captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: republicans in the house of representatives defied a presidential veto threat on how to pay for loans for college students. good evening. i'm judy woodruff >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown. on the newshour tonight, we get the latest on today's debate, and explore the growth and impact of student debt around the country. >> woodruff: then, ray suarez looks at global economic woes as new figures show u.s. growth slowing and fresh fiscal troubles abroad. >> brown: betty ann bowser reports on health insurance plans that trade lower premiums for higher out-of-pocket costs.

>> we have been so focused on health reform in washington, what we see is a quiet revolution happening in health insurance out in the country. >> woodruff: mark shields and david brooks analyze the week's news. >> brown: and two laureates-- poets from the united states and from britain-- reflect on their public roles. >> to be asked to represent and celebrate 9 thing you love most since childhood is a real privilege and a joy. so i've loved it much, much more than i anticipated. >> woodruff: that's all ahead on tonight's newshour. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: bnsf railway. >> citi. supporting progress for 200 years. at&t

>> and by the bill and melinda gates foundation. dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to live a healthy productive life. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> brown: house republicans staked their ground today in the political fight over student loans. it set up a confrontation with senate democrats, and possibly with the president. the vote this afternoon was 215 to 195 to keep interest rates on federal student loans from doubling. republicans had called the vote with just 48 hours notice under fire from democrats. but leaders of both parties agreed on the goal.

>> i think we all agree that the best thing that a family and country can do is invest in the next generation, the education of our children. >> i believe we shouldn't put students at risk and we should make sure rates don't go up. >> brown: the issue goes back to 2007, when congress cut the rate on so-called stafford loans in half to 3.4%. that provision is set to expire july 1, affecting 7.4 million students from low and middle income families. fixing the problem would cost nearly $6 billion for one year, and that's where the two parties split. republicans wanted to draw from what they called a "slush fund," money set aside for preventive health under the health care reform law. democrats said the move would gut breast cancer screening and similar services. wisconsin's gwen moore: >> when we look at this health care fund that they want to gouge, it's because health care

is one of the issues that women most care about. >> brown: republicans pointed out that president obama's budget called for cutting the same fund to pay for other priorities. and house speaker john boehner rejected any talk of a "war on women." >> and now, we're going to have a fight over women's health. this is the latest plank in the so called "war on women." entirely created by my colleagues across the aisle for political gain. >> brown: in the end, all but 30 republicans voted for the bill; all but 13 democrats voted against. white house officials said today the president would veto the house bill, if it reached his desk. but the bill has little chance in the senate. democrats hold the majority there, and they want to pay for the student loan fix with higher taxes on high-income owners of private corporations. the president has endorsed that approach, talking up the issue

on college campuses. republican challenger mitt romney also says he favors keeping the current low rates, but has not said how he'd pay for it. meanwhile, student loan debt exceeded credit card debt last year for the first time. the average debt-holder in the class of 2011 owed more than $27,000. and we explore the rising level of college debt underlying this political debate with sandy baum, senior fellow at the george washington university graduate school of education. she also writes an annual booklet called "trends in college pricing." and anya kamenetz, author of the books "generation debt" and "d-i-y u". >> anya, i will start with you, give us some context for this political fight am we say that student loan debt exceeded credit-card debt. how big a problem then are we talking about today? >> well, you mentioned the average figure, $27,000 a year for the-- for the class

of 2011. this has been growing every single year right in lock step with tuition. and it's something where families and students facing the tough job market that they are are really starting to question the value of their degree when it comes with these large loan payments. >> brown: sandy baum wa, would you at to that, and who's most affected. >> well, anya's right to focus on the amount that individual students owe, not on whether thing a. q. gatt amount of debt is greater than credit-card debt. >> brown: why is that. >> because what matter is whether individual students can manage their loan payments. and the fact that is most college graduates, $27,000 is fine. what we need to worry about is that there are many students, too many student was borrow much more than that who don't finish their degrees who can't get a job who have real trouble on paying back those loans. we need to focus on those students. >> brown: is that aggregate number helpful to focus -- >> no. >> brown: not even to focus

attention. >> it has focused a continuation but it seems like student loans are a problem. student loans are great for many people, they allow people to go to college who couldn't otherwise go and make that great investment in themselves. but when they are too extreme they do cause serious problems for students. >> brown: now anya, the stafford loans that run debate in the house now, who are they aimed at? who would most be affected by a change in the rates? >> well, the stafford loans, they're all directly from the u.s. government. and they are about 80% of all student loans. so anybody who goes to college can be eligible for these loans, either subsidized or unsub di-- unsubsidized is the limits are too low to pay for college, in a lot of cases so people are piling private loans on top of that. >> brown: so to fill in the picture more, students have access to these lorntion federally subsidized loans but also to the private market as well. >> that's exactly right. so if the federal loan limit they find to be too loan, a lot of people turn to the

