of us, we go home to our respective districts. we build a network of advisors that continually providing input for us. teams of people that are experts in their field. and it filters that information and it comes to us. in a whole series of ways. town hall meetings, individual meetings, individual lobbyists. yes, they do a very effective and useful job on this hill. if anyone gave me information that wasn't accurate or honest, if they found out about it, they would bring it back and correct it to me first. if i thought they were doing so intentionally they would not come back to talk to me ever. there is a credibility there in that arena i think somebody needs to stand up for the lobby. it is a matter of providing a will the of valuable information. we find that directly from our individual constituents and town hall meetings. and all the outside organizations that work outside and on this hill trying to affect the change. . all that i talked about, the inpaut from 100 million people,

pours through to us, through the media, i might add, and all of it, save what might be in the mind of the speaker and the speaker's staff, and maybe the leader and the leader's staff, all the rest of that is denied by the draconian approach here in the house of representatives that shuts down the debate process and prohibits amendments and limits an important bill to just selected amendments that help some people look good or position themselves so they'll vote for the broader bill. that's what it's come down to. it's not come down to what's the evaluation of the best policy or taking the risk of allowing someone to have their say and forcing a vote on the -- on an important issue. it was amazing that the stupak amendment, the pro-life amendment in the health care bill, was even aloud to be debated here on the floor. many people didn't think that would happen. i'll suggest that it wasn't the

speaker of the house she seems to want to tell the pope where the church stands on the life issue. i suggest it was the political dynamics that enough democrats would vote against the bill if they didn't get to have their debate and vote on the stupak amendment and that was a dynamic. so often the american people don't get to see what goes on behind the scenes or what's going on in the calculus. when you read your history book, it comes down to, well, congress debated this policy and that policy, some thought this, some thought that, it came down to a policy decision and we had a vote and moved forward. way too often, the american people need to know it's not a policy decision tavepls political decision. when you see someone make a tough political decision, way too often they're making a decision that has more to do with their political survivability than it has to do with the policy and statesmanship is hard to find, but thank god we still have

some in this house. i hope we get lots more statesmanship coming in november when the energy of the american people will be manifested at the polls. i'm very grateful that i have seen 9/12 tea party patriot constitutionalists all over this country, filling up the town hall meetings, packing the west side of the capitol out here to the tune of tens of thousands of people with only a two or three-day actual notice. and another 2,000 or 3,000 that came in for a pressdz conference the following saturday, on the fifth and ninth of november, the american people came here to have their voice heard. after this bill passed the house on a saturday night, the fight went to the city. there the senate, the -- there was a rally that took place with thousands of people there and a press conference, i should probably call that, to be technically correct. and as the battle went on in the senate and they were

counting votes one after the other and special deals were being made, not just for the cornhusker kickback but exempting florida from the cuts to medicare advantage. a lot of people look at florida and say that's the most senior state in the union. i should really look at iowa and the fifth district in iowa as the most senior congressional district in america. iowa has the highest percentage of its population over the age of 85 and the 99 counties in iowa, i represent 10 of the 12 most senior counties in the most senior state in the union and so i say the fifth district of the state of iowa is the most senior congressional district in america, we didn't get an exemption from the cuts from medicare advantage. just florida. why? because tom marken was already going to vote -- tom harkin was already going to vote for the

bill, so iowa didn't get that exemption. i'm thankful we didn't. if we had, i'd like to think that iowans would have stood up like nebraskans did and said, we don't want any special favors. it's unconstitutional to treat members from -- citizens of the united states in one state differently than we treat citizens or residents in another state. that is unconstitutional and i believe the cornhusker kickback was unconstitutional. i believe the florida exemption for medicare advantage was unconstitutional and i believe the special clinics up in vermont that went to bernie sanders to get him on board, also, i don't know that i would say they were unconstitutional, but they are unsavory. if one looks at the bill and the language that came out from the president on last monday at 10:00 a.m., exactly, not coincidentally, 72 hours before the blare house meeting started yesterday, that proposal, which is not a bill, but only bullet

points and platitudes, does include at least 11 other special treatments that look a lot like the cornhusker kickback or the louisiana purchase or the florida medicare advantage exemption or all the expensive billions of dollars for community health clinics in the state of vermont and the list goes on and on and on, the unsavory list. so a significant number of united states senators have spoken against reconciliation they called it the nuclear option, the courts are there, from president obecause marx hillary clinton, joe biden, name your senator on the democrat side, chris dodd is another one, there are others that have spoken, spoken against the nuclear option because they wanted to block confirmations to the federal court. and now they say, warm and fuzzy, we'll all join hands what do you have against a simple majority vote? well, i have a good number of things against the way things are being done here and to think that the president of the united states is negotiating

with the senate and the house, trying to put together enough votes to pass a -- an amendment to the senate version of the bill, now this -- remember the senate version of the bill passed christmas eve and presumably that's the rule of the united states senate and now they're talking about passing amendments to the senate bill out of the senate so that they can amend it to -- pass two piece here's in the house, send it to the president, the president would sign a bill and send a recon -- sign a reconciliation bill behind that. all of that to avoid a conference committee, that would have democrats and republicans sitting at the table,s the first time in history, as far as i know, that the president of the united states has convened a conference committee from the executive branch of government. this is a legislative function, mr. president. he taught constitutional law at the university of chicago. i have a lot of constitutional

disagreements with the president of the united states and i will say that my chief of staff studied at the university of chicago school of law during that period of time and was adept to study her cohn law in a different classroom, it's been useful for me to have that advice. i see one of our outstanding doctors in the conference, one of the most knowledgeable about health care and many other things here to join us, i would point out that the on gin dr. phil gingrey has -- the on gin dr. phil -- the ob/gyn dr. fill beginning ree has delivered many babies -- babies in his life. mr. gingrey: obviously the gentleman has in this hour spoken already of some of the arcane machinations that are going on in regard to how the democratic majority and the president -- and president

obama plan to get this bill, this massive health care reform bill through the congress and to describe, of course, that process called reconciliation and i know it's difficult for a lot of folks, mr. speaker, even members of congress, sometimes, to understand all of these parliamentary tricks which can be used but clearly the american people, the american people can't be tricked. i absolutely have faith in them. we have heard from them during the town hall meetings all across this country last august, the million man march on washington, the doctors for patient care march on washington, the tea party patriots, the freedom first foundation, led by a former majority leader, dick armey.

mr. speaker, these folks cannot be tricked. i was really disappointed in yesterday's proceedings. i think it was a good thing that the republican minority was really -- was willing to go over to blair house and realizing that the deck was stacked against them, but to have an opportunity in a respectful way, and i commend my republican colleagues, i think they did a great job of that. it was clear, it really was clear on monday of this week, mr. speaker, when the president put his 11-page addition online to add to the senate bill. it was pretty clear that it was -- there was going to be no opportunity in my colleague from iowa has stated this so well, no opportunity as the president, mr. speaker, gave indeed to iran and their leader

, ahmadinejad, to say, we're going to unclench the the fist. i guess the president was referring to the fist of the previous administration, his predecessor in the oval office. i'm not sure. but to say to ahmadinejad, of all people, we're going to unclench this fist and we're going to reach out with the hand of friendship as we negotiate with you in regard to trying to appease you and beg you and triple dog dare you to stop in your progress toward developing nuclear weapon. i didn't see that kind of outreach yesterday at think blair house as i watched the deliberations on television, mr. speaker. that really is what we needed. that really and truly is what we needed. we needed to have an agreement from the president and from the

democratic majority to start over. to reject this bill that the american people, what, 70%, mr. speaker, had rejected and they want us to start over and they know now that we have great republican ideas that were articulated, i can't go through a litany of all the members there, i think there were 18 or 20, including house and senate republicans, dr. tom coburn talked about medical liability reform, senator alexander spoke eloquently, our own dr. boustany from this body did a great job representing our doctors. we know now what's in store for us. i want to just say to my colleagues and to my friends back home, let's don't give up the fight. if this is what they want to do, if this is what the democratic majority wants to do, this is what the president insists on, they're going to

pay the consequences politically. unfortunately, that's not the greatest concern. the greatest concern is, of course, the health of -- both think physical health and economic health of this country and i think it's in great peril. i know we have other members, mr. speaker, that have joined representative king and want to weigh in on this, so i'll yield back but i thank you for the opportunity to be with you this afternoon. mr. king: reclaiming my time, i thank the doctor, congressman and gentleman from georgia for joining us, we have 23 minutes or so to continue the dialogue and i appreciate the intellect that's been brought to this debate. i think that there were some outspoken conservatives that would have contributed substantially to the discussion yesterday had that been the format, perhaps this is our format to weigh in on that. i'm happy to see that also my friend from minnesota, michelle bachmann has arrived on the floor and i'm happy to yield as much time as she may consume. mrs. bachmann: i appreciate my

colleague mr. king and also mr. gingrey, i'll only be a few minutes. i wanted to be part of this discussion. i saw that you all were down here speaking on a very important topic that's captured a lot of people's attention this week, in particular with this event that happened yesterday. i think one thing we have demonstrated very clearly is that those of us on the republican side of the aisle, for the beginning of this debate, have always had positive solutions that we have wanted to address. i know dr. gingrey has even lamb nate on a little card that he carries in his breast pocket he has rules of the road going forward on health care and of course he's a physician. he understands better than anyone how patients are impacted by what we do here in washington, d.c. i appreciate the work that he has done. we also have the declaration of health care independence that my colleague mr. king has put up. mr. gingrey has also contributed mightily to this document as well. it's a road map going forward.

