and we can't do it at the moment. i think that is a shame. revolution.ct a i think it is important not to oversell these things. i was in the clinton administration at the time of nasa. i think it is a good thing. the president was courageous in supporting it. they needed a lot of republican votes to get it passed. i also think we oversold. the cabinets fanned out and said this is the greatest thing since whenever. it is very dangerous to do that. i think it has been a success but a modest success. >> one more question you go >>

-- one more question? >> i am a principal. are at that stage of social security and we talked to a lot of people. it seems like there are ways to maneuver the system to get more and more if you do it right, which doesn't sound right. there is actually a book written on ways to make more money on this. todoesn't just come right me. i want to do the best thing that i don't want to do something that is going to hurt others. >> i just had a granddaughter graduate. you can design any system whether it is the tax system or medicare or whatever it is that

somebody isn't going to write a book on how to gain the system. they probably will make money on it. very careful when you are drafting things so there aren't loopholes that people can sneak through and get the money they aren't entitled to. stick with the big picture. social security is an extremely successful program. it keeps millions of older people out of poverty and it keeps their children from having to support grant the. my children are probably grateful for that. it's a very good system, it is well-designed. you have to adjust it a little. i would do a particular set of tweaks. some of which would be slightly

lower benefits for people like me who don't really need them. i wouldn't take them away because we need to have a stake in the system. comp level benefits could be a little less. we can actually make the system a little more generous at the bottom. thewe can fix the way indexing was done. the president was right about that. i think it wasn't sensible to just throw it up there out of the context of a total social security reform. >> thank you so much. >> the problem is that many of these bacterial or infectious diseases are actually becoming resistant to the most important

antibiotics. examples in the which they are trained. strains, which are completely, absolutely persistent to the most important antibiotics. other problem is there's not enough interest to develop antibiotics. this situation is slowly changing but i don't think we are there. we need to make this a global dealt to establish a great of collaboration between the developed world and the developing world, where many of these decisions are endemic -- where many of these diseases are endemic. onfuture of health care c-span's q&a. also tonight, rand paul on government surveillance.

he spoke at the university of california in berkeley. here are some of what he had to say. nothey say they are listening to their phone calls. maybe they are, maybe they aren't. last week we found out that the cia it legally searched senate computers. i am feinstein is in charge of the committee. she gave a big speech on the floor, saying they are illegally taking our work product, looking at our computers, and now they have taken stuff off of the computers we thought could have been information for the american people. that going tofind fight them on this. she is from another party, i immediately went up and said, great speech. i don't see this as a partisan issue. i hope she will stand up, not let the cia push her around, not let the nsa push her around. i am going to fight them on this. no one should be allowed to invade your privacy. that is why i am announcing that when i return to washington i will push for a select committee

. it should be bipartisan, independent, and wide reaching. it should have full power to investigate those who spy on us in the name of protecting us. it should watch the watchers. calexico more from senator paul tonight at 9:30 eastern. -- >> more from senator ron paul -- senator rand paul at 9:35 eastern. galston talking about u.s. intervention around the world. and then the fiscal reporter from the new york times will talk about which state exchanges are doing well and not so well and the results of the final weeks of this year's sign up.

and the process and the cost of shutting down military basis in light of the new round of closings recommended by the defense secretary. we will also look for your calls, tweets, and facebook comments, live at 7 a.m. eastern on c-span. markup of the 1988 satellite home viewer act, set to expire in 2014. it aims to make broadband available to underserved areas around the country and 1.5 million households will lose access to broadband content without congressional reauthorization. you can watch the markup on c-span three. more on the u.s. economy, the republican party, and russia with former senate committee atlanticd gray at the -- judd gregg at the atlantic council. the honorable judd gregg, former governor of new hampshire as well as former chairman of the u.s. senate and budget committee. he will speak with michael

hirsch, who is a national correspondent from "the national journal." please welcome them. [applause] >> you have been known for a long time as a master of the numbers. >> i think you just had the master of the numbers here. >> the other part of the capital, the hill part. these people have been getting numbers all day long. i want to start out with a purely political question. wrotee one of those who last september that the republican party was in danger

of failing abysmally because of what you call the self-promotional babble of a few in and forcing the government shutdown. we have now been through that and it appears the came toof the party share your view to some extent in terms of resolving those issues, the effort to defund obamacare and hold the government hostage. i would like to get your assessment of where you think party is now as we head into these november elections. restored?alance and >> that's a great question. let me thank the atlantic for this opportunity. here.ice to be your question is very current.