private loan swiss interest rates that go far beyond the 3.4% or 6.8% to 10 and 15%. >> brown: so sandy baum, when you talk about particular students or subsets of it aggregate who are you most worried about? >> well, one group of student are those relying on the private student loans. i think many students don't understand that federal loans come with a lot of protection if you can't afford to repay them, you actually don't have to. but if they go to the bank or sallie mais and take a private loan, those loans are very, very risky. and there are some students who are going to institutions that have very high tuition and making them borrow all they can borrow, that is a serious problem. >> brown: what else do you worry b what other subsets. >> there is a subset of student, students that go to for profit institutions are much more likely to borrow and to borrow more than students who go to public or private non-- and also are low income students and those students are frequently at great risk. >> brown: what would you add to that in terms of which groups you worry about most? >> well, i mean just as

sandy is saying, you have to underline the fact that out of the pro profit-- for profit colleges it they are producing almost 50% of all the people that default on their loans even though is a much smaller percent of actual students. so any college that has tuition that doesn't match the outcomes that they are able to promise the students is really putting students in a serious bind. >> brown: so follow-- some, trying to pars this, anya, some people are getting, are sort of forced into these situations and some people are kind of getting themselves into the situation. >> how do we think this true? >> well, it's a very tricky mat tore try to assign blame here. we're talking about 18-year-olds who are making lifetime decisions, right. so the question is, is the major are you choosing at the institution you are choosing, is that going to be adequate to pay for the loans that you are taking out? and you know, a very easy example to take is law students and medical students, each of them borrow on average $100,000 to go to school but they are going into a very high paying profession. however, if you are going, for example to a private

culinary school many of those might charge $47,000 a year, $40, 50,000 a year and they are outputting you into the restaurant industry. so it is not the same kind of earn pog tension and maybe not the best choice. >> brown: how do you think about this question? >> well, one issue is that many of the students who are overborrowing are actually adults. so the amount you can borrow from the federal government depends on whether you are dependent on your parents or whether you are older. older students can borrow more than younger students. and they dond up with much higher levels of debt. and of course they have less time to pay off that debt because they're already older. so it is a serious problem for people who don't have the accurate information, don't get the right advice, and then don't even know how to take advantage of the protection that are in existence to help people repay their federal loans. >> brown: now one of the discussions that's been long discussed, an anya i will start with you, is this notion of some form of student debt forgiveness. what are the pros and cons,

as just explained to us what the debate is about there. >> well, there is a bill in congress right now that would make student loan debt forgivable after ten years. and the pros, you know, there is about 700,000 people that have signed a petition on moveon.org about this and people say this is to stimulate the economy to relieve an unfair burden on many borrowers. but of course the cons are people talk about this being a basic issue of fairness. that student borrowers, college students at large are a relatively privileged sector of our society and is it really fair to zero out all of their loans en masse or should we apply more discretion in figuring out who as we say is unfairly burdened by the loans or doesn't have any hope of paying them off versus just writing off everyone's debt. >> brown: what would you add? >> we already have a lot of loan forgiveness in place. if you are in a public service occupation for ten years will you get your loan forgiven. if you can't afford to pay back your loan, if you borrowed so much in federal loans that your income doesn't support the repayment, you don't have to pay until your income exceed its 150% of the poverty

line. if you haven't paid it back after 25 years, it will be forgiven. so forgiving everybody's student loans just makes no sense at all. college graduates are in fact a very privileged group of people, higher income people are more likely to go to college, more likely to finish college, and then after they finish college they have much higher earnings than people who didn't go to college. >> brown: just one more question coming back to where we start, the political debatement you both watched this, the politics of this, is it any surprise that this issue is now a political football and likely to be through the campaign? >> no, i mean i think this is going to return over and over. and the solutions that they were talking about now val far too small. i mean keeping the interest rates down is not going to address the problem. we need a more holistic solution that addresses college cost. the program candy is talking about are very important but they're also very under subscribed there need to be a lot more public information and discussion before this problem gets solve. >> anya and sandy baum, thank you both very much.

>> thank you. >> woodruff: still to come on the newshour: the global economic troubles; high-deductible health insurance; shields and brooks; and two poet laureates. but first, the other news of the day. here's kwame holman. >> holman: an apparent suicide attack rocked the capital of syria today. state tv reported at least ten people were killed, and nearly 30 were wounded. we have a report from bill neely of independent television news in damascus. >> reporter: the target? riot police and troops. the attacker? a suicide bomber with an explosive belt. syrian forensic teams looked for evidence, the regime desperate to stem a tide of attacks that is turning damascus into a battleground. and if president assad loses control of damascus, he loses everything. the troops and riot police who survived were clearly shaken. they'd been deployed close to a mosque to confront demonstrators after friday prayers. the bombing is significant not

just because it happened here in the central of the capital city of damascus, but because of the method of the attack. a bomber wearing a suicide vest attacking troops may be common in iraq, but not here in syria-- not until now. u.n. monitors are stationed close to the scene of the bombing. they didn't visit it. they were on the road to another town. there are only 13 of them in the whole country. more than 200 others still haven't arrived. but there is no peace to monitor here, no real cease-fire to keep. >> holman: meanwhile, u.n. secretary general ban ki-moon charged today the syrian regime still is killing people. but that did not prevent thousands of protesters from turning out again today after friday prayers. in afghanistan, a nato service member was killed by insurgents in the south. that came a day after a bomb attack that killed three americans. in all, at least 36 foreign troops have died in afghanistan this month.