the rules of the road on what we need to do going forward on health care. there's 10 items. some of them include, don't add to the crushing federal debt that our nation is currently experiencing. don't force people to violate their moral conscience and pay for other people's abortions. don't force taxpayers to pay for health care for people who are residing illegally in the united states. it goes through a series of 10 items that we should at least be able to agree on, as a matter of fact, if i recall, i think the president himself has agreed on almost all 10 of these items about health care. . 100 members of congress have signed this document. and we think good roa forward. but we think we truly can have bipartisan health care reform. that's what we want to h3 it's and not about

washington, d.c., but about people back home a costs are going to be in heal 85% of americans really like to be cheaper. we gee. very simple plan that we could do. money. and beyond that, fully deduct on your taxes, any other expenses. that alone is a 32-page bill. anyone can un that. we coul start there and bring the costs down on why can't we at least start there, do something to help the a big bureaucracy, no the government take over 1/6 of ecs the american people done want us to do. but this is a great road map

going forward. mr. gingrey: would the gentlelady yield? the minnesota, mr. speaker, is absolutely right. and you know, it was interesting as that discussion yesterda between the senator alexander br whether or not the he premiums, health insurance premiums for people within the exchange as they were forced according to that everybody has health insurance.

president that many in the exchange would be paying less for their premiums. but as we -- i think maybe the president finally came to the realization that what senator alexander from tennessee, a par point he made was absolutely right that the premiums were coming dow mr. speaker, only because some of those that w+ purchasing as individuals through the exchange mechanism subsidies. so if you subtract the subsidy from the cost of the health insurance policy that by law they would be forced to purch i then, yeah, the price would come speaker. that subsidy is p for by guess who? that's why t costs $1 trill years, all these subsid to suggest that all these forced to purchase health insurance are g

their p absolu when you add wha3 and what t friends, men and women in this country that are busting their you know the people in the exchange, go. i thank the gentleman from georgia. and i take us to the declaration of health care independence, the new rules of the road. of these 10 provisions, first there are six items here on what went wrong. and i think it would be instructtive to simply read if i can the conc c13 it says thin that have happened, the attitude th, denying the people, it cripples the american economy, it creates an ines cable new tax by emp

mandates. we go through what went wrong and sounds like the declaration of independence where you have those laments on what went sensey of the elected mayort to respect the rights of all americans that leaders have been deaf to the voice of the people. we are appalled by their calf the people. we are repulsed by their political kickbacks, we, therefore, the people and care reform as a matter of principle must, and we hit these 10 principles which i w read. but dr. gingrey brought the tab lets down from on high and we like a few other principles in addition to and we think your

principles are ve sound. so the gingrey tablets are in the middle o the language is more to the credit of the fou substance is substantial10 poin we are comm 10 principles forw will preserve e doctor-patient relationship. and i'll summarize them. we to the national debt. we will enhance rather than diminish the quality of care. our negotiations will be transparent and there will be no favoritism. we will tre congress, the speaker of the house or whether the poorest person in america, we're all going to have opportunity here in this

people, employers or the states. we will not fund illegals. we will provide equ for. no special tr choice for ideas. that's the new rules o going forward that hav signatu of work that was collaborated by many. the tablets, many em from mr. gingrey: i gentleman for yielding and this declaration of health independence that representative king just so eloqu described and i love the form at. mr. speaker, when you look at those principles, t 10 principles that representative king just described, these were and are promises that this

democ13 majority, speaker pelosi, leader reid and over the last, really, two years now, he was saying that these things, as he was asking the american people to give him an opportunity to bring change you can believe in, as the next president, indeed he was successful in doing that. but many of these principles if not all of them, were promised by the president. i don't know what the total number of cigna tores, signatures on the declaration of health care independence that representative king has. i think it approaches 100. i'm not going to ask him specifically how many are republican versus how many are members of the democratic party and the house of representatives but golly, i would think that speaker pelosi would love to sign this declaration of health care independence. indeed, at the blair house, her

summary remarks, she said that absolutely not one dime of money, taxpayer money was going to fund abortions. i don't know if she really believes that, mr. speaker. i guess the proof of the pudding will be whether or not she can get that contingent of people they greed with representative bart stupak and insisted that the house veerings of health care reform be amended such that there was absolutely a provision that would make sure that the hyde amendment was not violated, that being that no public dollars would go toward the funding of abortion. so i just bring that point up and i would say to representative king, i'm sure he's going to continue to dry to get signatures, this ought to be bipartisan. maybe he's already done that. maybe, mr. speaker he can explain that to us. but i don't -- from my vantage

point, i don't see speaker pelosi's name on the bottom of the declaration. mr. king: reclaiming my time, i thank the gentleman for his contribution to this thought process. if there are those in this house of representatives who have objections to the positions taken here in this road map, the new rules for the road going forward, i'd like to hear them step forward and tell me what it is they object to. do they object to protecting the doctor-patient relationship as inviolate? do they want the government to make those decisions. the health choices administration czar, it's interesting, when you see a piece of legislation, h.r. 3200, in this house, it says in there that there will be all of these decisions made and power vested in the administration commissioner, i calm him the

come czar igs her -- the comiczarissioner, you give that power of discretion to an individual, appointed by the president, some of them are confirmed by the senate, i don't think all of them are confirmed by the senate. they take a look at all 1,300 health insurance companies in america, take a look at all 100,000 policy varieties in america and then they decide, what are these companies going to have to do to amend their policies so they can be approved by the health choices comiczarissioner's decision? that crams it into single payer. for the people who objected, who said i wasted paper when i took 13 amendments up there to the hole in the wall gang to try to get an opportunity to have a debate on the floor,

they said i wasted paper and wasted staff time, aide say -- i'd say take that 3,200 page bill in the house and many pages you've clipped together in the senate and all those pages nobody sees in the formerly smoke-filled rooms, no lodger smoke-filled, but they have guards on the outside, regular people don't get in, lower-ranking democrats don't get in, it's not that they're better defended than they normally are, but i want to paint the image right. . .q]9qto share, ms. kane? erica: just forget that i was even here.

madam speaker, and put that back in the tree. i think i can turn that into a tree and put it and stand -- we have some of those rain forests that exist in our zoos and put your fingernails in that, it is made out of rubber. i have had enough of this. the american people want to wash this off the board. if they do anything, they want to start over. they don't want to do anything because they don't trust this congress. the gentleman from georgia. mr. gingrey: i realize time is getting short, but thank you for a few more moments. and i think it's important that our colleagues understand that those 13 members of the hole in the wall gang, i think my colleague is referring to, the esteemed rules committee, just one more opportunity that we don't have to get our amendments

made in order so we can bring them down on the floor whether we're republicans in the minority or democrats in the majority who are very concerned about many provisions in this bill. and yet, they don't get to have an up-or-down vote, which is totally wrong. i want to say within the past week, i got a call from a physician member, former member from georgia, from middle georgia, dr. roland, who served with distinction here and was here during the hillarycare debate. and dr. roland and other members had some great ideas in regard to bringing down, not only bringing down the costs, but also making sure that more people not only had an insurance card -- you know, that doesn't guarantee you access to care, but had an opportunity through community health centers, expanded community health

centers where not necessarily a government subsidy, but people would pay on a sliding scale, depending on what their income was. medicaid patients, many of them were seen in community health centers. and also, dr. roland had the idea of having a medical liability reform. dr. roland, a family practitioner. i just mention him, because i would say to the president and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, we can do this. let's unclench the fis tmp s and let's get away of what we were trying to cram down the throats of the american people and let's start over with good ideas like dr. roland had and like many of my colleagues have on both sides of the aisle. and i yield back to my colleague from iowa. mr. king: i was thinking what it would be like if you sit around and deal out a deck of cards, 52 and for every one of those cards

this man has delivered 100 babies. that is pretty impressive and i can't get over that number, what that means. some people think that republicans don't have compassion, how could you have more compassion than dr. gingrey has. and so, when i look at this debate, it is past the point of the newances of what is right and what is wrong. it's pretty simple. the white house, the pelosi majority, senate majority leader reid, the beginning they started with single-payer health care, and that goes back 15 years ago when they first put that together. i have the republically occasion of that flow chart in my office. and that is a scary thing. but it was only in black and white back in the early 1990's and the one we have is in full color. and the next generation, it will

be 3-d and you will be able to see all of the components that they put together. and the more they put together, the more it scares you. that's what they started with, single-payer national health care act. it is socialized medicine. i don't know how you would device socialized medicine to look much differently than the way they started. they did change it along the way and moved away from the more pure definition. let's just say the goal is to cook up a pot of stew and start off with a meat bone and you toss that in a pot and you put a lot of water in that and start to simmer and you look at it and say what does it need. you start putting in vegetables, carrots and potatoes and whatever else you can find to put in the stew and after a

while, it would look pretty good. the democrats on the other side, how about putting carrots in the stew. i like corn. and after a while, here is this simmering pot of stew and they tasted it and the american people spit it out. this is a toxic stew. they started with it tainted in the beginning. if you start with and tainted soup bone, whatever you add to it, it's going to be toxic and the american people don't want the socialized toxic stew. they don't want a bowlful, cupful, they have put -- spit out obamacare. it is a toxic stew cooked up by the liberals in this congress.

