pro forma sessions today. congress is out before the recess on tuesday. democrats wrap up their retreat on the eastern shore and maryland. they will hear from president obama. the present beginning a long day today on the eastern shore of maryland and then heading to california and meeting with those affected by the drought. he will later meet with the king of jordan to talk about foreign-policy issues ahead of the issue by benjamin netanyahu. we will have coverage of the president, and coming up at 10:4 0 eastern. it week after signing a five-year farm bill that includes disaster assistance, it the president is headed to

fresno where he will announce an early start for programs that pay ranchers who are dealing with record losses of pay as for conserving water. we will hear more about that later. back in maryland, vice president biden just spoke to democrats. we're going to show you his comments next. he said to democrats they should not just defend the policies but aggressively push their agenda. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. >> hello, everybody. please, please. you have had a long week. thank you very much. thank you. thattime a group stood long in clap for me, a guy in

the back said "keep talking, it is raining outside." i am sorry i cannot be here yesterday. i want you to know i have a deadline. and got off the helicopter distancethe short addi to the hotel, i said if you're not out of here 10 minutes till the president cannot land. that is an incentive for everyone. for everyone. in light of the time, you have been kind enough to invite me to your caucuses before, to this retreat. i have always enjoyed it. i've always been willing and anxious to say as long as you have questions. in order to get to the questions, i am going to be fairly brief and what i have to say in my opening comments.

again, i came back to say thank you. i'm not being gratuitous. literally, thank you. were it not for the house of representatives and the way you stood right the president, particular the leadership of nancy, it would not have been amid this could have been a much rougher road. we understand as well why we were reelected here at an awful -- of you in this room reflected, because an awful lot of you in this room. committed andhas i am fully committed to put in every bit of effort we can to be of help to any of you. [applause] as jimmy eastland said to me, he said what would they do for you in delaware? some places you help in some places you would her. he said i will come to delaware

and campaigned for you or against you, whichever will help you the most. i want to thank steve israel for being so helpful in directing the where he wants me to go. dayad breakfast the other with about half a dozen of your pollsters. i am anxious to help. i also want to thank debbie wasserman schultz. she has been one of the best spokesman we have ever had. [applause] debbie is always there and always doing it well. you trying my best to help raise some money there as well. you are doing a heck of a job for us. i want to enqueue. i particularly -- i want to thank you. i particularly want to say thank you to shelby, her daughter. comes over i convinced shelby to hang out with me a little while. folks, look. america'sistic about

prospects and about our prospects. i really mean that. if you take a look at where we are relative to the other countries in the world, we are so much better positioned than any country in the world to be the 21st century. it is not even close. it really isn't. i love reading the stories about how the chinese are doing so well on their going to eat our lunch in the europeans are coming back. you would not want to try positions with any foreign leader for all the money in the world. they have more problems. we want to see them work their way through his problems. america is the best nation to lead the world, particularly economically. d, it is come home to america. an awful lot of corporations, as , manufacturing is

coming back to the united states of america. it is coming back for simple, basic reasons. most productive workers in the world. i want the chinese to do well. presidentt with the for five hours and told him how much we wanted to see him do well. i said we want you to buy our products. i really mean it. take a look around. take at look -- take a look at why companies are coming around. the best research of the needs of the world, not even close to any others in the world. where we court system protect intellectual property. we have a growth in ingenuity. think about it. what products can you name. how may times have you been making speeches about how the

chinese have graduated 45 or six 45 or 60 asneers -- many engineers? thane so much better off anyone else. it always amazes me that we do not talk more about it. traveled about i 800,000 miles so far as vice president. i was coming back from a trip that ended up being around the world. i was coming from india to singapore. ifet with a man that said you have met with, one of the wisest men i have met with. heard henry i have kissinger said he learned something from. yu is 92you -- li quan years old and frail. his mind is still extremely sharp.

he is still very articulate. anat with them for about hour. -- sat with him for about an hour. there is a book written where it is a group of interviews with , china,t four countries india, the united states and russia. to him about 20 minutes into the conversation and said " mr. president, what are the chinese doing now?" he said something interesting, " chinese are in the united states of america looking for the buried lack. box you know, like flight recorder boxes that contain the data. there try to figure out what it allows americans to be the only nation in the world able to continually remake itself." continually remake itself. i said "i think i can tell you what is in that black box.

i said, there are two things in a blackbox. one is a steady and significant stream of immigrants coming to american shores" -- [applause] come aremmigrants who self-selected. -- theymost courage have the most courage and sense of optimism. they have the greatest sense of the ability of they and their fellow immigrants to make things new. when you think about it, the strongest come. it takes a lot of courage to pick up and say i'm heading to a country that may not particularly want to me and i do not speak the language but i'm going anyway. it takes a special breed of person. that is the first thing. the second thing is in the united states, whether you are naturalized american citizen or by birth, you are talking the

time you are a child to challenge orthodoxy. " there the only nation in world where as difficult as our elementary school education is and we criticize it and we want to make it better and it must be made better, no child in america is ever criticized for challenging orthodox. think about every other country including our allies. orthodoxy. it is the holy grail. you cannot build something new and less to build the -- break the old mold. that is the magic of this country. at ourtake a look attitude about ourselves as a people, it always surprises me when we do not have the degree of optimism we should about the state of the nation. in spite of who is president or in congress, the american people are so much stronger, so much

more recently and, so much more capable. even the ridiculous policies of our friends on the right can i keep them from moving forward. that is what you see all over. the other thing we have going for us in this moment is this the first time in my career where on every major issue the american people agree with the democratic party. it's about it. [applause] i really mean it. i know that sounds like her verbally. every -- hyperbole. every issue facing the middle class for what you're able to do -- you wereceiling able to do at the debt ceiling to minimum wage, 72% supported an increase of minimum wage. reform, background

weapons, 90% of the american people, infrastructure. he said i do like south carolina but i like the airport a lot, to a lot, too.t s they meet hundreds of thousands of jobs. the american people agree with us. 55% of quality. grieve forgly they pay equity. 35% is all the difficulties with the aca. 35% of the people do not want to see it repealed. time where aof a most affect dust issues that

affect the middle class are overwhelmingly in support of us. timecannot think of a where most of the issues that affect the middle class are overwhelmingly in support of us. i wish there was a deal or compromise in know when he got up from the table it was done. that is what what political parties are able to do. at you had to do was look the response of the state of the union over three or four. i'm not being facetious. i think we should just get a little focus. let's get a little focus. to focusing on the few things we do have problems with, focus on us we have going for going forward in this election. , you have heard

me say this before, we have in the whitests house who will debate with you whether middle-class means $49,870 or $52,100. middle-class is not a number. middle-class is a value set. it is about whether or not you can only her home and not have to rent it. it is not whether not you can send your kid kids to the park in the neighborhood in a worry about whether he or she will be mugged or molested going to and from. it is about being able to send the kid to your school in the vicinity where you know if they do well they will qualify to go to school after they graduate, whether it is trade school or community college or a four-year college. it is knowing that you're going to be able to take care of your parents that are elderly and hope and pray your children will never have to take care of you. that is what being middle-class is. the middle class is being

clobbered. they talk about the fact that we should not be talking about income inequality. i think it would be a sin if we did not talk about income inequality. [applause] did you go from when i was to ceo that made about 25 times more than the lowest paid , iloyee to now 240 times understand all the economic arguments. anderson globalization. i understand all the consequences -- i understand the consequences. the reason america is a strong and as vital as it is, it has robust as any other nation in the world. this is why it happened. when the middle class does well,

the rich gets richer and the poor have an avenue. that is closing. that is what everything we talk about is about. making sure we are building this country. the thing that amazes me most is with republicans all of a sudden infrastructure is bad. building think the country needs, i do not get it. i really don't, by the way. it is one of the things after all of the years i served in the senate and now five years as vice president, it is the one perplexes me the most. i do not get it. their friends and business are for it. the american public is for it. we are for it. all they have to do is look around and see how badly the

need is, but there is this hesitancy to do anything. know we got a budget deal. it is a good thing that we're moving on to not have to refight the budget again this year and next. does anybody in this room think that the republican party has walked away from the ryan budget? does anybody in this room think if they are able to take the maintain the numbers that is not what they will get back to? i campaigned for a lot of congressional handed it. i am proud to. many times i go into the districts and supporters are x number ofe are republicans competing for nomination and this one or that one. kay hagan had about 1500 people.

i said the thing you have to ask anyone of the candidates, if they are elected, are they going to vote against when the republicans moved again to reduce taxes by another $220,000 a year for people making over a million but? cks? are they going to vote against a woman's right to choose, access to a good job? what are they going to do? are any one of them going to deviate from the orthodoxy? the orthodoxy of the republican party in the house of representatives right now. have, between we now and november is three political lifetimes. the one thing i'm actually confident about in large part because of the caliber of candidates you have been able to

recruit and the nature of your leadership and because the american people are already where we want them to be, i cannotith us, imagine our prospects of being viewed by the president and everyone else as being a whole hell of a lot brighter by the time we turn in september than now. keep your eye on the ball. keep your eye on the ball. the american people are where we are. let's go out and make every single effort not just to defend but to aggressively push our agenda. they are with us. they are with us. i am glad i am with you. thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] biden speaking to democrats about a year ago. president obama departing the white house about 20 minutes

ago, 2:00 a.m. eastern or so. he is set to speak to democrats in about 20 minutes at 10:40 a.m. you will have live coverage of that when a get started here in cambridge. the start of a long day for the president after his comments -- the start of a long day. for the president. after his comments, he will go to college or near. he will speak to the associated press. later today the president visiting palm springs california for a meeting on foreign policy with tina dela of yourdon -- with king abdullaj of jordan. senator whitehouse of rhode island will be on the senate floor. the goal is to "raise a great break the pattern of the senate and show interest of at least 20 senators who will be participating through the night."

the article says the tentative date for that is on monday march 10th. more details as we get them. we will have the president coming up at 10:40 a.m. eastern here on c-span. in the meantime, the, the democratic leaders from yesterday at the house retreat. >> great sessions. hear from're going to the chairman of the world bank. tomorrow we have the president of the united states. we have to stay tuned. since the vice president was not able to arrive today for the lunch keynote address, we are waiting to hear word of there might be some opportunity for the vice president as well. generally speaking, our members are not just thrilled that we have had this opportunity to

really drill deep into these issues that are so important to americans but we are going to the heart of the issue we think americans care about. how do you build an economy that works for all americans? how do you build those letters -- ladders of ? that is what this is all about. -- to do that best. we are fired up. we know, as you just heard from our colleagues, who have been working so hard on this idea that if we help women succeed that all of america will succeed. to work on that. thatve agreed as democrats

the house of representatives is not done doing its work. while some people consider this a do-nothing congress, we are ready to get to work. presidentcided to the said wend a half ago should increase the minimum wage for all americans. this house of representatives did nothing. a couple of weeks ago we heard the president again reiterate that we should decrease the minimum wage. -- increase the minimum wage. we have yet to hear from our republicans. today the president took action to help all those employees that work for federal contractors get a raise so now they will be able to earn this. it is time for america to get a raise. we're going to go back in a week to congress and we are prepared to submit a discharge petition

to begin the process of collecting the votes it will take to pass a bill to increase the minimum wage to $10 and $.10 an hour for all americans. we think that is not only the right thing, it is about time to do it. with that we are prepared to take any questions as the democrats in the house of representatives are ready to lead and willing to have republicans join us with that. i want to ask our assistant leader, mr. clyburn, to make some comment, because he has been one of the champions working hard on this issue. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i would simply say that all the talk about building an economy that works for all must be laid upon a solid foundation. and there is no more solid of a foundation that can be told than a minimum wage to be increased. i think that all of us are aware where would we be today, around$10.70 if we indexed the minimum wage last time it was raised.

to go to $10.10 and index is so we do not revisit from time and time again. as you heard from the women in our caucus, 60% of the beneficiaries of a minimum wage increase would be women, of which one out of every four households will be women with children. we believe that this is the way to go, and i am looking forward to us coming back from this work period and starting to work on building a foundation upon which we can have an economy that works for all. with that, i yield back.

>> there are a number of democratic priorities in which you can seek to file the discharge petition. can you talk about why the minimum wage was the one you decided to go with first? >> our focus this weekend, these few days, has been on the economy, building an economy that works for all americans. we think this is a fundamental pillar. we see immigration as an economic issue. we think the deficit growing the economy, and that is not excluded to be a discharge. but right now we are starting with a minimum wage. it is part of the women's economic agenda, when women succeed america succeeds, and we have the legislation, the miller-harkin bill, so that is why we are going forward with

that. >> you all know that if you were to start trying to collect on that first tuesday you come by, you have all the signatures you need by wednesday. minimum wage will be a much harder fight. there is some immigration advocates who have heard about this in the last 48 hours and said just do it. but you are now going to open yourselves up to criticism that you are, as republicans accuse, playing politics with the issue by not trying to move on it more quickly. >> would you like to rephrase that question? [laughter] >> when you know you have up to 50 republican to would sign that -- >> on the house side, democrats have made it clear where we stand on immigration. hr 15 does not leave with you a notion of principles. it is not some vague wording of what we might consider doing. hr 15 is legislative language which we believe once the cbo

finishes scoring probably will save even more money than the senate bill did when it passed by a bipartisan jury. we are ready to go. the minimum wage is the only issue we wish to tackle, but we are hoping our republican colleagues, by the way in the majority, will decide there is a lot of time for us to get things done. we are ready. he believed the minimum wage

makes very clear we want to build an economy that works for all of americans. immigration, unemployment insurance -- many others we could tackle. but right now when we return we are prepared to submit the discharge petition for the minimum wage. >> your hypothesis is there are up to 50 republicans who would sign that immediately. can you report -- >> [indiscernible] >> they will get a chance in a relatively near future. we believe the minimum wage, we have been talking about the economy, we have been talking about the economy working for everyone. we believe the minimum wage -- and i want to make a comment. frankly, if from 1968 on they had a cola adjustment, it would be far above $15, i think. i will be corrected on that. it was $10.57 in 1968. it is now $7.25 in 2013 dollars. very eroded from 1968. they will get that chance. we believe the minimum wage is absolutely critical to lift people so that they can be full participants in this economy. we have heard economist after economist after i must tell us this is a demand-driven economy. if it is a demand-driven economy, you have to have demand. raising the minimum wage will increase demand, raise the growth level in our country, create jobs, and the good for

everyone, which is the central theme of this conference. but they will get their chance. >> do you expect all 200 democrats to sign the discharge petition? are you confident you will get at least 18 republicans? how many republicans do you expect to get? >> we are hardly ever confident we will get 18 republicans on a discharge petition. but we apparently have 30 or 40 that are known over here. perhaps things have changed. i will tell you this -- our expectation is if they want to make sure that working people have an incentive to work, they will pay them a wage that does not leave them in poverty. the overwhelming majority, so i do not want to commit anybody, but we presume it will be close to everybody.

>> we have been listening to some of our republican colleagues around the country who have been asking questions that you are proposing with respect to the minimum wage. while some have said no, many of them had said they are open to it. we will give them an opportunity now to put their signature where their statements have been, or at least tell their constituents and look them in the face and say whether they are for or against. that is the benefit of a discharge petition. you talk about 50 members on the republican side who have talked about possibly supporting the immigration reform bill. talk is one thing. doing something is another. it will have a chance between now and november to let their constituents know whether they are serious on immigration reform.

on the minimum wage proposal, that they are open to it. let's find out how open they are. >> what issue do you see as the biggest brick wall to taking back the house of representatives for democrats in 2014? >> i do not accept there are brick walls. we just punched through those brick walls. you should ask many of the republican members who have decided to retire, including mr. miller, doc hastings, that there is no place for a republican majority. let's talk about pathways a bit. middle-class economic security is a defining issue today.

how you create broad and rising prosperity is a defining issue today. people want solutions and they want the right priorities. if there is a republican who will not sign this discharge petition because they argued the economy cannot afford an increase in the minimum wage, people are going to want to know why that same republicans vote for a minimum subsidy for the oil companies of $40 billion every 10 years? they will want to know why republicans support subsidies to corporations to outsource jobs or why there is a minimum tax credit for certain businesses to buy corporate debts this is about contrast and about priorities. and the minimum wage is one of the illuminating contrasts we have and will be a defining issue over the next nine months.

>> anything now in terms of getting back the majority -- >> it tells the rest of us that he loses sleep over this, the undisclosed special interest money that is poured into the system. and this is not just about unease we have about winning the election. this is about undermining our democracy. that is why this morning we had a meeting with john sarbanes who is taking the lead. amend the constitution to overturn citizens united. empowerment. big money does more to suppress the vote by undisclosed money that causes confusion, and people throw up their hands and say i do not get it, and that is a victory for the special interests in our country.

we are very proud of the response we've gotten from our grassroots people. we are very proud of their recruitment of the very excellent candidates under the leadership of steve israel, whether recruiting or raising the issues. we feel we are in a good place. not just us, but our democracy has a lot of sleep to lose over what the special interest money is doing to undermine what our founders fought for, sacrificed their lives, their liberty, their sacred honor, their democracy, a government of the many, not the government of the money. >> a brief comment. i think the worry about brick walls is on the other side of

the aisle. the reason i say that is because we talk about ladders of opportunity. that is a ladder to the majority as well because 70%, 65%, 60% of the american people agrees with us on almost every one -- if not every one of the issues we're discussing. the other side you see brick walls, because there is the retention of the majority. we have seen apparently two chairmen have decided to retire. my presumption is they do not believe they will keep the majority. [laughter] >> one last question? >> the administration announced another delay of the employer mandate on obamacare or the affordable care act. do you think that opens up wiggle room for democrats to vote to delay the employee mandate that the employees are now required to but, and if so, why not?

