democratakes fun of a or said something derogatory about democrats. to me, that is news. that is what we have had. i truly believe that the democrats are going to get slaughtered in 2014. absolutely slaughtered. when that happens -- host: we really appreciate it. that is all the time we have for today's program. tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. eastern. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> and here's what we have

coming up for you. jay carney has scheduled a briefing for 1230 this afternoon. we will have that or you. in congress, the house and the senate are returning to work today. they will discuss insurance companies. lawmakers will also vote on requiring federal judges to impose monetary penalties for frivolous lawsuits. in the senate, they will vote on nominations. the house is live on c-span two. john kerry will head here to talk of the ambitions. some push harder for sanctions. he will meet with members of the senate inking committee. the session tomorrow will be

close. age, he left to right. she would often create: as gets for her parents. should write one and illustrate it. one was a self-portrait. shuman sends charles -- she the french poet. she was hired as the inquiring camera girl for the washington times harold. .ne column

the last part of her life she was a very prolific editor of books in new york city working with several different authors. >> see this as a special time saturday at 10 of 5 p.m. eastern on sunday at noon. our series continues as we look at lady bird johnson. discussion now on retirement planning. the ceo of charles schwab was talking about that. an remarks lasted about hour.

he has been thinking about this since he was 22 years old. let's go back to 1983. he founded the hampton company. then fast forward a dozen years later. men he became president and as theperating officer war a ham man. move is a wall street. the issue was who would leave and 9 million brokerage accounts after he remains the company chairman.

he is one of the largest itancial services firms use the firm in 2000 and eight. despite all that he added 900,000 new broke rich account to his client a's in 2012 alone. jump.orted a 17% this year the company added a new program will want etf. look for speaker he says this is a philosophy they articulated years ago.

they had remarkable success building and defining a company. questions linger whether the person stand a chance. we have an opportunity to delve into a wide range of questions which is the personal financial pleasef all of us here give a warm national press club welcome. >> it is an honor to be with you today. it is very ongoing. their minds any of and experience i had about 15 years ago.

i was leaving a division in northeast ohio. we needed to construct a new office building. he said i will try brown and show off a little bit. we went by the rusted trailer i said that will be daddy's new office. and my eight-year-old daughter said daddy if you start doing a better job will they let you move from the trailer into the office building? today is a special day for our country. it's veterans day. i hope you will join northeast in thanking the millions of

americans who have served in our military over the years. they've protected our privileges like the free press that we all hold so dearly. verbally thanking veterans is just one stage. at charles schwab we hired more veterans in 2013 than any year preceding. they have an attitude of service that aligning perfectly with our culture at charles schwab. on behalf of my wife and my children we would like toe extend our gratitude to all the veterans who have served our countries. for those of you who are familiar with our founder or a discount broker. this year marks our 40th anniversary in business. we everybody is about 11 million we serve about 11 million investors and represent $2.2

trillion of assets of hardworking americans. i want to give you a sense of our deep commitment to saving and investing and our belief in the potential that it provides for all individuals to secure a comfortable retirement. it was over 30 years ago that i started in financial services, more specifically as mark mentioned in the pension and retirement plan administration segment. and i've seen the business change a lot over the last three decade. i've been fortunate to play a small role in some of that change and i've watched the demise of the pension plan and the transition to 401 k plans. interestingly enough from our research for over half of those americans the 401 k is their

primary savings they have outside of social security. when i share a little bit about that context it may surprise you to know that as i stand before you today to talk about 401 k i'm fairly disappointed and frustrated and it would not be stretching too far to say i'm angry about the 401 k system. it serves everybody, the firms, the providers, the firms that manage the funds. i think it works well for everyone except the one group of people it should be working for and that's the average hardworking american. my hope is that with your help, influencing and shaping opinions across our country that we can ignite a transformation, a fundamental change and fix in

the 401 k industry that our 51 million hardworking americans need. now my career with charles schwab began in 1995. they purchased the firm i founded about a dozen years later and with that acquisition we were a late comer. we did things that were decrumentive in the industry. we are credited with open architecture. that's the ideas that investments should be chones. as a result i received some undue credit and some accolades and it was at the event recognizing one of these i hit a personal inflection point. i was recognized by a major industry publication with a lifetime achievement award. and that lifetime achievement award a hand some crystal trophy. as i road back to my hotel after the event i looked down at the

trophy and read the words it said. it said recognizing contributions to the retirement industry -- i'm sorry recognizing contributions to the retirement security of working americans. a's read that over and over i felt a lump in my throat start to form and that little voice that was inside me, that little voice we all have, it whispered to me, walt, is that really what you've done. i thought about growing up in a small town in the midwest, one of four children, stay at home mom. father was a professor and i wondered how my parents would

have fared if the 401 k had been their form of retirement. i thought about my own experience in the industry and the contrast between the way that corporations used to handle pension plans when they had the responsibility for the out comes of those plans and the situation now and the way employees are largely left on their own to deal with saving and investing for their retirement. this was a sincere inflection point for me in my career and my thinking. the more i thought about it, the angrier i became. i became angry at the service providers, the industry, the consult presidents and the truth is i became very angry with myself. the more i looked at the industry and i recognized that it was successful, i realized that the 401 k plan was failing the people that it actually needed to be taking care of. i don't think it has to be that way. i hope you won't get me wrong in my comments.

i believe in the 401 k and we can fix it, we can get it right. but it requires fresh thinking. let me go into history about how we got here before talking about how we can fix the 401 k. 30 years ago i was a rookie in the retirement business and most companies offered employees a pension plan. the company made a promise to their employees to provide a specific monthly benefit when they reached retirement. the employer was responsible largely for funding that. they would make cash contributions into a plan and invest that money with a goal of making sure there was enough to fund promises they made. and they took their responsibility very seriously. they had to because if they fell short in accumulating the money to meet their promises, there was only one option, they wrote a bigger check into that plan reducing their profits and of course reducing returns for

their shareholders. employers took that seriously enough they hired legions of advisors, consultants, accountants to help them make the right decisions. surely no manufacturing firm or hospital or newspaper company for that matter would see themselves as having all the competency needed to manage this enormous promise that was being made to employees. so what happened? >> well eventually companies realized that the retirement obligations they had made to their employees were beginning to affect their current operation. they were starting to spend more money on funding the pension plans than current operations in the company or current employees. pension plans became economically unfeasible for most companies. at the same time a new solution was on the horizon 401-k plans. they were initially designed to be a supplement. but employers understandably and i helped many of them connected the dots. and they realized the 401-k plan could be the future without all

the promises and obligations placed on the company. today only 11 million individuals in private companies are participants in a pension plan. i'm not naive, the pension plan of yesterday is not coming back. pension plans have flaws also. but i want to look specifically at the 401-k plan now and see what it has meant to the average hardworking american. remember when companies had the responsibility to save and invest properly to fund those promises they surrounded themselves with the best advisors that money could buy. what happened with the introduction of the 401 k plan? most of us know because we've experienced it. employees sat in maybe a one-our education meeting. we got a brother sure that explained the plan. we got a list of mutual funds that we could invest in usually

actively managed funds. a bunch of us got these sliders. unfortunately i helped design this one. today it might be a website. maybe it's an app on the phone. all those things are silly. every one of them. hospitals, manufacturing firms, newspaper companies hired professional help and advisors when they faced the responsibility but yet we expect the employees of these same companies, nurses, assembly line workers, writers to figure out how much to save and how to invest their 401 k accounts. is it any surprise that more than half of americans in a 401 k consider their plan more complicated than their healthcare? is it any surprise nearly half of the workers in america have no idea how to invest their 401 k and for a third of them it causes major stress in their

life. is it any surprise balances are troubling low. the estimate of the median 401 k balance in the united states is just over $40,000. every one of us should be troubled by this picture. what are we going to do? when are we going to put the interest of the average hardworking americans first because clearly we're not going to be able to roll back the clock. also we should not throw out the basic framework of the 401-k plan but it has to be fixed. frankly i'm going to share with you today that it isn't that difficult but overcoming the resistance to the necessary fixes is difficult. there are people throughout the industry who are currently employed and compensated by the current approaches from the service providers to the investment managers, the

consultants and yes, of course, myself. every one of us needs to take a step toward and think about things differently in a manner that hit me in that cab ride in new york city five years ago. we have to ask ourselves when are we going oh to put the interest of the average hard work rg american first? i think the time is now. there are two relatively simple steps that we need to take that will largely achieve what i'm proposing. the first every single participant in a 401-k plan, every one of them should be automatically enrolled in customized objective, unbiased advice on how much they should save and how that money should be invested given their personal and unique circumstances. and second we need to

dramatically lower the level of fees associated with the management of 401-k accounts. simple? i think yes. even pretty obvious, i'd say yes to that too. easy to do in an industry that employees tens of thousands of people and general rates billions of dollars of operating profit? no. but if we don't address these issues now, i think we'd agree the social challenges facing our country can be overwhelming. how do we do it? how do we ensure they get customized advice and pay lower fees at the same time? we start and automatically enroll every participant into advisory management services.

these are services that have to be delivered by independent people acting a fiduciary. that means their interest are put behind the interest of the individual employee. these cannot be employees of the firm that services the plan. if charles schwab is services the plan cannot be charles schwab employees, have to be independent. and the service should be as customized for each employee as the employer received back in the day when they had the responsibility. should look at age, the risk tolerance, outside assets, how these moneys are invested, marital status, do they have a job, a pension plan and a host of other factors. this type of do it for me vice will help employees choose investments and help them make the right decisions. like cashing out or borrowing against our account or not rebalancing our account on a regular basis.

you might ask what about target date funds? they are designed to address these issues aren't they >> they were a good solution and they largely achieve what they were set out to do. but we can do so much better. target date funds take into account one factor, age. imagine this example, an individual 401-k participant walks in to meet with an advisor and tell them about their life, their risk tolerance, their investment strategies, their

marital situation, a host of different factors and at the end of the conversation the investment advisor says how old are you and i say i'm 52. and he says here is your answer. i walk out and someone else comes in with the same story but different facts an entirely different situation. at the end of the conversation the advisor says how old are you and the same answer. we can do so much better than single factor advice. if we get it right, target date funds are going to go the way of this silly slider. they may have been the best way at one time to get advice but they are not the right answer for today. they are better than nothing but not good for employees as customized advice. does customized advice work in yes. employees working with an independent professional double their savings rates and set up a far superior vet allocation. an independent study says that a typical 45-year-old getting independent objective advice would have 70% more money in their account upon retirement

than someone trying to go it alone. i think we would probably agree we need to offer customized advice for participants. here is the problem. that's going to cost money. that's an incremental fee. how does that jive with my second solution which is we have to lower fees charged to the working americans. i think the sans easy. 401-k plans should use low cost index oriented funds or etf's. let's look at the math. if the cost of the us customized advice is .4 of 1% and the cost is .1 of 1% that means the average participant would spend about a half of a percent total to have their 401-k managed. that level of expansion is lower than 90 to 5eu9% of all 401-k

plans in the united states without including any form of customized advice. here in washington, d.c. it's already well understood, the government savings plan uses index products for its saving plan, $200 billion worth. how much do fees matter? they matter a lot. if we can get fees down to one half of 1% and nothing else changed then the average hardworking american would have almost $100,000 more in their account upon retirement than today. if awe ply that across the 51 million americans participating in 401-k plans today by 2050 that's almost $10 trillion simply by lowering cost to 1/2 of 1%. what is stopping us? what keeps employers from moving

into index oriented investment vehicles? two entrenched camps stand in the way of this change. first, the major service providers in the 401 k world are asset manage whores specialize in managing actively managed funds. that means they charge anywhere between three fourths of a percent to try to beat the market. we all know study after study show only a tiny percentage of asset managers can beat the market and only a tinier percent can do it year after year. infompled investors have every right to select top managers to try and beat the market. this does not need to be part of 401-k plans. the goal should not be beating the market.

it should be offering a secure retirement with consistent performance. we should leave asset management and it's relatively higher fees to informed and highly sophisticated investors. the second entrenched camp resisting changes are the plan consultants and advisors who are hired by the employers who offer 401-k plans this. is not all consultants but many of them make their fees by telling employers that they are wise enough to select, monitor and suggest replacements among the active managers they somehow know which are the funds that are going to beat the market. why do they hate what i'm talking about today? because no consultant is needed

to monitor and manage index funds. they simply perform at the index. it's called self-preservation. this is so pervasive that at charles schwab as we've begun advocating for the ideas that i'm discussing today, we actually have consultants threat than they would do everything in their power to convince employers we serve in the 401-k industry to focus they publicly spoke about the ideas i'm speaking of today. we are asking assembly line workers and nurses and riders to manage money like they were experts. and second we're saddling these same workers with excessive fees which place a drag on their account growth. and we know the solution. one automatically enrolling these workers in professionally managed unbiased objective managed programs and ensuring their money is invested in low cost mutual funds and etf's.

and we know who wants to maintain the status quo, the consultants who make millions ensuring they can pick the best of those actively managed fund. the question is do we have what it takes to you push for change? as i mentioned at charles schwab we've begun to implement the approach i've described here. and we are taking a lot of hits from those people who depend on the status quo, entrenched service providers and consultants. frankly and amazing to me even the industry press. that's okay. i work for a man who made a living out of challenging the status quo. we're just one firm. and i'm just one person.

we need everyone to get behind these types of changes. now i'm one of those people whose personality is i'm often accused of being overly optimistic. but i believe there is a chance for change. i would argue that over 50 million americans are counting on us to fix the 401-k. for me it started five years ago in a cab ride in new york city. when it comes to the 4'1?k industry, my hope is we can all agree it's finally time to put the interest of the average hardworking american first. thank you so much for the opportunity to be here and thank you to the national press club. \[applause] >> thank you. now you get to go get water and come back on the field.

have you a lot of ackbishes ideas there and you are standing in the middle of the nation's capitol where much is discussed and seldom implemented. let's talk about the implementation. would there be a government solution involved at all? >> i don't think we need a government solution. we need courage of people to stand up and speak with truth and objectivity about what we need to do differently. i think that's all it takes but it has to start and my goal is to try and make it start at meetings like this. >> you said 11 million painfully low 401-k participants at the $40,000 average balance. what makes you think those people and others are better prepared to essentially invest more money in the plan because they are not participants now.

are you saying it's the information deficit? >> there are a couple of numbers. the 11 million is the number of accounts that charles schwab serves today. the $40,000 is the median balance in 401-k plans today. we found back to our research and client base when employers sign up for what i've described and automatically enroll their employees in professional advice, they on average double their saving rates. they don't know what to do which is understandable. they are nurses and assembly line workers and writers. and when they have someone who is on their side who recollects is objective, who is helping advise them, they are more comfortable putting money into the plan and when they don't they are more hesitant to put money away and add to this issue causing huge stress in their life. >> so you referenced broadly social and financial challenges. can you talk about those more

that if a problem isn't addressed and are we experiencing those already now? >> i think we are and there are many factors contributing to that. today one of the great challenges we face as a country is we demect a 40 year working career to fund a 30 year retirement and the math just doesn't work. so it is part of the over all challenge that is we face. but we first need to do the obvious. let's do the easy things that would add $100,000 on average into people's accounts. that's a first step. then we have other things to look at to address the 40 year or 30 year issue. that's for the folks in washington to solve, not me. >> that sounds like a player to me.

