wave force or reinforcing force, national guard to perform a function there, in the persian gulf, if we were, i think the forward of course has many capabilities that would support it. but also if we have to have an expeditionary force there, you have to mobilize a certain amount of force. again i think support major growth area for there would be rocket artillery in its various forms. in eastern europe if you buy my idea that trip wire forces, we're going to need because of limits on finances and manpower and so on. if we were to develop our own anti-access area in yeern europe, we would be relying on those kinds of systems as well. in easternrea eight

europe, we would be relying on those kinds of systems as well. to the extent that the guard, i work with the guard a long time ago when we had something called the army air defense command and they were off the charts in terms of their capability and expertise in that area. so i think certainly it's an operational reserve for those kinds of tasks. i think the forward could perform valuable function. senator ernst: thank you. mr. wood? mr. wood: i see it more of active army formations, we talked about proliferation of technology, the increasing complexities of military operations, especially when you're coordinating, synchronizing operations at higher levels. we talk about distributed operations. there's a still set that becomes -- there is a skill set that becomes ever more complex and takes a lot of time to develop competencies in those areas. so, i think the active component, doing that 24-7, is the force of choice to go off and do these kinds of things

we're talking about. you only have so much of that i think the strategic reserve capability and then selected skill sets where you could have army reserve, other service reserves and national guard units that would develop those kinds of things that would plug into larger structures. senator ernst: thank you. dr. preble. dr. preble: i have traditionally thought of the reserves as stratiege exreserves. that was the intent as we moved away from the con stripted force -- conscripted force to a volunteer force, augment that. i do see value in engaging the public and communities in a way, when we wage war abroad and there are people from their community drawn away from their jobs and families in a way they weren't intending because they are not full-time active duty, then it seems at a minimum we should have had the debate or

then we are having a debate over where exactly are we fighting and why? if it were, if we were to move to an operational reserve and it also engendered debate over the wars we're fighting and why, then i would support it. senator ernst: very briefly, mr. donnelly? mr. donnelly: i agree with both andy and dakota. used to be a national guard brigadey were gade -- with long-term associations with every army division. we got rid of those some time ago. there are rules -- roles the guard can play for early deployment and so on and so forth. as we find ourselveses in situations as we found ourselves say in 2006, 2007, where we were using anything that looked -- that wore a uniform as a soldier, that's a testament to bad strategic planning. not a knock on the guard at all. senator ernst: mr. brimley? mr. brimley: i would say the guard is an operational reserve, they've been used that way for the past 10-plus years. in my mind, i see them that way. enge there's value there last

there's hundreds of thousands of former active duty troops populating the national guards. now is the time to think through if they're to be used that way how to do so. i would just say i'm a little bit, i've been frustrated to see relations between the active army and the army national guard dee tieror ate in recent years. i think there's a lot of blame to go around there. but i've been frustrated that the active army doesn't seem to think about the total army. it seems to think first and foremost about the active army and then and only then do we think about the army national

guard and to a lesser degree army reserve. i think if you look at goldwater-nichols, one question to ask is has the elevation of the share of the national guard to four star status, has that had second and third order effects to complicate the relationship in what should be a cohesive, total army. senator ernst: that is a discussion we have had, i see an effort by the generals to repair some of the conflict we have had in the past. so thank you, gentlemen, very much. thank you, mr. chairman. ms. hirono: i do agree we should have a close relationship, strong relationship between the active army and national guard. you know in your testimony we have focused militarily on the quality of our military and that we have -- we held a technological edge which is being eroded. i do think that when we lose our technological edge, the numbers begin to matter more because when you look at china and their modernization of its military, they will have more ships, many

planes, etc. while they may not have the technological capabilities that we do, at some point there's already numbers to shift and becomes a qualitative advantage. so when we focus on the technological edge that we need to retain, what would ewe suggest that we do? -- what would you suggest that we do? what specific things should we do to retain and regain our technological edge? >> thank you, senator. i would outline some things in depth in my statement. mr. brimley: but i would say two things right now. one is manned systems. one thing chairman mccain is engaged on is the future of the carrier air wing. and the debate on what that ought to look like? what would their roles be and what would their missions be? that's an area where the navy needs to be pushed hard. any time you have emerging technology that fundamentally call into question the role of traditional pilots in this regard you'll get a lot of natural bureaucratic tension and

friction. i think that's an area where civilians can play a strong role both inside the pentagon and in congress. senator hirono: mr. donnelly, you noted in your testimony that you recommend a three-theater construct involving europe, the middle east and east asia. in your looking at what woe we -- in your looking at what we do in east asia, could you elaborate on what we're doing in regard to an east asia collaborative construct and what more we should be doning there? mr. donnelly: the policy of this administration has been to pivot in east asia and that's problematic in east asia. that's a problem, global powers don't pivot, where everybody -- like in a kiddie soccer game where everybody fol throes -- follows the bouncing ball. they're much more cautious when it comes to poking the japanese in neevet asia. so the spite the fact, i would agree that the development of

chinese military power is an important element and essential issue for defense planning but the first order of business is to get some presence there. the secretary made a big deal the other day about the fact that we were sending a destroyer to re-establish freedom of navigation. again, the striking thing about that to me was not what was being done, which was welcome, but the fact that it's taken so long to do it and it required a couple billion dollar destroyer to safely go on those waters again. if we had been there, over the course of the past couple of decades, maybe that wouldn't -- senator hirono: are you suggesting we need a stronger forward presence in east asia and to work more closely with

allies in syria? -- in this area? mr. donnelly: yes, the filipinos are desperate to have us return to the region. in the conversation about allies we should focus on the frontline states and they're the ones who are most interested in having us return. and what they provide which is a battlefield is something that is very hard to to put a price tag on. senator hirono: for dr. preble and mr. donnelly, i'd like your reaction to a recent hearing, dr. thomas mankin stated that strategy is about mitigating damage an risk. he feels the u.s. has grown unused to having to take risks an bear costs. do you believe we as a nation have become too risk averse?

both of you. dr. preble and mr. donnelly. mr. preble: i wouldn't say risk-averse. i would agree with the rest, that we have become less capable or adept at prioritizing. i think when we do see great risk aversion, especially the desire to not see american sole -- american soldiers be killed overseas, the question is, is the fission mission vital to u.s. national security. i think you're much more risk averse and averse to casualties when there isn't a clear sense of how that mission is serving u.s. national security interests. mr. donnelly: i have a different definition of strategy, to achieve our national security goals, not so much to mitigate risk per se. but i do not believe that this nation is risk averse. if properly led. senator hirono: thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> mr. chairman, before i begin my questioning, an inquiry of the chair or perhaps the staff, what does the budget agreement do to the unfortunate veto of

the national defense bill? do we know? senator mccain: i think the deal would entail a $5 billion reduction that we on the committee are trying to work through instead of $612 billion, it would be $607 billion. >> would the veto still, do we have to act on the veto? sit withdrawn? -- is it withdrawn? what is the procedural situation? senator mccain: i don't think you can withdraw a veto. i think we have to go through the drill again. isn't that your understanding, jack? >> i believe so, sir. senator mccain: i think we have to go through it again. >> you mean repass the bill or override the veto? senator mccain: i think what we have to do is readjust the authorization by looking at $5 billion out of authorizing and move it through the process again. i'm afraid. i hope not but i'm afraid.

senator king: i'm going to ask some questions, to me the most serious threat is capability plus will. what makes me lose sleep is north korea. they certainly are developing the capability and their will is unpredictable, as opposed to russia or china that have some semblance of a rational calculation of their interest. mr. brimley, your thoughts about -- i just don't want to wake up and say, who knew the north cree -- who knew north korea was going to fire a nuclear weapon at the west coast?