to a time ingoing the wilderness. i compare it to the democratic party in the early 70's, when the party lurched to the left with the government nomination and then spent 10 years trying to get back and was let back by the democratic leadership council and then by president clinton and al gore and others. we unfortunately have allowed what i call the shouters to take the playing field and dominate the playing field. when you have two national parties, you don't want to have a multiparty system in a country our size because people go to our corners and never leave. a national party must be a big tent. in thefirst step

madisonian form of government, which is the checks and balances of government, which demands compromise, demands that people govern by reaching agreement across the aisle. the way you reach that agreement is start with the parties gathering everybody under their philosophiesasic and that filters up and then becomes the framework for people going across the aisle when big issues, long under the leadership of the president at the national level. our party, unfortunately, allowed too many people who had no interest in governing but basically had an interest in promoting themselves and their ability to raise money to take center stage, and to dominate. i served in senate leadership for 16 years.

never take a hostage you can't shoot. you cannot shoot the debt ceiling or continuing the resolution -- continuing resolution. i think now that we have been through that exercise, and those folks basically have been shown to be more concerned with their own personal grave, their own personal reputation, and raising a lot of money, have shown to be ineffective in their ability to lead the party. the party has got its act together and it understands if it is going to communicate with the american people it is going to have to show it can govern. i congratulate the speaker of the house for this. clearly mitch mcconnell understands this and has been

pushing this approach. i do believe we are starting to see a party that is getting back to the realistic need to govern as opposed to just simply shouting from the corners. where does this translate to politically? i happen to think if not the spring, then certainly in the next congress, which i suspect may have a republican senate, the republican party is going to ane to govern by reaching agreement. the first is immigration. third, potentially tax reform. >> what changes the political dynamics? let's assume it does yield a

republican senate as the house. is the tea party on the run? i think ted cruz would disagree with your assessment that he is about to leave the stage. >> i don't think that state -- that segment of our party should leave the sage -- leave the state. i think those folks that understand that you cannot speak to the american people unless you explain to them how you intend to do something positive, you cannot always be fostering the negative. at some point you have to be fostering yourself on the positive on core issues that affect everyday americans and everyday lives. i think those folks are going to take the basic plea and the dominant role. i see three issues were you have opportunity to have that type of consensus reached. up yourt have to give philosophical beliefs to reach an agreement with the other side of the aisle. -- can reach agreements off

agreement across the aisle. there is a lot of identity of interest in our nation, most of which comes down to people having a prosperous life and passing a better life onto their kids. >> let's talk about that fertile ground you spoke to. you recently said you saw a few lights at the end of the tunnel that were not trained. he cited ron wyden has taken over the senate finance committee as opening the door to dynamic scoring. thecited a tax reform plan republican congress and dave camp has put forward. see you still think those are all realistic? ground has shifted and wyden has gone back on what he has said.

head,is now wearing his raising questions about whether we want to pare down the defense budget. address those thoughts. all three. dynamic scoring is dangerous ground to step on. i always defended the right to be rational, which they are. there is no relationship to common sense or what the practical effects of doing something are the people's reaction to the economy. in tax policy, some things are very obvious. one of which is if you ask people to invest or you tell people you created a tax law to invest with the purposes of avoiding tax as their primary goal, or you tell people to invest with the purpose of getting a better return on their money as the primary goal, you are going to get a better and stronger economy generating more revenues if you have people moving in the direction of

investing for return versus tax. that is basically the ron wyden view of the world. have at that you progressive and conservative viewing things in this context and a of people of those it , that isthose ilk's good news. on some level it is going to have to acknowledge that. important because you can't to a grand bargain on the budget. you can't even do a mini grand bargain on the budget unless you fundamentally reform our tax laws, eliminate the laws and exemptions, and to generate some revenues along the line. camp's tax bill is a starting point. but it is a good starting point. he steps on everybody's toes. was on the ways and means

committee in 86, when this was done between president reagan and officer witkowski. it started with bill bradley and jack kemp. it took a while to the bulk -- a while to bubble to the surface. they were talking about major tax reform until 83. we are further down the starting point than usual because you have the chairman of the committee and you have ron wyden as the chairman of finance, who is putting forward his proposal. the opportunity is there. and itld be taken requires presidential leadership. president obama wants to have a legacy reforming tax law. the third issue of defense spending, he didn't propose cutting significantly -- he

proposed cutting the funding of it. what are the threats and how do you respond to them? i cited eisenhower's great farewell speech, where he said the greatest threat to national defense is industrial complex. what secretary hagel proposed, and i disagree with some significant parts of it, the concept is the main emphasis should be on the threat. threat to us is a terrorist using a weapon of mass destruction against us. you have to find them in a way we find another nation. that requires massive intelligence gathering capability.

