been made is having an impact on the

economy? >> i certainly think at this point in time making this appointment as soon as possible will be helpful, yeah. let's talk a little bit about the coming can he bait over the continuing resolution. -- debate over the continuing resolution. obviously we have little time between now and the end of the fiscal year and the start of the 2014 fiscal year. to tie it into the sommers question, there are some who say the president not able to get the nominee he wanted to the fed, unable to marshal support for a resolution in congress to have use of force in syria that he's operating for a fairly weak hand and the power center in the democratic party has moved to the left, going to be very difficult for the president and democrats in the house and senate to come to an agreement with republicans that continues to fund the government. first of all, do you think the president's hand is weakened now? does he have limited support in congress, particularly among more liberal democrats? >> i think the president has good support in the congress and the united states. there was controversy clearly

egarding syria in the country. i think the president has been successful in attaining a substantial movement on the removal of chemical weapons. it remains to be seen whether the russians and the syrians will be good to their road, but nevertheless, i don't think any of us would have predicted the kind of progress that's been made over the last 10 days on the issue of chemical weapons in syria. so i think that's been -- and it was attained, in my opinion, because the president was illing to use military force to undermine the ability of the syrian regime to use weapons and to degrade the future militarily. so i think he showed resolve and i think it's had results. the test will be in the coming

weeks, of course. but the u.n. report that came out confirms almost absolutely the president's representations and the intelligence community's findings. so i think from that standpoint he's had the -- not only the united nations saying chemical weapons were being used but from all of the information you gleamed from their report there seems to be an almost inescapeable conclusion that it was the syrian regime that used it. so from both standpoints -- now, on the economic front, i think the president continues to enjoy broad-based support in the -- on our side of the aisle. i think there's nobody in the democratic party that wants to shut down the government. the president clearly does not want to shut down the government. i think we're talking about tactics of how to make sure we don't do that. >> let's talk about tactics and

the substance of what might be done to avoid that shutdown. you've had a pretty hard line on eliminating sequester as part of any continuing resolution. it's hard to see any scenario under which republicans agree to that. so how do you get a bill out of the house that continues to fund the government? if you say democrats won't support something that doesn't get rid of sequester, republicans obviously are having their own difficult time finding a vehicle to continue to fund the government that does or doesn't defund obamacare, but is there a way to pass a bill out of the house that gets rid of the sequester, at this point? >> well, my observation has been that the republicans have a large number of their caucus, their conference that are obsessively obstructionists, who are so focused on defunding obamacare, which is something that none of their leaders reasonably believe is going to happen. and in terms of getting

progress, there are many republicans who agree with rid of s that getting obamacare is not going to happen and that the sequester is irrational. let me read, if i can -- i'm going to call this the first book of rogers. and i'm going to use this as my text in the coming weeks. and i'll read from the first chapter -- first two verses. [laughter] "with this his -- action -- this action was pulling the transportation-h.u.d. appropriation bill which was being passed consistent with the republican budget from the floor because they couldn't get the votes for this. "with this action," quoting chairman rogers, conservative from kentucky, chairman of the appropriations committee -- "with this action the house has declined to proceed on the

implementation of the very budget it adopted just months ago. rogers -- meaning hal -- "believe that sequestration, the ill conceived discretionary cuts must be brought to an and." he goes on to say, "the house and senate and white house must come together as soon as possible on a comprehensive compromise that repeals sequestration, takes the nation from this lurching path from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis, reduces our deficits and debt and provides a realistic top line discretionary level to fund the government in a responsible and attainable way." i think that hal rogers, chairman of the appropriations committee, reflects at least half of their caucus' opinion. question, just

prognosticate for us. it's hard for me to see how we get to a deal on this before the government shutdown, given where we are at this moment. what does that deal look like in your view when we get there, what does that cap, discretionary spending cap that you'd like to see and just paint for us a picture of a bill that can pass the house and then get approved by the senate that continues to fund the government, what will be in it? >> first, where we are in context. in august of 2011, we adopted a budget control act. that budget control act cut $1.2 trillion over 10 years. very, very substantial. probably the largest single reduction in government spending that we've had in the time i've been in congress. that would have called for a spending level in this coming

fiscal year of $1.058 trillion, which was about $110 billion less than or almost 10% less discretionary spending. now, these numbers are lost on the citizens when they hear cut government spending, we need to get government spending under control, there is no republican who says, and, by the way, we cut $1.2 trillion. but that's the fact. the other figure is $1.043 trillion, which would be the next follow-on of that budget control act for fiscal year 2014, an additional cut. and then you have two other figures. the $988 billion, which is the sequester number from that $1.058 or $1.043 trillion number and the continuing sequester number for fiscal year 2014. the reason i go through that, you have four numbers. obviously at the low end of the paul ryan budget of 967 which of course hal rogers says -- >> doesn't like.

>> not only does he not like it, and this is a conservative republican from kentucky, this is not a moderate republican from new york or california. >> god forbid. [laughter] >> you know, would have no credibility, right? and he says it's unattainable. what he needs, i served with hal rogers for a long time on the appropriations committee. it is inconsistent with the responsibilities of operating government at a responsible level. from a conservative level standpoint. either on the defense side or nondefense side. discretionary spending. as a result, normally the senate has a $1.058 number. the house has a 967 number. split the difference. so you're talking about $1.2, let's say, $1.02, for the secretary of argument. that would be a possible compromise. the problem is you have

mebody twhants to be republican united states senator that is trying to get in the good graces, mark rubio, saying i will not vote for a c.r. unless it defunds obamacare. something that clearly mr. rubio's got to know is not possible. and an irrational ask for the president to get the signature. where do we find ourselves? we have mr. boehner knowing in is unreasonable and mr. cantor so they tried to construct a policy which would say to their republican hard liners, these obsessive obstructionists, you can vote for defunding obamacare, but we'll have a procedure so that the senate can reject it and then pass without sending back to us a -- in this case, 988. >> that didn't work out. >> and that didn't work out because heritage foundation,

freedom works, other very conservative groups in the republican party on the outside were going to score this and demand their members to be, in my opinion, continue to be obstructionists and unreasonable in what they would expect the other side and rejecting a compromise. compromise is the key. what do i think is attainable? i think frankly, i think mr. rogers and another 100 republicans or 80 republicans need to join the democrats in reaching a reasonable compromise. the democrats understand that we're not going to get our $1.058 trillion, which the budget control act called for. my own view is we need get a compromised figure and we need to eliminate the sequester, we need to repeal the sequester. i think there are a good number of republicans who could vote for that but for the fact they're terrified of tea party opponents.

>> will you oppose any continuing resolution that says not cancel the sequester? >> i'll oppose anything that goes out of the house that doesn't eliminate the squer because i believe the continuation of the sequester is damaging to our government, damaging to our economy and damaging to our national security. >> let's say we get passed the continuing resolution into october. we're immediately going to run into the debt ceiling rich ue and the treasury running out of pecial moves to -- stall a default and a real crisis, the debt ceiling will have to be raised by mid october. republicans continuing to say they'll support only a debt limit increase with a commensurate dollar-for-dollar equal measure of spending cuts. also long-term entitlement reforms. are there any entitlement reforms on the table now that democrats could accept as part

of an agreement with republicans that raises the debt ceiling, chained c.p. requirement? >> i think the president offered that in his budget and he's made it very clear that that offer is on the table. as you know, ben, i'm one of those democrats -- and i've spoken out over the last two, three years, -- we need a balanced big deal. need a domenici-rivlin, simples-bowles, gang of six, resolution to this -- simpson-bowles, gang of six, resolution to get us on a fiscally sustainable path where we create a consensus that understands that we are on a path that will get us from where we are to where we need to be. now, we ought to emphasize we have the budget deficit. the president said he'll have the budget deficit in four years. it took him four years and some months. so the budget deficit is coming

down. but over the long term we need to deal with both revenues and sides ents, and both have very strong opponents on that side of the equation. but almost every bipartisan group that's met said you have to deal with both. that's when rogers says we need a compre hencive resolution. >> -- comprehensive resolution. >> is there democratic support? >> i think. if it's comprehensive. and i will say this in the sense that when speaker boehner and president obama reached, in , speaker deal, pelosi, leader reid, mr. durbin and myself met with the president and we indicated to him that we would support that deal. we didn't think it was the president deal. thought there ought to be another increment of revenue to

balance off any entitlement cuts, or reductions in growth as opposed to cuts, that we would support that. i think there is support in the -- >> support for a deal that doesn't include any new revenue because it's clear that republicans won't support anything that touches revenue again. >> again, if you say it's clear they won't support -- >> i don't have any reason to support that otherwise. >> is it clear that democrats won't support any restraints in entitlement growth? i don't think that's clear. frankly, i don't think it's clear on the other side. i tell you i talk to republicans and i will not out them. [laughter] because it will be dangerous for them in their primaries, which is what they're concerned about. they're not concerned about losing over democrats. they're concerned about losing over to a very, very conservative republican. let me give you an example. delaware.

mike castle was defeated. indiana, richard lugar was defeated. sharon engel became the candidate in nevada. todd akin in missouri. arguably, had moderate republicans won any of those districts it would be difficult for the democrat to win. so the problem we have getting to revenues is, yes, you're right. there have been some very hard line stances taken on revenues, and those people -- many of those people were the same that said if we adopted the clinton program in 1993, i.e., dick army, freedom works, the economy was going to go down the crane. exactly the opposite happened. we stabilized our finances. we gave confidence to the markets and we had the best economy we've seen. >> tax reform is another issue that's critical to a lot of folks in this office -- in this office -- this audience. would be a big office. want to bring in rachel from

"politico" who has a question on tax reform. i think she's right there. >> hi. can you hear me? >> i can. >> thanks for being here. >> thank you. >> so right now we know that house republicans are really trying to push comprehensive tax reform. come out with a tax reform draft. there's been talk about linking tax reform to the debt ceiling. obama has proposed sort as a corporate-only tax reform. so my question for you is, where is your caucus? where are the democrats on reform for individuals? is that something you guys want even though the president has not necessarily pushed for it? and if so, what kinds of concrete steps are you guys willing to take in order to actually get reform going? would you guys ever be open to a debt ceiling -- linking it to the debt ceiling or something of that nature, for instance? our side et me say on of the capitol, sandy levin and the democrats on the ways and means committee has been

participating very positively with the sort of working groups that chairman camp has established. i think those were positive, bipartisan, and have been useful efforts. they have not led to an agreement, as you know, at this point in time. in my own view, we are certainly opened both on the individual side as well as the corporate side to tax reform. as a matter of fact, everybody in washington's for tax reform. right up until the time you say what it is. tax reform conceptually, everybody believes the tax code , too complicated, too long too uneven and its impact on individuals and the corporate level. warren buffett's observation that his secretary pays a higher rate than he does is obviously something that is i shall rational and unacceptable.

as a result -- is irrational and unacceptable. as a result, we need not only need to simplify it, we need to ationize it in terms of -- rationalize of it one pays a higher effective rate than their neighbor, which obviously makes them unhappy and believing the system is unfair. so the problem i see is that i've been in congress for 33 years, that's not the problem. i hope. i have not seen any major tax reform -- i've seen tax changes, but tax reform that has not had a president and a bipartisan congress working in league to obtain it because it is extraordinary difficult objective and unless you have a

large consensus and a working together of both parties and the executive and the legislative body, it's almost unobtainable. 1986 is the last time that happened. that was a very significant and important step forward. we ought to take another step like that but whether or not we can in this context i think is doubtful. -- there is a hostage taking on the debt limit and that hostage is the debt limit and the pay-for is tax reform that republicans want as opposed to bipartisan tax reform, it's not going to work, in my view. i think it's very doubtful we'll see tax reform this year or in this congress. but we need it and democrats and republicans are working together. you see on the senate side where senator baucus and senator hatch are working together. they came up with the zero sum

game to start out with. every interest group in town was energized by that proposal. >> speaking of hostage taking, if you take hostages, the only way that scenario works is if you're willing to kill the hostage on the debt limit. do you think there is a real risk that we get very close to the point of being unable to borrow further at the treasury and to default given the differences on the fiscal issues and insistence among republicans on either defunding obamacare or cutting spending in a way that democrats would never expect? wall street, everybody i talked to there said we'll go through the same song and dance. we'll get a c.r., we'll get a debt limit increase. we ask them how that happens, they don't have an answer for it. is it a riskier scenario than we've seen previously given how

polarized the two parties seem to be right at this moment? >> i think it's riskier and i think it's riskier because what you saw in what boehner was trying to do on the c.r. and cantor were trying to do on the c.r. you saw the heritage and frimed works all very energized in a very hard line, we're going to score this vote mode, which is, as i said, republicans for the most part are concerned, not about generals, but about primaries. and they're concerned about the funding from these very, very rdline right groups, right-wing groups. and i think in that context we're at greater risk. the irony is that boehner and cantor would both tell you if they were on this stage, not

extending the debt limit is an irrational, dangerous, economically devastating policy. my presumption is mcconnell would say the same thing. he has had the same thing in the past. ronald reagan said it. and i won't read you that verse, but i've got it in my pocket. >> enough scripture for another day. >> that's enough scripture for another sermon. ronald reagan agreed on that so that almost all the leaders, and certainly every former republican president, believes it's taking that hostage is a hostage you don't want to kill. taking that hostage that if you killed that hostage would kill the economy and undermine the stability of the country and give to the world an extraordinarily negative view of the united states' ability to manage its own affairs. the president's made it very clear and i agree with him. he's not going to negotiate. he's not going to negotiate

with something that is fundamental to america's stability, that republican leaders have said ought not to be put at risk. but their politics are putting it at risk. hopefully they'll retrieve from that a bit. >> want to remind folks, you can tweet questions, #morningmoney. we'll take a couple of them. take one now because i think it speaks to this. and it doesn't seem like there's any prospect that we get to a point where we're not lurching from crisis to crisis on the fiscal front, that every past piece of legislation on funding the government will be a knockdown dragout fight for the foreseeable future unless we get back to budget regular order. 16 years operating without a budget, only c.r.'s, will congress pass one, doesn't even matter? are there prospects for getting back to regular orders on budget and funding the

government? >> first off, let me make a discloseure out front, i was an operator for 23 years. the -- appropriator for 23 years. the budget only does one thing. can set up a reconciliation process, which is meaningful, particularly in the senate, not so much in the house. it sets a top line for discretionary spending and it gives the top line for the appropriators that then allocate that gross amount of discretionary spending between the 12 subcommittees so that you can operate relatively easily without a budget because the budget, the budget control act, which we passed in august of 2011, sets a top number for spending. republicans would argue that was the upper number and that we can do something below that. talk at dispute aside, we a lot about budget. it gets a lot of focus. but it's the appropriation bills that apply money.

in maryland, from which i came from, 12 years in the senate, the budget is the budget. it's a unified document. it does the spending. the president sends it down. the president doesn't participate in the budget process. it's not a law, in that sense, so that you don't need a budget. what you do need, however, is an appropriation process that works, that has hearings, determines priorities, determines that which is being done that doesn't need to be done and cuts that spending out. and applies resources to things that needs to be done and we have greater opportunities. that process is broken. that process being broken undermines our stability of government. and of course it's undermine because we don't have a context in which the -- which the budget does establish of an agreed upon spending level. and so we have this extraordinary discrepancy between the 967 of the ryan

trillion. the $1.058 that's a difference and a large umber to compromise. but it has led the senate to not pass an appropriation bill on their level. interesting thing in the house, we did pass three bills. we passed them at the $1.058 trillion. with the remaining bills, t- hud, cut far below the 967 because you had to prefund the others. so it's clear that the budget process ought to work better. what really must be conis the appropriation process needs to get back to a position where agreement is possible. >> want to open it up to audience questions in just a minute. so think of some good wubs and we'll get a mike to you. want to just go back to politics for a minute and talk about democrats' prospects for

taking back the house. the conventional wisdom is it's not possible, not enough competitive districts for democrats to make anywhere near a number of gains you need. do you think that's true? do you see a prospect for a democratic house in the next congress? >> yes, i co. >> that's shocking that you would say that. [laughter] and how do you get there? >> all right. let me get back to it. >> let's go district by district. >> no, i'm not going to go district by district. but i am going to go back to the example i gave all of you. charlie cook, i said, charlie cook, i understand historically you might think it's difficult for the democrats to take bass the house. what is easy in my view is for the republicans to lose the house. let me go back to delaware. these are senators. go back to delaware. mike castle wins that primary. i think mr. coons has trouble winning that election. if mr. lugar is renominated by the party, joe donnelly -- i

urged joe not to run. i said you can't beat richard lugar. i think i was right. the good news from joe's standpoint, he didn't have to. claire mccaskill was most threatened democratic senator in the last cycle. todd akin. and in nevada, sharon engel, the tea party put sharon engel the candidate against senator reid and i think was helpful for senator reid. what you're seeing in the republican party was, as i mentioned, the hard line -- i would call it the radical right -- is not allowing the appropriation process to go forward and threatening members if you cooperate in any way, mike simpson, who i think is one of the most solid, reasonable, commonsense, conservative house of representatives. chair of a subcommittee in the appropriation committee, former idaho house is

being contested by a tea party person because he's not conservative enough. why? because he believes there needs to be a balanced deal. i don't know if hal rogers will get a hard opponent. i don't believe americans are there. i don't believe independents are there. i think moderate republicans and independents are going to reject this hard right, take no prisoners, shut down the government, repeal obamacare. the repeal obamacare, when you talk to the american public, they say, no, fix it. they may not like it, but they say fix it, make it better. make it work for me and my family. they don't say, repeal it. when you say the republicans have been talking about repeal with no alternative for 2 1/2 years, they don't like that. so i any there is a definite possibility that we democrats would take back the house. steve israel has done a wonderful job recruiting. excellent candidates around the country. and i think that we certainly

have a very good chance of taking back the house. >> questions for congressman hoyer from the audience. we have one in the back there. if you just wait for the icrophone. >> hi. dave, l.r.p. publications. i just have two questions. the first, i just want to make sure, are you basically indicating that the c.r. that came out of the republicans -- in the appropriations committee, that would be something that you don't believe that democrats or particularly president obama would support? and then i guess the second one is inside washington beltway thing. there's been an issue with regard to pay raise for federal employees and obviously that's been cut. do you -- is there any chance of that coming in a final version of whatever is passed or is that probably going to have to be sufficed again? >> well, it won't -- sacrificed

again? >> well, it won't shock you that i'm for giving our federal employees a cost-of-living adjustment. not a pay raise. they are not going to get a pay raise. but cost-of-living adjustment. that has historically been what we've done over the years and we've done so in parody with the armed forces so they move together with equality. the republicans have a abandoned that process. in my opinion, this republican congress and the last republican congress has treated federal employees worse than at anytime in my career in the congress of the united states. i think that's damaging to the federal service. it's damaging to our ability to recruit and damaging to our ability to retain the kind of talent we need in the federal government that the american people need and the federal government. following a are very unwise federal employee policy. now, let me make it clear.