mr. brimley: i think that's a good observation. in the near term that's a huge strategic concern. the longer term threat that is somewhat typified by your comment is the marriage of increased capability. 10, 15 years ago, north korea, to have an intercontinental ballistic missile that they could mate with nuclear war heads and target the continental united states would have been unthinkable. senator king: and of course the jihaddists with a weapon in the hold of a trunk steamer. mr. brimley: indeed. there was a book that talked about the democratization of violence. what concerns me in that world is when precision guided munitions are available to all these actors. senator king: what bothers me about north korea, we are commenting, they're developing nuclear weapons, they're developing a missile. my question is, what should we

be doing about it? if anything? what are our alternatives? second point on the issue of the budget and joe manchin's questions, and senator sessions, did a little quick calculation. if interest rates to return historic levels of 5.5%, the differential, the increase of 3.5% between what we're running now would exactly equal the current entire defense budget. it would be over, it would be something like $630 billion just in the increase in interest charges. so i think the national debt is a threat, not to define our defense budget, i'm not arguing that we should reduce it because of that. the real problem with the national debt is increasing demographics and health care costs. that's where the problem is. but i think we have to be cognizant of it as a national security threat. number three, mr. preble, you talked about submarines as a possible, instead of the triad submarines. the question is how vulnerable are submarines to detection? my concern is that we not fall into the magino line trap.

mr. preble: this has been a long-standing concern since -- for a long time. and from the beginning the concern about being able to detect them and undermining their capabilities. i think that generally speaking, those concerns have been proved wrong so far over time. each time the people claim there's some exquisite technology ornew technology that significantly undermines the stealthiness of our submarines that they continue to perform extremely well. as i pointed out in my statement however, if that circumstance were to change, we still have the flexibility to adapt other forces. but for now, the combination of stealth and precision and other improvements in technology make ballistic missiles the best of the platform.

senator king: but the keyword is stealth? and if the erosion of that quality that creates problems, we need to be attentive to it? mr. preble: yes. senator king: a question for the record for all of you, how do we enforce the 2% standard? you all have mentioned it. we are carrying too much of the burden. what i'd like some suggestions as to how that is carried out rather than in ways other than just imprecations to our allies. finally, i'm not even going -- i'm going to screw up the pronunciation, krepinevich is that close? dr. krepinevich, i think you made a really important point, time is an issue. senator inhofe has a chart that shows the time to put an aircraft in the field is 23 years. if that has been the case with radar and the manhattan project we'd be speaking another language today.

we have to be able to field new technologies faster. cost is obviously a question but to talk about a new bomber that probably won't be built for 10 or 12 years may be not even then, we have to deal with this issue of time. mr. krepinevich: time is a resource as manpower is, or technology is, or defense dollars. senator king: are we overthinking new weapons systems in terms of making them so complex that it backs, time just wastes? mr. krepinevich: i think secretary gates had it almost right. he talked about performance characteristics. he said we want everything that's possible and a lot of things that aren't possible in a new system. he talked about costs and he said we treat costs as though cost is no object. and he talked about time and said time, again, everything is subordinate to performance.

we sacrifice cost in terms of no limits on cost. we sacrifice time in terms of we seem to be willing to wait forever. time is also linked to relevance because it's a lot easier to know what kind of security challenges you're going to face in two or three years than in 20 or 30. so his point was i'd rather have an 80% solution that you can give me within a reasonable cost and get on the ramp or wherever in a reasonable amount of time that's relevant to the threat and that's why he canceled systems like future combat systems and so on. senator king: i agree with that the message is as you've said, let's design and build systems so they can be upgrade over time but get the system online. thank you very much, mr. chairman. senator mccain: thank you, dr. krepinevich, known to many as andy.

[laughter] >> we have a famous coach k. and a famous doctor k. where i come from. senator blumenthal. senator mccain senator : blumenthal. senator blumenthal: i'm more sympathetic to the pronunciation question having a more difficult to pronounce name than reed, mccain and king. thank you all for being here. this is an excellent discussion , and i've been following it in in the midst of doing other duties and i think that just to pursue a line of questioning that senator king raised on stealth or as mr. brimley referred to it as concealment and just to quote one sentence in your testimony, the nature -- quote, the nature of an actor's

awareness of adversary forces will differ but it seems clear that on future battlefields finding the enemy will be easier than hiding from him. senator king, right -- senator king rightly identified the advantage of submarines as their versatility and their stealth. the ohio class replacement promises to be far stealthier than any submarine now known or perhaps imagined but i wonder in

terms of both your point, dr. preble, in relying on a smaller nuclear deterrent that macon cyst only of submarines, whether in fact we can pursue that objective in light of the plausible point that finding our submarines will be in fact easier than hiding them and obviously we're at a loss here because we can't talk about the technology in this setting. and in fact, i might be at a loss to talk about the technology in any setting in terms of my scientific or engineering expertise. but maybe you could just expand on that point. >> on the question of survivability as a function of concealment or stealth for the submarines, of course it's not merely that our submarines are well hid and continued improvements have made them kind of leaps ahead. but it is that there are many of them. we talk about one throfinge -- one leg of the triad. it's not just one boat, it's 12 or 16. so we would have to believe that

the advance in technology that made it so much easier to find those submarines was made without our knowledge and then sprung on us in a moment of surprise in which all of those vessels were all held vulnerable at the same time. i think that highly unlikely. therefore, that's why we wrote a whole pain own the subject, i'd be happy to share a copy, but that's why we believe that while some of the earlier arguments against the submarine in the early days of the triad were valid, those have been overcome over time through a combination of technological advances and changes in nuclear use doctrine which also explain why they are a suitable platform. senator blumenthal: i think that point is powerful and convincing for the first 10 or 20 years, but the ohio replacement will last well into this century and

may not be sprung on us in the first five years or even 10 year but at some point one wonders whether that technology can't be developed. mr. preble: which speaks about the absence of time and our seeming inability to adapt over time which is not true. we are capable of adapting and revising technology in an integrative process but investing so much in a single platform on the assumption that it will retain its tech no lobbling call edge for 40, 50 years, i agree, is unreasonable. senator blumen thaul: mr. brim

-- senator blumenthal: mr. brimley, i agree with you that we should never have a fair fight against an adversary. and i'm quoting you, one of our first steps should be to, quote, shore up maritime protection by emphasizing submarines that can attack from concealed positions ideally with platforms with larger payload capacities, etc. and i wonder if you could, given the point that you made about concealment, ebs up and down on that thought. mr. brimley: thank you, senator, for quoting my written testimony. i would expand on it by saying that there are fascinating levels of research,ing naval research a doing and also darpa. part of the solution to establish is to fully invest in the unmanned regime. in a world where stealth starts to erode or our ability to keep pace with those technologies comes into question, i think one of the investment ways we'll have to deal with that is get fully unmanned into unmanned submarines to the point where we can answer a little bit of the

erosion of the qualitative edge with our enhanced ability to generate more in terms of quality and take risks with the plat forls because they'll be unmanned. i take some solace in the fact that secretary worth and secretary herder are taking a look at this very closely. there's agreement that this is an area of potentially large advantage for us if we invest in it. senator blumenthal: my time has expired, i thank you all for this discussion. >> i recognize senator sullivan. mr. as a rule san -- mr. sullivan: thank you. i appreciate the panelists coming in and providing us with important insights on some issues. i wanted to focus on the issue , and you know, we have thea number of members of administration -- secretary carter for example. about thisve talked

as really an incredible instrument of american power that 10 years ago, we were not focused on because we did not believe we had it as something that was important, but it is, and it's ready remarkable that we are now the largest producer of gas, largest producer of renewables, not by any real help from the federal government. all through innovations in the private sector. would you care to comment on that and how we should take advantage of that and how the federal government can help -- being from a state where we are a big producer of energy, looking to produce more, we have huge l.n.g.-scale, project that the state of alaska's working on that would help our citizens with low-cost energy. but certainly would help in

terms of our strategic -- the strategic benefits for our allies in asia, who need l.n.g., even the chinese need l.n.g. i would just welcome comments on that. i know, mr. brimley, you talked about it in your testimony but i welcome that for any other panelists. mr. brimley: i would say as a defense analyst, i would say i'm very pleased by the fact that, potentially by the end of this decade, north america will become quote-unquote energy independent. mr. sullivan: a remarkable development. mr. brimley: it is. but that's not a panacea. it's a global market. we will still be importing and participating in the global market.

