tv Key Capitol Hill Hearings CSPAN January 14, 2016 10:00am-12:01pm EST
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and talking about this issue. that is all for today's washington journal. we will be back tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. join us then. have a great day. ♪ >> congressional republicans are holding their annual policy retreat in baltimore, maryland. our capitol hill producer, craig kaplan is there, tweeting this. reporters surrounding foreign affairs committee chairman ed royce. the tweet, ed royce at the g.o.p. retreat, quote, if
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agreement goes through, problems with iran going to compound, iran is on a roll. also from craig kaplan, tweeting the news conference under way with the chair's kathy mcmorris and senator john thune. follow that live online at c-span.org. back here later in the day, congressional republicans, annual retreat, we'll hear from the leaders. speaker paul ryan, and senate majority leader mitch mcconnell this afternoon at 1:30 eastern. across the networks today. live coverage getting under way right now over on c-span3. the american association of university women holding a discussion on campus physical and sexual assaults. again, that's on c-span3. president obama, meanwhile, continues his travels following his final state of the union address. speaking at a town hall meeting in baton rouge, louisiana, this morning. we'll have that live at 11:05 eastern. >> booker t. said to him, you
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know we have college-aged kids covered here in alabama. but it's really the kids in the elementary schools that are suffering. they are just not -- the african-american kids are getting poor education, horrible buildings. they are separate and not equal. >> sunday night on "q&a," a filmmaker talks about her latest film, "rhoden walled" did julius and his partnership with booker t washington and the african-american communities in the south to build schools and bring elementary education to children in rural america. >> first julius said, sears puts together these kit houses. why don't we use the kit houses? and the best thing booker t. washington ever did was say, no. i want the communities to build it. so first these six schools were built. that's really amazing. from that it more ofed into
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5,000 schools -- morphed into 5,000 schools. all over the south. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's "q&a." >> featured this weekend on american history tv on c-span3, saturday night at 8:00 eastern, on lectures in history. arizona state university professor brook simpson on the president's wartime role. including wars waged without formal congressional declaration. >> could argue that the president's job to educate, to explain, can educate. the president would say i know you don't understand this. there is not any reason you should have understood this. it was in a place far, far away. where people who speak a different language. and so i'm going to explain to you what american interests are, we'll let congress respond to that. i will let opinion makers respond to that, members of my administration. i'm going to educate you.
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then you can help make a decision. i'm going to ask you to do this. i'm going to explain to you why i think this is a course of action to pursue. >> sunday morning at 10:00, on road to the white house rewind, the 1996 campaign. former republican tennessee governor, lamar alexander, and his walk across new hampshire to greet voters. later, at 4:00 p.m. eastern on real america, a 1963 interview with reverend martin luther king jr. on his nonviolent approach to civil rights, his comments on president kennedy's civil rights bill, and how mahatma gandhi influenced his work. some years ago when i first studied the began deian philosophy and nonviolent resistance, i came to the conclusion that it was the most potent represent -- weapon available to oppress people in their struggle for freedom and human dignity. and i would say that this overall direct action movement
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th its sit-ins and standins, kneel-ins, mass marches, and pilgrimages and all of the other elements that enter the struggle deal een happened a great afghandy. >> for the weekend schedule go to c-span.org. >> white house chief of staff, denis mcdonough, says he has a lot of admiration for south carolina governor nicki haley and the good thing she's gotten done and wasn't surprised in some of the themes in who are response to the president's state of the union tuesday. his comments came yesterday as he spoke with reporters at the "christian science monitor" breakfast series in washington. it's about an hour.
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>> ok e. here we g i'm dan cook, christian science montomplet thanks for coming after i know what was a long night for many of you covering president obama's state of the union address. in 50 years the congress has been hosting thee gatherings we welcomed whout chief of staff to rahm emanuel. we are especially pleased to have our first breakfast -- it is true. it's true. it's true. so we are especially pleased to have our first breakfast of 2016 with president obama's fifth and reportedly favored chief of staff, denis mcdonough, thanks for making time in your schedule to do this. he's a minnesota native who grew up surrounded by seven brothers and three sisters. he graduated from st. john's university as did brother eisley with an honors degree in history
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an span in, and playing on two conference winning football teefments he earned a master's degree from georgetown school of public foreign service, which should endear him to fellow hoya conner of the national journal. he was working on the hill as a foreign policy advisor to senate democratic leader tom daschle and senator barack obama. he served in mr. as policy advisor in mr. obama's 2008 campaign. his white house long days have been spent serving as deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, chief of staff for the national security staff, deputy national security advisor, and since february, 2013, white house chief of staff. he and his wife are the parents of three children, and thus ended the bio graphical portion program. now on to the details. as always we are on the record here. please, no live blogging or tweeting. in short, no filing of any kind
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while the breakfast is under way to give us time to listen to what our guest says. there is no embargo when the session ends at 9:00 a.m. sharp. to help you curb that relentless selfie urge, we'll email several pictures of the breakfast to all reporters here as soon as the session ends. as regular attendees know, if you like to ask a querks send me a subtle nonthreatening signal and i'll call on one and all in the time available. we'll start off offering our guest the opportunity to make some opening comments. then move to questions around the table. thanks again for doing this. mr. mcdonough: thank you-all very much, david, thanks in tifpblgt i associate my opening remarks with what i thought was an excellent speech last night. and i'll go straight to your questions. mr. cook: i'm going to do one or two myself and go to tony, john, , craig, rge, katelyn john, colleen. you can tell there is some
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interest in what you have to say. greg, sara, and kevin. let me start with you on the navy service people being released this morning. what if anything in your view does the capture and subsequent usease of a 10% by iran tell about relations with iran and how the u.s. should deal with iran going forward? does it tell us anything? mr. mcdonough: obviously we are very pleased to see that our 10 sailors are now back with us. where they should have always been. we are -- you have seen statements from both secretaries kerry and carter, and you have seen, obviously, some statements rom the -- our region of command in the region, central command. he navy component thereof.
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i'm hesitant to draw big lessons from this, yet, david, because we want to get the facts of the case. navy has said that they are going to dig into that over the course of the next several days. and so we'll continue to follow that closely. i do think as secretary carter said in his statement, secretary kerry's aggressive and early engagement in this and open channel that he had and he has with his foreign minister counterpart was important. and as somebody who's been of policy this basket questions now for several years, do think that the open lines
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are mmunication, which relatively new, are extraordinarily important. particularly when we have so many interests in such a crowded rea in the persian gulf. bottom line is, too early to draw big conclusions about this because the facts are still as yet unknown. all the facts are as yet unknown. but one thing that i can say with confidence is that this channel between secretary kerry and their foreign minister was very important in resolving this in a timely fashion. just say -- sorry, one other thing here. which is particularly when you're working in such tight quarters and the persian gulf is tight quarters and relatively
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shallow body of water, the tradition that the united states navy has of providing for ilors in distress has been pretty evident over the course of the last decade, but also in the last several years when we've provided support for iranian sailors in distress. that very proud of tradition, of the u.s. navy. i think there's been several instances of this over the course of the last several years, as i have indicated. and i think it's in that spirit that i'm happy to see that. in this case, at least this was resolved relatively quickly. mr. cook: my predecessor in hosting these, throwing out a ceremonial softball and i violated a rule by asking a news question first. here's the ceremonial softball.