back in 1998 and 1999, i was supportive of a zero cola at that point in time. the economy was in rough shape. people were losing their jobs and we needed to pull our belt in a notch. and i talked to my friends and you didn't hear much -- there wasn't a great deal of controversy about that. but now we're carrying it forward. the military, on the other hand, has received raises so at the pentagon you have somebody in uniform and somebody in civis, in civilian clothes, working one desk next to one another doing exactly the same job and one receiving a cost-of-living adjustment and the other not. both of their services are valued and we ought to reflect that in our policies. secondly -- and i guess i answered them in the reverse order -- i'm not sure what c.r. the republicans are offering so it's did i have to -- because they don't know, in my opinion,

right now. they are trying to figure out what can get the number of votes. s they did on the farm bill, i expect them to move right, not to the center, not to compromise. they have not been very inclined to compromise. so i expect them to move the right. i expect them to have a c.r. that will have in fact the defunding of obamacare in it which perhaps garner them the votes of the hard liners in their caucus which are 40 to 80 of them i think probably in in a range. and they will pass that perhaps with a reckless number of votes, although it would be interesting to see how a guy like hal rogers does. i haven't talked to him about that. that wasn't in his text, but i don't believe he thinks that's a rational policy. and in fact, you know, senator burr of north carolina said that's the dumbest thinked he ever heard of. he knows that's not going to happen. so the question is, i don't

know what c.r. they're going to come out with. if the c.r. comes out initially, without repealing the sequester, which is, as i told you, i think is very harmful to the operations, the effective operations of government, to the growth of the economy and to the maintenance of our national security, then i will oppose it and would urge my members to oppose it. >> i wish we had time for audience questions. i know the congressman has a need to get back up to the hill. you have a little bit of work to do there in the next few days. >> you see how much work we're doing up there. -- forbid i miss it. >> hopefully you don't adjourn. thank you for coming out. >> thank you. [applause] >> appreciate it. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national able satellite corp. 2013]

>> and leader hoyer and the rest of the u.s. house gaveling in at 4:00 p.m. eastern. five bills on the calendar, including one dealing with native american gaming in arizona. another one on a u.s.-korea agreement on nuclear energy. also, the senate today taking up their energy efficient bill. follow the senate on c-span2 and the house here on c-span. a live look at the capitol with the flag at half staff in

memory of the victims of yesterday's navy yard shooting. within the hour, navy secretary has ordered review. tweeting a review of every u.s. navy and marine corps in the u.s. to make sure we live up to our responsibility of taking care of our people. tony of bloomberg says that review will be led by admiral illiam -- the review will be done by october 1. we'll hear about it from the white house briefing with jay carney. we'll have that live for you. until then, part of this morning's "washington journal" looking at yesterday's u.n. report on syria. >> the united nations opens its 68th session amid a challenging time for the international community. joining us now to talk about the u.n., including its role in

syria, is susan glasser, editor of "politico" magazine. let's start with that u.n. report on chemical weapons used in syria that was just released yesterday. what's your biggest takeaway from that report? guest: you know, clearly it's a significant moment. this is the first time there's been an independent confirmation, both of the use of chemical weapons, the scale of the killing. there are details about how the weapons were fired. u.n.'s mandate here was not to come to a definitive conclusion as far as the culpability, who actually fired the weapons. it's very interesting to see the immediate reaction where you have the united states and the allied partners like france. and this proves that the syrian president, al-assad, fired the weapons. you have the russians, despite the deal cut the other day by he united states, you have the russians say we believe it was

actually the rebel troops. but the united states and its partners has their own intelligence findings in addition to that in the report to say there's fairly overwhelming evidence to suggest these were fired by the government. host: let's talk about the evidence and the conclusions that were in that actual report. we mentioned the report earlier today for our viewers, but here's reading straight from the u.n. report which you can also find on c-span's website. the conclusions of that report note that on the basis of the evidence obtained during our investigation of the ghouta incident --

host: what evidence in this is the u.s. pointing to when they come to their conclusion that this shows that it was the government? guest: well, in particular, the united states has cited the fact that these were the kind of weapons that were needed to be under the command and control of an organized military in order to be fired. this is not the kind of capability that the united states assesses that the rebels have at this moment. in addition, they believe and the report cites where the trajectory of the rockets. to say they were coming from government-held positions and that the rebels and into rebel-held territory. there's what certainly would suggest to be an overwhelming amount of circumstancal evidence on this. ban ki-moon, the u.n. secretary general, has not spoken to assign exact responsibility for these. he did use the release of the report yesterday to call this a

war crime explicitly and to point out this is the most serious use of a weapon of mass destruction in the 21st century. host: we're talking with susan glasser, "politico" magazine editor about the u.n. and its role in syria right now, the challenges facing the u.n. our phone lines are open. democrats can call in 202-585-3880. republicans, 202-585-3881. independents, 202-585-3882. and if you're outside the u.s. it's 202-585-3883. while you're dialing in, want to show you yesterday, u.s. ambassador to the u.n., samantha power, responded to the release of the u.n. inspector's report that we have been talking about today. want to play you a bit about what she said. >> as you've already heard from the secretary general and from my colleague, ambassador lyle

grant, the u.n. report confirms unmistakably that chemical weapons were used in syria on august 21. now, the mandate of the chemical weapons team was, as you well know, was not to investigate culpability but the technical details of the u.n. report make clear that only the rejackson lee could have carried out this large-scale chemical weapons attack. we will analyze the u.n.'s findings in greater detail very carefully. but based on our preliminary review, i will note one particular observation. we have associated one type of nition cited in the u.n. report, .122 millimeter rockets with previous regime attacks. we have reviewed thousands of open source videos related to the current conflict in syria and have not observed the opposition manufacturing or using this style of rocket. in addition -- and i just wand

to underscore something that ambassador lyle grant shared -- in response to a question from russia, the quality of the sarin was higher than that of the sarin used in saddam hussein's program. host: we're talking with susan glasser, editor of "politico" magazine. we are talking about this kept kemcal weapons report. where does this go from here? what happens now? guest: that's a very good question because this past weekend the united states and russia came to an agreement under which they would require syria over a fairly rapid period both to disclose all of its chemical weapons and then to submit to international inspection with the goal of removing that chemical weapons arsenal over the next six months as quickly as possible. it's a very ambitious schedule. it's both a very significant agreement but one fraught with

a lot of potential roadblocks along the way. it's not entirely clear. as you saw yesterday, as the u.s. and russia had wildly different interpretations of this u.n. report that the two parties came together to agree that syria should give up its chemical weapons. can the united states and russia continue to work together on this or will there be points at which they are immediately disagreeing whether syria is in good faith, honoring the agreement, whether it's just buying for time? there's a lot of real questions about the implementation of this agreement. host: and talk about what that agreement asks of the u.n. in the coming months and perhaps years. guest: well, look, the united nations has in the past and i think again will be called upon to, you know, be the main guarantor in fact such an agreement supplying weapons inspectors, asking them to go into a very dangerous situation on the ground with a raging civil war to verify not only

the size and scale of this chemical weapons arsenal that assad, after denying for years, has now acknowledged that he has and said he's going to give it up. but will the inspectors be able to find all the chemical weapons? will they be able to ensure that we have a clear sense of ei are being eliminated? and then, of course, the destruction of chemical weapons is an enormous, elaborate, complicated and time-consuming process. host: is the u.n. up to the task? do they have the funding and the staffing and the resources to carry out all those things, along with the other missions they are being asked to do? guest:le u.n. has real expertise in this area of weapons monitoring and in particular of overseeing destruction of chemical weapons, as is the united states and russia. i should point out that actually the u.s. and russia presented a model for cooperation in the aftermath of the collapse of the soviet

union. the u.s. and russia worked successfully together over years on monitoring and destruction of chemical weaponses. i visited many years ago the destruction facility in gorney in russia which even two decades, by the end of the way, after the end of the cold war they were hard at work dismantling those weapons. that's how long it takes. it's a very elaborate process. host: what kinds of weapons were they doing there? was it the sarin gas? guest: i think it was that along with other kinds of other chemical weapons. host: some stats on u.n. peacekeeping efforts around the country. it's supported by 193 member states. the u.n. currently has 16 missions across four continents right now. the largest one is in darfur, about 26,000, 27,000 personnel are in partnership with the african union there in darfur. that mission was established in 2007. we're going to go to the phones

now to chat with susan glasser, the editor of "politico" magazine. give us a call. phone lines are open. from columbia, maryland. go ahead. caller: thank you very much for taking my call. .

guest: if the u.n. report didn't conclude and wasn't set up to conclude who was guilty in this chemical weapons attack, where do we look for a definitive answer? the united states and its allies have said they have what they believe to be evidence beyond their own doubt about the guilt of the assad regime in this circumstance, but the russians continue to be fairly effective advocates on behalf of the syrian government. at least in muddying the waters. there is at least raising a question out there about the guilt. again, the u.s. seems fairly

certain in addition to the report their own intelligence sources suggest very strongly that this was an action by government-controlled forces against the people. host: talk about how this report's being viewed around the world. i know did you a little bit. on twitter, the u.n. report is more political than factual and it tries to keep russia and china happy. your take? guest: well, i think anything that stops short of assigning blame explicitly in the report certainly would be greeted with more favor by the russians and chinese. in fact the russians have exactly what we expected, which is to -- although there is no real evidence in the report to suggest this, gone ahead and said that the report somehow proves that the rebels launched this attack. i think the politics of the security council are never far removed from the question of the u.n. and its effectiveness and russia and china will the veto

very effectively as positioning to give them a seat in the table in world affairs, and they have been very explicit throughout the two years of this syrian crisis in refusing to allow the security council to take action up until now. it's fair to say that anything that comes out of the u.n. security council is gamed at gathering the votes on russia and china or at least stopping them from explicitly wielding their veto. host: clifford from massachusetts on our independent line. clifford, you're on with susan glaser politico magazine. caller: hi, susan. have a certain here with all the chess we have done i think the u.s. is in a poor position of losing a lot of credibility. the russians and chinese and are masters at delay tactics and being able to throw off all these other comments. i'm all for a political

solution, but with the delay tactics that are even being deployed now, we could be eight years or a year and a half still talking about this same issue. what are we going to do to expedite this? what consequences are you going to have if we don't move on this? what if the russians continue to be an advocate of the syrians? guest: i think the caller has really sort of pointed out what the foreign challenge is on the table here for president obama. a question of ability. he's invested his credibility in with the russians. on the one hand he has to follow through, give this settlement a chance to work otherwise you risk undermining his credibility. he's made a handshake deal with the russians. he can't exactly immediately renege on it. at the same time, credibility was one of the main reasons that obama cited for his initial willingness to launch a military

strike in retaliation for this chemical weapons attack because he had very memorably just a year ago in august announced that he was imposing, in effect, a red line on the use of chemical weapons in the syrian conflict. he was warning assad a year ago that if you use chemical weapons there would be serious consequences. o, in fact, it was his credibility that was cited as the reason that he needed to go forward with the threat of a military strike. that was certainly the argument he heard behind closed doors from partners in the regions like saudi arabia and qatar who have strongly been supporting the rebels in the syrian fight. and they have very strongly made the case if obama did not launch some sort of military attack, or at least a credible threat of military action, he was undermining u.s. credibility. right now it seems like u.s. credibility potentially is at stake, which ever course

president obama pursues. host: you brought up russia several times now. what have we learned about the dynamics of the u.s.-russia relationship within the u.n. as a result of what's happened so far in syria? guest: that certainly has been one of the most fascinating subplots of this story, as someone who lived in moscow for four years as a "washington post" correspondent there, i have been fascinated to see this turn of events. over the last two years the u.s. has tried and failed, tried and failed to engage the russians in a real conversation over a diplomatic tract to ending the syrian conflict. so it's particularly striking that we should have this dramatic 11th hour deal here. and i think what it suggests is as has long been the case, even at a time of real tension between the united states and russia -- remember, this is a time of real tension. president obama canceled his meeting with putin weeks ago.

he refused to show. why? because president putin had decided to harbor snoweden, the n.s.a. fugitive. there was a sense the russians had nothing on the agenda that could come out of a summit meeting with the united states. there was a real breeze in relations between the u.s. and russia. it makes it more dramatic. again you have a convergence of interest here that may not be aligned for very long but temporarily were -- it's not like the russians suddenly decided to become humantarians and so personally outraged by the chemical attack, but much more the case they both saw an opportunity to outflank and outmaneuver the americans diplomatically, and at the same time they saw that their partnership with syria could possibly be advanced. remember, you no longer hear president obama and his advisors talking about the out ofer of

assad. for the last two years was stated policy, president obama in the past had repeatedly called for assad to go. now he's no longer talking about that. so it's possible that the russians believe they have just ensured the longer term survival of the assad regime by basically convincing him to give up his chemical weapons in order to stay in power. host: americans are hearing a lot about, sergei, he wrote a profile -- you wrote a profile of him for foreign policy earlier this year calling him minister no. what do americans need to know about him? guest: first of all he really in many ways is the architect of this russian diplomatic initiative that we are seeing. and it's sort of a challenge that he was really -- made he spent his whole career building up to. labrov spent two decades at the united nations before returning

to russia to become its foreign minister. he's now russia's longest serving foreign minister since the end of the cold war. he's a real classic diplomat, former secretary of state condoleezza rice told me that he often reminded her of a classic diplomat in the mold of a 19th century diplomat. the kind of guy who feels like you can -- he can sit down at the table with you and negotiate man-to-man and get things done. he's a real character. he sees russia as his religion nd returning russia to great power status is much his mission after what he sees as the indignities of the early 1990's when the soviet union broke off and there was a sense that russia's power and status in the world had plummeted. host: we are talking with susan glaser, editor of politico magazine, the former editor in chief of foreign policy from 2010 to 2013. also a "washington post"

co-chief of the "washington post" moscow bureau. we'll go back to the phones. jordan is waiting from washington, d.c. on our democratic line. jordan, good morning. caller: hi, john. good morning. i was wondering if your guest could give us a presummation on the nuclear proliferation treaty. how many nations have that capability, as well as the geneva convention with respect to chemical weapons. how many nation vs. that capability? and with respect to assad, the president -- it's now overwhelming we shouldn't slap him on the wrist and take away his nuclear weapons as toys as if he were a child. this man is a war criminal. he needs to be prosecuted. and anybody that commits those crimes as well, that should be their fate. thank you. guest: first, a quick clarification, we are talking not about nuclear capacity on the part of the syrian

government. it's chemical weapons. i think one of the problems with these treaties that the caller mentioned, the chemical weapons convention, the nuclear nonproliferation treaty is that the countries that are the rogue actors, the ones that were often most concerned about are not parties to these treaties. that is the case with syria, for example, which has been acquiring this chemical weapons arsenal since the time of assad's father saw this as a key .art of its strategic arsenal two weeks ago assad denied he had these weapons and was not a party to them. what's happened is he's agreed to join the convention as part of his agreement to give up the weapon. host: baltimore, maryland, on our democratic line. mel, you are on with susan glaser. ller: hi, i was just talking

about the situation with syria and the united states, it's about a regime change. -- we are ple that not going to go with service. we -- if the president can go to war without congress' approval, that's a dictatorship. and they are violating our own constitutional rights as well as laws. you got to consider every time we have war, it's about money and power for the most part. the u.s., u.n., army they know what's going ton. just like for example with the world trade center, when the world trade center went down, where was the u.n. to investigate that when they found explosive materials around the world trade center attack? where were they at? to investigate like they were doing over in syria. never heard about that. host: we'll skip the conspiracy theories and go on to roland from miami, beach, florida on our independent line.

roland, good morning. caller: good morning. i just want to -- wanted to begins to be ia seen as a narcostate, not so long ago. and i believe that it still is .roducing it heroin the brother of assad who was in line to become the prime minister after hoffa assad's death was killed in one of these disputes because he basically ran the opium production in the valley. host: are you saying this is something that the u.s. needs to look into as they are studying their responses in syria?

>> i think this is something athese us -- that the u.s. is aware of. it's been discussed in the past in academic forms as well. beyond that, the syrians had hedge moany -- hedgea moany in lebanon up until around 2009, they had hegemony in lebanon. they were able to make decisions in lebanon for the lebanese government that were security decisions and they did it counter balancing their proxy ezbollah, which is the party that's basically maintaining the narcotics trade in south lebanon and exporting throughout europe and the world. host: give you a chance to jump in. is it an issue you have studied? guest: in its broadest sense the caller is raising the framing of

the regional implications of this conflict, which are many. he pointed out about lebanon and there is the risk that's already occurring of destabilizing lebanon which has only had a fragile recovery from its own decades of civil war. more broadly there is the issue of proxies who are taking part in the fight, the civil war that's happening inside syria right now. you have not only hezbollah, but also the potential for other iranian backed groups and militias to be fighting there on the side of the asam regime there. was a controversial video that came out earlier this week that purported to show iranians on the side of the government. then on the rebel side you have various militias backed by different parties across the region. you have the saudis, as i mentioned, and the qataris who were backing particularly rebel factions. there's concern that the al qaeda affiliated group had

become the strongest and most military effective of the rebel groups than you have obviously groups who are more western oriented. governments like the united states would prefer to see emerge with the upper hand. you really have this competing interest of the whole middle east clashing inside of syria right now in way that's potentially very destabilizing. host: we started by noting that the united nations is opening its 68th session today. talk about the effectiveness of the u.n., specifically the security council as it's viewed in the world right now. guest: i think unfortunately the syria problem suggests the limits of the u.n. system. if we are going to have an international group like united nations, this would seem to be the classic challenge that the world should come together and do something about on a

humanitarian basis alone, you have a few million refugees created in syria as a result of this ongoing civil war. you have over 1,000 people killed in this horrific chemical weapons attack. and yet i think what -- the word most people would associate with the united nations, unfortunately, is often gridlock. there will be literal gridlock in new york city next week as all the world leaders descend upon the city for the annual meeting, and their limousines and motorcades compete with each other. there's also unfortunately the policy gridlock we associate with the security council system in which the permanent five council members, the united states, russia, china have a veto and are able in effect to stop any action to which they object. over the years what that has meant is that the most politically sensitive disputes, whether in the balkans in the

1990's, or here in the middle east now tend to be gridlock. and the result is civil war that everybody deplores and doesn't do anything about. host: what's on the united nations' agenda as they get prepared to start the 68th session this week? guest: i think we are going to hear a lot about syria. no question that the timing of the way this crisis and this chemical weapons has played out means that syria will be front and center. i think one interesting story that's very much related to the syria story that you'll hear a lot about is the first visit to the united nations general assembly in his new role of iran's new leader, he replaces the combative and defiant president ahmadinejad. every year ahmadinejad was well-known for coming to the u.n. and using the forum of the u.n. general assembly to give ry sort of hate filled

tirades. he often laced these with not only america bashing and holocaust denialism, but inewe wind dough about iran's nuclear program. there are high hopes with the change in leadership and rouhani's arrival, he'll give a speech before the u.n. general assembly, there now might be the opportunity that has not exis ited in recent years -- existed in recent years to open up a dialogue to begin actual negotiations potentially, directly between the united nations and iranians which would be a major step and put this question of the iranian nuclear program on the table. iran is right next door to syria . is alleged to be a participant on the side of the assad government in the civil war. there's a lot of fault line that would come up. host: talking about effectiveness of the u.n., monty writes in on twitter, the veto system renders the security council on controversial issues useless.