we will have national interests that are intimately bound up in the security situations of other regions, europe, middle east, etc. but i would say the geopolitics of this is going to be interesting, fascinating, potentially destabilizing, in a world where the exports from the middle east are coming out of the persian gulf, when they're not going west across the atlantic, but they're going east into the pacific, all sorts of, i would say, interesting dynamics will develop. the role of india and its forward defense posture, the role of china, how it invests in forward access points as it starts to invest in its global posture into the persian gulf. we need to be thinking very, very seriously about how to tracking these activities and how to react to them. they will potentially be destabilizing. mr. sullivan: any other thoughts and what the federal government should be doing to encourage the ability to seize this opportunity? everybody -- every panelist we've had in the last nine months has talked about, this is a new instrument of american power in terms of our foreign policy, national security. and yet it's true, we do not have an administration that seems even remotely interested in it. they don't seem to like the term hydrocarbons and they don't want

to recognize what is something that's pretty remarkable in terms of a benefit to our country. mr. donnelly: i would caution about over -- i mean, making everything a national security issue. both devalues the meaning of security and provides the temptation for everybody to try to make everything a national security issue. if you look globally and historically, there's a lot of conflicts that have started and been resolved due to energy. and it's likely to continue to be that way. look, i would agree that, say, becoming a stable source of energy for japan would be a very important strategic plus for the united states. mr. sullivan: or korea. mr. donnelly: or east asian, you know, the t.p.p. countries. having an alternative route of supply for those countries would be critically important.

the saudis are spending down their cash reserves at an extraordinary rate to try to underbid, you know, fracking sources and stuff, and also to upset iran. but what that will mean for the internal stability of the kingdom is a pretty good question that probably has a host of answers, but all of which are bad. so, changing this regime that has been in place for a number of decades now is going to have international political effects that almost certainly will have security implications for the united states. not all of them good. mr. sullivan: i would just agree that the ability of u.s. energy producers to reach a global market should be as unencumbered as possible, to the extent the federal law limits export of various products. or delays development is also a problem. mr. preble: the last point i'd make, i'd agree with tom, just

because there are benefits economically does not necessarily make it a national security issue. we have to recognize it distinctly. and also, for many years, myself and my colleagues were frustrated by the talk that when or if we become energy-independent it will have a huge impact on our strategy, we said for a long time that should never be the standard because we can never be energy-independent. we trade into a global marketplace, etc. now that that is happening, and i think soon will happen, i would like to see that particular argument taken off the table as why it is we behave the way we do, especially in the middle east. mr. sullivan: thank you, mr. chairman. mr. reed: thank you. on behalf of chairman mccain, let me thank you gentlemen for an extraordinarily insightful testimony which will be a superb foundation for the hearing the chairman is envisioning, recommendation.

truly, truly impressive and helpful hearing. thank you very much, gentlemen. at the direction of the chairman, the hearing is adjourned. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> here's a look at our primetime schedule -- starting at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span, josh earnest answers questions on the obama administration's decision to ought the rise u.s. special operation forces in syria. on c-span2, a discussion on ways to increase the number of americans sitting for retirement. on c-span3, the senate foreign relations committee holds a confirmation hearing for two diplomatic posts under secretary of state and u.s. representative for the international atomic energy agency.

journal,on washington and military times pentagon reporter andrew tilghman looks of the ongoing violence by isis and why the defense department is recommending increased military. then michael jacobson and janet riley of the north american meat institute discussed the recent report linking process meets and cancer. after that, sarah westwood on republican efforts to impeach irs commissioner. plus, your phone calls, facebook comments and tweets. washington journal live is saturday at 7 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> every weekend, the c-span networks features programs on politics, nonfiction books and american history. night, ask for whether social media hurts politics and its effects on

commitment 2016. then sunday, officials look at the hispanic vote in 2016 and 2018 elections. this saturday on c-span twos book tv starting at noon, it is the 27th annual southern festival of books in nashville featuring nonfiction authors, including kristen grain on the virginia towns reaction to the brown versus board of education ruling. actor and producer wendell pierce on how hurricane katrina impacted his neighborhood. then cecelia tishy remembers jack london. sunday at noon, our live three-hour conversation with economist walter williams as he shares his life and career and response to your calls, e-mails, comments and tweets. on c-span3, saturday evening at 6:00 eastern, john doyle looks at the root -- the worldview of

the american civil war and the perspective of foreign-born soldiers. sunday morning, an interview with supreme court justice clarence thomas on his upgrade -- upbringing in the south and the influence of his grandfather. get our complete schedule on c-span.org. the center for american progress and the short center for econom policy analysis tries to find ways to increase retirement savings. they shared their thoughts on retirement accounts and refundable tax credits. this is one hour. morning and welcome to the center for american progress. i'm christian weller. i'm a senior fellow here. martin was supposed to

do the opening remarks but she is sick. with each passing generation, america's retirement crisis is growing. of1983, almost a third working households would learn to live on much less during retirement. by 2013 come of that number grew to more than half. this trend is getting worse, not better. young families are having even more trouble than previous generations to save for retirement. while this problem is for all middle income families, there are some families suffering more than others from the retirement crisis and the expected shortfall in spending. morencome households are likely to experience short retirement. this is true for low income households who don't work for a n employer that offers retirement benefits. what can we do to tackle this problem? governments already offer substantial tax benefits to hope

peopl help people save for retirement. people toncentivize save for retirement. encourages workers in their states to save for retirement. even though the federal and state governments are spending a lot of money for growing tax revenue to help people save for retirement, we face a growing retirement crisis. part of the problem is the dichotomy of more government spending and less retirement savings is maybe not enough tax incentives. they are often inefficient. high income earners get the most help from the existing incentives, multiple times more as we have posted on her websiteour website. we have to do more to help families tacklee the retirement crisis and think

about ways of how we can reform the tax code and improve incentives to help those who need the most help. possible solutions include expanding refundable credits, designing incentives and offering more ways to let people save for retirement outside of employeroyee hig- relationship. we have our panel that will tell us what the data says and what is feasible and how we talk about the solutions. the first panel will be moderated by professor teresa ghilarducci at the new school university in new york who will leave the engaging discussion on the current crisis. the second panel will be moderated by the director for the povertyr program tority

allow households to save. we will be joined by the chief economist of the treasury department. keynote comments. let me welcome the first panel moderated by teresa. thank you. [applause] ms. ghilarducci: really wonderful to have you three-year wit here with me. let me start with keying off what christian set is we have a retirement crisis. many people have focused on this idea that government may not be able to pay for the elderly who will be of retirement age. but, a bigger problem, another way to think about this crisis is these folks will not have enough money when they get to retirement age.

