[appla [applause] [applause] >> thank you, everyone for joining us. good evening and welcome to mayor edwin lee and san francisco city hall possible lunar new year celebration. i am lisa ahng, the liaison of mayor li's to the asian-american community. i want to preface this part by siam only 1/8 chinese, so there is only a 12.5% chance this will go as it should. [speaking chinese] to start up the night, we have the chair of the treasure island board of directors and chairman of the asian american pacific celebration committee c laudine chang. [applause] >> good evening, everyone. thank you so much for celebrating -- joining us on this joyous occasion. welcoming and celebrating lunar new year. i am delighted to be your mistress of ceremonies this evening. this year, the chinese new year started on thursday, february 3. lunar new year, 4709, symbolized by the year of the hare. we all know it as a chinese new year but lunar new year was actually celebrated by many ethnic groups within the asian american pacific families, including vietnamese-americans, c

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[appla >> the c-span networks provide coverage of politics, public affairs, nonfiction books and american history. it's all of able to you on television, radio, online and on social media networking site. find our content anytime through c-span video library. we take see spent on the road with our digital bus, local content people. bringing our resources to your community. it's washington your way, the c-span networks available in more than 100 million homes. created by cable, provided as a public service. >> the senate gavels in shortly to begin the day with general speeches are at about 11 agencies take of a bill to repeal a health care long requirement that businesses report all been to payments over $600. the vote on an amendment to require a study of the measure before it is implement it. final vote expected shortly before senators break before the weekly party lunches meeting. when senators return, they will resume work on a bill to continue innovation funds for small tech and research businesses. a number of amendments are pending including several unrelated to the bill. negotiatio

[applause] >> thank you very much. it's great to be back of the world health care conference, and i've been impressed so many people are up early this morning to talk about their health care spending. i'm going to talk about restraining federal health care spending. i'm going to discuss three specific topics. first, i hope this isn't a surprise to anyone here, quote in spending on health care programs is one of the central fiscal challenges facing the federal government, second, last year's major health care legislation made important changes to medicare and effort to restrain spending and third, the federal government has other tools it could use to restrain its spending on health care. but like in those tools will not be painless. let me elaborate on those points. first the spending on health care programs is one of the central fiscal challenges facing the federal government. in the current fiscal year the federal government will spend more than $1 trillion on health care. more than half o