dr. king. he'll need to not just commemorate the legacy of the movement but also challenge the nation to write the next chapter, as we did two years ago at the dedication of dr. king's memorial. >> we can't be discouraged by what is, we've got to keep pushing for what ought to be. the america we ought to leave to our children, mindful that the hardships we face are nothing compared to those dr. king and his fellow marchers faced 50 years ago and that if we maintain our faith in ourselves and in the possibilities of this nation, there is no challenge we cannot surmount. >> joining me today, distinguished senior fellow, bob herbert, contributing editor for "rolling stone" and visiting scholar at nyu, eric bates. and congressional reporter, sahil kapur. joining me from washington is nbc justice correspondent pete williams. pete, you talked recently about the march on washington.

why don't you tell us about that. >> reporter: washington, d.c., in the summer of 1963 was more than a little nervous about the prospect of a big civil rights march coming to the city, and that worry extended from the president on down, a fear that if it went badly, it could derail the efforts to pass the nation's most important civil rights law. ♪ it's easy to see now why the march on washington is celebrated as a landmark in the civil rights movement. it helped to shape public opinion after decades of struggle, says todd perdom, author of a forth coming book about that period. >> i think it's probably the single most important public demonstration in america of any kind. >> reporter: america in 1963 was deeply segregated. something as simple as taking the bus meant separate waiting rooms for blacks. in the spring the nation had watched as police in birmingham, alabama, aimed fire hoses and set dogs on children who joined in the civil rights protests. when president john f. kennedy

heard about the plan to march on washington, he urged civil rights leaders to call it off, fearing it too could turn violent. members of congress were wary as well. >> the initial plan was to march on the capitol itself instead of the lincoln memorial, so that conjured up the notion of the halls of congress filled with protesters or maybe some kind of a sit-in or demonstration. >> reporter: the president eventually gave in, deciding if the march was going to happen, his administration should help it succeed. >> they're going to the washington monument. they're going to express their strong views. i think that's in a great tradition. >> reporter: organizers were hoping for 100,000 people to attend. some streaming in on buses, others coming by train. as the crowd built on the national mall, a government official stood by to shut off the public address system if the speeches advocated violence. >> if the rhetoric got out of hand, he was prepared to put on a song "he's got the whole world

in his hands." >> reporter: in the end, the 200,000 who turned out spent a peaceful day capped by a memorable speech. >> i have a dream, my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. i have a dream today. >> reporter: ten months later, president lyndon johnson signed the civil rights bill into law. >> the civil rights act of 1964 created modern america. it ended the civil war 100 years later. it integrated public accommodations, hotels, lunch counters. it gave powerful tools for fighting discrimination in education and employment. >> reporter: johnson had urged congress to pass the law in tribute to president kennedy, assassinated three months after the washington march. >> no memorial or eulogy could more eloquently honor president

kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long. >> reporter: but author todd purdum says even before kennedy's funeral, support for the law was building, and the success of the march, he says, was an important factor. >> if the march had been a disaster and the speech had been a dud, it might have hurt their chances at the law. so the fact that the march was a triumph and the speech was one for the record books, it can only have been icing on the cake. >> reporter: purdum also writes that news organizations here in washington were prepared for a day of chaos. "the new york times" put a reporter in a helicopter, but the day turned out to be so peaceful the reporter asked the pilot to fly over his house so he could inspect the condition of the shingles on his roof. joy? >> pete, thank you so much. stay with us for just a moment because joining us now from washington is democratic congresswoman from california, maxine waters.

congresswoman, looking at that package that we just saw from pete williams, it's almost as if that was a different country looking at that black and white footage. i want to read you three sets of statistics that sort of show the best of times, worst of times aspect. we have our first african-american president. and yet when president obama was inaugurated in january of 2009, 79% of people believed race relations in the country are good. now it's only 52%. the african-american poverty rate, in 1966 when the statistics were first kept for african-americans was 41.8%, four in ten. in 2011 it was 27.6%. still high, but enclosuclearly lower. and the black high school graduation rate in 1964 was only 25%, only a quarter. in 2012 it was 85%. give us your assessment, congresswoman, of how far we've come or how far we still have to go in terms of dr. king's dream. >> well, thank you very much. obviously we've made tremendous