>> i'm accused of doing that frequently also. >> i think we've all been praying these past years and months. specific questions to your speech. someone says what are the challenges facing a pension plan and recipients and who makes up the fees that are the high cost. perhaps the second question and then the pension plan question. >> the majority of fees that are paid by employees in 401-k plans are for the active management of their dollars in an effort to beat the market. by simply eliminating that and going with index funds which we can construct at 1/10 of 1% you free up money to go back into the pockets of employees. they should be enrolled in that professional managed service but they should be given the right if they are capable and want to to on the out of that in which case their only cost would be

the cost of the index funds. our experience is 80% of people automatically enrolled say thank you. someone to do it for me and i'm going to stay right here and have it professionally managed. >> what are challenges facing pension plans? >> the challenges are why we've seen the demise of the pension plan and that is it's a long term promise made in an uncertain world. most pension plan had interest assumption of 8% earning and it's not realistic to attain or fund those monthly benefits promised to people without taking enormous risk whether the company will have to put a lot more must be in the plan and you've seen the demise of the pension program. >> you've seen a lot of hits on this. would lowering cost necessitate financial advisors losing their jobs? >> no.

i'm suggesting that we would need more objective independent professional advisors to provide this stoves all these 51 million 401-k participants. i had no idea i was going to add to the employment good news with my comments. it would 23409 cost jobs, it will create jobs. it will take profits out of those who try to beat the market though. >> where would all the objective financial advisors come from to fill the need? and another question what kind of quality control best practices management would you have with regard to all of that? >> today's technology enables to us provide very high quality objective investment advice slounges feed into the programs enough detail around the individual circumstances, sort of the opposite of the target

date example i used whether wr no matter what data was fed in the answer was the same based on age. there is technology to do that but then you would have individuals who deliver to the employees. that's what we're doing today. i forgot the second part of the question. >> we can move on. another question since our economy is tied to consumption but we know that more americans aren't saving enough for retirement should we consider forcing americans to save more through a payroll tax increase even though tax increase is a dirty word. >> the answer to that is above my pay grade. before we get into a debate about forced savings we should first do the obvious things. how can we take the situation of what employers did and turn it over to employees and give them slide rules and web sites and

smartphone apps. let's first do the obvious. if it hasn't achieved our objectives then we can look at other alternatives. >> someone notes that a lot of brokerage firms provide advice to clients already. they are your competitors in a sense but what's wrong with the services they are providing? >> i'm not to bash anyone on the brokerage side, any competitor, fine firms that we compete with. but i think that what i'm describing is something very different here. i'm talking about objective people that are not the employees of the company servicing the 401-k plan who deliver this professional advice and they have to do it at a really low cost. there are very few people that can deliver the advice i'm talking about at that rate it takes scale.

if your funds are going to be 1/10 of 1%, the over all cost is no more than 1%. there aren't a lot of competitors that do that at 4/10 of 1% per year. >> does charles schwab support an s.e.c. rule making to have rule making for broker dealers? >> that's an industry technical question but let me respond this way. years ago at charles schwab we nut place that whenever a client is paying us a fee for our investment counsel we do it in a fiduciary manner period. where did the line get crossed between fiduciary.

if we take a e fee, we take a fiduciary position period. do you support the s.e.c. rule? >> the s.e.c. rule is not addressed the issue that is we're concerned about. what i'd like to create is a scenario where you're a self- directed investor and your cost go up many times because we have to be a fiduciary even though you're not turning to us for advice. we have to protect those who want to be self-directed but if you want our counsel we should absolutely by a fiduciary. there is a similar effort under way at the labor department. they say do you support the labor department rule making? >> i think the issue is similar which is if we're being

compensated by you to offer you advice your interest have to come first. there should be no debate around that. we can't force self-directed people who don't want our advice to pay more because of a new legislative rule. >> we are in washington so those questions from time to time come up. in fact the labor department you could throw a stone from here if you wanted to. but we wouldn't be for that. >> i don't throw stones. >> getting back to the retirement issue, what can we learn from other countries around the globe and are there some places elsewhere in other countries that are getting closer to the kind of system that you are talking about? >> i don't know the answer to that whether they are getting closer. i believe the ideas we are talking about are universally applicable. they are not unique to just our country. i think our hope is people will

consider the simplistic con cements we've shared today and consider implementing them. >> would you agree with the assumption that it seems making the argument for saving for retirement is most difficult among young people and do you treat that problem differently at present when you are advising individuals and how can you address the problems more generally as well? >> what our research has shown is one of the major reasons young people hesitate to safe is they feel even less prepared than someone who may be older to make these decisions we're forcing upon them. when you offer counsel to them they are already willing to sign up than if they have to do it on their own. go back to the statistics i shared. for 50% of the people they have no idea what to do. for a third this is causing major stress in their life. without the benefit of managing money ever for themselves they would be hesitant putting money

into something they are clueless what decisions to make and what are the backgrounds of charles schwab employees who talk to potential clients before they refer them to portfolio managers assuming they do. >> they all have to go through rigorous testing and training, some administered by the government and s.e.c. and some by us. every conversation they have is a reflection of our brand. given that we take very seriously the training that these individuals go through prior to engaging in any direct recommendations with any client. >> there has been a political debate about some immediate needs of the affordable care act

and some that are longer term. you are an employer. how does that reflect your out look within the company and what has your experience been to manage the needs f our own employees. >> that was a softball, huh? i think we have to wait and see as it unfolds. we are big believers in the concept that is the wealthiest country in the world. we should ensure that every individual has access to healthcare. how do that is complex and the unintended consequences of policies still being formulated we have concerned around. we provide healthcare to all our employees. we pay the majority of the cost. we would like to continue to do . so we have to see how things shake out during the coming

years. >> say congress use that is as an excuse to say employers are ratcheting down their hiring plans because this law exists, how has it affected the outlook at charles schwab? >> you have to draw a distinction between a company like charles schwab and a company of 100 or so like the firm i started. if i was running that company it probably would have a chilling effect on hiring. at charles schwab it's probably different. i can only speak for us. i can't speak for other companies and their business models of what the healthcare changes could mean. >> there is a growing body of evidence that shows americans are leaving thousands of dollars on the table when they start receiving social security earlier than they might. what is the financial -- how is the financial community adapts to this research and how can the industry educate the public about avoiding that problem?

>> that is a great issue and it is the case that for many individuals it is far more advantageous for them to wait to begin to receive their social security benefits. we've offered training and education training to our professionals who engage with clients to help them explain to individuals the benefits of potentially waiting. but it's difficult. because we also know for most individuals across our country, retirement or what we've referred to as retirement is not a voluntary choice. it is placed upon most people as opposed to them deciding of their own free will when that date will occur. so the option is often not there for retirees in our country. >> managed stock investments rarely out perform beat funds and shouldn't everybody be put into an index fund because you can't beat the market?

>> the answer to that question is yes. if you could put every employee into the index fund option and know that they would never change or drop out that would be beautiful, it's just not realistic. what professional advice does is match up risk tolerances and comfort levels and help employees not bail out when the markets go south for a period of time. if you get everybody to go in there and never move that would be better for them because they would save the cost we talked about. it just doesn't work that way. having someone to hold your hand with a hand on the shoulder to help you feel more confident keeps you in the market and capture the up sides that the market has delivered for decades. >> we know that a lot of americans don't trust the investment landscape these days

that seems to be dominated by big banks and so forth. i'm wondering what are your thoughts about that? and is at this time possible for the average investor to get a fair shake in the market? >> i like mark's confidence in me giving me two questions. i can't remember the first one. >> can the average person get a fair shake in the market? >> if you are an investor you can get a fair shake. an investor has a plan and is not trying to guess or time. if you believe you are going to beat the market by timing it, by guessing, by trading on a highly frequent basis, you must be exceptional. and there are some people who are exceptional at that but that is a very tiny%. the vast majority are not trying to beat the high frequency

traders v a plan, take a long term view. owners generally are paid better than lenders and stocks out perform bonds over the long term and stick to a plan. i would personally never try to time and beat the market and beat those folks, i'd have no chance. >> can you talk about who you regard as your chief rivals in the marketplace and that will give you the opportunity to talk about how you have a competitive advantage. >> i think any rival that we have is someone in our business whose business strategy isn't revolved around seeing the world through client's eyes. i know it's old fashioned and probably simplistic in many people's eyes. but in financial services maybe more so than any other industry, if you will simply do the right thing by your clients, i think

you win. it may take longer but you win. we went through the financial crisis at charles schwab. i like to say that we were the largest publicly traded firm that didn't receive any money under tarp. in the four years after that we brought in $530 billion in new client assets. our four largest publicly traded competitors i won't name collectively brought in 320. i think if you do the right thing you win. so i view anyone a competitor whose strategy is not based on seeing the world through the eyes of a client. >> the crash and regulatory responses to , that perhaps you might want to weigh in on the effectiveness of that. are those sorts of phenomenon something that essentially keep

you up at night? i was talking to mark cuban and he said his biggest worry is a hack attack on the financial market that is might take the whole system down. >> we live in an imperfect world because it's a world operated by human beings. as long as that is the case, we will have things that periodically go wrong whether it's technology related or whatever you want to fill in the blank on. we will periodically have issues. that is the world that we live in. with respect to hack attacks, certainly there is a form of conflict among us as a country and a society and among those who have belief that is are very different than ours and the battlefield of the future may be very different than the battlefields of the past and one of the places those bat are also already taking place is around our technology instability. fortunately we have

extraordinary professionals across our government assisting here. but we should not kid ourselves that is a battle going on every day, every minute and i can assure you it is going on in the servers of charles schwab at this very moment. >> how much of a challenge is it for you to ensure as perfect a system as you can knowing there are a lot of things you can't know. >> a lot of things i know but can't talk about. it is a high priority of course. i want to provide the transparent reality we will live in an imperfect world and there will be issue that is will be impossible to prevent despite all efforts. what our goal needs to be is to minimize the frequency and severity of those as opposed to believe i have some way to

prevent them entirely. the bad guys are smart too. and the idea we're going to win at every turn is not realistic. >> do you comment on the market out look. you employee people who do but do you talk about the biggest challenges facing the stock market and opportunities say in 014? >> it's an interesting question because there was a wall street journal article that said there was flows in the markets from individual investors which is contrary to what our 11 million clients are doing. our clients are quite cautious. about 2/3 of them expect a market correction sometime within the next nine months and only half of our clients think it's a good time to invest in stocks. we try to avoid making short term calls. even our strategist make calls on a long term perspective. i put it this way when someone asks me about the market. if someone tells you they have a solid prediction of the short term of the market run fast.

because if they do, they ain't sharing it with you. it's too valuable. nobody can predict market in the short term. >> we presume that we have a very important transition here in washington as chairman bernanke steps down at the end of january. any thoughts about that transition and the particular person involved coming in? >> i don't have any comments on mrs. yell len but our clients are concerned about the policies of the federal reserve. our clients would like to see a process toward a market driven approach to interest rates. and there will be pain associated with that.

we've been taking this drug for five years. you can't go cold turkey off a drug or slow it down without some pain. but the fear you is can't stay on the drug forever either. so the sooner we take steps back to a more sustainable environment they would feel a whole lot better. many of the client who anticipated crashes in the market it's because of concern around the ongoing policies of the federal reserve. >> you're not saying ben bernanke is a drug pusher? >> not in the least. but the policies are like a drug we've been on for five years. it's time to start to wean them off. >> one final question. how tough is it to follow in the shoes of charles schwab yourself? >> i think it's an extraordinary honor. there is one charles schwab and i've never tried to be him. i've tried to be walt bettinger.

i have a fabulous relationship with chuck. we meet on a regular basis. how fortune aim to be able to is it down and get counsel from someone like chuck, an icon in the industry whenever i want it? it's the greatest scenario i could ever envision. when we talked about the transition my number one concern was are you going to be around to offer counsel to me whenever i would ask for it and sometimes when i wouldn't i would still benefit from it? we have a great relationship and it's an honor to serve under chuck. >> we are almost out of time but before we ask the last question i'd like to remind our audiences about upcoming speakers. on november 18 a feminist activist and founder of ms. magazine will be here. and then the chairman and c.e.o.

of general motors will be here on december 16. and those of you who are here in regular attendance know we would like to present our guest with the coffee mug as a way of saying thank you. the final question is what is one decision either regarding your personal finances that you really regret making? >> how much time do we have? i don't know that i can boil it down to one. i guess i would say looking back to the internet bubble i probably held on to a few stocks a little longer than probably made sense. but there are too many that i can speak to. if i had just had that professional advice and plan i would have been a whole lot better off. >> how about a round of applause for our speaker today. thank you. \[applause] >> thank you all for being here today. i'd like to thank the national press club staff for organizing

today's event and to donna for bringing it all together. you can find more information about the press club on our website. today's program you can find that at www dot press.org. thank you and we're adjourned. >> looking at some of our live programming, it jay carney is expected to brief reporters this afternoon at about 1230 eastern.

will have a life for you when he gets underway. the house and senate will return to work at 1:00 p.m. eastern. allow insurance companies to continue offering policies even if they do not meet minimum coverage requirements. we will vote and requiring judges to impose penalties for frivolous lawsuits. they could start work on expanding fda oversight. the hill is reporting house republicans are hoping to keep the white house on the defensive over obamacare this week. fiveop is expected to have pianos. as the data.

the small business committee will look at insurance. live coverage will continue later today on c-span networks with remarks from massachusetts senator elizabeth warren who will talk about wall street reforms at an americans for finance reform event live at 1:00 p.m. eastern at c-span2. richard cordray, the rector of consumer financial protection bureau will testify before the senate banking committee live at 2:30 p.m. eastern on c-span3. public affairs evidence from washington directly to you, putting you in the room at congressional hearings, white house events, briefings and conferences and offering complete gavel-to-gavel coverage of the u.s. house, all as a public service of private industry. we are c-span. created by the cable tv industry 34 years ago and funded by your

local cable or satellite provider. and now you can watch us in hd. .> a look now at iran the world affairs council of las vegas hosted middle east expert jerrold geen. the coverage begins by describing the current situation with iran and he then introduces the luncheon speaker. this is just over an hour. >> i'm delighted to see you all here. are you able to hear me in the back? excellent. >> can you make it louder? >> louder? really? ok. i will try. ok. how is it now? can you hear me now? ok. perfect.

now i can hear myself, too. we are all delighted to see you here today. already, our president has recognized the dignitaries who are here. i am very pleased to present our speaker today. this is a critical moment between the u.s. and iran. as we all know. it is in the headlines. between iran and its regional neighbor, friends, and foes. we are on the eve of potential negotiations on iran's nuclear activities. there's a new president in office in tehran. we are privileged to host two- day one of our country's today one of our countries

knowledge one long-term experts. in theon -- on iran middle east and a personal friend of mine and a former colleague for about 30 years. dr. jerrold green. [applause] >> i will not take the time to go through his bio. it is very extensive. let me just mention the highlights were a few highlights. we first met when we were both consulting at the rand corporation consulting in santa monica about three years ago. he later became director of international programs and development at rand. and he oversaw the activities of the center for asia the civic policy -- asia pacific policy. at the same time, you directed

-- he directed the rand center for middle east and public policy. we actually first became aware of each other and got to new -- know each other when he was teaching at michigan, the university of michigan. later he moved to the west coast. he had a stint in the real world. with a private equity firm. for the last several years and a -- in recognition of his very broad experience and knowledge, he became the president of the pacific council on international affairs in los angeles. but his main expertise is centered on iran and the middle east.

i'm delighted that he has taken the time to come today and talk to us about some of the critical issues of the moment. [applause] >> can you hear me? i'm not sure i need a mic. if you can hear me, let me know. paul forwant to thank inviting me to speak. he is my pal from 30 years -- some 30 years. he is also an extraordinary distinguish -- not only expert on the middle east but frankly a patriotic american who after 9/11 kind of disappeared for seven years working for uncle sam in northern virginia doing important sorts of work. we have been friends for a long time. his knowledge is remarkable.

i've got to say -- they always say an expert is someone from out of town. i have to acknowledge -- i'm sitting at this table. i'm talking to congressman berkley, member of the house foreign relations committee and middle east subcommittee. when you get face time with someone of that level of exposure back in washington, it is something to be treasured. dr. -- who just came back from iran two days ago. you want to talk to someone about iran, he is the one to talk to. finally, a professor wrote a book called "why men rebel." i read it as a graduate student. we are the same age. and didust i was dumb not get into graduate school until i was old. if you want to understand things like the iranian revolution you read books like that. you really are living in a remarkably interesting community