>> no, it is a completely different thing. the president has -- how can we ease this not only into the enforcement of the law, to the improvement of the lives of the american people, and the implementation is what he is addressing in terms of the mandate that is central to what the law is. and the law is very sound policy. to go to back to our founders once again, they sacrificed it all for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. this law, the affordable care act, is about a healthier life, the liberty to pursue your happiness. that is solid policy, and the mandate is central to that.

i just want to defer to mr. crowley in case he has anything to say on any of these subjects. >> i thought my shirt said it all. [laughter] >> it does. >> hello. >> he is getting ready for st. patrick's day. >> early enough. i would make a point going back to your question about the path forward, as mr. israel said, there have been more republicans announcing their retirement. we have more opportunity to take their seats from them than they can take the seats from the democrats who are retiring. i think it is 21 -- 13-3 in competitive districts. 11-3. in that sense, i think we stand well in terms of the election. that election is months and months away still. a lot can happen between now and then. >> after we raise the minimum wage. >> we will make you a senior -- >> thank you all very much. >> one more thing, the following --

my colleagues set this up as we had the frame of building an economy that works for all americans. the theme of our conference under the leadership of mr. becerra has been strengthening the ladders of opportunity. we see as a first wrong of that ladder raising the minimum wage. we see another round of passing comprehensive immigration reform. we want to do so appropriately in the presence of so many stakeholders in that issue, so that will be coming soon. today we are announcing that first rung, the minimum wage. part of our full agenda and very, very central to our women succeed america succeeds. happy valentine's day. thank you. >> that wraps the democratic leaders democratic

yesterday. in a few minutes we will hear live from president obama. here at and departing 40 minutes ago from the white house file on. -- white house south lawn. we are going to show you all of that in just a bit. we want to take you live to cambridge. >> thank you. some of you asked me whether or not i would be singing my introduction of the president. to disappoint you but i will be disappointing you. last night we had an opportunity to have a little dedication to heat seeker -- pete sieger. my newfound best friend in derek hoffman.ere

view all simon songs as well. onot the president to seal the presidential podium, my mama loves me. if my mother could only see me now. our next speaker is the perfect conclusion to what has been a marvelous and wonderful two days despite the weather. on helping us to shape our goals and agenda for the rest of 2014. issues including minimum wage including equal pay, unemployment benefits, immigration reform. to be tackled. we need to help our country move forward. we should not bother in an election year.

all of these issues get lost in the chaos in the republicans lack of leadership. i say otherwise. so desire president. just look at what we have accomplished with this man. this wonderful man. we are helping people today because of his leadership on the the leadership of nancy pelosi, steny hoyer and all the house leadership because of what we have done in passing the affordable care act. treating isa way of better than we sometimes treat ourselves. same will be said about this democratic caucus and our leadership when it came to the issue of her writing for the least amongst us. this is a reminder of what we can accomplish when we work together. next guest understands what

opportunity is all about. he understands what we have accomplished so far and when used to be done. ,s a boy from woodside, queens it don't get much better than this. in my data were here today he would hardly believe it. were here today, he would hardly believe it. mindour grandparents in immigrant -- of min, all immigrants, would hardly believe this is the grandson. i thank you for this opportunity to introduce to you the leader of the free world, more importantly, our friend, president barack obama. [applause]

>> thank you. thank you so much. thank you, everybody. everybody sit down. sit down. it is good to see you. thank you for the wonderful introduction. let me be the first to say happy valentine's day to our fearless leader nancy pelosi. [applause] get you moreefully than just a thank you. -- to steny, waser, deed israel who doing an external or job under the circumstances. it is great to see you.

we just saw each other at the white house for the recently. give a longg to speech year. i want to spend most of my time answering support questions. let me just make a couple of observations since we saw each other. first of all, i stated in our state of the union that the single most important thing we have to do, not just as a party but as a country, is make sure there is opportunity for every single person that we are focused every single day in this town or in washington making sure that if you are willing to work hard and take responsibility that you can get ahead. you live matter where or what circumstances you were born into. what you look like. who you love. you should be able to make it here in america.

as i said at the state of the union, i want to work with congress to make that happen. am not going to wait. there's too much to do. america does not believe in standing still. america insists on moving forward. specificut some very ways we can move the country forward. raking them down into a few categories. number one, creating more good jobs that pay good wages. number two, making sure folks are trained to fill those good jobs. number three, making sure our kids have the best education in the world. number four, making sure that peoplerk pays off, that are not poor if they are working full-time. that they have some semblance of retirement security. that they can count on health care if something happens to

them. already, just in the last couple of weeks, we put forward a range of executive actions that are going to make a difference. yesterday i had a chance to be with a group of minimum wage workers for federal contractors. these are folks who are washing dishes or cleaning close on our military bases. debates on capitol hill get so abstract and to be next to folks, average age by the weight 35, these are not teenagers. these are looking after families in trying to raise kids and see what it would mean to them for minimumve a federal wage of $10 and $.10 an hour.

-- $2.10 an hour and how much relief that we give them -- $10.10 an hour and how much relief it would give them. it reminded me of why i am a democrat. i am soded me of why proud of this caucus. [applause] you are standing up on behalf of them. we signed the executive order. these folks are going to get a raise. america deserves a raise. now is the time for congress to act. that the out yesterday majority of minimum wage workers are -- low-wage workers are women. that is why we will push to make sure we have equal pay for equal work and we have sensible family policies. when women succeed

america sit seeds -- successds. eds. i still believe that. traveled to manufacturing plants up and wisconsin to talk about how we can continue to accelerate his danced manufacturing and technology in this country. great possibilities to create hubs that keep us on the creative edge. best to keep us on the cutting edge. -- we have some great possibilities to create hubs that keep us on the cutting edge. up a newlready set retirement account that allows people to get a starter

retirement. a lot of people do not have 401(k)s. across the board, we are moving. as i said at the state of the union, i want to repeat today that we can get a whole lot more done if we have congress working with us. has shown time and time again, under the most difficult circumstance, the kind of encourage in unity and discipline that has made me very proud. i was just talking to nancy before i came out here. the fact that we are no longer going to see anybody try to hold our government hostage and threaten the full faith and credit of the united states of america in order to contract policy concessions, the fact that we are able to pass a clean debt limit is just one example of why when you guys are unified

you guys stick together. this country is better off. i could not be more thankful. proud of whatre you are doing. just a couple more points. you have seen reports over the last couple of days though we slightly exceeded our targets for enrollments this past month. we now have well over 3.5 million people who have signed up and are getting insurance to the marketplace for the first time. we're going to keep on pushing on this to make sure here in america everyone can enjoy the

kind of financial security and peace of mind for good quality health insurance provides. i just want to say thank you for hanging in there on issue that i think 10 years from now or five years from now we will look i can say this was a monumental achievement that could not have happened had it not been for this caucus. finally, there are some big things we have to do that i cannot do through executive action where he have to get congress and where the american people are on our side. the federal minimum wage law is one of them. another is making sure we've got a smart immigration policy in this country that grows our economy, get people out of the shadows, makes sure our businesses are thriving. that has got to be a top priority. i believe there are folks on the other side of the outage and

only want to see this done but they are worried and scared about the lyrical blowback. look. everybody here is an elected official. we can all appreciate the maneuvering that takes place particularly in an election year. yourself -- wend have to remind ourselves that people are behind the statistics. their lives being impacted. punting and putting things off for another two years or three years, it hurts people. it hurts our economy. it hurts families. of what makes us democrats not some abstract ideological but the fact that we are reminded every single day that we're here to help a whole who are folks out there

struggling still. they are counting on us. has outstanding members of congress who are willing to fight for them regardless of the political cost starting with your leader nancy pelosi. i'm grateful for you. we keep on making progress. even if we get resistance from the other side. people know that we could be breaking out in washington gets its act together. it is important for us to be that process. thank you very much. [applause] all right. winky. -- thank you. thank you. ra. i think --

>> president obama speaking to democrats in cambridge maryland. a close session from questions for member -- from members. a long day for the president. he hands to california next. 91% of california has been affected by the drought. president obama later today will be making with the king of jordan. on when theord yet president might sign the debt ceiling bill that was passed this past week in the house and the senate. that senate vote was the subject controversy. writing about that today the hill has an article that says that the bring it on moment, saying in perhaps his most defining moment he strode up to the dais and declared he is a high vote.

it broke the impasse and seven more republicans soon voted as well to end the filibuster. they agreed it was a risky decision was facing a difficult primary battle from a businessman who a conservative party favors backed by tea party groups. that is from the hill. more life coverage coming up for you later today on c-span as we on the the situation korean peninsula. we will have that live at 1:15 p.m. eastern. >> one of the things we worry about, odyssey there are cyber attacks and physical dangers. -- obviously there are cyber attacks and physical dangers. what keeps me up at night when i think about what can happen next? i wonder what your greatest fear is as to a physical attack here in our country? >> i would answer it by really two things. on the cyber site, i think an

attack against our critical infrastructure that would have potential damaging effects, financial is an area that we have to pay very close attention to. site, -- kineix ctic side, there are a range of things that keep me up at night. when you see what happen in the mall in nairobi, what happened during the boston marathon. these are the kinds of things we have to continue to work together to make sure that we are working as seamlessly as possible to share everything that we have not only with the defense side and the national side but also on the federal, state, local, and travel level. that is really an important aspect of what we are trying to do in the intelligence committee, to work on integration. >> this weekend on c-span, the senate armed services committee looks at worldwide cyber threats, terrorism and weapons of mass distraction.

on book tv, watch live daylong coverage of the savanna festival . it starts saturday morning at 9:00 on c-span2. toura president weekend, -- as part of president we can, tour portraits of powers monday night at 8:00. >> three-time pulled surprise winning columnist thomas friedman talk next about the concept of freedom in a democratic society and what it means to have a freak press. marvin.ined by it is part of the series cohosted by george washington university and harvard university. this is about one hour and 20 minutes. >> report is funded by a grant from the of sorts in journal foundation.

>> from the national press club washington, d.c., this is the report with martin. >> welcoming to the national press club and to another edition of the report. a conversation with newer times columnist thomas friedman about friedman -- freedom. i've had the pleasure, the privilege, speaking some of the best or worst in the country. some had even won a pulitzer prize which is the highest compliment in the newspaper world.

none except our guest tonight has ever won three vote surprises, and one for his commentary. tom friedman joined the times in 1981. beirutbureau chief in and eventually slip your guest and the chief white house correspondent. >> in 1995, he became alumnist. columnist. somehow, he finds time to write six best selling books, posts six television documentaries, numerous seminars and conferences, and to be with us here today. thank you very much. [applause] freedom.ct tonight is big word. i would like to start by asking

what is your definition of freedom. >> first of all, it is great to be with you during you and your always greate were for me, people i admired as a journalist. tell bernie i said hi. i am not a philosopher. i am a journalist. so let me give you -- to answer your question in the context of journalism, if you started this theing by asking me who was greatest array you ever covered -- i've been at the time is now for 33 years. really youe one that say is the most amazing? i would say this terrier -- it square.r

i was there for the revolution that overthrew president mubarak . when i came home, people asked me about it. i would say this is the most raising storyh -- i have ever covered the cut is is -- because it is a must a political event i have ever covered. but because? at some level, it was about this very deep human emotion of i am somebody. and if you ask me what is freedom, freedom is the ability, live in apiration to context where i can realize my full potential as a human being, a man or a woman. tahrir squaret

was, at its very root, and a political aspiration, young people living in a world where they could see where everybody else was living and also live in a context where they could realize their full potential. it had to do with mubarak and corruption and had to do with a context that had been built where they couldn't realize the full potential, where they lived in a rigged game. freedom isn't just about the reason -- the freedom to write anything, to say anything, to travel. it is all of those things to be sure. but there is something deeply personal about it. it is to live in a situation where i can be the fullest person i want to be. >> do you feel that people all over the world share the same sentiment? >> well, you know, it is a very interesting question. i have thought about it a lot since the arab spring. professors likes to use the formula freedom from and freedom to.

much of the arab spring was about initially was freedom from. people wanted their freedom from various autocratic regimes. it in theften stalled next stage was freedom from his great, but there is also freedom to. what do you want to be free to do? and for that, you have to build to -- enableenable people to be free to. and some people want to be free to be more islamist. some want to be free to be more sectarian. and one -- and some people want to be free in the democratic sense to be equal citizens with equal rights and responsibilities. >> that is more like choice. if you are free to have a choice . then you would go one way or the other. but what i am asking you is something bigger than that.

i am asking you whether there is . concept that we call freedom do us as human beings or is this something that we acquire because we live in the united states where that idea of freedom is built into us from public school on? i'm trying to get from you a sense of the majesty of freedom, not a choice. becausebelieve that -- i do believe everyone wants to live in a context that enables, empowers, inspires them to realize their full potential, i do believe the aspiration for freedom, to live in a context where i can do all of those things is universal. sayingyet, as you were before, some people in the middle east even today would have a quarrel about that in the stateshat, in the united

we grew up believing it is due us. the people in yemen do not grope at that same idea. so it may be that we are imposing upon them something that we assume is natural but may not be natural to them at all. and therefore is not universal. >> you can also fall into the opposite trap, to think somehow we've got it and it unique to us and it isn't an aspiration that other people necessarily want. i'm only speaking from my own experience. i told you, once we lifted the lid in that part of the world, or it turned out that people wanted to be free to do a lot of different things. they be it was to put on a veil. maybe it was to live more within their own sect. so it will be different for different people. it, in my own

travels and experience there, it and --werful and jeep and deep and broad emotion. >> in an american context, we know that the first amendment to the u.s. constitution lays out a certain set of principles of freedom. congress cannot do anything to abridge our freedom of religion, right toress, the peaceably assemble, to petition our government for a redress of grievances. they are laid out there and they are large concepts. they are the underpinning for the society. they have been described as god-given. i'm wondering if you share that view. gosh, i confess i never thought about whether they are god-given. but again, when i think of our own society -- i will give you a

journalistic response to your question. [laughter] >> duck. >> no, it's because i'm not a philosopher. me china isple tell stealing our secrets, my answer don't is, look, i encourage industrial theft or cyber theft, but tell me when they steal the bill of rights. tell me when the steel the constitution. tell me when they steal the words off the lincoln and jefferson and washington memorials. then they will have stolen something. all the things that are worth stealing in this country are hiding in plain sight. as long as we've got those, we can always come up with another secret, another industrial advance, and other innovation and breakthrough. so those are the things that i

think are of great value. sometimes i find myself bristling at times when i hear our own lawmakers trashing our institutions. what would people in russia today give for one day of the sec? what would people in china today give for one day of the justice department human rights division? we kick this country around like it's a football sometimes. it is not a football. it is a fabergé age. [laughter] and it's one that a lot of people around the world would appreciate in terms of these bureaucrats, washington, d.c. these institutions are precisely what enable our freedom to -- to do all of these things. >> how do you think we got those? this takes me to origin once

again. how do you think it happened that this country has the first amendment that it does? do, forhave anything to example, with the fact that it is written into the first amendment in the bible the idea that god brought the fourth of egypt the house of bondage. is there something there having to do with an almighty force? bondage.g people from go from bondage to what? two.ere talking about from >> and a lot of ways, they were reenacting their own version of the exodus story, in leaving what they thought was a tear any come a a monarchical tyranny in europe and it has become a part of a -- part of our core dna. >> in terms of origin, you will not go down with me on any

particular path. >> i'm going to stay away from that path. [laughter] >> is it really possible in this country and others to separate church and state? that questions me of is it possible to be an objective journalist. i'm not dodging your question. never i am asking that i always answer -- i've gotten that question before. >> i'll go to the next one then. [laughter] >> and the answer to me is that objectivity is not a thing. it is a tension. it is a tension between understanding and disinterest. i can't possibly write an objective story about you unless at some level i really tried to understand you, almost see the world through your eyes. at the same time, i cannot write

an objective story if i only see the world through your eyes. so objectivity is always a tension. when you are a middle east reporter, you have to think about these things a lot. and sometimes there may be too much understanding or too much disinterest. but it is a tension. in a country like ours founded by people escaping religious freedom but also inspired by their own religious ethics, there will always be a tension to train church and state. you heard in the state of the union when the president says god bless america and what not. as long as there is tension, i have no problem with it. >> since 9/11, there has been a lot of tension certainly in this country and other parts of the world as well. do you feel, as both a journalist and a citizen of this country, that since 9/11 you have lost any of your freedoms? gosh, i -- i don't feel that.

but i do feel that -- i feel that and what i wrote about 9/11 at the time was that i do most,e it was one of the maybe the most, dangerous challenge to our open society in this sense. what this generation of terrorists were doing were taking objects from our daily life, the backpack, the car, the airplane, and turning them into weapons. and when you take objects from daily life, literally human beings in the end and turning them into weapons, what you do is you erode the very thing that

keeps an open society open and that is trust. intrusted that everyone came through was not wrapped in a suicide bomb or with a bomb in their shoe or their purse. lifeblood ofvery an open society. and what is so dangerous about this generation of terrorism is that what it tries to do is attack that very thing so that we close ourselves off. the search everybody. i went to a lecture this morning at johns hopkins on tunisia. it's a lecture on tunisia. and i had to show my driver's license. i had to sign in. i had to show my driver's license to a private security guard. they are still at the level of annoyance. >> you have written that, if there were another 9/11, you are fearful that it would be the end

of the open society. >> i deeply worry about another attack on the scale of 9/11. i fear then many americans would .ay do whatever you need to do do whatever you need to do. i think our response to 9/11, in many ways, has been remarkably restrained. , years afterr 9/11, we elected an african-american his middle name was hussein, whose grandfather was a muslim, who defeated a woman to run against a mormon. [laughter] ok, who does that, ok? [laughter] that was an amazing thing. we have learned since then that we still have a lot of work to do. when you see some of the racial antipathies that have been both

subtly and overtly directed at the president. but in many ways, the fact that we did that, that was the greatest repudiation of bin laden and bin ladenism. >> and yet the tools that the bin ladens use remain such a threat that you can imagine an end to our society as we know it were there another major attack of that nature. >> it's no joke. when i came over, i was reading the news. an amazing, perverse, bizarre story of a suicide bomber trainee in iraq blew himself and when he to other trainees up. 22 other trainees who was teaching and preparing how to build a suicide vest. his is not a joke hearing -- joke. there are things we are seeing in the middle east in the last five or six years that that kind

of thing, you have to take it seriously. >> absolutely. let's talk a little bit about which i amnology, of not an expert. >> then you really got the wrong guy. >> no, i think you're pretty good at this. no, no, no. a number of people of my point of view might look at all of that modern technology and say, oh, leave me alone. i want to go back to an old typewriter. modern technology to you is a good thing, an inspiring thing, on uplifting thing or is it simply too heavy to lift? what is your sense of it? and what is it doing at this point in our nationalized to the issue of privacy which i would like to get your gut feeling about? >> i don't know where to dive in exactly. >> do the privacy.