gains over the past 50 years, but things change. it is not that you can take a look at what happened 50 years ago and simply talk about the progress. you must understand the complications of a growing society. those complications are oftentimes exacerbated by lingering discrimination and racism and marginalization, and so you still have some of that, which makes the fight a little bit different. however, the struggle must continue because while we have made progress, we certainly still have a long way to go and we have to try and fight the obstruction and injustice in different ways. and while the cause was, you know, making sure that we didn't have separate drinking fountains and certain kinds of public accommodations, now we're

looking at a supreme court who just made a decision that sets us back on our voting rights. what must we do to obtain protection for our voting rights. we've got to, again, lobby the congress of the united states, work very hard, organize and even march to make sure that the gains that were made are not lost in this struggle. >> and, pete williams, just to bring you back in, the congresswoman just talked about the supreme court decision on the voting rights act which many saw as the most ironic of setbacks given the fact that the voting acts right that came out of the advocacy and the march. does it feel in terms of the legal reasoning, like we are moving away from a court that believes we need the protection that were put in place 50 years ago? >> reporter: well, i think you're exactly right. the court believes we don't need the protection from 50 years ago and they believe that congress failed to get the data to show why you still need the

protection of the voting rights act that say that the states that have a history of discrimination have to get the federal government's permission before they make any changes in their voting. so it's very much in the eye of the beholder. people like congresswoman waters and the justice department under eric holder believe that there is still intentional discrimination in many parts of the south and elsewhere in the u.s., but the majority of the supreme court said, no, this is a good news story. there's so little discrimination now, things are so much better in the south that you don't need the voting rights act anymore. so it is in the eye of the beholder. >> no -- >> and i want to bring the panel into this for just a second and go to bob herbert. because the immediate outcome after the supreme court made that decision on the voting rights act is that you had states like texas and north carolina rush immediately to enact voter i.d. laws that are seen by many people as directly restricting of the voting rights of african-americans and minorities. even to the point where colin powell, a republican, a very senior and respected republican

said of the north carolina voter i.d. law, it immediately turns off a voting block republicans need. he wants to see policies that encourage people to vote and he's accusing north carolina of punishing minority voters. how ironic is that? >> it's incredibly ironic. i think we need to be aware of the extent of the racism that still permeates the society. there's a tendency, you look back 50 years to the march on washington and talk about the progress that's been made. obviously there's been significant progress. but there's a tendency to overstate it. and that leads you to overlook the problems that exist now. the problems of continuing racism, job discrimination, housing discrimination, schools are probably as segregated or almost as segregated now, public schools, as they were back in 1963. relative to whites, black wealth has not increased at all since 1963. all of these problems are rooted

to some extent in the different treatment that blacks get relative to whites and there's been a reluctant to acknowledge that. >> there's a reluctance to even discuss it. there's almost a sense that the civil rights era is a newsreel and a lot of people on the right want to see it as history and move on. they get angry when you try to bring back the discussion of the continuing inequalities in society. >> sure, and i think that anger is translating itself into a really severe backlash that's taking us back on two of the key issue that the march on washington was designed to target, voting rights and justice for the killing of blacks, people of color in the south, as you see in the stand your ground laws in the trayvon martin case. so two of the seminole things, places where we have supposedly made progress, are the places most under attack now by the right. >> that backlash is severe and it's gotten us to a point where we're now debating over whether or not african-americans are criminal rather than talking about questions of lingering

inequality. and it goes beyond african-americans, obviously. we have issues for many people in society who are the underclass. the right doesn't want to have this conversation. >> i think there is a segment, a school of thought that the racism against african-americans and minorities of the past is no more and a lot of the protection that were put in place during the civil rights movement are no longer necessary. and i think the election of the first african-american president kind of reflects that paradigm shift. a lot of people think, okay, this is it now. and now that the real problem is that some people in the south, whites in the south are being treated unfairly in things like the voting rights act. so the supreme court's decision, it is brutally ironic that it came just two months ahead of this amazing historic anniversary. congress now has a real challenge and it's going to be very telling what they do. i think it's going to be huge -- it's going to be extremely difficult to actually get section 4 of the voting rights act rewritten, their efforts to get that rewritten, but i think there are a lot of political

headwinds and i think the outcome will be reflective of where the country is and where we're going from here. >> congresswoman waters, what are the chances that the house of representatives will even take up a bill that will address the supreme court's concerns on section 4 of the voting rights act? >> well, we have a moral obligation to take it up. it's not going to be as easy as a reauthorization that we did. we have a tea party element that are obstructionists that are opposed to everything and not inclined to be supportive of our efforts to ensure that our voting rights are protected. and so it's not going to be easy, but i want to let you know, it is going to happen. i wish i could tell you how soon it would be. i can't do that. i want it to be taken up relatively soon. and we're going to fight very hard for it. we are not going to sit back and allow our voting rights to be undermined in the way that the supreme court has done with this decision. as a matter of fact, you know,