find him you have to have the ability to deliver lethal force to them. that require certain types of military structure, specifically task forces. does russia and crimea change this formula? are we going to fight a land war in europe? we are not going to engage militarily with the russians on the issue of crime area. the story of crime era goes back to peter the great. i just don't think -- i think what secretary hagel has done is opened a discussion on how you approach defense spending in the post-cold war period that has not occurred and should have accord -- should have occurred post 9/11. >> i do want to stay on the ukraine, but what should obama have done? >> he should have gotten the

european union and use what we have, which is considerable leverage over the european union, to aggressively a search sanctions. i think there should have been a no holds bar sanctions. the european nations are concerned about their gas supplies, but make it clear to them that they can be concerned about their gas supplies or be concerned about our friendship and we have much more leverage than the russians have in bringing them together to a certain -- what i think should have been very aggressive sanctions. sanctioning 20 people? that's like sanctioning the board of aldermen in chicago. it's absurd. it's embarrassing and i think it was the wrong approach. >> that to the budget, it seems to me that the last time there was a remotely reasonable discussion in this town was the

simpson bowles commission report december 2010, early 2011, and you approved the work. obama did not really embrace it perhaps enough. design your perfect adjective a one that would be both post to ideal but at the same time passable by both parties in a sort of bipartisan way that you have proposed. give us the key elements you think would work to address all of these issues -- slow growth, debt deficit, -- >> the irony of the simpson bowles emission is that both hearties in the senate but their most aggressive fiscal people on it, the three most fiscally conservative republican senators were on it. and we still reached an agreement, which shows it can be done. from 20,000 feet, you don't want short-term austerity.

you don't need it. it would slow the economy. what you want is a glide path that shows in the second and third decades you have been the curve of spending so you got your debt to gdp ratio something lower than 70%. are judged to gdp ratio as a nation up until 2008 was about 35%, a very strong position. it jumped, doubled in four years by 2012 and it was at 60%. now it is at 74%, heading to 100%. to put that in context, hide it -- high debt to gdp ratio, there are only five countries that have worse than we have. one is japan who can self finance because they save so much so it is not a big issue for them. the second is iceland, which has gone bankrupt. the third is greece, which has gone bankrupt. the fourth is italy, which nobody knows what it is an because nobody knows how it keeps its oaks but we are pretty

sure it is bankrupt. the fifth is ireland and then comes the united states. so all the countries in front of us have fallen except for japan i'm a which has a unique situation of massive domestic savings. we are on the wrong path. we have breathing room because we are the currency of the world and the world looks at us and says, you know, the united states solve its rob lowe's. and -- solve its problems. and we do. at some point, someone will wake up and say, i just let the united states $100. 10 years from now, they will not be able to pay me $100 back. someone will have to spike their interest rate significant way. that will come. you can't get around that if we continue to borrow money that we cannot pay back without inflating our currency. i think simpson bowles put the template down. i think you need to give credit for what has been done so far. think of it as a three legged stool that you address the deficit issue with.

one leg is discretionary spending. the entire discretionary side has been done. $900 billion of savings in the 2011 agreement. $2 trillion in the sequester, assuming it holds. revenues have been raised $600 billion. that is a big number. it was done incorrectly. it should have been done through tax reform. what is left on the table to do? entitlements and there are only three accounts account. medicare, medicaid, and social security. the united states has historically spent 20% of gdp. and they are still going up because of this massive

demographic shift. they are all related to aging. we are going from 35 million to 75 million retired persons. that system does not work. we have to adjust our entire entitlement programs. not in any draconian or dramatic way that affects resident recipients. 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, you have done the cost curve. simpson bowles suggested raising the retirement rate by two years but we took 60 years to do it so it did not affect anybody over the age of 15. we can handle that as a country. and they president suggested changing the way we captivate cpi and the house did not take it.

that was the best offer on the table for fiscal responsibility so far. so there are ways to do this. >> and these are all feasible with the new politics? >> no. unfortunatly, i don't see a grand bargain coming down the street and i don't see a mini grand bargain coming down the street. i see bits and pieces. medicare will be adjusted a way, moving toward an out-based system. but will it be done by some grand scheme? no. >> i want to open it up to questions. but one last point. i wanted to ask you about financial reform. you spent five months in the financial industry lobby. what is your assessment of where we are now? do you think the to be to fail problem has been solved or not? we haven't heard from you in several years on this issue.