i read the israeli newspaper every day. i'm a golfer. a couple of months ago -- i buy golf clubs online occasionally. and i pick up the paper and there is an ad for golf clubs in the middle of the front page. how did that get there? >> you put it there. [laughter] from golf it get smith through some cookies onto ?y front page of the paper i find that a little creepy. that somehow golf smith sold my data to some bulk handler who sold it to them. call -- i don't remember if it was golf smith or not. and then it comes up on the front page. i did a column a couple of a sharing economy

site for women's apparel. i just wrote a column about it. the next day, there is political and there is a trade ad. >> but what does this all mean are giving an you illustration of how they have moved into your privacy in the area of golf. >> yeah, ok. >> what is it now -- >> any purchase. it could have been anything. >> what is it about modern technology that would allow twitter, if it was -- if my information is right amount to find out where you are at any given time of the day? are there no limits any longer? acause i have a feeling that certain generation of the american people have no problem with yielding privacy. --fact they are quite frack

quite happy to give up everything about themselves. and what is the danger if there is anything at all? >> i don't have a facebook page. -- because it would be overwhelmed a little bit. like i said, i can't deal with people wanting to friend or whatever. i can write my column and i can answer the mail now. but it is one or the other. it cannot be both. privacy is over. get used to it. i was having breakfast up in new york with a middle east diplomat friend of mine from the arab world at a hotel. a couple of days later, he e-mailed me and said what's this? post from i blog would say in anti-arab site.

tom friedman getting his instructions from a middle east diplomat here in and that -- diplomat. summit he was there with a cell phone and took a picture. i didn't know what was going on. you just have to go with it. i don't know how to fight it. so you just have to go with it. >> is there a danger -- this thought just occurred to me -- that at a certain point, if you lose your privacy, whether willingly or not, you are also yielding aspects of your freedom? >> there is no question about it. because it is on your mind all the time. you start to edit yourself. now in thehat right that, if ii know slip up right now, there is no such thing as local anymore. when we did the seven years ago or if we had done this 20 years

ao, if i mix up something, if -- if i make a mistake, if i make a fool of myself, say something angry or whatever, may summit he would tell somebody. there is no such thing as local anymore. you are on a search engine and bam. you have to live with it. i don't particularly like it, but it has upside, two. you are in contact with more people all the time. upust sort of have you been on privacy. >> edward snowden. [laughter] you have written that, from your point of view, you would like him to come back to the united states, stand trial and let's see what happens in a fair trial. does that mean that you consider that he has committed some kind of crime? >> i haven't really delved into that issue. you have referred to about as much as i have written.

there is a reason for that. every week, i read another set of revelations and another set of arguments of roe and con. they make me feel one way about him one week and another week feel another. and i have gone back and forth myself on that. clearly, he has exposed -- what he has exposed to me in the mega sense is the fact that technology has gone way ahead of some of both the legal protections and society's understanding of what it can do on one side. what he has also exposed though is the specific case of excuse -- of abuse, unless you're listening to angela merkel's cell phone, in terms of someone at the nsa saying i want to know what my ex-girlfriend is doing, etc., we have now several investigations that have also shown us that.

casenk it is a very vital that was inevitably going to happen. and i think it is healthy that it is happening. that we are having this discussion. i also believe that we do need protection from these rising threats and i find myself really torn. what i said in that one column is that i also trust the fairness of the american people and i do believe, if snowden came back and got a trial where he could properly make his case, wasn't done in secret and could actually present his evidence, i just trust the judgment of the american people. but i think that that trial could be just a huge teaching moment and one that would trigger a healthy debate and reform. >> i want to ask you about the , astionship of journalism

you have practiced it and i and many others, if a journalist comes upon the big story, he did not know it was there, he discovers that. and writes a big story. and that is terrific. that is what it is all about. but supposing you come upon the story in the sense that you know someone who has a lot of secrets, like snowden with the nsa. and you participate with that source in the way in which that information is going to be given to the public, which the number of reporters in the snowden case actually did. are those reporters, not the others, are those complicit in what may be a crime? >> and i'm going to give you a very unsatisfactory answer. i am not going to play the hypothetical game. >> that is not hypothetical. that actually did -- >> i realize that. and my answer is, i will answer for my own reporting and my own judgments, but i am not going to sit in judgment on others, especially in this case where my

own newspaper was involved. >> ok. i want to take a minute now to identify ourselves for our radio and television audiences. this is "the kalb report." i am marvin kalb. and i'm here talking with "the new york times" columnist thomas friedman. >> very frustrating -- [laughter] >> only on certain issues. >> you have been at this for a long time. 33 years with the times. upi before that. if you had it to do all over again, would you still do it as a journalist? >> oh, god, this is the most fun you can have legally that i know of. [laughter] growing up i only wanted to be gave it over stem, -- be david aversham, i got to meet him. i have had, this is been the most amazing run.

i have never had a bad day, and i have never gotten up in the morning and said, you know, i just do not want to do this anymore. it has been an amazing privilege to do this for "the new york times," and the people i met along the way, the experiences i had -- some tragic and some uplifting -- i would not have traded a moment for it, and i wish i could be 30 again. >> that is marvelous. that is wonderful. i heard that and still are perhaps a very good golfer. >> i do play golf, yes. but i am on the staff of "golf digest." >> did you ever consider being a golfer is your number one goal? >> when i was young i did want to be a professional golfer. i had it in the 1971 the u.s. open in minnesota -- i caddied. it was one of my great experiences in life.

i always tell people the story that back then, it was a time, it was an amazing time when you think about before sports was so professionalized, that in the u.s. open, you can not bring a pro caddy. what they did is they took caddies from each club and brought them to haseltine and they had a big bowl and all the names of the 179 players, and you stuck your hand in that bowl, and you could've picked jack nichlaus, and i picked chi chi rodriguez. he made the cup. we won all four days. 20 years later, some family friends of ours were down in puerto rico which was his home course, and they ran into them in the pro shop and they said,

chi chi, do you remember who caddied for you? >> and without missing a beat, he said tommy. they said, do you know he is more famous than you are today? [laughter] chi chi said, not in puerto rico. [laughter] >> you have done every other bit of journalism. have you ever considered at this point in your career shifting over and being a sports columnist? >> i have. i am literally on the staff of "golf digest." because they are owned by "the new york times," and for while they are owned by conde naste, so i write for them regularly. i have thought about it. i've always wanted to write a golf book. after i wrote a book, my publisher came to me and said, what do you want to write for your next book? and i said, john, i really want to write a book on golf.

and he said, the persian gulf? i said, no, i want to write a golf book. >> now, you have been a columnist for almost 20 years. >> yes. >> what are the changes that you have felt and experienced over the last 20 years being a columnist? is it the same now as it was 20 years ago? >> um, you know, the -- nothing has changed in the craft, marvin, of how you write a column. that is still, you know, you got to get an idea, you got to report it out, i believe i write a very reported colin, i think the best columnists are reporters - or bring heart to their column. what changes is a couple things -- one is your reach. through the web, we have 20 million unique visitors. that is huge compared to the 1.6 million on sunday for "the new

york times." even to syndication. you have comments on your column now. so there's your opinion and there are 300 more or less every day of readers. everyone is in a two-way conversation now, columnists. >> do you have to answer the tweets or the messages that come into you? >> maybe some people do. i don't because it is just too exhausting. i have mixed feelings about the comments if they are anonymous. so people can be disparaging and but i find if you dive into them and sometimes i have time to and sometimes i don't, you always find one or two just amazing gems, also. >> the kernel for a news story. >> that is just so smart. that is a big difference. and, when you think about it, i, so i inherited james reston's

office, the office he used his last office in the washington bureau of "the new york times." when i became a columnist in 1995. what a great honor to inherit his office. i often tell people, you know, when mr. reston was doing his column, i'm sure he came in and said, i wonder what my seven competitors are going to write today. and he knew them all personally. i knew them all. i do the same thing. i come into the same -- bill safire's office now, and i say, i wonder what my 70 million competitors are going to write. [laughter] i feel i've got 70 million competitors. >> but that doesn't change how you approach your responsibility or what it is that you're actually writing? >> no. but it does, you know, i did a book with michael mandelbaum that used to be us.

and we have a chapter in the book called "averages over," and it is about robots that can be above average. average is over for everybody, including me. in the example i gave is a, i have 70 million competitors now. and hopefully i was never writing average columns, but i am just saying, i go to china, been going to china once a year for the last 22 years. and you know, when it probably first started going to china, i had one goal in mind and that was to write something that my mother-in-law in chicago would not know about china, something that she -- my mother-in-law in chicago back then had never been to china. so the truth is, i can go to china. hopefully i never did, but, they have panda bears here.

people use chopsticks. i could really write an average column. today, "the new york times -- you have the nytimes.com in chinese. when i go to china now, i have a different goal, and that is to tell people in china they do not know about china. >> you want to pick up and distribute it in china. >> right now we are shut down because we reported that wen jiabao's mother is worth $2.7 billion. [laughter] you cannot get it in china unless you can get it through the firewall. if you go to new york times.com, you'll notice -- one says international. that is the old international herald tribune. and over the next one is in chinese letters. it is our chinese edition. that is a great thrill for me to have my column twice a week in chinese. and i am so frustrated that we are shut out of their. but there are a lot of chinese

speakers outside of china and there are chinese who know how there -- to find their way into the site. but i am keenly aware when i write about china now i am being read not but just by my mother-in-law but by chinese. and i think that does raise your game. again, i hope by -- >> it takes me back to a question that you sort of ducked earlier on new technology and the effect that has. "the new york times" benefited from the wikileaks story. "the new york times" decided that it would send a team of reporters to another newspaper in england where the information already was, so it was no act of journalistic genius to go over there and pick up that information and then put it into the times. so what does that mean about the times and a fitting from wikileaks? is that a good thing? are they to be proud of the fact

that they made that decision? >> you should really ask arthur sulzberger that. >> bill keller. he was seated here, and i did ask him. >> what did he say? >> he made an effort to answer it, which is more than you are doing. [laughter] you see, i'm trying to understand. >> the reason i am dodging this question and i am dodging it is because -- >> did you notice? >> is because it is a hugely complicated question, and i have not dealt with the raw material, the legal bit. i have not been deeply involved than i do not want to freelance on it. >> ok. then i will put it this way. [laughter] tomorrow morning, you are sitting in your office, and you get a call from the guardian in london and the guardian says,

hey, tom, you are one of the greatest columnists ever and we want to bring you in on something. we have just received from bin laden's mother-in-law who does not live in chicago, should live somewhere else in the middle east, and she has his personal plans for taking over the world. this is what he was going to do. we want to bring you in on that. you have to come over here and take a look at it and then run with it. would you do that? >> i would definitely go over there and take a look at it. whether i would run with it would depend on the veracity of it. would depend on what the real content was. the journalist in me get -- would definitely do that. >> let's move along. "the new york times." i love to pick it up in the morning. ten years from now, will i have that privilege? >> don't know. really don't know.

you know, one of the themes of my columns in the last seven or eight years has really, what i call, i think we are in a gutenberg scale moment of change. that is, i believe that we're in a moment that is a kin to gutenberg's invention of the printing press when the way in which information is generated, turned into knowledge and transforms into products and services has undergone a massive transformation. i always tell people, someone was alive when gutenberg invented the printing priest. some monk said to some priests, now this is cool. i do not have to use this quill anymore. we can stamp these things out, holy mackerel! i believe we are at a similar moment, and i call it the move from connected to hyper connected.

and it happened just in the last decade or a little bit more, and it was completely disguised by the subprime crisis and post-9/11. we are living it. we are living all of the innovations that it is throwing off, all the incredibly rapid change. but no one is really describing it. my sound bite on this, you may of heard me say is that when i sat down to write "that used to be us," the first thing i did was go back and get the first edition of "the world is flat" to remind myself what i said. i started that book in 2004. so i waited up to the index. i looked under abcdef -- facebook was not in it. so when i was running around the world, last time we talked, and saying the world is flat. we are all connected. facebook did not exist. twitter was still a sound. the cloud was still in the sky. 4g was a parking place.

linkedin was a prison. big data was a rap star and skype was a typo. [laughter] ok, so all of that happened after i wrote "the world is flat." it tells you something really big just happened in the plumbing of the world. we went from connected to hyper connected, and it is changing every job, every workplace. >> how is it changing journalism? is that a good thing? what would you say? >> we now have -- when nytimes.com, we have the most e-mail lists. so we are using big data, to track most tweeted. on the one hand, any "the new york times" journalist who says, i do not look at the list is lying to you. do they go up or down. but it also is very, that can be

dangerous, because i write about foreign affairs. and um, there are times when i should write about foreign affairs issues that may not make the list at all. you can tell. there are certain issues that just do not make the list. you write a political, sizzling piece about you know governor chris christie, goes to the top of the list. but if you write about the problem of water in chad, you are not going to make the list. as a journalist, as a columnist, do you start saying, i am not going to write about this whole set of issues because they are not going to make, most tweeted. >> so what do i do? >> i write about them and despite that. some days it does not go up the list. "the new york times" is going to

have more of a lefty readership, and the new york times online will have more of a young and left readership. just by its nature. if you were to write a pro-george w. bush column, it is not good to make the list, baby. it is not going to get near. in the way you would a pro-obama one. >> dan rather sitting here a couple of years ago said that in his judgment what rules ina newsroom these day is fear. he was talking about the consequences of 9/11, and the way in which journalism covers these events. you have introduced the cause of my question, you have introduced an element now having to do with the new way in which journalism has to be mindful of the new technology.

>> right. >> does the new technology, in your view, pervert or force you into places you would not want to be dealing with stories that you would not want to deal with? simply in order to get the ratings boost? >> um, i think it is an important question to be asking. i cannot give you a specific example right now, but what i can tell you is that you sit where i sit, it is just incredibly noisy now. and um, you know, i find that more and more, i'm shrinking my aperture. i got to filter out a lot of stuff. you are constantly being written about, basically. if you take too much of that in, it is really paralyzing and i start to write for you, and that is really. dangerous i think this applies to young journalist, old journalist.

i remember my daughter was in college, and she called me one day, there is an issue on campus that had disturbed her. and i said, honey, why don't you blog about it? in the campus newspaper. and she said no, everyone will blog about me. it really stuck in my mind. and so, to now be, i think a columnist at a place like "the new york times," wall street journal," you need a thick skin, but you have to keep your balance. >> if you could imagine yourself being a very important politician for example responsible for making decisions affecting all of us, the question that -- >> the feedback loop is so fast now. and so immediate. people tracking, twitter.

i stay away from that stuff because i do not want to get knocked off my game. >> but that has to affect, if you are a politician, the way in which you think about voters, getting votes, saying certain things to attract certain constituencies. have you in your coverage, so i am putting you as a journalist -- going to be hard for you to duck it -- >> please. >> have you met a president since you have been doing these opinion pieces who is a great man? >> um, you know, that's -- i think all the presidents i have covered have had moments of greatness and a lot of moments of not greatness. but i have a lot of affection, this may come as a surprise, i don't know, for george bush, the

elder, the father, who i covered as a reporter. i was the diplomatic correspondent for the times at the time. and the reason i have such great respect for him has to do with a very specific achievement that i think he forged that he was central in that so affected everyone that he has never quite gotten credit for. he brought the end of the cold war -- >> two germanies. >> the unification of germany and he brought the soviet union for a soft landing, and other than the one incident -- >> did he do that or gorbachev? >>he, gorbachev, that whole generation i think was amazing. he, margaret thatcher, gorbachev. but he was there and had it not gone well, he would've gotten the blame.

and i think his role in that, the decisions he made were really, helped pave the way for the world that came afterward. >> are you optimistic -- maybe that is not quite the right word -- are you positive in your feeling that the current generation a political leader in this country can cope with the dimension of challenge now facing political leadership? >> it is funny. i was just in israel and i was thinking about that issue. there. can the leadership there handle the lift. i begin to wonder. you raise a very important question. first of all, i know how noisy it is if you're just writing a column for "the new york times." i cannot imagine how noisy it is for the president of the united states. just all of the stuff coming in now. someone checking twitter and facebook in the evening in the morning news and cable tv. and so i think that is a real problem. and i also think that the

complexity of the problems you have to deal with. think of you and your brother wrote an amazing biography of henry kissinger. let's think of henry kissinger 1973-1974. he goes to the middle east to forge the first real peace agreement, disengagement agreement between egypt, israel, and syria. in egypt, he negotiates with one egyptian pharaoh named sadat, in syria, negotiates with a syrian dictator, and it is really negotiates with the prime minister golda maier whose majority in the knesset was so big no one had ever heard of the likud party. let's flash forward now. you are john kerry. in syria, who do you negotiate with? there's anybody who answers the phone that comes off the wall, basically. [laughter]

in israel, you have a kind of minority/majority coalition. not know who is in power but it is a really complicated set of coalition partners. --benjamin netanyahu is in power. the ministry of interior. by 6:00, he will end his political life. hop over to egypt, it was the generals and morsi, and a general again. think of what a difficult time this is. i also have enormous sympathy for anyone in these jobs. >> you mentioned before your most recent book which is called "that used to be us." here i want to ask you about whether i'm right in my belief in my many years of radio that you are a very optimistic and deeply patriotic --many years of reading you that you are a optimistic and patriotic person, and yet in this book, the title as well as part of it are for from a pessimistic.