and less than a fourth of the people in this country think that ought to be done. we have a sense of what it tastes like. i suggest this, that we should clean the slate off as the gentleman from has said, when he said, mr. president, you need to unclench your f inch st. the president ought to treat republicans as he did ahmadinejad when he said to our enemies in iran when they pledge to -- dialogue, he said to them, if you will just unclench your fist, we'll extend our hand. we'll negotiate with the yirnians without pre-conditions. you notice when the president met with republicans and democrats yesterday, president obama insisted upon pre-conditions and insists that

his bill, senate-house bill plus the 1,100 page bill would be the basis for the discussion. and he refused to take the nuclear option off the table. can you imagine negotiating with the iranians that way? they hold the nuclear option on the table. they refuse to take everything off the table. the president insisted on pre-conditions, obamacare, by his own definition and i'm saying couldn't you have treated the republicans as good as you treated the yirnians. give us a clean slate, start without pre-conditions. i would be willing to take the comprehensive plans off the table and let's take them up one at a time, stand-alone pieces of legislation that don't have to have a back-room deal. let's end lawsuit abuse, number one, full deductibility, respect the time of the speaker's gavel and also, we have made that part

very clear i think in this presentation. and mr. speaker, i appreciate your indulgence and appreciate the participants in this special order here that closes out the week. and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the gentleman will recognize the gentleman from iowa for a motion. mr. king: i move the house do now adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on the motion to adjourn. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is agreed to. accordingly the house stands ajourpped until tuesday next for morning hour deb

sunday, the entire white house health care summit. see president obama and congressional leaders debating what will happen next with the bills. w3it talked about health care cost, insurance reform and deficit reduction. see the entire event sunday beginning at 10:30 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> he is best known for a "animal -- "animal farm" and

"1984." . a discussion with george packer -- part of book tv weekend. >> i come from latin america. i am accustomed to see poverty. i never expected to see this kind of poverty in the capital of the u.s.." >> the different side of the nation's capital, in the shadow of power. sunday on q&a. >> secretary of state hillary clinton begins a week-long trip toç latin america this weekendo meet with the region's leaders on several multilateral issues. now we take you to the state department to hear about some of the discussions on her agenda. this briefing with the assistant secretary of state for western hemispheric affairs is about half an hour. q

>> good morning,q everybody. very happy to have with us todayç secretary of venezuela o will walk us preceptor to recall and's travel to latin america next week. she will travel to power of white, too late, costa rica, guatemala from february 28 through march 5 -- paraguay, chile, costa rica and guatemala. >> good morning. we are delighted that the secretary will be traveling this week to the southern cone and then to central america. as you know, last year the secretary did travel to mexico and trinidad and tobago for the oas the general assembly. this traveled this year is a continuation, of course, of our efforts to engage the country's other hemisphere on a whole

multiplicity of issues. as you know, president obama and the secretary have pledged great -- greater engagement with the countries of the western hemisphere. we are working on a whole host of bilateral issues with all of the countries in the region. they are grouped in three general basket. the first basket is what you might call competitiveness onç issuesçz] of socialçóqw¿y%@hñl justice. çthe second basket is issues of ç a major concern for most of theç countries in the region. we are trying to look to how we canxdç repackage and rethink te çway inç whichçó we doqw3 our collaborative work with countries int&eç hemisphere on çsuch things as crime and -- organized crime and also the counter drug efforts.

finally, we are concerned about how we can partner with other countries in the region on such issues as democratic governance and how we can have more effective governance in order to enhance the quality of life of the citizens of the hemisphere. this is actually a very exciting time to go. remember, 2010 is the 200th anniversary of the independence of the countries of the americas, the actual oetq'dence and different countries come on different dates. this time around it is 2010 argentina, chile, mexico and colombia. we have common histories. in new world societies based on the concept of popular sovereignty. it is profound -- pro-family it influenced by the indictment. this is the continent of the republican forms of government.

the 200th anniversary is a very important time. these societies are very similar in many ways. settlements -- established in the new world in countries with indigenous societies. slavery with a narrative of emancipation, and to strengthen the concept of democratic government based on the notion of social justice and equal opportunity to everyone. so we have, and goals and history. and this is what we are trying to do with our engagements with the hemisphere, with discussions that are respectful, where we are not going to go down and tell people what they need to do but we will seek to come up with common solutions to common

problems. and that is what our dialogue will be on the entire trip. we begin in your reply on march 1 but the inauguration of the president. -- with the inauguration of the president. this is the second time they nominated president -- and it should be an exciting time. you're a guy, as you know, is a country -- uruguay, as you know, is a country but a strong democratic tradition. they have always been well thought of. their leaders have been respected. and let me remind you uruguay is the second largest contributor to peacekeeping operations per capita of any country in the world, and indeed, in haiti,

the contribution before the earthquake to the haitian stabilization efforts of the u.n. is almost equivalent in terms of its size to brazil and just a little bit lower than that of nepal. and uruguay continues to be much interested in that regard. from uruguay, we travel to santiago, to chile. that same day, march 1, she will be meeting president batchelet. the secretary had a relationship with the president. this will be hurt last week in office. there will be an event -- projects that the president has

to address issues of social inclusion, which has been one of the marks of her government. there will be a bilateral meeting with the president takes office on the 11th of march. from chile, the secretary will travel to brazil. she will have meetings with president lula, the foreign minister in brazil, and then travel to sao paolo, where she will be visiting certain activities, particularly an afro-brazilian university in brazil. from there, the secretary travels to costa rica for the pathways to prosperity meeting,

a ministerial meeting of hemispheric ministers and discussing many of the themes i outlined at the top. it is one of the secretary's signature initiatives. she has expanded this initiative that began earlier to add a whole host of other components -- micro credit, ways in which you can empower women. it all fits into the theme of trying to look for ways to enhance -- with a significant components of encouraging private-partner --w3 private- public partnerships and to address issues of social conclusion. issues like corporate social responsibility, for example she will then on that same day have a a bilateral meeting with the president, who will be leaving

office, and will be meeting with the president-elect of costa rica as well. on the final day of her trip, until next friday, she will travel to guatemala and meet with the president of guatemala , and at the same time with severalç of the other presidens with the central -- of the central american countries, including the president of honduras, the president of bellsouth will door, and president hernandez as coming from the dominican republic as well -- and the president of bellsouth the door. -- el salvador. anyway, that is kind of our objective on this trip.

the secretary is very excited about it and i look forward to taking your questions on the trip. >> can i ask you the two countries she is not going to -- argentina and honduras -- and why not? >> i know there is always a complication as to how you schedule trips in terms of -- everythingq from flight time -- >> betweençt( montevideoç and- about 10 minutes? guatemala isqw3i]> ççççi]the flightç toç÷ is an<  overnight flight.

ofç logistics of the flight itt(ç ç i]çw3much,çq much sense toç] ilateralç meetingok with the president of argentina. that would be held in the çafternoon of march 1. i]thisç trip --

>> it could have just as easily built around the chilean inauguration, right? is there a signal you are trying to send? >> no signal whatsoever. it had to do in large measure with issues the secretary has. in an ideal world, we would attend all of these inaugurations. but obviously it is very difficult to do that. when we looked at the calendar, and the pathways meeting had been on the agenda for some time earlier, this was the best combination of things. we are very pleased with the way we were able to, i think, cover all of the interest we wanted to cover.

>> the inaugural events in montevideo will attract readers from across the region, some of the leftist leaders of that have been antagonistic at some times against the united states, and even roll castro might come, correct? then i don't know. >> will there be bilaterals with some of the people -- in the case of cha has an morales, will the secretary interact -- job as and morales, will the secretary incorrect? >> the only the latter role that is on the books is with the president of argentina. >> can you elaborate what the two will discuss with the president of argentina? will look for clues figure highly? are you concerned -- will the falkland islands figure in what you will discuss? >> i think with argentina, we

will not be discussing just simply-lateral issues but some of the international issues. the argentine's have been fairly outspoken on issues like iran and international terrorism. these are questions we will discuss with them. we will not be discussing the falkland islands issue with them. this is a matter for argentina and for britain. it is not a matter for the united states. >> mr. secretary, yesterday or a couple of days ago -- she said she was disappointed in the way president obama was handling all of the issues in latin america,

that everything was very disconnected, and especially the issue with honduras was disappointed. chavez saying also something along those lines. is it an okay environment to talk to the argentinian? can you do it in spanish also later? >> she is entitled to her opinion on this issue, but we simply disagree. we think not only have we had significant engagement over the past year with countries in the hemisphere, but at the same time having to focus on two huang very difficult and significant crises. the first being the honduran

could talk -- coup de'tat in june and earthquake in haiti that absorb a lot of attention. including the contribution but argentine's have made. on honduras, as we can see today, the secretariat is participating -- precisely because the central american countries have taken a very significant leadership role in trying to bring about a revolution to the honduran crisis. we see -- resolution to the honduran crisis. we see other countries in latin america are moving forward to recognize the government's of

the president's -- the government and thinking of reinstating honduras back to the organization of american states. we see the outcome of honduras as a successful case of standing for a fundamental principle,+ which is you cannot tolerate any coup d'etat -- and in that sense we joined the unanimity of the hemisphere in this regard. but at the same time, a solution had to be found to honduras. as someone told me in a conversation, we cannot afford to have honduras to be me and mark -- myanmar. the election has been recognized by the international community. it is a valid one. it certainly reflected the

desire for the honduran people at this particular point -- and steps have been taken to move ahead to restore honduras into the american system and to further restore the democratic and constitutional order in honduras. >> if i could follow up. what about the meeting with christina kirschner -- this appointment in the region and very vocal the train she and chavez said. >> when we have meetings, we also have meetings with people with whom we disagree. in fact, one of the reasons why it is important to schedule a meeting like this was precisely so we can have an exchange of views on these issues. i think if that is indeed her position, we would disagree on

the way the honduran situation evolved. let me stress again, and our dialogue with argentina, there are a whole host of things we are doing it on a bilateral basis that are very constructive. there is very, very good cooperation on law enforcement issues that i stressed earlier are very important. at the same time, we have been pleased at the votes the argentinines have taken on iran, and their position on international terrorism has been a very good one. this is a conversation that we have -- we share very many things with the argentines and we hope to strengthen our relationship as we move forward. >> although i am from argentina