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i would be interested in knowing what lessons you have learned during your white house experience that you would pass along to the next person to serve as chief of staff. you were quoted in glenn's comprehensive profile recently as saying process protects you. and you were also observed as life of chief of staff being treated like a baby treats a diaper. what do you expect to pass on to a future chief of staff? your experience being both below the steve of staff and now as chief of staff? mr. mcdonough: the best advice i got was from secretary baker who said that as long as you focus on the of staff and less on the chief, you'll be just fine. if you rack up the successful chiefs of staff over the course of time, i think that those i think life by the maxim
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tot secretary baker urged me consider. that's point one. point two, i want to underscore this process point, this is something that i really internalize not necessarily watching a chief of staff as much as watching my former colleague, national security advisor tom donelan. he had two, i think, very good things. one is process is your friend. and two is, let the government work for you. we have a huge government with a it's ery capable people working 24/7 both because of the dedication of the government personnel, but also because we have people around the world and you have to make that clockwork four. for example, this iranian incident is a good example of that where we had people literally working this around the clock even though when it
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happened it was pretty late in the day in the gulf and got quickly into night in the gulf. still we use the time advantage here on our end to work that out. i will say that as originally as white house staffer i was know if i i don't as as, shall we say, straightforwardly committed to the processes that were in place. i think that ultimately did not serve the president very well. and so both because of how i saw tom donlan run a very good process, and also having witnessed it what can happen when somebody like myself, when i first got in the white house, who sometimes went outside of
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process and kind of confusion that that wrought, i continue to believe the most important thing a good chief can do is assure the president that the process on which that president relies is straightforward and transparent and honest and presents him or her with very clear choices fairly presented. mr. cook: thank you. uss. reporter: [indiscernable onversation] reporter: follow up on your answer, can you talk about the president's instructionings to you or directions to you about transition? transition government and preparations that the white house is making now and how that will be organized, and what your ambition is for that? mr. mcdonough: in candor right now we are just doing a lot of paper development in the white house. what we are doing is getting a
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lot of paper and process in place to begin transition efforts. and then we'll begin transition planning in ernest -- earnest early spring. right now it's just preparation. i don't have anything particular to report on it other than i would anticipate it being rolling out pretty aggressively by early spring. reporter: are you in charge? mr. mcdonough: we have not -- the president hasn't put a finger on exactly who will be in charge. we'll present him with a couple options. reporter: the white house was in the sill lon valley last week to see how to crackdown on online extremism. there were ideas overfloating
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that meeting. does the white house have more meetings planned within tech executives? hat's the next step in this? mr. mcdonough: also rolled out on friday when we went on the trip were two institutions. one is the global engagement center over at the state epartment. the other is countering violent xtremism task force. so the next step that those institutions the task force has been up and running now for several weeks and the global ngagement center will roll out with initial efforts consistent with their charter. those are institutions that are up and running that will draw on
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the relationships we have developed in the silicon valley and around the country, frankly. but they have charters and efforts that they need to take and run with. we at the white house will have relatively role in making sure those efforts. option two is making sure that we are drawing on the best that silicon valley has to offer in this regard. and one thing we can do from the white house is serve as a bridge particularly as we are aggressively recruiting, and this is something that the president has been very clear with me about since october, 2013. ou might remember it quite clearly, that we get much more aggressive. -- aggressive about recruiting tech talent into the government. we feel pretty good about it. the numbers that we have are
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pretty solid and get 500 engineers in the government, you know, to provide that kind of cutting edge technical expertise across the board. not simply on combating online during the course of the next extremism. several months. that's basket two is maintain a very aggressive effort on regrumet. basket three is we will continue to draw on lessons from silicon valley, both as it relates to radicalize eople to online, what are the markers of that. what are the indications of that and how do we counter it. what's the message we can offer. others can offer to make sure that there's not just this
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loomy pathway from isil, but more realistic alternatives. -- . cook: -- mr. mcdonough:there are also other questions that we will continue to debate inside the government and silicon valley, where the technology is going. reporter: encryption that c.e.o. wanted you to put out a strong statement, are you guys going to do that? mr. mcdonough: what we have said on this, director comey has said and others have said, we are not seeking legislative changes at this time. so we'll continue to work this issue. i want to be careful, i'm not
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characterizing deliberately what happened in the room because i thought it was a very fruitful discussion, but mr. cook and apple have been vigorous in their public position on this and we'll continue to work this issue along with a full range of our colleagues who are out there in silicon valley and others. mr. cook: john bennett. eporter: before the speech was halfway over, speaker ryan's office put out a statement that said quote, lofty platitudes and rhetoric. it failed to lay out the path forward for the country. i wanted your response and what does the speaker say about his working relationship with the president? mr. mcdonough: i think the speech responds -- i don't need to respond to the statement. the speech was fully responsive o the statement.
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i don't want to engage a specific tweet from his office. he seemed to be quite engaged in the speech last night and after having heard the whole speech there is enough in there for us to work on. the president had a couple of references to the speaker. i think those are positive. my own view, which i think is not inconsistent with what the president has said in his speech or what the president believes on which i'll elaborate a bit is that last year, i think, was an important opportunity for us to get the muscle memory in the institution in washington starting with things like the ermanent doc fix, with t.p.a., with i.m.f. reform, something hat has lingered since 2010.
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ex-imre-authorization, cyber something which had lingered since the president called for it in the state of the union in 013. on top of the tax extenders and the budget. i think that kind of reestablishment of muscle memory is important for a lot of different reasons. i think the speaker is to be ommended for part of that. i think leader pelosi is pivotal to that. senators reid and mcconnell also contributed to that. and i think if you go to the speech and really what the president talked a lot about
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last night was over the course of this republic, the institutions of this government, this democracy are the best protections against the ndividual citizens getting the short end of the stick, and so the muscle memory that came back last year is, i think, both reassuring but also a great opportunity to try to make sure hard-earned of cynicism of the american public, which i think the president also cknowledged last night, can be -- we can regain some trust back from the american citizens. so that's what we'll focus on, less on the back and forth and making sure these institutions ork.
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reporter: the democratic message right now is america is already great, donald trump. [inaudible] pretty high of certain economic indicators. why is so many people think this country is on the wrong path right now? mr. mcdonough: the president talked about that last night so i associate myself with his i think very candid assessment of hat. the economy is changing. people who are working are having a hard time keeping pace with that change. he also said that the institutions as i just indicated in response to the previous
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question are not living up to heir traditional role. nd so i think there's a lot of reasons -- on top of that, the depth of the recession from 2007 and 2008 and the impact that had on people across the board, housing values to retirement and education savings. and people have a right to be and understandably are neasy. so i guess from the president's point of view that means three things. one, he is going to redouble his efforts to try to buy back some greater trust in these
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institutions and in our leadership and our role in the world. two is that we have very concrete ideas to try to do that and you'll hear more about that over the next several days including starting today on the road. nd three, we want to make sure that we don't fall victim to the same kind of short-termism that the president talked about in the economy section of the speech. we have to make sure we keep our eyes on the long-term prize and make sure we are investing in the policy choices. not to respond to a specific poll but respond to the national interests that we need to address over the long haul to make sure that we maintain the strength of the union that the president laid out last night.