-- which i kind of suspected. this is just one voice but it is only a different one. i want to do a sort of n.ntextual talking about ira what i want to do first of august scene setting, to try to understand how did we get to the impasse that we are at today. tehranently i was in dissipating during the iranian revolution so i was actually there are -- i did not participate, but i witness the iranian revolution from the beginnings until the return of khomeini. i was actually there and i saw it firsthand. this was 35 years ago. and it was a revolution against the shah of iran who really accomplished a remarkable -- remarkable achievement as he got the vast majority of the people in his country to hate him.

really, to get iranians to agree on anything is not easy, but this he succeeded at brilliantly. i am saying it because it is actually quite unfortunate and sad because he had extraordinary resources available to them and he flitted them away. i could then the whole time telling you how he did that, but we don't have time to do it today. trust me. -- you know, he had a remarkable opportunity. he was ill with cancer. he was having chemotherapy. so there are all sorts of explanations. but it is unfortunate. why do iranians not like us? it is kind of an inherent oxymoron. isy people will say iranian the most pro-american countries in the united states. it is certainly not the government of ayn rand, but the average iranian on the street. ngeles, second-

largest outside of iran. i go there regularly since the revolution. given the high level the score between the two governments -- i would say joe sixpack -- but they don't have six packs in iran at least publicly -- the average person in the street actually likes the united states. they like american culture, they like basketball. the normal stuff you get every -- everywhere. but having said that -- and again, you're not going to love it but i will tell you how a rainy and think. not that by -- not that i agree with it or i subscribe to these views but you need to understand how we look out within iran. first of all, it is believed that we support the hater ships across the middle east. and indeed, one could argue that by supporting saudi arabia or egypt under mubarak -- there are lots of examples.

this is certainly the case. second of all, we supported iraq in its at tackle on iran. after the iranian revolution iraq attacked iran, a dramatic event. they described to us responsibility -- far in excess of our response ability but our hands are not completely clean, either. it was a greek period of time in which a lot of my colleagues were trekking up to baghdad, selling weapons to the iraqis. the famed regime willbros group was the regime we were supporting. it was a horrible regime -- and evil, if i could use the word, up there with the assad regime in syria. this is the iranians talking. the united states favors israel. what the iranians believe the united states favors the jewish state over muslim states, states that are populated primarily by muslims.

not be not agree, it may true. this is the perception in iran. this is what iranians believe. in fact, after the revolution and --ok the israeli embassy in tehran and give it to the plo. the iranians believe that we as a country favor the jewish state over the muslim states and therefore we are anti-islamic. and there are all sorts of arguments against -- against that. we have muslim chaplains in the american military. we should be part of the organization of islamic countries because the u.s. has a lot of muslims. there is some congressman that was sworn in on the carotid -- koran. this is why you need congresspeople. i am quite serious. this is what the iranians believe, that we don't like muslims. they will read about the story in a gas station

murdered in arizona because somebody thought he was a muslim. you can take something and wildly exaggerated and it becomes true. fourth, we are trying to strangle iran economically. we are. do it. reasons to economic sanctions. they have worked. and iran is indeed strangled. iranians regard this more of an emotional kind of strangling rather than the one that is the result of geopolitics. the u.s. is trying to expel ayn rand from the community of nations and tried to isolate them. we are. that is u.s. policy. there is a reason for it. iranians regard this more emotionally. and iranians believe iran is a great nation, an ancient nation with global interests, and the deeply present what they think we are trying to do. now, 65% of the population of of 35. under the age this is all they knew. they grew up with this.

islamic republic -- that is it, that is all they know. there are things about it they don't like and so forth, but at the end of the day, this is part itwhat makes iran iran and is certainly not going to change. they have their narrative, we have our narrative. what is our narrative? they took over our embassy. they did. clear abrogation of international law. every international norm. we have all seen "argo." great movie. really, really inaccurate. i loved it. i've seen it twice. i know how inaccurate it was and i still like it. shorthand for taking over them at the -- if you are old enough, ted koppel. second of all, the iranian support terrorist and extremist groups. they absolutely do. there was the attack on the jewish community center in buenos aires that are still being investigated. ,upport for hezbollah

assassination to the saudi ambassador to the united states in washington. these are things iran has done. they tonight the holocaust. i was invited as believe it or not, this jewish kid from massachusetts where i was from originally -- i was invited to a meeting in tehran that the holocaust did not happen. david duke, the moronic holocaust denier. i cannot make it. i had a conflict. but indeed, there are people that do deny the holocaust. clear ignorant of modern history. they have threatened to destroy israel. the united states supports israel because the american people wish to support israel. it is not because of me and 14 tricking america into doing it. it is american policy. i used to live in texas. they love israel more than we

did. it was astounding. you go to these mega churches. this is an american issue. not just an american jewish issue. it is an american issue. satan.the great they are the axis of evil. satan.the great there are repeating narratives. both work in terms of mobilizing negative energy. countriesient in both . but it's going to happen? ok, what do we know? this is the one that i think is most important. what do we know about iran? i spend my life -- while decent people are working i am reading things about iran written by my learned colleagues all over the united states with us down to me because there is this sort of certainty with which they tell us about iran and one another, which is belied by reality.

nobody really understands what is going on he and iran. it is impossible. the political system in error and is intentionally designed so it is a patent, obscure. iranians don't know what is going on. who arert iranians politically connected don't know. that is simply the nature of the system. art of it is they want to avoid what happened to the shah. they want to create a political system in which it is very difficult to overrule the current political order. part of it is the uncertainty that comes in the wake of revolution. nobody wants to make a decision. nobody wants to be at risk. nobody wants to take a chance. so, the nature of the system is such that it is really not clear how does it work. it is sort of this purposeful murkiness. so, i read this tough -- part of the reason why i don't do this as much as i used to is because i feel like helen keller.

there is just so much of that is not evident to us. it is not clear. we sell black information. north korea is sort of the gold standard of ignorance, but it is not far behind in terms of the system. i read endlessly and i get frustrated. tv, i cannot even do. although there was a story on cnn that said the iranian soccer team has an american assistant coach. i do not know about that. who are the political actors? the one you hear about all the time is the supreme leader. the supreme leader is many things, one of which he is not is he is not supreme. he is the political actor par excellence but he is a political actor. he is not some autocrat who snaps his finger and things happen. it willlem -- and continue to get worse -- if he is not the ayatollah khomeini.

there is only one khomeini and when he passed from the scene, the unique role that khomeini occupied is not eminently transferable to somebody else. so, the supreme leader presides over the islamic republic. he is not only the spiritual leader but also the political leader and he needs to engage in politicking just the way everybody else does. he really needs to get political interests in the air ran to support him, he needs to work with them, and certainly he is very, very influential. what he is not the only game in town. and indeed, it is a challenge. second of all is themullahs, the religious sector. the religious sector is extremely diverse. it is not that they all agree. there is great diversity and differences of view within the religious sect there, -- religious sector.

some are extremely conservative and orthodox and some of them are actually very enlightened and they get it. but they are working in a very difficult system. , thehird is the irgc revolutionary guard. the revolutionary guard is not only a military organization parallel to the traditional military. far more importantly, it is also an economic entity that is sort of comparable to the peoples liberation army in china. its business interests are absolutely extraordinary. they are very, very wealthy. iny don't khomeini airport toronto, for example, after a pitch battle with another group that wanted to build the airport and they lost -- they built the khomeini airport. c is another political entity that is very, very influential. none of them are dominant but all of them are important.

you can't really discount any of them. and the part about iranian politics which is so fascinating which none of us have access to is these people spent a lot of time with one another, they drink tea, they read poetry, they politick. they do politics, if you will. it is a constant series of negotiations, deliberations, horsetrading, and politicking, which, again, is how iranian politics always worked. it worked this way under the shah. there were groups of people who would go to school together or would be in a similar industry, and interest the way we have our interests. your group, the people you work with. and in the good old days, five or six years ago, they could even be of the opposite party and you would do a deal. there is a book coming out on tip o'neill's relationship with

ronald reagan. very, very interesting. the o'neill being my sainted congressman from boston, very much a democrat, and reagan, they did business all the time. so, iran operates that way. the idea that there is one source and they are behind everything is simply wrong. -- again, i am doing this quickly, forgive me. there is a lot to cover and i want to allow time for questions. the whole mania era. -- khomeini area was special because khomeini was basically able to do pretty much what he wanted to do. khomeini was really interesting because if you were sitting in tehran before the revolution in some secretconfab, most of the people in this room would've supported khomeini and it is not because we like him but because we do not like the shah. and people, certainly like me, the snooty professors, is this old guy, ignorant cleric.

he's got the people. we will use him to get rid of the shah, and this guy will be daunted and they are now sitting in beverly hills drinking tea and wondering what went wrong. mightier an much opponent and much more widely and smarter and focus than any of them thought. was kind of the most difficult, one of the most difficult times because, a, the eurasianiraq and the -- invasion of iran. he traumatized the iranian people. you heard of the cemetery in tehran that has fountains shooting up red water to symbolize the blood that was shed. this really was kind of a 9/11 equivalent to the iranians. it deeply, deeply affected the people of iran. and it still does today. ultimately there was a hot tommy , elected era

president, liberal guy that we thought we could do business with. he was the rock -- rouhani, if you will come of his age. nothing much came of it. all of my colleagues were swinging from the chandeliers, a want of opportunity. we will make a deal. the deal never got made. why did it get made question mark part of it was khatemi could not deliver iran and the other part the time was not right. he was sort of synonymous with reform. the fact that was not successful but not mean there was no room for reform, is simply means there was president and indeed was unsuccessful. the everybody's favorite, ahmadinejad run. 's visionntral casting of the bad guy tom and he never failed to deliver. i used to call them israel's secret weapon. the israelis must have loved

him, a cousin this guy was so uncontrollable, was so off the charts, that in a sense you just had sit there and watch iran. it was very easy to sort of deal with iran episode of expel iran from the world community and to sanction it because i live in a jot -- ahmadinejad was so inattentive to the issues. he was concerned with the domestic constituency in iran. it wasn't only u.s. sanctions that destroyed the economy, a lot of it was what ahmadinejad himself was doing, ridiculously liberal concessions and subsidies and other sorts of things. and ahmadinejad in a sense may have been a necessary evil because he may have teed upper -- teed up iran for the rouhani era when again we are presented with an opportunity for negotiation, which is made

by the urgent development of the iranian nuclear program which upset everybody, as well as should. as well it should. the idea of a weapon eyes the nized iranapon eyes appeals to nobody, will not benefit the world and will not benefit iran. iran is not a country that you can bully. it simply does not work that way. if you look at what iran excelled at in the olympics, it is wrestling and weight lifting. really, i am serious. this is a country that is very, very nationalistic. it has a very strong sense of self. the thing i always tell people is when you go to tehran -- which i am sure you all will -- at some point your host will

a house of strength. were people kind of do synchronized and. -- weightlifting. it's very, very interesting. the point i'm making is culturally this is not a country that gives an well to bullying. they have a strong sense of themselves. they are very nationalistic. there are is sort of a martial quality there. and it simply doesn't work. what was so interesting about the rouhani election is that yet again an opportunity for some type of peaceful resolution of our differences with iran emerges. because am skeptical i'm always skeptical. i always say that we middle east specialists are kind of the oncologists of area studies. inevitably we are wrong and we

can do anything and we have no good news. but having said that, i think the stakes -- and i really mean this quite seriously -- the stakes are so high, they are so important, that i think that i certainly supported president rouhani'stempt to me initiative in the spirit in which we would like to believe it has been given. there are no guarantees. there are no guarantees. having said that, the planet earth is less of a place with iran in a box. we really need to try to find a way -- without giving away the farm for what we did in syria, i might add -- but to try to find accommodation with iran. maybe it won't work. maybe it won't work. and they about this sort of unusual characteristics is that the rouhani initiative to the u.s. and president

obama's despond has driven iran and saudi arabia into the same corner. that is quite an achievement. both israel and saudi arabia are very, very uncomfortable with the possibility of the ongoing negotiations with iran. with some israelis -- you can becausey "the israelis" it is too interesting and diverse, but some israelis believe and probably many more saudi's believe is that the iranians are doing this to buy time to my that they are not sincere, they don't mean it. rouhani will not be able to deliver. in other words, they believe iran will do what i believe bashar al-assad is doing with the chemical weapons program. thatsense, if you accept accusation about syria, it certainly deserves to be considered about iran. it is my personal view that the

risk is certainly worth taking. and indeed, if we are right, the big beneficiaries are likely to be both israel and saudi arabia, who will will not be under the sword of some sort of iran nuclear program. what if i'm wrong? that is the question. lomo six back in -- aviv or sitting in riyadh living in los angeles, and when , he won't even let her stay in his guest room. it is sort of -- i understand that. i really do. but i also do believe in our form of government. i have some measure of trust in our elected officials -- maybe more than angela merkel does for others. and this is a weighty, serious issue that the united states government has been deeply, deeply involved in from day one. i think if iran or -- if sirius

are not series it will be revealed relatively quickly. the first set of negotiations in geneva apparently went very well. wendy sherman, who was leading our negotiating the iranians showed up with a detailed power point presentation. they showed up with some serious there are going to be naysayers. the sanctions are working, it has squeezed iran into compliance. we have them on the ropes. let's elevate the sanctions. wendy sherman from the state

department who is overseeing the negotiations said she does not believe it would be help to feel increase the sanctions now. this was after irritating the iranians by saying duplicity is part of their dna. they didn't like that. so there is something for everybody. nuclear issue is important but i don't think it's the only issue. where it's going to get sticky is on levels of enrichment. iran believes it has to right to enrich plutonium for peaceful uses. the level of enrichment is very significant. and what we and the israelis and saudis and others are afraid of is they will be so close they can enrich very quickly and weaponize. it's too serious to not say it's a possibility. the obama administration and the

department of state believe that they have this -- they understand it and have it under control. each country has its own tea party. there are -- the iranians invented drinking tea. there are naysayers who will make this very difficult just as there are those in the united states who argue we are being tricked and this is not going to work. so the challenge is they need to sell not only one another, they need to sell their own people. again the obama administration has had such challenges in the middle east that one of its -- one of the issues it's going to have to contend with its credibility on middle east issues. these issues were all related. we were having a little discussion that i purposely stayed out of on does the palestine issue matter.

and at the end of the day, the symbolism matters a lot. if the palestine issue was resolved tomorrow we're not going to be able to retire to a warm climate and not worry about anything ever again. if it is resolved in a way that promotes national security and gives palestinians their own right, it gives one reason to dislike and distrust us in the middle east will go away. there will be a whole list of others there having to do with egypt and so on. but the palestine issue does matter. it's just we need to understand how does it matter, what is the nature of the mattering and there we need to be realistic. so all of these issues are related. and president obama has all sorts of domestic issues. obamacare and endless lists of things.

so the question is, if he is able to make a deal with the iranians that satisfies him and secretary kerry will he be able to sell this deal to the american people and their elected representatives in congress? and it's a real consideration and the same consideration exist in iran. so it's sort of a two-stage challenge. one is to make a deal with one another and the other is to get your camps to accept the deals. the supreme leader commented on rouhani's trip to new york. he criticized the phone call between him and obama. if two guys can't have a phone call and goes to that level, it shows you how difficult it is to make a deal. let me end by advocating extraordinary humility when it comes to understanding iran. the data is just not there.

we are really stumbling around in the dark and trying to make sense of things with very fragmentary information and things change a lot. so these are all my personal views. the longer i study iran, the longer i think i probably should have been a switzerland specialist because the longer i do it -- i always am discovering new complications and just things that i hadn't figured. the record of middle east specialists -- i'm looking at the real deal, our record is one of uniform failure. you name it, we failed to predict it. it's an extraordinary record. don't come to las vegas with people like me. that's normally what i say. but we didn't predict the arab spring.