so, in your remarks, i would like you to address what are the facts to help us all understand how big the crisis might be? the second issue is off what christian said is we spend a lot of money in the federal tax code and also in the state level that is invisible, indirect. it is in the form of taxa competitors, money we don't collect because people get a deferral when they contribute to their qualified tax retirement account and the contributions. this indirect subsidy -- how large is it? and what kinds of reforms? not what might happen, but what policy would best help the people we just talked about to get more savings adequacy? lily, do you want to start? ms. batchelder: thank you so

much for having me. this is a wonderful organization. i'm glad to be here today. as both christian and you mentioned, we are facing an ongoing retirement crisis, retirement security and people having enough to spend that they can maintain their levels relative to prior retirement. particularly, low income people can have a very basic level of income. concentratedblem on lower and middle income households, households of color. part of the solution is to increase the minimum benefit or social security which is now below the risk of poverty line. another huge piece of the puzzle is the focus today which is tax incentives for retirement. costs about $2 trillion over 10 years. teresa's work suggest that it is 20% more if you include the state level because the state

piggybacks on the federal level. i wanted to focus on three issues related to this. the first is the fairness of the current incentives in terms of people of theuthor research shows arour evidence is that incentives do not increase how much people save out of their own money. they do increase how much savings they have for retirement which may sound a little paradoxical. one way to think about it is they take him $50,000 of income. they would say $5,000 without any saving incentives.

you give me $1000 saving incentives. what the evidence is suggesting is that $1000 will go to increasing my 401(k) to some degree, probably most or all of it. i will not actually increase how much i'm saving. i'll and up with $45,000 of mysumption and $6,000 in 401k rather than $5,000, but not changing my consumption. this is a really important fact. it means these incentives are not spurring people to save more. it is like the government depositing into your 401(k) and possibly a bit of it into your checking account as well. i think we need to focus a lot more on the fairness of the savingses and whose we should be supplementing the most. my answer would be lower to middle income households rather than the wealthy. in fact, the current retirement incentive is very

disproportionate to the wealthiest households. cbo and jcp have estimated two thirds will go to the top two thirds. whereas only 7% goes to the bottom 40%. if you look at the top 1%, they get 50% more of the benefits then the whole middle quintile. way and probably the main way to address the unfairness issue would be to shift towards refundable tax credits. you could completely replace the current system of deferral and inductions and taxing the money when it comes out years later or when it goes in and not taxing the earnings at all. that proposes to change the entire system. you could also shift more in this direction by cutting back on the tax incentives for the wealthy, whether that is through

reducing the contribution limits. something like the president's proposal to limit the value of deductions and exclusions, including those for retirement savings -- 28%. a cap on the amount of tax deferred savings you can have as an average of balance. and then using some of that to make the credit refundable, potentially expanded. you might even want to use some of the revenue for deficit reductions or other priorities given the $2 trillion is an awful lot of money. an additional benefit on the refundable credit is it would enable you to structure the tax incentives that is directly deposited into the account. there are some evidence this would increase the responsiveness due to framing effects. ms. batchelder: what is a framing effect? let's say i get a refund equal to 25% of my

savings. i save one dollar and get $.25 back. i'm really putting in $.75 out of my own pocket to end up with a dollar in my account. if instead it is a match, you can have the same results and frame it as a 33% match. i put in 75% and the government would match 33% of my savings. most people don't do that math in their heads to a 33% sounds bigger than 25% and a refund more. is also the fact it would go into the account in some reform ideas would eliminate friction. so, the second thing i wanted to talk about was expanding access. right now, about a third of people don't have access to their retirement plan. about half do not participate. the numbers are much higher if you are low-wage, part-time, working for a small business --

60% don't even have access. the fact of the matter is people don't really save for retirement if they are not covered by in employer. very few people directly contribute to an ira. even if you made the tax incentives more progressive, you would be failing to increase retirement savings among a lot of people who are not covered or participating in employer plans. i think that is a very important aspect of retirement security we need to focus more on. one way to extend coverage would be through the automatic proposals that some folks in the room are pioneers on. the president proposed -- his proposal would have businesses to offer a payroll deduction ira and provide tax credits if they do so if they are auto enrolled. while this idea was originally a bipartisan idea, has really been

stymied by the fact it has included a mandate. it is brought up images of health care reform in the eyes of a lot of republicans. john's proposal is to increase the credits for employers offering plans, but not necessarily a mandate. in the meantime, i think another really effort is to get states to be pioneers. if we are not going to see these legislative proposals enacted in the near future, there are states that want to create those plans. the department of labor is working on guidance, clarifying they are allowed to. the final thing i want to touch on is plan designed. this can have a tremendous effect on coverage. a lot of people know if you have auto enrollment, there was a lot of plans. you see a lot more participation, more savings.

influencedhavior is by how easy it is to save. the structure of savings than it is by the savings incentives. we have seen a big shift towards auto enrollment since the pension protection act, but there is more we can do to spur that. even more ambitiously, i think we can think about calibrating some of our incentives, or trying to get employers to calibrate their defaults for adjusting to the auto enrollment default based on income. given that social security is lower wage workers get higher announce of the income replaced. you would probably have different savings rates and i'll be in an ideal world. one other thing we need to be thinking about is how the savings is invested. one important development has

increased auto enrollment and we have seen automatically adjustment of portfolio over time to have the ideal approach retirement. i think it would be great if we began to think about defaulting people. this would potentially require legislation and guidance. it would congratulate a new it gradually i knew iannuitize over time. you actually need less and less saved to do that if you are partially or purchasing long-term care. how funds are investment. labor'sdepartment of rule. this is addressing the problem that people are losing about $17 billion a year due to receiving

advice from their financial advisors that is not in their best interest because of conflicts of interest. these financial advisors are receiving that. the proposal which still needs to be finalized what require financial advisors who receive conflicted payments to provide advice in the best interest of their clients. i will stop there. ms. ghilarducci: you talked about the lack of coverage of most private-sector workers. you have given us some ideas of how to tweak the design of people who haven't. covere hoping auto ira's people who don't have in an employer. you talked about the default lines and how people invest now. most of the time asking experts for advice. later on after we hear from john

-- what about the odd design we have in this country where we allow withdrawals? we have seen what is happening in the u.k. now that they have given the pension freedom to take a lump sums. it is not good. whether or not you think -- you are not in politics anymore, so whether or not you think we should stop the withdrawals or before retirement. just -- i would love to hear that later on. problemsou frame the -- how would you frame the problems, not as a people problem and a budget problem? how would you frame and have people point a way forward with the money we are ready have on the table? did you say -- $2 trillion over 10. is $200ar, that billion. lessatchelder: a little

the first year, little more on the 10th year. ms. ghilarducci: if you showed the gun in the first act, it will be shot in the second. the gun is $200 billion a year. can we use that better? mr. friedman: thank you so much for the organizers and teresa. it is a great pleasure to be here. you phrase this as a budgetary problem. the easiest way to see this as a deeper people problem is i think if you substantially expanded the budget we were putting forth on retirement incentives, the way they are organized today, you would not go far towards fixing the problem. i think that is because these tax incentives, and really the research suggests in most forms of incentives whether they are company matches or tax deductions, they are just not that effective in increasing savings. that is for three reasons.

first, i think this will not come as a great surprise to people who are not in this room, most people don't pay a lot of attention to the fine details of savings. existing tax incentives -- i don't think people would notice. now that they would respond, i think they woululd literally do nothing. there would be people who would respond. the second problem is it does not appear they actually increase the amount people are saving. lily mentioned this. just to give you a sense of why it may be true, say your firm co mes out and they will give you a great match rate and you say this is fantastic. i will put more money in. that is only the first step. you have to not just a positive money into the retirement account, but you have to actually spend less on whatever else you were going to do that year. that turns out to be much harder. who do put is people

a lot of money into retirement accounts when they offer these incentives, but essentially for each dollar you put into the retirement account, you either save less in some other form or your credit card debt goes up. it gets offset in a way that does not increase your savings and may even make the problem worse. if you are borrowing on a credit card that has a much higher interest rate than your savings account will return. incentives essentially reframes the incentives as more of a lump sum deposit that people are making into accounts. i think you want to evaluate that on the basis of fairness, but also on the basis of efficiency. what is it we are trying to do by augmenting people savings? in addition to distributional concerns, the motivation for government support of retirement savings is we think some people on their own will not be able to save enough for retirement. what i think that clearly points