you seem to be suggesting that we are at a tipping point, and if something goes wrong, we're going to be up the creek without a paddle. what happened to your optimism? >> so, you know, let me start with where it came from and where it might have gone. so i grew up in minnesota, in the 1950's, at a time in a place where politics -- the year i graduated high school, the then governor anderson was on the cover of time magazine holding up a walleye, holding in the headline. the state that works. i grew up in this place where myself, the cohen brothers, al franken grew up at the same time. our congressmen were liberal republicans. the companies in minnesota, 3m,

dayton hudson thought it was their obligation to build a theater. it was not a diverse place. we had one african-american person in my high school. i do not want to suggest it was a perfect or a snapshot of america, but i grew up in a place where politics seem to work and solve problems, and that really formed, that was really a formative thing -- i am always looking for minnesota in some way in my journalism. and by then i have gone off, to the middle east and obviously, that cheered me. i saw some horrific things in beirut and jerusalem and i covered the massacre in syria. but i have never lost that sense. one of the things that journalists have lost, a bright dividing line today sometimes,

some journalists, is the line between skepticism and cynicism. you know, the skeptics -- i don't know. i want to check it out. i will not take anyone's word for it, but i want to report it out. show me. a cynic says, i already know who you are. one of the things that worries me is i did a call about this once where i came back. i was hired by upi, and spent two years in beirut. there was a reporter in the business section at that time. nathaniel was a wonderful, looks like a choir boy and he was a born-again christian and he loved to hear about the whole event. so we did have lunch and talk to him about israel. when i went off to beirut for the times, he said, i am going to pray for your safety. i said, i will appreciate that. two years later after i got out of beirut alive, he was one of

the first people i called. i said, thank you. it was, i thought you were my good luck charm. and nathaniel nash was on ron brown's airplane when it slammed into a mountain in bosnia and he died in that crash. in my mind, because he was such a -- he was someone who taught me the difference between skepticism and cynicism and i kept that in my mind. >> we have got about a minute left, and i want to know whether deep down you are an optimistic about america now. >> deep down i feel this -- that i think the most important national foreign-policy issue global issue in the world is the health and vitality of this country. if we go dark as a country -- >> go dark? >> if we are pessimistic, if we

cannot emulate these values were we started -- freedom, opportunity, perl is an -- pluralism -- your kids will grow up in a fundamentally different world. that is why i invest so much of my time in writing about america, because i do believe it is the most amazing country in the world and the world will be a very different place if we cannot be all we need to be. >> i am really sorry that our time was up because i would like to continue with that saying but we have run out of time. and i want to thank our audience first and i want to thank our audience around the nation and the world by way of the internet and webs and all of that, and most important, our guest new york times columnist thomas friedman for sharing his thoughts, his insights about big questions. i am very grateful to you. that is it for now. i am marvin kalb. good night and good luck.

[applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> we now have about 15 or 20 minutes, and we can, that is to say you can, ask tom questions and what i would like to do is suggest you come up front where there are two people with microphones, and your voice will be heard if you come right up here to the microphone. please identify yourself. let us know what you're associated with, university or whatever, and please ask a question and not make a speech. >> i am a retired navy captain, and thanks for all of the great work you do and mr. kalb, thanks for putting this on tonight. first, i have a book from paul brinkley --

>> oh, good. >> i have a two part question. how would you rate the trust factor of america in the world right now? and two, since we are in the press club, how does the international press look to the american press and what is your assessment of that? >> is are very fair question and a big question. it is hard for me to generalize about how the whole world, how much it trust us are not. if you are saudi arabia right now and your fear is that we are going to make up with iran, you do not trust us very much. if you are, if you are japan, and you are worried about china, maybe you trust us a lot because you have to. it would be really hard to generalize. but i kind of know what is behind your question and on balance, you know, the trust level if we have put it -- quantify -- i think it is going

down, not up. the second question was? >> the american press -- >> again, i think it really is, it really depends. and i think it depends the country, the newspaper, the tv outlet, the radio, the specific journalist -- i would be reluctant to generalize. there is international press here. you should ask them. >> thank you for that question. yes, please? >> hi, green connections. one of the issues -- >> your name? >> i did. one of the issues is energy and energy security. you mention it in your book and obviously energy security and independence is critical to the future of this country being its potential and the freedomto and the freedom from. and we have stories like the clean tech crash from "60 minutes,"

and we have other journalism that is sometimes covering it and sometimes not, what is your assessment of the coverage, what army missing, and can you give us your take on this component of the issue -- what are we missing? >> i have not looked at all the coverage and i am not going to make, i would not want to make a grand sweep on the coverage per se. i think it is a hugely important issue, and i think "60 minutes" did that story and the next week google bought an amazing clean tech company. people really have to be careful about, i think, generalizing about some of these things. so i spent a lot of time covering climate, water, energy issues. i think it is hugely important. it is also from a journalistic point of view really interesting. you have given me a chance to

make a plug that i just completed a documentary with showtime. "years of living dangerously." it begins on april 13. and i did the one on climate and environmental stresses and the arab spring, showing how underlying the arab uprising were a lot of climate, water and environmental stresses. they did not cause it but they contributed. harrison ford did deforestation in indonesia. matt damon the water issue. it is an amazing series, and we hope it will be something that helps rekindle interest and debate on this. coming over here, i mentioned to marvin at dinner, i had to start with 60 degrees in sochi today. in the winter olympics. that is why i always use the term -- i never use the term global warming. i try not to, because that sounds so, so cuddly.

global war. it sounds like golf in february to me. i much prefer global weirding. what actually happens is the weather gets weird. you get these -- the wets get wetter and the hot and hotter and the drives get drier and you see what is going on in california. that is actually what climate scientists project is how climate change will unfold. >> i will ask you to give answers that are a little more brief. we have so many people. yes, please. >> thank you very much. , am with the boston globe washington bureau. since we are talking about freedom, i would be interested in your take on this -- a lot of

freedom post-9/11 was kept in terms of spreading. a good part of. thatwas by miliy force i'm curious on your take on the lessons learned of the post-9/11 u.s. approach to spreading freedom. what did we do wrong and where are we now and what can we do to maybe prove -- improve that trust which is down in part because of that reaction. >> the short answer to that valid and important question is so many things went wrong in iraq and afghanistan. it's hard to know where to start. obviously, one of the things i think most went wrong in iraq which you can understand now when you talk to someone who really wanted that were to work and believed in the opportunity and necessity of trying to build an island of freedom in the part of the world is that if you look at the arab spring today in which one has

succeeded in which one has not -- there is one commo denominator about doing the best. that is the principle of no victor, no vanquished. somehow, everybody has to be included. then you think about what we did in iraq which was not only decapitate saddam but also go in and wipe out the industry and jobs of a whole class of people. then we fired the whole army. we came in and created a victor and they vanquished. which is exactly the wrong principle and that's exactly why those arab spring's that are failing, it's because of that. it's because one side think sunnis in iraq and have it all and shiities think they can have it all without the other. that was the biggest mistake of all. >> yes, please.

white housemer foreign-policy adviser. i want to ask you about the current israeli-palestinian discussions that are going on. do you feel optimistic that there will be a final resolution to this debate that has been going on for decades? i'm more optimistic than i have been in a while. that means i think the chances are 50/50. reallywhat optimism constitutes today. on the one hand, when i was there last week, i just don't see how this current leadership on both sides can make the huge concessions they have to make in order for a deal to be forged. on the other hand, i don't see how they don't do it.

here -- i truly believe -- there had to be some point where we have said this too many times -- i believe that rry mission will tell us at the two state solution is still possible. , i believe, is the last train. the next train is the one coming at them. >> ok, thanks. yes, please. >> i am working at brookings. thist to circle back to freedom of the press. i did my graduate work in europe , in ireland, and i found that the news coverage was actually fairly different than what we get here. when i spoke to my peers about

it, they told me our press is so censored. do you put any stock in that snap judgment or do you think it is more of an audience issue? >> i always try to avoid gross generalizations. i certainly have heard that. i went to graduate school in england. that --n tell you is in beirut with a lot of european correspondence and american correspondence. we covered those could stories very differently. i don't think there is anything -- i really disagreed sometimes with some takes they might have. europeanup the typical press on israel, for instance. it is the baseline and it starts a much higher level of hostility

, not just skepticism, frankly. they might say you are censored in america. we might say you start out with a bias. i like to read papers from all over the world and see everybody's perspective. i cannot pass judgment and wouldn't on who is censored and who is just coming at it totally straight. >> yes, please. >> i am currently with cc-tv america. my question is about reconciling freedom as an ideology and freedom in practice. when you look at freedom on an international scale, it's very different from what is written in the first amendment in america. people respect freedoms so much and someone would have intervened and the wrong one the genocide nephew look at jsoc and

the middle east and afghanistan and the night rates of -- and killing of people everywhere, how do you, as a journalist, reconcile that? >> um - one of the problems you always have in this job is -- when you are a journalist as well -- bad things happen all over the world all the time. because bad things are happening, it does not always tell you what you should do. for instance, you might say we should have intervened in row wanda. many people felt that at the time. what we have already learned from some of our interventions already like in iraq and

afghanistan is that maybe we don't know what we are doing. sometimes, intervention gets you through day one. you stop people from doing bad things but what we have learned from the whole middle east asked areas is we can stop people from doing bad things to we cannot always make them -- we rarely can -- maybe we can never make them do good things. once you get done stopping people doing bad things which we did in libya, we stopped what we thought was going to be a massacre and benghazi. then we did not go in and we could not make people do good things. they then started him fighting amongst themselves. my take away from the last 10 years is more humility about these things. w if youill the end, you better will the means. the will might be a long-term presence. that would be my answer. >> yes, please. >> thank you.

degree atgw in international affairs. you mentioned your high regard for president bush and his work internationally. >> the elder. >> bush the elder. aboutso talked kissinger's work in the middle east. looking at bush the elder, does that respect also extend to his secretary of state jim baker? >> i covered jim baker and i was the diplomatic correspondent. i have high regard for the job he did a secretary of state. >> thank you very much. yes, please. gwi'm an undergraduate at and a great admirer of your column and writing. i was here for one session when

ted koppel was a guest about the changing state of news. i read "the new york times," i read al jazeera and more to avoid news written by cynics. feel about the creation of businesses like fox news -- >> just one question -- >> people ask me what i read. i get up in the morning and read "the new york times" first. [laughter] i read "the washington post" and "the financial times." i enjoyed clear politics. it gives me a really wide range. it gives me international opinion.

it is a one-stop shop of some al jazeera, some they root daily star, some der spiegel. i am a news junkie. i am an opinion news junkie so i love reading opinion and i love reading other people's opinions and i love reading a wide range of opinions. while, i don't always have time but al jazeera asked me last year to be on their debate show. it is filmed at the oxford union debating society. challenginggh and debaters. -- issue of debate was america a force for good in the world and i took the affirmative on al jazeera at the debating society. i do that to test myself.

i think it's important when you sit where i sit to give people a shot at you every once in a while. it is something like bush and cheney never said. their idea of an open forum was to go to the heritage foundation and have no questions. it's not something i will do all the time but i believe from time to time you should do that. >> i think we have time for just two questions. >> i am from brookings. you mentioned early on a quotation -- it was something along the lines of those who give up their freedom to preserve the security deserve neither. >> yes. >> i wanted to get your take on that. that freedoms are something we have given up in favor of security. i'm wondering whether you thatve there is any way

people might be convinced to give up their security to preserve values. >> it's a very important question. all i can do is go back to what i said. reaction to the whole snowden affair is that this was inevitable and it's healthy that we have this discussion. see where technology is going now, it is leaping ahead as the world gets cyber connected. it is so much faster than human beings can adapt and adjust. at the same time, i think you have to be aware -- i go back to why i see golf sa wing adds, and some people are voluntarily and not balance early giving up freedoms. giving up voluntarily freedoms. we have to have a big discussion about this. >> last question, please. >> bill clifford with the world

affairs councils of america. you mentioned your concern if america goes dark. i would like you to assess the american education system and how good it does the job of keeping the lights on and of creating globally minded citizens and what would be the prescription to do a better job. >> that's not a question, that's a whole new caliber. i read about this occasionally. -- i write about this occasionally. we have work to do. i read about education a lot. i'm not an educator but i play one on tv. i'm an just an power which gotten me into politics and industry and education. i kind of backed into it. think we have a lot of work to

do. there is no question about it. the single most important issue in my view is parenting. parents to instill a love of learning in kids and hold them too high expectations and reform,ng else, teacher technology is third and fourth. these are great questions. i dodged as many as i could. [laughter] issue of pessimism and optimism has run through so i will leave you with a story. my column runs a fairly regularly. nine years ago, i was in israel having dinner with the editor and i asked him why he ran my column. he said we at the -- he's that you are the only optimist we have. and he said iup know what you are an optimist.

he said it's because you're short. [laughter] he said you can always see that part of the glass that is half full. [laughter] the truth is, i am not so short but i am still an optimist, thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you all very much for coming. thank you very much, everybody. >> thanks for joining us and be safe driving home. we have one more program before the season is over and we will be back shortly. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] to a will take you discussion on the korean peninsula and u.s. national security issues. secretary of state kerry is in seoul to reinvigorate efforts to deter north korea from pursuing nuclear arms. we will have live coverage at 1:15 p.m. eastern. secretary kerry earlier met with

king abdullah of jordan. president obama will meet with them in california later today. the president will fly there now. he will speak to a number of people affected by the drought in the state of california. there are reports the president will pitch a new $1 billion planet change resilience funds during his visit to california. which is separate from the climate agenda announced in june will be detailed in the president's 2015 budget set for release next month. when the senate comes back next week, we expect them to be talking about climate change. there was a story first reported in huffington post. that is one of the plans of a new climate action task force. a group of the democratic conference announced last month and the anticipated date of that is march 10. things that we

worry about our cyber attacks. also physical dangers and what i always think is what keeps me up at night when i think about what can happen next. i wonder what your greatest fear is as to a physical attack here in our country. general? >> i would answer by two things -- on the cyber side, i think an attack against our critical infrastructure would have potential damaging effects to transportation, health care and financial. we have to play close attention to our energy sector. on the kinetics, there is a range of things that keep me up at night. styleyou see these mumbai- attacks and like the one in nairobi and during the boston marathon -- those are the kinds of things we have to continue to work together in the intelligence community to make

sure that we are working as seamlessly as possible to share have within the defense side and national side but also on the federal, state, local and tribal level. i think that is an important aspect of what we are trying to do in the intelligence community which is to work on integration. thehis weekend on c-span, senate armed services committee looks at worldwide cyber threats and the terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction saturday morning at 10:00 eastern. on book tv, watch live coverage of the savanna book festival. morning at saturday 9:00 on c-span two. as part of the presidents' day weekend on american history tv on c-span3, tour portraits of power, the american presidents in the national gallery at 8:00. watcher program on first lady michelle obama saturday at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. live monday night, we conclude

our series with a two-hour special program from martha washington to michelle obama. >> she brings financial resources to the marriage as well as her managerial skills and makes mount vernon as successful operation and makes it possible for washington to be away for eight years fighting a war. >> there was something about abraham lincoln that she saw potential in and encouraged it and helped develop it, lessons in etiquette and the dining room -- am ups polish them for washington society were there invited a lot of important people. weretrawberry cream party talking with important gentleman and she wields a lot of power both over mr. lincoln and where he was going. >> the involvement of mrs. roosevelt and the political career of frank and roosevelt is right from the beginning. she becomes much more active in her role after 1921 when franklin roosevelt contracted polio. she would encourage franklin

roosevelt to continue with his political ambitions. >> first lady's influence and image for more of the washington to become a monday night at 9:00 eastern, live on c-span, c-span radio, and www.c-span.org. next, republican senator mike lee addresses education wallace in the rising cost of higher education. he outlines proposed legislation that would create state-based accreditation systems and increase access to federal student aid. he was one of the featured speakers monday at the heritage foundation's conservative policy summit. this is just over half an hour. >> the higher education is

controlled by something our next speaker refers to as the iron triangle of accreditation, schools and federal bureaucrats. the reason i am excited is that mike leigh is a special person. he came here in the 2010 election and within months of his coming to washington, we were working with them on something that hurt its foundation put forth called saving the american dream plan. he would come by monday set 630 and sit down with our experts and steep himself in the policy of this. i have not met anybody in washington, d.c. interested more in ideas than mike leigh and it has been a privilege for us to work with him for the last three years. one of the themes you have heard me refer to throughout this event straight through all the afternoon is we will not advance conservative policy in this town until we are willing to take on the status quo bias of washington, d.c. and inspire americans to change washington from the outside in.

lee of the reason that mike has been such a forceful at the get for bold ideas as he also recognizes he has not been a proud -- afraid to take on the status quote. in doing that, he has come forth with some of the most innovative proposals we have seen in washington quite some time. he is here to talk about higher education reform, opportunity act which is something that would radically transform the way higher education works for the better and empower people with choice and options that make more sense for themselves. i'm shared -- i am proud to share the stage with senator mike lee and he will take questions afterwards. [applause] it's good to be with you today. mikewas on my way in, needham asked if i was ready to talk about railroad policy. i thought maybe i got the wrong message and i realized it was

mike being mike. it reminded me of a story told by a former member of my staff, david barlow who was my chief counsel a couple of years ago. he has a son named william who is sometimes restless during church. he is five years old and was sitting in church one day and david said, william, it you need to be quiet during church. if you have all -- if you have a hard time holding still, maybe you should stop and think about davis and william would not hear that. he said to be perfectly clear, i'm not thinking about jesus. i am thinking about trains. [laughter] said minutes later, david just hold still for a few more then this part of church will be over and you can go to sunday school and see your friends and that will be fun. i will just to be clear, not be thinking about jesus during sunday school. i will still be thinking about trains.