you name it, we didn't get it right. so be very aware of experts from out of town or even in town, this is not for the faint of heart. i'll be glad to have questions or contrasting views. >> [inaudible] >> did everyone hear the question? >> for the purposes of the c-span taping we need every question to be made from this microphone in the center of the room, please. >> the question is, if we make this deal you spoke of with the islamic republic, are we not selling the six pack down the river? >> it depends on what the deal

looks like. and the thing that we as americans and emigre iranians in the u.s. need to realize islamic republic is here to stay. it was a country that was born out of a revolution. it is legitimate. it has done things that are not in accord of our values or many iranians' values, but this is it. and i think that bringing iran back into the world community, reintegrating it into the world economy, opening the country up so people can visit the country and they can get visas and come here and study engineering or whatever i think will benefit significantly. >> before we go to the next question, let me ask you to devote a couple of minutes --

there is one aspect of iran's role in the middle east that you might want to touch upon. given our limited time we can only do so much, but this is critical understanding what is going on in the arab world, which is iran's role as the emerging guardian of the global shia community. and this is what is getting the saudis to react the way they do. saudis are reacting the way they do less because they are concerned iran is going to nuke them than because the rise of iran as the major voice in the muslim world which traditionally has gone to saudi arabia where islam began. this a direct challenge to the

saudis and their perception of themselves. that also speaks to how iran with its own role in the middle east and elsewhere. i wonder what your comments on that are. >> that's a very important question. the iranian revolution has failed. the iranian revolution was meant to sponsor revolutions around the world. it was supposed to be a model for muslims to throw off the yolk of oppression, and other than groups around the world no country has gone the way of iran and iran is the good advertisement against creating islamic republics.

having said that, the shia-sunni issue is imperative and that is one that is not going to go away. it's very important. so we can pick our poison. we can line up with saudi arabia where they are toying with letting women drive cars. that's a remarkable achievement in the 21st century. or we can try and make a deal with iran and at the end of the day -- and i go to saudi arabia a lot -- they are not going to send their kids to universities in beijing. they are stuck with us and we are stuck with them. but traditionally we made choices in the middle east. i think ultimately in a perfect world we would have relationships with all major pulls in the middle east. with iran, with the sunni arabs and israelis and even turkey which i think of as a middle eastern state. what you are talking about is not going to go away. it's very very important.

the question is how will that play in terms of broader opportunities for economic development and integration into the world and so forth. these are countries that are evolving. what we haven't talked about and don't have time is the arab spring. this say region that is undergoing extraordinary changes and your question highlights one of the most important areas of instability, but not the only one and they all feed on one another. >> let's make questions as brief as possible. >> should make answers as brief as possible and for that i apologize. >> you pointed out how difficult it is for to us predict what is going to happen, all these unexpected things happen. but don't you think we're helped by starting history in 1979 rather than in 1953 or 1952 when

dulles and his brother got together and overthrew the government. you didn't mention anything about that. another thing that you talked about the danger of iran having nuclear weapons. what about the danger of israel having nuclear weapons or the united states having nuclear weapons? we're the only one that is have purposely killed people with nuclear weapons. and i wonder if you could look into the future and see what is going to happen when china becomes the dominant country in the world, it takes over from the united states -- how do you think that will affect iran and israel which seems totally oblivious to the fact that this is going to happen? >> i'm a simple guy. and i really don't disagree with particularly 1953 which is part of the iranian narrative. you are exactly right.

that part of the story -- one of the reasons they don't like him, we brought the sha back and kept him in power. israel has nuclear weapons. what are you going to do? i'm not sure what we can do about it. i don't like us having -- >> [inaudible] >> why talk about people that aren't here? let's talk real issues where we can have an impact and at the end of the day if you are too ambitious, you get nothing done. i give my staff the f word lecture. new staff, the f word. that's focus. let's pick our issues and do it. if we can solve the palestine question, if we can make a deal with iran. there are so many ifs. the world will be a better place if we are realistic in our ambitions, and that's the f word.

>> i have loved your presentation. it was informative and charming and witty, and it was most enjoyable to listen to, and the only thing i liked better was our conversation around the table which was a lot of fun as well. but i don't think anybody in this room would mistake me for being a tea party person, quite the contrary. but i come down on the side of those that think that a deal with iran right now is an impossibility and i'm going to tell you why. or let me not talk about that. but i was part of the original co-sponsors of the iranian sanctions bill, both of them, and worked very closely with the europeans in ensuring they voted for sanctions in the eu and the united nations. so i've been solved in this for quite a while.

the reason rouhani is reaching out to the united states and to the europeans is because the sanctions are actually working. we are bringing their economy to its knees, and i am of the mind that if we start loosening up those sanctions and granting concessions before the iranians agree to end their nuclear ambitions -- and i do not believe for a minute that they are attempting to use nuclear for peaceful purposes -- there is only one reason that they are working so hard and spending so much money to acquire enough material to make a nuclear bomb -- it is my understanding from the latest intelligence information that they are within a month of having enough material to in fact make one bomb. and i think that would be very dangerous for us to lift those sanctions now after all of the

time and the sacrifice and the efforts on the part of the united states and the europeans. let those sanction work, and the way they are going to work is make it worse right now which i'm of the mind we should but just leave them in place until the iranians come over to our way of thinking and actually agree to end their nuclear ambitions. and i find it extraordinary in this day in age that rouhani is considered a moderate when he has been the advisor and the right-hand man of the supreme leader. and in addition to that, when ahmadinijad was a total lunatic and was acquiring nuclear capability to do that or so he

said and was a holocaust denier. now have you rouhani when asked the question did the holocaust happen, he said i'm not a historian. that to me is not being a moderate. >> the question. >> the question is -- >> why would you possibly think that lifting the sanctions now would be a help with iranians given their history? >> i didn't say we should lift the sanctions now. i was quoting wendy sherman who said they shouldn't be increased. >> what do you think? >> i don't think we should lift them, but where you will disagree with me is we should signal to them a willingness to consider lifting the sanctions in ways which will satisfy your

view which is an important viewpoint. you represent an important segment of congressional and public opinion in this country. your view is not a weird view. i don't fully agree with you, but i get it. i hope you didn't think i was calling you a tea partier but obama is going to have to satisfy people that hold that view and it's going to be very difficult. so the question is how can he sort of address the sanctions issues in a way that will have an impact on iran while at the same time being able to persuade people who hold your view which is an important view that your concerns are being met. the other thing is i have heard so many statistics about when iran can weaponize including from the israelis which are wildly different. and that's part of what i'm lamenting is how little we know. what you can see to it seems to me how can you afford to take the risk if there is 1% possibility there it's a month how can you do it?

having said that you're right, but the more desperate they become, the more they squeeze them the more they feel painted into a corner to do something that is in our debt including their own. >> you just answered the question i was going to put to you. yes or no, very briefly, can the iranians be forced to give up their nuclear option, let's call it that because that's what it is at any level of sanctions that the world will agree to impose beyond where we are today? >> it's not only that. the iranians are going to have to permit very intrusive inspections, intrusive inspections, and there is a will they allow that? they will regard that as an infringement on their sovreignty. the bar is going to be high for

them and i'm not sure if they are going to meet it. history kind of favors you more than it does me. certainly recent history which is worrisome, but it is what it is. >> i have a twofold question first on christian persecution and also the person in prison there -- is that on the hearts and minds of the iran people? >> i think the situation of christian minorities across the middle east is not good. the situation in egypt was terrible under morsi, and one hopes under the new regime it will be better. in terms of iran, being a religious minority is

not fun. they are sort of at the top of the heap in terms of being discriminated against. christians have had issues, jews have had issues, persians are a minority in iran. this country has not shown great respect for diversity. it is an important question, and the news is not good. in terms of the person being in prison, unclear. we do not know. >> but there might be another elephant in the room. can you discuss how that's been impacting what i've been discussing. >> the relationship between iran

and iraq, nothing good. the situation in iraq is deteriorating. iran generally believes it has interest in iraq which it does. it's a neighboring country. to go back to paul's question, the iranians have a shia inferiority complex, the two holiest cities are in iraq and iran wants a seat at the iraq table and the iraq table is very unsteady. so i understand their desire to be part of it. but having said that, iraq is not out of the woods and certainly we are not on the same side as the iranians. there have been instances which we've agreed. afghanistan, believe it or not,

there was a period of time which we collaborated effectively with iran, but these things are fleeting and not forever, so you are right. >> i just had a question if we weren't murky enough already. i'd like to talk about iranian domestic economics. we talk about sanctions and how that effects them and their economy. but i was wondering how severe are some of their own policies, how severe is the recovery going to be for the highly educated and underememployed young population, you mentioned 65% under 35 years old, what's the way forward for them? is that going to involve reprivatizing the industry in iran? >> iran economically looks worse than it should look because it has a very sophisticated business sector, highly educated

people, a good labor force, and a tradition of being economically a healthy country and they are petroleum producers which we ouven forget. forget.h we often we keep the sanctions which under circumstances it's american law it will continue to contract. i agree with the congresswoman. i'm not sure he would have done this were the economy healthier but it's not. economic recovery is absolutely possible in iran, absolutely, but the right circumstances need to be in place. and unemployment, the youth bulge, all of these things, the environment is a terrible issue.

any of you have been to tehran lately, it's like mexico city, the air is absolutely foul, water shortage, there are endless numbers of problems in iran which are not being dealt with because they don't have the will or resources or both. >> we have been talking about this as if it were strictly a middle east issue. what about their role particularly in northern africa and closer to home in central and south america? >> again, i mentioned the bombing of the jewish community center. any of you watching homeland -- i can't say anything without spoiling. i take that back because i don't want to be a spoiler. iran is involved in all sorts of things globally, and this is what paul was saying, sort of the center of a global shia political religious-based inspired political movement, and it not constructive.

but having said that if we remain on this course, it's not going to get better but worse. will the guys in teheran pull back if we reach an accord with them. they don't do this because it's good for iran. these are desperation moves in a country with a failed revolution and is looking for a mission. so you are absolutely right but this is not inevitable and does not have to be forever. it would help us as a country if we would be a little more attentive to latin america as well. it's interesting the degree which the united states takes latin america for granted. >> i have a question and a statement. my question is we talked about iran and you said they want to be a leader in the middle east

and whatever they do in iraq but we are forgetting they are completely taking over of turkey and turkey is one of the biggest allies in west and as we call them they are the right arm of the nato. last week turkey passed a law, you cannot sell alcohol in the shops, you cannot sell in any restaurant anymore. and between 10:00 in the p.m. and 10:00 in the a.m., selling alcohol is completely banned. >> sounds like texas by the way. it's like that in texas, too. >> that's ok. but texas can do that. but turkey is a secular country and today is the day, 29th of october, it is the day turkey really celebrated because they believe they are secular. but my question is, what is your opinion with the involvement of the iranian and the turks and both of them are not arabs and

one more time they are together and taking control of the middle east -- what is your opinion? and the statement was congresswoman was absolutely right, because i am half persian, i was born in iran. i left very young the country but i still have my cousins and did see all of them this summer and all of them, even though they are very hurt from the sanctions, really sanction bothering them, but they are saying it is the only way to bring to the knee the islamic republic of iran. >> i don't think turkey needs any help from iran. turkey is a very big independent country, the movement towards islamization in part is a result of the rejection by the european union. turkey mistakingly wanted to

join the e.u. for years and years which never made sense to me. turkey is the only country in the world that is all three. they should leverage all three of those instead of going in the eu direction which benefits nobody. i don't think iran is a significant actor in turkey. turks don't love the iranians, they are not going to listen to them and they don't need any help. the idea that they are together, i don't see turkey coordinating its policies with iran. it's a very different country with different expectations and different needs. but what it does show is the middle east is a mess, and that's kind of an undercurrent of your entire question. if iran is the only good news coming out of the middle east, what does that say about the middle east? nothing very good. >> there is one issue where iranians and turks come together and that's where they help each

other to keep curbing rising kurdish nationalism. this will be become more of an issue if the kurds set up a zone in northeast syria and in combination with northern iraq which brings me to a question from our former president of the world affairs council, and his question has to do with iran's role in the syrian mess. so if you can address that for a second. >> the syrian-iranian relationship was always bizarre because if iran is really all about islam and shism to support the assad family is the an tith sis of everything that he i slamic republic stands for, this was a secular

non-religious political order but it gave iran an entremendous into the world which it was valued and very important. it puts the idea that the anians are wild eyed zealots is undermined by its relationship with syria. it's my view that by not responding quickly to the deployment of chemical weapons by the assad regime and delaying, delaying, delaying, taking it to congress and making a deal with russia, basically assad should send the united states a thank you note for buying it another six months or year or two or whatever it is. my view of iran and you would know better than i do but you can't tell us is i always felt the iranian role in syria -- the iranian influence in syria and lebanon was somewhat exaggerated. think they were striving to be influential. but the lebanese and syrians are not willing to be dominated by the iranians so it was a marriage of convenience in

which they collaborated but i never got the feeling that iran was pushing the buttons in teheran and things happened in had lebanon and syria. but it doesn't change the fact their involvement in both places is not constructive and very serious. >> there is no gain saying the fact that lebanon is totally dependent on lebanon as a supplier of weaponry and dependent on syria as the channel which they arrive. so this whole setup is critical to the power in lebanon. they are really -- they are the power in the country and so it is very critical in that respect. >> i agree with that. i just never know who needs who more. >> i would say hezbollah needs iran more than iran needs hezbollah.

>> how about russia? they portray iran as a friend or ally. how about iranians? do they take russia seriously? what is their sense of ussia? >> russia, everybody sort of takes russia seriously and there are long historical relations between iran and russia. the shah's father was a member of the military brigade and iranian brigade but i think that russia is desperately looking for a role in the middle east. the iranians are cynical. they get it. russia might be a useful counterpoint to the u.s. and to those forces that are marshalled against it. but russia is not eager for iran to develop a nuclear weapons capability. russia is concerned about islamic-based activity

particularly in chechnya but also along its southern border. so they will tolerate certain iranian behavior but probably not too much and the iranians i don't think have great expectations of russia nor should they. >> i would add to that and also ask to you comment as far as iran is concerned in a sense russia is a rival on the oil and gas export front, far more critical to the iranians is the budding relationship with china. and china is becoming very aggressive in its purchase of natural resources and in establishing all sorts of channels to build on for the future. and india also derives a lot of its oil imports from iran. it has been seriously affected by the sanctions and it's tired of them and trying finding ways of getting around the

sanctions. so in a sense we should not think that iran is isolated in a box when it comes to the sanctions. in fact, there are rising number of emerging major powers that find it in their interest to work with iran and get around the sanctions. and so that is also part of the picture. >> absolutely right, i agree. >> any more questions? yes, please. >> [inaudible] >> for the interest of the rest of the audience the question has to do with whether there are other intermediaries that could work with iran other than the united states and germany might be a candidate? >> well the talks in geneva is not bilateral u.s.-iran.

the e.u. involves a number of other powers. at the end of the day we don't need immediate ators, we need the countries to decide to make a deal and once they do it will happen or it won't happen. the iranian foreign minister got his ph.d. at the university of denver which is where condoleeza rise got her h.d. what paul mentioned in his question is all of these other collateral issues which debilateralize but it is global because there are all of these activities elsewhere which impinge on our ability to make a deal and selling our own peoples, the iranians theirs and us ours. >> jerry, you made a great contribution to our understanding of how complex

the picture is and filling in some of the blanks. i know it would take weeks to fill in all the blanks but this was extremely useful and thank you so much for coming out. >> thank you for having me, i appreciate it. thank you. you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> jay carney is expected to brief reporters on a number of topics including the issue we heard debated, work on a deal with iran to cease nuclear production. we'll have live coverage when that briefing gets under way here on c-span. in the meantime, here is the latest on efforts to craft a deal to end sanctions on iran from today's "washington ournal." host: so take us inside the room. iran failed to reach an agreement. how did that happen? guest: well, there were rising expectations as the seven countries met in geneva the end

of last week. it seemed a deal was within reach, the iranians said so. on saturday the french foreign minister came out and gave a radio interview and said he had problems with the draft. he said he wanted more limits on a heavy reactor, that the iranians are developing and he wanted firmer disposition as some medium enriched uranium that iran has. by late saturday night it looks like the world powers, including the u.s., the europeans, china and russia had agreed generally on an approach the iranian team said

they needed to go back to tehran and get clearance for a deal. and some diplomats are saying one obstacle was that iran wanted an explicit commitment from the seven nations that it would have the right to enrich uranium going forward if it signed onto this deal which is an interim deal to begin with. so the group came up slightly short. it's possible that at the next meeting on november 20 they will be able to get across the finish line but for the moment the bauks has to deal with on -- the obama administration has to deal with opposition to the deal on -- in congress, in israel, among arab countries in the persian gulf as well.

