the next year, senator gramm pushed this commodities futures modernization act through in 2000. president clinton signed it. that's the most derivatives out of regulation almost completely. -- that took most derivatives out of regulation. out of regulation.

senator gramm's wife was on the board of enron. i find it ironic that senator gramm went to ubs. because as you may know, ubi suffered one of the worst losses of any nature institution during the recentstitutio crisis tiered elastomer $15 billion. they had to be built up by the swiss government and i don't think his judgment proved to be very astute in my opinion. >> c-span 2, one of c-span public affairs offering. a roundtable discussion on broadcast frequencies and their potential use for the expansion of broadband in the united states. our guests are michael calibrate and donovan. >> host: well, our goal this week on "the communicators" is twofold. number one, to learn what the spectrum is. and if you've been following telecommunications about car particularly the last couple of months you've heard a lot about the spectrum. so that's our first goal. our second goal is to hear some different viewpoints on how the spectrum can be best managed. and we have to just to introduce to you this week, both members of the commerce department spectrum advisory committee. her staff, david

as a framework that was suggested by senator schumer and senator gramm will have been working on whatuch a thing would look like in actual legislative language and we have been working with them and their staffs to provide such language. the president has said he would support a bill that included or was designed along the lines of that framework. you have two keep bipartisan leaders of the senate who have indicated that this is what the from work looks like. you have the president of the united states agreeing with that remark. you have polling of the american people that it's been done over years that says that would give us a good, strong, fair immigration system and we want to work to sustain that and have confidence moving forward that we will not have, in 20 years, another 12 million illegal aliens in the country. what is missing in this is bipartisan everyone on capitol hill recognizes that a bill would not pass without bipartisan support that does not exist right now. how will that be managed? what will happen? i do not know. i do not know whether there will be an attempt to g

senator gramm's wife was on the board of enron. i find it ironic that senator gramm went to ubs.hey suffered one of the worst losses of any major financial institution during the most recent crisis. they lost over $50 billion and had to be bailed out by the swiss government. i do not think his judgment proved to be very astute, in my opinion. caller: hi, good morning. this is related. what do you think about the corporate law, the way they changed it from the original constitution where they did not allow corporations unless you went before congress and voted on incorporating and had to display a corporate interest? if we win back to the old way where you ran a business and were personally liable for your mistakes and good fortune, would that not automatically limits the size of business to make some of these ceo's were conscious of what they were doing which would give you automatic inherent protections against these financial problems? guest: many people will tell you that wall street changed when all the old securities firms stopped these partnerships they had personal liabili

the gramm-leach-bliley act tore down that fire wall as well as the firewall that separated insurancerom wall street banks, and we have seen the disastrous results of that policy. madam president, i voted against tearing down the firewall that separated main street from the wall street banks. i did it for the same reason i voted against the wall street bailout, because i listened to the people of wisconsin, who did not want to give wall street more and more power. wall street was gambling with the money of hard-working families. too many members of congress voted to let them do it. i didn't support it before and i won't support it now. we've got to get this legislation right, protect the people of wisconsin and every state, protect them from something like this ever happening again. so i was pleased to join the senator from washington, senator cantwell, and the senator from arizona, mr. mccain, introducing legislation to correct that enormous mistake that congress made in passing gramm-leach-bliley. and i look forward to supporting an amendment to this measure based on the cantwell-mc

gramm, who is a senator from south carolina, and they have become -- they have begun legislation that is not amnesty. i do not support amnesty, and i do not believe the american people support amnesty. they need to ignore as they have done wrong, which is a little bit -- they need to acknowledge a they have done wrong. we need to have them acknowledge what they have done, get in line, pay a fine, and with their turn. that is in the works, and that is the language that is included in the chuck schumer-lindsay gramm legislation. it's good you have any plans to run for congress? -- host: you have any plans to run for congress? guest: i'm not sure that is where i want to be. to thank the want representatives for her views, and giving us more in-depth information. i want everyone to think of the historical implications of the people that are coming to this country from mexico. historically, everyone is talking about who is here illegally. when you short -- when you show up on the shores of a country, and claim it to be your country, one people were already here, and you forsees people beyo