>> dodd-frank has not accomplished its goals in the sense that it was supposed to stabilize the banking system in a way that allowed more liquidity in the marketplace. it is doing just the opposite. it is contracting liquidity and lending and pushing and a lot of activity into off-balance sheets, nonregulated entities. has itself to be to fail? i think it probably has. capital requirements are very stiff and good. really, you did not need dodd-frank, which has produced

20 million words and we have a new regulation every 2.6 days or something. and we are only 40% of the way through it. what you needed was tough capital requirements and that would have solved the problem. to a great extent. the problem that created the -- the issues that created the problem in 2008 were failure of underwriting, securitization, and as a result of that, lack of capital behind those two activities. volcker am a one thousand page proposal from an idea that makes sense in concept but cannot be executed in practice. it is almost impossible to separate market-making from the structure of how a bank works in a way that will be clear enough

so that you don't end up with massive regulatory oversight which kills the market for market-making. one of the great american advantages is, which is unique to our nation, is that, if you are a person who has a good idea and you go out and you take a risk and you start to grow that idea and hire people and create economic activity, a whole bunch of people will come along behind you and be willing to give you money to do it. it's called stocks. it is called bonds. in no place else in the world doesn't happen like it does here. you have facebook and twitter and tesla. >> we also cost the economy $50 billion in 2008. >> it has very little relevance in the underlying problem and in the end will produce a lot of problems for our capacity to be as competitive as we were before and be as vibrant as we were before. >> let's open it up to the audience. this lady right here in the black cat. i -- black hat. i think it is black. >> my question to you, senator -- as far as i am concerned, you are still a good senator. could you address the situation

with russia right now where our big is on mobile has a major deal with that major elephant in russia to do major drilling in the arctic. it has become so huge. and what that will do in terms of affecting us. we might change our tax code so that exxon will do what it has to do. >> russia has massive oil reserves and gas reserves. one of the levers we have to put pressure on them is our technology because they can't hit it without our technology. if you are talking about ways to put pressure on russia, you should talk about putting sanctions on the ability of our technology. but you have to do it on the other nations who have that type of technology to be delivered to russia. that is where this administration has failed. they have not been aggressive

enough that we do it in a corrugated way. as for specifics on exxon mobil, i really don't know anything. >> this gentleman right here. >> john schilling. you mentioned the importance of providing more tax investments -- tax incentives for investment. things like the capital gains tax is really not by and large promoting new investment but supporting long-term gambling on the stock exchanges as you buy existing assets and carry them forward and sell them or the interest carry forward tax benefits for people who do a lot of active trading with hedge funds. so what are the kinds of incentives you think are important to promote real investment, that generates more

productive capacity and jobs? >> i am not a big fan of incentives. i don't believe in industrial policy, whether supporting a group like solyndra or the tax laws. bring the rates way down. in fact, you bring them down so far that you really don't need any capital gains differential. under simpson balls, we had three rates, 10%, 15%, and 30%. when people do that, people invest for the best return in their money. you get the most productive use out of that money and will probably generate more revenues than a tax law that gives a lot of deductions and exactions and has high rates. in fact, i'm sure it will. so that is some answer to you. >> yes, sir, back there. >> thank you for coming today. my name is arnold king and i own

king solutions. what can a person do -- how can they assist the economy this year and in 2015? we need to get back to our -- to talk about the economy. what can we do about the economy onward? what can business do to help the economy?

>> great question. how do we get the economy going? i believe the united states is on the verge of massive economic expansion. probably as large as we have ever had in our history. it will be driven by four basic factors. the first and is important by far is the new energy paradigm. for the first time in -- time since the 1950's, we will be an energy exporter instead of an importer. we will have an incredible advantage over the other industrialized countries in this world.