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reporter: a big goal of the president in the next term of his presidency is criminal justice reform. mr. cook: no announcement on his next term. reporter: criminal justice reform requires working with conservatives, conservative groups, republicans, the election year has kicked off. how much time do you have to actually get something done on this issue before the election kicks off and how is that process going in terms of working with these conservative groups that are out there trying to tear the president down in other ways but support you in criminal justice? mr. mcdonough: the president said we don't have to agree on everything but get to work on some things that we can and should work on. that's point one. point two, we don't spend a lot
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of time keeping score of who is being nice to us, or who is being mean to us, but focused on how we are going to get stuff done. i will call your attention to the fact that the president very early in the speech talked about his hope that we can work together on the opioids and heroin epidemic in this country. that can and should feed the criminal justice reform ffort. and by the way that's kind of happening all across the country in every corner of the country. i was just home and this huge issue in minnesota and suburban twin cities. this is true in every corner of the country. point three how much time we got, we don't have much. and i think part of the argument
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we will be making and the president referred to last night and i think in each of the efforts we have gone through is the president is trying to make personal that we not overwhelm don't have a lot of time to get this done, but as it relates to time, there is some fundamental injustice we should correct in terms of the time that any of these individuals is now serving, which is in cases across the board, republicans and democrats, conservatives and progressives, be agree is too uch. and we ought to correct that. and so you're right. it's going to be hard. it requires cooperation with some of the most conservative members and it requires working through the committees, the judiciary committees or more recently have become the most partisan committees.
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but nevertheless, the president has had a series of meetings with democrats and republicans together as well as individual meetings with members on both sides that have been among the most substantive that he's had on any issue. so there's a lot of fruitful ommon ground to be plowed here and i think we can make use of the time we do have. the underlying current of your question is there is not much time. we're pushing up if i understand or remember correctly the time line for congress this year. i think they are anticipating being in session until the middle of july and in effect, being done. that feeds our sense of urgency o get this done.
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reporter: did you hear governor haley's speech last night but echoed what the president said of rejecting the politics of fear, a lot of what donald trump has talked about. and the official republican response would be in effect a rebuke of the party's presidential front runner, do you see it that way and do you think something like that could be a pivotal moment. mr. mcdonough: i read her response and i read a lot of the coverage today. i was in a meeting yesterday that i have a lot of admiration for the governor. i think some of the things she has done over the course of the last year are remarkable. i thought that the reaction and her leadership role in the
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follow-up on the charleston shootings and her very brave and admirable role on the flag were powerful. and so on one level i wasn't surprised to see the -- some of the themes in the speech given that. i don't consider myself particularly qualified to comment on what's going to move and be consequential in the republican primary or the presidential campaign generally. i have trepidation of going -- i thought it was -- i have been mpressed by the governor's work, a lot of stuff that she's proposed and worked for that that we disagree with and things hat we wish she would do and
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haven't done, like medicaid exchanges the top of the list, i think there's a huge chance for south carolinians to get basic protections. so by no means do i -- am i trying to endorse everything that she is doing. but a lot of it including parts of the speech last night were admirable. reporter: the end of last year, beginning of this year, we have seen rhetoric of syrian refugees and members to put greater crutiny on refugees. how does the administration plan to address that issue? r. mcdonough: we continue to think that and pursue policies that maintain united states eadership role on refugees
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generally and in syria and central america in articular. we -- i'm quite proud of the work of this government over the course of the last several years to fulfill the quota established each year of 70,000 to 75,000 each year. but over the course of the last three years, we filled those quotas for the first time in a long time. really for the first time since /11. and it's our intention to continue to grow that topline quota. and we believe that the budget agreement gives us the resources to continue to grow that number. so we'll continue to work that. that's point one.
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that is a priority for us and will continue to be the budget that we got at the end of last year to give us the resources to continue to do that. point two is that my hunch is it will continue to be controversial for the reasons that the president pointed out in his speech last night but we'll continue to defend the idea of the united states as refuge, but also the idea that refugees in the united states add immeasurably to the national interests and it is going to be something we have to get out and defend but we are prepared to do that. and the examples are many. -- and the example are manifold. and i can tell you that my own personal experience as a young kid in minnesota when my family sponsored a vietnamese refugee
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family, my wife and me sponsoring refugee families here in d.c. over the course of the last couple decades. partially motivates my own view of this. but united states -- the impact of refugees on the national interests is undeniable and we ill defend that. it will be tough to beat and see how it goes. we won't shy from it. reporter: just a follow-up on a question. in the last gallup poll, the way things are going, 79% but in the 60, 70's or 80's for 10 years. when you look at that as a decade-long condition, do you read those numbers primarily
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about economic anxiety and insecurity or about political frustration with divided government or with the political leadership in this country? mr. mcdonough: fair question, i think. i start with a confession, i see these polls and get together with you guys, to be honest, when i read those, what do i think when i read those? i don't because i don't read them. based on my interactions with both our people who do read them and with my interaction just coming back from the holidays and spending time with my own family, quite extended and is quite large. i think it's a reasonable sample size. i think it's both. i think -- i think that --
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what's interesting is we are seeing some bounce back in productivity in the course of the last year or so. but there is a strange lull in roductivity. and the global economy right now that productivity, jason and sandy, productivity globally is down, which is weird, because the big input in the economy right now is something that we all think adds productivity namely technology. productivity is down, but that also is part of a stagnation of wages that far predates the last 0 years. so wage stagnation has got to be part of it, but that's not new in the last 10 years, that's ike a 30-year trend. but the combination of people
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feeling like they are working as hard as they can, the vehicles by which they determine how their kids are going to get to the next level from what they got or from what we got is also super expensive. the education inflation numbers are outpacing health care inflation numbers and something that we believe as an administration that the universities and higher education have to account for. that's why we went through the whole exercise we went through last year on college score cards. i think it's both. it has to do with the historic trend on wage stagnation. as people feel their wages are stagnating, other things that are indicators of success are ot stagnating. inflation is out of control and
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ultimately they feel that policy makers aren't responding to either of those questions. and so that's a generational thing that we have to make sure e are responding to. reporter: recently i interviewed a cardinal who had been at the monitor's breakfast and while he applauded the statement of the persecution of christians in the middle east that was issued before christmas, he did express a hope that the president would follow the example of pope francis and other world leaders nd call it genocide. this is something that the cardinal felt strongly about, that other secular as well as church leaders feel strong about. will the administration call what is happening to christians in the middle east genocide?
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mr. mcdonough: thanks. i red the transcript of his eminence's appearance here. it must have been an interesting conversation. and when you think about the question about refugees or this question of talking about stagnation or opportunity, i think his eminence and the holy father have been catalysts in our public debate. so i think -- we owe them a debt of gratitude for their work on that. on this question -- i got this question also from cardinal --an, and as i understand it i guess i understand it is not on the record.
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i put an as terrific there to make sure maybe i don't understand it, but as i understand it the holocaust museum is going through a policy review as to whether it should characterize what's happening in he middle east as genocide toward christians but also otherwise. this is not administration policy this is holocaust museum olicy. i think -- i'm not aware of us making a determination in any case about determining whether there is genocide in the middle east. i could take that question on and see if we can check it to see if we are undertaking a eview of that. but at the time when i talked to cardinal dolan last year, we were not. i want to be careful here because i don't want to make
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sure we are not expressly calling it genocide. we have not taken on this question of characterizing the ongoing violence as enocide. reporter: i wanted to ask you about the politics brings out the best in us and not the worst and regretted that politics is so divisive and what lessons he has learned about that or what he might do differently to bring out the best in politics. and including language that clearly was a direct response to donald trump and ted cruz in the speech and if you are trying to bring out the best in politics, why wait until the republican -- why wade into the republican primary?