-- the question is this. in may, president lula will travel to tehran. yesterday it was said in this same room that although brazil has a lot of influence, it also has to have responsibility. i want to go directly to the point. what kind of conversations will there be with lula? would you say you need to press more with iran? what is the real factor in the meeting with lula in relation to iran? >> as you know, the undersecretary is in brazil today. so, he is going to have conversations with his counterparts on many issues and also on the this particular issue. the secretary will have the same conversations. let me make it absolutely clear, we will be telling our brazilian counterparts that we encourage them to encourage iran to regain the trust of the international

community, by fulfilling its international obligations. so we will be urging the brazilians to take a constructive role with regard to their engagement with iran. >> mr. assistant secretary, you talk a lot of about the common things the united states has with the region. it seems like their region in recent months and since this administration came into office is feeling a little bit more divided from the united states, in that just last week, countries in the region formed a new regional alliance that left the united states out and included cuba, for example. there have been divisions over honduras, some would say disappointments. there have been divisions over the agreement with colombia, disappointments from some countries. so they are, in some cases these countries are forging

economic and political relationships that supersede relations with the united states and some say go against u.s. interests like brazil and iran. does the united states feel perhaps in an effort to stop ordering the region around, it is also beginning to lose influence in the region? >> i don't think so. if you actually go back and look at the history of what they'd love relationships between the united states and the region -- history of the relationships between the united states and the region, i can think of greater periods where there was a far greater dissidents. we could go way back if you wanted, but we don't have enough time to do that. certainly in the 19th century, the united states began ticket as i began earlier in my remarks about the celebration of the 200 anniversary of their interests bent -- independence, when they

were trying to reimpose colonial rule in the region -- part of the monroe doctrine was to have the european powers stay out of the region. .

>> we do not have the same kinds of challenges as we do in other places. it appears to pay less attention to the region at the level of the president, but that is not the case. the fact is that we do not have the problems in the americas and in that whole area that we have to deal with. the consensus -- what we're looking through -- we're looking to strengthen that consensus. i know there are dissonant voices out there. let me get your first observation. we do not think they are trying to put together some of their

own individuation. quite the contrary. if they can avoid protectionism which they often have, in order to expand trade, and obtain of a greater sense of integration, let me say one final thing. the fact that there are talking about this does not mean -- it is qualitatively different. it is based on broad agreements.

and the human rights convention and all those different things. these are obligated treaties that go way back. we see an importance of the organization. >> secretary clinton last year talked about the lack of engagement. other countries there have inroads. but implicit in that is that the u.s. -- are you gaining back influence? how? >> if we look at trade flows and investment flows, if we look at

these as resistant -- reluctant -- remittent, they show enormous integration in our hemisphere and the important role that latin america plays. we are forging greater bond between our countries. it is a strong process of engagement, culturally, and on all these other efforts. the question of china -- this has also been a period where latin america has been very successfully economically. you're talking about tremendous disconnect in the region. you have societies with economies with hyper-inflation and stagnation. the reason why the countries in

latin america were able to survive the national economical prices is because they did reform. china is very important as an exporting destination. part of the answer is, we want to encourage countries to export and to grow and be more dynamic, to create jobs, and to become more engaged in the international community. we do not see that necessarily as damaging. successful societies and economies are in our interest. we do not have to worry about whether we are encouraging -- it is not clear what their objectives might be. generally speaking, a latin america engaged with the rest of

the world -- the chileans have 67 free trade agreements with countries across the world. their economy has grown. the poverty rate has been reduced from 40% to a 12%. >> thank you very much. >> the engagement with brazil and iran -- you see that as helpful? i have heard conflicting reports. in one way, they believe brazil can serve as an important mediator. perhaps there is some benefit to brazil having a relationship with iran. does the united states see this as a good thing? bamut in my conversations and other official conversations -- >> in my conversations and other official conversations, we want to have influence. we want to tell the brazilians,

yes, if you have engagement with a run, we want to encourage you -- with iran, we want to encourage you can use that engagement in a way that can push me by -- pushed the by iranians. -- push the iranians. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. >> the decision may be a

reaction to reports of the governor paterson role in the domestic violence incident involving one of his aides. that is beginning at 3:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 23. on sunday, we erred the entire white house health care summit with the president obama. they spoke about health care cost, insurance reform, and deficit reduction. see the entire event beginning at 10:30 a.m. eastern. is an archive of c-span programming from barack obama to ronald reagan and everyone in between. over 150,000 hours is now available to you. it is fast and free. try it out on line -- online. >>-president biden chaired a task force aimed at addressing solutions of middle-class

families. -- and vice-president biden chaired a task force aimed at addressing solutions for middle- class families. [applause] >> good morning. i am rejected it -- the deputy secretary of labor. we thank you for your outstanding leadership. secretary solis and her staff are proud of our contributions to strengthening in the middle class. retirement security is fundamental to that effort. workers need secure pensions if they are to remain in the middle class when their working days are done. a secure pension system is essential to the long-term health of our economy, whether it is then -- in 401k's,

workers create tremendous pools of capital that expand our economy. it must be spent wisely to serve these purposes. retirees with middle-class incomes and continuing job creation being those purposes. mr. vice president, at the labor department, we think workers will make good decisions about their pensions if they could get good information. i am delighted to announce the publication of two new rules that will strengthen american's pension systems to ensure that people get the information they need. the first rule would make sure that workers get unbiased advice about how to invest the money in their ira's and 401k's. expert advice can be helpful, but it must be unbipáq". there must be no risk that the

adviser will benefit from steering workers to particular investments. if this role is finally adopted, investment advisers would not be able to make extra money if workers use an investment in which the adviser has a financial interest. it avoids conflicts of interest. investment advisers would be required to disclose their fees and certify computer models as objective and unbiased. we project that 2 million workers in defined contribution ira holders would benefit to the tune of $6 billion. we invite everyone to go to the labor department website to learn more and offer your views. the second rule will increase transparency. there are 13.5 million workers and roald and multi employer

plans. this rule will require that -- there are 13.5 million workers enrolled in multi-employer plans. rule ensures that unions can ay-to-dayres that unions can operations of a retirement investment. i know regulations are not the sexiest topic of conversation. we do not have allusions about the difficulties -- illusions about the difficulties in these tough economic times. it will take time, hard work, and perseverance or workers to rebuild their retirement savings the two rules we are announcing today will make a real difference in the lives of the working and retired americans prepare that is -- retired americans. the labor department stands

ready to continue our work with you and the middle-class task force wants to ensure retirement security for all. we look forward to the challenge. i am delighted to introduce peter or is that -- peter orszag. >> the middle class task force was formed a little more than a year ago at the height of the most severe economic recession we have experienced since the great depression. the real gdp was falling at the fastest rate in a quarter- century. we were losing an average of 700,000 jobs each month, equivalent to the entire population of the state of vermont. the capital and credit markets were virtually frozen. economists feared that our economy would sink into a depression. that did not happen.

in no small part because the administration acted quickly and strongly to get landing flowing again, stabilize the housing market, and jump-start economic activity by passing the recovery act. the recovery act is working. it is a key reason we have moved from the economy falling by almost 6% at the end of 2008 to increasing by almost 6% at the end of 2009. it is funding critical to projects all across the nation. it is doing so in a way that is transparent and has thus far had a remarkable lack of fraud and abuse. that is attributed in no small part to efforts from our vice president, sheriff joe, in making sure people are treating this seriously and responsibly. there is more work to be done to bolster the jobs market and still more work to be done to reverse the declines that

middle-class families have experienced over the past several decades. from 1979 to 2008, median family income grew at a rate of 20% a year while productivity grew by 2% a year. families are not keeping pace. the result is those at the top 1% of income distribution accounted for 23% of total income in 2007, the highest level of concentration since 1928. family incomes are not rising, get in more and more families, both husband and wife are working. the female labor force participation rates have risen significantly region almost 60% in 2007, relative to almost 40% in the 1960's. between 1979 and 2006, working wives and middle income families worked an average of 500 hours a year more -- roughly three

months a year more than previously. at the same time, health care costs and tuition costs are rising rapidly putting increased pressure on middle-class families. a strong america must be built on a strong middle-class, which is why the work of this task force is so important and why we included in this year's budget some key initiatives developed by the task force. a child-care tax credit, help for families caring for elderly and disabled relatives, along forgiveness for college students, and ways to promote retirement savings. one reason that the middle-class task force has been so effective in developing these and other proposals is the man leading it. it is my distinct honor to introduce a champion of the middle class, whom all lot of us call a friend, the vice president of united states, joe biden. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. thank you.