[laughter] as i was on my way to deliver a speech on the senate floor about railroad policy, my wife sent me a text message saying " i'm thinking about trains." [laughter] before i begin my remarks today, i want to thank heritage action and all of the scholars at heritage that have made today possible. i think the conservative movement really is at its best when it's all about ideas. 2014 i think is something that will prove to be the beginning of an important and new era for our country. it is an error in which americans -- it is an era in which americans will need conservatives to be at our best. for decades, that has really been with the heritage foundation has been about -- about making sure that conservatives are at our best.

as we begin the process of developing a new and long overdue conservative reform agenda, events like this will prove to be an invaluable and indispensable part of the development of that very agenda that we so badly need. lincoln toldham the united states congress that, to him, the leading object of government was to " elevate the condition of man, lift artificial weights from all soldiers, clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and after chains and the race of life." today, one of the great artificial weights on the shoulders of working families, hard-working americans from one is theo the other,

rising cost of higher education along with a narrowed access to the kind of education and the uncertain value that kind of education sometimes has attached to it. those problems are symptoms of the deep paradox is at the heart of higher education policy in america today. to policymakers is to overcome that paradox by reconciling two seemingly conflicting, seemingly contradictory, seemingly irreconcilable facts. on the one hand as the united states continues to transition from an industrial economy to an information-based information age economy, higher education is more important to social opportunity and to economic mobility than it ever has been at any time in our history. on the other hand, the standard

credential of higher education in america, that is, the bachelors degree, is being aggressively devalued by the diminishing quality and exploding costs of undergraduate education in america. how is it possible that higher education is becoming more valuable and the bachelors degree is becoming less valuable at the same time? i answer that question by pointing out that these are not the same thing. higher education and the bachelors degree are two different distinct concepts. i believe that to succeed in the the globaly, information age economy, the vast majority of americans will need at least some post secondary knowledge and skills. brick year traditional and ivy residential institution is not necessarily any longer the only way to get those

things.. part of the problem is simple vocabulary. until recently, the college campus was really the only game in town when it came to higher education. make higher education cost effective, you need a centralized location where students from far away could be close to teachers, where scholars from different fields could be close together so that they can have an opportunity to work with another. and where all of the above could be in the immediate proximity of a common library that would be shared by the various constituent parts of the university. today, technology has made it possible for students to take classes from professors in another state. for academics to conduct research with colleagues across oceans. to for anyone with an ipad carry a library around in their backpack. for the first time in history,

students don't have to go to college to go to college. today, there are vocational programs and specialized training programs, especially in growing technological industries. there are apprenticeships in the skilled trade. there are hybrid on campus and on the job models. there are public/private and for profit colleges of varying tiers and emphases. there is the burgeoning promise of business learning options like massive open online courses ormokes as they are described. unfortunately, this innovative alternative market is being cordoned off from the vast majority of students by an increasingly outdated federal policy, governing higher education accreditation. this is how it works -- federal student assistance, and i'm speaking primarily of stafford loans and pell grants.

they are offered through title iv of the federal higher education act. under the law, the students are eligible for title for loans or title loan grants only if they attend formerly accredited schools. there is a good quality control argument for this kind of arrangement. except that's not where the restrictions and. the restrictions, unfortunately, go much further than that. only degreew, issuing academic institutions are allowed to be accredited. only the u.s. department of education can authorize accreditors under the system. furthermore, congress effectively killed the private student loan industry in 2009. taken together, these restrictive policies artificially narrow america's path into the middle class and

into economic opportunity. in effect, the federal government today operates a kind of higher education cartel. creditorsapproved operate as a gatekeeper to keep unwanted providers out of the market. this arrangement does not protect students from bad actors so much as it protects incumbent colleges from innovative competitors. government has closed, protected, and subsidize this market, it has started to break down. the price of college has exploded. it's still impossible for all but the wealthiest students to pay their own way through an undergraduate higher education experience. meanwhile, the ubiquity of the ba degree has made it difficult to achieve middle-class security without that increasingly expensive and increasingly nebulous credential. current policies are

creating three distinct classes of students. first, you have the affluent kids who attend the best public and private high schools prior to going to college where then all that certain to graduate from college and simply have to decide which college they will attend, which college will ultimately announce them as graduates. next, you have high school graduates who certainly could go to college but are reluctant to take on that much debt, the amount of debt it would require as a condition for attending college. some of them i prefer to explore more tailored and affordable option for their education or training. thatthere are the people current policy all that walks out on in the current education financing system. high school dropouts, students

betrayed by the system who are socially promoted, all the way to graduation in high school without being prepared for college-level work. and others like single parents whose life circumstances might make it almost impossible for them to take enough courses at a time to qualify for federal assistance. offer to, washington's most people after high school is to go tens of thousands of dollars into nondischargeable debt, pursuant overpriced degree that there is no guarantee you will ever even receive or, alternatively, spend the rest of your life locked out of america's middle class. this is not a good choice. most progressives think that increasing the level of taxpayer assistance will make up for any policy dysfunction in this area as in so many others. they just say let's throw more at the problem and the

problem will eventually go away. we have tried that3. just like in housing market or in so many other areas where the government has thrown mark money at a at the problem and the problem will eventually go away. problem, we have inflated the bubble. last summer, outstanding student debt past $1 trillion. it is now greater than total outstanding credit card debt throughout the country. it seems that the answer is not more funding for existing programs. instead, i think the answer is to make more kinds of students of educational experiences eligible for these kinds of programs, eligible for title iv funding. that is what my bill , the higher education reform act would do. it would empower states to create alternative, parallel, accreditation systems to enable students in their respective states to get title for assistance in order to attend

alternative post secondary education providers participation would be totally voluntary from state to state. it would in no way interfere with the current system. accreditation would, in this respect, augment and supplement but not replace the current existing accreditation regime. college presidents can rest that if they like their regional a creditor, they can keep their regional a creditor. [laughter] i mean it. i am sincere in that. the key difference here would be that state asic sick accreditation would not be limited to traditional reissuing , brick-and-mortar academic institutions. be for students attending specialized programs, apprenticeships, professional certifications, competency

tests and individualized courses. states would not be limited to authorizing incumbent in -- a crediting industries. anyone could be empowered to accredit one of these programs. under state accreditation, america's higher education market would become as diverse and nimble as the job creating industries that are looking to hire new workers. authorized businesses could accredit programs to teach precisely the kind of skills they need. imagine computer course accredited by apple or google. dow could accredit a chemistry argument owing could crafted some aerospace engineering major or helton could accredit a hospitality training program specifically designed to meet current market needs. accrediting individual forces would give the student to

their options a chance to take a course or two without knowing thousands of dollars or of dollarsusands into debt. an entry-level employee who needed only to take a few classes to qualify for a promotion could find a program specifically tailored to match his individualized needs. competency exams would allow students to acquire .kills on their own timelines an entry-level employee who freed from thed be arbitrary semester calendar which is kind of a relic of a bygone era. it is something that existing brick-and-mortar institutions would be free to hold onto but not everyone would have to be wedded to it. high school graduates not prepare for college or a career and left in the state of unpreparedness by their failing high schools could get assistance to start catching up in remedial classes for getting

professional skills. single moms and parents pulling double shift to finally become eligible for title iv funds to build or transcripts at a personalized rate and at a sustainable pace. labor unions and companies employing skilled workers could accredit innovative apprenticeship and training programs, potentially developing entirely new delivery models. that's another exciting feature of this plan. freedit opens doors for more ss teachers, for more types of students and more types of teachers. types of students and more types of teachers. uninterested in esoteric publish or perish types they can focus their energy on classroom excellence and being that are teachers and so the constant push for more research and publication.

rather than on the constant push for more research and more publication. groups of professors could strike out on their own, forming new business models like medical practices. they could offer high quality, higher education for a fraction of the cost of four years at a traditional university. states could finally start to level the playing field for new innovators like moocs. these massive open online courses. and see where empowered students and teachers could take that kind of technology. these reforms would begin to turn higher education into the cutting edge growth industry our information economy needs to be -- desperately needs to become. institutions of civil society could play a crucial role in this kind of system as well. nonprofit groups like --

measuring exams for various courses. think of the proliferation of opportunities that could come from this. faith communities and civic organizations could begin to offer local students accredited college courses. they could do so for next to nothing. and they could do so as part of their missions for those that they represent and those that they're dedicated to serving. qualified individuals could make teaching higher education their form of tithing or their form of community volunteering. after all, properly considered, the retired mechanic who lives down the street and the stay at home mom with the master's degree and the civil war re-enacting enthusiast who has encyclopedic knowledge of military history all are teachers that current policy tends to keep on the sidelines. alternative accreditation could

start to get those kind of people into the game and more americans into the middle class, which is exactly what we want. after all, how long does one think that we really have to wait for heritage university? i'd like to see that some day. with professor needham teaching. seriously, we already know that people other than tenured academics can teach college-level material. adjunct professors, teaching assistants and high school advanced placement teachers do it every single day. some of the best courses i took in college and in law school were from adjunct professors. and we already know credentials other than the traditional degrees offered by brick and mortar, higher learning institutions can be made to work perfectly well in fields that use them. accountants take the cpa exam. stockbrokers take the series 7. and skilled tradesmen have their

various journeyman exams, just to name a few. and in the most important growth industry in our economy, high-technology, nonacademic professional certifications have already been in the marketplace where they've been flourishing and widely accepted for many, many years. the market is moving in this direction already. it's time for federal policy to catch up to the marketplace. there are too many valuable opportunities and invaluable people that current law, current policy, tends to exclude. it's time to law tends to exclude. it is time to decouple eligibility and enrollment at degree institution. my bill would begin that process. spurring innovation and experimentation. creating jobs and opportunities for students, teachers and everyone in between. opening up the higher education market to new ideas and driving down costs while lowering barriers to the middle class.

some reformers might want to go even further to open up the market with a national system based in washington or blow up the existing accreditation system altogether. but i submit that housing alternative accreditation in the states offers three conservative goals all at the same time. first it will protect the new market from the cronyism that almost inevitably targets centralized pour. it is harder for special interests to get to 50 competing states than to corrupt one single monopoly in one single city. second it will allow competitive federalism to work its magic just as the founding fathers intend intended. neighbors could check on prudence and inaction if that

arises and voters can have a say as higher education and innovation becomes more important in gubinatorial election. and it will preserve and reward what does work at today's colleges and universities. it is wrong to say that america's higher education system is -- failing. it isn't, in fact that system succeeds every day beyond any reasonable expectation that created it many generations ago. our best colleges remain the best colleges anywhere, anywhere in the world. that is why students from around the world come here to the united states to study. but federal higher education policy is failing the two thirds of americans who never get a b.a. and a large majority of americans who never set foot on a college campus. those americans need access to skills that current colleges are not teaching. at prices that four year

residential institutions can't afford to offer, on time lines the academic calendar can't accommodate. and the lower an income and the more pressing life circumstances, the more greater the need. in today's customizable world students should be able to build their transcripts a la carte, online and in campuses with offices, with traditional semester courses and alternative scenarios like competency testing. and it should follow them every step of the way. we don't need to dump our higher education system, we just need it open it to up to more students and teachers that can benefit from it. a little competition would be good for everyone. but the goal of reform should be to build up, not to tear down. so instead of eliminating our current accreditation regime, my bill would simply allow 50 new

ones to compete with it and to compete with each other. with enough quality control to protect students and taxpayers and enough flexibility to incentivize experimentation. in higher education as in so many areas, the greatest threats to equal opportunity, the obstacles that abraham lincoln references, are the unintended consequences of government policies. the current system has left a lot of people behind and also helped a lot of people. reform needs to circle back and make equal opportunity a reality for everyone. so that it is not just there for the lucky ones. the point of higher education policy should be to enable good teachers to teach, wig willing students to learn, the economy to grow and civil society to

flourish. and most of all, it should look out for those students that the current system is leaving behind. the american people are ready to meet that challenge. and accreditation reform, i believe, will start to give them that have very chance, the chance they need to succeed. thank you very much. >> the senator will take questions but to start off, you have gotten praise and what places are you getting from higher education and state governments? >> for those who are familiar with this proposal, the praise has been pretty consistent. the only significant concerns that i've heard have been from a couple of people in the more traditional brick and mortar institutions that have been misinformed about what it would

do. i've had some -- some college administrators who understandably, when they were under the mistaken impression this would tear down the existing system, they wanted to warn me that might not be such a good idea, but as soon as i explained what this does, that concern seemed to dissipate. so the response has been overwhelming good so far. >> hi. well first of all, the terms when i grew up were mentor and internship and things along those lines so it is not new concepts, just new ways of describing it. are you addressing the f 1 visas that are active on campus? a med a young girl from china the other day and she was getting her social security card which she needed to have herrin turnship to get cap to go to the

internment. when she is here she is eligible to get a credit card and driver's license, are you talking to the people who will want the life here and the job that will stay here. >> it doesn't address the f-1 visa system. i understand there is always need for reform in that area and that is not the focus of this bill. >> senate, colleagues and senators, are there others in the [ inaudible ]. >> we have a handful of co-sponsors and the idea is still new enough and novel to where people are getting their arms around it. we are not under -- any kind of mistaken impression that this is going to pass within a matter of

days or weeks. this is going to take some time. buff the good news -- but the good news is those who have reviewed it have been encouraged and i'm optimistic about where it is going. >> [ inaudible question ] >> harry reid has yet to sign on as a co-sponsor but i'll let you know when he does. >> so the reauthorization coming up this summer, how do you see that impacting the kind of dialogue? >> that is one of the many reasons why in the senate we need to restore the regular order amendment process. because any time we're dealing with some kind of reauthorization of an existing program, a reauthorization that needs to occur, we need to consider options along with it. things like this, have a much higher likelihood of getting to a vote and therefore of being debated and considered and having the relative various

policy merits discussed and debated when they come up with a vote and that is more likely to occur if we have an open amendment process. the way things have been functioning lately, that would seem like more or less an impossibility. from july of last year through the end of january of this year, we had a total of four role call votes in the senate. four -- one, two, three, four. on measures introduced by republicans. why the majority fills the amendment tree and blocks all of the amendments other than those that he personally benefits. and we think this is neither a democrat or republican issue, not conservative or republican

issue. the american people do send us there and expect us to take votes and not just what the majority leader in his infinity wisdom deems to grand us. >> having conservations with [ inaudible ] at purdue and he's done -- obviously he would need more flexibility with a bill such as yours, but there is a gl up purdue index that is going to try to come up with a new gage of college students saying degrees not necessarily equate to being prepared in the work force. i was just wondering if you've had any conversations with him or if you followed anything he's been doing at purdue? >> i have heard of that. and i think what we're doing arises out of a similar pattern of thinking. i have not met with mitch daniels but i hope to in the

future as i think there is a lot i can do from there. >> we have time for one more. >> i imagine that -- this is a great first step for higher ed reform but i imagine it is just a first step in your eyes. what do you think other opportunities are available for the higher ed world, maybe more metrics for transparency so people know what their dollars are going to buy them long-term, what do you see as far as other opportunities. >> metrics is sort of the -- the buyer notifications that often come with the product. this is how much this refrigerator will cost you to operate for an entire year. you know that when you buy a refrigerato refrigerator, you know the pliels per gallon rating a car receives before buying a car. a lot of people have suggested we require similar information to be disclosed when it comes to

higher education and that especially where federal funds are involved, that there ought to be some kind of metrics produced and made available to the consumer -- the student -- about what the graduation rates are, about what the employment rates are post graduation, about what the salary rangers are within those majors and i think those are the other oncoming up, but discussion south korea and u.s. national security. hascommission of inquiry found that crimes against humanity have been committed in north korea is recommending the findings be referred to the international criminal court. among the guests and panelist this afternoon, the deputy assistant defense secretary or east asia and we will have that discussion for 1:15 p.m. want to get underway live here on c- span. until then, but discussion from

this morning's "washington journal." on food security issues. host: this week, we will look at hunger in the u.s.. what does the usda mean when they say food security? simply put, food security is the ability to consistently put adequate food on the table. the term can be a little misleading because people hear the word security and they think it's just people worrying about whether they can get enough food. what we are measuring in the survey is whether people were unable to put adequate food on the table. host: does it mean hunger? guest: the relationship is a little complicated. you can think of food insecurity

as the social and economic context in which hunger may occur. -- if foodrity insecurity are severe, people are likely to be hungry because they cannot afford enough food. host: this is a chart that your economic research branch put out -- food insecurity worsened and the recession then changed little through 2012. what are we seeing here on the screen? what can we extrapolate? guest: there are two lines in here. this is how we measure and the terminology we use. the top line, the blue line, is the percentage ofhere. households that were food insecure. host: that is close to 15%. guest: it was around 11% before the recession. it went up quite sharply. since then, it has not changed

much. food, for households that were food insecure. most households that are food insecure, this means in adequate in terms of quality and variety of diet. the red line, the more severe range emma that's below six percent currently, those are households where the respondent to the survey reported conditions they were not able to get enough food. it's not just that they were cutting back on quality. that would be the households in which hunger is more likely to occur. most of those households actually responded that at times during the year, he or she was hungry but did not eat because they did not have enough money for food. host: also joining our conversation is caroline radcliffe. you see this, how do you interpret these numbers? guest: he also has the on employment rate.