the fact that the supreme court should know and understand the long waiting lines, the polling places that were not available to people that caused them to have to stand in line, the continued efforts to intimidate and repress the black vote, they were all there for us to see in these last elections. and despite the fact that a black was elected president, these kind of tactics still exist. and so we are going to fight hard to make sure that we correct the damage of the supreme court and we will not sit back and allow even the right wing and the tea party to undermine our efforts to do so. >> all right, well, thank you so much, congresswoman maxine waters. >> you're welcome. >> thank you also to nbc's pete williams. >> you bet. and don't forget to tune in for msnbc's special coverage of the march on washington live from the national mall all day tomorrow. after the break, members of the right wing seize on the senseless killing of australian

baseball player chris lane as a race issue. we'll discuss false equivalent sees when tim wise joins us next on "now." good job! still running in the morning? yeah. getting your vegetables every day? when i can. [ bop ] [ male announcer ] could've had a v8. two full servings of vegetables for only 50 delicious calories.

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. the shooting of 22-year-old australian baseball player chris lane has ignited a firestorm on the right about a supposed media double standard when it comes to its reporting of lane's death and that of trayvon martin. a day after calling lane's shooting trayvon martin in reverse only worse, rush limbaugh accused the mainstream media of ignoring lane's shooting because it doesn't advance its own political agenda. >> in the zimmerman/martin case,

you had barack obama himself injecting race into it. there was no racial component. the racial component had to be manufactured all because there was a black victim. the whole trayvon martin/zimmerman, no racial aspect to it other than the one the left manufactured for the purposes of advancing its agenda. >> of course many on the right have seized on lane's shooting as an example of reverse racism, despite the more obvious outrage, namely one of the teens allegedly telling cops we were bored and didn't have anything to do so we decided to kill somebody. police have not ascribed a racial motive to the shooting and notably while two of the alleged shooters are black, one is white. that hasn't stopped many on the right from accusing president obama and civil rights leaders like jesse jackson and al sharpton of a racial double standards. >> it shows you that these race hustlers have no commitment to principle and cannot transend

their own racial, narrow agenda. >> the right's hostility doesn't just stop with leaders and elected officials. on breitbart news, david webb asked where is sybrina fulton, trayvon martin's mom? does she not feel for another grieving mother of a son who was hunted down and killed like a dog? joining us now is anti-racism activist tim wise, author of "white like me, reflexes on race from a privileged son." tim, that last quote about chris lane being hunted and killed like a dog really struck me because i remember after the trayvon martin shooting there were comments on the right that essentially said and in one case literally said that trayvon martin was a rabid dog that had to be put down. there was this viciousness against him personally and this need to ascribe to him animalistic characteristics, so it's kind of ironic that that's the framing that the right is using in the chris lane case. >> yeah, in that case the black

victim was the animal and in this case the two out of three black perpetrators were the animals. this was a vicious crime but the difference between it and the killing of trayvon martin was this thing called an arrest. the perpetrators in this case have been arrested as they should have been. the problem, when trayvon martin was killed is his body laid in the morgue for 72 hours, his parents didn't even know where he was and zimmerman was free for six weeks. the biggest issue with this issue being spun by the right is how fundamentally dishonest it is. they're trying to make white americans think that black folks are out to get us. less than 0.3 of 1% of white americans will be violently victimized by a black person in one year. less than 0.7 of 1% of black folks will victimize a white person. when it comes to homicide, the percentage of white folks killed by a black person in a given year is 2/10,000 of 1%. this is not a race against white

folks even though this case may or may not turn out to be racial. this is about hyping up white fear, it is irresponsible, it is race baiting on the right. it is playing the right wing version of the so-called race card and it ought to be stopped. >> bringing it back to the panel, brian boitler writes a piece and talks about the black crime obsession. he says the conservative media, including fox news, repeated the claim that the oklahoma suspects were all black but this turned out to be a toxic mix of racial bias and wishful thinking. you almost wonder whether the people whose alternative motives led them into error actually la meanted the fact that one of the suspects would be white. it would be so much more convenient if that weren't the case. isn't this obsession with bringing the conversation back to the criminality of black men -- >> i think the perception of racism guides their thinking and comments like that can be very revealing as to where they are.