-p>> stephanie s. >> matthew a. >> adam+ schwartz. >> bret d. >> amanda >> gramm clark. >> d.m w. >> christopher g. >> larson gilmor. p> >> wwlliam%herbertt m. >> christian p. >> alan lewis. >> patrick ryan. >> alexander s. >> matthew s. stored -- steward m. >>%eric w.3%+ >> kathryn c.. >> meghan reed. >> brannon >> daaid s. >> nathan s. >> joy turner.. >> hunter wiiliams. >> charles s.. >> elisabeth c. sean w. >> joseph brown. >> paige ford. >> joshua h. >> joseph g. >> alexander j. >>+ adam l. >> christopher h. >> jeremy m.- >> william meyers. >> jeffrey nielsen. >> aleeander n. >> ean rosenberg. >> dana >> alexannra s. >> masius -- matthew r. >> hristopher webber. >> brandon w. >> mark a. >> william smalls. >>>timothh thomas. >> riihard t. >> philip b. >> thomassb. >>>and benjamin white.. >> peter m. >> joon g. >> david e. jacobson. >> brian c. p> alexander d. >>> christopher frederick. >> william grove. >> lois k. >> annie >> and david johnson. >> alexandria scott. >> andrew shields. >> nicole .%+ >> alexander mumford. >>>agenda for nixon. -- alexander nixon. >> steven ski

thank you. >> senator gramm i had a senior moment to read >> go ahead, senator. >> i would like to continuehe line of questioning that was started. mr. sirri, relative to the information that is available and in particular i am asking the perspective of that investor who was trying to make sense of what the risks are and the options he or she has to invest in. much of our system is built upon in forming the investor and assuming they will use their good judgment to make decisions that are best for them and best for the system. in our last panel, mr. schwartz, the last ceo of their stearns made the statement that from the outside you could not tell the exposure to the housing mortgage risk with the kind of information that was being made available to the investor community. my question is the shiastan inherent limitation of the accounting and of the literary professions to properly explain to the layperson what it is that is going on or is the structure of the information that we make available and adequate but susceptible to being made more informative so that prudent the person can make be

that was reference to gramm-leach-bliley act.sight do you have that is lacking on capitol hill. >> that was at a time everybody talked about we need to modernize the financial system and big holding companies created where you bring in commercial banks, investment banks under one roof. i said i think it's nuts, setting us up for a huge problem ahead which turned out to be the case. i don't have a crystal ball but it wasn't hard for me to understand this was going to be a big problem for our country. we've lost $15 trillion in this rather deep recession, the deepest recession since the great depression. now as we do wall street reform, let's fix this in a way that will prevent it from happening again. the only way to do that, in my judgment, on too big to fail, say if you're too big to fail, you're too big. you need to divest some. >>> are republicans playing politics with the times square bomb plot arrest? former new york governor george pataki will join us. [ male announcer ] if you've had a heart attack caused by a completely b

i also want to thank senator gramm for putting so many hours into this as well.ment is this bill is all the better because of the time he putin in helping shave it going forward. for duke energy, this bill is about three towering america -- re-towering america. we need to go forward, giving us the road map where we can provide the solutions, where we can raise billions of dollars of investment and create jobs and move this towards energy independence and at the same time make our air even cleaner than it is today. these investments we will make and are prepared to make will not only create jobs today, but tomorrow and in the future, and that is going to really lead to the recovery of our economy when you see the trajectory of the jobs that will be created over time. the legislation can also -- i am selling this from tom friedman. it can help us -- sealing this from tom friedman. it can help us get our economic mojo back, and we will get that back, and it will give us a chance to lead on energy and technology. we should not see that leadership to anybody in the wo

. >> my time is up and i'm going to senator gramm. i want to stress what i think it's been said.es not mandate that the person on the terrorism watch list would be prohibited from buying the gun. it gives the department of justice the i authority to do so. there may be cases where it justice decides it wants the gun purchase to go forward because they are following that person and that individual may lead to other co-conspirators. senator graham. >> just for the record. we have the chance to have a good discussion about very important issues. you took time from a very busy job dto to come and talk with the spirit we have a difference of opinion on this particular issue, but the idea that america has gaps in her defenses is a timely topic. and we do. we have gaps in defending our southern border, allowing people to overstay their visas, all 19 hijackers were here illegally but they did not cross the border of mexico, the came here on a visa. they had multiple drivers license, so easy to fake documents, and we're almost 10 years out, and i don't that we have warned all of the lesso