there were high increases in unemployment since the recession. unemployment has come down some. if we look at other measures of well-being like the poverty rate, it mimics the increase in food insecurity. we saw a big increase in the poverty rate. it has been relatively flat in recent years. we really have families who are struggling with high poverty rates and high food insecurity. we have these pieces coming together that create a lot of instability and insecurity around food for families. host: when we look at this chart put out by the usda, the darker blue states are the ones that have higher food insecurity issues.

there are substantial differences. these are statistics from 2010 or 12. food will and purity. rates were around 21% north dakota and northridge and have them around 9%. there is a lot of different. the higher levels of food insecurity tend to have higher unemployment. they tend to have especially higher housing costs. these insecure states have one or more of these traits. taxr average wages, higher burden on income tax olds. tax structures. that have a higher tax

burden. when we roughly at the u.s. at the u.s., when you look at debt, financialernative services like payday loans, you generally see much worth south.eristics in the just -- host: what kind of government programs, we have all heard of food stamps. how effective are those programs, caroline ratcliffe? guest: there are three main programs, supplemental nutrition assistance program, snap -- host: which is food stamps. guest: that is really the cornerstone of the usda's food program. there is free and reduced school breakfast and lunch, also women infants and children nutrition program.

research is from that the programs have been effective in reducing food insecurity. most of the research has been focused on snap, the food stamp program. we have done work at the urban institute finding that dissipating in the food stamp program produces the likelihood of being food insecure by 1/3. from 20%earch puts it to 50%. there is also a work that looks at the amount of benefits. riley, what we are seeing is that the snap program is reducing food insecurity. the same as school breakfast, school lunch, and that wic program for the mother and the children. mark nord, does usda agree? guest: yes, i will talk later about research we did around the

recovery act, the stimulus bill. that many other things were in that bill, increase snap benefits about 60% on average. 16% on average. the graph you have now, talk about it a little bit. it helps shed light on the snap caseload. you can see looking back a couple of business cycles -- host: this is the chart? poverty is the top line. snap participants, food stamp or participants is the blue line. unemployed is green. guest: this goes back to food insecurity, snap participation goes up following the recession as food insecurity increase.

looking back over this period, it has basically followed the trend of the poverty rate and the unemployment rate. it tends to take it a while to come down after unemployment. host: we see the snap participation rate, caroline ratcliffe, going up, up to 45 million americans who use food stamps. why? does that seem extreme? guest: no, it does not. people have voiced concern about the increases in the snap caseload, that so many people are on this program. i would frame this in a different way. stamp program was really designed to help families in a time of need, we had the great recession, lots of families with lots of economic

hardships. the program is doing exactly what it was intended to do. rise, thef this deep congressional budget office has estimates that suggest this is going to be coming back down, this is not expected to be the new normal. that over the next 10 years it will come down significantly. point, people worry about big caseloads. when we look at participation in about 75% of the people who are eligible for the program participate. the people who do not participate tend to have smaller benefits. we are talking about a program where people are eligible and we want them to take up these services to help children in the family's. that is a good thing. host: i am not sure who to ask this, this is a tweet from @boringfileclerk. in, how many who go

hungry our children as opposed to adults? mr. nord? guest: we publish separate statistics in our report. usda's economic research service publishes a report annually on experienced food insecurity and households. one of the statistics is the percentage of households with children in which children are food insecure. households in which children experience this, they are cutting back -- parents are cutting back on the amount of food available. protectedend to be until things get pretty severe in the household. the percentage of households with children in which adults food security is higher than the percentage where

children have low food security. ofis a little over 1% households with children in which children have low food security. host: caroline ratcliffe, do you want to add? upst: i am glad you brought children, that is very important in terms of getting food and nutritional food to children. early in life, research looks at poverty and these earlyity, years are times when children are developing, their brains are developing. for future outcomes, for their future health, ability to focus in school, all these things are important. here are more statistics from the u.s. department of agriculture's economic research service. more than half of snap recipients are children or elderly. 46% 18 yearsen,

old to 59 years old. elderly receive 9%. james tweets in, can you be food insecure and obese? guest: i will jump right in. yes. can be going on here, mark mentioned the types of food. we know that-- healthy foods are expensive to purchase. you can be food insecure where your consumption early in the month when you get your snap benefits, you do not feel insecure, as the money dwindles, you are food insecure. people are that making, particularly with the fact that some of the lower quality foods are less healthy, can result in people being obese.

host: let's take some calls for mark nord with the usda's economic research service. he is a sociologist and the food assistance branch. is a seniorcliffe fellow at the urban institute. both monitor food insecurity, hunger in the u.s. rich from massachusetts. go ahead. caller: good morning. i am calling about -- this is my first time accepting food stamps. i got laid off of my job, i was at my job for almost 20 something years. i was embarrassed to go down and ask for food stamps, i am very independent. i do not need a handout. go to thehoice but to food stamp office and get food stamps with my three kids. we are suffering really bad. this is embarrassing.

that is all i have to say. host: thank you for calling. experience is what many families have experienced. people lose their jobs, food stamps -- a lot of people have instability in their lives. they might have two part-time jobs. they are expected to work 20 hours a week at a job and it gets cut down to 10 hours. people need assistance, let me also say that people who work full-time at a minimum wage job, they are eligible for the snap program. their incomes are low. people who lose their jobs but also many working families. host: mark nord, i went to compare two charts. food insecurity worsened in the recession, prevalence rate, 14%. down here, the very low food security rate pushing 6%. snap participation is blank --

snap participation is way up. wouldn't these rates come down as this rate goes up? helpful to look at it another way. if you look at the red line and the green line on the top chart. coming into the recession, from 2007 two 2008, coming into the recession. food insecurity, low food security went up in parallel to unemployment. unemployment continued to go up in 2009 and 2010. but the prevalence of very low food security -- host: went up. guest: we have some research evidence that is the safety net be partin, snap would of that. there is unemployment insurance.

add income tax credit. all of the pieces of the safety net that help keep things from getting as bad as they might when the unemployment rate went that high. host: caroline ratcliffe of the urban institute. we have had all these government programs for hunger since lbj's great society. why are they working? -- aren't they working? guest: i would say they are working well, we have had declined in food insecurity. without these programs, the levels will be much higher. also, these programs have though: the short term of reducing food insecurity. -- these programs have the goal through the short term of reducing food insecurity. they have long-term benefits,

children who have access to the program early in life have better outcomes as adults. looking at obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure. we have the benefit in the short run and the long run. in the long run for women, greater self-sufficiency. earnings, income, less reliance on public assistance. the programs are working, they could be expanded to improve outcomes. host: do you see evidence that food banks and private charities put a dent in food insecurity and hunger? guest: families supplement government programs with private programs. and other particularly during the great recession, there were lots of families that were using food banks and other nonprofit

services. that ai might expand on little, households -- the two types of programs tend to complement each other. the private programs, food banks and food pantry is, they can respond very quickly. you practically do not have to demonstrate eligibility or anything. if you show up, you can get food. quickly.ond very the federal programs might take longer to get into and get assistance from, but when you get the assistance is longer-term. aboutderal programs are 10 times the size in terms of amount of food delivered. about 10 times as large as the private, but the private fill an important niche. host: what is the total spent on food security issues by the federal government? guest: snap, i have this is to i have theap,

statistic. in the fiscal year 2013, the federal outlays for snap were $79 billion. host: what is the budget for 2014?

there is a strong association over a long time. it typically takes a while caseload to come down after the unemployment rate comes down. there's a bit of a lag. host: do you know the figures for wic? guest: in terms of size, the school breakfast and school lunch falls second after snap. about 30 million children, about 20 million of those have free and reduced. you have lots of kids going to school and getting school lunches that are paying full price. for that wic program, about 8.5 million people are served -- host: could you explain the school figure? guest: the number of children who get school breakfast and lunch is about 30 million. host: total. guest: but will we look at free and reduced price school breakfast and lunch, which the usda supports, that is 20 million.

host: so 10 million of those children are paying for themselves. jerome in california. caller: good morning. i have a couple statements. one is about the ebt cards, snap cards. i have concerns about they are used in convenience stores and gas stations. how people could better use them if they were related to grocery stores. host: why does that matter?

caller: well, one, the cost of food in a convenience store is higher. two, is it always healthy? no, convenience costs money. that does not mean i'm going to get healthy food. i will get full and get fat food. host: we will start with caroline ratcliffe. guest: you are making a good point. the point i want to make here is that we have food deserts, for example. areas either -- we think of them in inner cities. we can have them in rural areas. a food desert means people do not have access to healthy fruits and vegetables. also big supermarkets. some of these convenience stores and smaller locations are the only places where people have access to food they can purchase. part of that is taken up by the smaller stores. guest: i might add that we have pretty good information on where snap benefits are redeemed because of the electronic system. the food and nutrition service, the usda agency that operates the program, reports on this. about 80% of snap benefits are redeemed in supermarkets or

larger stores. your concern is well-placed, but as dr. ratcliffe mentioned, for some people, convenience stores -- they might supplement their purchase by picking up things or it might be practically their only choice. host: mark nord, are you seeing trends that children on food stamps continue to be on food stamps as adults? guest: i do not have that research handy, we have done longitudinal looks at that. host: caroline ratcliffe? guest: to the extent that food insecurity is connected with poverty, we can say something about that. we have done some work looking at children who are born into

poverty. what we see is that just by looking at that one year, those children are likely to the poor throughout their childhood, multiple years. more likely to be poor as adults. to the extent we see the connection between poverty and food insecurity, we expect that children who are born into food insecure households are more likely to have this food insecurity throughout their life.

host: caroline ratcliffe, how many people in the u.s., 340 million or so, is that right? how many people in the u.s. go to bed hungry? guest: i guess this goes to mark's point about the food insecurity and then the very low levels of food insecurity. that would be closer to your 6% to 7%, families that are more likely to have children who are food insecure. host: are we talking about 18 million people in the u.s.? guest: keep in mind that statistic is at some time during the year. we make estimates, we do not have quite as good a measure of daily occurrence. daily occurrence is much lower. talking about people going to bed hungry every night, that would be a good bit lower. we are concerned about food insecurity, even occasionally. that is what our programs are intended to address. that is what we measure. guest: can i add, when we look at food insecurity and you are saying going to bed at night, i want to bring it to the morning when kids get to school. the school breakfast program,

particularly some of the programs, breakfast in the classroom. i was talking to a principal of an elementary school in southwest colorado where lots of their children are poor. they instituted breakfast in the classroom, a lot of teachers were not interested. kids are messy. what they found after a short period, teachers were on board, children were much more focused on learning, they were not thinking about lunch. they were more secure in their situation in school and able to learn. some of these programs are very critical. host: as a policy person as well as a researcher, caroline ratcliffe, we have been putting the onus on you, i should not, if you could design a foodsecurity program, how would you do it? what would you do differently? guest: i think we are doing a lot that is good. mark has done some research, he alluded to it, the snap, with

the stimulus package that snap benefits increased, research shows that reduced food insecurity. snap benefits increased, those benefits were allowed to erode over time. we find that that reduced food insecurity. why is that so important? it tells us that the snap program is operating in this area where increased benefits will lead to reduced food insecurity. so that putting -- we have got a really great, solid programs out there. and resources, the resources are very important. more resources would reduce food insecurity. host: mark nord, are there a lot of people who use snap, wic, and school lunches, all three? guest: there is overlap between them, but households without

children are not eligible for either wic or school lunch, that whole group is not getting assistance from either of those. households with children, especially with low incomes, many of them do use all three. host: peter in iowa, you are on the "washington journal." caller: hello. i have a couple things. i have been watching and listening. something about our food stamp program that i think is totally flawed, it is in the farm bill. we have farmers that are paid not to grow food. farmer bob is making .25 million dollars not to grow something so someone can be hungry. the other thing, and anything with high fructose corn syrup is covered under food stamps. coca cola, general mills, all profit from food stamps. what i don't understand is that we know what high fructose corn syrup does and what it can do to your body. yet our lobbyists pushed, we had

reagan, the dairy farmers got more than regular farmers. the sugar farmers, the corn farmers. boom, now, all encompassed in that farm bill. host: i will ask you about the farm bill, caroline ratcliffe, do you think it is a good idea that snap is included in a farm bill? guest: i don't have a strong opinion on that. i would say that with the farm bill, there had been lots of talk, the house measures had cuts in snap. those did not come into play in the final legislation. by in large, there were some cuts to snap, it came through in pretty good shape.

host: mark nord, is it true about high fructose corn syrup, you can use a snap benefit if it is included in a program? coke, mountain dew? guest: that is true. the type of sweetener does not make a food ineligible for use of snap benefits. host: i am not sure i understand, i apologize. can you use snap to buy candy bars? guest: yes. guest: there has been a lot of talk about this in the news, new york city tried to get rid of -- you could not use snap benefits to purchase soda. there has been farmers markets, for example, programs where if

you use your snap benefit at the farmers market you get more. in new york city, for every five dollars you spend in the farmers market, you get a two dollar coupon. it is trying to encourage people towards healthier alternatives. you could actually bring it to a program where if you are using your snap benefits to buy whole grains or whole food, fruits and vegetables, there could be a benefit.

we know those foods are more expensive than some of the processed foods. host: mark nord, tweeting in, i thought snap was separate from the farm bill? guest: there was discussion early on, but in the end -- host: it came back. guest: it is part of the farm bill. host: ruth? caller: i was visiting salt lake city, an incident took place in a school lunchroom. some parents were in arrears with school lunch accounts. they were not, in a timely manner, informed of this. food was served to kids under these circumstances. and then a few minutes later as they were eating their lunches it was taken away from them because -- in a very public manner and thrown away. the explanation for that was we could not waste the food once it had been distributed.

what are the political impacts, what are the influences on these programs? who is leaning on them to suddenly take food out of the mouths of children? these cafeteria workers who were having to do this, some of them were crying. host: i think we got the point. caroline ratcliffe? guest: i would say that some of these free programs, particularly snap, did come under attack when we think back to the last presidential election. all sorts of talk about snap. as i mentioned, in the farm bill, the house had lots of proposals that would result in deep cuts in that program. other parts of our social safety net, tax assistance, that has really not been, it has not picked up slack with the great recession.

some of the programs have gotten smaller, snap is now the largest. i think politically it ends up getting more attention. host: tweeting in, is the usage of food subsidy regional? largest usage and per capita usage? here is the map again. we are going to take this call. darker blue are the higher usage states. val in minneapolis. caller: i don't think she answered the question properly. i am concerned, reading here in minnesota about how food is being literally taken out of the mouths of children. that leads me to this comment.

but first i want to say thank you to c-span. you have done shows like this where you have had two people on and they are supposed to be giving contrasting information or opinions. my question was thisu all speak about food insecurity, i understand that the biggest problem in the country is not food, we have an abundance of that. the biggest problem for low income people who rely on food

stamps and other programs, the biggest problem is housing. host: got it, thank you very much. any response for that caller? show: our research does that states with higher costs of housing have higher levels of food insecurity. the two tend to grow together, housing and food are the big-budget items in the budgets of low income households. food, get assistance with it can help you pay your bill better because you don't have to put your money into food. if you get help with housing, it can free up money for food. right in saying that housing along with food is a major concern. people whoo see that spend less on housing are spending more dollars on food. host: caroline ratcliffe with the urban institute, mark nord

is with the usda's >> we have plenty take you live to a discussion on the korean peninsula. we have been told by organizers event will behe off the record to cameras and reporters. another part will be available. we hope to be able to cover that later on in our program schedule. coming up next, part of this "washington journal" focusing on patient privacy laws. joining us from austin, texas is dr. deborah peel, founder and chairman of the board of a group called patient privacy. what is that group? guest: we are fighting to put americans back in control of their health information. we cannot control it anymore.

callerhost: what does that mean? guest: i have been a physician for a long time. that's why i found it patient privacy rights. vacuum the agent age of paper, before any information about you was moved from one doctor to another, you had to be asked your permission to send the information. today, with the new technology system, electronic health records, health information exchanges, everyone else, everyone that holds their data controls it and moves it. we don't know where it goes. that -- ofve a chain custody and we cannot prevent their information from flowing to thousands, literally thousands of users and data sellers. the problem is health aid in the digital age is the most valuable

information about you, anything about your health. patient privacy rights aims to put everybody back in control of their own very personal health records. efforts off the long a lot of health-care reform has been the electronic records act. is this something you do not support? o, we actually do support technology. the problem is, they are putting in the wrong kind. technology could give each of us the kind of control we want over our information. it could work exactly like things did before the electronic age. to a doctor for a broken foot, you did not tell that dr. the same information that you would tell a dr. for your heart or you would not tell

a psychiatrist or a mental health professional the same thing you would tell an allergist. age, we carefully selected what we shared with which physicians. the electronic age and the way the technology we have now works is we cannot select anything. everything is open, every kind of sensitive record is open to people that have no need to see it. damaging to people's trust in doctors when they realize that what they say to one doctor does not stay there. it can get to other people that they would never want or expect to see it. host: you are a psychiatrist? guest: yes, yes. that's where my experience comes from. more than that,

freudian psychoanalysis. i work with people and have worked for over 30 years in long-term treatment. , dealing with your feelings and depression and addiction and child abuse, these are incredibly sensitive issues. no one would talk to me if they thought it was going to be on the internet. that's a deal killer. privacy is absolutely critical to people being able to tell physicians sensitive information that we need to know to help them. that is true not just of psychiatry. it is true of every kind of illness. it is very important to be able to trust that your physician is going to protect your information. today with electronic systems, they cannot. they literally cannot prevent your information from being blown around the world. host: legislatively, what would you like to see done to prevent

these electronic medical records from getting out? guest: there is a change that 2002 where it your right to give consent for your information could be disclosed or shared and that was taken out of the hipaa privacy rules. the media did not report it and congress did not notice and the public is not about to read 2000 pages of dense legislative language. nobody knew but those of us who work with people who have sensitive conditions, we were all over that. the first thing that has to happen is your right of consent, your right to control who sees your health information needs to be restored in hipaa. we have strong constitutional rights to privacy and control over our health information. but the technology industry has

not paid attention. hospitals, the pharmacies, the electronic health record vendors , health technology vendors -- all of them use and share our information in ways that we would never agree with. host: from your website, patient you sayhe writes.org, who can use an see your health records, over 4 million businesses including employers, government agencies, insurance companies, billing firms, pharmaceutical companies, pharmacy benefit managers, marketing firms and data miners? records are currently out there for all those people to see? guest: yes, actually they are. the senate is focusing in particular recently on the data brokers. there is a huge hidden industry online of data brokers. the public is just starting to

learn about them. collects like axiom 1500 points of data about everyone in the entire united states. there is another company called ims health that is about to sell stock in the filing they sent to the government to be able to sell stock says that they buy our health information, electronic health records, prescriptions, claims data, and they also put in information about our health and social media. they buy this information from 100,000 data suppliers. , covering 780,000 live data feeds and they sell profiles to 5000 clients including the u.s. government.