would you agree? guest: well, i think there's an awful lot of evidence in recent years to suggest that's the case. remember, back just a couple years ago to libya and the libyan intervention in which the imminent threat of libyan leader gaddafi that he was basically going to exterminate the rebels who had guard to oppose him in the city of benghazi actually led to a break through at the u.n. security council. and russia and china did not use their veto to block western ilitary intervention, but they decided to abstain instead. and yet the outcome there with the bombing of the -- toppling of the gaddafi government may the russians furious. the russian foreign minister has very pub particularly complained ever since he was misled by the united states and its partners. had he no intention that russia did not want to sign off on the kind of military intervention

that then occurred using the vehicle of the u.n. security council resolution as its legal authority. so the russians claim they were duped. the americans, susan rice was then the u.s. ambassador, she's now the national security advisor, she adamantly deny there is was any duping of any kind. she says it was clear. that was the last time, the last example that we could say where there was a surprising breakthrough on the security council that led to a dramatic collective action. the result has been absolutely sort of a retrenchment and retreat to the previous positions of good luck. host: we are talking about the u.n. with susan glaser, editor of politico magazine, vicky up next from brandonton, florida, democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning, i want to ask your guest, since syria's been the topic of the news and everyone's really been engaged

here as americans, and i'm really happy that the speaker, your guest is on, my question is is that on the security council at the u.n., would they ever consider inviting the head of google, head of twitter, head of facebook since technology is such advancement to the world itself, i was wondering if those three organizations could have a seat at the u.n.? guest: that's a very interesting and novel proposal. i think the caller is right to suggest that the u.n. really is a creature of a different time, right? it's very much all about nation state sovereignity. it was born in the aftermath of world war ii. it was designed very much with the focus of trying to avoid anything like world war ii ever

breaking out again. this principle of nation states is why we have the veto on the security council. and it's also why the u.n. has proved so ineffective at dealing with say the problems of dictatorships anti-terrible things they do to their own people. the reason is because we weren't so concerned with that in the early cold war context of the end of world war ii. we were worried about states fighting each other. and we didn't care so much what happened inside the boundaries of existing nation states, never mind anticipating a world of the extent of globalization that we have now and these new kind of actors, companies in many cases, that wield as much or more power than most of the member states of the united nations. host: keith up next from sanford, florida, on our republican line, good morning. you're on with susan glaser. caller: good morning. i'm a cold war veteran out of the 1970's and 1980's.

it seems to me that they ought to have the kgb colonel, putin, they ought to have him clean up the mess over there. they have caused a lot of this, the majority of it. they have sold a lot of these weapons to the syrians. of course they have a warm water port there for their navy. why is it he's not held his feet to the fire, so to speak, and him be brought up what he's helped to cause, add to this whole situation, there's never any mention of them. they always come out smelling very, very clean. he's trying to build relations in iran. he's going up there to sell them more of these kind of weapons. this is a troublemaker. host: susan glaser. guest: it's a very -- i think it is an important perspective on president putin and russia. i don't think they always escape

without accountability. i think that certainly the u.s. and its partners and everyone is actually very well aware of russia's status as the main supplier of arms to the syrian government. it's very clear that the assad government would not still be power and not still be an effective fighting force if it weren't for the aid, military and otherwise by the way, that the russians have been giving them. they have basically emerged as their main political and diplomatic champions on the world stage over the last couple years. i think it's actually very clear in that when the accounting of this war is taken, people will understand that the russian arms supply was crucial to the survival of the assad government. host: independent line, tom is waiting from kingston, pennsylvania, good morning. caller: good morning. how are you? host: go ahead. caller: i take a whole different perspective than your last caller. i think putin should be

congratulated for -- as far as the russians go, i don't see the russians starting wars every two years and attacking. the last war that i remember was the chechens, and they were domestic issues. but avoiding this war in syria is only going to be temporary because the zionists are going to get us in war. and just like -- host: exsusan glasser, let's talk about the other perspective on russian's involvement here. guest: first of all i just to correct the historical record, russia did invade its neighbor georgia just five years ago, tanks rolling across the border into an independent country that's been partner of the united states. it's not something one should dismiss as a domestic matter. the two wars that russia fought in chechnya which brought putin

to power were among the bloodiest civil conflicts of recent years. the russians basically flattened and destroyed the city of grozny in one of its own provinces. again i think that the russian record of military brutality is fairly well documented. what it hasn't been is super effective for the russians. it's not a tactic they have adopted broadly speaking in their foreign policy, in their very weakened state since the end of the cold war. that won't be an option for them even had they chosen to have military designs in other parts of the world like the middle east. they don't have the resources and the military that could project power, russia had its own vietnam in nearby afghanistan in the 1980's and that was a scarring interinns pent not only killed many, many thousands of russians and millions of afghans, but left a collective memory in russia that is very much against military

intervention. host: on this issue of the u.n., bill writes in on twitter what, would it take to change the internal policies of the u.n. and the selections of countries to the security council? guest: you know, the calls of u.n. security council reform is one that has been taken up unsuccessfully by many over the years. obviously the world that we live in is incredibly different than the late 1940's when the united nations was established at the historic meeting in san francisco. and yet reform has been almost impossible because of this gridlock. there are emerging countries, for example, like brazil, like india that believe that because of their status in the world, both their economic power, the size of their populations, that they deserve a permanent seat at the table. still you have many of theure peaian powers -- of the european powers, germany, france, britain

who are partners here because of their role in world war ii. clearly it's an institution that is more a bit of an aknack kronism at this point, but the politics are such no one can see how they can see how they firebomb away that gridlock. host: civil ver spring, maryland, on our democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. i actually think that the u.n. is behaving appropriately. i base it on two factors. number one, the acale don't want to go to war. i mean we are tired of going to war. i believe that the president behaved correctly when he went ahead and i guess submitted before he left congress vote on it, debate it, did a bunch of polls, 80%, the 0% of americans don't want to get involved in this. anti-second thing is the credible threat of if things go sour or wrong with russia. we are probably the most powerful nation on the face of

the planet. russia is no -- they are not exactly lightweight, either. the fact they are basically backing assad is something to be to be taken seriously. i think the u.n. is incorrect. diplomacy is weaker. it basically saves face in a lot of different ways. host: ray from sarasota, florida, on the independent line. good morning. caller: good morning. i would just like to collaborate with the previous caller as well. i do agree with him in some sense. i do believe that the president basically s as a to e because he was going go to war, but he used congress as an excuse so he would not go to war because of russia taking a stand due to the previous war that we went in and to -- overthrough gaddafi.

also one caller said why don't the u.n. implement the internet, twitter, facebook. twitter and facebook to any country and united states and citizens' freedom a threat to national security. i believe that's how the government and other countries are overthrown by these entities of internet, twitter, facebook. i don't think it should be implemented at the u.n. believe that it's also a threat to also our civil liberties as well. thank you. host: i'll give you last minute here. guest: a couple quick points. both these callers clearly expressed strong opposition to any action in syria. i think that clearly the politics of this for president obama were fairly overwhelming in that that came through in this sort of awkward dance with congress before the russian bill was put on the table. you have across the political spectrum in the united states, republicans and democrats,

managing to unite on this one issue if not other things. so there's a very strong political rational for pursuing the diplomatic tract when it comes to syria. just quickly on this twitter and facebook thing, i think it's interesting to note that in iran, which we are talking about, and their new leader will be coming to new york next week for the u.n. general assembly, although there's been the promise of an opening up and censorship f strict that's been in effect ever since the green revolution, failed green revolution of 2009, yesterday twitter and facebook were briefly freed up in iran and everyone took to the social media channels and started tweeting and facebooking without having to go through a circuitus v.p.n. to do so. people wondered what did this mean? was this rouhani's hand already loosening up the government. we weak woke up this morning to find out the censorship and

controls were back in place. host: susan glaser is the editor of politico magazine. check it out at politico.com. thanks for joining us this morning. >> this afternoon the so-called p-5 members of the u.n. security council, the u.s., u.k., france, russia, and china are meeting to discuss that joint draft security council resolution on syria's chemicals weapon program. here at the white house we are waiting to take you live to the news conference. we are set to get under way with jay carney at 1:00 p.m. eastern. running a bit late. we'll have it live when it starts here on c-span. looks like it will be just a couple of minutes away. in the meantime, we'll take you to an event from this morning at the u.s. navy memorial plaza where defense secretary chuck hagel and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff laid a wreath to honor the victims of yesterday's washington navy yard shooting.

>> navy secretary mabus part of that group at the memorial this morning. the secretary this afternoon ordering a full review of navy and marine corps security -- marine corps base security processes that's due on october 1. it is likely that jay carney will get questions certainly about the navy shooting when the white house briefing comes up here shortly on c-span. also questions about other issues on capitol hill as the deadline of the october 1 new fiscal year looms. live coverage here on c-span.

>> it's oddly quiet in here today. hello, everyone. thank you for being here. before i take your questions, i had a couple of things to mention at the top. first, the president will welcome israeli prime minister netanyahu to the white house on monday, september 30678 the president looks forward to discussing with prime minister netanyahu the progress on final negotiations with the palestinians as well as development in iran, sira, and elsewhere in the region. secondly i have good news on health care today. which -- about which i have a visual aid. today the department of health and human services has released

a new report showing that nearly six out of 10 americans who currently do not have insurance could get coverage for less than $100 a month per person under the health care law when the health insurance marketplace is opened for business. with the help of tax credits and medicaid. overall, that's 23.3 million people, or 56% of the uninsured. and if all 50 states expand medicaid as called for under the affordable care act, the number of americans who could get health insurance for less than $100 per month would rise to nearly out of every 10 americans, or 78% of the uninsured. that's 32.1 million americans who could get health insurance for under $100 per month if all governors followed the lead of the republican governors in states like pennsylvania, michigan, arizona, and north dakota. this news also shows that forcing insurers to compete for your business, holding insurance

companies accountable for the way they treat customers, and offering tax credits to make health care even more affordable have great potential to deliver affordable health care. and for the people who already have insurance, this means no longer having to worry about being denied coverage for a pre-existing condition or losing health coverage when switching jobs or having the unpaid bills of the uninsured significantly drive up health insurance for everyone else. this news comes after the census bureau reported that the percent of uninsured americans fell in 2012, in part thanks to gains in coverage of young adults on their parents' policies. thanks again to the affordable care act. now, this is good news for uninsured americans and their families who will have finally -- who finally will have a simple way to get quality, affordable health care when the marketplace is open on october 1. with that i will take your questions. >> a couple questions on the navy yard shooting. does the president have any plans to meet with first

responders, victims, victims' families considering this shooting happened so close to the white house? >> i have no meetings of that nature to announce today. what i can tell you is that later this afternoon the president will receive a briefing from attorney general eric holder, f.b.i. director, and members of his national security team on yesterday's horrific shooting at the washington navy yard. the president has obviously been updated regularly, including this morning at his p.d.d. on developments in that matter. but he will get a specific briefing from the attorney general and the f.b.i. director his afternoon. later this afternoon. >> did any of the updates received this morning or last night focus on what the motivation of the shooter may have been? there have been reports about the shooter's mental health condition. >> matters regarding the investigation itself i have to

refer to the f.b.i., which has the lead. and this is obviously something that's still under investigation having just happened yesterday. the president, as he said express his nts to condolences and send his thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families. he wants to commend the first responders who did a remarkable job and responded quite quickly. saving lives and putting their own lives at risk as they did so. but in terms of the investigation itself, motivation and other issues that will be decided by that investigation we have to wait and see what the investigators provide. >> the president spoke quite emotionally after the newtown shooting, after other shootings to cities, downs affected by gun violence. does he feel in any way like the reaction to this shooting may not have been quite as intense

as it has after other incidents that maybe there's some sort of numbness among the public? >> i know that he was horrified by this news and while it is a sad truth that we in america seem to experience these mass hootings with all too much frequency, they are always horrifying. and the senseless violence and a senseless loss of life is source of great pain for those o experience it in those communities and for everyone ere in america, i think, who watches the images and can imagine the fear associated with an event like that. so i don't -- certainly don't

have an observation from the president along those lines to make. when it comes to newtown i think it goes without saying that there is a particular horror when the victims are so young. >> one quick point on brazil, does the white house see this decision to cancel the state dinner as a setback for this relationship which the u.s. has tried to cultivate and grow for the past few years? >> i think it's because the relationship is so important and because it has so many facets that the president agrees with this decision they made together to postpone the visit. and they both look forward to that visit which will celebrate our broad relationship and the president believes and their president believes as i understand it should not be

overshadowed by a bilateral issue no matter how important or challenging the issue may be. we are acknowledging that the concerns that these disclosures have generated in brazil and other countries. >> was this decision made in their phone call last night? >> it was discussed in their phone call last night and inalized, yes. >> the suspect apparently had clearance to access that facility despite a history of mental problems. does the president have any concerns about the clearance process and who is allowed to have access to facilities like that that merits review? >> i say a couple things. there's been a variety of reports and all these matters are under investigation as we have seen in this incident as we do so often, some reports may or may not be true. so i'm certainly not going to comment on an unfolding story, especially one that's under investigation by the f.b.i. on the broader issue of

clearances, as you know, d.n.i. is currently undertaking a review of security clearance policy for certain contractors. and i can tell you that at the president's direction o.m.b. is examining standards for contractors and employees across federal agencies. so this is obviously a matter that the president believes and has believed merits review. the d.n.i. -- that was announced previously. the o.m.b. action is something that is getting under way. >> on the budget quickly, the democrats are now endorsing the idea of a so-called clean c.r., even though there are concerns about enshrining the postsequester level of funding. you had said the other day the president would be supportive of that. is that still his position? >> a short-term clean c.r. that would allow congress the time to reach a broader agreement is

something that we could accept. unfortunately what we have seen is a me republicans relitigateefight and old battles and to be willing to shut down the government doing harm to the middle class, and to be willing, even to allow the united states to default, something we have never done in our history, if they don't get what they want, which is to achieve through this kind of procedure what they could not achieve when it was passed by the house, this is obamacare, passed by the house, passed by the senate, siped into law by the president, upheld as constitutional by the support of the united states, and a law that we are going about the business of implementing, and a law that has already produced tangible benefits to millions of americans. tangible in many ways, including

in financial ways that we have elaborated on in recent days. that is an obstacle that we currently face and which, as the president mentioned yesterday, needs to be addressed because it is simply unacceptable at a time five years after the financial collapse, five years after this country stared into the economic abyss, five years of slow, steady recovery later that we cannot allow washington to reverse that progress. and to do it for the ideological agenda of a faction of the republican party. >> what would the president hope to accomplish in that period in the short-term c.r., broader issues? and does he intend to remain passive in his process with so little time left? >> the idea that he's passive is of course disproven by the

facts, but the president has put forward a compromise budget proposal that anybody who looks t it will say, if he or she is serious, represents hard choices by a democratic president when it comes to entitlement savings, and asks for in return hard choices by republicans when it comes to a balanced approach to reducing our deficit. that's the way that we should go about the business of continuing to deal with our deficit, but republicans aren't even talking about that anymore. it's hard to when the deficit has come down by half since the president took office. instead, they are talking about basically hitching the fate of the economy, the american economy and global economy, to their ideological agenda, which is to continue to fight the battle over the affordable care act.

a law that, as i said today, is producing enormous benefits for the american people and will produce even more for millions and millions of uninsured americans who, until this law gets implemented, have not had access to affordable care but will because of this, they want to overturn that, and they have no alternative. their answer to those millions of americans is, tough luck. tough luck. by the way, if i don't get what i want, they say, we are going to set all that progress aside and reverse course. hat's a terrible approach. >> you have had a day to reflect. still a good idea for the president to give what was a very partisan speech yesterday even after what happened over at the navy yard? >> i understand some republicans are trying to make something of this. the president spoke about the navy yard at the top of his briefing. he talked about the cowardly act that's taken place, the tragedy unfolding and the loss of life. and he called for an demanded a

seamless investigation with federal and local law enforcement officials. and that is what we are seeing now. it is a fact that we have very little time for congress to act, and the consequences for the american economy of congress failing to act would be significant. and it is absolutely important, part of his job, to talk about that to the american people. and far from being a partisan speech, the president made clear in his speech that many republicans on capitol hill agree with him. that we should not go down the road of threatening to shut down the government or defaulting on our obligations in the name of some partisan agenda item. or partisan pursuit. but unfortunately there is a faction that many, including in some op-ed pages have noted, conservative op-ed pages have noted, are not doing great service to their own party let alone the country or middle class by pursuing this agenda.

these deadlines are upon us and congress needs to act. congress needs to fulfill its basic responsibility, which is to ensure that government functions are funded. congress needs to fulfill its other basic responsibility which is to ensure that it pays the bills that conditioning racked up. that's what the debt ceiling is all about. it's hard to break through because it's a phrase that just weeks of sort of washington arcane discussions, debt ceilings, raising the debt limit, that kind of thing. what it is is basically allowing congress to pay the bills that congress already wracked up. full stop. has nothing to do with future spending. it has to do with the united states of america being true to its obligations. the president believes and i

think has shown that we ought to do everything we can to implement commonsense measures to reduce gun violence in america. he came out with a comprehensive plan to do that that included calls for legislative action in congress as well as numerous executive actions that his administration could take ithout congress. they have added to those administrative actions as recently as a couple weeks ago we had an announcement about two more legislative -- executive actions that the administration is moving on. d he is not in the least hidden his displeasure and disappointment in congress for its failure to pass legislation that's supported by 80% to 90% of the american people. by majorities of the american

people in virtually every state in the country. you could not define a case of congress or minority in congress, minority in the senate, taking its cues from a narrow spivent better than this. when you vote against 80% or 90% of the american people. when you vote against the inority of your constituents answer to or at the behest of a special interest, you are serving that narrow special interest. are you not serving your constituents. the president believes very -- we are continuing to push the cause. a common sense -- again, i can recite to you, i'm sure cnn covered it in detail all day long, the executive actions that this administration took to further reduce gun violence in america. and we continue to hope and we continue to press that congress will take action. but i think your question should be addressed to those senators

who chose to ignore the will of their constituents and ignore the will of the american people -- i believe that 85% of democrats or more voted for, am i right? 85%? maybe 90% of senate democrats voted for it? what%age of republicans voted for it? -- what percentage of republicans voted for it? the problem here is not democrats of the the problem here is senators, overwhelmingly from one party, who refuse to do something very simple, which is expand the background check system that everyone believes functions well but needs to function better. it's their choice. those questions should be addressed to those senators. >> on syria, the russians responded to the u.n. report by saying, well, it's still possible that the rebels might have done this, on august 21. that doesn't bode well, does it, for this process that's under way? >> well, they can believe what they want or say what they want.

the facts prove otherwise. they are overwhelming. the facts, we presented the facts that the inspection team presented. what matters when it comes to the process going forward is not statements like that, what matters is what the russians do that syria upholds its commitments and that russia upholds its commitment to see this agreement through. which calls for an aggressive timetable in accounting for and securing assad's chemical weapons inventory. >> follow up on yesterday, at the time of the speech did the president know how bad it was? did the president know that 12 people had been murdered? >> we knew what the public knew. and i believe -- >> we are going to break away from the white house briefing at this point just to let you know

it's continuing onlynn at c-span.org. we hope to bring you back to this briefing as well. we are breaking away as the house is coming in briefly. later today, 4:00 p.m. eastern, they'll start work on five bills, including one dealing with native american gaming in arizona, another on u.s.-korea nuclear agreement. live coverage of the house here on c-span. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013]

the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the prayer will be offered byin haplain conroy: let us pray. lord god of heaven and earth, thank you for giving us another day. as this assembly gathers after a long weekend at home, we note the observance of constitution day, when our nation's founding document was signed at the

constitutional convention in 1787. grant a deepening knowledge of and appreciation for our constitution to all americans, but especially to the members of the people's house who have sworn an oath to defend it. may they have the freedom to realize that their responsibility is to the nation and its welfare as well as to their own constituents. give them the wisdom to discern the greater good when those allegiances might seem to conflict. may all that is done today be for your greater honor and glory, amen. the speaker pro tempore: the chair has examined the journal of the last day's proceedings and announces to the house his approval thereof. pursuant to clause 1 of rule 1, the journal stands approved. the pledge of allegiance will be

from the gentleman northern mariana islands, mr. ablan. mr. sablan: i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the speaker pro tempore: the chair will entertain requests for one-minute speeches. for what purpose does the gentlewoman from north carolina seek recognition? ms. foxx: i ask unanimous consent to address the house for one minute, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentlewoman is recognized for one minute. ms. foxx: thank you, mr. speaker. given president obama's reflective opposition to offering all americans fair treatment under obamacare, you'd think the cost of fairness for all must be pretty astronomical. not so. extending fairness to all by

giving american families the same break from obamacare that businesses are getting will save taxpayers and cut the federal deficit. the nonpartisan congressional budget office found that delaying obamacare's weighty individual mandate tax on the american people would reduce federal deficits by roughly $36 to 2018 ver the 2014 period. fairness makes sense. it's not just good policy, it's good for taxpayers and for the economy. no wonder republicans and democrats join together this summer to stop the individual mandate, just like president obama decided to stop his big business employer mandate. we encourage president obama to rethink his insistence on the individual mandate and support fairness for all. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from northern mariana islands seek recognition? without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute.