we were vulnerable to the fact that under gramm-leach-bliley, we are, we rely on functions of supervisors to supervise for safety at the underlying banks or in the case of the ftc in this case, the broker-dealer and each firm operates across the world and were able to push risk into other jurisdictions to make it harder to captured and we were vulnerable to those as a whole. and of course as we have learned, the capital requirements and the accounting requirements in the exposure requirements did not do a good enough job of giving us a good picture of what capital really was relative to risk. that is why the big lesson i take from this, among the many lessons are to make sure that we forced the system to run with more conservative requirement some leverage because i do not believe you can design a system that depends on a community of regulators always been wise and tough and smart and have the foresight imperfect foresight to preemptively, preempt pockets of risk and bubbles of leverage. we will do our best and people will do their best but they will be imperfect and in the best sense th

who can work but refused to work, so people who have done the right thing to do not have to feel as grammdoes? so many people say i go to work and what passed houses where i know people could work which is not to. that is not acceptable, and we need change to make that happen. >> graham use that word galling. when you retired, that you will find that the benefits you get are not as generous as i think they should be. i think one of the things we need to do immediately after the general election is restore the earnings link. it was broken some years ago by the conservative government and has not been restored under 13 years of labour government. the least they deserve when you retire, having worked hard and paid into the common pot is that you get a decent state pension when you retire. i hope that we do something to make that experience feel a little less galling. >> he is absolutely right. the pensions should relate to earnings. we will do that in 2012 when we have the resources to do so. we have also introduced the winter allows for all pensioner household for some as over 60. it is 400

frankly, given the mantle said that led to gramley to bliley -- gramm leech bliley. i guess we're still working on tomorrow after what happened yesterday afternoon to all of us. if you have this attempt to take the sec's given jurisdiction and regulatory power and see what you could do with it to solve or at least address a blank in the regulatory structure because of what happened with the repeal of glass-steagall work because you felt it was necessary to deal with them regardless of what happened in the traditional statutory structure that was no longer there. am i making sense? was the cse the best thing you could create given what you had created a out of, i .e. the regulatory powers that were there? when speaking for the time i was there? i think we were increasingly concerned. >> is your microphone on? >> yes. we were increasingly concerned with what was going on in the shadowed area. there were new instruments, new activities in these holding companies that we had no access to. we felt we had to do something about that to at least gain access what was going on

and as a result, this is inside the beltway, i guess, but lindsay gramm, the one republican supportere legislation, announced that he would drop off. i think the president obama has established a habit of making grand promises, which he sometimes felt constrained to keep. this is pure speculation, but i think a lot will depend on how the news media, the major news media, play, not just the statement but the news conference that is held. and washington post, new york times, and the wall street journal may force president obama to say something that he would rather not say about pushing immigration. it depends a lot, i am afraid to say, on whether or not is a slow news day on may 19 and may 20. >> sure. >> i wanted to pursue juan's misery in talking about calderÓn's potential legacy. i remember in this country in the 1994 disastrous midterm election for the quinn administration. i remember a lot of people saying about president clinton, he did not do anything big. he was always giving press conferences, talking to things like school uniforms or some mechanisms for creating stability in

i am sympathetic to senator gramm -- senator grrham's concerns. he is a thoughtful senator who has put a lot of time into this. i am hopeful that we will be able to convince him that this is consistent with the other laws that the congress has passed and the supreme court has said are reasonable. >> thank you. commissioner, tell us as best you recall about some of the findings of that study. i saw something about it and i was struck by just how willing a lot of the gun show dealers are to break he law. >> this investigation was done by a private contractor. but we are obviously concerned about the gun show loophole. it has been known to be -- it is talked about on the street. certainly, in some states, it is more of a problem than others. we have certain states that seem to contribute excessively to the guns that we find on the streets of our city. the gun shows sort of predominate in a lot of those states. >> let me add one other thing. >> go ahead. >> our investigation at the gun shows -- we made sure that the seller of the gun, who was somebody