to is we should be directing these subsidies which are effectively lump sums towards those people who are least prepared or able to save for retirement. and by structuring it as -- we are doing the opposite. first, we are giving the largest lump sum to people that are already saving the most. second, the people that are already saving, even if they are saving last, the people who are saving are more likely to be aware, they are understanding the problem, they are thinking about retirement in a way that the people that have the deepest problems are the ones that are not thinking about the problems at all. they have not started saving, not because they thought about it really hard and decided it was not best, they just have not thought about the problem at all. those are the people we need to help the most. how do we help those people? i think there is increasing evidence that default, nudges or call them what you want -- and

these other forms of increasing, encouraging participation is much more powerful. it creates three ways in which tax incentives are ineffective. a default or other nudge is effective. first, just take a default for instance. it works on people that are not paying attention. now you will effect the 85% of people who are not paying attention, as opposed to the 15% who are. defaultst turns out when the increased contributions to retirement accounts, it does increased true savings. there are couple of different reasons why that might be the case, but in contrast to the tax incentives, which i think is the increase of savings and the more rational well-thought-out thing. when people contribute more to the retirement account, money is disappearing from their paycheck. for whatever reason, they and up spending less which is

exactly what you need to save more. the defaults are targeted to those people who are paying the least attention who often have the least savings and need the most help in accumulating a nest egg for retirement. i think defaults, you mention the political problems with mandates, i think defaults might be better than mandates because it is going to help target these thie interventions that are more effective. in mandate, there might be some people who should not be saving. maybe they are earning much less. lily just got out of government service. taking a hit. maybe it was not worth it for her to save, but now that she is back at nyu an earning a princely sum for working, it makes more sense to put more money away. there are people who go through bad times and good times.

forcing everybody to save the same amount of matter what is going on is not right. whereas if you have a default which encourages people to save, but if you really need the money -- i think these types of nudges should be put at the forefront of policy efforts to try to help the retirement savings crisis. i think even though the normal thing we think about tax incentives coming from tax reform might not be as effective, tax policy can be very effective in encouraging firms to take-up these kinds of very effective policies or encouraging firms to give workers access to these retirement accounts at all. for instance, being able to have direct deposit of savings directly out of your paycheck instead of having to save up and write a check at the end of the year makes in a norman's difference i -- an enormous difference of how people say. with a minute or two left, other

things we are thinking about the tax system and encouraging better retirement savings behavior more generally, two big other deals we have talked about. lily talked a little bit about how money is invested in the account. there is a lot of evidence that people pay extraordinarily high fees relative to what they need to pay. it has been getting better over time. i think the conflict of interest rules is a good step further. a lot more encouragement of people to invest in index funds, things that are relatively low-f fees. the final thing is a turns out to be way too easy in the united states for people to take money out of their retirement accounts. you mentioned the lump sum. the bigger problem is when people withdrawal before retirement because at least you have the money at 65. shows that for

every dollar that is invested in a retirement savings account, nearly $.50 is coming out that same year. some of that is coming out due to real life hardships, but a lot of it is coming out in ways that i think are not great. for instance, people take out loans from their 401(k) entities which firms, you automatically have to pay it back. really smalls -- changes could increase the amount of savings that we managed to get to the retirement age by 25% or 30%. you get people contribute more up front. 30%get people, maybe 25% or from paying lower fees. another 25% from not taking out the money early. we can take some large strides toward solving the problem. ms. ghilarducci: i wanted to ask

you this over coffee or in front of 100 people. year.e 200 billion a you say that we are spending that money indirectly because the qualified plans with bad design. you would want designs with lots of tweaks, but you would not mandate that the money go in and stay there. i'm intrigued by this idea that this would disrupt people like lily or somebody else who over their lifecycle have consumer needs and the government would be forcing people to say too much and they could not optimally structured their spending. this came out in the recession. i was asked by a member of congress can people take money out of their 401(k) now because they needed it as an emergency?

the response is if you are going to call her retirement tax credit, that it is what it is for. i will take your argument a little further. would you want people to be default it into social security and use their money when they need it in those times of need? how far are you going to go with this default rather than mandate ? mr. friedman: i think it is very important to have the base floor below which people cannot all out. i think social security is effective at providing that. i think it could be more effective, but i think -- not to say we could not improve it -- i think allowing -- we are trying to provide an efficient system to get people to save for retirement, but i think we are also trying to avoid a problem where we have elderly -- ms. ghilarducci: would you

social 2% on top of security because we know it is not providing enough? mr. friedman: i would not mandate anything on top of social security. i think that is the role of flexibility. i think people should be encouraged to save a lot on top of social security. i think that we really need flexibility because either people need money for current expenditures, or if you have mandates also, you often end up -- even if it is a very small fraction of people. hardship on 1% of the population because you have not structured it, back at offset almost everything else you are doing that is good in the rest of the system. advantage ofeal having a system where it is a strongly suggested default, but not one we are going to

absolutely force you to take. you get the main effect of the mandate for 90% of the people, it is just for the last little bit that really need the flex ability, you are allowing it. ms. ghilarducci: a soft mandate. thank you. bill, you have always help me envision with your work on tactics miniature and calling out that we are spending a lot less on retirement security. how would you spend it better? is it a people problem or a budget problem? mr. gale: i guess i would think of it as both. first, let me say thank you for inviting me. on the one hand, it is very gratifying to hear the stuff i have been saying for 25 years coming out of conventional wisdom from people as sharp as lily and john. on the other hand, i have to go

third and they have taken most of the points. i will try to weigh in on different aspects. the way i think about it is there are four ways government could influence retirement accumulation. the first one is mandates. it goes without saying that social security is that the core of the retirement system. it should be there. it should be a mandate for the reasons john mentioned. that is the building point from any additional discussion of retirement policy. the second way is incentives, tax incentives. tax expenditures, whatever you want to call them? there is a wide variety of them historyewhat checkered as lily and john have described. the third category is information education. the government could provide people with information.

the social security statement is an example of that. ise of the stuff that cfpd doing is try to get information out to people on various aspects of saving. is what waspproach referred to as nudges or defaults, choice architecture which is shown to be a powerful influence on saving behaviors. historically, these four ways have been developed as substitutes. auto enrollment came along because they didn't want to pay the cost for the incentive. can only bees because social security was not meant to provide all of the retirement needs of people, just to provide a base. beenrically, they have substitutes for each other. i think we should they give them

as complements. just to put an example in your head, let's suppose we want to increase saving, retirement savings by low income households. what do you do? the first thing you do is the fault of them in -- default them into a 401(k) or an auto ira. the second thing you do is thatm the savers credit so it provides refundable contributions to the account. the third thing you do is you provide them with information or education so they know what they are doing with their funds. you further design the account along the way so that contributions escalate. they're the vested in low-cost -- invested in low-cost funds. i will show you what happens in a second. it is the combination of

policies that would work much more effectively than one or the other. you get the person in the account with the knowledge o-- nudge or default. you get them contribute more. you make the savings more rewarding by providing a match and then you will equip them to figure out what they should do with it through education and information. that is sort of a framework of where we should go with policy. that suggests, coming back to tax expenditures, that incentives can be part of the solution. i want to emphasize the knb. if they are designed well, they will go to people for whom the contributions represent additions of savings and then they will raise the savings. if they are going to people for whom the contributions represent the savings they would have done anyway, then in essence, they

are wasting money. is way to think about this there is an easy way to take advantage of tax incentives and a hard way. the hard way is to reduce your current standard of living in order to get the benefits of the tax reduction. that represents large consumptions and higher savings. people, for very obvious reasons, choose the easy way if they can. the easy way is shifting your assets to the savings you would have done anyway and not having to reduce your standard of living. people are very excited about tax subsidies for savings, but nobody is very exciting about reducing their standard of living. if you look at the brokerage industry, they don't say, you know, cut your standard of

living and take advantage of tax incentives. they emphasize shifting opportunities. for natural reasons. if you want people to participate, you want them to in an easy way. incentives can be part of the solution. if everyone were perfectly informed, maybe they could be the whole solution . if they were designed right. given the imperfections people have in terms of not being foresighted, not being able to implement plans even if they get plans, we need more than just incentives. incentives cannot be the entire solution. incentives can be part of the solution is what i would like to emphasize. a couple of other things that i think are important. levelouched on the state activities.