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mr. mcdonough: on the question -- i think the president believed it was important that there be an alternative to rebut the prevailing wisdom in some of the pun lick -- public debate right now. and that is fully consistent with the tone of his speech and the content of the speech and also what he said. i thought his characterization of the founders and the vigor ith which they debated forcefully issues that in many ways both strongly held but also
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. posed was a good example tom daschle who i worked for for a long time said it was the music democracy. but without the music, it just oesn't work. what i would say back, i don't see him offering a different narrative or a different argument as being inconsistent with the politics that rises above kind of the -- otherwise unproductive nature of some of this -- unproductive conduct so far. n terms of what specifically he'll do, in basket four of the
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speech, i don't want to frontline on that, and i think you'll see a lot -- it's one of those things i think you'll want to kind of have reported after he fact rather than lead up to conduct thereof. but i guess i want to underscore what he said, which is this can't be -- this is not just a question of who controls the next congress and the next president. it can't be the work of just the president or anybody else. he really put a call out to american citizens to engage. and i think you will see him engaging with american citizens directly. on the full range of policy questions including the ones we just talked about, but also directly engaging with them in small groups in living rooms and towns across the country and those are going to be in red and blue states.
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and so ultimately as he said, we need hard work in this democracy and we want to make sure that the american people that are driving that change. mr. cook: we've got about 10 minutes left and 11 questions. i'm not going to be able to get o everybody. nice to have some substantive answers. all in life is not a tweet. but there may be some frustration. mr. mcdonough: you share a lot of wisdom. reporter: the rancor and -- indiscernible] reporter: since you have been around the white house and congress all these years and
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talked with the president about how this has all unfolded. what is responsible for that? apart from the question you just took on, what can we do going forward. when he looks at the situation and look at how this has played out over the past seven years, who's responsible? mr. mcdonough: so, you know, i think he talked a little bit about that last night. i think -- what strikes me is epublicans and democrats say this to me -- i assume they say it to you guys, too, off the record, republicans and emocrats are struck by the oise signal ratio or the politics to substance ratio of
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their job, and obviously, they wished the ratio was much more substantive than they find it when they get here. and you know -- probably the reason you are asking the questions are the reasons i don't want to answer it. but as i think there are a lot f us to blame. i think it's the structure of ur campaigns, the structure of our districts, kind of what's happening in terms of news media, that is to say you can select the news media the same way you select your neighborhood, your church, so it ends up being -- you can end up in an echo chamber unless you aggressively
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work to get out of that, to seek ifferent chambers of nformation and friendships and ideas, you end up -- and i think that that ultimately is the thing that we rely on you all and your jobs are so important. i think we also as individuals here district of columbia look, i'm struck by the fact that republicans and democrats on the hill, they don't spend a lot of time together, period. so that's one thing i have tried to do and will continue to do here over the course of the next year if the president keeps me on the job and see if we get anywhere.
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i'm filibustering the answer because i don't know precisely and we'll keep track of ifferent things. reporter: can you give us information of how much political capital the president plans to use this year. mr. mcdonough: the president has been doing a lot of reading on this and also had a bunch of conversations with susan and ale as well as others. you know at the world bank and other places. he came back -- i forget, i think it was over the summer aving read some on malaria and
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he said, you know how close we are to really breaking through on malaria and beating malaria? and i confessed that i didn't. so susan and gail and ben did a lot of work on this over the course of the fall. i think this is something that along with pepfar, something that president bush and ambassador -- secretary rice and mike, those guys should feel really good about. hey got us up the impact curve on h.i.v., on malaria and t.b.
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that maybe if we give it a little extra push here, maybe we an close this out. e're going to push on this and the president did put it in there deliberately. i'm glad you noticed. reporter: what about unilateral ism --mr. mcdonough: on ebola that iberia comes clean again which will then be each of the three countries at the epicenter of the ebola epidemic having come out of the depth of that pidemic. the capability inside usaid,
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n.i.h., c.d.c. and u.s. military is a gem for the united states government and for the united states people. this is a capability that from he response -- the haiti earthquake to ongoing efforts in sudan to treat infectious disease to h.i.v. to malaria. these guys are unbelievably good and we should be proud of their work. i think the bush administration should be proud of their ork. reporter: no executive orders or executive actions announced last night. mr. mcdonough: i think the speech itself was an executive action. reporter: previous years have been year of action, if congress
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won't act, i will. am i wrong, we are starting to see a somewhat more constrained view of utility of executive action as he gets later in his presidency. with the gun action, it was coloring within the lines. not going as far as rewriting engaging the business rule, offering guidance. is there an understanding that anything done by executive action can be undone by executive action. is there an evolution of the president's utility of executive power? mr. mcdonough: we'll do executive actions throughout the course of the year, i'm confident of that. there is -- go back to the first question, process is your friend, but process dictates what you can do and we want to make sure we get the executive
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actions that we undertake are not left hanging out there subject to congress undoing them and so we're very mindful of time frames by which we have to eet our targets. so process is your friend but process has a lot of equirements. i think maybe what you're seeing is our efforts to make sure that the steps we take are one that is we can lock down and not ave hanging subjected to undoing through congressional review act or otherwise. that's point one. oint two is that we have no -- you know, we could try to administer appetite suppress
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- suppressants inshied the white house and the administration, but the president said to us the other day, i'm going to ask myself -- i'm going to demand of you guys and ask myself one question. what i'm going to demand of you is that everything we do is infused with the sense of possibility that has both undergirded this administration but also this country for time and memorial. and two, he said i'm going to be asking myself why not. and so i think that's the spirit with which we'll approach the last year. and three is, frankly that's part of the way we approached last year and as i said at the beginning, we feel good about last year. we want to start feeling good
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about this year so we are going to lean pretty hard into it. mr. cook: appreciate you spending with us. mr. mcdonough: i appreciate it guys. thanks for having me. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by and here on c-span we'll take you live next to baton rouge, louisiana. president obama in louisiana today to talk about some of the themes he mentioned in tuesday's state of the union address. he's here at mckinley senior high school. will answer questions from the audience and also from a twitter audience. he returns to the nation's capital this amp. second of two stops. yesterday, the president in omaha, nebraska. and today in baton rouge, louisiana. again, following up to the state of the union. his final state of the union. this should get under way in just a couple of minutes. we also want to let you novak
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this is mckinley senior high school. baton rouge, louisiana. president obama will be speaking at a town hall here and also taking questions from a twitter audience. it will get under way shortly. until it does, part of this morning's conversation from oday's "washington journal." host: joining us now with a roundtable discussion about president obama's economic record, we have larry michelle, he's the president of the economic policy institute, and we are also joined by a senior research fellow at the george mason university. welcome to both of you. thanks for joining us. guest: thanks for having me. host: let's look at what the president said tuesday night at the state of the union address.