. >> the last thing is to follow up listening to senator gramm's question to senator cornyn. since you have come in, you have worked very hard on these border issues, specifically the drug enforcement issues. you have had a laser focus on that we had not seen before. i wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about the difference between what was going on under some of your predecessors with the border and with some of the law enforcement issues in mexico, and what you have been doing now. >> thank you. let me just say that one of the key things that is going on now is the cooperation with mexico. one of the things that does not get counted is the amount of law enforcement resources mexico itself is deploying to the border. for example, we are going to begin helping them train their first ever border patrol. it is not just going to be our border patrol on this side. they will have border patrol on their side. it is those kind of things -- we want to 21st century border zone protecting south and north. it needs to marry up with an immigration system that works. as we know, th

the other thing pointed out is that the examiners at the feet occ complained about the revisions of gramm-leach-blileyaying it would prevented them from information as mom bank affiliate's and kept them blind as of the asset quality problems that eventually can walk on its balance sheet. it sounds like to me there was a whole. the balance sheet entities vehicles, and no one is looking so they did pose a risk or certainly potential risk. >> absolutely in the didn't mean to claim otherwise. there was material in the sense of -- the system -- the system of a whole bunch of different regulators looking at pieces of the entity, the fed is supposed to be looking at the whole thing. accounting the regime, reading dependence, capital didn't catch all the rest come internal checks and balances that failed the risk, that system absolutely did not work. sprick by the way i said at the fcc told us they were aware -- they felt it seems to us at least my reading of the black hole of sorts. >> many ways the problem with whole is -- it looked like it was called aaa or super senior, and people didn't say well how big

we were vulnerable to the fact that under gramm-leach-bliley, we a, we rely on functions of supervisors to supervise for safety at the underlying banks or in the case of the ftc in this case, the broker-dealer and each firm operates across the world and were able to push risk into other jurisdictions to make it harder to captured and we were vulnerable to those as a whole. and of course as we have learned, the capital requirements and the accounting requirements in the exposure requirements did not do a good enough job of giving us a good picture of what capital really was retive to risk. that is why the big lesson i take from this, among the many lessons are to make sure that we forced the system to run with more conservative requirement some leverage because i do not believe you can design a system that depends on a community of regulators always been wise and ugh and smart and have the foresight imperfect foresight to preemptively, preempt pockets of risk and bubbles of leverage. we will do our be and people will do their best but they will be imperfect and in the best sense that pot

but when the bush administration came to office, about the same time that gramm-leach-bliley, by the way, with the support of the clinton administration, repealed glass-steagall and said, you can create big financial holding companies as big as you want and you can -- you can merge investment banks with commercial banks and securities sales and you can do it all. one-stop financial shopping. it will be great and we'll call it modern. and about the time that got passed, over my objections -- i was one of eight senators who voted "no" and i was out here about six, eight times opposing it -- about the time that got passed, we had a new administration come to town to say, oh, by the way, we're going to put regulators in place who have no interest in whachg what do you so -- in watching what to do so do what you want to do. put out naked default swaps. who cares? put out trillions and troil yons and troil yons o trillions out o cares? we'll have a meeting in the basement of the s.e.c. and we will, just like that, we'll approve you to be able to increase your leverage to 30 times your capi

linzie gramm and john mccain and many others would be willing to work in an honest, decent bipartisan effort. for dearly to cut back on government. there are whole departments -- particularly to cut back on government. most of commerce could go. you could put -- if there was some imagination in the white house and sound management, there could be big cuts and effective government so people could trust the government to regulate drilling for natural gas onshore and offshore, and to trust the national government to defend them against threats. that's what we really need, a bipartisan effort. end the partisan finger- pointing. host: this is an editorial in "the wall street journal" this morning. they write -- host: you can read more of that in "the wall street journal" this morning. back to the phones, in new jersey, max on the line for independents. good morning. caller: good morning. we certainly have to work at reducing the deficit, and concurrently reducing the interest payments on all the moneys we have borrowed. i hear very little bit about the revenue side. when i hear on televisi

when gramm-leach-bliley passed the largest banks had 35% in the financial industry.serve the communities well. you can add up key bank and fifth third and huntington and first merit, all the regional banks. then you do that all overt country, these -- all over the country, these five banks still have all the assets. five banks, 52% of the assets. i know some people think it's too late, the horses are out of the barn, we can't go back to a size when we had 15 modestly sized banks. but we allowed big financial firms to merge into giant ones. in the last few decades the the banking industry has become so concentrated it no longer functions as a competitive market. since 1900, the 20 largest financial firms increased -- i'm sr.ry. -- i'm sorry. since 1990 the 20 largest financial firms once controlled 35%. they now control 70%. some firms are 30%, 40% in some cases legislative brancher than they had been before the -- larger than they had been before the crisis. what does it mean? we're twit telling our thumbs as wall street once again, once again places our nation at ri