r. sablan: mr. speaker, public education in the northern mariana islands was transformed 25 years ago by the education t of 1988, creating an autonomous public school system outside the executive branch of the government overseen by an elected board of education. this issue coincided with a period of political maturation, economic expansion and population growth in the islands and the intervening years have proven its values. p.s.s. students are excel, winning national awards for ting talents, debate skills, pelling skills and science ability. our students won a design challenge. three students were awarded gates millennium scholarships the third year in a row students

from our small community have won. one of our school bands performed at the olympics and brought home a silver medal. these achievements were made possible through the leaders, teachers and staff of the public school system. please join me in saluting to . for 25 years service our youth. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from texas seek recognition? >> i ask unanimous consent to address the house for one minute and revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognize. mr. burgess: today is the 226th anniversary of the signing of one of the most important documents in history. a lot of us talk about the constitution and talk about it often but we forget the groundbreaking influence of that document and the fact that that very document was written by the states to create the federal government and not the other way around. it has provided the basis for our representative republic,

provided the foundation for our government, and it's had lasting influence across the world. in various corns of the globe, our constitution has served as a model for other countries as they strove to build their governments and make liberty and freedom for their citizens one of their first priorities. today's anniversary marks the spot where history diverged from colonial rule and forged a path based on the rule of law and the rights of individuals. i hope everyone takes a moment to reflect on the enormous insights of our founders in creating this document. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from oregon seek recognition? without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute. mr. blumenauer: i appreciate the recognition of the signing of our constitution, described as a document created by gene juses for -- geniuses for a government that could be run by idiots. it looks pretty idiotic to have been driven into a fiscal

cul-de-sac risking default on the national debt. we can help the republicans out of the cul-de-sac they've driven into, first, just allow the house to vote on a continuing resolution. second, if you want to cut the budget, bring your house budget bills to the floor. you pulled them back and wouldn't allow a vote on them. third if your own budget is too onerous that your own members don't want to vote on it, allow a conference committee to be formed with the senate and create a budget that's more realistic. but one thing should be off limits -- wrecking the global economy by defaulting on the national debt which is money we borrowed for -- for money that's already been spent. every small business, church, union, rotary club, contractor, home builder and bank should tell the republicans, don't play games with the national debt. the speaker pro tempore: for

what purpose does the gentleman from louisiana seek recognition? without objection, the gentleman s recognized for one minute. mr. fleming: this past saturday marked the first annual national day of remembrance. a day to solemnly mark the sorrowful loss of life caused by abortions. last spring, the murder convictions of abortionist our nationell forced to take a long, hard look into the brutal realities of abortion and the unborn lives killed by abortion every day. with gosnell behind us, it may be tempting for some to look away again and ignore the truth -- abortion is the taking of a human life. i want to acknowledge and thank the pro-life groups and leaders who began the national day of remembrance. it is a double tragedy when an

unborn child is killed in an abortion. research has shown us the complications and emotional scars that can linger with a child's mother, compounding that tragedy. that's why we grieve and long for an end to abortion and why pro lifers must can't to make every effort to educate people about abortion. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to clause 12a of rule 1, the chair declares the house in recess until approximately 4:00 p.m. today.

for the use of chemical weapons, instead now have moved forward and put their prestige on the line behind an agreement that would relieve assaad of his chemical weapons stockpile and transfer it to our control for ultimate destruction. we will be keenly interested in working with the russians to be sure they keep their commitments as we will keep you ares. -- ours -- we will keep ours. a lot as changed and i think for the better as we show that actions are what matter here. agreements need to stick and people will be held accountable. >> another question on russia,

you have not -- we have not asked and you have not offered where we are with snowden. since there's more cooperation with russia on the syria situation is that building trust toward changing edward snowden's status? is the u.s. still pushing to get him back? >> we have made clear our position to the russians on this matter and our position has not changed. and i think the russians are fully awear oaf fact that we believe there's every legal justification for mr. snowden to be returned here to the yeats to face the charges against him but eyond that, i have no updates. >> with the mass shooting, does the president believe -- does he want to lead another conversation, on guns, mental health, violence? does he want to lead another conversation on that like what

happened 56 newtown? and to follow up on the other question is there an exhauston and acceptance that this is the norm? >> he doesn't accept that it's the new normal. he believes that americans don't and can't accept that. and he continues, as we did just a couple of weeks ago to press forward in doing what we can through his pecktive powers to take measures to reduce gun violence, commonsense measures. acknowledging that he did -- as he did in the againing and as he does today that some of this requires congressional action. and we continue to call on congress to listen to the voices of the constituents and legislate accordingly. >> is it all guns? >> absolutely not. it was very much a part of the report the president and vice president announced in the wake of newtown that there were many

issues associated with gun violence and many avenues we need to travel in order to tackle that, including mental health matters and that's very much a part of some of the executive actions the president has taken. brazil wing up on the question, did the president of brazil -- did brazil ask the president to -- did they ask the president to reconsider the n.s.a. policies before they would consider it? is there an expectation that the president will reassure her on x when it comes to what the n.s.a. does and doesn't do before she'll accept another invitation? >> i believe the president has talked about the fact the administration is reviewing some of these matters and we are discussing in a bilateral way with the countries who have

concerned about them. the nature of the work that we do. and you know, he believes that it's important that we have those discussions and he is making clear that he's committed to working together with the brazilians and the brazilian government to move beyond this issue. >> when you say move beyond -- >> he understands that the concerns, he understands the concerns that have been raised and regrets that those concerns have caused the tension that exists in the relationship and that's why he believes we ought to have these discussions and move on. >> does he believe that the revelations created the tension or the actions themselvess? >> again, i'm not going to get into specific matters of intelligence gathering. i think that we have said and i think it's pretty self-evident that the united states, like most other nations around the world, fwathers intelligence and -- >> isn't the -- does the u.s. do

this more than other countries? >> i think it's fair to say we have significant capacity but it's also true that what we do is not dissimilar from what other nations do. >> do other countries do it to the extent that the yeats does? >> not being an expert, i'm not sure i can answer that. >> some dispute, when is the last time the president -- what is the stat toufs the president and speaker boehner since their last conversation to start talking about all the things that the president brought up yesterday on the plate over the next few weeks? >> i don't have a new conversation to read out to you but obviously i spoke around the syria matter but i'm sure we'll keep you updated. >> has there been any ntiaotiations going on? >> we're in consult eags -- let's be clear -- >> descriptions, the level of lk not at a high level?

>> here's what the president has done in calendar year 2013. 4e put forward a budget that represan estimation incredible assessment a compromised position on resolving our budget challenges, reducing our deficit in a way that eliminates the sequester and more and continuing to invest in areas of the economy that continue to grow and create jobs for middle class americans. that was a compromise position. most people in this room who covered it acknowledged that in their coverage. there are tough choice there is for a democratic president. and the president has spent, as many of his top advisors have, in meetings with the republicans who expressed a willingness to find common ground on these issues. we believe that those conversations were often constructed and fruitful an that they demonstrated the fact that there is the possibility of common ground here to be found

but what we have not -- >> but republicans new york meeting with house republicans and the president? >> that's not true you guys reported on meetings. >> has the president met with house republicans? >> the president had numerous meetings, we can get you a list that have been peculiar and obviously other senior members of the president's team including the chief of staff have been spotted having meet wgs senior republicans in public places. but -- as well as in private places. >> it's been a lot different than -- >> what has -- what is obvious is that we have -- we haven't seen -- >> he didn't do anything -- >> have you seen account proposals from senate republicans? >> you're waiting for senate republicans? >> i'm just asking. have you seen any proposals, beyond a proposition that -- >> you tell us. >> we should move forward -- have not what? >> have you gotten one? >> no. >> is negotiation going on between you and them?

>> we have made clear our willingness to be reasonable and koch mies. the president did that again on abc. over the weekend. what we haven't seen thus far is anything from the republicans that represent a similar willingness to compromise when it comes to a broader, more comprehensive budget agreement. in the meantime, congress needs to fulfill its responsibility to ensure that government functions are funded and fulfill etc. responsibility to ensure that for the first time in the history of this country the u.s. doesn't default on its obligation. > has the president made a decision on the nominee? >> no. >> could you talk more broadly about how to assess the effectiveness of the strategy on syria and others? >> as i said with regard to syria, what matters is the result and the result is that the position of the president --

the position the president took, both in his negotiations and in his consultations and in his public presentations, help prod deuce the result we see today, which is at least the possibility that we can achieve the goal of mill tear force and then some without the use of mill tear force by relieving assaad of his chemical weapons and destroying them. that's far more significant than assessments about how it looked as it unfolded. what's important is the result. and the result of his consistency has been the potential for a diplomatic breakthrough. >> what about the fed? y all accounts the president's notion to be choosing the person he wanted to choose? >> you guys reported a lot of things about personnel matters. we have never confirmed anything

you say about who he wants to choose on any position. he makes the announcement when he makes the announcement. that's true of his decision for a -- for the fed chairman as it is for any other senior administration in his -- any other senior official in his administration or nominee. i will say the president will have an announcement when he's ready to make one. we're not going to get into his decision making process or into lists. beyond what the president himself said when he talked about both larry somers and janet yellin. when the president is ready to make an announcement in the fall he will make an announcement. >> that phone call yesterday, did president obama make one the effort to persuade president not to cancel? >> the -- no, the president agreed with president rusof that

it was important to celebrate our broad relationship and that relationship should not be overshadowed by a single bilateral issue no matter how important or challenging the issue may be and for that reason, the two presidents agreed to postpone president the president's state visit here to washington scheduled for october 23. >> he knew she was going to say no. >> the president had a conversation with her at the g-20 and there has always been consultations with and discussions with the brazilian government ongoing since then and prior to that. >> do you know if the state dinner invitations have gone out yet? >> i would refer you to the east ing. >> the president is going to speak to the business round table tomorrow, durept to talk a little bit about that? and can you get more specific about what he's going to be presenting to them. and will he have any private time with any of those executives, would you expect

conversations about the next fed to come up privately? president not say the is going to be conversations with the -- about personnel matters. anyone he meets with is free to raise any somebody they want. his focus on the -- for the group will be what we can do together to keep the economy growing, what we can do to make it grow in a way that creates more good-paying jobs for middle class americans. what we can do together to, for example, move forward on comprehensive immigration reform which has enormous economic benefits for the country and for the middle class in which i think many of those affiliated with the business round table would support. so there'll be a host of topics the president will discuss and he looks forward to meeting with them. >> i want to ask you, since the president hasn't made a decision

yet on the fed is he continuing to interview potential candidates? >> i will not get into the president's personnel process. i will point you to what the president said in the past because he was asked about it and talked about larry somers and the vice chair of the fed, the number two person of the fed. >> it's ongoing? >> yes. i'm not going to get beyond the president in what he said about potential nominees. askedsly larry somers has not to be considered. and you know, the process moves forward and when the president has an announcement, that's when you'll hear what his decision is. >> two questions, on brazil, you say you don't want the multifaceted relationship to be overshadowed by one issue, wouldn't the best way to do that to prove it's not overshadowed by one issue to go ahead and have the visit and -- to prove

that this one issue isn't overshadowing anything? >> i think currently this one issue is a matter of intense focus, especially in the brazilian media and obviously a concern for the brazilian government. we are working with the brazilian government to discuss hose concerns. we'll continue to do that. president obama felt it was the right choice to postpone the visit. >> the white house is acknowledging it would have been overshadowed, that the rest of the issues wouldn't have gotten any -- even if she'd come -- >> i think there's no question it would have -- the other very important issues would have received less attention, at least from the media, than they might otherwise have reseed. but also, this is -- this continues to be an issue that is a serious matter and we understand it, that's why we're engaging with the brazilians in discussions about it and will continue to do so. >> one other question, on obamacare, we've got two weeks

before the enrollment period begins. is there any concern that the events out of the president's out of -- out of the president's control, syria, the shooting yesterday, n.s.a. issues, have made it harder and overshadowed the administration's attempt to kind of get the message out and that as a result there is likely to be more problems or less people -- fewer people signing up than desired? >> i haven't heard that expressed. obviously, we live in general in an environment 23il8ed -- filled with a lot of issues that are getting people's attention. i don't think any year that i've been here would be an exception to that. certainly this has been a year of many, many things happening that the american people are paying attention to. meanwhile, we've gone about the business of making sure that enrollment can and will begin on october 1 and the fact is the

public can -- the public education campaign kicked off in earnest at the beginning of october from staff and community alth centers, public service announcements, the six months from october to march will be key to raising awareness about the marketplaces and the benefits of the law from americans. adds from outside groups attacking the law have been --ing, c.m.s. adds and toods and ads to insurance companies haven't. there will be efforts to help people get the facts they need. there are efforts under way to prevent americans from getting benefits they lawfully could enjoy and should enjoy. insurers say they'll spend $1 billion on advertising. there will be outreach from h.h.s., grass root group the white house, celebrities and

pharmacies like c.v.s. and rite aid. the fact of the matter is, as i noted at the top of the briefing, there are significant benefits that will be available uninsured who are and until the arrival of the marketplaces will not have had affordable options available to them but when six in 10 of those americans will have the option to have purchasing health insurance for less than $100 a month, that's a significant development and is in line with the goals set out by the president when he first signed the affordable care act into law. >> and you guys are comfortable that the effort, the public relations effort is on track? >> yes. >> is the brazilian president seeking anything in terms of u.s. spoil or accommodation from u.s.-based internet companies in advance of -- >> you'd have to ask the brazilian president. i don't have any more details on

the president's conversation with her except for what i've read out to you already. this is an important relationship, we understand the president -- we understand, the president understands the issued raised by these disclosures, we're working with the brazils -- brazilians on this matter and will don't do that. >> do you think any other bilatrl issues are affected by this? >> we have a broad relationship, that was hirlted when the president visited brazil and is reflected in increasing economic ties we have with brazil and we will continue to try to build that relationship and cement the ties between our nations, our two nations moving forward. >> this is only related if you -- i'm interested to know if you think this is related but dureng the u.s. interests were advanced by the president's decision to cancel his visit to moscow? would, for example, the syria

resolution be where it is now if the president hadn't gone to moscow? >> counterfactuals are hard to prove. >> duke it had an effect? >> i think that what we know is where we were three weeks ago and where we are today when it comes to syria. when it comes to the assaad regimes representations about its possession of and use of chemical weaponsing when it comes to russia's aprotion to assad's chemical weapons stockpile. we mad an announcement about why we didn't think it was the right time for a bilateral summit in moscow but the fact is, president obama and president putin spoke at the gsks-20 in st. petersburg and spoke about this very issue. and tissue as did -- as had sec retear kerry and the foreign minister.

how the fact that we didn't go forward with the moscow meeting played into that is really impossible to know. what we focus on is, you know, the results that we've seen thus far of the approach we've taken. last one. >> on some of the specific bilateral issues with brazil and the u.s., oils, biofuels, jets from boeing, etc., how do you expect this to cheage the course? >> i don't think that either nation believes -- again, i will speak for the united states, that these important matters in our bilateral relationship ought to be overshadowed or sidetracked by this other serious matter. we're going to continue to work with the brazilians on it but we'll also continue to work at a variety of levels on the broader bilateral relationship. >> there's some sort of joint agreement, it seems safe to assume without the state visit those deals won't be announced on the same timeline.

>> you're presenting something as a hypothetical and then knocking it down because the meeting is not happening. >> are you saying everything is on track and will go as planned? >> i'm saying this is a matter of significant concern to the brazilians. we are addressing it directly in our conversations with the bra --zilians as we should. >> april, i feel bad i didn't call on you so go ahead. >> the president will be addressing the congressional black caucus saturday night and the esident recently had congressional black caucus on a classified briefing of syria. they're also a group that's a strong supporter of gun control legislation. what is the president expecting o talk about saturday and is

his speech already dobe? >> i don't know the answer to his last question, his remarks are always in process until the delivery, but the meeting on syria was part of a broad outreach that the white house undertook with congress on syria and appropriately included the meeting that you reference. and when et comes to the matter of reducing gun violence in america, the president appreciates the support he gets includingin congress, the c.b.c. and it's -- i certainly anticipate that could be a top exof conversation but the president's views on this have been consistent and are known and when people ask, ok, now what do we do in the wake of another mass shooting, i think that question is appropriately asked not just here but in congress of those senators who voted no to a bill that was pure

commonsense, that enjoyed the support of an overwhelming majority of the american people. >> when you say the c.b.c. is part of a broad spectrum the president met with, he met with them specifically to give them classified information buzz the white house understood that many of the constituents of the c.b.c. members were weary of war and number two, the c.b.c. members, their constituents, are pretty much in support of gun control because they see rampant gun violence throughout their communities, not just around mass shootings but on a constant basis. so once again, there's specific issues. and also unploipt in the black community once again is higher than average system of specifically do you believe the president will adress saturday? >> i don't have a preview of what the president is going to say on saturday, it being tuesday.

