this and it is part of that great national asset thatth that is very much included.c i would like to paygo pa theome warm welcome and also tou ambassador hull we will be treated to a discussion of a very important topic of the emerging middle east and yemenen as one of the many hot spots in the context of thea presence of outside of their. given the news and development over the last several months the programer could hardly be time lear also applying to the publication of his book. i have not had a chance to read it myself. i look forward to doing so but for those who have, they tell me it is a great read. i am sure we will feelad that after the discussion this morning. our guide is very distinguished retiredm diplomatun ambassador to edmund hull his book "high value target" countering al qaeda in yemen" will be the basic roadmap for the discussion this morning. ambassador hull served as ambassador 2001 through 2004 and has extensive experience working in counterterrorism and shoes at the state department.r mor those of you who who have seen a more extensive by a detail in the announcemen

we had something called the paygo rules.ny washington inside jargon, what this meant is if you have a new program tough pay for it. either have to pay for it by taking other programs that are in existence and getting rid of those or raising revenues. we did that in the clinton years. when president bush took office, republicans in the congress worked with him and got rid of those rules. that's how come we had everything that was unpaid for. in fact, unpaid for is an understatement. it was all borrowed money. so we know there is a problem with deficits and we want to work with those. today at the white house there is a meeting. i've appointed a couple of people to represent the democrats in the senate. senator inouye, chairman of the appropriations committee; senator baucus, chairman of the finance committee. the other three leaders in the congress here appointed people. they're going to meet and talk seriously about ways of reducing the deficits we have. i would hope one of the things that vice president biden talks about wi

so we had paygo. i think that worked pretty well. it has been changed, it was dropped, it's come back in a different form and is weaker now. we had the sequestration approached the worked a couple of years and went away. the president's debt trigger is in that same tradition and i don't think we can count on much, so the question is is this report i would say that it's sort of a whispering in the years of policy makers. but we have seen this before, and is anything moving? by the way, this is the trigger. triggered by quite a few years ago but he lives on and in fact you will notice that he has been posed in a rather awkward position for a horse and that is exactly what i think the trust fund report does it is pointing in a very awkward position, and but the problem is that it's not really moving. >> okay. thank you. more optimism, right? >> we now go to roger feldman who is the blue cross professor of health insurance, professor of economics at the university of minnesota and author of several books among other things. roger? >> tha

spending caps as we did with the gramm-rudman-hollings act almost 30 years ago, as we did with the paygo rules congress has treated those as something congress can exempt itself out of. the problem is that we, as a legislative body, cannot bind future congresses. we can legislate. we can appropriate only for this congress. and so our commitment now to save later isn't binding unless, of course, we adopt an amendment to the u.s. constitution that will bind future congresses. that's why i've said i would oppose any and every attempt to raise the debt limit until such time as congress has passed out of this body and presented to the states for ratification a balanced budget amendment to the u.s. constitution, one that would require a two-thirds supermajority vote to authorize do think spend more than it takes in in any given year and spend more than 18% of gross domestic product in any given year. we cannot continue in perpetuity to rely on this kind of deficit spending. this will hurt every single federal program, whether you are most concerned, on the one hand, about preserving our abilit