the u.s. and japan have reached a deal to move 9,000 u.s. marines away from okinawa. it's aimed at easing longstanding tensions over the u.s. military presence on the japanese island. under the agreement, the marines will be relocated from okinawa to guam and other points in the pacific. about 10,000 marines will stay on okinawa. a judge in florida will decide whether to impose a higher bond for george zimmerman. he's the neighborhood watch volunteer accused in the shooting death of trayvon martin, an unarmed teenager. zimmerman was freed monday on $150,000 bond. his family said they'd have trouble raising it. at a hearing today, defense attorney mark o'mara said it turns out a web site raised $200,000 for zimmerman's defense. he said the family did not realize they could use the money. the federal communications commission ordered tv stations today to post their campaign advertising rates online. the information already is available for public inspection

at each station, but advocates of the new rule said putting the data online makes it far more accessible. broadcasters warned it will give their competitors sensitive information about how much they charge for commercials. wall street finished the week on a quiet note. the dow jones industrial average gained 23 points to close at 13,228. the nasdaq rose 18 points to close at 3,069. for the week, the dow gained 1.5%; the nasdaq rose more than 2%. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to judy. >> woodruff: now, the economy, here and abroad. the commerce depeped today that u.s. economic growth expanded 2.2% in the first quarter. that was down from the final quarter last year. the news came as recession begins to grip europe again. ray suarez has our story. >> suarez: the story behind today's numbers? american consumers spent more in january through march, but

governments and business spent less. still, the u.s. numbers would be welcome news in europe, where economic carnage continues. spain, europe's fourth largest economy, has fallen back into recession. unemployment has jumped to near 25%, and more than half of young people under age 25 are jobless. >> ( translated ): in this moment, perhaps, we are living one of the worst moments for the spanish economy, as the figures of unemployment show. >> suarez: spain's debt rating was cut again this week to near "junk" status as the government tries to implement budget austerity measures in the face of growing discontent. >> ( translated ): if they take some sort of measures in investment, i think we could improve, but not with this present system of cuts. >> suarez: similar cuts have been imposed across europe, an effort to control crushing debt. but as recession returns, those measures are triggering

political shock waves, and not just in spain. today, the government in romania lost a no-confidence vote. the nearby czech republic's government moved to the brink of collapse before surviving a no- confidence vote this afternoon. and the dutch government collapsed monday, leaving a caretaker regime to pass an austerity package. britain is also confronting a double-dip recession, news that triggered fireworks as labour leader ed milliband lit into conservative prime minister david cameron on wednesday. >> i'm sure the prime minister spent the last 24 hours thinking of an excuse as to why this is nothing to do with him. so what's his excuse this time? >> i don't seek to excuse them, i don't seek to try and explain them away. >> suarez: indeed, cameron again defended the notion that austerity now will ultimately lead to growth. >> our banks had too much debt, our households had too much debt, our government had too much debt. we've got to rebalance our economy.

we need a bigger private sector. we need more exports, more investment. >> suarez: even europe's largest economy, germany, is now projecting relatively meager growth for the year, just 0.7%. for a closer look at economic woes here and abroad, we turn to scheherazade rehman. she is director of the european union research center and professor of international finance at george washington university. scheherazade, teetering government, debt downgrade, in the u.s. positive gdp growth but not as much as people expected. is there a thread that connects these data points, a pattern in all of this? >> well, i think the pattern is pretty clear. we in the united states are experiencing very, very slow growth. and what we are seeing in europe is things are getting worse very fast. >> suarez: well, you saw david cameron run down the litany of overburdened debt in british institutions. is confidence lagging in

britain that the cameron medicine is working? >> well, i think, you know, the question is, is this the right medicine for the right time. and this is not just for the u.k. this is for all of europe. too much austerity we know yield those growth. and we are seeing the as a results of this right now. and no growth means no job and no debt repayments down the road. and so this is a recipe for, asking for trouble and we are seeing this in government. the french president lost the first round of elections. in eight days he is going to go for the second round. it doesn't look very good but this is a natural biproduct-- byproduct of not doing enough crisis management. >> so when you say crisis management you mean cutting when times are good so you are prepared when times are bad. >> absolutely, that's what germany did. but now times are very, very bad. we're in the middle of a crisis. and yes, austerity measures will yield growth in the long run and things will get much better. but in the middle of a crisis, we need to do a lot more in terms of stimulating