but i can tell you that all of those issue are -- are ones that where the president and he shares the concerns of the c.b.c. when it comes to syria briefings, members of c.b.c. were not alone in being reluctant to entertain another military action by the united states in the mideast. that's why the president personally, with his team, held so many consultations with members of congress and groups and more broadly to discuss why the action being proposed was not iraq and was not afghanistan and was not even libya or kosovo designed to beon narrow in scope and duration that would have a specific impact on assad's capabilities but was not involving boots on the ground, was not an attempt

to engage mill tearly in the civil war that's ongoing that can only be resolved in syria through political settlement. >> you said the o.m.b. is reviewing the standards for the hiring of contractors, is that something the president has directed? did he do so after the shooting yesterday? and can you give a little more about what the scope of the review will be? >> i don't have more on the scope. the d.n.i. review focused on the matters in the purview of the d.n.i., this is a broader look at secured clearance procedures with contractors and it is something that's being watched today. thank you very much. [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. [captioning performed by

national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> if you missed any of today's briefing, you can find it shortly in our archives at c-span.org. back on capitol hill, the senate is in session this afternoon, the house coming back into session in about an hour and a half at 4:00 p.m. eastern, they'll begin legislative work on five bills including one dealing with native american gaming in arizona, another on a u.s.-korea agreement on nuclear energy and may see work later in the week on a forest management bill and food stamps. live coverage here on c-span when they gavel in at 4:00 p.m. eastern. earlier today the democratic whip, steny hoyer, spoke at the politico breakfast on a number of issues, including that larry somers withdrew his name from consideration as the next federal reserve chair. here's some of what steny hoyer had to say. >> economic and fiscal matters before us, starting with the

next chairperson of the federal reserve. we saw larry somers, former treasury secretary, withdraw his name from consideration over the weekend, by all accounts he was the administration's first choice, the president's first choice for chairman of the fed. do you think it was the right thing for larry somers to do to pull his name out of considering? and obviously you're on the house side but do you think had he gone up to the senate he could have been confirmed? >> i don't know the answer to the second question. there was obviously controversy. i've had the opportunity of working closely with larry somers both when he was deputy secretary under bob rubin in the clinton administration and as secretary i found him to be extraordinarily competent, knowledgeable, respected and i know that the president relied heavily on him for economic advice and felt strongly about his capabilities. i have not talked to larry

somers but my conclusion is that he decided that the controversy that would be surrounding the confirm eags or his appointment would undermine the confidence that we need to have in the federal reserve and so i think in a very responsible way he made a determination that he did not want to further politicize or create controversy within the federal reserve. so i think he probably did the right thing, certainly from his perspective. but he is a person of immense capability and will continue to contribute. >> do you think fed vice chair janet yellin is the best pick now that somers is out of contention? or are there other candidates? >> i think she'd be an excellent appointee. i think she enjoys wide respect. i think she would be somebody who would be confidence building on the federal reserve but there are others as well and this is

of course a choice the president is going to make and i would hope that he would make it relatively soon so we could stabilize because i think that given the other economic turmoil we're going to talk about, having the federal reserve as a stable, respected, institution that gives confidence to the marketplace is very important. >> do you think that the administration is taking too long in making this appointment? one of the arguments from folks who are supportive of larry somers is that had they moved more quickly, some of the opposition couldn't have coalesced and he could have gotten through the senate faster. are we at a destabilizing point where this is having a negative impact on the economy? >> i think at this point in time, making this appointment as soon as possible will be helpful. >> steny hoyer, from earlier today. you can see that in our video library later in our program schedule. looking live at the u.s. capitol with the flag at half-staff in

honor and memory of the victims of yesterday's navy yard shooting in the nation's capital. the house coming in at 4:00 p.m. eastern. after tonight's votes at 6:30 p.m. they'll hold a moment of silence. we'll have live coverage here on c-span. earlier today on capitol hill the congressional budget office released its long-term outlook, showing that government spending on health care and social security would double relative to the side of the economy in -- to the size of the economy in 5 years and that spending on other programs like defense and transportation would decline to its smallest measure since the great depression. doug elmendorf speck to reporters for about 55 minutes. >> good morning, thank you all for coming. i'm doug elmendorf, director of

the congressional budget office. this morning, c.b.o. released its latest long-term budget outlook, showing what would happen to the budget over the next 25 years under a number of different fiscal policies. today's report differs from the report we published last year by incorporating the effects of tax legislation congress enacted in january, by including a wide range of recent dayity and have significant method lobbling call provements -- molteodge call improvements but -- method logical improvements but it shows that this cannot be sustained. federal debt will rise from 73% of g.d.p. today, already high by historical standards, to 100% of g.d.p. 25 years from now, even

before incorporating the harmful economic effects of the rising debt. to be sure, the deficit has shrunk dramatically in the last two years from nearly 10% of g.d.p. in 2009 to 4% this year. we expect that under current law, the deficit would decline further to about 2% of g.d.p. after that respite, however, we predict the deficit would start growing again. federal spending would be pushed up by rising interest payments on the federal debt and by growing costs for social security and the major health care programs, medicare, medicaid, and subsidies to be provided to insurance -- through insurance exchanges. interest paint -- payments on the debt would rise as interest rates rebounded from their current unusually low levels. in particular, with debt so large, the interest rate that we and others expect would have a very large effect on interest payments. projected spending for social

security increases relative to g.d.p. in our extended baseline buzz of the retirement of the by by boom generation which would increase the number of people eligible for the program by more than one third in just 10 years. spending for the major health care programs would increase for three reasons, first, the retirement of the baby boomers, second, rising costs of health care per person, and third, expansion of federal support for health insurance for low income people. meanwhile, projected federal spending for all other programs taken together declined sharply relative to g.d.p. in our extended baseline. such spending is average -- has averaged 11% of g.d.p. in the last 40 years. it is currently about 10% of g.d.p., a lit bellow its average and would fall to about .5% of g.d.p. in 2023 and 7% in 2038. by 2020, under current law, total federal spending, apart

from social security, the major health care programs, and interest on the debt, would be a smaller percentage of g.d.p. than at any time since the 1930's. thause the upward pressure on federal spending relative to the side of -- size of the economy comes not from general growth in the size of the government but from growth in a handful othe largest programs, social security, medicare, and medicaid, along with the rising costs of servicing the government's debt. federal revenues would also increase over time under current law but more gradually than federal spending. federal revenues have averaged 17.5% of g.d.p. in the last 40 years. they're now a little lower but rise to 18.5% by 2023 and nearly 20% by 2038 in our extended baseline. the gap between federal spending and revenues would widen steadily after 2015. by 2038 under our ex-tened

baseline the deficit would be 6.5% of g.d.p. and federal debt held by the public would be 100% of g.d.p. even before we account for the economic effects of increasing debt. that would be more than any other besides 1945 and 1946. federal debt would be growing relative to g.d.p., a path that could not be followed indefinitely. in our report we project how the economic consequences of the policies that underlie the baseline would affect the long-term budget outlook. the growth in debt would reduce the nation's output and raise interest rates relative to what would happen if the debt were stable. that in turn would lead to wider budget deficits. with those effects included, debt under the extended baseline would rise to 108% of g.d.p. in 038. debt that is so large relative to our annual output would in

the long-term reduce output and income compared to what they would be if debt were closer to its historical average of g.d.p. debt so large would require higher interest payments, redeuce lawmaker's ability to use fiscal policy to respond town expected developments and increase the risk of a fiscal crisis. in our report this morning we show the effects of some alternative sets of fiscal policies, some that would produce larger deficits than under current law and some that would produce smaller deficits. certain tax and spending policies that might be difficult to main teen for a long-term, if they were modified, the federal debt would be greater than 108% of g.d.p. by 2038. in addition we devote a chapter of the report to theud -- projections. we discuss the number of sors of uncertainty and present budget projections based on different

outcomes for productivity, interest rates and federal spending for health care. any projection this far into the future are very uncertain. nevertheless, our analysis shows that under a wide possible assumptions, the budget is on an unsustainable path. as lawmakers consider changes in policies to put the budget on a more sustainable path they'll face choices about the magnitude of deficit reduction and the timing of deficit reduction. economic nearly does not say what the optimal amount of federal debt is or what the right ams of federal spending and revenues are but a significant reduction in debt from its current percentage of g.d.p. would require substantial changes in tax policies, spending policies or both. if lawmakers wanted to bring debt down 30% of g.d.p. in 2038, a lit bellow its 40-year

average, using policies phased in over the next decade, they would need to enact a combination of increases in revenue and cuts in spending to total about $400 trillion in a decade. in deciding how quickly to reduce deficits lawmakers face difficult tradeoffs. waiting to cut federal spending or taxes would lead to a greater accumleags of debt and would encrease the size of the policy adjustments needed to achieve any chosen debt target. however, implementing spending cuts with tax increases quickly would weaken the economic expansion and give people little time to plan for and adjust to the policy changes. the negative short-term effects of deficit reduction would be especially large now because output is so far below its potential or mabblings numb sustainable level that the federal reserve is keeping short-term interest rates near zero and could not lower them further to offset changes in spending and tax policies.

thank you. my colleagues and i will be happy to try to answer your questions. >> you talk about economic feedback, you talk about it eing 100% of g.d.p. by 2038. many of us have found other scenarios to be more plausible. what are the key factors that go into that different projection and assumption? >> so the extended alternative fiscal alternative differs on both spending and revenue sides of. on the spending side that scenario takes away the sequestration and reduction in discretionary spending caps, goes become to the original spending caps established under he budget control act, it also take this is broad catter to -- category of spending and pushes

that back up toward a more standard relationship to g.d.p. on the spending side. on the revenue side the alternative scenario keeps federal revenues around 18% of g.d.p. and closer to their historical average rather than allowing them to rise to nearly 20% of g.d.p. as we think they would do under current law. the scenario can be viewed as taking a set of policies that might be difficult to explain, policies that are in current law to might be be difficult sustain and reverted become to a more historical scenario. i wouldn't say it's more plausible, a 190% g.d.p. unusua

it's meant to show what would happen under a tempt set of policies and that set of changes matters a tremendous amount particularly if one compounds the problem. i think i should be asking people who they are and where they're from. >> i'm from "barrons." when you look at the other fiscal scenario over the next 10 years to arrive at 31% of g.d.p. by 2038 do you factor in what increased taxes and reduced spending would mean for economic rowth? >> let me explain, there's a scenario with specific tax and spending policies, others we spending and revenues.

there's $4 trillion worth of reductions in the 10-year when doe, not specified if they're on the spending side or tax side. for the alternative fiscal scenario and the extended baseline, when we look at the long-term effects on the economy, we take account of in particular of the amount of federal debt and marginal tax rates, the tax rate on adegreesal dollars earned, which affect the ensentiv to work and save, so for those particular policies where we have actual tax policies written down that we're follow, we incorporate the effects of tax rate changes as well as the effects of changes in debt. r these two illustrative scenarios where we haven't specified changes because we're not trying to lead the congress, we don't have tax rates to use in thatage sess. the economic effects of those scenarios are beased just on the different amounts of federal debt that would be held by the public.

>> so not really accounting for you iscal trag because don't know how it will be made up? >> we do account in the short-term, the deficits would be smaller under those policies, would produce some trag on the economy. but in contrast with our analysis of other proposals in the past several years where we've had different sorts of responses here we take the arch response from a set of policies and we use our usual modeling to look at how debt crowds out investment and reduces output nd income. >> could you talk about how to improve this and what would happen if we got rid of -- >> a lot of questions in the that. in the back of the report we show that federal health care

spending in 25 years from now would be a little more than half a percent of g.d.p. lower. in our current projections than it was a year ago. that downward revision comes on the revision we made to medkear and medicaid within the first 10 in the projection, 10-year outlook we talked about having marked down our projecks of medicare and medicaid spending a fair bit from a year ago and in fact over the past three years, we have reduced federal spending for medicare and medicaid in 2020 by about 15%. that's a response to the incoming data we have seen and ourage sess of it. nor longer term report, the down revision in the first decade mattered a lot in in terms of the cost of the programs as we prompt out 25 years but

adecisionally the downward revision of the first 10 years we have taken on more data in terms of the slowdown of health costs so the underlying rate of growth of health spend chg comes from a historical average is lower than it was. we have a lower level of health care spending to jump off from and a slightly lower rate of growth beyond that and the combination of those factors is to reduce federal health spend big about .6% of g.d.p. in 2038 a significant difference. the affordable care act did a number of things. we think of it in general in three large buckets, partly expanded insurance coverage, partly reduced spending for medicare and partly it raised revenues. taking all those pieces together, we estimated that the affordable care act would reduce budget deficits by a small amount and that repealing the

affordable care act now would increase deficits by a small amount. in these projections we don't try to separate out all of those effects of the affordable care act they have effects on medicare and revenue in particular are provisions of law that relate to other provillingses of -- provisions of law and that set of provisions leads to projections we have here. there's no natural way to separate out all the affordable care act provisions. one thing we do separate out in this report is the effect of expansion of insurance coverage and we have a table that shows a decomposition of the growth in federal spending for major health care programs over the next 25 years and for those who are here, this is in a box on page 25 of the report. we decompose the growth in federal spending for major health care programs over the next 5 years. of the total growth in health care spending, as a shir of g.d.p., the aging of the population accounts for 35%.

the excess cost growth, meaning the fast growth of cost per person in these programs accounts for 40% and the remaining 26% is accounted for by the expansion of medicaid and the creation of subsidies to be provided to insurance exchanges. the insurance coverage provisions of the affordable care act explain about one quarter of the increase in federal health spending relative to g.d.p. over the next 25 years. and i should mention that we also note in the report, from the looks of where federal health spending is going in 2023, about 3/5 of it will be going to people age 65 or over. about a fifth will be going to people who are blind or disabled under age 65 and another fifth will be fwoning to able-bodied people under age 65678 even with significant expansion of health care for lower income people through the expansion of

medicaid and subsidies through insurance exchanges, the great majority of federal health care spending and the great majority of growth in federal health care spending is not related to the affordable care act. >> jackie collins, "new york times." do your numbers account for the significant number of states, some with significant populations, that have rejected the expansion of medicaid? >> so, in our projections from last winter, the ones that went into the 10-year forecast that e released in the spring, we estimated that about 45% of people who would have been eligible for the medicaid expansion if that had taken effect never state would be eligible for the medicaid expansion. of the total number of people who could have gone into medicaid through this expansion, if it occurred in every state, we expected that 45% would live

in states where they could go ahead and expansion would occur. so far, about 20 to 25 states and the district of columbia are expanding their medicaid programs. the remaining states are still thinking about it or have decided against expanding. those 20 to 25 states and and d.c. account for about 35% to 42%, i'm told, of the people who would have been made eligible for medicaid had all states expanded coverage that figure looks to be running a little below what we anticipated. our projection had a gradual expansion of medicaid eligibility and enrollment and a gradual expansion of enrollment in the insurance exchanges. we expected from the beginning that it would take some time for all the systems to be put into place and for people to understand the systems and sign up for these programs. so we have a gradual expansion

of -- gradual increase in the numb of people enrolled in medicaid and gradual expansion in the numb of people receiving subsidies through insurance exchanges over the next few years in our projection. with the new projecks, spring projections are the ones underliing the long-term projections here. there's been no change in that. with the new projections early next year, we'll take on board any information we can get our ands on at that point. > two questions. [inaudible]

a freeze on payments to doctors

and incorporates the extension of some provisiones that are scheduled to expire, such as the higher depreciation allowances for businesses that are scheduled to expire at the end of this year. as i said before, i think the biggest differences in the overall magnitude comes from the turning off these enforcement mechanisms from the budget control act, from pushing back this other category of federal spending to closer to historical norm and from holding tax revenue, around 18% of g.d.p., indefinitely rather than letting tax revenue drive -- under current law through sore of reinflation bracket creep but not for real income growth and we think that there will be real income growth that will move people into higher tax brackets. and we talked about in lengths of quantifying the real bracket creep on the marginal tax rates which affect incentives and on

average tax rates which show the burden of taxes on people. sort of taxes they pay as a share of their incomes. and we note the tax system by 2038 would be quite different in its impact on people from the tax system we have today under current law because of the way that law will interact in changes in the economy overtime. >> just to clarify, you are saying the s.g.r. -- you assume it froze? >> in the alternative fiscal scenario. so the extended baseline follows the concept of our 10-year baseline and the baseline basically follows current law. so under current law, medicare's payments to doctors will be cut by about 25% at the beginning of next year. as incorporated in the -- our 10-year baseline for may and incorporated in the extended baseline projections we have here. but the alternative scenario is designed to capture some policies that may be harder to sustain were in fact turned off and we're showing the

consequences of that for budget outcomes and for economic outcomes. >> this is probably asking to you do apples and oranges math. there was this reduction in the growth in health care costs that subtracted from our long-term deficit and debt problems but then there was this tax law change that was locked in place. how do those compare to each other in terms of the effect on the long-term outcome? >> so the change in the tax law has a larger affect down the road than our vision to health care spending. relative to last year's extended baseline, the debt we projected this year is a great deal larger. last year we thought that under the current laws that stood then, debt would actually come

down from its current roughly 70% of g.d.p. to close to 50% of g.d.p. over 25 years. this year we think debt will go from the current 70% of g.d.p. up to 100% of g.d.p. over 20 years and most of that increase comes from the change -- i think the primary factor is the change in the tax receipts because of the change in law. the piece in the other direction was our downrevision to health spending. >> that's a tiny bit compared to the -- >> well, as i said, i think it's .6% of g.d.p. in 2038. that's a big deal. but it's not as big of deal as a change in tax law. remember, the change in tax law extended lower tax rates except for the highest of income people and the index raised the threshold for the alternative minimum tax. so previously under current law, the thing that congress kept not happening -- under current law as it stood a year

ago many, many americans would be paying alternative minimum tax right away and congress basically fixed that problem in the sense as i said raising the threshold and indexing them for inflation. the number of people affected by alternative minimum tax and the revenue collected from it rises but not very much over the 25 years. so those changes were very large in the 10-year budget window but had larger affects beyond the 10-year budget window. another thing i emphasize in this climb of debt is the share in g.d.p. when we have these deficits, that adds to the debt. the next year from payments on the debt are higher. and that adds more to the debt. so these things can snowball. you see this in our projection of from payments which are a little over 1% of g.d.p. today. we think it will be 5% of g.d.p. by 2038. now, a big part of that increase comes over the next half dozen years as interest

rates return to more normal levels. but then beyond that, as debt rises, the interest servicing cost rises as well. >> so when we embarked upon deficit reduction, everybody was talking about $4 trillion in savings. what this report is showing, whatever we've done, we still have $2 trillion? >> so there is certainly more work to do to stabilize the debt. i gave a talk last week and there's slides on our website that show a projection of debt in 2007, projected it made in early 2011 and the projection we made earlier this year. these were just 10-year projections. in 2007, debt was 35% of g.d.p. or so and we thought it would actually decline slightly. we then hit a financial crisis and economic downturn, the likes of which we have not seen

since the great depression, and policymakers, those developments would automatically have pushed down revenues and pushed up federal spending in a way that would led to much larger deficits and debt. top of that, policymakers took deliberate actions to try to help households, sustain local governments, stabilize the financial systems and the economy and those policies had costs. so by early 2011, our projection was not at debt of 35% of g.d.p. and heading down. it was 60% or 70% of g.d.p. and heading up. relative to the 2011 projection, our 2013 projection is a little lower. in this talk last week i break down the pieces of that. part of that is health cost changes in our projections. part of that is policy changes. but still we are at a very high level of debt relative to g.d.p. given our historical experience and specious of most countries. so under current law, as our extended baseline shows today,

debt will rise the share of g.d.p. one our illustrious scenarios is $2 trillion of deficit reduction phased in over the coming duck'd. over that policy debt in 2038, for 10 years there's the $2 trillion of deficit reduction. and then outside the 10-year window at the same projection of g.d.p. we are giving a sense of orders of magnitude for congress. that leads to debt in 2038 that is a little below the current share of g.d.p. but close to the current share of g.d.p. as it turned out, this $4 trillion policy -- and these are numbers we picked in spring as nice round numbers. we are not trying to suggest there is a particular target that congress should have. it's a matter of judgment. the $4 trillion policy in the first decade pushes debt by historical percent

of 25% to 30%. so the $2 trillion of deficit reduction over the next decade if sustained would keep debt close to the current high share of g.d.p. $4 trillion of deficit reduction over the coming decade continued after that would push debt back down so it would be by 25 years from now a little bit low historical relationship to g.d.p. those are large numbers. what you need to remember here what the congress and president have done in the past few years is to raise taxes relative to an alternative scenario but cut them a great deal what had been current law and to cut back on discretionary spending and some of -- and some of the benefit programs but not to make fundamental changes in either social security, medicare, medicaid or a fundamental changes to collect more tax revenue. and that's the basic choice. we have a set of programs that given the surge of people who will be eligible for them over the next decade and the rising

cost of health care per person, that set of programs will be much more expensive in the future than it's been in the past. so we as a society have a fundamental choice of whether to cut back on those programs or to raise taxes to pay for them. and so far we've chosen to do very little of either and as long as that's the case, i will c.b.o.'s projections keep looking like this. >> just another question about interest rates. you mentioned the returning to normal of rates. what does that look like under this scenario? what kind of percentages are we talking about? and also, after the fed announced its signal it's tapering program, rates did spike up quite a bit higher than most of the market anticipated. has that changed your view on rates and the way you look at

them? >> so last i checked the interest rate in the 10-year treasury note was 80 basis points what we projected it to be in the third quarter. that's a substantial difference. we have been projecting the 10-year treasury notes would rise quite a bit over the next several years. so we view this as simply an acceleration, pulling into the present of something we thought was going to happen within a few years anyway. so if we were to do new baseline budget projections today, we would have -- we would project higher interest costs in the next few years. but in our 10-year projections from the spring and underlying the projections here, we had rates coming up a lot anyway. i don't think what's happening in the last few months would change our projection of interest rates five years from now, 10 years from now, 25 years from now. in fact, the market read on interest rates, five, 10 years from now is not much different than it was earlier in the

year. so i think what we've just seen again is an increase in rates what we've seen come sooner than expected but nothing that would change the fundamental contours of our economic forecast. but it's certainly true as rates rise from their level very close to zero to something closer to their historical average that that increase in rates applied to debt that is 70% of g.d.p. has a huge affect on the government's interest payments. i think those interest payments reach about 3% of g.d.p. by the end of the decade. 5% of g.d.p. by 2038. does that answer your question? [inaudible] >> if you picture projection of interest rates that had a pretty steep upward slope and then leveling off, we started up sooner than we thought and that would raise projected

interest costs in the next few years. since we were expecting a very large increase anyway a few years from now, this increase literal doesn't change the path further down the road. >> but if you get in a situation where the deficits are bigger, say under your alternative scenario, that does then have an affect on the rate itself which has an affect -- [inaudible] >> so in chapter 6 of the report where we look at the economic effects of different paths of fiscal policy, we look at the economic effects of the alternative fiscal scenario relative to the extended baseline and we show that we think interest rates would be nobly higher. but we also -- noticeably higher. but we also note cal berg that increase, because when we -- in this report and other places

project the effects of interest rates, we're drawing on historical reports, it has risen relative to g.d.p. but it's not headed off indefinitely in projection. if debt looked like it was on a permanently upwardly trajectory, that might affect some that would be out of line what we've seen given historical sorts of valuation in debt to g.d.p. we so the quantification we have relies on our sort of standard models and relationships between interest rates and debt and g.d.p. even then, interest rates are higher and that matters for the debt dynamics, as you say. i want to caution that we think we have and try to say we have greater uncertainty about projecting the effects of paths of fiscal policy that are outside our historical xperience.

