when mortgage rates were 11 and 12%, that was a period of us terity. the voe tters sent them there i 2010. they wanted austerity. i believe they wanted to shrink the size of the federal government. the public sector will be one that will feel the pain for quite a while. what scares me is that our politicians here share the ideas ofhe europeans. that congress isn't taking action to create jobs. the private sector creates jobs and the government has been a drag on job creation during this recession. i'm hopeful that will change regardless of whether there is a change on the administration or not. >> i would like to open the q and a session to our audience. if anybody has a question, raise your hand and we'll pass the mic row phone to you. >> please be sure to state your name and affiliation. >> i would like to ask each panelist what is your forecast for gdp in the second quarter and what do you think that will mean for the election in november? >> i didn't bring my green eye shades i don't know if i can make an accurate prediction of gdp second quarter.

. >> it is unfair and i think what many of us said on your first question about augs terity. when you're coming out of the biggest recession since the great depression, the biggist problem is augs terity. the fact that we lost that jobs act. what's happened is there are thousands of schools that need to be prepared. teachers every single day see poverty firsthand. they are on the front line of seeing it every day. and we fight like hell to try to keep schools open, to not destabilize neighborhoods. my teachers take money out of their pockets every day to buy supplies, to buy food and all of this stuff. we see it firsthand. but we have to have long-term as well as short-term strategies. we have to have a jobs strategy, but we also have to have a lifeline strategy. >> on my reds vegas, which is 100 miles by 50 miles, one of the things that we are doing in our community is taking a hard look at the existing way of educating our people. unfortunately, the western model created by somebody in washington, d.c. and it trickled down to our community, education, when it began in my co