i think generally the -- you know, what we're finding out throughout this whole thing is that conservatives want to deflect the issue. they don't want to talk about the fact that there is an on going issue about racial profiling and that black men are treated differently. they're treated with more suspicion. and if you're a black man, you're much more likely to be stopped and to be arrested. >> and, tim, i think this still gets to the point. is it conservatives essential low want to have a conversation about race but in a very narrow frame. they want african-americans to go back and talk to one another about black criminals. >> right. >> but they really don't want to have a conversation about race in terms of where african-americans fit into the social structure of the united states? >> well, and the reality is, if these white reactionaries actually spent time in black communities, they would know that black folks have that conversation all the time about what they're going to do to solve the problems in their own communities. but the real issue is what they're attempting to do and i think that last comment is right

on point, they're trying to rationalize stop and frisk and racial profiling. what better way to rationalize stop and frisk in new york or stand your ground laws all over the country than to make folks that if you don't do that, those awful, horrible, animalistic black people are going to get you. a, it's unconstitutional, b, it wasn't working. 90% of the time there was no arrest or citation. less than 2% of the searches resulted in a weapon, less than 5% drugs. so it had nothing to do with stopping crime, nothing to do with stopping violence and yet the folks on the right want to justify that fear because that is their politics now. they have essentially gone in as a white nationalist party. that's where they are at this point. >> bob, it isn't only white conservatives because you had john mcwarder in "time" saying don't ignore race. his notion is black america isn't as concerned when black people kill white people or kill one another. so it isn't just white

conservatives that are having that conversation, but isn't tim right that essentially this is about advancing policies that they don't want to have questioned. >> it's absolutely about advancing policies. one of the things that's really twisted in this particular case is that there's no one that i can think of who does not want the killers in this case, the alleged killers, to be punished. >> it's an awful crime. >> and punished to the full extent of the law. >> exactly. >> i'm opposed to the death penalty, but if these guys are convicted, i don't ever want them let out of prison. >> indeed. >> so it should be a nonissue. >> it should be a nonissue and we get away from talking about the tragedy of chris lane's killing. this is a horrible crime, but it's not horrible because of race, it's horrible because the alleged depravity of saying we don't have anything better to do. don't we have to get back to a cultural problem with guns, gun culture and the almost pornographic violence that we're seeing a lot of young people being attracted to? >> there's plenty to get upset about in this case, but race isn't the issue. the cheap availability of

handguns. >> right. >> and youth who are dispairing and who have nothing to do and who have come to a mindset where they think killing is something to do when you're bored and they have the means to do it. all of that is a ripe area for debate and public concern, far more than the racial issue. but the same right wingers who are making this into a race issue want to distract from the cheap availability of handguns as the cause really of this problem. >> and it's a mistake for those on the right or anywhere else to suggest that the people who are aware of this crime are not sympathetic to the family of this victim and don't think that what happened to this young man wasn't terrible. >> correct. >> they really do. >> clearly i think everyone agrees on it. tim, one word answer, do you think we're ever going to have a real conversation about race in this country? >> i think until white folks are prepared to face up to the legacy of racism, the answer to that is probably no. >> all right, tim wise, thank you. thank you very much. coming up, while the obama administration ponders

contingencies in response to the bloody crisis in syria, a diverse and familiar group of critics join the chorus for intervention. we'll discuss when mark mazetti joins us next. [ dennis ] it's always the same dilemma -- who gets the allstate safe driving bonus check. rock beats scissors! [ chuckles ] wife beats rock. and with two checks a year, everyone wins. [ female announcer ] switch today and get two safe driving bonus checks a year for driving safely. only from allstate. call 866-906-8500 now. [ dennis ] zach really loves his new camera. problem is...this isn't zach. it's a friend of a friend who was at zach's party and stole his camera. but zach's got it covered... with allstate renters insurance. [ female announcer ] protect your valuables for as low as $4 a month when you add renters insurance to your allstate auto policy. call 866-906-8500 now. what are you doing? we're switching car insurance. why? because these guys are the cheapest. why? good question. because a cut-rate price could mean cut-rate protection. you should listen to this guy.

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do not drive, operate machinery or do unsafe tasks until you know how toviaz affects you. the most common side effects are dry mouth and constipation. talk to your doctor about toviaz. after wednesday's deadly assault in a damascus suburb killed hundreds of syrians in what way well turn out to be a chemical weapons attack, senior administration officials met. senior pentagon officials have begun looking over contingency plans for possible military action. among the options discussed at the white house, officials said, was a cruise missile strike which would probably involve tomahawks launched from a ship in the mediterranean sea. in an interview this morning president obama called the latest use of chemical weapons an event of grave concern.

