institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> ohio republican senator robert portmanaid on monday that changes must be made to end at a man programs to get the economy on track. following his remarks, economic scholars and former officials discuss the next steps for deficit reduction. this is an hour and 45 minutes. >> welcome to the american car enterprise institute. today i have the pleasure of kicking off a two-sport event, consisting of a keynote it reviewed address, falling by a panel discussion -- consisting of a keynote address. let me just make a brief remark and set the stage in the wake of the super committee s termination. when i think about the super committee, i think on one hand, it was much like any congressional conference committee, a limited number of members appointed by the their leadership from the house and senate to forge a compromise between chambers and report back to both chambers of product that is neither amendable in the house or on the senate for. on the other hand, the super committee was a truly unique structure. unlike simpson-bowles,

lautenberg, lee, manchin, mikulski, moran, murkowski, nelson of florida, nelson of nebraska, portman, pryor, risch, roberts, snowe, stabenow, tester, thune, whitehouse and wyden. these 46 members are on the shoulders of the 92 members that signed the letter -- the circumstance-schumer letter in august. when this these partisan stiemstimes do we have all but eight senators agreeing on a policy? i will note as senator menendez and senator mccain pointed out, the administration is somewhat poird about this amendment but senator menendez correctly provided flexibility to the administration by saying number one if the energy information agency says oil markets are tight and issues a report on the effective oil markets these sanctions could be suspended for a time. on top of that one waiver, there's a second waiver for the national security of the united states that the president could have that kind of flexibility. and so with flexibility, with bipartisan support, with outrageous activity by iran in the face of the iaea report moving towards a nuclear weapon, with the danger we see from that government, hezboll

fighter jet and robert gates calls it unnecessary, and it goes into the details how much money the industries give to the members of congress, and the members, a former omb director, rob portmanere by receiving? like $59,000 from ge over the 2010 elections, and i guess the main point here to find from you is how can we, with the probably we're in economically, how is this ever going to stop when the defense department who needs the weapons says no and the congress says yes? >> guest: i mean every year there was another -- i don't know 10 or 12 billion that the congress added to our legislation. we didn't want. we argued, please, don't put that in there. it's for things that had nothing to do with the defense budget. now, the implication of the question is, sure, we have serious economic problems in the country, but there's no way to balance the budget off the defense department. c-span: my implication is how do we start this throughout government? >> guest: exactly. it's broad. the entitlements is basically where the money goes, the largest frangs. we spend today a relatively small percentage of gdp on defense compared to, for example, back in the eisenhower and kennedy era,