and providing liquidity. and it's only after almost two years last november that the europeans got their act together with a new european central bank governor who did aggressive crisis management and things are beginning to look, to get a little bit better. the problem is, it's the same scenario. is it too little and too late now? because spain is now on the brink. >> suarez: now all the countries we're talking about are democracies. is there a conversation back and forth between politics and economics. can the economic technician, the mechanics keep on doing their work without hearing from the people? >> and the answer is no. and you know one of the biggest uncertainties in the market right now is government execution risks. we are seeing election cycles in the united states. we know nothing is going to happen for the next year, at least, nothing major. we are seeing it all over europe and governments are basically frozen because they are being voted out of office. there's too much pain on the

ground. >> suarez: so is there a rebellion happening against austerity. >> i believe so i believe they are going to have to ease off and the market is a little bit afraid of this because austerity programs have been promised. certain countries have bailouts and there will be a backlash against this. and when that happens, the markets will become even more anxiety-ridden. look, today every little shock dips us down into an anxiety zone. and every little piece of good news exhilarates us. and we're going to see this to go on probably for another two years at least. >> suarez: let's take a little bit more about spain. because they didn't do the kind of overborrowing that got some of the earlier crisis countries into trouble. their problems really started with the burst of a real estate bubble. but now that they are lowering the target for percentage of gdp that the government can borrow, but they've got a shrinking gdp they have to keep borrowing less and less, government can't prime the pump.

government can't kick start the economy. >> yes, you are right and don't forget government borrowing costs are going up. spain is now crossing the threshold of over 6% for its borrowing costs for its bond. and once you hit 7%, they're in trouble. that is about the mark when greece, ireland and port began-- portugal began to talk about bailouts. and the moment we talk about spanish bailout and it becomes a serious issue, then the other shoe drops which we are very afraid of and that's italy. you know, if the contagion spreads to italy and they have a liquidity problem right now f that turns into a solvency problem, then there's going to be some real trouble ahead. >> suarez: but isn't spain paying itses debt? why this cycle where you are sort of chasing yourself down the sink, really? >> well, you know, and that's why some crisis management up-front would have helped. it would have helped in terms of-- with the austerity packages, mind you. it just when the markets panic they don't see the discrepancy and the

differences between the different economies. southern europe just looks all the same. and they're applying the same kind of remedy which is going to keeld a very specific result. and that is no growth or a contraction which is exactly what we are seeing in most of the countries. >> well, we've got what is going on in europe and then you've got north america. these two giant economic zones, do they talk back and forth with each other? can failure in one inevitably spread to the other or success in one create a virtuous cycle and lead to better times in the other? >> and i think this is a very good question. the problem is that we are experiencing such slow growth, is this growth sustainable between 2 and 3%, yes, of course. but the real question in the united states is, is this growth enough for what we have experienced to recover in our jobs market? is enough for us to recover its loss that has happened in the last four years. and the answer is no, it's not enough. so our very, very slow growth, although helpful to europe, by no means going to drag them out of the probes that they have. and anything going south in

europe will most definitely slow us down even more. >> suarez: so that bad times in europe can take that 2.2 gdp down even further. >> absolutely. >> suarez: scheherazade rehman, thanks a lot for joining us. >> thank you. >> brown: next, a growing change in the way americans are buying and receiving health insurance. newshour health correspondent betty ann bowser reports. >> reporter: dennis adams is what the insurance industry calls a "young invincible." >> i figured nothing would happen to me. i was 26 or 25, i had never had surgery, i'd never broken a bone, i had never been in an ambulance, i had never been to the hospital. >> reporter: so when the non- profit oberlin dance company of san francisco offered a new type of health insurance in 2009, the 27-year-old professional dancer didn't think twice.

he signed up right away. it was a high-deductible insurance plan that traded lower monthly premiums for higher out of pocket costs to employees. in this case, adams would have to pay $2,500 up front before his health insurance would kick in, if he needed it. then, the unthinkable. >> i got hurt. >> reporter: during a performance like this, adams tore his a.c.l. when he needed an m.r.i. to determine how bad the damage was, the provider demanded the $1,600 test be paid for up front. adams was stunned, but even worse, he didn't have the money. of the growing number of companies that are going to high-deductible plans, about 23% of them offer employees some type of rainy day option, usually called a health savings

account or h.s.a. and even though the dance company is a non-profit with a tight bottom line, it puts $100 a month in each employee's account. the 30 people on the plan can also contribute to it tax-free, and the money rolls over year after year and from job to job. in the end, workers' comp paid for adams treatment because the injury happened on the job. but for the young dancer, it was a teachable moment-- he went back to a traditional plan with higher monthly premiums. dr. drew altman, president and c.e.o. of the kaiser family foundation in palo alto, calls this a "reshaping of the insurance market." >> we've been so focused on health reform in washington, and what we've missed is there is a quiet revolution happening in health insurance out in the country. >> reporter: according to kaiser, last year, 31% of workers covered by their

