>> yes, we do, judge reinhardt. states what the united supreme court said in a case going back to reitman v. mulkey in 1964 where the california citizens acted through this process and took away rights with respect to discrimination in housing, and that is what the supreme court said in romer v. colorado, that it does make a difference. now, i don't think as an original matter that it would be constitutional if congress had enacted proposition 8 five years ago before the in re marriage cases, but i think it makes it worse, and that's what the united states supreme court has said, that taking away of rights in that context enhances the effect of the constitution -- of the purported constitutional change. >> what's your answer to the case that mr. cooper referred to several times? it's the one about the -- it was busing and methods of bringing diversity to the schools. >> that's the crawford case. >> yes. >> what the crawford case did was say that to the extent not required by the constitution, remedies for constituti

addition to rogoff and reinhart, in the last couple of years, perhaps stimulated by rogoff and hin reinhardt, the european central bank, the bank for international settlements has studied these very issues, because it's a big deal in europe. and they are all -- many of the countries in europe are deeply in debt, their economies are stagnating and they have studied this issue. and what did they conclude? they concluded basically the same thing: every one of those studies show that when a country reaches a high level of debt in the range of a 90% figure, they begin to suffer economic growth. one of -- growth reduction. one of those studies, i believe, went as low as 60% of your g.d.p. in debt, begins to slow the economy. they have various factors in how it's done and the studies are coninstructed in different ways -- are co constructed in differt ways and means but the net result is that when our debt situation is applied to each those studies, our economy is projected to be suffering as a result of the high debt that we have. so i just would say, those three studies validate the concerns of r

i think harvard and i'm not sure where ca carmen reinhardt is frm as a professor. when debt reaches 90% of the size of your economy, you show economic growths, 1% to 2%. where are we now? a the although of people have been using the figure, the public debt of the united states. and that's one way to calculate it and our public debt represents about 76% of our gross domestic product. but the other debt that we use, the one you have a he seen most -- you've seen most often, the $16 trillion figure that has the numbers spinning on if is what's called the gross debt. a lot of people seem to think that we were not in danger because rogoff and reinhart were talking about the public debt. that is not so. we've examined their work. we've examined their footnotes and their reports and analysis. it is the gross debt. that's what they were using. that's what they calculated. so we are at 104% gross debt. so we're well over the 90%. and i would contend that the reason our economy is failing to meet for the last three years the growth expectations that were out there is because

we'd had carmen reinhardt testify before the committee, a little later, and so i asked him about it. he said -- this was my question to him, as i recall. "it is an excellent study. and you could say in some ways what you summarize from it, understates the risks, because it's not just that governments or countries that live with very high debt-to-g.d.p. ratios are consigned to weaker growth." as i've been contending throughout the day. "they're consigned to the damage that comes from periodic financial crises as well." february 17, 2011, secretary geithner, president obama's own secretary. so he was warning us about it. that -- about what your debt getgets this high, you're in a danger zone. we know there's some countries that are -- that have more difficult problems than we. there was an article recently about that, cato talking about one of the countries in the world, japan is one of theming, most dangerous. what if japan, one of ash key -e of our key trading partners, were to have an economic collapse like greece? think it can't happen? i don't think it can't hasn't. i don't know.

so in many ways the united states is lucky, even though we are on the brink of what scholars like reinhardt and rogoff have said are on the precipice of a debt crisis because once interest rates begin to rise, the creditors lose confidence in our ability to repay that debt, and our economy spins out of control resulting not only in a severe recession or worse but also harl to some of the most -- harm to some of the most vulnerable people in our society, who depend on the safety net that government provides. and it's also in a debt crisis impossible for the federal government to do what it must dozen in terms of national security. indeed, that's what led former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff mike mullen to say that the single greatest threat to our national security is our debt. and it keeps getting worse and worse, because the president seems unwilling to deal with the obvious and enter into what he likes to call the grand bargain but one that can only owe curb if the president is willing to talk about the entire economy and not just raise taxes. the president has said that we must e