>> [inaudible] >> i think the extra risks in that case will be the high side. >> i assume your studies, what you have on your website, supplemental tables [inaudible] >> so the extensive set of extra data that went up at 10:00 this morning and hopefully that will help you. >> how did that do with the whole evolution of the downward adjustment in the increase in per capita medical health care costs? could you give me a couple numbers on how it -- to what extent but also address a concern of mine which maybe un justified. it seems like the danger that

the slowdown in health care costs is really cyclical and not secular, that it appears as mostly cut in, could he insiding with the re-- coinciding with the recession. there is a danger, one would imagine -- you get where i'm going. >> so in revising our health spending projections the past few years, we've drawn on our own analysis of the data we've seen and on the analysis of outside experts. a number of outside experts who looked at the causes of the slowdown in national health care spending have attributed part of that slowdown to the financial crisis and recession and the ways in which the loss in income and have contributed to noncyclical factors, the structural factors.

two of my colleagues did an incredibly thorough examination of the slowdown in medicare spending. we published this working paper in august. in that paper, they tried hard, but were unable to link the slowdown in medicare spending growth to the business cycle conditions to the loss of wealth. they tried to do this not just by looking at the time series data which don't show historically the correlation of medicare growth and economic conditions. but i think much more persuasionively they looked at households that suffered larger wealth losses, experienced other bad affects of the economic conditions. and those households did not seem to have any different reaction in their medicare spending. that leaves open the very important question of wealth. it's not the financial crisis and recession. it's what is it.

it's an uncertain business. my cleegged and i tried to quantify changes in age and health status of medicare beneficiaries, changes in the payment rates that medicare rates, change in the use of prescription drugs, changes in whether people are enrolled in part a and part b of medicare or just in part a. a whole set of factors they were able to quantify but that didn't explain very much of the slowdown. there is another part of the paper that goes through a number of possible factors that were difficult to quantify and they tried to pull together the scraps of evidence and the -- to see what stories might have been more or less important. but it doesn't lead to a clean sharp affect and we now know how persistent that will be. so when we do our projections we are trying to make projections that are in the middle of the distribution. we want there to be equal chances that we are too high and too low. i think that's the best

information we can give to congress. as we see this slow growth in medicare and medicaid in the past few years and slower growth in premiums in the private insurance market than we expected earlier, we tried to construct projections for the future that balance risks. so i think there are a set of reasons we might take the recent experience very seriously, give it a lot of weight in our projections. one of this is the breath of the slowdown. it's in medicare, medicaid, the private health insurance market. within medicare it is in part a and part b and part d. my colleagues show it applies across regions. it applies across beneficiaries with high and low health costs. so it's just a very widespread phenomenon. it suggests it's not just a few idiosyncratic factors. it gives a lot of weight to the recent experience in making our projections. the second reason this slowdown has been going on for sometime. it's not two years, three years. it's half a dozen years or

longer. there's another reason to give a lot of weight. and another reason to give substantial weight for medicare at least is that we have not been able to link the medicare slowdown to the economic -- macroeconomic conditions. now, on the other hand, i think there are three reasons, as it turns out, to -- didn't start out as an objective, three reasons to put limited weight or more limited weight in the past few years. one is health spending growth has varied a lot in the past. and breff -- previous periods of slower spending growth was followed by a pickup in growth. again, in some of those previous periods, some of the stories, one heard, some of the ecdotes that were told sound like some that we hear today. i think the second reason to put only limited weight on the past several years is there

continues to be s.e.c. technological development in he health care business. i'm discussing something this thursday on the brookings institute, i think the paper is embargo but they talk about a number of areas where the practice of health care is continuing to push in new and expensive directions. so we may have seen a lull in some of that but it doesn't mean it won't recur. i think a third reason to put less weight on the last several years for medicare, again, only is that medicare remains primarily a fee for service system in which the incentives for providing more care are still there. so i think there are some good reasons to put substantial weight on what we've seen in the past several years but reasons to be cautious in how much weight to put on it. and what we have done in the response to that is to have projections that main stain slow growth of medicare and

medicaid spending for several years but that -- but the number of years from now, growth rates come back up in our projection. and the level of spending in medicare and medicaid remains in our projection just permanently below what we had said a few years ago. but we don't have a widening wedge -- a very rapidly widening wedge in the long term. >> have you provided some kind of graph that shows like what you were projecting? what's been the magnitude? down by a third? >> we provided pieces of this. it's not easy to pull this together because our projections gets revised for lots of region. legislation is enacted. so it's complicated to do these historical comparisons, but we have said a number of places that for 2020 our projections

of -- projection of medicare spending growth is now about 15% below where it was in the spring of 2010. in 2020 our projection -- sorry -- the level of medicare spending, 15% below. and medicaid spending is about 15% below where it was a few years ago. and that is a bigger difference than what we've seen in so far. n 2012, it is 5% below what we expected in 2010. so we have seen some of the slowdown. we are projecting more of it to continue. but as i said, the gap between our earlier projections and current ones don't get that much wider later on. we've taken this recent news into our projection of the underlying rate of health cost growth which matters. there is a chart in the back of today's report which looks at last year and this year's projection of health spending growth and you can see this year is lower and most of that difference comes just in the

next few years. beyond that point the lines are close to parallel but not quite. the current law is a little lower slope in an the line from a few years ago. inaudible] they talk about the fiscal crisis brought on by the in crease [inaudible] >> we plan to produce a number of budget projections this fall. i am not going to be more specific than that. it's a really daunting task for us.

the last time we did a set of options for reducing the deficit we had 100 different options. it's different proposals and a lot of writing to go with it so that work is well under way. but i don't know when we'll be done in particular because i don't know what congress will need from us between now and we could finish the report. what we mean by a fiscal crisis is a point of which investors lose confidence in the government's ability to manage its finances and thereby won't lend the government money at affordable interest rates. we've been very clear though that it surpasses our ability and we think anyone's ability to predict when such a point might be reached. the language from the report today is how long the nation could sustain such growth in the federal debt is impossible

predict with any measure of confidence. any country that's had that sort of problem has differed in some way and the united states is different from other countries in ways that can matter. so we just don't have enough experience in this country or experience in other countries for which we can untangle all the different factors to produce some estimate of how much debt the country could have before it encountered that sort of problem. and presumably it depends -- the answer would depend critically not on what amount of debt but what people think happen to fiscal policy in the future. it's not a matter of just today's borrowing but expected future borrowing and i think a matter of confidence in the government's ability to make policy decisions. so i don't think there is a number out there that is like the number and i don't think anybody knows how to find it.

[inaudible] >> yes, absolutely. jackie. >> the comparisons with the $4 trillion alternative, pick your 10-year window, whether 2011, 2021, 2033, but can you quantify exactly how much congress and the white house has actually achieved in that window in deficit reduction? >> so we've not -- we've not done that. and the talk i gave last week, i highlighted the revisions to different cat comborse of the budget. and for those categories, one can see there are categories where there has or has not been substantial legislative action but we haven't tried to work out the specific numbers. >> congressman van hollen uses the figure $2.5 trillion. >> we have just not tried to do that kind of precise

calculation. >> is it in the ballpark? i know you wouldn't want to refute the ranking member of the budget committee. >> i don't speak about other people's comments. if we had an estimate of that, i would happily share it with you. but i don't know any estimate we've done of that sort. >> so $4 trillion is on top of that amount when you do this alternative, right? >> yes. i mean, as a general matter, we are not trying to keep track so much where we've been but give a sense of congress of where we're going, as a benchmark for them to consider changes. so whatever they've done in the past has been accompanied by a collection of good and bad news out of the world, but we are at a certain place now and we have projections of where we think we will go in the future. that's what our $2 trillion and $4 trillion and other sorts of numbers are based on. >> is there a reason you haven't done that calculation? is it impossible to do or -- >> i think it's difficult to do. as i said, our projections get

revised for a lot of different reasons. trying to go back over some period of years and disentangle a lot of pieces is challenging, not impossible. again, our focus is not -- is not so much on the things they've done as where we think the budget will go under the laws that are currently in place. and whatever the goal was viewed to be three years ago, however much has been accomplished, what matters i think is the situation as it stands now. the outlook as it stands now and what sort of deficit and debt objectives the congress has. >> is the economic feedback analysis, is this the first? i don't recall seeing this before. >> so we've done this before. it's complicated to do. one thing i should note is in

our 10-year projections, the budget projections and economic projections are completely consistent with each other. the economic projections, what we think would happen in the economy given the budget outlook and the budget outlook given the economic outlook, it's not true in this report. the basic budget projkses in the first five chapters -- projections in the first five chapters all hold the economy xed in -- income growth over time. but it grows as it has in the past. so in the first several chapters here, debt reaches 100% of g.d.p. in 2038. and then we look back at the economic feedback. and then debt reaches 108% of g.d.p. so that's the reason for that difference. but we've done that sort of extra analysis in the past. >> was that in 2012, june,

2012? >> yeah. it was done separately from the basic budget projections because of the complexity of doing this at the long horizon and doing it when fiscal policy s on an unsustainable course which creates challenges. >> this probably goes beyond the confines of this report. can you shed any light and have you been asked by congress to hed any light on the [inaudible] >> well, there's still a good deal of uncertainty about when the treasury might run out of cash including, for example, how large the tax receipts will be this week. as you know, the treasury said that it expected to reach its borrowing limit in mid-october, and to have about $50 billion in cash on hand at the time. that projection seems plausible to us. given the likely cash flows

after that date, we think that the treasury will probably run out of cash sometime between the end of october and mid november. without some change in the borrowing limit. we will be releasing a short report next week that will provide our latest view at that time, including i hope on information we can gleam this week. but the date on which the treasury would run out of money is likely to be uncertain even at the very end because federal cash flows bounce around from day-to-day. >> so what happens end of october to mid november is when u say run out of cash, you mean not pay? >> yeah. we think without some increase in the debt limit the treasury would be unable to meet its obligations sometime between the end of october and mid ovember.

well, that's a good note to end n. >> [inaudible] >> well, i should emphasize we don't -- we aren't engaged in the day-to-day cash management of the government the way the treasury department is. we watch what's happening to federal spending and revenues, but the precise mechanics, the tools they would have under those circumstances, we just don't know. so the projection i offered was based on the set of extraordinary -- quote, extraordinary, measures that have been fairly common. what else treasury might do, i don't know. so, for example, the ability of the treasury to delay making certain payments rather than others is not something we can speak to. >> and that projection also

since they have no rollover roblems -- [inaudible] >> well, if they have rollover -- i have to think about that more carefully. the projection, if they can't sell -- if they end up not selling as much debt on one date, then maybe they can sell more on another date. i don't know how i can think about your question, i'm afraid. what we're trying to do is offer a sense under the regular workings of the treasury cash management to the point they would not have as much cash they need to make the payments they would normally make on that date. and what else might happen or what else they might do i think is other people's jobs in this own. ok. so dwront we stop there? thank you very much for coming. if you have further questions, then we're happy to try to

answer them. thank you very much. >> thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national able satellite corp. 2013] >> on that report, fox business writes by 2038 if current law continues, federal debt held by the public would hit 100% of g.d.p. they write the nonpart san c.b.o. added by the same time frame, if action by congress is taken, entitlement spending would increase to 14% of g.d.p. or twice the average over the last 40 years. read the report at c-span.org. the house is about to gavel in at 4:00 p.m. eastern. five bills including one

dealing with gaming activity on indian lines and another on u.s.-korea nuclear energy. and possible work on a forest management bill. also on food stamp programs. live coverage of the house when they come back in. until then, discussion on the possible next federal reserve chair from this morning's "washington journal." host: and with the federal reserve in the news because of the looming change in leadership, we'll spend the next 45 minutes discussing the country's central banking nation with bloomberg columnist nela richardson. thank you for joining us. as the fed will celebrate the 100th anniversary this winter, go back to 1913 and explain why the institution was created in the first place. guest: well, the federal reserve was created in a response to a series of financial panics that caused the government to form a central bank that was both independent and decentralized. and those two fundamental

characteristics continue until this day. we have 12 regional banks all over the country, from silicon valley in san francisco to chicago and manufacturing to philadelphia that is supposed to be more representative of the whole country. and we have an organization that's independent, free from congress and political interference. except -- and this is important -- when it comes to picking the actual chair of who runs the fed. host: and we'll get to the looming vacancies. what are the federal reserve's main responsibilities? guest: so the federal reserve has two main responsibilities. two -- and i'm actually going to add a third and i'll get to that in a second. the first two are the traditional ones. that is price stability and full employment. and so the fed is supposed to keep inflation low and keep the economy fully employed. and over the long term, help support moderate interest rate growth.

now, there was a third one that was added with the addition of the dodd-frank act. now, the fed is charged with financial stability and making sure that systemic risk is contained in the financial system. we're not talking about that now. our conversation has been devoted to quantitative easing. this new emerging mandate of the fed will be significant in the future. host: and those mandates sometimes conflicts with each other, correct? guest: yes, they do, and we're seeing that in this current discussion. when is too much inflation from monetary policy too much for the economy? and when is it ok to keep doing monetary policy in order to fulfill that really primal mandate of full employment? we're far from full employment at 7.3%, and there seems to be a lot of support at the fed right now to continue its policies but to also taper them

back in order to keep these price expectations under control. host: nela richardson of bloomberg government, a senior economist there, is helping us go through our segment today on the federal reserve. phone lines are open if you have questions about how the federal reserve works or questions and comments about the looming vacancies. let's talk about those vacancies. what's the current leadership structure at the fed and where are those vacancies coming from? guest: well, the fed, the monetary policy of the fed, which is what we care about today, is led by the federal open markets committee. that's seven members. they are all appointed by the president and confirmed by congress. of course, the chairman of that committee is the current federal reserve chair, ben bernanke. this group sets the monetary policy of the federal reserve and does that primarily through the federal funds rate. that is the overnight rate in which banks can make loans to

each other. host: we're taking your calls and comments this morning. jack is up from washington, d.c. on our independent line. good morning to you. caller: good morning. i'm calling because i wonder if you were familiar with the novel "the creature from jackle island," and if you could tell us how the federal reserve was originally conceived and who s involved in creating -- in creating it? guest: well, i am not familiar with that novel. i'm not quite sure what the caller meant by being confused. the federal reserve has had a fairly clear -- a lot of clarity in their mandate. now, that mandate has often suffered as different chairs conceptions rent on what inflation containment

meant, like in the 1970's and also in terms of full employment. but the current fed, the modern fed has had this clear mandate of low inflation, full employment. now, there's tension in this mandate, and during the financial crisis, the fed also had to serve as the lender of last resort and had to take extraordinary measures, measures actually never seen before to make sure that the financial system stayed afloat. however, i think that of all regulators, the fed has had maniacal clarity. host: how are you board members selecteds? are there specific qualifications that they had to have before they're selected? guest: well, they can come from the private sector. they can come from the business sector. there will be a clear

understanding of how the economy works and how the financial markets works. and this -- as these appointments go, they are somewhat political as well. but also i think it's very important to understand how the fed chairman is selected. there was a paper written 10 years ago by christina romer and her husband, david, what makes a good fed chair. and they came up with two things. basically, a good understanding how this work and the tradeoff between inflation and employment. and secondly, some experience, both private sector experience and fiscal policy experience. and you can see that the current candidates being tossed around for fed chair definitely fit those qualifications. host: we can go through some of those candidates. one name who has been taken -- who took his name off the table as a possible replacement is larry summers. laurence summers. talk about him as we show folks a pictur of him there with the

president. guest: so he's been a lightning rod in terms of the potential for him as a candidate. has very little to do with his policy. in fact, the media noise around larry summers has been exclusively because of his personality. politically, though, there were some issues with the liberal contingent of the democratic party. because of larry summers' role in deregulating the financial markets. there are some who thought that that role actually led to the financial crisis. now, larry summers has come out, said he would be strong on regulation going forward but his past kind has caught up with him here at least in terms of liberal democrats. he is a breath of fresh air in terms of the financial markets because what it is avoiding is a contentious and acrimonious confirmation process, when

we're dealing with the threat of a government shutdown and the debt ceiling being raised, the last thing we needed was to have a confirmation process that was chaotic. host: and the candidates that are left on the table, one name that keeps coming up is janet yellen. who is she? guest: the vice chairman of the fed and she seems to always be the frontrunner until someone else sneaks up in front of her. she has a long history with the fed. she's an -- she was an academic in the past. she's seen the establishment of this monetary policy, this unconventional policy known as quan tative easing. many economists signed a letter -- 350 economists agreeing on anything is a pretty surprising thing. and they agree that janet yellen would make a terrific fed chair because of her experience and because of her insight, her intellect and the characteristics go on and on. host: and some other candidates whose name has been brought up

in this segment of "washington journal," but we're taking your calls and comments as we talk about the federal reserve with nela richardson of bloomberg government. lansing, michigan, independent line, dick, good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. , in r: i would like to ask 1934, after the federal reserve was enacted, of course, income tax and the 16th amendment was enacted at the same time, in 1934, a democrat president and democrat congress wrote the glass-steagall act to separate these banks from commercial investment. and in 19 -- i think it was 1996, a democratic president and republican congress got rid of the glass-steagall act and the bottom fell out. everybody in america lost money in this real estate debacle and that was the cause of it. and nobody -- i mean, you got to get rid of the federal reserve bank, because take it

back to the united states treasury department because the bank -- look at the debt we have. $17 trillion. what is the interest that the taxpayers pay the federal reserve bank a day, i'd like to question answered also. y haven't they brought the glass-steagall act back? i know it separated these banks. thank you. host: nela richardson. guest: well, there's a lot of good points in dick's questions. there are some who attribute the financial crisis to the end of glass-steagall. however, you know, modern financial markets depend on actually this integration between investment and retail enterprises, and there is a thought, at least it's my thought, they can continue simultaneously as long as there's good regulation. now, dick is right to point out that that regulation actually was quite lax during the

financial crisis and a very amenable poll tear policy coupled with lax regulation actually led to bubbles in our asset prices. so there was some problems with regulation. but the question is if you go all the way back to glass-steagall and kind of root our financial system -- route our financial system in the past or do we move forward, accepting dodd-frank and being vigilant now about systemic risk and encouraging regulation. now, in terms of the candidates, both yellen and larry summers have stated that maybe a restrainment of some of banks' activities is the right approach. and the people expect janet yellen to be very tough on regulation and tough on banks in the future. host: the more recent pushes een r an audit of the

federal reserve. ann meyer writes in on twitter -- guest: it'sed iterms of independence. that is a central feature we opened up with that discussion, a central feature of the federal reserve isndce. they get no appropriations from congress. in fact, they return billions of dollars to the treasury. some of that because of this asset buying purchase program. they are free and independent. an audit necessarily places re strixes on that independence and although congress may have a problem with the approach of the fed in certain circumstances -- if you look traditionally over the long term, independence is the key guiding factor of most central banks around the world. host: why are some folks pushing for an audit? guest: some folks are disturbed at the extraordinary measures that the federal reserve is taking, not only to get the economy growing again and get

jobs created but also what happened during the financial crisis when the fed helped bail out the banks that it regulated. for some people that doesn't quite sit right. and so there is this desire to kind of reign in the -- rein in the powers of the fed because they saw the execution of tremendous financial power during the financial crisis and they find that concerning, quite frankly. ost: let's go to ruth from sandy hook, connecticut. good morning. caller: wow. i agree with the last caller that we need to bring glass-steagall back. and we need to break up these banks. i don't care if there's been a little bit of demand that they carry, you know, a little bit more money on the books or whatever. they are still too risky. they are the ones reaping the profits, and main street isn't. we don't -- we don't give the

same advantages to the smaller banks or the middle-sized ones that were not risky. and we encourage this risky behavior. and the rest of the country, the 90% or whatever you want to say, is struggling. so i disagree with you that we don't have to do something dramatic because i believe that we do and i think if anything happened we'd be right there to say, you know, too big to fail, we can't let the whole world fall apart, we are so interconnected. what do you think of janet yellen in terms of i know, you know, as a democrat and progressive i was totally against larry summers. i can't believe that the president actually listened to us. do you really think that she will do something? because you know what, i'd like a little bit of interest on my bank account so i don't have to invest in wall street and i might be able to make 5%, you

know. why should the big banks -- and i'll close with that because i know i've gone on a little bit -- you know, get all these advantages? it's just -- it's so -- and they got all the power. that was the other thing, too, to come against any kind of regulation or anything that's going to tie the hands and all. you know, main street has no power behind it. host: nela richardson. guest: well, i'd like to first say, i think something dramatic does need to be done in terms of bank regulation. and the dodd-frank act was actually structured to be that thing. this act has not been fully implemented. and so before we add another piece of regulation, like a return to glass-steagall, on top of the dodd-frank act, i think we should get this act implemented and enforced. the problem with regulation is not always that we don't have enough rules but that the rules are not properly enforced.