. >> on "after words" ballston radio talk-show host michael gramm defended the tea party movement from accusations from the left while making a few accusations of his own. finding the entire weekend schedule at book tv.org and follow us on twitter. >> it gives you a sense of what the country is thinking at this moment. >> d.c. journalists looks behind institution of the u.s. senate, the upper house, sunday on c-span's "q&a." >> supreme court justice clarence thomas on the confirmation process. >> do not have a front spirits is up there, -- i do not have fun experiences up there and i did not was that on anyone. and also, something justice white said when i first got here has stuck with me, that it doesn't matter how you got here, it matters what you do after you have got here. >> with a new supreme court nominee heading into the confirmation process, learn more about the nation's highest court in c-span's latest book "the supreme court." pages of candid conversation with all of the justices providing unique insight about the courts. available now in hardcover and also as an e-book. >>

"buying in 2005 when lindsay gramm and i were drafting a lot to -- "-- >> in 2005 we ultimately drafted a law that defined the term enemy, attends -- enemy combatants. she wrote a letter, along with other law professors to the senate, describing the bill at the time in most unflattering terms, contending that we had to provide article 3 civilian court appeals from decisions of the military commissions, making the entire point of military commissions irrelevant. she compared the bill to the fundamental wallace actions of dictators. that is not very judicious. i dunno if she would recuse herself from those kinds of cases but that is something i will have to ask for about. can she lay those political views aside? host: let's look at a couple more headlines this morning. from "the washington post," "pp resumes efforts -- bp resumes efforts to divert oil." "rocket fire from protesters in bangkok." a photograph here from the barricades in "the new york times." "the wall street journal" leaves with a story about the oil spill. -- leads with a story about the oil spill. "showing progress, bp in

i also want to thank senator gramm for putting in so many hours into this issue as well. my judgment is that this bill is all the better because of the time he put in an in helping shape going forward. for duke energy, up this bill is about real power in america. this is our industry the road map we need to go ford, giving us the road map where we can provide the solution, where we can raise billions of dollars of investment and create jobs and move us toward energy independence, and at the same time make our air even cleaner than it is today. these investments that we will make and are prepared to make will not only -- and i want to underscore this point -- not only create jobs today but tomorrow and in the future, and that is going to really lead to the recovery of our economy, when you see the trajectory of the jobs that will be created over time. the legislation -- said in another way and i am getting this from tom friedman -- it can help us get our economic mojo back, and we need to get that back and we will get that back and it would give us a chance as a country to

if he is not available, senator gramm. >> thank you. i want to thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank you, secretary the peloton no -- secretary janet napolitano. my first question relates to something that is bothering me. that is the securing the city's program. securing the cities is a federally funded effort to protect new york city from the threat of a makeshift nuclear device. every time new yorkers hear about the threat of a potential terrorist attack, it sends chills down our spines. everyone remembers 9/11. i think about the guy who played bass at -- who i played basketball with two died. or a firefighter who lived in my neighborhood. this is really important. new york has taken extraordinary efforts on its own. to make sure that we are never attacked again. that is mostly a federal responsibility, but one of the things that we have done is set up this securing the city's program. it provides new yorkers with the reassurance that their government is working hard to protect them from eight radiological or dirty bomb. it uses the available technology at all the

the gramm center has many of you know functions as a division of the american academy of family physicians. savage by a small research team focused on providing evidence to help inform policymaking. dr. phyllis practices in a come into this residency program in fairfax virginia and has a faculty appointment at its georgetown, george washington university and virginia commonwealth university. finally as i mentioned earlier we will hear from georgia became the seventh president of the mazie foundation in january of 2008. immediately before that he was vice president of the clinical affair is partners healthcare systems in boston and a daughter of the academy and harvard medical school. for nearly four decades he played the leadership roles in many aspects of undergraduate and graduate medical education at harvard. he also serves on the president's wife tells fellow commission and chairs the special medical advisory group. for the department of veterans affairs. let me turn things over now to some comments from larry. >> i'm going to try to frame one specific issue but i think it is an issue