employers offered this type of insurance, with a deductible of at least $1,000. enrollment has tripled, up from 10%, in five years. altman says employers just don't >> they don't have a lot of weapons to throw at their rising health care costs any longer, so they have really no choice but to go in this direction, especially the smaller employers who are getting hit especially hard by rising healthcare costs. so, we are seeing this quiet revolution in what health insurance really is. it's changing in the country and it has big implications for people. >> the logic is that, if you have a higher deductible, that you, as a consumer, you're going to pay more attention to the marketplace and how much people are charging you for their services. >> reporter: phil lebherz is the founder and chairman of l.i.s.i., an agency that provides support for health insurance brokers throughout california. about half of his employees are on these types of plans.

and lebherz says, the rise in their popularity comes down to economics. >> this move to high-deductibles is really, at the bottom line, an economic market adjustment to lowering the cost of the actual health insurance premium, putting some risk, or some emphasis, from the consumer standpoint, and some interest in people's trying to stay healthy, so that it protects them, and protects the company at the same time. what we're seeing is a change in the financing of health care, not an erosion of the coverage. the coverage is still there. in fact, there's more coverage than ever. >> reporter: that's why, in 2009, the dance company's finance manager, charlene folcomer, recommended they start offering a high-deductible plan with lower premiums. about a third of the company's 100 full-time employees opted in >> it's made a huge savings for

us. the employees that are on it stay with it because they're getting used to it, and they have to do what it takes to keep their healthcare costs down now. >> reporter: but a new study found people on these types of plans sometimes put off medical care more often than those in traditional, lower-deductible plans. the study's lead author is dr. alison galbraith, a pediatrician at harvard medical school. >> what we found was that, in families in high-deductible plans, there was a much higher prevalence of delayed or foregone care due to cost, compared to people in the non- deductible plans. and an interesting thing was, there was this suggestion that actually it wasn't necessarily the chronically ill family members who were delaying care. >> reporter: but galbraith added that these plans can work well for some people. >> ideally, the best person in a high-deductible plan is a healthy person who doesn't need

a lot of care, and for those types of people, they're great plans. so that's why some families will want to buy them, because it may be the only affordable option for them. >> reporter: lauryn menard, an administrator for the dance company in san francisco, is one of those "ideal candidates" for this type of insurance, and she's happy with it. >> i feel like i'm getting good coverage for me. i'm young, i'm healthy, i'm savvy. i know, you know, what my costs are going to be per month. i know what my expected medical costs are, so... and i feel like, if something were really worrying me, i could totally go to a doctor. >> reporter: but even menard admits she now sometimes puts off going to the doctor to save money. >> i do get headaches about once a month, and they can get really bad, and i still haven't gone to see a doctor about it. and i don't know, i haven't made plans to yet.

it's, like, i'm kind of trying to cheat the system a little bit. it's like if i don't go when it's not really serious, then i'm saving money. >> reporter: with this so-called "quiet revolution" already well underway for thousands of americans, altman is pushing the industry and the country to take stock. >> we really need to have a national discussion about whether this is a good thing or this is a bad thing. it may be, i think what it really means is this is okay for some people if you are pretty healthy. but we have to worry about what these very high deductibles-- $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 deductibles-- is that really even insurance coverage? >> reporter: the number of americans enrolling in high- deductible plans is expected to rise as long as the cost of health premiums also continue to climb. >> brown: online, find our list of the top ten things you need to know about high-deductible insurance plans. plus, you can submit your questions via facebook or twitter, or on our web site, and

we'll post answers from experts next week. >> woodruff: and to the analysis of shields and brooks-- syndicated columnist mark shields and "new york times" columnist david brooks. gentlemen, welcome. so let's go back to something we were talking about on the show a few minutes ago. and that is the u.s. economy slowing down but mark, not as bad off as europe's economy. is there a lesson there for what we see here in the united states? >> i guess there's a less on, judy. i mean if you make the case, certainly, great britain, that austerity as an economic prescription which has been the hall mark of the cameron reg even-- regime, is not only unpopular but hasn't worked. but i think that the external shocks, quote, unquote,, whether it's china slowing down or europe, in a

recession, are the wild card in the american political campaign. i mean regardless of what is happening, i mean we are part of and vulnerable to was's going on. the american optimism appears, confidence appears to have survived this initial shock, set back, which is encouraging but it's been the hallmark of americans. >> woodruff: and many of these countries in europe, david, that cut government spending a lot but now there are protests that it's too much. >> well, in some case that's true. first of all i don't think you can clearly say government spending determines how much growth you have. it is an influence but monetary policy is probably a much bigger influence and the state of your labor market is probably a much bigger influence. the germans to their credit did labor market reform urd gerhart schroder and are in decent shape because of the reform. there are at sorts of influences it is true that austerity dampens growth in