thank you for being here. i recognize there are leaders who, by their leadership of union movements, leadership of a whole range of organizations here, are the champions of the middle class. you know, folks, this is a bit unusual. the president of united states, the first official announcement he made other than after personnel were named for the cabinet and the administration, very early on -- was that he was going to set up this thing called the middle class task force. when it happened, a lot of people wondered, ok, is this sort of a of gimmi -- is this sort of a gimmick? the truth of the matter is, the

president and i meant what we said during the campaign. we will measure the success of our efforts at the end of the day, not merely on whether or not the gdp is growing at 2%, 4%, 6%, 8% -- or whatever percentage it may grow. but the fact of the matter is that is not enough peridot the question we're -- that is not enough. the question is whether or not middle-class folks, sitting around a kitchen table after we have been out of office, actually feel more secure. being able to stay at that table in that neighborhood, sending their kids to school, having at+ living standard they worked so hard to get, and have a sense that those aspiring to the middle class will may gake it, d

their kids will be able to do at least as well, if not better, then they were able to bridge the goal was clear. we are moving from recession to recovery. women and men are behind me and alongside me here -- the economic team here. we have made great progress. the truth of the matter is that unless middle-class folks in the coming out of this recession better off than when i went into the recession, we really have not done our jobs. help working americans get by during these times, to get ahead, to improve their living standard -- that is what this is about. the consequence of this -- and people ask me, how does this thing work? every administration is concerned about middle-class folks.

this is not particularly partisan thing. the fact is that most administrations get consumed from the moment they take office, not just ours, with urgent, urgent requirements that must be attended to. what happens is each of the department heads finds themself in a recession -- finds oneself in a position where they are responding to the most urgent need under their jurisdiction. the things that are important and that can actually impact on the living standards and the sense of the security middle- class people have somehow gets secondary. the difference was that the middle class task force was set up. i called regular meetings. every department head comes. i have been a pain in the neck

up along with the team behind me. we have asked them to make sure they have someone in their department. they are thinking, what would, in my jurisdiction, am i able to do to alleviate the pain in the middle class folks are going through and enhance the prospects for middle-class families? you just heard from the secretary of labor. that is what this is about. the things that are going on need to be focused on and they may not be headline issues. a lot of folks are not getting the best treatment, the best advice, and the most help, in degree out how to deal with their retirement plans. -- in figuring out how to deal

with their retirement plans. it will impact how families planning for retirement can have better prospects of the retirement benefits being enhanced and not diminished. because the president and i have long held that you cannot build a strong economy without a strong middle class, that becomes the bedrock of what we're trying to do here. the middle-class of this country is nowhere near as strong as it needs to be. those of us on the task force have been traveling across the country. all the people behind the year have traveled around. we've been 260- -- to 60-some cities. we are hearing directly from people in their communities about the challenges they face, the ideas they have that are going to make it better for them. whether we are talking clean

energy in st. cloud or green jobs in denver or manufacturing in ohio, or college affordability in st. louis, nothing has been more valuable then talking to americans. guess what, they are showing up. they want to be heard. my dad used to have an expression where he said -- i do not expect the government to solve all my problems, but i sure expect them to understand my problems. the first part of this is being in an and ministration that understands their anxiety -- in an administration that i understand their anxiety. we have identified specific proposals and policies that will ease the strain on working-class families. this morning, after a year of work, we're releasing the first annual report which i thought i had, but i hope you have copies

of it. it brings together all of the work that we have done and tells the stories of middle-class families we have spoken to and how we're going to move toward improving their lindy -- improving their living standards. the reality is there is a growing gap between productivity and middle-class income. there is a rise in economic inequity continuing and an ever- increasing challenge of balancing work and family responsibilities. just ask any woman in this crowd and a whole lot of men as well. men and women across the country are sitting across their kitchen tables and trying to hide their worries from their children, who worries about how they can maintain their livestock, send their kids to college -- their lifestyle, send their kids to

college, -- mom is really ill, what do we do? how do we get her to the doctor? these are things that people in my old neighborhoods talk about and the vast majority of the american people are talking about. this report does not just take off the problems come at it offers some -- does not just tick off the problems, it offers some solutions. the solutions we laid out were all the ones i'm going to mention the date and others in the report -- most of them were in the state of the union message and are contained in our proposed budget. my dad used to have a same where he would say, "do not tell me what you value. show me your budget and i will tell you what you value."

what do you spend the money on? and i will tell you what you value. it is a transparent way of figuring out what somebody values. the white house budget has laid out what we value. we think it is important to double the child tax credit for middle-class families. we want to increase credit for nearly every family. how many of you yourself or how many of you know people that the bulk of the second and come in a household is eaten up by making sure you have quality daycare or quality care for your child? it is a big deal. provide more resources for child care and development -- money that means 235,000 children will

get quality care and their children -- and their parents will get peace of mind. get additional funding for families caring for elderly parents so they can get help, respite care, preparing meals. one of the hardest things -- think about it. everybody kidney. we should talk english -- everybody kids me. we should talk english to the american people. my italian neighbor was a common joke, speak english. -- my italian neighbor would say, "joe, speak english." we're born to give money to states to have programs to fund it things from -- we are going to give money to states to have programs to fund things that make a difference in the quality of life for people. we want students to have had to

borrow money -- almost everybody i know -- through a federal loan program never have to pay back more than 10% of what they are earning, and as long as their pain that back -- paying back back. -- paying that back. otherwise, they make a god awful choices -- then it got awful choices which they should not have to. -- they make godawful choices which they should not have to. we are acting to offer a better retirement plans. middle-class americans can save money, but in -- can save money confidently. it is automatically taken out --

whether it is a defined benefit plan, just to save. people do it. they do not want to do it and they do not have to. but every employer has to provide this service for their employees. we want to simplify and expand the sabres credit where -- the saver's credit, where they can get their savings maxed. we need to put people's positions so that they have some confidence and the capacity -- confidence in having a retirement where they are not dependent. we are enhancing the ability to make sure workers are protected by overtime rules that are -- so that employees are accurately

classified, instead of as regular workers or independent contractors, so hard working americans get paid for what they actually do. as we stepped forward, in making the retirement system safer, so that the labor department -- those dry regulations can make a whole lot of difference between whether or not someone has something to retire on that is consistent with the efforts they have put in in the investments they made. look, folks, there is a lot more that we're looking at. together, these initiatives are really important as the first steps towards delivering on the promise we made a long time ago and to make sure that middle- class -- in the middle class emerges from this recession into the recovery better off than they were before it began.

this is referenced by fema. productivity grew by 20% in yet middle-class blacks lost earning power during that period. productivity goes up, those that help produce it get a chunk of it. we know that the most important thing we can do to maintain people's abilities to get to and stay in the middle class is a good-paying job. that is the single most important thing. the president is working day and night and it is the almost- single focus of this administration. now that we have been brought back from the brink, that is all we're doing. and creating a good, decent- paying jobs that people can live a middle-class life on.

did not take my word for it to go. if you take a look at the proposals that we have come up with in this task force, there are a lot of people who think these are important steps. you will hear from dozens of leading experts and advocates who are here today who support these proposals in believe they are an effective way to ease the burdens of middle-class families. you ought to go out and listen to the stories that we have all heard from hard-working americans. the truth of the matter is that the best way to communicate what we're hearing -- in st. louis, i listened to a mother who told me her daughter was trying to reconcile her excitement over a new job as a teacher with being

able to afford the sky-high payments on her $60,000 student loan. a single woman and a veteran in pennsylvania, bouncing caring for her children and working full-time, who wrote to tell me that your paycheck barely covers your bills and she does not know what she will do to get by in terms of job here. the task force is designed to deal with real world, real-life problems. the middle class people are under extreme pressure now and we want to help them better deal with their circumstances. we have done a lot so far and have a lot more to do. one of the things i am really disappointed in us, quite frankly, is that, right now, a single republican senator is standing up in the chamber i worked in for a long time and

filibustering the extension of a number of things we had in the recovery act to begin with which make a fundamental difference in the near term concerns of middle-class people. he is blocking the expansion of unemployment insurance. if he succeeds, 1 million people next month will be thrown off the unemployment rolls. 1 million people will be thrown into despair. a lot of you have family members -- i suspect some of you have family members who face that dilemma of knowing that they have no income and no job, no immediate prospects, and there is no help out there. i wish that senator would think about how that man or woman is

going to explain to their children how they are going to get by. people will start to lose their health care that they get through the cobra subsidies greeted by the recovery act. -- created by the recovery act. it allows people who lost their jobs to keep their health care. you will not have health care -- if you lose this, you will not be allowed to be in the plan. you have a pre-existing condition -- you are out, have no insurance, and you tried to get it again. this is real stuff. this affects real people. right now. the proposal he is blocking means that small businesses will lose access to credit.

this affects people on main street right now. doctors across the country who are taking care of medicare patients and tri-care patients will see their pay cut by 20%. lest you say, i do not feel badly for doctors, guess what? that will eventually not yet restored and will not see medicare patients. it will limit access to the elderly, or they will close or block it because the doctors do not want to do it anymore or cannot financially afford to do it anymore. these are critical things that we acted on. we did. they are in place and give relief and continue to give relief. we talk about the additional things we're going to do what we are creating jobs.

