in other words, what this says to me is that, like a lot of things in the federal budget, the problem has been pushed out. it has been kicked down the road through incremental things. some of it good luck. some of it as a result of legislation. but those incremental steps have not changed the curve. they have not solved the problem. they have pushed it off. it is in a large way emblematic of what is going on with federal budget right now. you look at the next session. and what they are going to have to deal with. a lot of the things they have just pushed off. sustainable growth rates, medicare. debt limits. they have not funded the full

budget for the year. the highway trust fund. there are a number of things that have been fixed, patched, for a couple years at a time. when you look at the big picture, that is what is happening in the big picture. so one could say, all right, maybe we can keep doing this, pushing things off. i think all of us have alluded to why this is different. i want to see if i can summarize. the demographics are different. in 1994, you had a favorable demographic scenario in the short term. the baby boomers were in peak earning years. and it was a much smaller elderly population.

now the boomers are pushing 70. a lot of them are collecting social security or medicare already. that has a couple of effects. it has a big effect on the federal budget. it makes medicare much more expensive. it is a lot more beneficiaries, which means the programs on autopilot are going to be more expensive. that is beginning to happen now. it is having a demonstrable impact on the budget now. secondly, it has an economic effect. as the boomers leave the workforce, it is going to be more difficult for those that remain in the workforce to produce goods and services to keep the economy growing and keep retired boomers with what we expect with our entitlements. the workers of tomorrow will have to be much more productive given that demographic. and yet, we are investing less

in the federal budget in the future of the economy, which is supposed to be producing these goods and services. we looked at some of those trends in federal investment spending. kerrey and danforth warned about it. national savings, kerrey and danforth warned about that, it has gotten worse since then. a lot of forces coming together. bill mentioned the debt. debt is twice as high now as the percentage of the economy as it was in 1994. social security had many years of surplus ahead of it in 1994. senator danforth, one of the most accurate projections in this report was the social security would begin running a cash deficit in 2012 according to the kerrey-danforth report. it actually happened in 2010. that was pretty close.

so some of the things that have allowed us to postpone crisis over the last 20 years cannot be counted on again. maya mentioned interest on the debt. at some point, interest rates are going to go back up. the interest rate on the 10 year treasury is not going to stay at 2% forever. it will probably go back up. at some point, we would hope it would go back up, because that would be the sign of a recovering economy. but because we have taken on more debt, that is going to put pressure on the budget by increased interest payments. one of the charts in here shows that interest payments from the debt goes from 200 billion now to about $800 billion by the end of the decade. simply, without anything catastrophic happening, with the baseline, if you look at

longer-term at any of these -- could you show the next chart, please? this is the current trends from the kerrey-danforth report, which we updated using the cbo alternative scenario numbers. you can see the net interest eventually becomes the real driving force. entitlement programs as the boomers begin to retire. health care costs continue to develop. certainly, that is programatically, the thing driving the gap between spending and revenues. but if you keep doing that, as anyone who has tried to live off a credit card knows, that is going to be a problem for the federal budget. and so the low teaser rates we are experiencing now on federal debt that is allowing us to take

on this new debt without interest going up substantially. that is kind of a one-shot deal. i do not think -- i appreciate the point that we got through the last 20 years without catastrophe. there are a lot of things that happened that are not going to happen again. we have kind of run out of time for us boomers. i wish i had that 20 years back. i felt better years ago. i would not say in 1994, i could do this, this, and this. i do not think we will be able to do the same stuff 20 years from now. we need to look at our country as an aging population. and look at the things we can do as a nation if we get our fiscal house in order. for the candidates, what we have to tell them is the debt is your running mate. you are stuck with it. it is going to be there when you raise your hand and take the oath of office.

it will be at your first cabinet meeting. you have to come up with a plan for dealing with it. you might as well start preparing the public during the campaign and try to get some ideas on the table. so whatever your campaign platform, if you want to cut taxes, increase defense spending, take care of medicare and social security, whatever your campaign agenda is, it will not be credible if it relies on this continuing stream of borrow cash. as bob and jack have said, the media and the public, getting the public involved in this is really crucial. >> ok. so we have been talking a lot. questions from the audience?

yes, sir. >> there's a microphone there. >> national economist club. one of the issues that has been raised is the automatic cuts. you cannot get it done through political measures. those that too are too hard to take, you take it out of control. i would like to get your views on how that my work. >> anybody want to take on sequestration? >> right now, what we have is automatic cuts as part of the the wrong kinds of cuts to do. there are triggers that you could put in place. the trigger we put with the sequester is let's put together a package of cuts that are so stupid members of congress will never let it hit. i went around sort of confidently saying they are never going to let it hit. it will force them to come up with a deal.