>> there is no doubt that when you start seeing chemical weapons used on a large scale, and again, we're still gathering information about this particular event, but it is very troublesome. >> there's strong proof they used them already in the past. >> then that starts getting to some core national interests that the united states has. >> jning us now is national security correspondent for "the new york times" mark mazzetti. he's the author of "the way of the knife. the cia, a secret army and a war at the ends of the earth." mark, british foreign minister william hague is saying now we do believe this is a chemical attack by the assad regime on a large scale and asked about the possibility that syrian rebels are the ones that did it. he said, quote, i think the chances of that are vanishing small. when you combine that with the fact that russia is urging syria to allow u.n. chemical weapons inspectors in, are we starting to see a solution that looks like it might involve military

action or what action do you see happening? >> well, as you pointed out, at the very least, the evidence is coalescing around the fact that it does appear to have been a syrian government attack as opposed to the allegations that maybe the rebels were involved. so the syrian government, government forces carried it out. the real question is then what did they use, was it a chemical attack. as the british have been saying today, that they are increasingly convinced that it was a chemical attack. so if the americans, the british, the french all come to this conclusion that it was a pretty wide -- large scale chemical attack, then that forces, you would think, some kind of response. and it doesn't automatically mean there's going to be an american military response, but there certainly -- that was discussed at the white house yesterday. there certainly was at least an element of the obama administration that is pushing for a strong, vigorous, u.s. military response, although the administration is somewhat divided over this. >> mark, how significant is it

that the russians appear to be moving in the direction of saying -- of demanding that the assad regime allowing inspectors in. in this case they seem to be on our side of it. >> it is significant, you would think, because the russians, by pressing it, they hold a lot of leverage over assad. if they are telling him to allow inspectors in, that does carry a lot of weight. now, it will then -- it is yet to be determined what the inspectors will find and whether they are convinced that it was a chemical attack. perhaps the russians are trying to somehow stave off some kind of a military intervention by the west. but we'll see. the inspectors could get there this weekend. they could start investigating. as i said, the americans, british and french seem to be moving very solidly in the direction that it was a chemical attack, but obviously no official announcement has been made. >> we're just bringing in the

panel. this does feel sort of eerily back to the future. there was a lot of talk about what saddam hussein was doing in iraq in 2003 and there was this sort of gathering feeling that something was going to have to be done militarily or at least people thought so at the time when they thought they had chemical weapons. but you have an administration. the president of the united states, one of the attractions democrats had to him was he was very reluctant on this idea of intervening and you have an administration that doesn't want to seem to go there militarily. is president obama at this point in a really serious box? >> i think there are a couple of things that are different than 2003. one is that the bush wars in iraq and afghanistan made it more difficult to intervene. there's a lot of fatigue, a lot of reluctance and lessons learned against that. the political reality is that the people who are being the most brutalized in syria and in egypt are not necessarily friends of the united states. and if they were friends of the united states, i think you'd be seeing different reactions.

you're talking about al qaeda supporting elements, you're talking about the islamist brotherhood. and so there's some tendency within the administration to feel like, well, okay, let those guys duke it out among themselves. the dirty work is getting done for us in a sense of the and that complicates the situation politically in terms of intervention. >> and yet you have those pictures of chemical weapons being yoosds. even "the new york times" editorial board saying a red line, the words have to mean something. >> the president is in an extremely difficult position right now because he said recently that one of the red lines he had was if chemical weapons were being used. it wasn't at the time and now they are. the country doesn't have an appetite for another war, the white house doesn't have an appetite for another war. the military is stretched thin, there's no money out there to spend on that. pictures like that, events like this, that could change the country's mind and that could mean the challenges for the president are even greater. >> last word to you, mark mazzetti, on the same issue of the box the obama administration

is in, clearly a great deal of reluctance to intervene but a lot of people saying red lines does have to have a meaning. >> in the president's interview today, he indicated there is no appetite for a lengthy military intervention or a long drawn-out ground war. that's not where he's going. they are considering whether they could do some sort of a strike that would send a message to assad and show some kind of resolve on the u.s.' part without committing to anything long term. i think that's what they're trying to figure out. but obviously there's always the implication of a slippery slope. once you do get directly militarily involved, what comes next? >> mark mazzetti from "the new york times," thank you. >> thank you. here's a live look at binghamton university in new york, which is going to be the latest stop on president obama's college bus tour. he'd expected to hold a town hall there in just a few minutes. david gregory joins us live for a preview of the president's remarks and we'll bring them to you live just ahead. [ female announcer ] made just a little sweeter...