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[video clip] president obama: the united states of america right now has the strongest, most durable conomy in the world. we're in the longest streak of private sector job creation in history. more than 14 million new jobs, the strongest two years of job growth since the 1990's, an unemployment rate cut in half. our auto industry just had its best year ever. [applause] that's just part of a manufacturing surge that's created nearly 900,000 new jobs in the past six years, and we've done all this while
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cutting our deficits by almost 3/4. [applause] anyone claiming that america's economy is in decline is peddling fiction. host: so the president offers a pretty rosy picture of the economic situation. larry, do you agree with his assessment? guest: well, everything the president said is true. he also said in the speech that the job is far from done, and i think that's the reality of america. and some of it has a lot to do with what he inherited and very long-term problems, which he tried to paint, and -- but it is true that the united states is doing better than all the other advanced nations. you might say that's a very low bar because the european policy has been very bad and they've had basically three recisions
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over the last eight years and their unemployment rate is double what ours is. so, you know, by comparison we're doing great. by comparison to an earlier period in the 1950's and 1960's we're not doing so well. if you compare incomes of a typical working family from now to 1999 to 2000, not doing so well. incomes have been falling for 15 years, so that's way before president obama took office. they haven't fared well. but that's because -- we should also be clear. one of the things he didn't mention was we had a financial crisis caused by wall street on the watch of his predecessor that created a worldwide recession, created very long-standing high unemployment and so the fact that people don't feel so good about the economy is the consequence is we've been through the wringer. and it's not been an easy time
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to get policy done. there's no cooperation between the g.o.p. and the democrats on getting a policy done. so, sure, there's a lot of things to be done. i think the main challenge in america is getting -- to grow for everybody and i wish the president talked more about that. host: you said people aren't feeling so good about the economy which seems to be true, according to a pew research center poll which shows that 48% of americans think that the economy is only fair. and 28% think it's poor. only 27% view it as excellent or good. what's the -- what explains that dichotomy between the president painted the economic picture and what americans feel, veronique? guest: there's real politics that show that 65% of americans thinks we're on the wrong track. that's a big number. it's mostly because of the economy and it is true. this is why i was quite
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surprised to hear the president talk about peddling fiction by thinking we were in decline. then the american people are peddling fiction. it is true the president -- under the president's watch, unemployment has gone down to 5%. however, that number is somewhat misrepresentive of the health of the labor market. labor participation has been reduced draw mactcally, the lowest it's been since 1977 and that would be great -- dramatically, the lowest it's been since 1977 and that would be great if people didn't want to work. that's not the reason. more importantly, the best indicator of the health of the labor market is the employment population ratio and it's low. and the stranges thing is it actually hasn't been going up, really -- strange thing is it actually hasn't been going up, really, as the unemployment rate is going down. there is a new study that came out by the national association of counties that looks at the
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size of the economy, unemployment, housing prices and -- sorry. there's a fourth factor that now i can't remember. that says 93% of counties in america are actually still at the lower levels than before the recession. yes, there's been a really profound recession. the reason why the american people feel things are not great is because things just really aren't great. there's a sense -- america is a land of dream. you come to america or when you're born in america, you know your kids will be doing better than you were. for the first time in a long time, a majority of people do not believe this anymore. host: we want to get the viewers in on this conversation about president obama's economic record. democrats can call in at 202-748-8000. republicans at 202-748-8001. and on the independent line,
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202-748-8002. so we talked about some of the -- we hit on some of the bright spots. one of them is the employment rate which you mentioned is down, is at its lowest point in quite sometime. yet, at the same time wages seem to be falling at the same time. how do these two things cancel each other out? how can both of those things be happening at once? guest: well, the unemployment rate has gone down. as veronique mentioned, the unemployment rate, which is the share of the work force, employed has still not recovered. it's about halfway back to where it was. that just means we are not back at full employment yet and i don't think anyone should say that we are. it means the federal reserve board should not be raising interest rates until we get the full employment. that's my view. you can imagine we should even be doing things to stimulate job growth. and wages are a very long-term problem. wages have not grown --
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inflation for white-collar workers, blue-collar workers or college grands since 2002. during george w. bush or during the recession. it's not something that obama created, generated or something he's been able to fix yet. and why that is -- that's why we have the biggest corporate profits ever. i think it's because we have a wage setting system that's been broken. actually, it's been revised to help the employers relative to the employees for many decades. and we have to fix that. and that's why, you know, people are not feeling like they're getting ahead. the quality of jobs are going down. the young people are not necessarily getting the good jobs they might expect would be available to them and so, you know, those are things we have to fix. i think the president acknowledges those kinds of things. listen, every person in office brags about something going on. it's actually an instinct i
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wish they wouldn't do. he was bragging about green shoots in the spring of 2009 which i thought was really silly. but i think people in the press office and the administration can't help themselves. and i think -- >> we'll take you live now to louisiana. this is mckinley senior high school in baton rouge. president obama being introduced here for a town hall meeting. live coverage on c-span. >> my upbringing has given me the insight that hardships do not limit opportunities. a journey toward self-actualization is not as easy for all of us as it is for some. it is challenging for marginalized americans to succeed. however, remaining focused on ambitions and education allows opportunities for moments of surrealism similar to this one. i am here in spite of not because of my circumstances. i have defied the statistics and i will not falter in my aspirations to dismantle the glass ceilings imposed on
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women, people of color and minorities. [applause] mckinley has been a significant factor in my personal development. due to its ever-present but often unacknowledged historical value. in 1907 mckinley became the first institution in louisiana to offer black students academic advancement. furthermore, its first graduating class of 1916 were all females. mckinley -- mckinley was a win for black excellence and a win for women. today, mckinley is home to educational opportunities that allow for a progressive inclusive environment that stimulates infirm tiff and insightful dialogue among people who exhibit die versity nd everything from skin color, sexual status and socioeconomic status. i'm proud to introduce both myself and the president. as a representative -- as a representative of mckinley high
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school, baton rouge and louisiana, i offer the president our gratitude for giving america a nontraditional model of success that proves adversity does not restrict opportunity and for choosing mckinley high school to make history. [applause] ladies and gentlemen, mckinley high school proudly welcomes the president of the united states of america. cheers and applause]
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president obama: hello, louisiana. hello, baton rouge. o, tigers! for those of you who are not aware, it is go with an x. i got it. can everybody give shea a big round of applause? [applause] we are -- we could not be more proud of her. i was backstage. i asked her, are you nervous? she said, no, i got this. i'm fine. that is a -- that is a serious leader of the future. and we are so proud of her and i want to thank everybody at mckinley for hosting us today.
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there are a couple people i want to make sure we acknowledge. .our mayor, kip we have congressman cedric richmond is here. who has a really cute little boy. new orleans mayor and my friend, mitch landrieu, is in the house. whose son's not so little but looks pretty cool. i want to congratulate your new governor who's going to do and his lovely family. we are so grateful to have him here. since l.s.u. has a pretty good sports team -- sports teams historically, i thought i might mention you got an ok basketball player named ben immons in the house.
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his dad played in australia with my secretary of education, arne duncan. so they can hoop. but i think they would both acknowledge that ben is better. and it's wonderful to have him here. now, it is my intention not to give a long speech because this is sort of a town hall. i want to spend a little time having a conversation with all of you. [applause] i do want to make mention of what your incoming governor is already doing. he's already delivering for the people of louisiana. this week he took the bold and wise step to expand medicaid to cover hundreds of thousands of hardworking louisianaans, providing them with the financial security of health
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care. it was the right thing to do, and by the way, it will actually help the state's finances, and it shows you why lections matter. and now we're hoping to encourage more states to do the right thing. one of the ways we're doing it is by proposing additional funding to support new states that choose, as john did, to expand medicaid. so i'm just so proud of him and i'm confident he's going to do great work. he's going to do great work and everybody here needs to get behind him because it's not going to be easy. he's coming in a little like i came in. sort of -- got to clean up some stuff. now, i love louisiana.