john who is david here as a doing a lot of work on that. i think that is a crucial avenue given the gridlock at the federal level. and the federal government can governments tote clarifying the regulations. i want -- we talked about automatic enrollment. everybody knows about automatic escalation and investment. teresa, you raised the issue about lump sums and taking money as annuity. with and i, we came up proposal for automatic -- it is a heart issue. if you automatically enroll someone in 401k and get the contribution level wrong, it is no big deal.

if you automatic annuitize somebody, that is a mess because they are stuck there for their life. kidspeople have a lot of that they want to give inheritances to. some people have a lot of health needs so they want to keep the money flexible for that. some people may nothing that will live very long so don't nnuitize. new it what we came up with was the idea of arriving annuities. the idea that people would automatically be enrolled but on a temporary basis. they would get monthly income for a two-year period when they wanted to take money out of their 401(k). that would get over the hump and the big, small issue with annuities which is basically try this out your thanksgiving table.

tell your relatives, you give me $100,000 and i will give you $500 a month and they will look at you like you are nuts. why would i ever do that? the answer is because it is a good deal if you stretch it out. the idea is getting people to experience that rather than anticipating it beforehand. just do it for a couple of years. just see what it is like. after two years, if you don't like it, you can take your money out. there are ways to think about automatically annuitizeing people without forcing them immediately into a lifetime commitment. let's see, two other points. one is -- john has written about this -- when you to start thinking in about ways of divorcing retirement savings from the employment system. employers, is an accident of history that the system ended up

being employer-based. the system, you can understand why employers set up the structures. to manage their workforce, etc.. the program really does not have those features, but because the firms, you can do all the incentives you want, all the matching you want. a 401(k) that would not have to be employer-based. i would say more than that because john has written about that recently. that is important to think about, especially the latest hot topic is the gig of harmony. workers, people who are functionally workers, but for legal reasons are contractors. that are actually have employers. they are all independent contractors. that is kind of the tip of the

iceberg. more generally, we need to think about -- there is no reason why your retirement security should depend on whether your firm feels like offering a retirement plan. last point, we keep throwing around this $200 billion a year number on tactics miniatures. tax expenditures. somewhat argue it is not that big. regardless, the point i want to make is we should make 1% of that amount on an annual basis and use it to fund research to understand what works in saving and what would not work. -- we havethat we learned a lot in recent years, but we could learn a lot more at

very low expense relative to the stakes involved. various policy initiatives aimed at people, we should also aim some of them at researchers for also people, but interested in the research issues. ms. ghilarducci: the consensus on the panel -- research is a great idea. before we go to questions and answers, can i do a quick speech that is less than 30 seconds? is it a refundable tax credit a good idea to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars on the table and how far does it help solve the problem? lily, do you want to go first? ms. batchelder: i think it is a good way to shift of the fairness of the system. i think some of the credits should go not just to employees to supplement their savings, but to make sure that more, a lot

more employers are offering plans so that you really increase the participation rate above 50%. ms. ghilarducci: increase in the rate of employers. that is interesting. ms. batchelder: they are offering a plan and getting people to participate because people generally do not save outside of the employer context. ms. ghilarducci: we are in a short elevator ride. mr. friedman: the key question is compared to what? if it is compared to the current system, i think it is a small step in the right direction, but i think there are better things you can do with the money if you accept that. ms. ghilarducci: you would leave the refundable tax credit for the changes in design? mr. friedman: i would use a lot of that money to rethink the design. mr. gale: incentives could be part of the solution.

this could be refundable credits aimed at lower to middle income households which would be helpful because almost all of them have marginal tax rates at 50% or less. i don't think it will deal with the overall cost issues at the high end, but it could be part of the solution. ms. ghilarducci: i would love to open it up for questions. yes?. can you introduce yourself also? >> i'm david mitchell. -- talk aestion little bit more about the distinction between legitimate withdrawals and the unproductive leakages. maybe touch on emergency side card ideas like a starter account or ira. how do we keep people on retirement and allow people to get access to the money when they need it? ms. ghilarducci: i'm a

bipartisan policy commission on reform. a lot of the provisions, you can drive a remodeled kitchen through the hardship withdrawals for home repairs. thank you for that. lily? ms. batchelder: i think you are raising of really important issue which i think is related but distinct from the retirement security crisis. there is also a major problem of very few problems have a rainy day fund to deal with shocks to their income or consumption expenses. conference, one of my colleagues at nyu talk about some of his research about how month-to-month there are dramatic shifts in people's disposable income and what their demands are. i think that is something that maybe is a somewhat separate topic from today, but is really worth very careful policy attention. in terms of how the retirement

think --ystem works, i i want to go back to this issue of annuitizing. one solution may be bill's proposal is trying out annuities is very intriguing. another possibility is to gradually annuitize people over time. this deals with several issues. one issue is that there is a very large problem in the security markets. if you have people defaulting people into targets, they gradually shift from stocks to bonds over time, you can imagine a new fund which shifted you into annuities. first because it was through it , youployer and defaulted would deal with interest rate risk. if people annuitize in one year, they face a lot of risk that they are getting a relatively

bad deal because of what the rate happens to be that year which heavily impacts the annuity price. i think that would potentially help with less leakage, but also give a wide path where in the you haver early on much more of your account not annuitized and as you approach retirement you have it more annuitized. programioned the ira and i think this is a really intriguing program for the issue of precautionary savings because even though it is structured as a retirement savings account, it works pretty well as a precautionary savings account. it is no risk. you can get a relatively high return for no risk. there is no fee. the amount that is invested in att product is capped

$15,000 and then treasury will have to think about what happens when it exceeds the amount. the money that you put in yourself, you can withdraw without penalty. that makes it a nice opportunity for people who want a basic account of up to $15,000 to deal with shocks. to have something that is earning a safe return but they can withdrawal at any time for those crises. i thin don't think that is the r to it at large, but it is a potential answer to the other problem you raised. i don't have a silver bullet for how you delineate what the proper hardship expense, but what is striking is many of the withdrawals people may currently do not happen because there is some crisis and they are trying to decide whether it is are not.

but they happen almost by accident. the default on loans is the best example. let me go through that in more detail. you can take a loan from your 401(k) and you have some time to pay it back and that is fine. that is how it should be working. now, if you have your 401(k) with an employer and decide to role your money over because you are leaving your employer, you are forced to immediately pay back the loan which is simply infeasible for many people. what happens is through things that happen in their life which have nothing to do with retirement and need not to be bad, but you get a better job elsewhere and now you are forced to pay back the $50,000 loan you took out in order to buy your first home, then suddenly you have to default on that and now you have lost forever the opportunity to have that money in retirement savings and startle over. -- start all over.