so they got their hands full with that host: paul, you mentioned the comments by the french foreign minister. how much weight do you think they had with no deal emerging from the latest talks? guest: it's a bit unclear. the american diplomats say that that was not the -- you know, the problem. but it's clear that several of the countries within the five-plus-one group, as it's called, did have concerns. there was discussion as the deal got close to being completed, they really came down to the nitty gritty as they have not done before so maybe it's natural that various delegations would have issues with it. in any event, they seemed to have come together at the end but i think it seems like going

forward when they get to the phase of having to negotiate the final deal, which may happen in the month ahead, there's room for even more, you know, disagreement among the six powers. host: paul richter, your report in the "l.a. times," traded accusations -- host: with that kind of blame game taking place in the media and i hear it on twitter, what about the upcoming talks at the end of the month? guest: well, even though secretary kerry and the french foreign minister traded accusations what happened in geneva that caused this snag, both are insists that they agree there is a chance a deal may be done. even though there's this

maneuvering and public relations contest, the iranians really -- or at least the new administration in iran wants a deal that's going to ease the economic pressure on iran and the u.s. also wants a deal because they don't want to have to go to war with iran and they don't want the idea of iran obtaining a nuclear weapons capability on the record of this administration. so there's a lot of pressure for the two sides to get a deal. it just -- there are still sticking points as well. host: want to turn to a report in "politico" this week. he reports that the senate will hit pause on any plans to consider further economic sanctions on iran until the chamber is briefed by the obama administration this week. it's been reported that secretary of state john kerry will brief the senate banking committee on wednesday. what will we hear from him and what weight is this decision to

halt additional sanctions likely to have? guest: i think secretary kerry's briefing is going to be behind closed doors, so we may hear from senators afterwards, a bit about what happened. but certainly if congress is to impose tough additional sanctions, there's a chance that could make negotiations more difficult. it could encourage some of the countries that are -- that have en purchasers of iranian oil that they should stop complying with u.s. sanctions. there may be -- there could be more pressure for -- from countries that have been holding back on their purchases of oil. they may decide that there's not really a diplomatic outcome in prospect here. and so they ought to start buying the oil.

anyway, that's the administration's warning that new sanctions could, you know, blow up all of the diplomacy at this point. many people in congress are not convinced of that. and so we're going to see those choices starkly this week. host: paul, want to ask you about one more sad story today on "the washington post." host: it was confirmed by the secretary of defense who released that late last evening. i wanted to get your thoughts there. guest: i'm really -- i'm not really well informed. i saw the report but that's as much as i know about it. host: well, we'll leave it there. en talking with paul richter of the "los angeles times." thank you for joining us by phone this morning. guest: glad to do it.

>> reporters at 12:30 eastern here. the house and senate return today for legislative business. both bodies are back at 2:00 p.m. eastern. the house will start with one-minute speeches. then rele sess until 5:00 for -- recess until 5:00. on the agenda this week is a measure allowing insurance companies to continue offering policies if they don't meet the health care laws. and impose monetary penalties for frivolous lawsuits. and the senate will vote on a federal judicial nomination. and work on compounding pharmacies. the senate on c-span2. and this from cnn. secretary of state john kerry will head to capitol hill tomorrow testifying on issues curb iran's nuclear ambitions. the latest round of talks failing to produce an agreement. secretary kerry will meet with members of the senate banking committee in a closed door session. should any news come out of that meeting, we'll have it for

you on the c-span networks. >> from a young age, jacqueline loved to write. she would often create poems as gifts for her parents. on christmas and birthdays, she would write a poem and illustrate it. we have two examples here from when she was about 10 years old. in the fall of 1950, she entered "vogue's writing contest and her winning essays, one was a self-portrait and question three of the essay, who are three people in history you wish you would have known? in the first two she mentions charles, the french poet, and oscar, the author. d the russian ballet empresario. she was hired by "the washington times-herald."

and this photo interviewed vice president nixon and senator kennedy who would be adversaries during the presidential campaign. as we know in her later life, the last part of her life, she was a very prolific editor of books in new york city working with several different authors on several different topics. show about jacqueline kennedy, sunday at noon on c-span. and our series continues live monday as we look at first lady, lady bird johnson. >> today's white house briefing is coming up at about 12:30. right now, though, a discussion on intelligence and the increasing use of drones around the world from today's "washington journal." host: welcome back. we're joined by guy taylor who covers foreign policy, national security and intelligence for "the washington times." thanks for joining us this

morning. guest: thanks, juana. how are you? host: not too bad. so this week you had an article from "the washington times" and explain your thesis to us. the age of the drone is here and you asked that they are monitoring their proliferation around the globe. chinese spy on japan. host: walk us through your piece. guest: the idea i wanted to get into this is the ugly precedent that the united states has set over the past decade using

remote control airplanes to fire missiles at so-called high value suspected terrorist targets in other countries, particularly pakistan, yemen, somalia, libya. and the need that we have at this point to have a bit of a deeper national discussion about where this new 21st century very futuristic kind of warfare is going. and the precedent that washington has set, before he became director of the c.i.a. last year, john brennan gave a speech here in washington where he acknowledged it would be naive for washington and americans to assume that other world powers are not going to go forward in the years ahead and use drones for cross-border strikes on what they claim to be their own high value targets. that's somewhat unsettling if you look at the way this technology is proliferate the around the world in the last five or six years, particularly with the rise of high-tech chinese manufacturing and then american adversaries like iran

getting a hold of the technology from that part of the world and advancing and also having shot down an american drone last year. host: certainly a big debate on capitol hill. let me ask you this. you write in your article 87 countries have possessed drones. is this a new arms race? guest: it's a little more complicated than the traditional cold war era race to get nuclear weapons by the soviet union and the united states. what's happening here, industry insiders and intelligence sources tell you this is a more like a computerized technology. it's not so much a nuclear weapon-type technology that's extremely difficult to develop. these are really basically remote control airplanes. you and i can go out to a hobby store and buy a version of a drone and potentially fly it around. the reality is to use it in a clandestine way that becomes

desired by a powerful military in the world is that you got to reach a new level of sophistication. the types of drones that the united states, israel and britain have and a handful of other countries, the chinese re believed to, the turks, the israelis, are relatively unintelligent. they were designed at a time in the post-9/11 era when the united states military needed a way to quickly go in and surveil patches of the world that did not have air defenses, for instance. so there was no need to make these things as stealth as big fighter jets. so particularly those models, the reaper drone and the predator, began to dominate the global market. what's happening now is that the united states is trying to develop newer models that can subvert air defenses, but then other nations around the world are speeding ahead with the

development of smaller and smaller drones. as that happens, dozens of companies around the world, backed by governments and private, can developing these smaller drones that proliferated in 87 countries around the world, that's really where we're going in the next 10 years and that's the thrust of the story to say we should wake up to this and beware of the push to begin to lay the groundwork for some kind of international standard of rules for how these weapons can be used by nations because it really is a matter of time before americans wake up to news that the chinese have used a drone in a cross-border strike or that the turks have used a drone in a cross-border strike, for instance, and we got to prepare for how we will respond to that and how we deal

with diplomacy and geopolitics around the world. host: we will take phone calls. the numbers are -- talking with guy taylor of "the washington times." you said it might not be long before we see these ross-border strikes. how far realistically is that? guest: what i did is a eakdown of the analysis that is on in the intelligence community and the private sector. there are 90 countries around the world that are believed to possess high-tech drone capability with their military. of those about 26 nations are believed to have either developed their own or purchased from the united states or israel the equivalent to the predator or reaper drone. those are the winds that are capable of -- those are the

ones that are capable of carrying missiles that the united states used. of those 26 only 10 or 15 nations are believed to have armed those drones. so to -- i don't want to create kind of a shock with this story. i just want to generate conversation. it's not known. the clandestine nature of foreign u.a.v. programs makes it extremely difficult to get an eye on who's doing what where. the last months, the japanese government threatened to shoot down chinese drones over the islands in the south china sea which are disputed territory which you guys talked about on this show. how would the chinese respond if the japanese shot down a drone? are those drones armed? we don't know for sure. host: let's take one of your calls now. let's go to rick in atlanta, georgia, on our line for democrats. o ahead.

rick -- caller: yes. i was wondering, since so many innocent people have died in the war on terror, can you explain to future generations maybe watching this time in history why journalists re tuesday to dig deeper about building 705 feet of free fall and the impossibility of destruction unless explosives were used? guest: regarding the larger and long-standing debate on 9/11, i think we can get into it. the number of people who -- civilians who've been killed in the war on terror era. that's one of the things about drone technology that has really been focused on by the mainstream media at this point as well as a number of leading human rights organizations around the world which is the united states has carried out drone attacks in the afghanistan-pakistan border region where an unknown number

of civilians, hundreds of civilians, if not more, have been innocent women, children have been killed by these strikes targeting suspected terrorists. and this is something when you get back to this precedence set bit united states is very disconcerting because we can sit here in washington and say, oh, we got our targets. hey, it was collateral damage. if we're looking at another world capital, moscow does a cross-border drone strike into one of the former soviet republics say, after an international suspected criminal and dozens if not hundreds of civilians are killed in that strike, how are we going to respond? are we prepared politically and mentally after having done that ourselves to respond to that type of scenario? host: next, pennsylvania, on the line for republicans. caller: how are you doing? thank you for doing your story here. on building seven from our previous caller -- moving right

along, i would also like to say i'm glad to hear you talk a little bit about the sovereignty issue. obviously we are violating international sovereignty all over the place. 12, 13 countries we're currently doing it. actually i wanted to call about weaponization of these drones and what we call nanodrones or microdrones, how they can be used in swarming. there are other type of techniques. we can use them for assassination. they literally are going to be the fly on the wall. so i'd just like to hear your comments. thank you. guest: absolutely entertaining and disconcerting to think in the science fiction-type terms that this whole type of weaponry inspires. so let me respond by kind of jumping into a couple more numbers. around the world, my investigation found around the

world there are about 20,000 u.a.v.'s in operation right now. and that's from little experimental small ones fly on the wall. this is not beyond the imagination of american technology community. up to big reaper and predator-type drones, of those 20,000, right now where wrer today in 2013 is less than -- where we are today in 2013 is less than 400 of the reaper-predator type that can be armed with these hell fire missiles. where we're going now -- this is where i was getting at before, this new arms race here in the united states are scrambling to develop smaller and smaller weapons that can be attached to that 20,000 proliferation. so the idea of a world full of weaponized drones is still a little bit out over the horizon

but it feels like that's where we're going and why we're having this conversation. host: again, we're talking to guy taylor from "the washington times." democrats, 202-585-3880. for republicans, that number is 02-585-3881. for independents, your number is 202-585-3882. let's take another call from kathy from long bridge, new jersey. caller: good morning, everybody. can you hear me? host: we can. caller: thank you so much, gentleman, gentlewoman are. i don't understand what drones are and why they're there. i don't believe in 9/11, by the way. i don't believe one thing i heard of it. that's a whole other story. i am a democrat. i love my congressman, frank pallone. yes, i think he's a great guy and nice guy.

that's all about what i have to say. i don't understand why we have to be at war. thank god george bush is not the president of the united states. i don't like the governor -- host: thank you so much, kathy, for your call. i want to turn to a question from twitter. guest: absolutely. that's what we're trying to grabble with with with this discussion. one of the things intelligence -- the c.i.a. and others will tell you kind of behind the scenes is one of the big concerns here is the nonstate actors will get their hands on more and more unmanned aerial vehicles. there's an example last year where israeli -- the israeli government suddenly came out and said it had shot a -- its fighter jets had shot drones over the skies over israeli airspace. the leader of hezbollah, which is a designated by the united states as a nonstate actor

terrorist organization but is also a legitimate political operation in lebanon right now, claimed responsibility for actually launching and flying that drone into israeli airspace. so already hezbollah has this capability. and he said he'd gotten it from the iranians and the iranians already shot down an american drone a year and a half ago. the idea we're going in the direction where nonstate actors could have this probably speaks most to this question of are we getting into an era of warfare that's changed or doesn't quite fit the parameters of our imagination in the last decade or so which was a difficult period in the post-9/11, as some callers called up conspiracy theories around the 9/11 attack. as americans in the united states, let's say that a nonstate actor such as a powerful mexican drug cartel of

which there are several, say one gets their hands on drones, try to use them to ferry illegal contraband into the united states or even more nefariously target one of its rivals that's hiding out in the united states with, say, a cross-border-type raid, this might be the kind of thing that would make your imagination go wild. to -- the united states has phenomenal, extremely sophisticated air defense systems around the country and the idea that a drone powerful enough to fly in in a cross-border mission from somewhere else without getting shot out of the sky immediately by air defense systems is unrealistic. host: next, mark, on our line for independents. caller: good morning. guy, i have a question for you. going to be a little

bit odd. i feel historically having drone warfare -- we are always going to be warring, it feels like. i don't think we'll get to the state of not warring. feel like, it's better we're arming up, if that's better at all, with drones instead of like the cold war which growing up in the cold war there was the fear of a button push and one thing changing the world. could you maybe enlighten me a little bit with -- or add validity to the argument that it could be a better way of handling armed disputes with drones instead of aircraft and tanks and traditional warfare? guest: i think it's a great point and i credit you with

thinking really critically about where we're at with this. i am not going to take a side and say evolution towards drone proliferation is better than the cold war era because i didn't live in the cold war era for very long. but what i will say -- and i'll go back to john brennan speech from last year, because i think one of the other things that he d a part from making controversial statements is he pointed out that the war on terror is actually a very real thing and that there are nonstate actors and islamic jihadists in the world that very much want to attack the united states so that the evolution towards using drones by the u.s. military intelligence community was warranted in that way. that was part of his argument. i encourage people to go out, google john brennan, it was a speech at the woodrow wilson

center here in washington. moving away from the idea that boughton could be pushed and entire cities liquidated by nuclear weapons, yes, it's definitely nice to know that we are not living under that fear day-to-day at this time, at least most of us aren't. when it comes to drones, though, with this technology comes this responsibility and also big concerns about, we're talking about weaponized drones in this program so far. what we haven't touched on is the level of sophistication with surveillance that this technology can carry. i mean, drones flying over a city can hone in on telephone calls, incredible camera capabilities, night vision, all kinds of things that increase the government's ability to watch its own people, i'm not saying in any way that that's happening here in the united states but we know that we have governments around the world that are very eager and hungry to use this technology in that way.