here is where i am critical of the federal reserve, that they did drop the ball during the housing boom, allowing a lot of bad products to creep in the market. and those products eventy overtook the financial system. but more regulation, i think, particularly when we have the dodd-frank act in existence, may not be the conclusive answer that folks on main street need. now, janet yellen has given every indication that she would be a good regulator and a tough regulator on the banks moving forward. most of the conversation is, as i said before, has been on quantitative easing. and that q.e. has suppressing interest rates. so i feel the caller's discussion of having interest rates that don't make any interest on her bank account. that's not because of the fed. that is because we have an economy that is not working

properly. and we have a fiscal policy that is in a stalemate because congress cannot come to a decision on the economy. the fed can only go so far. the fed only has one tool. that is monetary policy. and it is hopeful that that tool will lead to investment. but it won't solve all of our problems, by any means. host: we heard the term quantitative easing a couple times. explain that terms for folks who don't know. guest: so. what the federal reserve has started in 2010 in this latest round last year was to start buying about $85 billion in bonds every month. that's both long-dated treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. and the idea behind it was to keep interest rates low and to spur investments not only for banks and private enter prices but for consumers so -- enterprises but for consumers so i go buy a house or car and

that transaction would spur more economic activity. the problem is that quantitative easing, though it's kept the economy somewhat afloat, it hasn't had the success that the federal reserve would like it to do and it hasn't been able to generate this economic growth over the hump. and we're still seeing that in the latest economic data. host: bill writes in that the fed has too much power over world markets to go without oversight. an then asks, who pays for fed's operations? guest: well, the banks pay for the fed's operations, so it's not a taxpayer funded organization. and because of quantity fative easing, because the fed has all niece assets on its books, it's actually been paying money to the treasury. so it's not a net taker from the government. that may change, though, as they taper, as they start selling off assets over the long run. interest rates will necessarily rise. that means the bonds and the

federal reserve's balance sheet will lower in value. they might see a loss going forward. that's something the federal reserve will have to be very sensitive to going forward. host: al's up next from leesburg, virginia, on our republican line. you're on with nela richardson. caller: thank you. this is my first time calling. this subject has actually boiled my blood. this ra, ra for the federal reserve system is obnoxious. host: al, what's your concerns with the federal reserve? caller: first off, it's the devaluation of the dollar. if you go to google and type in dollar devaluation chart, since 1913 we have lost 95% of the value of the dollar. i'd appreciate it if you'd comment on that. and i'll take my answer off the air. thank you. host: devaluation of the dollar. guest: right. so part of this quantitative

easing suppresses interest rates and suppresses the value of the dollar, that is absolutely true. and i understand what i hear as a rising -- almost anger toward the federal reserve because of the erosion of savings accounts, the erosion of the power of the dollar, but to say that the federal reserve is the ly main actor in the economy underserves the role of congress, the role of the white house and the fiscal obligations in generating the economy. again, the federal reserve only has one tool. that's to keep low interest rates low through their open market operations. without that, many believe, many economists believe that the economy would not even be as good and as well-off as it is right now. ost: lewis is up next from pikesville, maryland, on our independent line. go ahead. caller: does fed issue the old

savings bonds they use to use to finance colleges? because i think -- i heard so many people now have trouble buying savings bonds, you almost have to jump through loops, is that because savings bonds are issued by the treasury and not the federal reserve? i think that more savings bonds should be issued. if you paid me 5% i'd be willing to take a little bit of my pension and pay that because 5% is a good -- and it paid over five years, this would help with the -- you know, the mortgage -- sorry -- with the debt that we have in this country. and the independence -- i like the federal reserve's independence but they're privately owned by the banks themselves. i guess the fox is running the hen house. i'd like to hear her answer the question about the savings bond and the private ownership of the federal reserve. thank you. guest: well, rates are going to be low across asset prices. so it's not like savings bond would have a higher rate of return than a long-dated

treasury bond. but to answer your question on the independence, yes, the federal reserve system is a private-public partnership. the federal reserve board, however, is a centralized government-making body that decides monetary policy for the fed. host: and as we talk about the board and the leadership of the board, we mentioned janet yellen as someone who might be in line to lead the board. another name mentioned is kohn. guest: he has a 40-year history with the federal reserve. he has seen the ups and downs and has these qualities that the two have said are fundamental for the future fed chairman which is an understanding of inflation expectation and the balance and tradeoffs to meet full employment. host: and who else is being

mentioned? i think "the financial times" list four other folks, alan blinder, roger ferguson and ben bernanke. guest: i think ben bernanke would be a good choice. some have an affinity toward the federal reserve, experience with the federal reserve, an understanding of the economy and how it works. and let me just mention, the federal reserve operations is not merely to help banks. i think that's a misconception that i'm hearing. it's also for job creation. the idea is that if you keep interest rates low, firms and companies will start investing in the economy and that will create jobs. that is the idea. now, the execution of the idea and the actual success of the idea i think is debatable. but the fed only has a couple of tools in its toolbox and what it has tried to do was keep a very low interest rate environment that will lead to

job creation on wall street. . 20, the chair will postpone further proceedings today on motions to suspend the rules on which a recorded vote or the yeas and nays are ordered or on which the vote incurs objection

under clause 6 of rule 20. recorded votes on postponed questions will be taken later. for what purpose does the gentleman from arizona seek recognition? >> mr. speaker, i move to suspend the rules and pass h.r. 1410. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: union calendar number 154, h.r. 1410, a bill to prohibit gaming activities on certain indian lands in arizona until the expiration of certain gaming compacts. . the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from arizona, there gosar, and the gentleman from grijalva, each will control 20 minutes. the chair recognizes the gentleman from arizona.

mr. gosar: i ask unanimous consent that all members have five legislative days to review and extends their remarks and include extraneous materials on the bill under consideration. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. gosar: i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. gosar: h.r. 1410, the keep the promises act, introduced by a bipartisan group of members from the arizona delegation, would preserve arizona voteers' approved gaming exabblingt by prohibiting any indian casino on land acquired in trust after april 9, 2013, in the phoenix metropolitan area. this prohibition would expire on january 1, 2097, when the cumpt gaming contact negotiated with the arizona governor expires. this bill helps to resolve public promises that were supposedly made in good faith to the voters of arizona. in 2002 the voters supported the passage of proposition 202, which limited the number of tribally owned casinos in the

state. and it granted tribes exclusive rights to operate casinos in arizona. during the proposition 202 campaign, a public promise was made by a coalition of 17 arizona tribes including the nation. to limit casino gaming in the phoenix metropolitan area. unfortunately it appears that a tribe is on the verge of breaking that commitment and more than a majority of the tribes in upset. the immediate effect of the bill is to block the nation from opening an offresva this is a modified version of a bill passed by overwhelming majority of the house last year . as mentioned earlier, the bill has bipartisan support, including a majority of the house delegation. the governor of arizona and six of the tribes that took part in proposition 202 agreement. the salt river maricopa indian

ommunity, the walapai tribe, and other indian tribes. it is important to point out that it's not just arizona tribes that support this bill. i have met tribes from other states who are very concerned about what's happening in arizona. they believe that if our legislation is not signed into law, a dangerous precedent could be set leading to the expansion of off-reservation casinos in arizona and other states. they want to see congress protect state gaming compacts. for me today's deliberations are not about stopping one casino or or gaming as a whole. i support gaming. the keep promises act is about protecting my state's gaming compact, the future of gaming in arizona and ultimately the future of indian gaming in this country. i urge adoption of the measure and reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from arizona reserves his time. the chair recognizes the gentleman from arizona, mr.

grijalva. mr. grijalva: thank you, sir. thank you, mr. chairman. we're back again. this is the second different piece of legislation and quite honestly h.r. 410 is nothing more than a special interest legislation designed to protect the phoenix market from a few wealthy tribal gaming enterprises. the legislation not only upsets settled law but potentially subjects the united states to new liabilities for breach of trust, breach of contract and taking claims valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. but it also creates a dangerous precedent for hundreds of tribal-state compacts land and water right settlements that are found nationwide. let's talk about those promises. to acquire act

non-reservation land anywhere within three arizona counties in order to replace original reservation land rendered economically useless by the painted rock dam. a district in particular, that community was totally destroyed. the settlement specifically promised that the nation could acquire new replacement land that could be used for the nation, for economic development and as a federal reservation for all purposes. h.r. 410 would impose additional restrictions beyond those agreed upon by the united states and the i understandian nation 25 years ago, breaking the solemn promise made between two sovereign nations. this would mark the first and only time in modern era in which the united states unilaterally reneges on truble land and water rights settlement -- tribal land and water rights settlement. last time around the special interest behind this legislation tried to amend the

actual settlement language from 1986. they soon discovered that that would open up a pan dora's box, potentially rendering more than a century's worth of binding legal agreements with native american tribes and nations, it would render it moot. this time, they thought they would be clever and instead attack the actual state compact. but this legislation sets equally dangerous precedents. in 2003 the state explicitly agreed that the nation could conduct gaming on any of the nation's lands that meet the requirements of egra. proposition 202, the voter sanctions state law, which gave the governor the authority to enter into the very tribal gaming compact now enforced includes the exact same language allowing the nation to conduct gaming on lands that meet the requirements of egra. h.r. 410 breaks this contractual promise that

arizona made to the indian nation. it would also be the first and only time, the first and only time the united states unilaterally inserts new terms into a tribal-state gaming compact. let me restate that. h.r. 410, the federal government would be stepping in and unilaterally altering a voter-approved legislatively approved, tribal-approved and governor-approved binding tribal-state compact. this legislation would put all tribal gaming compacts at risk, a collateral attack by members of congress. now, the special interests are bringing 410 up this time because they have lost yet another court case. since its predecessor, h.r. 2938, was introduced in 2011, almost every argument to justify h.r. 2938 and now h.r. 410 have been rejected by

federal courts in multiple cases. in fact, there have been 11 administrative and judicial decisions rejecting justifications for this legislation. the latest came june 25, 2013, when the federal district court ruled that arizona's tribal gaming compact was fully integrated and contained no prohibition, i repeat, no prohibition of new gaming in phoenix. this foreclosured any alleged promises not to game. the court dismissed all remaining claims by the plaintiffs. what rom making good on the federal government promised the nation, this is also about jobs. jobs that project to create 9,000 and $300 million in annual economic impacts. this is critical to the economic well-being of west valley of phoenix and the state of arizona. this is why many surrounding cities and hundreds of business leaders and trade organizations are supportive of the project.

the city of glendale where the casino would be located and which was initially party to the losses is now actively working with the nation to move forward on the project. they see that economic benefits it will bring. in fact, they are asking congress to pass -- not to pass this legislation as it will only undermine their ongoing talks. congress needs to stop interfering in this issue in the order of picking winners and losers. this bill is just a waste of time and energy. and that this congress should be spending on many more pressing issues that face this nation. it should be noted that the administration has twice testified against this bill in both versions. which regardless of what happens today in the house, it will not become law. with that, i reserve the balance of my time. and yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from arizona reserves.

the gentleman from arizona. mr. grijalva: i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the chair will receive a message. the messenger: meek, a message from the president of the united states. letter in cretary: a writing. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from arizona, mr. gosar, is recognized. mr. gosar: mr. speaker, i yield five minutes to the gentleman from, -- the gentleman, the author of this bill, mr. trent franks. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from arizona is recognized for five minutes. mr. franks: i thank the gentleman, i thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, before i begin, might i just, on behalf of a lot of the members here on the house of representatives, thank peggy sampson for her tremendous work to help us. this is her birthday and we wish her a happy birthday. shope she has 100 more and at least 90 of them are spent

helping us on this house. with that, mr. speaker, let me also thank chairman hastings and leadership for bringing this bill to the floor today. as well as the bipartisan group of co-sponsors for their support. i certainly want to thank all of the arizona delegation that are members -- members of the delegation that are in support of this bill. mr. speaker, h.r. 1410rks the keep the promise act, keeps to prevent las vegas-style gaming in the phoenix metropolitan area until the gaming compact that both the tribes agreed to and the arizona voters approved expires in 2027. one tucson area tribe is trying to build a major casino on lands that were purchased in the phoenix metropolitan area at the same time that they were in negotiations with other tribes in the state. to craft this gaming compact. these actions are contrary to the public commitments that this particular tribe made between 2000 and 2002 to the 16

other indian tribes in arizona, the state itself and the voters of the state of arizona. and they publicly supported the passage of proposition 202, a state referendum to limit casino gambling in the phoenix metropolitan area. mr. speaker, the bipartisan co-sponsors of h.r. 1410 are simply trying to keep all of the parties to their publicly stated commitment, to the people of arizona. not to engage in gaming in the phoenix metropolitan area. mr. speaker, during the subcommittee hearing on this bill, witnesses made clear that there is a problem and that a serious threat to the negotiated gaming structure in arizona will ensue if this tribe is able to break its promise and develop a las vegas-style casino in the phoenix metropolitan area. h.r. 1410 prevents an onerous precedent that could lead to an out-of-control expansion of

off-reservation casinoses as well as dangerous changes to the complex of tribal gaming -- complexion of tribal gaming across america. mr. speaker, tribes across this nation, including many of the other arizona tribes that played an integral role in the 2002 gaming compact, strongly support this legislation due to the impact this situation could have on tribal gaming enterprises nationally. the bill's also supported by the state of arizona, the city of glendale, the city of scottsdale, the city of tempe, the town of gilbert and the editorial board of the arizona republic which is the largest newspaper in the state. additionaly, mr. speaker, even if the casino weren't in violation of federal law or contrary to the voter-approved gaming compact, claims that the operation would create jobs and benefit the economy of the surrounding area are woefully misinformed at best and shamefully dishonest at worst. . he

it is conducted roughly four years ago, mr. speaker, and to this day the tribe continuously, steadfastly refuses. in other words, the tribe released a batch of numbers extolling the amazing benefits of this casino and then refused to tell anyone how they came about finding and coming up with those numbers. mr. speaker, this bill does not impact any tribe's ability to have lands taken into trust. nor does it impact any water or land claims. consistent with the intent of the indian gaming regulatory act in proposition 202, this bill merely restricts the ability of tribes to gain on the very lands on which they agreed that they would not game. so with that, mr. speaker, i respectfully ask that my colleagues join me and the members of arizona's delegation in supporting this bill and i respectfully yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. mr. gosar: mr. speaker, i reserve the balance. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves.

the gentleman from arizona, mr. grijalva. mr. grijalva: thank you, mr. speaker. let me enter in the record three letters, one from council woman norm ma alvarez from the city of glendale. let me quote from her. as a member of the glendale city council, i urge you to oppose h.r. 1410, the so-called keep the promise act. this bill is aimed at halting the resort and casino project in the west valley in order to preserve the market share for two wealthy tribes on the other side of the valley. in serving these narrow interests, h.r. 1410 will also be harmful to my constituents who want thousands of jobs that the west valley resort and casino will create. i am part of a majority of the glendale city council that supports beginning discussions with the tribal nation to

support. these talks are long overdue and they need an opportunity to succeed. councilman from glendale, samuel -- let me quote from him. as an elected official, i believe this legislation is not only detrimental to my community but is an affront to the notion of fairness in attempting to overturn a land settlement resolved by congress three decades ago brought by parties who have repeatedly failed to sustain their position in court. my constituents want this project to go forward. the sooner the better. please join me in opposing h.r. 1410. ian hugh, councilman, city of glendale. there is now a consensus of the glendale city council that favors pursuing discussion about the project which represents our first opportunity in years to working

together constructively. passing h.r. 1410 right now would cut the local communities it's supposed to protect. i ask you to please oppose this bill and oppose any efforts to move h.r. 1410 until after the and ons between the city the tribe run its course. -- i have one communication to enter. it's the glass roots tea party activists, and let me quote from their communications to congress. i feel confident that i speak for the majority of those river -- ith the hila hila river action in glendale as well as other tea party organizations in the west valley that we have -- we can all be in agreement that to

continue on this insane spending,ying tistical stubbornness and the refusal to speak will be the debt trap financially -- death trap financially within the state and not keeping good-paying jobs here within reach. i am sending each of you a copy of this letter as well as post it on all our facebook webpages of many of the legislative districts. tea party organizations, republicans coalitions and various other organizations to ensure there is a peaceful resolution and in opposition to h.r. 1410. with that i yield back and reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman's request is granted. the gentleman reserves. the chair recognizes the gentleman from arizona, mr. gosar. mr. gosar: mr. speaker, can i inquire as to the amount of time remaining? the speaker pro tempore: 13 minutes remaining.