for those of us who thought that, i guess we overestimated congress's ability to do the sensible thing. you learn from that unfortunate situation. the sequester is doing real damage. we are cutting the wrong parts of the budget. we are not doing anything to fix the problem. at the same time, i believe politicians are showing themselves unable to make tough choices. we have not been trying to do this for so long with so little success on the real issues because we are dealing with a bunch of really courageous politicians. that is the reality. they have some very hard constraints as well. i do think we are going to have to move towards more automatic changes in the budget and then what you want to do is instead of building in stupid policy changes that happen automatically, you want to build in things that are more sensible. what if we said whenever your debt hit x percent of gdp, policymakers have to come up with a plan to bring it down so it is not growing faster than the economy.

if they do not, we put in automatic changes. i would say you look at the revenue side and sending side of the budget. you look at all parts of the budget. you do not want to rely on automatic changes. you want politicians to make choices, will at priorities, pay for priorities. if they are unwilling to, your backup plan should be something you can live with. so you start looking at what kind of plan you can have as your automatic sequester that would a smarter way to get policy changes in. >> can i just briefly add that since the offer, the bottom line is that there was a negotiated agreement on what the sequester should be which basically became the sequester of 1985. i agree with maya completely. knowing that it didn't work, let's go back and change the trigger. if you are going to have a trigger, let's go back. let's put social security into it. let's put medicare at 2%.

let's put the whole spending into that. then i think you will get their attention. then the sequester will have some impact. when the threat will have some impact on actually making hard decisions. >> we have another couple of questions. senator danforth, did you need to -- >> i am going to leave pretty soon. [laughter] >> i thought that might be the case. thank you, senator. we will take one or two more questions. the stars are out here. >> two questions. >> my name is roberta stanley. i am a former news reporter. you made several references to relying on the media to keep people honest your mike

-- well, mike wallace's dead. candy crawley is leaving cnn. the backbone of a lot of the media now just isn't there. do you have recommendations on who in the media might step up to the plate? >> wow. that is one i did not expect. >> i do think -- we were having a discussion this morning about how congress has become more polarized and political. the institutions around it have as well. media has. you see an ongoing polarization that is unfortunate. but that is not across the media. the other keys that is difficult for the media is that these are really tough issues to understand. one of the things we had talked about doing in new hampshire and iowa, some of the states where we are doing public education efforts, is we have budget exercises that basically say let's take the budget, take your

physical goal, and how will you get there? we do it with candidates, citizens. our plan is to run those with a bunch of people in the media so that when you go to new hampshire or iowa or the candidates go to state where they are trying to run campaigns, the media has gone through the exercise finding out that it is not foreign aid that will fix this. if you are not going to be able to tax billionaires and fix the problem. they have gone through the exercise, reaching an overall framework that they can ask smarter questions. i think there is a part of the media that has become opinion journalism. but that is a different area. this is very technical. it is very difficult. that is why we say read the cbo reports. but there are ways to do interesting education that can help focusing on the candidate. >> you do have to educate them. our major newspapers have gone

downhill and do not have the influence. >> i would just add that if you follow the cromnibus, which everyone was reading about, you read about the whole thing, and you still do not know what was in it. the little interesting stories, the funny stories, but there is nowhere that you gone say the they just passed a $1.1 trillion budget. what is in this? no one who has been following the best news coverage actually knows because the sensationalist journalism does not lead to that. >> i'm sure that both of you had the same experience of being called by a reporter about a bill like that. you have all sorts of witty things you want to say about what it means for the big picture. and the question is always, what is the worst thing you can point out? find something really absurd and tell me about that. it happens all the time.

to pick up on what maya was saying, i think that what i have been trying to convince a tv network or somebody to do is film one of these budget exercises. i think it would make a fascinating tv program. because you have real people making real choices. and they do not talk about this in wonky terms. they actually talk about what it means to be a family. i have seen this happen so often. people around the tables at a townhall meeting or rotary club. and they start relating to items in the budget and how it affects their family. with clever programming, you could get some of the filming something like this, and it would make the budget and those choices that we need to make much more real for people.