so while we might win in some respects of emerging past the cold war era we're going to be losing when we go into this place where big state actors use this new technology to spy on people on ways -- in ways that basically violate their human rights. host: next, virginia, on the line for democrats. caller: hi. thank you for taking my call. i know there are many forms -- i mean, we can look at terrorism in many ways. maybe somebody can be a patriot and the same person would be called a terrorist. we see that all the time. i guess i'm going to do a little stretch here, and it's a hypothetical but tell me if this has any validity. let's say, for example, we'll use china, for example, that they -- a group of patriots, chinese patriots that we may look at as terrorists, my goodness, the factor was

terrible. they got together and decided to drone us, drone the owner here in the united states calling the american a terrorist. could it get to that point, i guess? i'm trying to figure out how far could this drone situation go. it sounds to me there's a sovereign issue. there is a an issue going on whether it's america or another country. there seems validity to others points of views. that's my question, thank you. guest: thanks for the question. it's a really sober question. i certainly appreciate it. i think i want to go on the record here saying it's very unrealistic to think that any other state or nonstate actor is going to fly a weaponized remote control airplane into american airspace to target

anyone here. u.s. air defenses are simply too powerful and sophisticated for that to happen. some kind of small surveillance drone, could we be going that direction in the years ahead, yes, it is very possible. but right now it is really not a great concern of the insiders in the industry or the intelligence community. however, a more realistic concern right now would, say, the iranian government providing drones to the embattled bashir assad government in syria and the syrian government using drones to carry out a targeted strike against al qaeda linked rebels inside syria that are among the opposition fighters in that civil war. and then the syrian government could turn around and throw the precedent back at washington saying we were using this technology to target suspected terrorists. so what's your problem with

that, washington? you've done the same thing around the world, why can't we do it? that's more likely to unfold, something like that. i'm not saying there is intelligence pointing to that or anything. i'm saying that that type of scenario, and then the diplomatic and political stickyness that it's going to create for the united states and interacting with other nations that the united nations and elsewhere in the world will increase as a result of the situation like that. host: i do want to ask you about washington's response to these drones. a reuters report from last week reports that the senate intelligence committee has quietly approved a plan to staff up both public and international government oversight of the use of arm drones to kill suspected militants overseas, including american citizens. the committee voted in closed session earlier this week to approve legislative language that would require u.s. spy agencies to make public statistics on how many people were killed or injured in

missile strikes launched from u.s. operated drones. talk about the politics of this and how it's playing out. guest: what the u.s. congress is doing is being driven by two motivations right now. one is this concern about this suspected terrorist who's an american citizen last year who was the government has admitted to targeting and killing in yemen, last name al with a licky. the -- al-waliki. the idea that they would go and kill an american citizen has -- is extremely upsetting for a large constituency of people here in the united states. so that's motivated congress to get involved. they're getting a lot of complaints from their constituents about, you know, oh, my gosh. is the united states actually willing to target americans with this technology without -- where does justice go if that happens? there's no trial. what happened to constitutional rights? that's one of the things.

the push for increased oversight or more transparency and whether it's the obama administration or whoever succeeds obama in two years, what are they telling congress about what they're doing to ensure whoever's in the white house does not use this power to target americans? the second motivation, though, has to do with, again, this precedent around the world and the realization here in washington among sophisticated actors in congress. i know it probably sounds like an oxymoron to a lot of people, but among the intelligence oversight committees, and those are some of the most sophisticated members of congress, are looking at this saying, wow, there's a world debate happening about -- if we would like -- as the united states to have any currency in the world in telling others how we would like to see them use or not use this technology, then we need to come clean with our own use of it very quickly here. that's the other motivation

behind what congress is doing. it's a rapidly developing debate here on capitol hill. host: next, let's take another one of your calls, going to rodney in easton, pennsylvania, on our line for republicans. caller: yes, good morning and thank you. first, the question. you are making a plea for an ethical -- for ethical norms and some kind of restraint, are you not? guest: absolutely. i'm in the position of being an objective journalist who is trying to find facts that the american public or the world public, who are my readers, don't know about. in terms of making a plea, i think what i'm pointing out is where we need to go and where we are going now hopefully with this whole discussion about the use of armed remote control -- a weaponized missile system where somebody could fly a surveillance sophisticated remote control airplane from a cockpit that's thousands of miles away and very specifically target somebody, i think there has to be a serious

debate about what the ethics of that are, both from a law enforcement standpoint and from a justice standpoint and also from a collateral, to use the awful term collateral damage standpoint. so the yes is, yes, i am making that ethical plea. host: let's go to chuck on our line for ints. caller: thank you. i love c-span. there is a phrase, he who could frame the debate can control the flow of the discourse. i say i am very skeptical of it this gentleman's motives here. he works for a relatively right-wing newspapers and he covers the state department. that raises the flag for me right off the bat. it sounds like to me that what he is suggesting or implying is what i would call, i'm the only one you can trust with the switch and that is we have developed this technology and we have used it and the jihadists that he mentioned that want to do harm to our

country, one could argue is because of the -- the innocent men, women and children that have been killed by u.s. drone strikes, for example, last week or week before last, there was a pakistani family that came to the united states, one child saw his grandmother's head blown to bits right in her back yard and only three u.s. congressmen showed up for it. i think it's kind of like a poetic justice in a sense and it reminds me of the old nuclear scenario where we were saying that, ok, we've got our nuclear superiority but we are not going to allow you as a developing nation to secure those very same types of weapons. similar the situation with israel who are ready to take on iran and go to war with iran over their wanting to get nuclear weapons, even though they deny that, though the israelis have had nuclear weapons since the 1970's. it's that double standard

ypocrisy at play here. guest: i respectfully challenge the viewer to comb as deeply as he would like to my own writing and reporting and identify some politicized content. i try very hard, regardless politicize k, not to what i write and to adhere to the objective standards of journalism and to do so seriously. the second thing, the caller pointed out, yes, we are in this position where we are trying to claim american superiority with a war of technology that leaves people dead. so, again, the collateral damage has triggered all kinds of negativity towards the united states. particularly in pakistan, the nation that has hosted the leadership of al qaeda over the last 20 years. i just thank the caller for pointing that out. this is a very real problem

that the united states government carries forth as if we can continue killing people around the world without some sort of personal backlash towards the united states. host: looking at another article that you wrote last week. host: explain to the viewers why that is. guest: right. so there's a fairly heated debate in the intelligence and military community right now in washington about the fact that if you simply blow somebody to bits out of the sky, you aren't able to question them and get any intelligence out of them. part of what led to the capture of osama bin laden came from basically tore during suspects that were captured by the united states for information

and leads. this is extremely distasteful for people who hear our overnment does this. so the idea is if you kill these people with drones, you're not able to capture and torture them for new information. there is a deficit for real-time information with this kind of emerging threat in north africa of al qaeda affiliate organizations such as arabian n the peninsula. the administration has slowly, and we saw this with two special forces raids about a month ago. the one in somalia failed. the one in libya captured a suspected al qaeda leader. we sided as a government to use those types of attacks, those

types of raids so we could question those people. that is basically where i was going with that story. there is a bigger point here which there is part of this debate in the intelligence community has to do with the fact that the obama administration has known for some time that the cat is a little bit out of the bag on the moral side of drone strikes. there was a bit of a push in the last three or four years to do as many as possible before the rest of the world got the capability to do them themselves. now that the rest of the world is beginning to get that capability there's definitely some reconciliation going on in washington where people are saying, the administration is saying why don't we tone this down because it creates a lot of ill will against the united states but, two, it continues to set a precedent for other nations who will use what the united states has done as an excuse for their own nefarious or potentially controversial strikes. host: next, let's take another

one of your calls. carlos on our line for democrats. caller: hello. i had a question as well as a concern about these drones. i don't know if they have -- i know they're dealing with intelligence, but at the same time is there a concern they could be hacked or anything? guest: absolutely. that's another part of this multifaceted subject and that was the idea of the iranian takeover of an american drone last year. the u.s. government has effectively said nothing about this and basically denied it was an american drone. the leading theory is that tehran was able to hack the brain of this drone and bring it down for a landing inside ran without it crashing. so, yeah, that's definitely disconcerting.

you can know that leading intelligence agencies are trying to develop that technology, to hack the brain of other drones and take control of them. private hackers could potentially do the same thing. definitely disconcerting. host: next, let's talk with ron on our line for republicans. caller: hello? host: good morning. caller: hello? good morning. host: you are on "washington journal," ron. caller: how are you doing this morning? host: well, how are you? caller: i'd like to say this gentleman, he's like, you know, i'm listening to him talk. he is like saying to the public like a right-winger. like the man said. i know he doesn't give the president his perks. he is president obama. he is not obama. i like to say that the drones

are getting rid of most of the terrorists. the terrorists that's out there. i know you are going to have accidents. and another thing is that we using -- host: are you able to turn your television or radio down? so we can hear you a little bit better? caller: sure. we are using the drones to not give our military men or women killed. when you hear him, you hear him from his right-wing side saying the stuff against the president. he got to give the man his perks. he's took out obama. he's took out one of the main terrorists that's really out there, and he's going to take out more. so when i hear him talk, he need to go on fox news with this crap. host: thank you for your call. do you think you can maybe

speak to your concerns? guest: i have the utmost respect for president obama, leader of the free world. leader of the united states. two, as a journalist in this town, there is a minority of them that will take a critical position at every turn. i credit the administration with the killing and capturing f osama bin laden in pakistan. that was an incredible development. picking up a chaotic war on terror, open-ended extremely difficult policy set in motion by president obama's predecessor. the george w. bush administration. and there was great success by the obama administration in that capacity. host: there is a tweet that kind of picks up on one of the other points of ron. guest: right. that has been a major motivation, particularly as the

obama administration has sought to draw al qaeda out of iraq. there has been a desire to use technologies that limit the exposure of american troops, and that is a big part of it. absolutely. host: next from glen on our line for independents. caller: good morning. how are you this morning? guest: hi. caller: i got a couple of things to say. that last caller, he was talking about our president of the united states. we've heard killed an american citizen. in fact, we've killed a couple of them. just shot them down in cold blood, no trial, no nothing. here about eight, 10 months ago, we had a guy that built drones and i talked to him -- i got on c-span and talked about the drones then.

we are already using them in this country. there was a case where a guy had kidnapped a young girl and the police used the drone to watch him and find out all they could. the thing about our kids, kids in afghanistan and around the world. our boys aren't going to stand or this. we got kids that are either going to capture them or shoot them down. and if you watch one, there was a guy that builds drones for companies and uses them for surveillance for police forces and we built a jet drone for the express purpose to shoot down the first drone that would fly over the united states. so as far as i'm concerned, the technology is far outstripping our ability to keep up with that.

the government is going to do what they like so it's going to be up to the american citizen, a guy like me, to not put up with it. host: thank you for your call. guest: i will say there is heated debate around the united states over the legal rights and technical capacity for law enforcement to use small, unarmed aerial vehicles. i am sure the debate includes heated discussions about whether or not domestic municipal law enforcement in this country may pursue the use of armed drones going forward. i'm sure that that is going to trigger immense backlash from the american people as our caller just exhibited. thank you. host: damaris in leesburg, virginia. caller: hi, good morning. the reason i'm calling is

cause it's really sad to say it has reached this country. from the time you leave this country as an american citizen to go overseas to plot to kill our people, you have already given up your american rights and you have none. if we have an opportunity to ill you before you kill us, so be it. i do not agree with everything the government does. there was a lot of things -- excuse me -- when i was growing up, i used to believe our government was, did a lot of things that were unspeakable and i still believe that to this day. but the problem is, all of this information is coming out now and putting up in a separate place in terms of the world stage and i think that all of that, basically what goes around comes around. host: ok. thank you for your call.

let's go to georgia on our line for republicans. caller: good morning. i am concerned about drones and the technology appears to be so superior that it is ehumanizing the human race and that we are inferior now and we are being controlled by higher technology and i am concerned. that's my concern. host: we'll take another one of your calls. let's go to john in titusville, florida, on our line for independents. caller: good morning, mr. taylor. i think what you are hearing is an extension of the concept of mite n imperial

throughout the world. i think you understand that fully and you are engaged with that issue. politics oftentimes makes strange bedfellows. and you referenced the possibility of iran supplying he assad regime with drones. let me -- being a 71 years old and knowing a little bit of american history. et me remind you of an earlier period, the iran-contra affair, in which the united states government supplied arms. it may well be the case that our israeli brethren or some other western europeans are preparing to supply the assad regime with drones if the regime gets to the point where they may be overwhelmed by the related factions of al qaeda. of course as you know, where will we stand at that point vis a vis the saudis, in

fact are probably worse enemies with the qataris in the middle east in opposition to our major strategic viewpoint? ultimately it could be qataris and the assad regime against us and we, in order to sustain the assad regime and they end up in act using the technology surreptitiously in getting to the regime in order to stop our apparent allies. host: thank you so much for your call. guest: i want to thank the caller for an extremely intelligent analysis. i really appreciate it. everything that he pointed out, i think we have to ask ourselves, we often wonder if perception is destined to trump reality. in a case like this, with the united states and the middle east and the civil war in syria, we have to ask ourselves whether the perceptions pointed out by the caller actually may be the reality.

that's a vague answer but i just want to thank him for the call. host: next, let's go to atlanta, georgia, with janice on our line for democrats. aller: good morning. i'd like to say that drones i'd like to say drones are not new. you could go into any hobby shot, buy a kit, and put it together, and each decade they would come out with more and more devices you could add to it to increase the distance, to increase the abilities of it. drones have been something that's been around for a long time, or remote controlled planes. the fact that the government is using them, go back to desert storm. they have been using them for a long time. and the fact they are using it here, go back to bush with the terrorist attack thing and the thing they put in place to protect us from the terrorism.

i'm saying that use of the drones is good in a lot of way, but i'm also saying you need to start regulating more on the private use of drones through these hobby shops because they have a lot of devices. they can add to those things that can be very scary. host: thank you. guest: i would like to respond to the caller, i think this is a really good point that the remote control airplane technology has been around for more than a half century. it's been developed. rather than engage in the kind of fear mongering posture, really the thrust of my story that we are talking about here has been a call to wake up to the fact that this very basic technology over the last 10 years has advanced immensely. and that it's very likely, according to industry and intelligence sources here and our government, to expand globally and advance globally

over the coming decades. so we've got to be having this serious conversation about it. i thank the caller. host: this concern over privacy and the use of surveillance or commercial drones here in the united states. guest: i think we are in totally unchartered territory. i think congress is behind by a decade and work on laws that we have that municipal police and law enforcement can lean on and rely on as some sort of standard what to do if someone is found spying on their neighborhoods. where does the rubber meet the road on this? what's actually the likely scenario? that somebody is found to be spying on their neighbors with drones. maybe you have a guy with the cockpit being a car and they are driving around a city and the sophisticated remote control airplane is being operated from the car to give it a larger area to roam around. are there laws on a book that a

u.s. attorney could press charges for that? it's a great question. host: next lebanon, maine, and talk to dianne on our line for independents. hello. chris: good morning. thank you, mr. taylor, for riting a clear and concise article about this issue. it's i think something that we do need more information on. i have been listening to the caller since i have been on hold, and one of the things that seems to be a repeated theme is this business of the drones versus the boots on the ground. collateral damage versus american troops orure peaian troops or middle east troops. it's all about people dying. the question sort of, for me, is where do we go, and i think your question, too, possibly, where do we go from here? and whether it's -- >> we'll leave this segment to

go live now to the white house briefing room for spokesman, jay carney. >> good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. thank you for being here. happy tuesday. i hope you had an enjoyable veterans day. which he reminds me that as you probably know by now the president is enjoying lunch with service members at molly malone's. an establishment here in washington. in advance of the annual dinner he'll be having with combatant commanders tonight. i have a couple of toppers to give to you. first, i wanted to note that the first lady delivered remarks today at bell multicultural high school. a high school in the washington, d.c. area. the first lady's remarks continue to expand her focus on issues of youth empowerment and education, in particular working to achieve the president's north star goal. that by the year 2020 america will once again have the highest

proportion of college graduates in the world. in her remarks the first lady spoke directly to young people about committing to their education so that they can create a petter future for themselves and their conry -- better future for themselves and their country. following the first lady's remarks she was participating in a conversation with the 10th grade class about her own personal story of working hard toward her education. the secretary of education also participated. secondly, i wanted to note that at 5:30 p.m. today the senate will have a cloture vote on nina pollard, another of the president's three nominees to the d.c. circuit court. pollard is an accomplished litigator and professor. her career includes landmark accomplishments on behalf of women and families such as helping to defend the actuality of the family and medical leave act, and helping to open the doors of the virginia military institute to female students. it is time for senate republicans to stop flying politics with our courts. 15 of the last 19 judges

confirmed to this court were nominated by republican presidents. 15 of the last 19. but now there is a democratic president is fulfilling his constitutional duty at neathing judges, republicans make cynical arguments in an effort to maintain an ideological edge. more of president obama as nominees to the d.c. circuit have been successfully filibustered than those of any other president in history. we urge the senate to consider all of these nominations on their merits starting with tonight's cloture vote for nina pollard. finally, i wanted to note a phone call the president had earlier. this morning president obama spoke with president aquino of the philippines to express our deep condolences to the lives lost and damage caused by supertie poon haiyan, one of the largest to ever hit land. over the weekend the president directed the administration to mount a swift and coordinated