in the meantime, the irony is here, while we're making progress in the task force, because of the single senator in the united states senate, a lot of middle-class people -- if we do not succeed, i believe we will -- if we do not succeed in overcoming that objection, there will be immediate hurt on a lot of people very quickly. i thought the republicans and democrats and president acted in a way that has been done for a long time here. it was civil, whether we ended up agreeing or not. there was a real discussion in people really cared their differences. my hope is that -- and people really aired their differences. we are not going to yield until

we keep the commitment we made. we are going to improve the living standards of americans, especially middle class americans. that is the work of the middle class task force and i cannot bank of folks to my right and left -- thank the folks to my right and left enough for all that they have done and their enthusiasm. thank you very much. keep the faith. we're going to get this done. thank you very much. [applause] thanks, folks. >> in about 20 minutes, we will be back at the white house for the briefing with press secretary robert gibbs, his first briefing since yesterday's

white house health care summit. it is beginning at 3:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. there will be remarks from governor david paterson who indicated that he may not seek reelection this year, possibly a reaction to reports of his role in the domestic violence incident involving one of his aides. that will be live on our companion network, c-span 3, at 3:00 p.m. eastern. this marks one year since congress passed the economic stimulus bill. of the $780 billion approved, nearly $339 billion has been committed so far and nearly $186 billion has been paid out. to attract spending, go to c- span's website. >> which for you -- which a zero you are put -- which four pre

president lived past 80 years? >> it is a guidebook and living history -- the work of biography of each of these presidents. you can tell a lot about people at the end of their lives. >> the story of their final moments and insights about their lives -- "who's buried in grant's tomb? it is now available. >> after a briefing earlier today, house speaker nancy pelosi refused to call for charles rangel to step down as chairman of the ways and means committee. he was admonished by the ethics committee for accepting a corporate funded trip to the caribbean. she also spoke about yesterday's white house health care summit. the briefing is about 20

>> good morning. what were you up to yesterday? watching tv? some people said to me -- everybody commented on how crowded the room was. i did not even notice. was that an issue? we were focusing on health care. outside the room we were focusing on jobs and how we can move legislation. we will have a series of jobs pieces. the house bill will be about hiring incentives to restore employment. an encouraging next step in our drive to put more people to work. this is an important bill that

has targeted investments for energy and infrastructure and provides specific support to small businesses with tax credits and accelerated -- it is one of our focuses, as you know. this is part of our ongoing lending to small businesses, building highways, supporting job training. we want to keep teachers on the job. yesterday, the president brought together democrats and republicans to explore areas to seek out common ground and discuss the path forward on health insurance reform. one year ago, nearly, march 5, 2009, president obama started this bipartisan conversation at the white house at a summit. it was a great day. it was house and senate

democrats and republicans, outside stakeholders, consumers, all present. the biggest presence was when senator kennedy came into the room and said he was there to enlist in the fight and campaign to pass health care reform. that had been his life's work. he would later say to the president, "this is not about policy, it is about the character of our country." we carry that with us as we go forward in this campaign. we brought to the table the concerns that american families have one is a down at the kitchen table to talk about their job security, the education of their children, and how they can afford that, their pensions, and of course, how they are going to pay their medical bills. we must always be mindful of that -- that what we do is relevant to their lives.

i was very proud of the president's present-day -- presentation. he has encyclopedic knowledge of the issue. he wants to build consensus. he started that only six weeks after his swearing-in last year. it continued with the consideration of bills and committees. still, it has the door open. hopefully, we can find some initiatives to incorporate in the bill in addition to the over 100 republican amendments that are already accepted into the house and senate bills -- more like 150. well over 100 amendments that the republicans have put forth.

any others that we can come up with, we certainly will. i am not of the school that says, unless you vote for the bill, we're not going to accept your amendment. if they have good ideas that work for the american people, we welcome that. i think it was clear, coming out of the meeting yesterday, if i can tell you what i thought -- two things were clear. that the president has recognized -- and it was evident yesterday -- in order to improve health care insurance for the american people, we must have some regulation of the industry. we have to go beyond the status quo. it was clear also that the republicans were accepting of the status quo. i was very proud and mention that on wednesday we passed in the house an overwhelming bipartisan support -- 406 to 19

-- to remove the exemption for insurance -- health insurance companies that they had had for over 60 years, which has not served the american people well. left to their own devices, insurance companies have behaved very poorly and the american people have paid the price. this legislation is essential. one other point that was clear was that, while we all talk about ending -the denial of coverage based on pre-existing conditions, which is probably the most needed and desired reform that the american people recognize and want, is something that democrats stand fully behind and republicans do not have it in their bill. when they say they support it, you have to support the

underlying bill, if you're going to have that provision on -- prohibition on discriminating against people based on pre- existing conditions. this has been about lowering costs, improving quality, expanding coverage. i am excited that we can move to a place to accommodate suggestions that people have, using the president's possible bill -- proposal that was put on the table on monday and go from there and talk about what is in the bill, not the controversy around the bill, but what is in the bill. it is about prevention, diet, not diabetes. it is about a healthy america, not just health care for america. it is very exciting because it will take us down a new path and allow for effective initiatives

to take hold, rather than just building on what we have done before. it is about what is new and innovative. it is pretty exciting and i look forward to where we're going next to accommodate whatever suggestions there are accusing the proposal -- there are, using the proposal as a base. we want to listen to republican ideas in the senate and house bill, which were there any way. the other day that you saw was "start over," "eensy-weensy spider," -- but you cannot do it. unless you do it together, it does not have this energy and it does not hold the insurance

companies accountable. i was very pleased with how the president, of course, but also the members, made it very clear -- senator harkins said it best -- you see somebody drowning, for them or rope, if we do this incrementally, it just does not work. people need a lifeline on their medical bills. people spoke about stories they had -- whether they met people in person, constituents, family members, letters they have received -- about how medical bills were pulling them down, not only help wise, but economically. -- not only helalth-wise, but economically. i think it moves us closer to passing the bill that meets the standards of accountability, accessibility, and

affordability for the middle class. i will take your questions. >> that ethics committee has admonished charles rangel. given the you promised to run the most honest congress in history, do you think he should step down? >> what i understand, and i have not seen the report -- i do not think it is out get -- oh, it is. i saw the press release where they said that he did not violate the rules of the house. i think that is an important statement that they made. there is more to mr. rangel's situation and we will look forward to hearing from the ethics committee on that. >> they did admonish him. >> and is said that he did not. -- and they said that he did

not. they said the press release would stand as the admonishment. i think there is more -- obviously, they have other issues to deal with, but i thank them for taking this action and i hope they will have other action. they did not take action against him, except to say he did not break the rules. we will see what happens next. >> you talked about abortion funding. would you say mr. stupak is wrong when he looks at the president's language and says it is not sitting with his standard of funding? >> let me say it this way. there are three standards we are using as we go forward.

we talk to the catholic bishops to this, and all people on all sides of the issue. federal law prevents federal funding of abortions. there is no federal funding for abortion in this bill. we know expansion -- there is no expansion of a woman's right to choose. we're determined to pass health care reform. this bill that passed the senate does not have federal funding of abortion. >> it is an open secret that you and harry reid want to attend to get a bill through reconciliation. where do things stand? the thing is possible, along with the change -- do you think it is possible in reconciliation? >> a simple majority is what

we're asking the senate to act upon. it is up to them. here are the three steps we're going through -- what is the substance? that is what we will put together, and we did not want to do that before we heard from our republican colleagues. secondly, what is the senate able to do with a simple majority? and then we will act upon that. i believe that we have a good prospect for passing legislation, in light of the recognition the president gave to the concerns of the house members. that was be -- that would be affordability for the middle class, closing the doughnut hole for seniors, ending the nebraska 6, state equity, and changing the pay from the excise tax. that was a very big -- we were eager to see what the president would put forth.

we saw it on the internet. that was a big step forward and took us further down the path. now we will put something together and we will see what we have -- what we can get the votes for. we will go from there. >> will you be able to pass the bill in the house? >> when we see what the senate will be able to do. those were the major differences between the house and senate bill. 75% of the bills are the same underneath. >> what will the process look like over the next period of time? how well they have a voice in the process? -- alabama will they have a voice in the process? -- how will they have a

voice in the process? >> i hope we can get republican votes. if we have good ideas, we should incorporate them. what we heard from republicans yesterday was about process and "let's start over." those who made suggestions talked about selling insurance across state lines, the nature of the exchange -- it was not a question of whether they would be exchanged, it was what can we exchange. we have come a long way since last march on this legislation. i do not know if you recall, but senator grassley questioned the merits of a public option, which still remains very popular in the public. the president said at the time,

"i believe a public option is a good way to keep insurance companies honest and create competition. if you have a better idea, put it on the table." i do not think it is a better idea, but it is an idea to have the exchange and it covers much of what we want to do. it does not say the same kind of money that a public option wood. it was interesting to me that olympia snowe and builder ben had an exchange -- and dick durbin had an exchange. we can find suggestions from what they were talking about their and language that might be helpful. there were not many other ideas come to accept -- ideas, except "let's start over."

that was not fertile territory. without the substance, we cannot go to the next step. the next step would require us to see what the senate will do. we have a voted on a bill that we like and we will see if they can accommodate the changes that the president has put forth, and then we can go to the next step. we will keep posted along the way. >> how do you plan to proceed with the jobs bill? how do you see the broader jobs agenda developing, given the difficulties? >> as you know, we passed our jobs bill before christmas -- it was urgent at the time and it is urgent now.

i know you will see that segmentation -- this jobs bill that we started with investments, infrastructure, energy, transportation, tax credits for hiring, small businesses, accelerated depreciation. the next bill we have to address -- in the next bills that come up, we have to address the fact that the unemployment insurance is inspiring -- is expiring now and it would have to pass legislation to correct that and extend that period it is really hard to -- extend that period. it is really hard to understand why one senator is holding up the extension of unemployment insurance at this time. but he is.

senate democrats are trying to make a move to dislodge that. instead of a bigger bill, you will see segmentation. you will ask them why they are going that route, but it is ok with us, as long as we get the bills. i believe it will be up next week. >> madam speaker, i know you are waiting for the ethics committee, but doesn't this earsplitting over whether it was mr. rangel or his staff, does it not kind of damage your promise? >> i think every member is entitled to have his day before the ethics committee. they have said he did not knowingly violate the rules. if this were the end of it, that would be one thing. but there is obviously more to come and we will see what happens with that. every member has that right.