the short term. some of these countries have to do because unlike us they don't have a reserve currency. they are really vulnerable to the markets in the way we're not. so i think britain probably has too do it. the problem is you have some countries in europe who shouldn't be doing. spain was mentioned earlier in the show. their debt situation is not critically bad or particularly bad. and meanwhile they're recovering from the housing bust am so they probably do need something much more stimulative but they are stuck in this monetary union. they're stuck in this european system which has to have one uniform policy. and so to mean one of the different problems europe has from us is there are 12 different or now many different economies with different situations, stuck in a common monetary system and this is a real problem for them. >> but you are staying is so different from the united states it is apples and oranges? >> i think there is a transatlantic debate over austerity. and i think it's certainly true that if you spend, if you go into debt and spend you do lies growth. how much? well, that you economists are all over the map.

it's also true if you go into debt now, sometime down the road when you have to pay that off, you diminish growth. how much? economists are all over the map. so there is some effect, the size of it, i really don't think we have a clear answer. >> woodruff: some things for us to pay a lot of attention to. >> no, i think-- the world is a lot smaller place. i mean, and i don't think anybody can escape that. we are not immune from what goes on in europe by any means. and it is europe is in a recession, it is to the good for the united states. it's to the good for europe, first of all. and europeans but it's to the good for outside. and it certainly isn't good, you can see, judy, what has happened politically. i mean if you are sitting in barack obama's campaign headquarters right now, the news from france, the news from holland, the netherlands, the news from romania is not good for incumbent governments. >> woodruff: so speaking of spending, the other story we lead the show with is that

vote in the house of representatives, mark, on how to pay for keeping the interest rates low on student loans. we heard the presidents argument is the democrats argument is you shouldn't be taking this money from health care reform, from a fund that was part of the health-care reform law. is one side clearly right in that argument or is this just, you know, a spring storm. >> one side is playing offense and the other side is playing defense. the democrats are very much playing offense on this and the president is playing offense. the republicans have not provided the funds for the student loan differential in the ryan budget which they voted for very proudly and trumpetted. and then they found themselves on what they thought was the losing side politically. the president, with a big edge in the youth vote which shows little enthusiasm, little interest in voingt, certainly not comparable towards the turnout in 208.

and so this is a great way to, you go to iowa city, iowa, swing state, you go to boulder, colorado, university of colorado, swing state. and go you to chapel hill, north carolina, swing state, all of a sudden the republicans, mitt romney says first of all, yes, i am for differential, cut in interest rates on student loans. and then john boehner follows, and the house republicans have to come up with some sort of a figure leaf which they did in the form of financing it by taking it out of health care. >> woodruff: and john boehner really, david, went after the president on this, purely playing politics. he talked about the em per rohr has no clothes. >> yeah, i guess i think they are both playing politics. first they are pandering. who can give college students the most. so that is one pander. that is probably a less serious panner because it is probably a pretty good program. the second panned certificate how are we going pay for it and they pick the political vulnerability, the republicans want to go after

obama care. the democrats want to go after oil & gas. and so they want to pay for it through there. to they are picking on each other's vulnerabilities. it's typical election year ledge slaption. and i would say a little small, to me, you know, how to pay for education is actually a phenomenally difficult issue. and reducing the interest rates on the loan, believe me is not a solution at a time when academic inflation is going up, up, up. and we happen to be at a moment, i happen to think we are on the cusp of a tremendous change in how higher ed is delivered through on-line learning and stuff. and this is symptomatic of a campaign. it would be nice to see a candidate say i've got a big view of what is about to happen to higher ed and the federal government's role in it. and that would be a big plan. how it could use on-line learningment but they're not doing that. they're doing the mutual pandering. >> woodruff: the charge of-- i mean, i was struck by how tough john boehner was, speaker boehner was in going after the president, i have never seen the white house be so small.

>> i was surprised. because that is not john boehner's style. he's not a bombastic guy any nature. by practice. you know, i think the white house would have been better served if they had visited maybe the university of vermont and the university of canvas. i mean to go to three swing states and to the universities there, and certainly opens it up to the accusation that this is a political rather than a substantive visit. but i mean, this is vintage quadrennial vintage politics. the president wherever he goes is still the president even though he's the party leader, and the nominee of this party. and it was true of george w when he ran for re-election t was true of bill clinton and it was certainly true of ronald w reagan when he ran for election. >> the supreme court, david, took up the arizona immigration law this week. you listened to some of the arguments. a lot of speculation about whether they will uphold it