>> for people who are interested in doing this, call the congress coalition. call the campaign to fix the debt or go on the website for the committee for a responsible federal budget. we have a simulator where you can go through the exercise. >> and contact the bipartisan -- [laughter] >> of course. there are people that will come and run these exercises in your community with members of congress. it is a great educational tool with the media. bob will have the network come and film it. >> we are going to get one more question. if there are no more questions, we have answered them all. thank you for coming. we are out of here. tonight on c-span, a look at

the relationship between politics and humor with actor seth rogen. part of a recent conversation at harvard university, where one of several topics included lyrical correctness -- political correctness in today's entertainment. >> i would never make a joke that i think would get a laugh that is a political view don't personally believe in, because i might get asked about that one day and i don't want to look stupid. so it's like -- i do think that a lot of people who try to be edgy or political camus feel as though they are unfairly targeted at by the political correctness crowd forget that they have to be funny as well as edgy and political. and i think that if you really look at the people who complain about that and the people who w of the peoplee

complaining about it are hilarious, and most of the people who are truly valerius who are incredibly edgy never complain about it at all. every time you make a joke that you know in your head is liketly -- there's almost a group of people that have to react negatively to some jokes in order for the joke to be valid and you just know that group of stupid people is going to say that thing and that is almost the point of the joke their making, that there is a thinkof people that this is not what you necessarily should be thinking. and they will say the thing. sometimes they will say some thing offends more than just those people by think this is accident, and i do see comedians apologizing sometimes good i've never done something that i felt like i've had to apologize for, but i've seen people make jokes right think they may be should apologize. it is an admission that they made a joke that he went too far -- maybe went too far. we screen our movies a lot and a

lot of screens of our movies, there are jokes that go too far and that are probably in bad taste and by the time there he smash -- they reach mass consumption, we filter those out. andidn't even realize it somebody will say some were just the way it plays in the room, oh, we were wrong about that. we try to be sensitive towards that personally. but i personally don't feel like, you know, that there is some political correct squad that is trying to prevent me from doing my job in the best way that i can. all of thatee discussion with actor seth rogen tonight at 9:30 eastern tonight on c-span. >> here is a look at some of the programs you will find christmas day on the c-span networks. nationaling of the christmas tree, followed by the white house christmas decorations with his lady

michelle -- first lady michelle obama, and the lighting of the capitol christmas tree. just after 12: 30 p.m., celebrity activists talk about the causes. at 8:00, supreme court justice samuel alito and former florida governor jeb bush on the bill of rights and the founding fathers. 10:00 a.m. at eastern, venture into the art of good writing with steven pinker. at 12:30, the feminist side of a superhero, as jill lepor looks at the history of wonder woman. on american history tv on c-span3 at 8:00 a.m. eastern, the fall of the berlin wall, with c-span footage of president george bush and bob dole, with speeches from presidency john kennedy and ronald reagan. at noon, fashion experts on first lady fashion choices and how they represented the styles of the times in which they live. at 10 a clock, former nbc news anchor tom brokaw on his more than 50 years of reporting on world events.

that is christmas day on the c-span networks. for a complete schedule, go to cspan.org. >> in his weekly address, president obama discusses jobs and the economy and his administration's legislative accomplishments. in the republican response, representative mike kelly of pennsylvania talks about energy policy. >> hi, everybody. as 2014 comes to an end, we can enter the new year with new confidence that america is making significant strides where it counts. the steps we took nearly six years ago to rescue our economy and rebuild it on a new foundation helped make 2014 the strongest year for job growth since the 1990s. over the past 57 months, our businesses have created nearly 11 million new jobs. and in a hopeful sign for middle-class families, wages are on the rise again. our investments in american

manufacturing have helped fuel its best stretch of job growth since the '90s. america is now the number one producer of oil and gas, saving drivers about 70 cents a gallon at the pump over last christmas. the auto industry we rescued is on track for its strongest year since 2005. thanks to the affordable care act, about 10 million americans have gained health insurance in the past year alone. and since i took office, we have cut our deficits by about two-thirds. meanwhile, around the world, america is leading. we're leading the coalition to degrade and ultimately destroy isil. we're leading the global fight to combat the ebola outbreak in west africa. we're leading global efforts to address climate change, including last month's joint announcement with china. we're turning a new page in our relationship with the cuban people. and in less than two weeks, after more than 13 years, our combat mission in afghanistan will be over, and our war there will come to a responsible end.

today, more of our troops are home for the holidays than at any time in over a decade. still, many of our men and women in uniform will spend this christmas in harm's way. and as commander-in-chief, i want our troops to know -- your country is united in our support and gratitude for you and your families. the six years since the financial crisis have demanded hard work and sacrifice on everyone's part. but as a country, we have every right to be proud of what we've got to show for it. more jobs. more insured. a growing economy. shrinking deficits. bustling industry. booming energy. pick any metric you want -- america's resurgence is real. and we now have the chance to reverse the decades-long erosion of middle-class jobs and incomes. we just have to invest in the things that we know will secure even faster growth in higher-paying jobs for more americans. we have to make sure our economy, our justice system, and our government work not only for a few, but for all of us.