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i love baton rouge, but this is the first time i've been here as president. i've been trying to pack all my -- all my fun trips into my last year. and although i missed the tigers beating ole miss last night, maybe i'll come back for football season. some of you know i gave my final state of the union address this week. [applause] i spoke the fact we're going through a time of extraordinary change and that's unsettling. it can seem sometimes, especially during political season, where everybody is running around saying, oh, everything's terrible. and let's find somebody to blame. that our politics won't meet the moment. but what i want folks to know, that's right, if you have a
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chair, go ahead and sit down. if you don't have a chair, don't sit down. i don't want you falling down. good thing -- whoever the first one was that did that, you're a leader. >> we love you. president obama: love you back. thank you. but what i want people to know is that we've been through big changes before, and america always comes out stronger and better as long as we make ecisions together that our design to seize the fun instead of running away from it and we are uniquely positioned to do it. we have the strongest economy in the world. we've gone through the bors economic crisis of our lifetime and we've bounced back with 14 million new jobs. cut the unemployment rate in half. we're the most powerful country on earth. capable of meeting any threat. our commitment to science and
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education and entrepreneurship and our diversity make us a perfect match for what's needed in this new century. but our progress is not inevitable, so we got to answer some big questions. number one, how do we make sure that we create a economy where everybody is benefiting, everybody feels secure, everybody has a shot at success, not just some? that's question number one. question number two, how do we make sure we got an innovation economy and we embrace science and reason and facts instead of running away from them? number three, how do we make sure that we keep america safe, not through trying to talk tough, but by being smart? number four, how do we make sure our politics works, not in a way where everybody agrees, because in a big country like ours, people aren't going to agree on everything, but so
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that it is civil and so that it is constructive and so that, you know, we can work together to find solutions to the problems that are not just going to face us but our kids and our grandkids? all right. now, i tried to give you a sense of how i think we need to answer those questions going forward, but i promised i wasn't going to talk long because i wanted to get a chance to hear from you. i just want to make this point. you know, we're pretty close to new orleans and i had a chance to go back and travel with mitch as we were commemorating the anniversary of katrina. and if you have any doubt about america's capacity to overcome anything, you just visit some of those neighborhoods and you talk to some of those families and you see the businesses that are thriving and the homes that have been built and the parishes that have pulled
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together. and it's just a reminder of the fact that when we work together we cannot be stopped. we cannot be stopped. it rk best as a team, and is my ardent hope that during the course of this year, as long as i have this extraordinary privilege to be your president that i'm going to be able to encourage more and more of you to get involved and feel that optimism and confidence about where america is headed. all right. so with that let's start this conversation and we -- let me tell you this. we got mikes in the audience and we're going to go boy, girl, boy, girl so it's fair. [laughter] and or girl, boy, girl, boy. that's fine.
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and -- she said girl, girl, girl. now, that's not fair. come on. so what i'm going to do is -- people just raise your hands. i'll call on you. couple of things. wait until the mike gets there. number two, introduce yourself so we know who you are. number three, if you keep your question -- comment relatively short, then my response -- i can't guarantee i'll keep it short but i'll keep it shorter. and that way we have a chance to hear from more people. all right. ok. so let's see who's going to go first. where's my mike. ere we go. all right. let's see. this is a good-looking crowd, too. oh. i don't know who to call on. that young lady right there in
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the brown jacket. right there. yes. you. ok. hold on. wait for the mike. you didn't follow instructions. [laughter] careful. careful. she didn't go mckinley. is that what happens? >> no, i didn't. president obama: all right. go ahead. >> my name is rachel. i'm from texas. and my question -- i don't have one. i want to tell you thank you. president obama: ok. that's sweet. all right. well, she didn't really have a question so i'm going to go back -- i am going to this young lady in the black and white jacket. right there. hold on a second. the mike's coming to you. it's we're so packed in. it might take -- you can go ahead and pass her the mike. she looks like she'll give it
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back. >> hi, mr. president. my name is jasmine elliott and i am a 10th grade cheerleader here at mckinley high school. president obama: yeah. all right. go, panthers. >> and i love you. me and my family love you so much. president obama: oh, that's sweet. >> as a future broadcast journalist, i would like to ask you two questions. president obama: ok. >> my first question is -- what are your plans to do when you leave office? president obama: ok. >> and, can you please give my grandmother a hug? president obama: see. now, first of all, i know your grandma put you up to that. so i will give your grandma a hug because you did such a nice job asking a question. in terms of my plans, look, i got so much work to do this next year that i -- michelle and i, we haven't had a chance to really step back and think about it. but as i said at the state of
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the union, when i get out, i'm still holding the most important job in a democracy. and that is the office of citizen. so i will continue to work on the things that michelle and i care so deeply about. we want to encourage young people to get involved. we want to improve education. we want to make sure that our criminal justice works the way it should. e want to make sure we are promoting science education and learning. we want to work internationally to help other countries develop. so we're going to have a busy agenda, but i'm not overthinking that right now because i got a whole bunch of stuff to do between now and next year. all right. but thank you for the question. all right. it's the gentleman's turn. this man because he has such a sharp bow tie. all right. go ahead. >> good morning.
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president obama: good morning. >> this is a pleasure, sir. president obama: thank you. >> my name is tremane sterling. i'm from baton rouge, louisiana. during your entire two terms as president, what would be your biggest regret and why? president obama: i think that's a great question although had you been watching my state of the union on tuesday -- [applause] he might had known that i actually already answered that question. but that's ok. i'm sure there was a good ballgame on that night. no. what i told the country, except for you -- [laughter] was that my biggest regret was e fact that politics has
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become more rank russ -- rankerous during my term. keep in mind, when i ran, my red was there were no states and blue states. there were no black, white, latino americans. there was a united states of america. and that continues to be my belief. president, as obviously done soul searching about what are things i could do differently to help bridge some of those divides. i think part of it had to do with when i came in we had a real emergency and we had to people in and washington sometimes weren't
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always as focused on getting the job done as they were, how's this going to position us or future elections and -- but at the state of the union, there is no doubt there are things i could have done better. but as i also say is that this is not something a president can do by him or herself. when it comes to how we work impetus for main a better politics is going to be the american people. they have to demand it. and so if we have voters who are not getting involved, then the people who tend to determine the agenda are the special interests or money or power or the loudest voices or
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the most polarizing voices because a lot of folks, some of the best people, they're just sitting at home. and they're getting cynical about politics. they got get involved. and then the people who do get involved are the folks that aren't willing to work together. it's important for voters to insist that their elected officials are strong on principle but also are willing to compromise with people who don't agree with them. and if you punish an elected official for even talking to the other side, then it's going to produce the kind of politics that we have seen in washington too often. so this is an area where i regret. 'm going to keep on working at it, see what we can do to reach across the aisle to get things done. i said on tune, i think at the end of last year, -- i said on
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tuesday, i think at the end of last year we got the budget done, extended tax cuts for working families that were due to expire and we were able to continue funding for transportation. i know that your mayor was talking about how the interstate here narrows and we may need to do something about t to relieve some traffic. and those things are not things that should be subject to a lot of republican and democratic argument. maybe that's something that we can carry over into this year. one area, for example, that there's been genuine bipartisan interest and support is the idea we got to reform our criminal justice system. that we have to be tough on violent crime but also be smart when we think about how prevent
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young people from getting in the criminal justice system in the first place. how can we provide alternatives for low-level, nonviolent drug offenders, how can we make sure that the sentencing is proportional, how do we make sure that we're training folks while they're incarcerated to get a skill that would allow them to be gainfully employed, how do we make sure that when they're released there's a transition process for them, how do we lift up all the outstanding employers who are willing to give people second chances. so there's a whole slew of work we could be doing there, and to their credit, we've seen some very conservative republicans and some very liberal democrats sitting down at the table and trying to work it out. and that's an example of where we see some promise. another area is -- and i mentioned this at the state of the union -- some of you heard
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of the earned income tax credit. now, this is a program historically that is supported by democrats and republicans and it's a pretty simple idea. if you work, you shouldn't be in poverty and so we should provide tax breaks to low-income working families so that they don't say, i might as well just be on welfare because i'll get more benefits than if i'm working. well, the earned income tax credit creates an incentive to say, you work hard, you're working full time, but say a minimum wage job, we're going to give you a chance if you got kids to raise that income level. get a tax break. the problem is that it does not ply to individuals without children. and that means a lot of men in that category don't benefit and
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young people don't benefit. one of the things we've been talking about, if we expand hat to reach workers who don't have children but are also working hard and are in poverty, that could be helpful. these are areas where cedric, he's been a leader on criminal justice reform, he's working on this as well. i know that mitch has been doing great work when it comes to the criminal justice system in new orleans. these are the kinds of areas where just common sense can prevail if we all got a spirit of trying to solve problems instead of just winning elections. ok. all right. ok. t's a young lady's turn. ok. you know what, i'm going to call on that little young lady right there. yeah.