. capture a great deal of our work. but the president's report -- i want to see how it translates into legislative language with the clarity we need. i want to make sure of affordability. >> thank you. >> for the middle class. [laughter]

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> coming up shortly, the white house briefing with press wreck -- with press secretary robert gibbs. we will take you there once it gets under way. also, in new york, remarks from governor david patterson. news reports indicate the governor will not seek reelection this year. that is coming up shortly on c- span3. we will look at the were calls on today's "washington journal." >> on your screen is thomas hoenig, who is president of the federal reserve bank of kansas city. what is the role of the federal reserve when it comes to regulating banks? guest: the role of the federal reserve is multifaceted in the regulation of banks.

it has an oversight responsibility for financial stability. that involves the major financial institutions of the country. more specifically, it has supervisory authority where it can examine the activities and the books of the major -- all the bank holding companies in the country and state banks that choose to be part of the federal reserve system. this gives us out hands on information about conditions in the financial system. i call it the eyes of the federal reserve as we deal with banks across the country, not just on wall street but in parts of america like our region of the country, which is in the center of the country. it as an important function central to our role in ensuring financial stability not just on wall street but in the middle of america and main street -- across the country. i consider that an essential

function of the federal reserve. host: what is the legislation being considered by the federal banking committee that would change that rule? callerguest: the legislation ist out yet. proposals involve taking the federal reserve out of its supervisory role at this time or in the future. i think that is a tragic mistake. it takes the eyes away from the federal reserve in knowing what is going away in america -- not just on wall street, but in middle america. for example, right now we know commercial banks have issues in our part of the country with commercial real estate. we are also concerned about small business lending. by having examiners involved, we are gathering intelligence information on what is causing that.

it is partly, obviously, the recession, partly capital pressures on these banks because they have been dealing with all the loans. and we have been working with the banks to figure out ways to allow them, for example, to restructure loans in a way that does not hide the problem but helps them deal with the problem. you cannot do that from a distance. you have to be involved on an ongoing, daily basis. that is, i think, the essential element. that is why i very much hope that the senate will not take that kind of responsibility away from the federal reserve. i think the outcome would be negative -- essentially a very bad outcome for banks and for the communities of america. host: ben bernanke cautioned senators not to curtail the fed's banking oversight, referring to short-term

political liability for this. guest: i think he is absolutely correct. people tend, under these kinds of conditions, to want to blame someone. the problem with that is there are plenty of people to blame. we deregulated the industry. congress deregulated the industry. there was a culture, if you will, of deregulation, and this encouraged some speculative activities that led to the bubbles and then the collapse. yes, you have this reaction. i think it is an overreaction. i think the outcome would be -- as you try to blame someone, you get worse outcomes instead of better outcomes. i think that is what the chairman was communicating. it is certainly my message. host: senate banking committee -- are the right to be angry at

the fed at all? guest: if they are going to be angry, they have to be angry at everyone, including themselves. they asked to eliminate glass-segall, which allowed these agencies to get better. the regulation backed off, if you will. in that kind of environment, when you do not have -- one of the things i have proposed is that we need to have clear rules of the road. that is, we need to reintroduce simple, understandable rules around capitoal underwriting standards, including value ratios and liquidity. we need to say these are the standards. if you tell the supervisor that we want things to be good, and you go into a bank and look at the bank's books, and this looks

like a pretty concentration of credit that could be a problem in the future, they are going to say "look at this portfolio. it is paid off. we can sell these assets. they are in the expansion phase ." if you have clear leverage ratios, you can say that if you want to grow your balance you also have to have more capital, specifically this ratio. then you say that if you are over that you have to make adjustments. that becomes counter-cyclical. the -- there is less chance of a financial crisis under those conditions. we have to go back. we have to diagnose this problem correctly. rearranging who is the supervisor, taking away the federal reserve -- who is going to be there in their place? who is going to figure out the liquidity needs for financial institutions not just in wall

street but across the country? those are questions you have to ask and answer before you take this responsibility away. host: we are putting the numbers on the screen. if you would like to talk with dr. thomas hoenig, who is the head of the kansas city branch of the federal reserve, call these numbers. e-mails and tweets as well -- we will put those addresses up. what is your job as president of the kansas city federal reserve? guest: as president, i have multiple responsibilities like any c.e.o. would have. the federal reserve is involved in, number one, monetary policy. i do attend allñi the federal market committeeq meetings, and every third year, iñr am a votig member, as i am this year. this is a major responsibility.

secondly, i am responsible for oversight of our bank supervision activities, although that's activities are vested with the board of governors in washington. a report that information to the board of governors. i manage that operation -- host: for your region? guest: yes. so we are clear, that is wyoming, colorado, and northern new mexico. our bank processes payments, what we call wire transfers, money, large volume transactions. we process small electronic transactions through our bank. and that is a major operation. we also distribute cash for our regional banks. so there is multiple responsibilities with that job. host: is it necessary, your view, in the 21st century, to

have the fed divided into regions? guest: i think it is more important than ever. in 1913, when the federal reserve was formed, there was no need for a 12 region system. the federal reserve system is the third central bank of the united states. the first two were monolithic organizations, and they failed because they were not distributed across the country. the federal reserve, in that sense, is a product of, if you will, main streets distrust of concentrated financial power. there were very uneasy with it just being concentrated in washington, or just concentrated on wall street. in the compromise, to give people confidence in the central bank and to address the years, if you will, the distributed the power across to these other 11 banks besides the federal reserve bank in new york. and that is essential. and we gather information.

we have boards of directors who come from all walks of life, and across our region, from agriculture, from technology, from labor. and that is essential to the input and to the feedback that goes -- it is more critical, in these trying times to have these networks of communication that stream up and back then it has ever been. i cannot emphasize that enough to the american people. host: in the new york times this morning, a prediction that the united states is headed for a debt-driven meltdown according to judd gregg, the outgoing senator from new hampshire. guest: i think that is extreme. i am very concerned about the debt levels in the united states. i am very concerned about the federal deficit, the total debt, and has been noted by others --

and as has been noted by others, depending on your assumption about the economy, that federal debt will grow as lel either starting immediately or in a few years. we doñi have unsustainable prive debt. that puts pressure on the federal reserve to keep interest rates artificially low as you try to deal with that debt. that will only make the problem worse. are we necessarily going to have a crisis in five years? no. the in ministration can outline with the congress a plan that will systematically -- and i know they have a commission set up -- to say here is how we are going to deal with that. secondly, we as a nation will have to systematically increase our savings rate so we can fund our debt and therefore bring down the debt over time. we do not want to do it too quickly because that will reduce the growth rate in the economy,

but we have to do it. the sooner we begin that process, the less likely that prediction is to come true. the more we delay, the more likely. host: one more question before we go to calls. how independent are you? how much is ben bernanke a boss? guest: the reserve banks are set up to be independent. the board of directors does have oversight responsibility for the 12 banks to make sure we are operated correctly. so we are autonomous. the chairman of the federal reserve is the head of the board of governors of the federal reserve. that gives him a lot of authority in that role. i also have a board of directors from my region. they are my boss as well, or they are my boss. and they can fire me or fail to reappoint me. so i have a lot of oversight. i think it is important that i

have this board of directors. that brings this independent you to the open market committee, and that is essential to have. that is why we were designed the way we work. host: you have the longest tenure of all the presidents of the federal reserve. you have been with them since 1991, and with the kansas city bank since 1981 in various positions. on our independent line, you are on with thomas hoenig of the federal reserve bank. caller: i am glad to speak to one of the capos of the federal reserve. you are not even federal. you are a private bank. i am working very hard to make sure you are not in a job. if allegations prove right that were laid on your boss, mr. ben bernanke, by the esteemed mr.

representative ron paul, who wants to audit the fed -- something you will be humanly go against, which we can understand. you are a bank. if you go into a bank and audit and find things that do not add up, you try to fix it. host: we got the point. ron paul, etc.. guest: i get these questions often. it is interesting, the misinformation that comes forward from this kind of a call. let me explain first of all -- representative paulñr has every right to his views. he calls it "the fed, but it is really and the fed -- he calls it autit the fed, but it is really end the fed.