and i look forward to working together with the new congress next year on these priorities. sure, we'll disagree on some things. we'll have to compromise on others. i'll act on my own when it's necessary. but i will never stop trying to make life better for people like you. because thanks to your efforts, a new foundation is laid. a new future is ready to be written. we have set the stage for a new american moment, and i'm going to spend every minute of my last two years making sure we seize it. on behalf of the obama family, i wish all of you a very merry christmas. thanks, and have a wonderful holiday season. >> good morning, i'm mike kelly, and i have the tremendous privilege of representing pennsylvania's third congressional district. today i'm offering president obama a lump of coal for christmas. not because he's been bad this year -- though i'll get to that. no, i'm offering the president a lump of coal because this product right here holds the

potential for a 21st-century economic revival. you see, coal is our most abundant and valuable resource. it lights our homes, it keeps our electric bills low, and puts food on the table for countless families. more than 40,000 jobs in my state alone are tied to coal. but this isn't just about coal country -- no, it's about our whole country. because no other nation in the world has been blessed with such abundant, affordable, and accessible resources. and with all god has given us, we shouldn't be just trying to keep up with the pack -- my goodness, we should be leading the world. if only we had a president willing to seize this opportunity. he tells us he's for "all of the above" but then he leaves out everything that's below. the president said he would bankrupt the coal industry, and he's spent his presidency trying to do just that. federal regulations have already forced two coal-fired power plants in my district to close over the past two years.

and hundreds more are set to shut down around our country. he's put up so many roadblocks to american energy that all our production is coming from state and private lands. even when the president's own party stopped him from imposing his cap-and-trade tax, he said it was 'just one way of skinning the cat," and then he directed the epa to do his bidding for him. instead of forcing our workers to live with less, the president should let us use our god-given resources and talents to help americans get back to work and make our nation the energy superpower it can be -- and quite frankly, that it needs to be. so, whether it's stopping these regulations, expediting infrastructure, or expanding production, there's so much more we can do to encourage the development of all forms of american energy. these just aren't republican solutions -- these are common-sense, american ideas that have support in both

parties. you're going to see them again in the new congress, starting with a vote to approve the keystone xl pipeline. because manufacturing things, making things -- and doing it better than anyone else in the world -- that's what america has always been about. that's how we've built such a robust and dynamic economy. if we pull together, we can make 2015 the year we restore our nation of builders. but that's next year. right now, we are getting ready to celebrate christmas. as we do, i hope you'll set aside a moment to remember all those who gave their lives this year for the cause of freedom, and pray for those spending this holiday season away from their families and loved ones. merry christmas, everyone, and may god continue to bless the united states of america. >> on the next "washington post"l," "washington onrespondent jim tankersley

what to do to get the economy working for everyone. milleror aaron david talks about his book "the end of greatness." will take yourwe calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. "washington journal," live at 7:00 a.m. on c-span. "q&a," authorn com editor on what she perceives as the hypocrisy of liberals and their "warn women"rick -- "war on rhetoric. >> ted kennedy? >> the idea of this book came from the dnc convention, where they show to distribute video because -- they show to distribute video because he had

passed and portrayed him as a women's rights champion when he had left a young woman to die in his car and if he had not gone wouldours, she probably have survived it you cannot do an entire video at a convention claiming to be fighting the war on women and glorify someone like that while not including that part of his life in a video about his women's rights record. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern and pacific on "q&a." two market 10 years of "q&a," we are showing one program from each year at 7:00 p.m. eastern. >> next, a discussion of a video streaming technology on "the communicators." is this man donald trump talks about his brand, political ambitions -- businessman donald trump talks about his brand and political ambitions. and how political views are conveyed in pop culture. c-span, created by america's

cable companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. >> both cbs and hbo have announced recently that they are going to begin internet video streaming services, thus bypassing the traditional media -- broadcast, cable, etc. that is our topic this week on "the communicators," how people are getting their tv, what's the future of tv. joining us from the new york studio are two leading analysts of the telecom industry, craig moffett and michael nathanson, and they are partners in the moffettnathanson research firm. mr. moffett, let's begin with you. what is the impact, what is your initial reaction to what cbs, hbo have announced, and then add onto that netflix and apple, etc., all these other different services -- what is the impact on the overall television industry? >>