response to save lives and provide assistance to alleviate suffering. usaid and the department of defense are providing significant assistance to the people of philippines. even before the storm reached land, usaid had deployed a disaster assistance response team to the area. after landfall, u.s. marines were some of the first to help deliver supplies for the relief effort. american aircraft are delivering vital assistance and equipment. the united states is also providing food aid to feed tens of thousands of people in the coming days. additionally, the aircraft carrier, u.s.s. george washington, and several escort ships are on their way tote philippines. they will help expand search and rescue operations, provide maryland cal care, and serve as platforms for helicopters working to deliver supplies. our state department and usaid team on the ground is coordinating with local officials and other organizations and in the days ahead the united states will continue to work with the philippines to deliver whatever

help we can as quickly as possible. and with that i take your questions. julie, i want to remind people i think we have a preset for the president's announcement at 2:00. yes. >> i wanted to get your reaction to a comment made in an interview posted today. talking about health care he said president obama should honor his commitment to people who have lost their health care or losing their health care. even if it means -- does the president agree with the comment? >> i think as you saw the president say in an interview with nbc last week, the answer's yes. the president has asked his team looking at a range of -- tavinged his team with looking at range of options to make sure that nobody is put in a position where their plans have been canceled and they can't afford a better plan even though they would like one. you heard the president address this very issue in his interview last week. and i think it's important to note that president clinton in that interview also said, and i

quote, the big lesson is that we are better off with this law than without it. and he said, quote, the enrollment period did not come off well because the national website wasn't ready. but this happened once before. it happened when president bush put in the medicare drug program for seniors, which was not as complicated but had the same problem with the rollout. it was a disaster. there were people that lost their prescriptions for their existing medicine and they fixed it. the president, as you know, has pledged to ask his team, tasked his team to look at potential actions that could be taken to address this problem. because his focus is on making sure that people get quality and affordable health insurance. >> what the president said appears to be different from what president clinton said. president clinton is talking about anybody who is losing their plan, what the president said and officials said was they were focused more on people getting cancellations and weren't getting subsidies to cover higher premiums. is what president obama looking

at more narrow than -- >> certainly the point we have made is that for more than half of those on the individual market who, because their plans were not grand fathered in, they did not exist, or were not participants in those plans prior to the passage of the affordable care act, more than half of those individuals will have higher quality insurance with better basic protections at the same or lower cost. roughly half, maybe that is roughly half, more than half will qualify for subsidies. some will qualify for medicaid in those states where medicaid has been expanded. for the universe of people that smaller group of people within that 5% of the population for aom the fact they have gotten cancellation notice because they purchased plans in the last couple years that do not meet the minimum standards and they are facing challenges in terms

of affordability, the president has asked his team to look at that problem. that goes to the point he made about the vast majority of americans here who, if they are an employer, provided insurance or medicare or medicaid or v.a. will not have any changes if they don't want them. the only changes they'll see have to do with improvements to benefits. >> another point on health care there are a number of reports out about the enrollment numbers. putting them at about 40,000 to 50,000. can you confirm that those numbers are accurate? if not, can you tell us when the administration expects to put out numbers? >> i cannot confirm those numbers. there have been a variety of reports saying a variety of different things. the administration will be releasing data about enrollment in the middle of the month. i anticipate it will be later this week. as we said all along, consistent with the way that data like this is released for other programs,

so i would add two things. first, it was always the case, even prior to the problems with the launch of the website, that enrollment in the first month would be low. that is the experience we saw in massachusetts, and it is the experience we expect here because -- especially for healthier, younger people, the pattern of behavior is to shop around, to wait before you purchase when you don't have to purchase before december 15 in order to have insurance on january 1. which is the earliest possible date for coverage. so we expect that pattern to play out with the marketplaces in the affordable care act. secondly, the fact the website has been so challenging and problematic in that first month means that the enrollment numbers will be even lower than expected. but beyond that i don't have specific figures. i have not seen specific figures. but i anticipate that we will be releasing data about enrollment

by the end of the week. >> you don't have a specific date? >> i do not. mark. >> the president spoke last week about gaps and problems with the rollout of the website that needs to be fixed. what are those gaps and what -- >> he was referring to, and i'll quote, i assigned my team to see what we can do to close some of the holes and gaps in the law. he was addressing the issue of cancellations and some of the concerns that he has about individuals who have their existing policies canceled. that issue has gotten a lot of attention. the problems with the website, which you just mentioned, are being addressed by a team of tech experts, as well as by jeff who is overseeing that team. and they essentially have a punch list of problems that need to be fixed in different areas of the website. and they have been working through that punch list. and making progress. gradual progress each day.

there's no question that the website is functioning better today than it was a week ago or 10 days ago. and certainly much better than it was in the first two weeks of october. but there is more work to be done as he said. that work continues. our goal is to have that website functioning effectively for the vast majority of americans by the end of this month. >> if it's not up to par by the end of the month, do you have a plan b in place? >> we expect it to be functioning properly and effectively for the vast majority of americans by the end of the month. what we have been doing since he issues of the website arose has focused -- we expanded our efforts to create ways through which americans can get more information about the options available to them. both by in person consultations or over the phone.

they can also apply and enroll by mail. so those efforts continue. but we expect, and i'm citing here, those closer to the ground that the site will be functioning effectively by the end of the month for the vast majority of the users. i think i said last week and i will reiterate that any website of this size and complexity will occasionally have issues with it. that's true of major websites today in the commercial sphere. but we expect it to be functioning effectively for the vast majority of users so that he they can navigate through it, re-- so that they can navigate through it, review their options, find out whether or not they are eligible for tax credits and choose coverage that fits their needs, both their financial needs and their coverage needs. >> can you say whether -- >> i can say a couple of things.

first of all, i'd like to point out the administration's extraordinary cooperation with the six separate congressional committees currently conducting oversight into the affordable care act. as you have all seen and covered, administration officials have testified at numerous committee interviews and briefings, and they have testified at more than two dozen congressional hearings, including four in just the last two weeks. the administration has also produced thousands of pages of documents and our cooperation on these issues continues. the subpoena issued by house republicans on friday is an unfortunate and unnecessary step since we made clear several times that many todd is willing to testify. the issue for us is not a question of if he will testify, but when. we had hoped the committee would work with us to find an alternative date to give mr. park time to focus on his immediate task at hand, which is getting the website fixed. this is a goal that is ostensibly shared by the very

house republicans now demanding his appearance on wednesday. an appearance that would take him away from his work on the website. in fact, chairman issa told cbs news a few weeks ago that he wanted the website fixed and fixed quickly. well, todd park is very much engaged in the effort of fixing it as quickly as possible. i have no update on that except to tell you that the office of science and technology have said they are reviewing the subpoena and they will respond as appropriate. foreign minister has rejected the claim that iran that was the result of the failure to reach an agreement in geneva recently, and said divisions among western nations were the cause of the failed talks. can you comment on that? >> what i can tell you is simply that the p five plus one were

unified on the proposal put forward. and that the iranians did not accept that proposal. that's a statement of fact. there was important progress made at these negotiations, and they were cordial and substantive and serious. but as i said, the p five plus one were united there and we remain united in our proposal to iran and our approach to these negotiations. gaps remain and there are still important issues to be addressed between the p-5 plus one and iran, and that's why there will be a break, as you know, and the p-5 plus one will resume negotiation was iran on november 21 and 22. i want to caution everyone because there's been a substantial amount of speculation about the details of the proposal against believing rumors and incorrect reports or prejudging outcomes. both p-5 plus one and iran have

been very disciplined in keeping the details of the negotiations private and that is the sign of the seriousness of what is taking place and allowed us to make the progress that we have made. so we are not going to get into details about our negotiating positions. but to be clear the purposes of these negotiations is to prevent iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. i think that's important. there's one objective here. the reason why we are here, the reason why negotiations are taking place, is because of the very focused effort in building an international consensus and building a punitive sanctions regime around iranian behavior and around its refusal to comply with its international obligations. because of that effort, over the several years since it's been in place, we now have a sim matic opening. we have a willingness because of thesencentrated effect of

sanctions by iran to pursue the possibility of resolving this diplomatically. resolving this diplomatically is the best way to resolve it. it is the responsibility of the president to pursue a diplomatic opening. because the best way to ensure that iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon is to achieve an agreement through diplomacy. an agreement that's verifiable, that's transparent, and that requires iran to take concrete steps. the alternative is military action. the president has never taken any option off the table, and he does not now and will not. but it is his responsibility as president to pursue a diplomatic opening, to see if it is possible to resolve this issue peacefully. >> is there any assurance that secretary kerry can he provide lawmakers on the hill that will persuade them to hold off on tightening sanctions?

>> secretary kerry and undersecretary of state for political affairs, wendy sherman, are briefing the senate banking committee tomorrow. that's part of a broader effort to consult with congress and update them on the p-5 plus one negotiations, as well as our consultation was our allies. when it comes to the issue of new sanctions legislation, it's important to remember, no one is suggesting an open-ended delay for new sanctions because there may come a point where additional sanctions are necessary. at the same time, it is important for congress to reserve its ability to legislate for the moment when it is most effective in order to give the current p-5 plus one negotiations the best chance to make real progress in achieving our shared goal. of prehaven'ting iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. again, this is not about being for or against sanctions. this administration has imposed

the most crippling sanctions in history against iran, and we appreciate the leverage those sanctions have given us and we appreciate the partnership that congress has given us in that effort. but this is a decision to support diplomacy and possible peaceful resolution to this issue. the american people justifiably and understandably refer a peaceful solution that prevents iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. and this agreement if it's achieved has the potential to do that. the american people do not want a march to war. it's important to understand that if pursuing a resolution disallowed or is ruled out, what options, then, do we and our allies have to prevent iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon? we said all along as we have

ratcheted up sanctions and increased the isolation and pressure on tehran, that the window for resolving this diplomatically was opened, but that it would not remain opened forever. and short of an agreement, iran will continue to make progress in its nuclear weapon. so we need to pursue this. we need to see if iran is serious. and any deal that we and the p-5 might reach with iran will be one that absolutely meets our standards that would be verifiable and concrete. any initial release as part of the first phase would be reversible and modest. it would not in any way change the sanction's ack tech ture in place, but it would allow for essentially putting time on the clock because it would halt iran's program and rollback

aspects of its program. if it doesn't do that, the united states won't agree to it. >> getting back for president clinton's comments, you were saying at the beginning of the briefing that the president does agree with what former president clinton said, but former president clinton did say, i personally believe even if it takes a change in the law the president should honor the commitment the federal government made. the president agrees even if it takes a change in the law -- >> what i just said, jim, is that the president has instructed his team to look at a range of options. we haven't announced one way or the other. all he though understandably you and others -- although understandably you and others ask us for details what is under consideration. we haven't announced any potential fixes or moves that we might be able to make to address this problem, but the president, as you heard him say in his interview with nbc, he's very interested in trying to address this problem. and looks forward to being

presented the options that he might be able to pursue. >> the situation where you're trying to help people keep the plans they have now, what you might be putting the tooth pace back in the tube and hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of americans have received these notifications already. how do you go back and allow those people to keep those insurance plans? that seems practically impossible. >> what i would say is i'm not going to get into specifics about avenues that might be available to the president to address this problem until he's chosen which option he he wants to pursue. the broader thing that we have to remember here is that the overall majority, overwhelming majority of the american people, either get their insurance through their employers, and will not see a change, get their insurance through medicare or medicaid, or the v.a. and will not see a change, except for those changes that improve the

coverage they get and improve the benefits they get. they apply to everyone. not just those who purchase plans in the marketplaces. others as you know because some decision tomade the help their own constituents, their own people, by expanding the medicaid program under the affordable care act will extend insurance to hundreds of thousands, millions of americans who will become duly eligible for medicaid and others will be able to find an array of options available to them for purchase through the marketplaces. that effort in terms of the shopping period have been made more difficult, frustratingly so because of the problems with the website, but there is a team focused daley, seven days -- daily, seven days a week, on making improvements to the website so the american people have a better experience while they are shopping for plans and registering and enrolling for coverage. >> getting back to the interview

the president did with nbc, he apologized to people losing their coverage despite the assurances he gave. but what about whether or not the statement itself was misleading, if you like your plan you can keep it. the senate with dick durbin was on cnn earlier today he said that perhaps a couple of sentence has been added to the end of that pledge, that might have clarified things. does the president agree with that? >> the president gave a pretty extensive interview which this was the essential topic of discussion. he obviously expressed regret about the fact that the law has not addressed some of these individuals the way that he would like. and therefore he has asked his team to come up with some solutions that he can review. so the overall effort here has to be on implementing the affordable care act, standing up to marketplaces so that these millions of americans are

presented with the far better options that the affordable care act allows them for affordable, quality health insurance, for many of whom that's something that's been out of reach for a long time. nd he is focused on getting it right because it is a fact come january 1 there will be millions more americans with insurance coverage who didn't have it before. and there will be millions -- other millions of americans who will have higher quality insurance than they had before. they won't be subjected to a marketplace in which insurers could charge juliana double for the same plan you got because she's a woman. they can't put a lifetime or annual cap on the benefits that you receive. exemptions arve out for certain conditions, chronic conditions that you might have that you might need benefits to

cover. that is the underlying purpose of the affordable care act to make sure there is a structure in place that creates higher competition under the private sector model that we have had. keeps down prices, and allows millions of americans to get access to affordable quality insurance and health care that they have not had in the past. >> the enrollment numbers, is the administration confident those numbers will be accurate given all the problems with the insurers being able to sort through the data and figure out which applications are correct and properly submitted and so forth? >> they are going to work very hard over at c.m.s. and h.h.s. to compile the data and present the most ackcra data available. i think that's a good question in light of the fact that some on capitol hill have been demanding data daily. we have made the point that consistent with the release of data for other programs that is

in the interest of everybody to do this on a monthly basis so the data is as accurate as possible. john? >> are the numbers gg to be low for the first month s. there any number that would concern the white house? >> i can guarantee you the number that is released will be lower than we had hoped and anticipated because of the problems with the website. and that is why it is so important to focus our energies on fixing the problems. and that goes to the subpoena we were talking about earlier. the attempt to remove somebody who is very much a key part of the effort to fix the website from his job for a certain amount of time. and it raises questions about how sincere critics are when it comes to joining with us in the effort to try to fix the problems that exist. >> i guess what i'm asking, is there any number that would be so low you would say, wow, alarm

bells are going off, we have a problem? >> i think it's a very creative way to try to set expectations, and the only expectation i'll set is that we expect them to be low. we expected them to be low as a percentage of the overall number of people who would enroll by the end of the six-month period in any case because that is the experience that we have seen in massachusetts and in similar kinds of programs. younger, healthier people especially tend to wait until the last minute to enroll in these kinds of programs. and overall i think whether you are young or old, if you don't have to enroll until a certain time, you're going to take your time to look at your options and wait until late in the process. that was certainly what happened in massachusetts. >> when you are defining enrollment, there's been reporting about how the numbers -- are you going to be including

people who have taken out a health care plan and put it in their shopping cart but haven't paid for it? >> i would refer you to h.h.s. and c.m.s. how they define enrollment. it is consistent with the way massachusetts did it and the states are doing it. the marketplace experience or process ends when a person selects a plan. essentially presses enroll in a plan. and after that it becomes a contract between the private insurer and the individual. the process they are using as i understand it will be consistent with what massachusetts did and the states are doing. and more details will be available when those data are released. >> is the number of people who enroll going to be lower than those that received cancellation notices? >> john, i would simply ask you to wait until the data are released. i think it's fair to say that the enrollment figures will be low and were going to be low

anyway. they will be significantly lower because of the challenges posed by the faulty website. >> what will that say? what kind of message -- more people receive cancellation notices than can enroll? >> i would say two things, one the history of these kinds of programs, and massachusetts is the best model, show that enrollment is very slow early on. i think there were only 123 people in massachusetts who enrolled in the first month. while it's a small state, 123 is a low number. in the end more than 36,000 people enrolled in massachusetts . i think as a guide post i think that's a pretty good indicator even without troubles of the website of what kind of sort of phased in process of enrollment we are likely to see. that will be undoubtedly compounded by the problems with the website that have made it so much harder for individuals to shop and enroll. >> just a clarification, he said