the question you pose is an excellent one. i think you can get a lot of mileage from just preventing these almost accidental withdrawals. it happens a lot when you roll the money over. sooner or later, it is out of the retirement account. mr. gale: i think you asked a great question and i think the first thing john said -- there is no silver bullet on this. personally, i feel like i'm the dove up here about early withdrawals. i feel like if you tell people when they are 25 or 30, you are putting this money in and you cannot get it until you are 62, 65, 70, i feel that will cause people not to purchase things. i don't have any good evidence. i have 1 -- my son who is 26. he was open to 401(k) two years ago and asked all these questions. the idea you have to lock it away for certain until he was 60

which seems like infinity was a downer. the idea of saving part of his raise he thought was a brilliant idea. that was the most enthusiastic. i think it is important to get with the in -- even lack of withdrawal rules than it is to insist that people do not take the money out until they are 65. we already have a retirement mandate and that is social security. that is money you cannot take out until you retire. i have a hard time telling somebody who has a house and kid who loses their job, that they had $50,000 in their 401(k), have a hard time with policy saying they cannot ask is that to keep their family or house. i think we all want more retirement savings, but i think

the perfect can be the enemy of the good. >> hi. i'm a reporter for financial advisor magazine. done inresearch been what the decline of homeownership has done to retirement readiness? i think a strong argument can be made that home-equity is a very part -- important part of retirement savings. ms. ghilarducci: i'm looking at a couple of researchers in the audience. some from it. tony webb here at boston college and new school and diane oakley. it is a really important part of retirement security. comments here on home-equity? mr. friedman: home-equity is the second largest asset behind social security. is a very important source. donenk that -- i have not

the calculations but i'm guessing the reduction in homeownership has not had that big of an effect on retirement readiness. i think people seem to be relatively readiness to have home equity as a source of retirement. >> [indiscernible] you are not: sitting more money. less, but ifsave you save more in your house and you don't ever sell your house until you die which i think is how most people do it, it is kind of not that helpful. -here is a last stop but - ms. ghilarducci: just the second. a second. any other questions? mr. gale: there is a paper from the urban institute that shows

there is a correlation between paying off your mortgage and retiring. i think that is what you are getting at. you finished 30 years of payment, your cash flow goes down and therefore the income you need to survive and for retirement has gone down. there is a correlation there. the is not clear is whether drop in mortgage payment is then allowing people to retire. it might be that people who know they are going to retire later decide to refinance their hencege in their 50's and the mortgage payment for longer. if you are doing retirement adequacy calculations, how much income you need, that drop that someone is paying mortgage versus someone who paid it off is a significant amount of money. the replacement rate of 70% or

whatever, that is one of the reasons why it is not 100% because there is the assumption you finished paying off your mortgage, you are not making 401(k) conservations anymore and so on. things people try to calculate in when they figure out what replacement rate they need. >> one more question? >> a lot of the current savings efficient,are not not effective, and many of your ideas that you have communicated i find to be very compelling. my question is, can you comment on the level of support that these ideas have for working men and women on the hill or in the current

administration because i find your ideas very fascinating? >> that such a good lead-in to panel, but any comment on the political popularity of ?our ideas >> a lot of the ideas have been proposed by the president. i don't want to sugarcoat it. some of these are very ambitious legislative proposals that will years totake multiple get enacted, but i think there are signs of positive progress on the hill. there are signs of the senate finance committee working on fund issues that indicated positive support. they also indicated some interest into defaulting people into lifetime income options. there has been some interest in coming back to some of the savings incentives at the higher

end. there are proposals that limit the extent to which you can benefit from retirement savings retirement savings have been inherited by your air. that has bipartisan support. a long-term process, but it is moving in the right direction. clicks i have nothing to add. -- >> i have nothing to add. >> i will throw in my two cents. i think there is a political sweet spot. party cares about low and no income households. the republican party cares about savings. my sense is that both parties can support that type of

initiative without any stretch of their basic view of the world , and if and when they do decide , thatant to do something would be an amazing candidate for action because it would be consistent with their views of the world. that's a great lead-in. thanks a lot. look at our primetime schedules on the c-span networks. starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern, press secretary josh earnest answers questions on the obama administration's decision to authorize u.s. special operations forces in syria. c-span two, a discussion of ways to increase the number of americans saving for retirement. on c-span3, the senate foreign relations committee holds a confirmation hearing for two -- twont political

different of o-matic posts. -- diplomatic posts. tomorrow, a look at the ongoing violence by isis and why the defense department is recommending increased military activity in iraq and syria. then michael jacobson and janet riley discusses recent report linking processed meats and cancer. after that, sarah westwood of the washington examiner on republican efforts to impeach the irs commissioner. comments, phone calls, and tweets. every weekend, the c-span networks future programs on

politics, nonfiction books, and american history. whether social media hurts politics, and its affect on campaign 2016. sunday evening, texas legislatures and other officials the at the hispanic vote in 2016 and 2018 elections. and on book tv starting a new an eastern, it's the 27th annual southern festival of books in nashville, featuring nonfiction author presentations including kristen green on a virginia town's reaction to the supreme court's brown versus board of education ruling, actor and producer wendell peers on how hurricane katrina impacted his family's new orleans and a remember and to the life of jack london. a live three-hour conversation williamsomist walter as he shares his life and career

, and responses to your phone calls, facebook comments, and tweets. on american history tv, a look at the american civil war and the perspective of foreign rn soldiers who joined the cause. thomas,ook at clarence his upbringing in the south, and his grandfather's influence on his career. arza. librea director of the organization. what is that? guest: it advances the economic principles of latinos across the country. host: what are you concerned about? guest: education issues, debt reform. communityhe latino

and their civic responsibility. immigration reform and economic issue? guest: it has everything to do with how our economy interact. it is important that we have an immigration law that allows the private sector to respond to -- to hire who they need to hire. there is labor demand we need to meet. immigrants coming into our country is important in fulfilling the demand in the private sector. host: when you say debt ceiling, what is your concern? guest: ultimately, we are concerned that our legislators, elected leaders fulfill their promises to be fiscally responsible to hold sacred the

money that taxpayers are paying into our government and make sure the programs they are financing are working effectively. caps,en we have spending that you honor those spending caps. in this case, they have not. they tested the last night and did not the fill their promises. night past a bill last and did not fulfill their thomas. latinos are very young. while the rest of america is 10 years old on average. pay the spending that is occurring today in the future more than anybody else. it matters what elected leaders are doing with the taxpayer dollars.

what they did last night was not honoring the spending caps. politician tells you when they run for office that they are going to be fiscally responsible, then they come to washington and turns out they are not, we remember that. why areniel garza, republican candidates not doing well with latino voters? guest: there is a lot to that. it's complex. -- i think i'd think that the conservative movement for decades stayed at the margins with minority communities. they seated minorities to the left. they assumed that the principles of free markets and limited government would sell themselves to let -- to the latino community. that latinos were conservatively -- bettina's were conservative intuitively. -- that latinos were

conservative intuitively. providing services, using federal dollars, leaning data from the latino community for decades. spanish-language television, unions, all the sort of forces were at work in the latino community that were more aggressive in so driving that narrative and those ideas to the left, they were much more effective because they were engaged, while conservatives were not engaged. so, now they are paying the price and having to catch up. even though's -- even though i agree that latinos are philosophical in their ideas, you have to engage and connect. ronald reagan said it best, freedom does not pass on through the blood, it passes on from one generation to the next.