or not but whatever they do, does that affect the campaign, the presidential. >> i think immigration will play a lesser role this tii than many of the pastimes. first i suspect there is going to be struck down. i sort of hope it is struck down not because of particular substance of the arizona laurx i just don't think each individual state should have its own immigration policy. i just think it's unworkable. but as immigration as an issue, well, it's not clear that there is net migration from mexico. because the jobs aren't here and the mexican economy is doing better. and so the underlying problem which fired a lot of people up is of diminishing-- so i'm not sure immigration will be a huge issue this year because there isn't that much immigration, at least illegal immigration. >> david's presentation is always thoughtful and reflective. unfortunately, it's vorlsed from political reality. we just went to a republican employmentary, judy where mitt romney proved himself not to be a true blue conservative, to be a red hot conservative by what did he do, he went after

governor rick perry of texas on what grounds, that rick perry had signed legislation as governor of texas that enabled the child of an undocumented immigrant who went through the texas public schools and had a good record to go to school in state tuition, wenlts after newt gingrich for saying that a family who had been here for 25 years, belonged to a church, paid taxes, raised a family, obeyed the law, should be deported tomorrow. he is going to scramble back. john mccain carried white voters by 12 points in 2080. george w. bush carried white voters by 12 points in 2080, the exact same number. the difference is the electorate change. there are more latinos voting and that is why barack obama could win a bigger landslide in 2008 than any democratics since lyndon johnson and franklin roosevelt. that's the reality that mitt romney has to deal with and republicans have to deal with. no republicans since george w. bush has been able to-- wince do agree with that. romney got himself into a

terrible position on immigration. and the party as a whole has gotten into a terrible position in immigration. >> woodruff: you mean the republican. >> the republican party, the question is whether the issue has sal yens, there will be a range of issues, iran, the economy, xyz. and if one, people especially in the border states perceive a flood of illegal immigrants putting a burden on their health-care system or schools t will have high sal yens f it goes away, it seems it will be lower sal yens. >> woodruff: you don't think it is going to affect, how many hispanic voters, turnout and whether they are up set enough about it. >> right. >> i think the middle east has sal yens to jewish voters. and i think that immigration or anti-immigration has great sal yens to-- sal yens to latino varieties. they see one party that has really been overtly hostile to its nominee, really got the nomination by that route. >> woodruff: less than a minute left. newt gingrich announced that he is going to drop out race.

>> no. >> woodruff: early next week. his legacy, you want to weigh in on that. >> disappointing. we wanted a little more entertainment from the guy. i got to see him cry in iowa one day. but i thought we come ot with big ideas. some of them would be wackying some of them would be smart but they would be like big heaving ideas. and you know o you follow him around, he was talking about some bridge, in the port of charleston. littled ideas. and so i can't even associate him with an idea this time. i was a little disappoint. >> $.50 gasoline is a big idea, and colonizing the moon. think it what is go-- he comes out of the race a smaller person than he went into it rick santorum came out of race a bigger person than he went into it. and there were, there really were no big ideas. it was more of a soap opera than a campaign. it began with great flourish, then went to the greek aisles for a cruise, the entire staff quit on him,

went with rick perry. he clam pered back. how de get back, by attacking the press and it is one of the great true, trusted routes and he did it as well as anybody i have ever heard do did. >> woodruff: you two do it even better than everybody else, every friday, mark shields, david brooks, thank you. >> brown: finally tonight, this being poetry month, at least for a few more days, we talk to two poets who've taken on a very public role. >> "look, we all have wishes. granted. but who has wishes granted? him. >> brown: carol ann duffy is poet laureate of the united kingdom. at 56, she is the first woman and first openly gay writer to hold a position that is still appointed by the monarch, but now for a ten-year term rather than life. one of her best known books is "the world's wife", which re-imagines myths and history through the voices of women

rather than the men who originally got all the attention, as here in "mrs. midas." >> in fact, i put a chair against my door, near petrified. he was below, turning the spare room into the tomb of tutankhamun. ( laughter ) you see, we were passionate then, in those halcyon days; unwrapping each other, rapidly, like presents, fast food. but now, i feared his honeyed embrace, the kiss that would turn my lips to a work of art." ( applause ) >> brown: at 84, philip levine is poet laureate of the u.s., appointed by the librarian of congress to a one-year term. levine's best known for poems about working class life and people he grew up around in detroit, as in "of love and other disasters." >> "the grease ate so deeply into her skin it became

a part of her, and she put her hand, palm up, on the bar and pointed with her cigarette at the deep lines that work had carved." >> brown: they were together for the first time recently, reading their work and speaking to a packed crowd at the annual gathering of the association of writers and writing programs, held this year in chicago. the next day, i sat down with the two of them, and began by asking just why they'd wanted to take on this public role. >> in my case, it was because there hadn't been a woman laureate in the nearly 400 years. >> brown: you felt that it was important to take on? >> i felt it very much, and i think it was felt in the country that a woman's voice should be represented-- not necessarily my voice, but certainly a woman. i felt it was something i couldn't turn down, even if i had reservations. >> brown: did you have reservations? >> yeah, i think a poet should be private and invisible.