mr. gosar: mr. speaker, i'd like to yield five minutes to the gentleman from arizona, mr. schweikert. . schweikert: mr. speaker, congressman gosar, thank you. actually eaker, i come here before the mike i think actually with somewhat of a unique perspective on what's going on here. i hate to admit i'm getting i was the in 1993 majority whip in the arizona state house. i was the one who was assigned to work as a negotiator on the original compacts between the state of arizona, the legislature had to put its package together and the tribal communities, the 21 land holding tribes in the state of arizona. i spent hours with lawyers and their lawyers, members of the

legislature, members of the governor's office going through this over and over and the concern that constantly came up was if we make this deal as igra that passed a few years earlier and was sponsored by one of our u.s. senators, are we confident that this very situation that's happening right now would not happen. and, look, i know many of the players have changed in those 20 years, but this is what we talked about. and now i need to take you to the next reason. hy is this so dangerous to our state? arizona does something -- and i don't know if it's unique to our state, but there's the ability for my poor rural tribal communities to transfer their machines to urban communities. i believe if this casino goes into my metropolitan area, my

state within a couple years becomes a full-scale gaming state. because the horse track and the others are already lining up, gearing up, i believe to do the initiative saying, hey, what we all thought we had, we all thought we had this deal, look what's happening. they're coming into your neighborhoods. let's put it on the ballot and let everyone participate in full-scale gaming. and the value of the machine transfer for these poor rural tribes in a are just now starting to build that consistent cash flow will go away. this is much more than just dealing with the tribes and where their lands are and the acquisition of lands 100 miles beyond. this is an issue of are you about to allow something to happen that will change the very, the very nature of my state. with that, mr. speaker, i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. mr. gosar: mr. speaker, i

continue to reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the chair recognizes the gentleman from arizona, mr. grijalva. mr. grijalva: thank you very much, mr. speaker. it's hard to -- it's been impossible to correct the the constant ions and sophisticated disinformation lobbying campaign that's persisted without regard to facts or reality. and there's been some constant 1410 that were made that is about stopping reservation shopping and offreservation gaming. i look to the situation that's going on in michigan. t's unrelated. in he decree by law

congress points to the fact hat that is not real and totally different. that the 202 initiative that the public voted on and passed is somehow in jeopardy. the last court hearing reaffirmed that was not the case. and it sets a precedent for allstate compact to be opened up. -- all state compacts to be opened up. each state is different with all their checks and balances and arizona is no different. and this is the violation of the state gaming compact, there was agreement. again, the courts pointed that that was not in fact part of of the rd or part decision. and that court decisions, 1410, very interestingly, court

decisions, interior department findings are of no matter. 2009, april 30, department of interior ruled in favor of the tribal nation. 2009, june, ruled in favor of the tribal nation. 2010, july, the decision letter in favor. the hilo river vs. the u.s., 2011, march, court summary judgment, in favor of the tribal nation. 2013, may, ninth circuit court decision in favor of the nation. the tribal nation vs. glendale annexation. 2011, may, court of appeals , supreme court

decision denial, prevails. 2012, january, superior court dgment the tribal nation revails. vs. arizona, 2011, june, district court's summary prevails. 2011, june, again, district district court order on a motion to dismiss, again, claims one, two, three and seven in part, they win. 2013, may, district court summary judgment order all remaining claims except breach of contract under restatement, they win. 2013, june, court summary

judgment order all remaining claims, including breach of ontract, they prevail. they june, threen, prevail. 11 in total administrative and judicial statements. but let's not let facts and judicial precedent and the fact that they have prevailed consistently against the state, against the city of glendale, against the competing tribes over and over again and has had the interior department which i stated earlier has testified twice against the previous legislation and this legislation. gainst it. i want to quote from the glendale star editorial.

is there any reason why people distrust government at any level when there are motives of the plaintiffs that are suing, one begins to ask about the greed factor, does anyone believe that the future of gaming in yase is at risk of the ak-chin nation of the long drawnout battle within the court, who is willing to bet on the future of indian gaming in the state? as the congressman who is sponsoring this legislation is so set against gaming he should be trying to get rid of all casinos in the state. he should out stumping for the end of gaming altogether instead of working on the site of two gaming areas. this congressman needs to start looking in his own back yard and needs to come up with solution of unemployment, help for small business owners, transportation gridlock and more than blocking what could be a big step toward economic

stability, i.e., jobs. at least the nation's resort casino would provide construction jobs for many out-of-work carpenters and mason workers. those jobs are needed now. i mention all this because as i said earlier, it's been difficult to try to counter the allegations and the misrepresentations and the disinformation that have been chin against the ak nation's establishment of a casino against the congressional decision and the law that afforded them to make them whole because of the land they lost because of the dam -- and we're still back here on this decision. so court decisions matter now. precedent matters not.

the open up of pan dore ea's box in terms of water claims w claims matters not. what is protecting gaming interests and special interests for two gaming entities that have had the luxury for the last five, six, seven, eight, 0 years. o'odham nation has prevailed in court, a back room deal has been ruled moot by the court. this issue that this somehow reservation shopping and offsite gaming has been ruled moot by the court and then you have the glendale city council, a principal plaintiff in this now retreating and not -- and ather working with the o'odham working out agreements as opposed to continuing the litigation.

millions are meant to the costs. i think it's time that as this legislation goes forward that people ask a very fundamental question about this legislation. is it intended to preserve a gaming compact, which i believe and the court has ruled no, or is it intending to preserve a market share for two gaming entities that have enjoyed that market share by themselves? the free market requires competition. the free market requires opportunity and all that is happening in this legislation is to try to constrict the ability of people in this free market of ours to compete, to create jobs and to create opportunities. with that, i yield back and reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. reserves. the chair recognizes the gentleman from arizona, mr. gosar. mr. gosar: mr. speaker, i'd

like to acknowledge that out of our committee this bill was reported 35-1 in favor of this bill. so a heavily bipartisan bill reported to the house. and i reserve the balance of my ime. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. mr. grijalva: there's no question that the prevailing point of view, and talked about the disinformation, will prevail here today. i have no question about that. does the fact that we are going can against the judicial decisions, undoing a law that was passed by this congress to make whole a tribe who lost their land 25 years ago, and interjecting ourselves for the first time in the history of this nation into a state and native american gaming compact, that doesn't negate that.

so, you know, my opposition, whether it's in the distinct minority or not, is based on what i believe is reality and fact. and if this was about reality and fact and not about supposition, disinformation or misinformation, the debate would be in a whole different tone. this is about economic development for the state, this is about congress making true on a decision it made 25 years ago. and this is about congress not shortcutting judicial decisions that have been made over the course of the last five years in which the o'odham nation has prevailed never one of them. -- preslail -- prevailed in every one of them. bipartisanship, i love it, but being correct and holding true to a decision that this congress made 25 years ago i think is consistent with the work of this house and consistent with preserving

gaming compacts in states and more importantly making whole a tribe that lost valuable resources to the federal government in the past. with that i yield back and reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the chair recognizes the gentleman from arizona. mr. gosar: mr. speaker, i'd like to yield one minute to the gentleman from michigan, mr. kildee. the speaker pro tempore: the chair recognizes the gentleman from michigan for one minute. mr. kildee: thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you for yielding some time to me. i rise in support today of h.r. 1410. the sag in a chippewa tribe in michigan, whom i have the privilege of representing here, and for reasons that i concur with have asked that i support this legislation, along with several other michigan tribes that are opposed to off-reservation gaming. so i ask my colleagues to join me in support of this legislation and in opposition

to off-reservation gaming. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. mr. gosar: mr. speaker, i continue to reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman continues to reserve. mr. grijalva: thank you very much. in closing, let me say that the situation in michigan, as i mentioned, is unrelated to this. there is no legal precedent and there is no congressional action to guide the decisions of courts which has been the case with the o'odham decision and with the casino in the west valley. let me just say this is about fairness, this is about congress upholding its word, this is not about reservation shopping, it's not about offsite gaming. it is not about a gentleman's agreement and it is totally and entirely about an act that was taken 25 years ago, upholding that act, making a tribe whole and not opening up a pandora's box in which litigation will continue to proceed once this legislation goes forward.

with that, thank you, mr. chairman, and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the chair recognizes the gentleman from arizona, mr. gosar. mr. gosar: mr. speaker, i yield myself as much time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. gosar: trust is a series of promises kept. that's the basis of all government functions. and that is the same thing that is required of the o'odham. when they entered into the agreement in 2002 they publicly supported the compact in which limited the amount of casinos in the phoenix -- greater phoenix area. yes, it is true there are other precedents behind it. but contractual always follows and subs gates it self when -- subjugates itself when you look at. this the speaker from arizona spoke about the dialogue with the courts. the courts had to rule because the o'odham hid behind sovereignty in which the discussion, in which they were truly negotiating behind closed

doors, in dire dissent against this compact, would not be disclosed. so the court only had one way to look. congress has the ability to rectify this answer and that's why we are here today. this is good legislation, it doesn't prohibit any of the jurisdictions over that, except just flying -- complying with the compact, to the end of the compact, 2027. once upon that time, then they can renegotiate and everybody is fairly into the game. this is about trust. but it is trust from the o'odham to the federal government, to the taxpayers of arizona, to the governor and to the other tribes of arizona. with that i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the question is will the house suspend the rules and pass the bill h.r. 1410. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, twirs 2/3 -- 2/3 of those voting having responded in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the bill is passed and without objection the

motion to reconsider is laid on the table. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from california seek recognition?

>> mr. speaker, i move to suspend the rules and pass h.r. 2449. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: union calendar number 153, h.r. 2449, a bill to authorize the president to extend the term of the agreement for cooperation between the government of the united states of america and the government of the republic of korea, concerning the civil uses of nuclear energy for a period not to exceed march 19, 2016. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from california, mr. royce, and the gentleman from new york, mr. meeks, each will control 20 minutes. the chair recognizes the gentleman from california. mr. royce: thank you, mr. speaker. i would ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material on the this measure. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. royce: i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the

gentleman is recognized. mr. royce: mr. speaker, over the past six decades, the united states and south korea have built a strong and enduring alliance which is the cornerstone of peace, the cornerstone of security in the asia-pacific region. ever since the dark days of the korean war, our two nations have stood side by side to meet some of today's most pressing challenges. the alliance between our two countries is a model for global partnership in every field, whether it's in the economic field or political or concerning security and earlier this year my good friend, the ranking member, and i led a bipartisan delegation to south korea to reaffirm our nation's steadfast commitment to the good people of south korea. it was during this visit that we witnessed the tremendous sacrifice that south koreans

made in order to live in freedom. the ranking member and i stood by the wreckage of the naval ship, paying our respects to the 46 south korean sailors who perished as a result of the unprovoked north korean attack. a poignant reminder of the constant threat that our two nations face. park, madam park , the first woman to be elected president of south korea, addressed a joint session of congress, she honored the deep sacrifice americans have made in protecting her beloved nation. i was pleased to serve on the host committee when she visited the congress. madam park and her delegation warmly received when in southern california. as part of her official visit to the united states.

today south korea is at the forefront of global innovation, with the world's 13th largest economy, and as a result of the landmark u.s.-south korea trade agreement, south korea is our seventh largest trading partner. one of the most important areas of our close economic cooperation is commerce. and particularly commerce in nuclear energy. and that is why, mr. speaker, it is so important that the congress approve this piece of legislation before us today. south korea's nuclear energy extensive, it's critically important to its economy, its 23 operating reactors produce 1/3 of the nation's electricity. in an effort to create greater energy independence, the government plans to double this figure over the next two decades. with 11 more power plants to be completed. much of south korea's nuclear infrastructure is of american origin and u.s. businesses provide millions of dollars

worth of spare parts and services every year to that nation. that is one of the reasons expansion of this vital sector will be good for the u.s. economy as well. south korea also plans to become a major nuclear exporter in the international market. given the truly global nature of this industry, american suppliers stand to make considerable gains as well. for example, in 2009 a consortium of korean companies was selected to build four nuclear power reactors in the united arab emirates, a deal worth $20 billion. of this total, american companies will earn up to $2 billion for this project alone through sales of equipment and of services. it is estimated that this one project will support 5,000 jobs in 17 states. the ability of american companies to export to south korea's nuclear power sector rests upon our two countries'

40-year-old nuclear cooperation agreement which expires on march 19 of 2014. the u.s. and south korea negotiators are currently negotiating a long-term extension of this agreement. but to prevent an unnecessary interpretation that would have a major -- interruption that would have a major negative impact on our alliance with south korea and on u.s. exporters alike, ranking member engel and introduced this bipartisan legislation to extend the existing agreement for two years, to march 19 of 2016, the state department is in support of this legislation. testifying earlier this year on behalf of an extension, a top state department official told the house foreign affairs committee that an extension would also ensure there is no lapse in our ongoing civil nuclear cooperation, preserving stability and predictability in our joint commercial activities. this bill is a simple extension of the existing agreement with

no modifications or changes, that will allow negotiators time to focus on substance instead of the clock. the foreign affairs committee voted unanimously in favor of the bill which now has a total of 41 co-sponsors on both sides of the aisle and i urge my colleagues to vote for this legislation so it can be sent to the senate and then on to the president for his signature and thereby ensure that the cooperation between our two countries in this vital area can continue without interruption and i will reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the chair recognizes the gentleman from new york, mr. meeks. . mr. meeks: i rise in support of h.r. 2449, and i yield myself such time as i may consume. i'd like to begin by thanking my good friend, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee, ed royce, and the ranking member, elliot engel, for their work on this bipartisan

legislation. the current u.s.-south korea civil nuclear cooperation agreement, also known as the 123 agreement, allows the u.s. and south korea to work together on peaceful uses of nuclear energy. that agreement is set to expire next year. because our twor countries have not yet completed negotiations for a new agreement, h.r. 2449 allows a two-year extension of the existing agreement to provide more time for the two sides to come to an agreement. an extension would help ensure that there's no lapse in our ongoing civil nuclear cooperation, preserving stability and predixibility -- predictability in our joint commercial activities. south korea is a vital economic security partner of the united states, and passing this bill would help ensure that we main feign the strongest possible relationship with our trusted

ally. mr. speaker, h.r. 2449 enjoys a large bipartisan and wide support. i urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the chair recognizes the gentleman from california. mr. royce: mr. speaker, i yield two minutes to the gentlelady from florida, ms. ros-lehtinen, the chairman emeritus of the foreign affairs committee who currently chairs the subcommittee on the middle east and north africa. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from florida is recognized for two minutes. ms. ros-lehtinen: thank you, mr. speaker. and i thank our gracious chairman for the time. and i rise in full support of h.r. 2449, an important bipartisan bill that will extend the u.s.-south korea civilian nuclear energy agreement for another two years. south korea is indeed an important ally of the united states and our bilateral relationship is a cornerstone

of america's national security interests in asia. by passing this stopgap measure, mr. speaker, we will avoid the expiration of the original 40-year agreement and allow the united states and south korea to continue to negotiate on a renewed agreement in good faith. if we do not pass this bill, the current agreement will expire early next year. this would not only cause damage to the u.s.-south korea relationship, but it will also harm the united states manufacturers who provide parts and services to south korea's energy sector, and it will negatively impact the technological, safety and nonproliferation efforts of boith of our countries in the civil -- both of our countries in the civilian nuclear energy sector. mr. speaker, south korea has been a major user of domestic nuclear power with the partnership of american technology. nuclear power provides about

1/3 of all of south korea's electricity and south korea is looking to even further expand that percentage. and they are looking to the united states and american businesses to help them achieve their goals. south korea's partnership with america for civilian nuclear projects already has resulted in billions of dollars for our economy and has created thousands of jobs. continued cooperation with south korea would bring even more revenue to america, create much-needed jobs for americans, but this can only happen, mr. speaker, if our two countries can negotiate a long-term agreement. they cannot negotiate in earnest when they're constantly watching the clock. i would ask the gentleman for 15 seconds. mr. royce: if i could give 30 additional seconds to the gentlelady. ms. ros-lehtinen: thank you so much. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady is recognized for 30 seconds. ms. ros-lehtinen: to the chairman and to the speaker,

they cannot negotiate this, as i said, when they're constantly watching the clock, which i should have done as well. passing this bill would give them the much-needed time to focus on the negotiations and finally come to a mutually beneficial agreement. so i urge my colleagues to support this strong bipartisan, much-needed bill that will help the u.s. economy, u.s. jobs and strengthen the alliance between the united states and our key trading partner in south korea and i thank the gentleman for the time. thank you, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady from florida yields back. the chair recognizes the gentleman from new york. mr. meeks: continue to reserve. we have no speakers. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentleman from california. mr. royce: i'll yield 2 1/2 minutes to the gentleman from ohio, mr. chabot, the chairman of the foreign affairs subcommittee on asia and the pacific. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from ohio is recognized for 2 1/2 minutes. mr. chabot: thank you, mr. speaker. i rise as a strong supporter and co-espnor of h.r. 2449,

legislation to extend for two additional years the exist -- co-sponsor of h.r. 2449, legislation to extend for two additional years. it's my strong belief that passage of this legislation is in the interest, the national interest of the united states and it's also in the vital interest of the u.s.-south korea alliance. earlier this year we held a hearing in our subcommittee to examine the facts behind the current nuclear energy agreement with south korea and why it needs to be extended. simply put, the agreement with south korea strengthens americans' no proliferation priorities. it helps create american jobs in the energy sector and it's important symbol with our long friendship with those of south korea. i want to thank the chairman of the full committee and also the ranking member of the committee from new york, elliot engel,

for introducing this bipartisan legislation. america's friendship with south korea is stronger today, i think, than probably at any other moment in our history. forged on the cold dark battlefields of the korean war, this the 60th anniversary of the u.s.-south korea alliance, marks a significant milestone in our ever-growing relationship. there is no doubt it has indeed become the cornerstone of peace and security in east asia. in fact, it is the enduring, relevant and forward-looking quality of our alliance that makes consideration of this bill, h.r. 2449, so important. today in south korea, a once war-torn nation, has become a world-class economy and leader in high-tech innovation. its commitment to democracy, human rights and the rule of law in a region where these ideals are oftentimes hard to come by, is a testament to the trust we have in our ally and

friend, south korea. i once again thank chairman royce and ranking member engel for joining -- for putting this particular legislation together. i'd like to join them in urging my colleagues to support this bill, and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the chair recognizes the gentleman from new york. mr. meeks: continue to reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentleman from california. mr. royce: mr. speaker, i think we have one final -- one final member who wishes to speak on this and i yield back two minutes to the gentleman from georgia, mr. collins, he's a member of the foreign affairs, judiciary and oversight committees. the speaker pro tempore: the chair recognizes the gentleman from georgia for two minutes. mr. collins: i thank you, mr. chairman. i appreciate you yielding time. i rise in strong support of h.r. 2449. i think the friendship spoken of well, i want to rise and discuss really the relationship

with the republic of korea. since the 1950's, the republic of korea has been a strong ally of the united states and an economic leader in the pacific region. south korea is an example of how the free market brings an increased quality of life. it is asia's fourth largest economy and the world's 12th largest economy. in the 1960's, south korea was on par for levels of poverty seen in africa. when they joined the trillion dollar club of world economies in stark contrast to its neighbor to the north. north korea is one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. the u.s.-south korea alliance shows the world the promise of a democracy and free enterprise. today we recognize just one partnership between our nations, the civilian nuclear energy program. this maintains a safe, secure nuclear program in a very turbulent international environment. i'm very grateful to be an original co-sponsor of this legislation. congress needs to continue to show how much it values our nation's relationship with

south korea and a positive vote on this agreement will be a strong step in that regard. when you look at the area you see the strong light of freedom in south korea. tarnished only by the darkness of the tyranny in north korea. that's why we stand with south korea. that's why this agreement is important. with that i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. the chair recognizes the gentleman from new york. mr. meeks: i'm prepared to close. i yield myself such time as i may consume. let me just again thank the chair and the ranking member for their hard work in listening to the chair, talking about the trip that he and the ranking member, what they observed and the information they brought back to the subcommittee and to the committees is so tremendously important. it just highlights the importance of our ally, south korea. it shows we recently passed a trade agreement with them because we worked together and we were able to create jobs through that trade agreement, not only in south korea but here in america. this is an example of what can