i am is sympathetic to senator gramm's concerns. i think he is a very thoughtful senator and he has put a lot of time into this. i would argue that this is consistent with the other laws that the congress has passed and that the supreme court has said are reasonable. >> thank you. commissioner, tell us level -- tell us a little about some of the findings of a study. i am struck with just a willing the gun show participants are to break the law. >> this was done by private investigators. we are obviously concerned about the gun show loophole. it has been known and talked about on the street. certainly, in some states it is more of a problem than in others. we have certain states that seem to contribute excessively to the guns that we find on the stteets of our city. gun shows predominate in a lot of those states. >> let me just add one other thing. in our investigation at the gun shows, we make sure that the seller of the gun, who was somebody that we had hired, said to the potential buyer, "if you had to go through a background chec

change legislation by announcing that he would push immigration legislation this year, and lindsay gramme supporter of the climate change legislation, announced he would drop off. there's happened a habit of making grand promises that are hard to keep. this is pure speculation, but i think a lot will depend on how the major news media play not just the statement, but the news conference itself. but the new york times and wall street journal may force president obama to say something that he would rather not say about pushing immigration. it depends a lot of weather is a slow news day -- on whether it is a slow news day. >> i remember in this country, disastrous midterm elections, and lot of people saying that president clinton did not do anything big, he was always giving press conferences talking about school uniforms or creating stability in underserved communities, that sort of thing. somebody on the panel give us a list of those kinds of things which the mexican population would respond to, because the u.s. population responded to president clinton's initiatives positively and resoun

thisztp was a way for gramm to about out. -- to bow out. obama's problems seem to be that he is playing to the center and there is nobody at the center. this is a big issue for our domestic issue as we have seen the health care and other things. it will be a big issue with our relations with countries like mexico who are hoping for big changes. unfortunately, our policy and parties seem quite divided and unable to come together on little things. trucking should be a little thing. i have to put myself in the cautiously optimistic side. are there huge problems in mexico, yes? look at what happened over the last 20 years and to be in the middle class in mexico before, you need to have a government job. that is no longer the case. we have seen per capita income increase. inequality is still there.. one way of thinking about the middle class is that usually we think about it in marxist terms if you are a worker or. we then pick to the middle class is. they are the professionals in the middle. being a middle-class person can be defined as being a

boxer, brownback, burr, cardin, chambliss, coburn, cochran, cornyn, crapo, demint, dorgan, feingold, gramm, grassley, harkin, hutchison, isakson, landrieu, leahy, lincoln, mccain, murkowski, risch, wicker and wyden. this is a very broad cross section of ideological opinion in the u.s. senate. mr. president, in the house of representatives, a similar process has taken place, and this concept has been cosponsored by 320 members of congress. that is a lot. that very rarely happens. and that legislation was authored by republican congressman ron paul and democratic congressman alan grayson. the amendment that i will be bringing to the floor of the senate has 15 cosponsors, republicans and democrats alike, and i very much appreciate their support. mr. president, this amendment is simple and it is straightforward. at a time when federal reserve has provided over $2 trillion in zero or near zero-interest loans to some of the largest financial institutions in this country, this amendment requires the fed to tell the american people who got the money. now, i don't think that's a very radical concep

i want to they senator gramm for his participation and i know his support and recommendation of the benefits were very important as the legislation has moved forward. we support a diversified portfolio of technology. there is no single bullet that will solve our problem from an energy or environmental standpoint, nor an economic standpoint. one thing that is recognized in this bill -- you heard others talk about this from a customer standpoint -- is a very big recognition of the impact of the economy and a big recognition of looking at energy security is one of the outcomes that we want on this. the bill does a lot to enhance and expand our ability to move nuclear energy for. we have plans going forward now, but nothing like what china and india are doing. they're moving much more aggressively than we are. we think this bill will be able to move more aggressively to create jobs and meeting our energy supply needs. i will close by offering our support to work with the senators and their colleagues on both sides of the aisle and the senate and house as we try to move this to the president's de