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she's in her daddy's lap. you know, my daughter, my oldest daughter is about to go o college next year. i can't talk a lot because i'll start to cry. >> my name is noelle. i'm in fourth grade and 10 years old. do you think there's going to be a cure for cancer? president obama: well, there you go. are you interested in math and science? >> a little bit. president obama: a little bit? well, i tell you what, it's going to be young people like you that are going to help cure cancer. so you better study up on your math and study up on your scenes. but i do think that we are seeing medical breakthroughs right now that we have not seen in my lifetime. part of the reason is because some of you heard of the human
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genome project. what happens is we're now able to look at not just how cells work but we're actually able to rack how individual d.n.a. and genetics operates. and when you do that it turns out that a cancer cell that i have may be different than a cancer cell that john or somebody else has. and may require different cures and certain treatments might work work better than other treatments. because we're getting in the nitty gritty of how our bodies work in ways that we haven't before, we're starting to see more effective treatments. but we have to make a big investment, and my vice president joe biden, who i love, suffered the kind of is edy last year that
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unbelievable. he managed it with grace. his son, beau biden, was one of the best guys i knew. i thought it was entirely appropriate for joe biden, who's seen this and gone through it, to lead this effort like a moon launch. we're going to double down on medical research. we're going to look at the best -- we're going to gather the best researchers, the best scientists and we are going to go after this thing. it probably won't be cured in my lifetime but i think it will be cured in yours. and that's why we got to get started now. all right. ok. it is -- it's a gentleman's turn. this gentleman back here. right there. yes, sir. you. hold on. the mike's coming.
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the mike's coming. >> mr. president, first of all, i'm the proud father of one of your special great secret service. president obama: outstanding. >> i have a question for you. since you can't run again for another term, is there any way that we as a group can talk the first lady into running? president obama: no. [cheers and applause] no, no, no. o. >> i know that's right. president obama: let me tell you. the three things that are ertain in life -- death, taxes and michelle is not running for president. that i can tell you. but you know what, the first lady, though, the work she's
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done around reducing childhood obesity, the work that she and joe biden have done on military families and making sure they get support, i could not be prouder of her. i am certain that she's going to be really active as a first lady, not only is she going to a very young first -- ex-first lady, she looks young. i was looking at a wedding picture -- actually, we found the old video from our wedding. we've been married 23 years now. and so my mother-in-law had been going through some storage stuff and found our wedding video and i popped it in. teenager. d like a
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and realized, boy, i sure have ged. >> [inaudible] president obama: i know that, though. but michelle looked -- she looked identical. looked identical. and i am proud of her too, because most importantly, she's been an unbelievable mom which is why my daughters turned out so well. all right. t is a young woman's turn. this young lady right here. yeah, you. yeah, you've been raising your hand. ok. hold on. mike's coming. go ahead. >> hi. i'm iman, a coastal
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environmental science major at l.s.u. president obama: outstanding. >> i want to say thank you for rejecting the keystone pipeline. and, two, i want to ask while you've been in office what environmental impact -- what environmental issue do you think has impacted you the most and should be more brought to the public? president obama: ok. that's a great question and i'm proud you're doing that work. hat's important. first of all, it's important for us to understand how much environmental progress we've made in my lifetime. and the reason that sometimes when we talk about the environment, it sounds like something far away. but we don't realize, we don't remember what we've accomplished already. in california, there would be regular days where people did not go outside
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. when ronald reagan was governor in california, there were regularly days where the smog was so bad it was like it is in beijing now. people just wouldn't go outside. if you had asthma or some respiratory disease, you might die. i remember as recently as 1979 when i first started college, i started college in los angeles. when i went running, first week i was there, after about five minutes i'd start feeling a burning in my chest. and it was just me sucking in soot and smog. and now you go there and that smog isn't there. and the reason is because we catalytic hings like
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converters and it used to be places like the cuyahoga river around cleveland caught fire it was so polluted. caught fire. this is no joke. now you go there and people are able to use it. same thing with the chicago river. now people are kayaking and fishing. so the point is that we actually can make progress when we make an effort because of our technology and our innovation and every time we made -- taken a step to try to clean up our air or our water or our environment, there are all kinds of people that will say this is going to kill jobs, we can't afford it, can't do it, it's going to cost too much. and then after we do it we look back and say, you know what, it didn't cost as much as we thought, it happened quicker than we thought, our businesses figured out how to do it and make money at the same time. that's what i mean when i say
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an innovation economy. we got to be confident about our ability to solve any problem if we put our minds to it. so now the answer to your question right now is what i am very much concerned about is climate change. nd there are folks who are still denying that this is a problem or that we can do anything about it. told you doctors that you had diabetes and you need to change your eating habits and get some exercise and lose some weight, you may decide not to do it because you're stubborn but don't say they're wrong because the science is unsure. this is happening and by the way, if you live in louisiana,
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you should especially be concerned about this because you are right next to some water that has a tendency to heat up and that then creates rise, es and as oceans that means the amount of land that is getting gobbled up ontinuously in this state is shrinking the land mass and it's going to have an impact. now, we can build things and we can fortify things and we can do things smarter and we can control how development happens and we can restore wetlands. all those things make a difference, but ultimately we have to do something about making sure that ocean levels don't rise four, five, six, eight feet. because if they do, this state's going to have some big problems, bigger problems.