this kind of use of health information, when we cannot even get it, is absolutely appalling. how can we possibly find out what 100,000 companies are doing with their health information? how can any individual person do that? this complete lack of control of our most sensitive information has to be fixed. it has to be fixed because it is a massive violation of our rights to keep sensitive information private. patient. peel founded rabbits he writes in 2004. what sparked you two found this? how do you protect your own patients information? guest: whoo - well, there are a number of things that caused me to do this. as we have talked about, i

practice in one of the most sensitive areas of medicine. information about peoples minds and bodies, their feelings, their fears, their fantasies -- this information is very sensitive. beginning of my work as a psychiatrist, it was very clear that this information had to be protected. -- and i'm sure your audience knows this -- any kind of mental health diagnosis can ruin your life, frankly. and it does because that gets out to employers. is the situation that recently made so much news when the aol ceo tim armstrong outed families that had distressed families born to them.

he stripped away the privacy of that sensitive situation and information and revealed them to the world. this is the kind of thing that employers -- and the public needs to know this -- employers could get your health information in the paper age. but it was much harder. today, it is incredibly easy for them to get this sensitive information. and we never know. have laws passed, for example, thatan insurer - every time our health information is shared or disclosed or sold, we get notified just like if you do electronic banking. every time there is a transaction, you get an e-mail. we should be notified every time our health information is used and who is using it and why, especially when we cannot control it.

we should be able to get all the copies that all of these companies have of our information. we are the only ones who knows what is right or wrong about our health. it's our health that is at risk. is ifst important thing you cannot trust your physician to keep this information private , it really damages your ability to work with a doctor and get help. americans in eight hides health information or omits it. that's 20-30,000,000 people because they know electronic systems take away privacy. there are millions more that avoid or delay every year treatment for very serious conditions like cancer. avoid earlyle treatment for cancer, putting their lives literally at risk.

million,n, another 2 avoid or delay treatment for depression. again, people can die from depression. they can become suicidal and they can kill themselves. this is terrible. treatment for sexually transmitted diseases -- do we really want people not to get treated for those diseases because they are afraid that that information will not stay , so having an electronic record system that reveals everything that -- really causes harm to people. the harm is not just not giving treatment but the worst harm is the violation of the relationship with the doctor. when you are sick, when you are hurting, you need to be able to trust somebody. if that doctor has an electronic record system that sells your data, and many do, then what?

who do you trust? control whole to knows the most sensitive things about you -- that is a human need. that is a human right, to need to be able to decide who knows what about you. that is very important. today's electronic health system completely eliminates our ability to decide who we share things with. and who knows all about us. host: can you choose, as a physician, whether or not you will share patient information and can you choose whether or not to sell patient information? guest: to some degree. for example, some physicians have the ability to choose which electronic health record system they use. others do not if they work for a hospital, for example.

many of the major electronic health records systems cell data -- sell data. many of them, as part of their business practice, sell your data. there are others that don't. that is at least worth asking your doctor. which electronic records system do you have and doesn't sell my data? are you selling my data? you have to ask this of hospitals, two. it depends of a physician has an independent practice. they do not have to even use electronic health records. there are lots of small practitioners and concierge physicians that are sticking with paper, primarily for privacy reasons, to keep people's records private. but the government wants president- this is bush and president obama, both

share the same goal. they want each of us to have an electronic health record by this year. the problem is, most of the electronic health records that are out there to not do anything that we want and that we expect from these systems. they don't allow us or our doctors to hold back any information in violation of the law and in violation of our right to privacy. host: 202 is the area code if you'd like to talk to dr. peel. the first call for dr. peel on patient privacy rights comes from linda in texas. i have to attend the pain clinic because of several painful medical conditions. you are treated like a criminal

and your privacy is violated in at least two ways. it is vital in the making you take a urine test to prove that you're not a drug addict and that you are taking your medications. , they turn over your information to the department of public safety to make sure that you are not shopping for drugs and doctors. they do that by tying together pharmacies instead of turning it over the the department of public safety, the police force. i am very distressed by that. that is a big violation of our constitutional rights. guest: absolutely, i could not agree more. i am a psychiatrist, and adult psychiatrist, i have long worked with people with addictions. addictionalization of and people with chronic pain who made these medicines is an outrage. , in mys no reason

opinion, that law enforcement should have databases of everyone who is on a painkiller or on certain other substances and sotalin for adhd forth as well as certain sensitive hormonal medicines. in these databases that law enforcement has. it should never have worked that way. never. if anything, the information from the pharmacies, if you get a second prescription for a pain payinge, you should be the doctors that prescribe the second medicine, and both doctors should be pinged so you can get together with the doctors and figure out what the problem is. i am outraged as you are. medicinese need these for genuine medical conditions

and sometimes, if the medicine does not work, you go to a different doctor to get a prescription. many people are reluctant to say to their doctor that you prescribe something that does not work so well for me. if there is a second prescription or a second dr., the technology system could connect everyone back together. it would say this is a medical problem. why don't you work it out with these two doctors? there really is no reason for this to be sent to the criminal justice system. i think it's an outrage. it causes people to be afraid to take pain medicine and a causes doctors to be afraid to prescribe them. sorry, these are legitimate and important medicines. i am completely with you about that. the technology, again, could be redesigned. it could keep the information with the people that are actually treating you. here is a tweet --

guest: that's almost true. thes true that many of health insurance companies also sell data. blue cross clue shield sells the data -- maybe 53 million people -- they are not the only ones. yes, you are absolutely right. one of the things that we were to get into the stimulus bill -- there was a technology portion of the 2009 stimulus bill -- if you pay cash for something, some health care treatment, dr. or a medicine, the technology system is supposed to allow you to block that information from going to your health plan. the technology companies have

fought this. they say it's too expensive and we cannot do it. they have been stalling ever since 2009. they say that we cannot revamp the flow of that information. -- revamp the flow of that information. you are supposed to be able to thatevent the flow of information. in practice, systems don't allow that to happen. it is very disturbing. that is a federal right. that's a federal law. we cannot exercise because the technology companies to not want to build in patient protection. ont: we invited dr. peel after tim armstrong made this statement regarding health care costs at his company. ershave had two aol two questions -- should somebody

who is fiscally in charge of making sure that value is given shareholders, that benefits are available to the company, should that person know about distressed babies and know about extraordinary medical or should he or she not be aware of personal situations like this? guest: i believe there should be an absolute ban on employers knowing anything about employee's health, at least as much is possible. it gets difficult and small businesses but it can be done. the only thing relevant to the employer should be is the person doing the job. that's what's relevant. is doingrong of aol

this in a really bad way. all, most of your audience would be surprised to know that pretty much any employer can get your health information whether they are self-insured or not. it's available. it is sold so they can get it. that is incredibly distressing. there are better ways to do this. for example, there are companies that are self-insured like ibm, that put all kinds of firewalls between health information and management. ibm tells everyone -- they announced publicly that our company will never, ever look at your health information. and guess what, they seem to be able to manage the benefits just fine. they let another company do it and they don't look for it it's not necessary to look. the thing that tim armstrong and the rest of the ceos need to look at is what is the real cause of america's health cost?

about it for a second, it's pretty simple. it's not sick people. sick people in europe do not cost what they cost in this country. at ceos should be looking the people who are the drivers, the companies that drive these accepted health costs we have in our nation. i would suggest that probably most people saw the issue in "time magazine" from last year -- stephen brill spent a year or two looking at what is causing the high cost for american health care. he found four things -- costs, hiddenl excess of hospital costs, massively inflated drug costs, high hidden costs for freestanding surgical clinics, and the cost of lobbying for the other three issues in

washington. i'm sorry but none of those things are caused by people being sick or having a preemie baby born. they are not caused by people. the costs are caused by other corporations that have figured out ways to charge outrageous amounts of money for services that can be delivered in much more efficient and cheaper ways throughout the rest of the world. ofare being taken advantage by the health care industry. host:. is another tweet -- what is an roi form? guest: i'm not sure what she means. it usually means return on investment, doesn't it? guesthost: as far as medically?

guest: if you give a consent, you should always be able to take it back. that should be possible. it's very difficult with electronic information and particularly for what is coming statewidey state now, health information exchanges, where different health care providers in your state are going to share your information. that is very difficult to opt in or out of. in some states, you cannot opt out at all. it's a mandate that everyone's information will be exchanged. host: this is a release of information is what roi stands for. guest: oh and the reader was saying she cannot take it back? host: i think she must work in the health care field because signsys once a patient's

and electronic release of information, they cannot take it back and she was on to say that i see anything treated forever. h, in a way, that person is right. what we should have in the future is one place where we set up all the rules of how our information should be shared. words, in order to control our records, we will have to have one location where everyone that wants our information comes to check and see if they can get it. likeould set up rules anytime i am treated in the health-care system, i want a copy of that information to go a copyedical home and for myself to put my own health bank account. i want information about new medicines or allergies to be sent to all of my doctors.

in other words, you should be able to set up the rules of how you typically operate with doctors and hospitals where you let each one no the things that are we want to let you know the house is coming in momentarily for a reef pro forma session. back in onavel tuesday, february 25. have a sexually transmitted disease. we should be able to set our rules, broad and narrow, about who can see what for which situation in one place. all of the data holders should ife to check with us first what they want the information for does not fit with our rules, we could easily, with technology, the pinged and asked. dr. jones wants to see your latest let test records, is that ok?

forcould be pinged exceptions and set up rules for which research you want to donate your medical information to contribute to. example, if people in your family have diabetes, you might have a broad rule that says i am willing to have my information used for research into the causes and treatment of diabetes but not some other , but not some bone disease. if you follow me, we should be able to set up with our strong constitutional rights to control health information. we should be able to set up rules about how our data is used and we have to have it in one place. think about it -- if there is 100,000 health data suppliers and you have to give consent for

everything they do or you have to go to find different hospitals and change your forms about what can be disclosed, it's impossible to keep up. the data holders will have to turn around and come to us. we have to have the right to control this information. we have to put our control and rules in one place and everyone that wants her information should have to come to us. call is dave in kingman, arizona. caller: how are you doing? three things real fast -- i apologize, we have moved on any to get to your question. i agree with you, dr., for the most part as far as information availability.

i disagree on any medication, any and all medication prescribed by any doctor anywhere. by anyld be seeable doctor. in a psychiatric situation and giving them an upper or down or, because a doctor breaks a bone, they might give them pain medication. then they may get treated by -- diabetes.r host: i think the dr. gets your point. guest: that's important. the reason you should control your prescription records is there are lots of doctors that discriminate against people because they see that they have a medicine for maybe depression. or that they are taking a medicine for addiction.

the doctors to tell us which of our medicines have conflicts. if we have our own complete list of medications, why couldn't we have an app that tells us which medicines might not work together well? why couldn't we know for ourselves and learn for ourselves which medicines might not work together? it's ridiculous. , aredoctors, as you know not even familiar with all of the drug interactions. it is very complicated. there is no reason, if we have our medicine that we cannot find that out ourselves and let doctors now. here is what has happened throughout my career where people were taking sensitive medication. the vast majority of my patients did not want other doctors to know. this is because doctors, like a

lot of the public, really have strong feelings about people ith mental illness addiction or child abuse and the get very nervous and they do not listen to them. i don't treat them as well for their medical condition. people with heart disease -- i am treating you for depression, this is something that is important for your cardiologist to know. sometimes antidepressants can conflict with cardiac medication. really can patients have that knowledge. we don't need to wait for doctors to tell us how medicines work. the information is out there and the technology and the applications for figuring out drug conflicts -- we can look at that ourselves if we have our own information. after all, who cares the most aret whether your medicine

contraindicated or don't work together or might hurt you? who cares the most about your health? i think it's you and me. guest: armand from atlanta, go ahead. glad you are able to be on here today and i appreciate you taking my call. issues. lot of i fell off a two-story shed in a warehouse and it did damage to my mac. it causes me migraine headaches. myfeels like somebody shot rain out of my head with a gun. when i talk about this to these pain doctors, they think i am suicidal and i explained that i am not suicidal. i am only there to get the pain medicine that i need. i don't ask for the shots but they refused to give me the medicine if that -- if i don't

take all the medicine they offer. i don't think it's fair they do that. some of this is because of the other doctors i have had seen. they have given the shots on the don't work and they give me the pain medicine. i know how to take my pain medicine. host: thank you very much. it's true, it's very treat chronic pain. sometimes the doctors are not flexible. there are lots of different ways to treat comic pain -- chronic pain. you need to be offered more than shots or pills. there is also various kinds of yoga, thererapy, are all kinds of other methods to begin to try to bring down the pain. it is really a tough

problem. you should have access to a of different kinds of treatment and not be dictated to. host: there is another tweet -- guest: absolutely. peopleow, millions of have access to our records. let me give you a very specific example. i think thesnowden analogy is very apt. it is really a tough in a typical hospital like here in austin, the population is about 2 million people. we have two major hospitals. maybe three. we have a public hospital, a catholic hospital, and then we have a hospital corporation of america hospital. records on most of the 2 million and all of them 5-7000aff, at least

doctors and nurses and everyone of them can see the records of all 2 million people in this area. these are just hospital employees. this does not include insurance notany employees, this does include electronic health records company employees. i also need to tell everyone that a hospital has between 150- 650 different kinds of software that work with your health information. each one of those companies may have the right to use or sell your information. it depends with some the contract. probably millions s who could share millions of records and when we read about reaches of personal information, the most common reaches in this country, the

highest frequency, are breaches of health information because it is exposed and stalin because it is so valuable and has your financial information. it's not a good system. jean is calling from dublin, virginia. go ahead. caller: everything you have been saying about privacy and data i agree with but there is one major flaw in all of this. allowedbalization has sovereignty to become a firewall for these companies. when data has been moved to other countries beyond u.s. sovereignty, there is really nothing you can do about it. guest: that's certainly true about the cloud. sorry, weet, -- i'm would be safer if our data was in europe or in some places in canada.

they have much tougher laws that do not permit companies to even collect your data without your consent. there are other countries that have way tougher privacy laws in line with what americans expect. arkansas, good, morning. what about when somebody goes into the emergency room - [inaudible] drug andt give him a he might be on another drug they don't know about. [inaudible] as a psychiatrist, how do you feel about if you had a cocaine addict as a patient?

guest: that's a great question. example of being unconscious in an emergency room and all your records have to be opened -- as a physician, i ran an emergency room and i guarantee you if you are unconscious in an emergency room, we will pick your pockets and call your mother, we will call anyone we can to get any information about you to save your life. the highest duty of a physician is to save a life. privacy gets pushed aside in that case. but one of the things that is important to understand about somebody unconscious in the emergency room is we should not built a system where everyone's records are open all the time to everyone except to us. . for that rare one and one million cases where you are

unconscious, what we need are systems that work for us so that we can protect our information and selectively share it routinely. that is what most of medicine is about. it is about routine visits that are scheduled where we are awake and conscious and we can decide to share. that is the kind of technology we should have that let each of us make the choices about what is shared. the other thing about the emergency situation is i guarantee you that if you come in their unconscious with no records, we have a protocol. breathe, cardiac -- we know what to do to evaluate how to keep you alive long enough to figure out what is going on. it's very possible when you come in unconscious that you have something that is new that is not in your old records. people forget that records are not everything because your health changes and particularly,

there are emergencies. there are new conditions that emerge. they are obviously not in your old records. that's the point of getting trained in medicine that you diagnose and try to understand things that you don't have all the information about yet. peel is a graduate of the university of texas and the medical rants at galveston. krupa tweets - -i'm a little confused. host: you referred to the fact that medical costs are not

because of sick people necessarily. that aaying it's true few of the people in a plan use most of the benefits. yeah, of, well , course -- some of us are sicker than others but it's not sick people that are causing the excessive costs in this country. i'm sorry, it's the people charging us these excessive rates that are far beyond any other country and the rest of the world. amazing hidden monopolies. the health care industry uses our data in ways that we don't even know because we cannot even get it. we cannot even get our electronic health records which we are supposed to have a right to get since 2001. imagine if we could get our all of and could pool our different treatments from different hospitals and doctors.

we are the only ones that would want to use health information so that we could get apples to apples or head to head comparisons. a cost from a hospital. a hospital will have 20 or arty or 50 different costs for the same thing depending on which health plan you are him. we don't actually even know what the costs are much less the quality. who cares about that? i think it's us. i think it's the parents. i think it's the moms in the dads and the people who are trying to keep their children and their families and their mothers and fathers healthy. i think it is us. we are the citizens who care about what this really costs and where the money is going why the costs are skyhigh.

when these industries are making so much money, we have got to take the lid off >> next we will leave c-span here on c-spanu and take you to the korean-american briefing. we have it live now on c-span. holding degrees from the university of chicago, he is current policy director on a nonpartisan group that engages the publickers and importance of u.s. global leadership on various issues. he assisted with a congressman affairs,ng on foreign

homeland security, and legislative assistance. thelso reported on technology, politics, and law and business. he has also published articles in periodicals such as "the weekly standard." issues ono discussed -span's "washington journal," cctv, public radio, and other national media. he also served on the project with nuclear initiative. experience will add much value to the next topic, which is to look on to the relationship of the u.s., china, and japan. these welcome our guest.