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we can't price the middle class and everybody working to get into the middle class out of a college education. >> president obama is trading in air force one for ground force one. any minute now the president will speak at binghamton university in new york, the third stop on his two-day bus tour. the president kicked off his tour with a pair of speeches in upstate new york yesterday. >> we're going to start rating colleges not just by which college is the most selective, not just by which college is the most expensive, not just by which college has the nicest facilities, you can get all that on the existing rate systems. what we want to do is rate them on who's offering the best value so students and taxpayers get a bigger bang for their buck. it is time to stop subsidizing schools that are not producing good results and reward schools

that deliver for american students and our future. >> while the president doesn't need congressional authority to rank colleges based on value he does need congress' sign-off to redirect aid to high-ranking schools and he was clear about the obstacles he faces. >> rather than keeping focus on a growing economy that creates good middle class jobs, we've seen a faction of republicans in congress suggest that maybe america shouldn't pay its bills that have already been run up, that we should shut down government if they can't shut down obama care. >> and joining us now from washington is moderate of "meet the press," david gregory. david, this is a pretty ambitious plan the president is talking about. you've seen this dramatic decline in the amount of funding colleges are getting from the states. this is talking about making that money contingent about whether a school provides good value. pretty ambitious. >> yeah, it is ambitious. the president is doing a couple

of things. one, he's taking on a topic that he thinks he mooi a little bit more traction with in congress. this is part of a larger argument about the plight of the middle class and this economy. and with kids going back to school, how difficult college is to afford, let alone college debt for those students who graduate or have to pay that debt over time. these are big issues. they're big issues for our economy because we know that the children who go through secondary education are able to go to college, can get a college degree, fare much better in the economy than those who get part of college or who end up not going to college at all. so these are important issues. it's ambitious and yet as i say i think there's an attempt here to try to take on something that might have a little bit more traction on a bipartisan basis in congress. >> you say that, david, but as if on can you senator marco rubio of florida has already come out and slammed the

proposal saying while i share the president's goal of making college tuition more affordable, i'm strongly opposed to higher standards on institutions. this is a slippery slope. so already the signal being sent from the republican party that this is a nonstarter. >> right, from elements of the republican party. again, i think the president would like to take on, even if it's just a fight and not a resolution, he wants to take on this question of college affordability. some of it is just summer politics and being timely with a message like this in the dog days of august and the other piece of it is how do you start to argue all the aspects of an economic message for the middle class, and college affordability is one and let's remember, the president is also speaking to a significant portion of his base, and that's younger voters who are the ones who might just be entering college. they may have voted for the first time and now they're

entering college so this is at the forefront of their mind. but people make -- young people that i know in my life have to make really hard choices about college, about how much college they're going to pursue, about whether it's worth it to them as they pursue a career and can they afford to. so these are really tough choices. and colleges can never get so expensive that people can't afford them or else we have a real problem in our country. >> bringing it back to the panel, this does seem like a universal sort of theme. everybody believes in college affordability but again you do have the two sides talking past each other. you have the president talking about college affordability. some republicans talking about impeachment. we're not having the conversation, the two sides are not having the same conversation. >> on this issue, though, i think the president's proposal is not likely to go anywhere. if it were to happen, i don't think it would work. i don't think the data zealots are capable of crunching the numbers and coming up with a legitimate system of which

colleges are a better value than another. it's a very complex system. we do have the best higher education system in the world. and it does cost too much money, especially state schools have been raising their tuition. that's the one that kids without a great deal of money are supposed to be able to enroll. they have been raising their tuition really high. but we've got to figure out another simpler way to make college more affordable. >> and there are plenty of simple ways to do that. the problem with the president's proposal is that it doesn't go far enough. it's nowhere near enough to get college costs under control. the similarity is here with the health care system. in both cases, costs for colleges and for health care have risen at a far faster rate than the consumer price index, than inflation, two, three times a year the cost of inflation over ten, 20 years. so college costs are way out of control. how do colleges make their money? what supports colleges? as in health care, it's