you have a civic and political responsibility to connect to all constituencies, which the failed to do so. have the presidential candidates have been saying that you have agreed with concerning latino voters? what are some of the positions that have turned off latino voters? guest: contrary to popular believe, all issues are latino issues. it is not just the issue of immigration. on the issue of immigration, there is a diverse field of thought when it comes to the republican, conservative side. they are much more unified on the left, democrat side. it is easier for one to know the position of one side or the other. left asuld say, on the opposed to the right. a couple cute things when it comes to immigration for latinos. poll after poll, we know that

jobs and the economy is number one in raking us concern for the latino community. we are concerned about our kids graduating from college and the are no job opportunities here it we are concerned about the real low participation rate at 62%. that matters to us. showed did a study that that during this time from 2009, more latinos have been part-time but the other social group in america. so, if we are at 8% part-time what the rest of the country is 4%, obamacare is impacting us. taxation,ation, more as the government grows and centralizes more capital here in bc and wall street, those impacted our minority communities as the government is imposeg, threatening to more tax hikes on most double

the cost. blacks and latino youths are in double digits when it comes to unemployment. this matters to us. it is bringing a lot of latinos to their knees. that matters to us among the candidates are saying. education, of course, is very high on the ranks. a formal education will position you better in the marketplace. parents are empowered to choose the education for their children. college tuition is going to be very important as well. those tax hikes and what the candidates are saying to begin to restrain the high cost of college and an education and health care is also a very important issue to us. and of course the issue of immigration. host: how long has the image --

hello has the initiative and around as mark -- been around? guest: we lost in 2011. -- we launched in 2011. we have received contributions from freedom partners there is that if the connection. host: daniel garza is our guest. libre meaning freedom. numbers are up on the screen divided by our usual political affiliations. republican, democrat, independent and we set aside our fourth line for latino voters, we want to hear from you as well, and that number is -- debate, cnbc, the want to your response from what

he had to say. today we have a legal that ision system or -- the way my parents came in 1956. in 2015, we have a very different economy. behas to be merit-based and somewhat skills you have, what you can contribute economically, and on whether or not you are coming to become -- coming here to become an american. guest: i agree in most part in what he is saying. history, there has been an estimation that there has been to hundred 20 million immigrants with a lot of skill and talent and a lot of desire to achieve the american dream. those ways of poor immigrants have made our nation richer, our economicause system allows anybody with wehing to achieve anything,

have been a prosperous nation because of the wealth of labor. because an immigration system has allowed to accommodate for those ways of poor immigrants. fear isday, what i've that would system hinder those waves of poor immigrants to create new wealth. mark rubio is talking about we need a new system. having those people who have low the 1986high skill, immigration act passed by ronald reagan only absorb the 3 million that had been here without authorization, but it did not accommodate for future flows of immigrants. that is where the system is broken. that is how we force people to come in illegally. we need to fix that component

and criminalize a very rational activity of our private sector. lives. can improve their we do need to guard our borders and secure our orders. we are a sovereign nation, after all. those of the exceptions when it comes to the immigrant community. see are hopeful -- we are hopeful that they can show some leadership on this issue. host: let's take some calls. jesus is calling in from bedford, maine. caller: my questions is for mr. garza. host: sorry about that. you are going to move on to don in vallejo, california. caller: yes. number one.span,

i'm looking at this guy garza, you are supposed to be representing mexican's, so-called mexicans in america, but aren't you part of the spanish conquest? aren't you one of the ones that took the indians and turned them into mexican that taught them how to speak spanish and put them in slavery? how can you represent the mexican when you are not a mexican? you are a white man. host: thank you. any response mr. garza. i'd think if we are going to indict this generation for the sins of the past, i inc. we are in trouble. all we can do is reflect on we are as individuals. make life better for ourselves and try to advance freedom and

make sure we have a nation where we can safeguard the notion that there is equal opportunity and we can all prosper and fries, no matter who you are. , no matter who you are. i'd think it is important that the different divers voices within cultural diversity, we be given a platform to voice our concern about the direction of this country because we are impacted. the decisions are being made in washington dc and the state capitals. whetherencourage anyone mexican descent, puerto rican, anything, to be involved in the election process and steer the direction of this country. everyone matters and every voice matters. carroll tweets in that it

fledonic that immigrants -- guest: there is no questioned that there is a collectivist approach that has taken over latin america. venezuela is collapsing in their system of economy because they governments that have failed, that if you centralize power and decision-making in a federal government, that is the best system. we feel that people thrive when from the tethers of government. clearly, there is a role for government and some regulation, but it cannot be accessed. -- but it cannot be excessive.

we have to reward hard work and personal responsibility. that is a system that has made america oscar. we must preserve that. latin america is heading down the wrong road. argentina is heading in that direction. bolivia, ecuador, one country after another. the ones that have separated from the pack are doing very well. are some of the most prosperous countries in latin america and it shows in their economy. another tweet, dave, for immigrants are just slave labor at this point. would be smart to fix mexico -- would be smarter to fix mexico. government has interfered

too much with the lives of individuals. parents, they went as far as the fourth rate. picking from a roll part of mexico. they were from a rural part of mexico. i was born in california. group. part of the same we migrated in groups. my parents took 20 years of saving working in the field and orchards in america and made a small business. that decision made us get on our way up to the middle class and succeed. but so did my answer and uncles -- but so did my aunts and uncles. they started in those low skill jobs. in america, it takes one generation to move on and up

-- it takess that one generation to move on and up. it takes one generation for children to succeed. children of farmworkers, from the field to the white house. that is a reflection of america. those opportunities that we want to preserve for others. host: daniel garza was part of the george w. bush administration and served as deputy director in the office of the secretary of interior. tulsa, oklahoma, go ahead. the leading republican candidates for president, first-generation immigrant -- sons of immigrants. it will be interesting to see

how the latin american community, which is very conservative, as you have indicated, and going up against the hillary clinton and talk about positions. hillary clinton is a supporter of planned parenthood selling baby parts. many other issues that will go right down the line and it will be interesting to see how this conservative hard-working group -- every latino eye now is very hard-working, very family oriented, very conservative in their philosophy, and yet they are classed and convinced to be by the spending of money for social services.

that's not really something that will hold long-term if they start talking about the issues. i look forward to this upcoming election and seeing if this latin american immunity will --lly support their beliefs latin american community will really support their beliefs. guest: eye would tell the caller aat there have been their --e support percentage self identify as moderate. who represents them? not many. if you are talking about 70% at any given time that are predisposed to free market is 30 million to

35 million that are not been represented. it is not spanish-language television, univision, telemundo, it is not the unions. this is a time in america that conservative elected leaders could really shine if they can aggressively court the latino community and earn their trust and vote. means you have to be unapologetic about where you stand on your conservative vegetables on limited government, restraining the ending that is going on in the, centralization of power. latinos will engage with you. in 2014, there was a massive shift in the latino vote. you saw that in colorado. barack obama got 80% of the latino vote. so for cory gardner to cause

that shift, it honors his hard work that he did to going to latino churches, latino chamber of common sense -- latino chamber of commerce is an connected with the latino community. you not only saw that in colorado, but governor gray greg abbott,s, each got over 40%, over 45% over the latinos vote. rick scott in florida, chris christie that 66% of the latino vote. you saw across the map that is conservative candidates connect with the latino voter, you will be rewarded. host: what about donald trump? he said that he employs thousands of hispanic. he loved the hispanic people.

is he connecting? guest: he is not. his narrative is not one that is inclusive. it turned off a lot of folks to mischaracterize the immigrant community. granted, if folks come in unauthorized, to mischaracterize them as criminals and reese -- , it is anand rapists offensive thing to say. position, hepolicy has taken a cruel position to cut off remittances of hard-working immigrants who want to send money back to their family is cruel or it it is also unrealistic and say you're going to deport 11 million folks who are already a part of our communities here. 50% had been here over five years -- 60% have been here over

five years. it is not practical. and to also say that you are going to resent the 14th -- that you're going to be send the 14th amendment for that subgroup in him to, it hasn't caused gain endearment with the latino community. quite the contrary. folks have been turned off by his rhetoric and commentary. host: what about ted cruz? has called to double -- legalof immigration --igration and quadruple where we want to work with the senator, what do we do with the 11 million that are here? he holds a position that we want -- to beage more to be

more accommodating. his narrative has been spot on. itrative matters there neared it is important -- narrative matters. how you connect with people, there is an emotional response to that. for latino people, it is the questioning of the heart and the compassion you have for people and how you speak about the most vulnerable. for us, it is an important issue. see whate waiting to kind of position you hold on their issues. host: this call for daniel garza comes from dan in pennsylvania on our democrats line. caller: good morning to everybody. you republicans have a short memory. you forget that $2 trillion of the budget deficit that we are in was brought on