>> good afternoon, and happy valentine's day to you all. i cannot think of a better way to spend my afternoon than talking about u.s.-korean alliance issues and talking about asia in general. i would like to thank the institute for korean american can studies for hosting this event, in promoting educational dialogue, and issues affecting asia and the pacific more generally. i would like to thank dr. kim and dr. maxwell and others for being here today. when i am about to say is not all, and about age, that experience and knowledge, and these gentlemen have forgotten

more about these issues than most of us will ever know. thank you very much for being here. no amount of humility, because i look forward to the discussion where i will learn much from you all, and i will have -- the title of my beijing, tokyo, washington relations, is the east china sea and the south china sea boiling up? i am not is yes, but done yet. there is more to say. my recent trips to the region in the last few months, i have had the pleasure to travel to local abeokyo to meet with administration officials and also to oconomowoc and had a chance to go to type a. -- taipei.

i also had to dialogue with russell's, with the european -- with brussels, with european think tankers, also with the china mission there, and i am glad to say we have a person here from the chinese and the city. -- embassy. will truck about the track 1.5 level for u.s. opportunities for progress in nuclear weapons issues. , they tell me that the south china sea is boiling up. the question is, yes, but how hot of a oil will we see -- of a boil will we see? when it simmer, or boil over leading to the erect forms

-- direct forms of conflict? the answer to that question was how much more it will oil up is not clear, and it will depend on the interaction of decisions, not only by the united states on japan and china, but also decisions of others in the region. i speak of the southeast asian claimants to a lot of those territorial maritime disputes in the south china sea, also a decision from taiwan. i am also here to say that south korea has an important stake in how this all turns out. i was in a conference some time ago in which an interlocutor who was not from the korean government, but was trying to express a korean point of view about regional issues, and there that in increasing

competition we are seeing between the united states and that there is a tendency to think that south korea is not an important player in that. i think it is because if tensions do boil over and reaching melting point, that america'st not only ability to focus on the important aspects of the u.s.-south korea relationship, but it could also lead to a larger regional conflagration. i worry about this because we have seen in recent weeks and months a lot of repeated rhetoric. i do not think this is going away. what has happened recently? why is the temperature in the east china sea and the south china sea getting hotter? i think you could look at a couple things. obviously,ably most

in november 2013 there was a conversation in the east china sea. air defenseed an zone in the east china sea, and that led to a variety of reactions from the united and south korea. they were over islands in japante, but yo administratively controls. while initially there were worries that this could flame over into something more down, but itid die left a lingering bad aftertaste from that. next in december 2013, there was anear collision between guided missile destroyer from the u.s. and a chinese warship. anwas operating with

aircraft carrier, and the cowpens, which was on a normal mission, ended up in what is called a game of chicken with the chinese warship. cowpens took evasive action to avoid a collision. bringme of you this will to mind the issues, the conflict that arose in 2001 after a u.s. surveillance plane in that -- and a chinese fighter collided, leading to a very troubling set of interactions. in january 2014, a news report suggested china's leadership is airining the option of an defense zone in the south china sea. the united states has responded in a public manner. recently testified

on the hill and told aggression there are growing concerns that this pattern of behavior in the south china sea to and effort by china assert control. despite objections of its neighbors and the lack of any explanation or basis under law regarding the scope of the claim. here are russell was referring to the fact that the claimants are at least somewhat outside international law. secretary russell also added that china had created great uncertainty and instability in the region and urged china to clarify and adjust its claim to bring it in accordance with the international law of the sea. a senior director for asian affairs in the white to theissued a statement

japanese press about the possibility of china declaring aegis in the south china sea. he said we have been clear with the chinese that we see the establishment of a new zone in the south china sea as a provocative element -- to vomit and will result in a change of posture in the region. at the same time there are despite these sort of trend lines which point to growing tensions, or something worse, there are other data points. i will cite one here. fora recently participated the first time in observer-plus status in an exercise in 2014 off thailand. 17 or 20 or so troops who purchase abated as

part of a humanitarian civic assistance team. thinking of the broader scope of what is going on, there are opportunities here for conflict. growing orome glimmering here and there for opportunities for cooperation. how will this work out? it is prudent to worry because as i have traveled throughout the region and passed all my interlocutors in all these countries, how they see these issues, the general consensus i heard his matters in the east china sea, south china sea, and likelyindia-pacific are to get worse before better. the question is how much worse? here i think it is helpful to have a discussion about the ofger views coming out

beijing and tokyo and washington regarding how they see themselves vis a vis the region. here i will speak about the u.s. rebalance to asia, what i heard from my asian interlocutors about what they see happening, rhetoric versus reality. xi'sl also speak about chinese dream. also last about what japan is doing in terms of its security terms, anti-altogether in of what the united states ought to be trying to do in the future. wasrebalance to asia formerly or and sometimes called the pivot to asia, announced in late 2011. president obama had a high-profile speech on australia or he talked about his goal to work with allies and partners in to promote security,

prosperity, and human dignity. now, as time has gone on, there has been a growing perception that the rebalance is a code word for containment strategy against china. mike personal view, that's my personal view, while security and the so-called islands of power does fit into it, most of the rebalance has little to do with china and a lot of it has to do with the sorts of things we ought to do with our allies and partners. intentions of any from regional competitors -- making sure that we work to grow and share a sense of regional .hi also to find ways to integrate

further, economically. continue the transpacific partnership. i've heard the message from the administration that they hoped to conclude negotiations for that agreement by the end of last year. that did not happen. i think the timeline for this important agreement has been pushed to the right. my hope is that we will see an agreement among the 12 nations this year. while the congressional calendar makes unlikely that it would be considered this year, it will have to be considered along with a controversial bill related to the president's trade partnership. that is an essential part of the rebalance. there are other aspects and term of our economic and trade policies we should be looking at. there are other partners in the region, such as indonesia and the stagnating economic relationship with india.

that also needs to be cultivated. , in terms of the rebalance, there is a lot of rhetoric about the united states returning to asia. i think some people are a bit alarmed by this idea that a pivotal rebalance back to asia -- the united states ever laugh. o aree getting issues to the budgetary issues that the united states is facing in terms of sequestration and indiscriminate cuts mandated by law trade when you take the prior cuts -- mandated by law. you take the prior cuts, that is real money. given the dynamic security environment in asia, this could have serious applications for u.s. strategy. -- serious complications for u.s. strategy. from the rebalance to the it is described

in these elements. national rejuvenation, improvement of people's lives, prosperity, construction of a better society and military strengthening. it is that last aspect that has region some in the because if you look at the source of things that the chinese military is doing, a lot are aimed at honoring capabilities that united states has in terms of denying access and the sorts of things. in addition, nuclear proliferation. there are concerns about how the chinese nuclear arsenal will balk. to some extent, what it is doing probably are natural and understandable. moving from liquid fuel to solid fuel missiles.

these are probably reasonable modernization thanks. what has worried people most about china's nuclear modernization efforts is a lack of capacity and transparency. there is a perception here in washington in terms of deterrent, the west tends to think about the currents and t deterrence and arm control. potential aggressors will understand and make better decisions there is a wide . their strong evidence that the chinese tend to view opacity. trading uncertainty -- given isre their arsenal was --

better rather than transparency. as part of the commission i was on, one of our hopes at some point was that the united states and china can move towards i call an informal approach to arms control. the idea here is that at some point in the future, the chinese could come and watch these inspections and see how they are done and to do informal things that could perhaps lead to growing for disability in the strategic relationship. if it is informal, these aspects are a long way to go. grows, it power returns to being a great power. it is naturally going to cause a lot of friction. we are seeing that friction today in the east china sea and

the south china sea. we may see even more the south china sea if the news reports are correct. japan's security policy. since comingister back to office has undertaken a broad agenda to reframe not just japan's views on security but also its bilateral relationship with the united states and its role given the region. the phrase you often hear is that they want to be a "proactive contributor to peace." as part of their agenda, some of the key aspects here are establishing a national security council, which they did last year. achi san is the head of it. they have adopted a national strategy first. in addition, japan has been

reviewing the guidelines and reconsidering the legal basis for some of its security efforts, including how it thinks about exercising the right to collective self-defense. or an allied ship were to come under attack, currently, under japanese legality, they could get involved that they were attacked. because self-defense is strictly about the fence itself, they would face the old is being involved. whereas if they are able to move and clarify collective self-defense, they can also come to the sense of allies -- come to the defense of allies. in addition, japan is also looking at participating and other u.n. click of security measures. elicited various

reactions. i've seen japanese officials -- they have tried to explain it. there is a reflexive tendency to see any effort that japan takes as movinglarger role towards militarism. there are strains of militarism within japan. big sleeper, they are trying to do it in a legal and transparent way. deeper, they're trying to do it in a legal and transparent way. here with america's rebalance and china's chinese dream -- it's great power growth towards playing a

larger role. trajectory which could lead to collision and conflict. whathe question here is, can be done to tamp down on some of these regional tensions to make sure that the sea does not boil up? to make sure that to the extent possible that as china grows and becomes more of a great power, as japan moves in its trajectory that we don't find ourselves in a military conflict. processes here. i will speak for the west side. -- i will speak for the u.s. side.

the japanese are an independent variable in all this. their decisions, whether they ecide to be more confrontational -- my guess is they are challenging military control in the sea -- my worry is that, i hope the chinese are thinking that through and where that could lead to. i worry that sometimes the americans and others always don't -- don't always think through these issues. we have a strong posture and react to these things. where that leads -- the issues of escalation -- lots of good work has been done on that. especially at the political level, make sure that members of congress are educated about that. right how is ay mismatch between strategy and resources. in terms of strategy, i speak not only of military strategy

but broadly of grand strategy, which is combining all elements of national power. i will start with military. after the 2012, so-called budget control act of $450which cut 45 billion, obama released strategic guidelines for 2012, which sought to reframe how we think about strategy and to match it with budgets to resource this strategy. year 13 budget, which ignored the possibility of ure sequestration was the minimum amount to resource the strategy of 2012. if you had made further cuts to

this defense spending, you would from secretary gates and others. we would to go back to the drawing board. we are making further cuts to this defense trajectory. while congress and ryan was able -- while congressman ryan was , in to patch the sequester fiscal year 15, they reversed $30 billion out of $100 billion to the cuts in those two years. to ais a band-aid gaping fiscal wound. it will continue until 2021. , we saw that year the united states was able to deal with some of these fiscal pressures on the military by using unobligated balances. money that they had not yet obligated to be spent. that was able to provide a to thesebridge

indiscriminate fiscal year 2013 cuts. what we saw was mainly an impact on military readiness, the repair fairness of our troops -- therations preparedness of our troops for operations. in future years, if these sequestration level cuts roughly $50 we see billion on top of the $50 ,illion we are cutting annually we are going to start seeing which feedmpacts directly into the growing tension in the south china sea. there is military competition in asia. the competition is not a bad thing per se. peacetime competition -- it never turned into an all-out world war. peaceful competition if done

right and we are able to channel to our competitive advantages can be a good thing and a good way to displace actual military conflict. ry aboute is a wor where our resources are going to. this is a competition which we will have a hard time competing in. in the coming months, there will be renewed discussion about this question of whether the united states can match it strategy and resources. not only globally, but most poorly, any station. we will see that with the defense review which was due this month but is being pushed back. it remains to see what form it will take place. in addition, there'll be a major review every five years. month, we to the

fiscal year 2015 budget -- we will see the fiscal year 2015 budget and how the obama ministration plans to handle these cuts to the fence -- administration plans to handle these cuts to the defense. future debates about the of the u.s. national defense and what the united states will try to do. debate overhe strategy and resources, there are very important opportunities various u.s.on alliances, both bilateral and how to move towards more trilateral or to move away what spokef called a hub and model in which the united states is at the center of everything the model in which the united empower its to allies and partners to stand

shoulder to shoulder on some of these security issues. the key aspect here is conveying are seen -- alliances as dependency things. because the united states is a great power and a relative military superpower, they often hear the rhetoric -- i often hear the rhetoric, others are wr free riding off u.s. security. the case of this in japan and korea -- they are attempting to play larger roles in these alliances. that is a welcome thing. this helps to convey to the republic of korea the importance of making sure that they also look beyond their traditional portfolio concerns. aboutevious speaker spoke

this to some extent about the and a betterth relationship at the political levels between japan and south korea. senator rubio said it bluntly. he said the united states needs japan and south korea to work together. that is something i would repeatedly here. inould ask our interlocutors various governments, what are your thoughts about japan and south korea relations? if they can find a way to really cooperate at higher levels, that would be great. at lower levels, military youlligence levels, do see cooperation on issues. even the difficulties with history and the like, it is complicated. here, this is a place where the

united states need to be creative and needs to find ways -- this is something i look ofward to discussing -- ways bringing these two countries to find ways to create building blocks towards greater trilateral relations between the two bilateral nations. the fact thatto the united states becomes deeply involved in the east china sea or south china sea issues -- if they boil over, and could turn into an all-out fire. this will detract from the u.s.- korean relationship. this is why south korea needs to think about its equities and how -- the role they can play. i will close by saying, i have often heard analysts talk about resembles 1914

with the seeds of larger conflict. i hear the analogy of pre-world war ii. i think analogies of our instructive in the sense that they can help sharpen thinking. but if all we do is focus on the analogies themselves, we forget the fact that analogies are inherently imperfect. the region also presents an entirely new, generous challenges. it is far from certain that we are going to see a repeat of an asian 1914. oft will require a mixture candor about the problems we see and when countries cause a problem and proper nouns. it is also going to require a lot of hard choices, not only among our allies and partners, but in the united states to ensure that whatever

strategy we choose is adequately resourced and that the rhetoric of this rebalance is analyzed. thank you very much. [applause] >> i open the floor. you also mentioned -- very nice presentation, by the way -- you mentioned the concept of candor. it is very important that we have transparency and speak honestly about these things. that are two myths prevalent that need to be examined. perpetuated by china that it does not desire to push the united states out of asia. the second myth is perpetuated by the united states. the u.s. does not intend to contain china. both are not true.

china clearly wants the united states out of the way, certainly in the taiwan strait. they have said that we should mind our business. they have an entire military doctrine of area denial and end anti-access with missiles designed to do that. keep the u.s. away from the area that china believes is its own domain. they want us out. for 40 years, we engaged in a policy of engagement where we toked to incur it china enter the international community to develop economic ally and produce prosperity that has resulted in hundreds of millions of chinese being brought out of poverty. those are wonderful policies that the chinese government has pursued. when the military started to develop these capacities and

when their rhetoric demonstrated that there is a problem there, we did turn to what can be a containment policy. containot trying to china's economic involvement. we see that as a benefit to the region and the nine states. states.nited we do perceive a potential military threat that needs to be contained. a pivot or rebalancing is clearly related to that. there are other concerns as well. there is a growing perception of a chinese threat. some more honestly and talking about that -- honesty and talking about that, the better it will be. guest: thank you. >> first, a quick comment about the defense budget. figure thatfy one

you gave. the $450 billion in defense cuts , needs to be clarified. that is over a ten-year. period.ear you're talking about cuts that are actually not cuts. they are restraints on future projected defense spending. i'm a bit more cynical about the the terrible effects that this is going to have on our military and our readiness. if this is the case, why did eight 2% cut in pensions?etirees

and yet, this was unacceptable ese retirement benefits by 2%. senator coburn put out a report in which he identified nearly $80 billion in programs that have really nothing to do with military security or national defense. such as the pentagon's programs to do research in colon cancer. nih is supposed to do that kind of research. frankly, i'm going to mention which is f 35 program, a big program for the air force. it is a program which has involved $160 billion in cost

overruns. program thate lockheed has imposed on the pentagon and the pentagon has meekly accepted from lockheed. there is a lot that the pentagon these to absorb reductions in increases brought without sequesters really affecting very much the readiness of the u.s. armed forces. problems that mr. last you touched on. on the area of defense identification zone that china has imposed which has gotten a lot of attention, other

countries, including the united aires, have long had defense identification zones. we have those off our east coast and even worn portly, off our west coast. importantly, off our west coast. rights and the powers that other countries claim to be able to exercise dic's,h their own a compared to what the u.s. says it can do, in terms of operating its military forces and its adic , what new military activities affecting the immediate area -- can china now

begin to carry out for based on much can china expand its military exercises now that it has re proclaimed an adiz? you brought up the settlements of these maritime disputes. has argued for a number of years that the issue with china is not a dispute. on the basis of that argument, japan has rejected proposals that it proposed to china that this dispute be taken to the international court of justice. ironically, japan has proposed

doing exactly that with regard the takashima dispute with south korea. does this refusal to consider dispute to the icj -- does this rejection on the part of japan strengthen its diplomacy on this issue or does it weaken it? thirdly, and this is something i've talked about two south korean audiences -- if you look at the rising tensions around , is there any real potential for the future,

years, at five, 15, 20 is there any potential that the dispute with south korea over takashima could grow into this situationry dangerous between south korea and japan that we now see between japan and china? is there any real potential for that to happen between south ?orea and japan echo > >> thank you. of whate first question china is able to do militarily in terms of operations as opposed to what it could not before -- my understanding is that the larger concern is -- first, how this aid has been announced compared to others.

sea,ng at the east china adiz, taiwan claims to have an adiz -- they overlap. typically, the way a lot of typically a lot of the way this operates, you notify the controllers. with the east zone was it went far beyond that in terms of traffic passing through. younderstanding is when plan on landing. correct me if i i am wrong,