government subsidies in the form of student loans. so governments are paying the bill. taxpayers are paying the bill for college. we can control the costs by saying this much and no more. we did that for years in the health care industry. we set the price of all kinds of services and said we won't subsidize anything beyond that. you can charge it if you want but we won't pay for it. you can come up with all kinds of very simple systems that would do that for college costs, but there's no will in congress to get that done. >> i want to go back to david really quickly, back to the will of congress. we do have another issue that's looming on the horizon when congress comes back from the recess and that is averting a government shutdown. john boehner, the speaker of the house, has proposed a short-term bill to avert a government shutdown. is that something that's likely to happen? are we going to have another debt ceiling crisis on our hands? >> my reading of our recent struggles over the budget is that both parties will find the easiest way out as quickly as they can, rather than deal with the really hard stuff. and so in this way if there's a temporary measure, i don't think it's what democrats want, they

want a full replacement of the sequester cuts. i don't think that's going to happen right now, not out of the house. so if it's a temporary bill in september that keeps funding the government, that's good. it doesn't head off the end of the year battle over debt ceiling and if boehner just is time shifting, his own caucus which wants to defund obama care and make that contingent on raising the debt ceiling, for which there is not support, then you have this clash that gets close to december. and there the debt ceiling fight we have seen is perilous for both sides. both sides last year wanted to avoid it. we'll see. the president has a pretty bright marker down there saying we're not negotiating over this, period. so this will be republicans negotiating with themselves. if they stick to that, we'll see where we are in december. but that's where the fight is headed with all of those eggs in that basket, in that fight. >> okay. we are waiting for the president to come out. look, we see him coming out right now and that is the president at binghamton university talking about college affordability, so we will watch

as president obama heads to the podium. he is doing that right now. >> hello, binghamton! it's good to see all of you. thank you so much. go ahead and have a seat, i'm going to be here a while. well, first of all, let me thank the university and your president, harvey stanger, for having me here today. give your president a big round of applause. there he is. a couple other people i want to recognize. mayor matt ryan is here. two wonderful congressmen, richard hannah and paul tonko. your former representative, maurice hinche is here as well.

so, first of all, thank you because it's really nice outside, so for you to be willing to come inside, i greatly appreciate it. i'm not going to do a lot of talking at the top because i want to have a conversation with you about a range of issues, but in particular something that is, you know, personal for me. a lot of you know that i wasn't born into a lot of wealth or fame. there wasn't a long obama dynas dynasty. and so the only reason i'm here today, the only reason michelle and i have been able to accomplish what we've accomplished is because we got a great education. and i think the essence of the american dream is that anybody who's willing to work hard is able to get that good education and achieve their dreams. and central to that is the issue

that you've got a big sign there, we try to message effectively, college affordability. making sure that people can afford to go to college. i'm on a road trip from new york to pennsylvania. yesterday i was at the university of buffalo. i visited students at syracuse. later today i'm going to meet joe biden in scranton, his hometown. but i decided to stop here for a couple of reasons. number one, i've been told that it's very important for me to get a speedies while i'm here. so we're going to pick one up and try it on the road. number two, i'm excited because the great work that suny campuses like binghamton are doing to keep costs down for hard-working students like so many of you. the chancellor is making sure that hundreds of thousands of

suny students all across the state are getting a world class higher education. but without some of the debt and financial burden that is stopping too many young people from going to college. that's what we want for all of our students and all of our families all across the country. over the past month i've been visiting towns throughout america and i've talked about how do we secure a better bargain for the middle class and everybody who's trying to work their way into the middle class? we've fought our way through a very brutal recession. and now we're at a point where we're creating jobs. the economy is growing. budget deficits are falling. health care inflation has been reduced. and yet there's still a lot of working families out there who are having a tough time in this competitive global economy that we live in. and the fact is even before this last financial crisis, we had

increasingly than economy where folks at the top were doing better and better and better, but the average individual or family was seeing their incomes and their wages flat lining. and you start getting a tale of two americas. and the whole premise of upward mobility in this country, which is central to who we understand ourselves to be, was being diminished for too many people. so from my perspective, reversing that trend should be washington's highest priority. it's certainly my highest priority. unfortunately, what we've seen in washington all too often is instead of focusing on how do we bring good middle class jobs back to america, how do we make sure the economy is growing robustly and that growth is broad based, we've been spending a lot of time arguing about whether we should be paying our bills that we've already accrued. or the discussion has been about slashing spending on education