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so what we've done is we've gotten together with 200 other nations, american leadership to say, all of us have to start bringing down the carbon pollution that we send in the atmosphere. and here in the united states, there are two main ways we can do that. number one, our power plants, we have to start using cleaner energy. number two, we got to start promoting soul ar and wind which -- solar and wind which creates jobs and we're a leader in this technology as long as we start investing in it. you know, and that transition from old dirty fuels to clean fuels, that's going to be tough. a lot of people make money in the coal industry, for example. a lot of people have worked there historically, but now you have more people working in solar than you do in coal. those communities that are relying on coal, we should help them get a jump on making money
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in wind power and solar power. those are hardworking good people. let's not have them stuck in old jobs that are going to be slowly declining. let's get them in the new jobs that are going to be going up. and then in our transportation sector, we need to continue to build on the things we've done since i've been president, doubling fuel efficiency standards on cars, promoting electric cars. all this stuff adds up, and the good news is businesses can succeed and we can make money doing it at the same time. but don't think that this is not a problem for all of us, this is the main message i have. you know, we talked -- that young lady was asking me about curing cancer. well, we might cure cancer, but temperatures have gone up two, three degrees around the planet, four degrees and oceans
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are rising, we got -- we're going to have more problems than medical science can cure. we got to make that investment now and we can do it. all right. good question. this gentleman right here. hold on. i got a mike right there. how you doing? >> i can hold it. i'm a big kid. well, maybe not a big kid. my name is allen from new youngstown, ohio. you've been there many times in helping with the steel mills get back on track. that's all good, and in your defense my business is doing good, making money. president obama: good. >> growing for the last 10 years and i have friends that have businesses, doing real well too. for a lot of people complaining there is a lot of people doing well. if you hustle you can make good. but inside question to you is, you're on your last year. is there any one big thing that you'd like to see happen before you leave the office? president obama: good. well, first of all, what's your business? >> well, i got a couple
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businesses. i manufacture halloween props. and i own a haunted house and hay ride in lordstown to the car plant called fear ford. maybe if you back it into youngstown in october you can check it out. i make halloween props and i like to scare people. president obama: so that's kind of interesting. that's fun. ?ou sell a lot of obama masks >> hey, obama is not scary. president obama: there you go. all right. i don't think so. [applause] the things that i talked about in the state of the union are all things that i think are possible. some of them i can get done on
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my own so i'll give you a couple examples. our ed to revamp how information systems, our i.t. systems in government work. this is one of the areas where we're -- there's the biggest gap between government and the private sector is -- if you just want to order a pizza, you have your smartphone and you bleep and the pizza shows up. you bine airline ticket, you punch in a couple things and some of you go to the airport, it's all printed out. and the systems in government are really old. now, that causes two problems. number one is, they are less safe and secure than they should be because they're old. they're outdated systems. it's easier for folks to hack into them, break into them and we're constantly putting patches up. the second thing is, it just means that things are slower for customers and i want to
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make sure that government is in the 21st century and, you know, we're systematically going agency to agency. if you want to get a small business loan from the s.b.a., i want you to be able to go to one website in english, be able to figure out what you need to do, apply online, get that money, start that business, put people to work. and right now we're continually trying to streamline that process. and we made some good progress, but that's an example of something that we can do administratively. the same is true, by the way, for the v.a. you remember -- we are so proud of our veterans and our young men and women who served and we got some folks here looking sharp in uniform that we are . ateful for their service and we have put more resources
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and provided more support to and increased budgets for the administration in history. we have cut backlogs, we included folks who had been affected by agent orange. we have boosted the resources available for folks suffering from ptsd. we are ending veterans' homelessness. we've made some huge investments, made some really good progress. but you remember the story that came out last year or a year and a half ago in phoenix where folks were waiting so long to try to get an appointment that -- and many of these were olderly aging folks and they were dying before they got an appointment. and it was unacceptable. when we did an investigation what happened -- what was worse is some of the administration was hiding what was going on
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and manipulating records in ways that meant they had to be fired, but when you looked at what was going on, a lot of it had to do with the fact that they had a system where a veteran would call in trying to get an appointment, somebody was writing it down on paper. then, they were tapping it into some 30-year-old computer system that would then print out something, that would then get walked over to someplace, that then they'd have to -- it was a mess. and so we've had to make big investments in trying to clean up that whole process. so that's what we can do without congress. some things i think we can do with congress i've already mentioned. i think we can get criminal justice reform passed. i think that we can potentially i just work on what identified, the earned income
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tax credit, that would help millions of people around the country who are working hard get out of poverty. nd on the issue of medicine, i think that we -- we're seeing some bipartisan work to try to bring together all the resources we have around these new medical breakthroughs that could potentially -- not affect things like cancer but also alzheimer's and parkinson's and a lot of diseases that people suffer from. it's a good story and it's not as politically controversial as some other issues. there are things i would like to do like raising the minimum wage for everybody. i'd a lot of to get immigration reform passed, but i'm realistic that congress probably will not act on some of those more controversial issues. that's where people are going to have to make a decision in
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this election. that's what elections are about. you got to decide which direction america needs to go in. k. let's see. these folks have been neglected. so i got to pay them a little attention here. it's a young lady's turn. you have a beautiful dress on. let's call on you. here you go. >> mr. president, i'm judge white and i'm the district court judge here in the 19th district court. president obama: good to see you, judge. >> i'm also the re-entry judge for our parish. and i did notice when you did speak at the state of the union, you made your address that the first issue that you did address was criminal justice reform. i'd like to know as re-entry court judge, what incentives could you offer our governor, new governor, and governors across the united states that
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would provide opportunities for felons who are returning as they exit the criminal justice system? president obama: well, judge, you probably know more than i do. >> can my people get what your -- send them down here? president obama: absolutely. i'll have my people call your people. > all right. president obama: but i will tell you -- i will tell you what i know i've seen with my own eyes. i was in camden with a fellow federal district court judge ho had taken -- who had worked ith the u.s. attorney there to supplement some of the re-entry programs that were already there with some grants and this
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judge, wonderful woman just like you and she had this terrific lead probation officer and together what they had done is just made sure that anybody who got released, that they were getting call from the probation officer and the probation officer would say. all right, what do you need? do you need clothes? what are you doing in terms of a place to stay? how are you going to think about getting your resume together? do you have an alarm clock? just basic stuff. how are you going to get around? because so often what happens is these young people are getting released and they're just dropped off in the neighborhood where they were oftentimes part of the reason they got down a wrong path in the first place is mom and dad
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might not had been there or they might have moved by now and so they're literally all alone. and so this young man who was there, who had gone through this process, he had been arrested when he was 17. and had a record that accumulated. then arrested at 27. spent 10 years in federal prison. was released at 37, and he really decided, i want to change my life. he had a spiritual awakening. and he started just pounding the pavement and got a job at a fast food place. and he was describing what it was like. he had been doing this about three months and he still didn't have enough money for rent and the halfway house he was staying out, they were
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about to kick them out because they only have a certain number of slots and you don't stay there long enough and he was saying how his old friends, the drug dealers and the gang bangers who he had used to run with, they would come up every once in a while and he would be sitting there in his uniform flipping burgers and serving food. they'd be talking to him. hey, man, anytime you're ready. those are the only clothes you got. those are the same shoes we saw you in 10 years ago. this is the new style. and that temptation for him was powerful. now, this is where a well-designed re-entry program comes in because what happened was, the judge, the probation officer, they worked with him, signed him up. the judge, unfortunately, because the program didn't have a lot of money, had to basically do a collection, dig into her own pocket, but they got the fees to have him go study at a community college to be an emergency medical
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technician. from ended up graduating this class, working for a private health firm and then by the time he was sitting next to me three or four years later, he's not working for the county as an e.m.t. fully trained saving lives. but [applause] but the point is it required intensive intervention and support and help, but what a smart investment that was. because if we spent whatever it two, uring those one, three years of transition to help that person get their life straight, we might have just saved ourselves another 10 years or 15 years or 20 years of
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