this is a different way of being a poet, to be laureate. do you agree? >> oh, yeah. i think we witness things, but we are not witnessed. we have our private lives and that is where the poetry comes out of that. it is a very solitary act. >> brown: well, what is it? people still wonder what is a poet laureate in the 21st century? you said this has had a 400-year history in britain. >> the first laureates were spin doctors employed by the monarch to say how great the king was. it has evolved over the centuries. i think of tennyson when he wrote "the charge of the light brigade." that was a public poem that was critical of the government policy in the crimean war. i think laureates have to feel the pulse of their country, and perhaps write poems that reflect that. you can meet public events with

a poetic lens. i think it is important that poetry is part of a dialogue in a country. >> brown: can you imagine the older style of the laureate in britain, asked to write the "occasional" poem? >> i can imagine being asked and imagine saying "no, stuff it." that is not the way it works. i remember years ago when teaching at fresno state. they hired a new president, and the vice-president called me into his office and asked me to write a ceremonial poem for this occasion. and i said, "no, that is not how poems come to be." he said, "but we would appreciate it so much." i said, "i have never met the man, i do not know who he is, i have no feeling toward him. and as far as i'm concerned, he is just another bureaucrat." that was the wrong thing to say. that kept me an assistant professor instead of an associate professor for another five years. ( laughter ) >> brown: both came from a

working class background-- she the daughter of an electrician, born in a poor section of glasgow; he, born and raised in detroit to immigrant parents. his father sold used auto parts, his mother was a bookseller. and both came to poetry early on. >> when i was very young, like in my teens, poetry reading was not a big thing in america. i went to school at wayne university in detroit, a school of 20,000, and we had one poetry reading a year. we would invite someone in. but then, they invited dylan thomas, and he was a kind of rock star. he traveled around the u.s. and actually made a living doing this. and then, i think american poets, for a couple of years, we all started writing rural welsh poetry. ( laughter ) people who'd never left chicago were writing about hay bales and the owls swooping down.

and then they got over it. >> that's extraordinary. i mean, we didn't have any poetry readings in my school, a convent school. but although i loved the poets we had to study-- keats, donne, shakespeare, chaucer-- i did love those poets, but it was dylan thomas, given to me by my english teacher, her own copy, that made me begin to kind of copy him. >> brown: going back to the background, in your case being a woman, did you feel an outsider to the poetry establishment? >> when i first published, i was still called a "poetess." >> brown: really? >> mm-hmm. and there was still that male dominance of publishing, of reviewing, of the people who were awarded prizes. anthologies-- you could open an anthology, and there would be three or four women out of 50 poets. >> brown: has taking on this

public role affected your poetry? >> my life hasn't hardly changed at all, but my writing has been weak. and that is why, thank god, i don't have to do this for ten years. at my age, there are still some poems in me. >> brown: you started by saying one of the reasons you took the laureate position was because you are a woman, you felt a women should have that role. is it a burden, in any way, because of that? >> i thought it would be, but i have loved it. it's a joy. >> brown: you thought it would be because...? >> too much attention, and people looking more at me than the poetry. but going back to childhood and being asked to represent and celebrate the thing you have loved most since childhood is a real privilege and a joy. i have loved it much more than i anticipated. >> brown: carol ann duffy and philip levine, thank you very much. >> a pleasure.

>> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day: republicans in the house of representatives passed a student loan bill, defying a presidential veto threat on how to pay for it. and u.s. economic growth expanded 2.2% in the first quarter of the year. that was down from the end of last year. and our reporting on the student loans story continues online. kwame holman explains. kwame. >> holman: share your stories of student loan debt by answering a questionnaire from the public insight network. find a link on the "rundown." plus, tonight's edition of "need to know" examines the rising sea levels and sinking land in a city on the atlantic coast. here's an excerpt. >> north of virginia is a historic coastal city nestled on the chesapeake basically it's got beautiful old homes, a world-class art museum and miles of water front property. but the city another distinction it would rather

not have. according to the federal government, norfolk is also one of the city's most at risk from sea level rise. what used to be occasional floods now happen a lot more often. it used to take big storms to shut down parts of the city. now just some rain and a seasonal high tide can turn neighborhood streets into canals. >> flooding has, i mean its with a phenomena that occurred with big storms, not on a daily basis, not just when high tides came, not just when full moons got here. and now we have water seeping not city. into our streets nearly monthly. >> so the problem is getting worse. >> there's no question that the problem is getting worse. >> reporter: rise >> holman: "rising tide" airs tonight on most pbs stations. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. judy. >> woodruff: and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown. "washington week" can be seen later this evening on most pbs stations. we'll see you online, and again here monday evening.

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