-- on the bill clinton quote, he said changes, would it take legal changes, act of congress, to address this issue? >> the president has asked his team to come up with options. we are looking at ones that effectively address the problem. >> those that have been struck here are within the context of the law and working with state insurance commissioners. is that the -- the president looking at or team meeting, they don't include seeking a change in the law that would have to go through congress? people who talk to me about it believe the legislative climate is just too difficult to look in that direction. >> beg your indulgence and give you the same answer i just gave john which is that at this time the president is -- has asked his team to look at the options that might be available to pursue. and once we have an announcement

to make, we'll make one. the -- i think it's fair to say that he wants to address this problem and have as many people who are affected here helped as possible. so he would look for an option that is effective rather than one that cannot be achieved. >> would you acknowledge that that's going to be hard to do? people who are experts in this area have said insurance policies have already gone out. it's very difficult to retroactively as jim mentioned uncancel something. regulatory permission to do it that's why you need these conversations? the state insurance commissioners? and the law itself has very defined poverty levels, or above that. how do you create a new subsidy for people who don't fall into that income category defined by law? it seems like a very difficult thing for you to handle outside of a legislative fix. would you acknowledge that? >> i think in general these

issues are challenging which is hy it took a century of effort for it to come to fruition. the passage of comprehensive health insurance reform. and you described some of the general challenges that are out there. i would send you over to c.m.s. in their daily briefing for more details. i guess is they are going to ask that you wait for details about what the president's going to decide -- probably not send you over here, but simply say what can i tell you, i'm not going to discuss in any detail the options the president might be considering because when he makes a decision we'll let you know. >> just to clarify, it's been described this way to me, what the president is looking at is for those who are in the individual market who don't qualify for subsidies but their premiums are higher than they can afford, this is kind of a, to use your phraseology in the past, a slice of a slice of a slice. what the president is --

>> i don't want to overly define the universe because that's work being done by policy experts, but i think that -- >> fair characterization? >> it's a fair characterization of people who are most affected by this problem. obviously if you are -- if you are somebody who enrolled in a plan and you now have a -- and paid for it and it was a substandard plan and now you are eligible for medicaid -- what i'm saying is, it's obviously not every individual in the individual market today. beyond that i'm not going to get into defining the population. i'll have the policy experts -- i don't have a timeline for it except the president asked for something and when he asks for something people tend to work on it quickly. >> it sounded here thursday as if you had rhetoric to describe

what you thought might happen and it didn't happen. and the theory what was trying to be accomplished in geneva was a cap on a cap. the iranians cap where they are and the p-5 plus one agree to cap the sanctions. that's a general formulation i have seen described in what was being sought. s that still the goal? osh did in experience in geneva of the p-5 plus one reconsider the idea of the initial agreement that would come before a much bigger one? >> it is our aproich and the p-5 plus one's approach to phase this in in two phases. the first phase would halt progress on iran's nuclear weapon and roll back key aspects of the program. the second component of that the relief component would -- the only relief we would consider would be limited, it would be

temporary, and it would be reversible. we would take no steps, and this addresses the cap on sanctions, it would take no steps that undermine the architecture of our sanctions regime. i think i described it last week as essentially a spigot, you could turn down or turn up t would be something that would be easily reversible. it would be temporary and it would require steps taken by iran to halt progress on its nuclear weapon and rollback certain aspects of it. i can tell you the areas that we are concerned about, our most serious concerns are the possibility of iran producing a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon which can commonly referred to as breakout capability. two, the possibility of iran stockpiling center fugse or increasing the efficiency of those of the centrifuges they have. also iran's ability to produce plutonium using the iraq reactor.

and finally bringing unprecedented transparency and monitoring of iran's programs. those are the four areas around which the negotiations are focused when it comes to actions, concrete actions that the p-5 plus one is asking iran to take. again when it comes to the relief component of this, it's very important to be clear. the sanctions regime stays in place. we built the regime working with our allies. the most punishing regime in history. and it has had a profound effect and it has created this opportunity, potentially, for resolving this international challenge diplomatically. we ought to pursue that option, purr -- pursue that opportunity. as secretary kerry anti-president and others have made clear, we will only reach an agreement, we and the other members of the p-5 plus one with iran if it's a good deal that ensures concrete iranian angst that is are verifiable and transparent. >> you asked a rhetorical

question a few moments ago, what options do we have? this is the chief executive of the president of the united states. he knows the answer to that question. >> no question, the president has made abundantly clear throughout his presidency that he takes no options off the table. that remains true today when it comes to dealing with the potential for iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. but it is his responsibility to pursue a diplomatic resolution of this problem if one is available. and we have to tft whether or not it is available. it is in the interest -- to test whether or not it is available. it is the interest of the american people to do that. alternatively if pursuing a diplomatic opening is something that some say we should not do, they ought to be explicit will the fact they are suggesting the only alternative is use ever force.

the president believes that we should never take the use of force off the table, but it is his responsibility as commander in chief, his responsibility as president to take advantage of the impact of this comprehensive sanctions regime and opening it has created to see if iran is serious about resolving this peacefully. >> it was credibly reported last week that already the administration had slightly eased up on some of the financial sanctions. josh grobin reported that last week. can you cat gorkically say has any softening of the sanctions has been undertaken to say to the iranians this would be a worthwhile endeavor for them to engage? >> i am not aware of that. i refer to you treasury. the fact is the sanctions is in place and extremely broad and punishing. gep the specific programs function in different ways, for specifics about those programs that specially deal with financial matters and

institution, i refer to you treshry. there certainly has been no agreement reached that provide any type of relief with the iranians. there was not an agreement in geneva, there was progress and it was a productive and series of cordial negotiations. there's only even moderate, modest relief if the iranians agree to concrete actions. >> the president troubled by curity concerns in the healthcare.gov website? >> i think you are elliptically referring to the selectively released memo to cbs that -- by the committee in the habit that it tends to embrace, which had to do with portions of the website that are not an will not be operative until the spring. so the fact of the matter is

security is a constant issue that is addressed. c.m.s. and e, others have discussed this in eir testimony, and it is absolutely imperative when we go through this process rigorously to ensure that security is maintained sews people's personal data is protected. and that is the case and it will continue to be the case. >> to support senator haigen's call of cost overruns. >> i haven't seen that. >> getting back to what president clinton said, he said he thought the president should honor the commitment and let them keep what they got. just to be very clear, is the president's commitment to try to look for fixes to let people keep the plans they already have? or will accommodate them in terms of new plans they would be required to get through

obamacare? >> i'm not going to review the options available to the president. i'm going to let him review those options and make a decision about how we want to move forward on this issue, which he said on your network is one that concerns him. once a decision is made, we'll let you know. >> we spoke with one of the architects of pothe the plan, massachusetts mass health care system and obamacare health care system said a variety of things basically said if some people are allowed to stay on their old plan and other people are forced to get under the obamacare system because they didn't have coverage, then the whole system collapses. there's no way to balance both. does the white house acknowledge that there is no way to make both of those work? >> it's written into the law that those with grand fathered plans can stay on those plans indefinitely. i think -- >> referring to the additional people. people who presently have plans through 2013. after march 2010 date through 2013. in other words, if the president tries to accommodate, saying if you like your plan can keep your

plan, you buy your plan in july 2012, i'm going to let you keep your plan. according to the architects of both plans, massachusetts and federal plan, the system would collapse, it creates an imbalance, does the white house concede that much? >> all i can say this gets to some of proposed legislation that any fix that would essentially pope up -- open up for insurers the ability to sell new plans that did not meet standards would create more problems than it fixed because it would essentially allow insurers to offer plans that charged women double or didn't cover basic services or impose caps. and then charge prices that undercut prices of other plans coverage to the basic -- peter, again, the law as written allowed for the grand fathering in of any plan if somebody wanted to keep it that was in existence prior to the passage of the law obviously

there is some capacity for that. it's also true, depending on the state and what's allowed by state insurance rules, that insurers have the option and insured individuals on the individual market have the option of taking early renewal of existing individual insurance plans. but that obviously depends on a state and depends on the insurance company, some insurance companies haven't offered those early renewals. i think it's a little -- i know that muddies up the clarity of your question, but the clarity of the question doesn't apply to the pretty complex circumstances here. >> very quickly you said earlier, while you are considering potential actions right now and while the desire is by the end of the month the vast majority of americans will be able to enroll through the website, i guess the question very simply is right now, is the white house telling americans who are considering enrolling right now they should not go to the website? do not begin that effort until

december 1? are you saying hey, try it, i can't promise you it will work. >> we have been saying all along the website has functioned at a b effective level since november october 1. >> good use of your time right now? >> i think every individual out to avail himself or herself of the option that is are presented here in terms of getting information. it is certainly a good place to go if you want to shop for -- look at the options broadly that you have. type in your zip code and other data. >> the information get through accurately? is it fair to tell the people it's safe? >> it is safe and i would refer you to c.m.s. and h.h.s. for more details. the fact is again, somebody was just citing reports of enrollment figures. the fact is whatever the numbers are that we released, people are getting enrolled. they are simply having a much more difficult time because of the website than is acceptable.

that's why we have to make sure that the website improvements continue so that -- you said the vast majority of the american people. i think you meant the vast majority of americans who want to explore their options on the marketplaces which are designed for about 15% of the american people are able to do so. "new york times." >> one last time to make sure i understand. forget about what the president's options are. can you just clarify for us what the problem is he wants to solve? is it helping people keep their insurance or is it helping people afford new insurance that they are going to be still required to get? that doesn't have anything to do with what the options are in front of him, which is the problem that he's pledging to fix? >> i think you heard the president address this in his interview. it's pretty clear the president is concerned about those individuals who find themselves

because they either purchased insurance in the last year or two since the affordable care act passed, or there's been so much churn in the market their plans were changed and downgraded, and they are confronted with a situation where even though the coverage better, the cost may be a challenge for them. i'm not going to define the affected population here more specifically because i want to let the policy people do that who are looking at the options here. >> it sounds like -- without necessarily saying -- it sounds like you are heading towards that latter piece where the real concern here is the affordability question and that the direction you guys are heading is we are not going to let people keep substandard plans which you guys have railed against any way. we are not going to let people keep those. we are going to find a way somehow with extra subsidies or something, which are the options you are not talking about, to

fix the affordability question. >> i think you have accurately diagnosed the problem most concerning to the president. how he he assesses the options available for addressing that problem, i will leave to him and the experts who are compiling the options. what is not, i think, an effective fix is one that as envisioned on the hill by some legislation that would simply tell insurers they can sell substandard plans to anybody who might purchase them because that would cause more problems and create more problems and do more harm than any good it would do for individuals in this market who might be affected. >> different subject of the does the president still retain full confidence in mr. clper going forward? -- clapper going forward? there was some suggestion today in our paper that -- >> you make it sound like something on a blog. the president does, yes. >> can i follow on what we are

talking about. because you are addressing the legislation, can you clarify the president is saying that senator landrieu's approach and congressman upton's approach, which is gaining some democratic sponsors, is in his view the wrong approach to resolve the problem of those who got transition letters in the individual market? >> what i would tell you is that the upton bill allows insurers to sell 2013 plans in 2014 to anyone. it does just continue 2013 plans to 2014 for people enrolled in those plans. that creates the problem i just described and creates all sorts of problems for insurers who are trying to sell plans that meet the basic standards and it allows those insurers who would sell those 2013 plans that either charge you double or put caps on benefits or do any of the number of things that make those plans insufficient when it comes to basic coverage.

and basically sell them to any takers. obviously if the coverage is substandard they would potentially be able to sell those plans and underline the basic premise of the affordable care act which is to provide basic benefits, affordable quality health insurance for everyone. >> the same would be the case -- >> i don't have the details on that. i would say broadly speaking that applies to the upton legislation. broadly speaking we do not see that as fixing the problem. we see that as throwing the baby out with the bath water. >> follow-up, you were talking earlier about the president's desire to find an option that would be effective. you know that this population of people, however small it may be, have until prackly -- break tyly december 15 to try to find insurance january 1. people suggested even if the president has the legal authority to expand the subsidies, in other words to change the income levels, if he

were able to do that through executive action, that would have to be programmed in to healthcare.gov. new coding, all that. as part of the effective, is the president opened to the idea of any kind of option that would change healthcare.gov in the next month? >> those are questions that are excellent. i would stick to what i said before i'm not going to describe or get into he detail about the specific options available to the president that his team is working on. once the president reviews those options and make decisions we'll have an option for you. april? >> the president when he was interviewed by chuck talked about how federal regulation guiding the website construction. are federal regulations prohibiting a new creation of whole new websites to kind of eradicate what's going on now and bring up something new before the 30th or on the 30th?

>> i don't think that's what he was saying. for more details about the regulations that govern the creation of these -- federal website i would have to refer you to c.m.s. to start because they obviously take the lead on this one. i think that there are issues with as the president discussed in his interview with federal i.t. programs and that have been a persistent problem. that's sort of a related but bigger issue that i know concerns the president. s to the white house now fish they would have followed some of the conversations and leaders on capitol hill who suggested you do not focus primarily on the website use more navigators, to get people involved or enrolled in a.c.a.? >> i think that's always been part of the effort. the broad effort to get information to people, help

educate people about the options available to them and benefits available to them. it was never just limited to the website. i think what the president website shouldhe be working more effectively and should have been working more effectively on october 1. it's an important portal through which americans across the country should be able to and will be able to get information that they need and enroll in affordable inchshurens plans -- insurance plans. >> you have everyone looking at it. do you think that you have lost that momentum now that there are glitches and found out -- do you think you lost that momentum for people? >> i would say there's no question this has create add challenge. and we have have to work even harder to make sure that those americans who have benefits available to them through the

affordable care act and marketplaces are gotting the information they need so that they can make decisions about their insurance coverage. so that's on us. and we are working hard to make sure that happens. the goal here has always been not an effective website so much as an effective marketplace for americans to get the quality affordable health insurance they deserve. the criticism of the website is legitimate. it is a problem. it is frustrating. and the president is more frustrated than anyone about it as he has said. that's why he's tasked this team of experts to make the fixes necessary to bring it up to standard. it is important throughout this to remember what the status quo looks like. to remember what the health insurance marketplace looked like in the united states and why a century of presidents

engaged in efforts to try to reform it. this is -- it's important to remember that prior to the passage of the affordable care was ealth care inflation astronomical, and increasing at a rate that made it unsustainable for employers and individuals and for the government in the long term. something needed to be done and s being done to bring those -- that cost growth under control. do not forget that even as we the hese challenges with website and other challenges, since the passage of the affordable care act we have had the three years of slowest growth in health care costs ever recorded. essentially in a half century. that has extreme benefits for

the long term for individuals, for the government, and for private employers. and in the meantime we are going to get the website right and we are going to get the marketplaces right and we are going to make sure that the goal here is achieved which is to deliver the benefits to the american people that the affordable care act promises. and if we do that and millions of americans who are not insured have insurance, and other americans who are underinsured who had crummy insurance have better coverage than we will have achieved the objectives. because coupled with the reduced -- reduction and growth of health care costs, and the expansion of affordable quality insurance to the american people, we will have achieved what the affordable care act set out to do and what this president set out to do. and against some pretty entrenched establishment interests here. there is a reason why it hasn't

been achieved in the past, because a lot of forces fought against it. and citing president clinton is absolutely appropriate, and it's important to remember that he tried this. he tried to reform our health insurance market, and that effort was blocked. so the american people deserve quality, affordable health insurance. they deserve the certainty of knowing that they will not go bankrupt -- >> we'll leave today's white house briefing to go live to the floor of the u.s. house. members beginning with one-minute speeches and recess until 5:00 for legislative work. live coverage of the house here 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., november 12, 2013. i hereby appoint the honorable thomas j. roon