who better to direct the discussion than leslie stahl of cbs news. ease welcome alan simpson bowles and leslie. [applause] ♪ >> hello, everyone, thanks for coming. first i want to ask alan, how is your me? [laughter] [inaudible] [laughter] [inaudible] erskine hasn't been sympathetic at all. [laughter] >> i durham all over washington. >> can now we have dispensed with the funnies because our topic this kind of heavy. so, senator simpson, let me start off and ask you whether the word doable is going to be factored into your deliberations. in other words, if it becomes clear that there is a solution that is obvious will you toss it out there or will the idea of whether this can fly politically be woven into everything you do? >> first of all let me thank pete peterson. that wonderful man has been working with me. we worked on social security. he's more than all of the things you see. there is a deep next to him that's called patriotism. that is what he springs from and he's just very special and does so much. but doable, i don't know. when we got the cal

leslie stahl said this morning and we used the tapes of that "to the minutes" --" 60 minutes "segmenty time we have done what of these projects, no matter what the process or where in the country, the public really wants to be at the table. they are really willing to give up their personal time and to listen open mind in an open hearted plea to each other. number two, they want to come to solutions. it is one of the most extraordinary pieces of social capitalism in this country. they want to solve problems and they want to do it by discovering common ground. the last piece of conventional wisdom that is at a peak now in the country is that people inside the beltway will listen to people outside the beltway. it is easy to understand why we think that given what is available to us. as has been our experience in every case, when the public is brought together in representative samples, it is the whole public together. lawmakers and decision makers are more than happy to listen. in this case, the president's commission, the bipartisan policy center's debt reduction task force, the senate

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