and basic research and science, all the things that are going to make sure that we remain competitive for the future. most recently there's been threats that we would shut down the government unless we agree to roll pack the health care reform that's about to provide millions of americans with health care coverage for the first time. and that's not an economic plan. that's not going to grow the economy, that's not going to strengthen the middle class and it's not going to create ladders of opportunity into the middle class. what we need to do is focus on the pocketbook bread and butter issues that affect all of you. making sure we've got good jobs with good wages, a good education, a home of your own, affordable health care, a secure retirement, and a way for people who are currently in poverty to get out of poverty. that's what we should be spending our time thinking about when it comes to domestic policy. that's what's always made america great. and nothing is more important to that process than what we're doing in terms of k through 12

education and higher education. now, here's the challenge. at the time when higher education has never been more important, and when i say higher education, i mean two year, four year, technical colleges, it doesn't all have to be four-year traditional bachelor of arts or sciences. at a time when that's never been more important, college has never been more expensive. in fact what you've seen is that over the last three decades, the cost of higher education has gone up 260% at a time when family incomes have gone up about 16%. so i'm not a math major. there probably is some here. but if you've got one line going up 260% and another line going up 16%, you start getting a bigger and bigger gap and what's happened as a consequence is

that either college has become out of reach for too many people, or young people are being loaded up with more and more debt. now, we've tried to close that gap. when i came into office, we reformed our financial aid system so the student loan programs were being run through banks, and banks were making billions of dollars on it and we said let's just give the money directly to students, cut out the middle man and we were able to refunnel billions of dollars to provide more students with more grants and more assistance. we've done our best to keep interest rates on student loans as low as possible. but even with all the work that we're doing there, the fact is, is that the average student is still coming out with $26,000 worth of debt when they graduate. and for a lot of students, it's much more than that. and particularly for those young people who are choosing careers where -- like teaching, where they may not make a lot of

money. if they're burdened with tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt, in some cases it's impossible for them ever to pay it off. or they have to put off buying a home or starting a business or starting a family. and that has a depressive effect on our economy overall. so it's not just bad for the students, it's also bad for the economy as a whole. bottom line is this. we can't price higher education so prohibitively that ordinary families can't afford it. that will ruin our chances to make sure the 21st century is the american century, just like the 20th century was. so what we've done, and i announced this yesterday, is proposed three basic reforms to try to shake the system up. number one, we want to start rating colleges based on how well they're doing in providing good value and opportunity for

students. right now you've got a bunch of ranking systems, some of them commercial, and when you look at what's being rated, it's typically how selective the schools are, how few students they take in, and how expensive they are and what are their facilities like. and what we want to do is start looking at factors like how much debt do students leave with, and do they actually graduate, and do they graduate in four years as opposed to six or eight or ten? and do they find a job after they graduate? giving some concrete measures that will allow students and families to gauge if i go to this school, am i going to get a good deal. and since taxpayers are often providing those families and students assistance, we want to make sure taxpayers are getting a good deal as well. that will create an atmosphere in which college presidents and

trustees start thinking about affordability and don't just assume that tuition can keep on going up and up and up. what we're also going to be doing is putting pressure on state legislatures to rebalance, because part of the reason so many state universities have had to increase tuition is because state legislative priorities have shifted. all across the country, more money into prisons, less money into schools. that means that costs are passed on to students in the form of higher tuition, so we've got to do something about that. and we're going to ask a little more from students. what we're going to say to students is you need to actually finish courses before you take out more loans and more grants. we want to say that to students not to be punitive, but instead prevent a situation where students end up taking out a lot of debt but never actually getting the degree. which puts them in a deeper financial hole than they

otherwise would be. so that's point number one. second, we want to jumpstart competition among colleges and states to think of more innovative ways to reduce costs. and there are schools that are doing some terrific work in reducing costs while maintaining high quality education. so, for example, there's some schools that are experimenting where you can get credits based on your competency as opposed to how much time you're spending in the classroom. there's no law that says you have to graduate -- that for you to be in school for four years rather than three or three and a half somehow automatically gives you a better education. so schools are experimenting with how can we compress the time and, there by, reduce the costs. are there ways we can use online learning to improve the educational quality and at the

same time make things a little cheaper for students. so we're going to work with states, schools, university presidents to see what's work and what's not. and let's spread best practices all across the country. the third thing we want to do is to expand and better advertise a program that we put in place and expanded when i came into office, and that is a program that says for college graduates who do have debt, we're going to cap the monthly payments that you have to make to 10% of your income. and the notion is that that way it's manageable and you're not going to have to make career decisions simply based on how much money can i make to pay off those student loans if i want to be a teacher, if i want to be a social worker, if i want to go into public service. then i can do that and i'm still going to be able to act responsibly and pay off