the fed is audited by the government accounting office, or the government accountability office. it is audited by a major auditing firm. it is audited by the treasury. our bank is examined by the board of governors. so there is an enormous amount of auditing that goes on within the federal reserve. exceptions are found, we are held accountable for that and we correct them. in terms of allegations against the chairman or anyone else, they will not be, i think, found to have any substance to them. but we welcome that review. and i think the federal reserve system has encouraged the government accountability office to take a look at it. i think i understand your frustration, and it is unfortunate but it is also misinformed. host: where are those audits? guest: the gao audits are posted

t(on their site. we annually post the accounting office's reports, just like every office would do. those reports are very public and they are on our website. go to the gao website, go to ours, and those reports are there whenever you wish. host: have you had a conversation with ron paul? guest: i have not. i have not read his book. i know he would like to see the gold standard. it is one monetary system. it was bitterly opposed by many people in america at the time because of its deflationary impact. and those are choicesñi that congress can make, butñi i would not recommend it to them. i would encourage ron paul to look beyond his goal of ending the fed. host: from georgia, on our

republican line. caller: good morning. it is an honor to speak with you. as opposed to the first caller, i am kind of along some of his mindset, but i know that you are probably one of the more same members of the fedñi, and one of your recent remarks have been -- and your more recent remarks have been along the lines of reining in some of the insanity of ben bernanke and his loose money policy. does the fed realize the terribly destructive impact that you have had on savers and frugal people in this country by reducing their interest incomes below, really, real negative interest rates while the fraudsters that created this problem are being rewarded? guest: i understand your frustration, and i do think that one of the issues that i have

dealt with is how we bring interest rates back to a more long-term sustainable level from their extremely low and obviously unsustainable levels. and there are some disagreements. that is one thing about a committee like the open market committee, where you can have different views. i do share a different view. i think we should be going back to a more normal level sooner rather than later, as i have said in my public speeches. and i think -- i am not -- my concern is, in terms of the last time i voted -- i dissented on the usage of the words "extended. period." i would like to be in a position to be able to move back to normal rate sooner rather than later, and i do not consider it in our interest to assure the markets that rates will be zero

and they can play the yield curve. while it has intended affects of assuring the markets that they can invest, it also invites and sometimes in sites speculative activity, so that is what we have to care for. i am not with the majority, but those are different views. as we debate this, those are important things to bring out, and in the end, hopefully, we will come to the right solution in the right time. thank you for your question. host: dr. thomas hoenig got his master's and his undergrad at benedictine college. how important is your relationship with congress? guest: they are ultimately responsible for our being in existence, so there is, i think, a very important relationship there and a reason to be responsive to the congress of the united states. congress, knowing that if you put the printing press with the

spending you are going to get bad outcomes, give the federal reserve bank a certain degree of independence. it was structured to assure that independence to make sure that you had different views and could take a longer-term view of things from a policy perspective. it is a very important reporting relationship, but somewhat independent from the daily pressures of politics so that we can hopefully, over time, come up with the right answers for the long-term sustainability of the u.s. economy and, for that matter, because our economy is so important, it affects the world in general. very important that we have a degree of autonomy but also are accountable. host: on a professional level, is health care reform important to you? guest: on a professional level, it certainly is. it has to be looked at because of the future liabilities that

come with medicare and with the baby boom population entering their retirement years. those are important because the will impact the budget, the fiscal deficit, and the total amount of debt outs thatanding. a solution there is extremely important for all of us, from a long-term economic perspective. how and what -- that is up to the congress and the administration. but i do know how important it is that we solve that issue. host: a democrat from knoxville, tennessee. caller: how are you this morning? i have a couple quick questions. who is on your board of governors? guest: on the board of governors in washington? caller: in your area. guest: our board of directors.

we have an individual from omaha who is from the labor unions. we have an individual from kansas city, a food processor. we have a bookseller from oklahoma. we have a rancher from wyoming. we have a banker from denver and a banker from nebraska and a banker from kansas. so it is a diverse -- it is perverse in geography and professions that are part -- it is diverse in geography and professions. guest: i wanted to know if someone from the financial side -- how many financial side individuals were in there. the next question that i have for you is -- you mentioned that you are against what is going to be happening today. but you did not say anything about the role and the accountability of the federal bank.

another quick question -- host: we are running out of time. we are going to leave it right there. thanks for calling in, though. guest: there are three bankers on our board of directors, and may have important insights into what is going on in the banking insight, and that is very important to us. they are separate from our supervisory activities. they are not informed on that. that is important for you to know. as far as out accountability goes, the board in washington has general oversight over our bank, and also the congress of the united states can change the structure, as is being discussed in one dimension right now, if it should decide to do so. so there is a great deal of accountability of the federal reserve banks to the board of directors, those people who live in that region, to the board of

governors in washington, and to the congress. host: florida. we are running short on time. keep it short. caller: the federal reserve is nothing but a big scale and created in 1913 to stabilize and help prevent inflation and unemployment. it has failed at those. what it really does is usurps money from the working class, puts it into the banking system, does that by a series of inflating the economy and then deflating the economy. guest: i am sorry you feel that way, but the federal reserve system's mission is, as signed by congress, to look to the long run stable growth of the economy and to maintain stable prices. the economy has a lot of moving parts. we are one element of that. the laws of the nation affect it.

>> "washington journal" is live every day at 9 a.m. central. we believe this and take you to the white house, live, for the briefing. >> on april 12 and 14th, the president will host the nuclear summit here in washington, d.c.. the summit is to discuss steps we can take to prevent acts of nuclear terrorism. as the president's stated in prague in april 2009, nuclear terrorism is the most extreme threat to global security. a little bit later on this afternoon, our third release of visitor records will be made public. at that point, we will release the names of over 150,000 visitors to the white house complex. those will cover official events

between november 1 and november 30 of 2009. earlier this morning, the president had a secure video teleconference with british prime minister gordon brown and german chancellor on the lumber co -- chance angela merkel. they talked about trade issues as well as the upcoming nuclear security summit. looking at the week ahead, the president has no public events tomorrow. on sunday, the president will travel to the national naval medical center in bethesda, maryland, where he will undergo a routine physical. afterwards, he will visit wounded warriors who are getting treatment at the same facility. just a quick coverage note on that -- if you are in the pool

that day, please see katie. it will be a barely -- a very early movement on sunday. we will have a readout from the doctor sometime, hopefully, early to mid afternoon about the recent physical. sorry? we will disperse it from here. on monday, the president will announce new steps in the administration's efforts to improve america's schools at an event hosted by general colin powell and his wife, alma. america's promise alliance is the nation's largest partnership organization dedicated to improving the lives of children and youth. tuesday, the president will travel to savannah, georgia. the only guidance i have for wednesday through friday is that he is attending meetings at the white house.

so, with those four announcements -- >> can you follow up on health care? now that the summit is over, can you be direct about this point? will be president support the use of reconciliation to get a health care bill through if a deal can be reached? >> the president found yesterday's meeting and conversation to be productive. i think, certainly, there were points throughout the nearly seven hours, including lunch break. there were areas of agreement and common efforts on an issue that we know is important to the american people. no doubt, there were differences. when the primary differences appeared to be the treatment of insurance companies and the regulation of insurance companies. in all honesty, those differences may just be between the president and some members

of congress -- maybe too big. the president is going to take the areas that there was, an agreement on and work -- the areas that there were commoas c agreement on and will make the next steps next week. >> what were the areas? >> at the beginning, helen, there was a lot of head nodding and agreement on dr. coburn, his discussion of a waste, fraud, and abuse in the medical system. many of those ideas have been incorporated into the president's plan. there was some agreement also on the proposal that senator cockburburn had worked on regarg defensive medicine and medical malpractice, including increasing grants to states to set up ways to help that

problem. i think there was some general agreement on the selling of insurance across state lines. obviously, the differences i talked about earlier still include a minimum floor for standards to insure that if you are purchasing a policy in a different state you enjoy, as i said, a minimum level of standard coverage. i think, certainly, those are the main areas, yesterday, where there was agreement. >> can you clarify the time frame? the president said yesterday he hopes to resolve something in a month to six weeks. you talked about an announcement yesterday -- an announcement next week. >> i think the president will take into account what he heard yesterday, work through some ideas, and make an announcement next week about the way forward.

i do not have a ton to add to that, ben, except that as the presidencies -- let me not get ahead of the president. >> you cannot speak to the point about whether he would support reconciliation? >> i think those questions are better left for when we have an announcement from the president. >> sooner or later? >> my sense is probably closer to wednesday. do not hold me to it. it could be earlier or later than that. >> is the president or anyone else at this point reaching out to -- from the white house -- reaching out to democrats who might be for or against -- >> i think nancy in particular was going to follow up with democrats and republicans on some of the ideas and notions that they heard yesterday. >> there was discussion of an eastern break deadline for getting a bill done.

>> the president has been working on this issue for months. more than a year. obviously, his desire is to see something that improves the lives of the american people soon. i do not want to get ahead of what the president might announce next week, in terms of the way forward. >> soul-searching -- he said he was going to do that over the coming weeks. is he going to do that soul- searching before moving ahead with something like reconciliation? >> again, i would say first and foremost we have had many weeks with which to complement -- with which to complcontemplate where we are. that was fleshed out some what clearly yesterday. again, i think the president will be looking at ideas that were offered up yesterday that he agrees with, where there is

common agreement on moving forward. look -- i think this is a fairly dynamic process that will happen over the next several days. >> can you follow up on how you described yesterday. he said it was a productive session. >> with the president like to have come out of there with a larger agreement? sure. i think that while there appear to be some agreements on the issues that i outlined a minute ago, there appear to be some philosophical issues. i think the main ones seem to be on the degree to which we are going to regulate insurance companies, whether it is with the policies that -- a standard level of benefit in a policy. whether or not we are going to have the right authority to insure that people do not see

huge swings upward in the price that insurance companies are charging individuals in the market as we move toward a health insurance exchange, whether or not dealing with pre- existing conditions in its entirety was something that people wanted to do but could not -- >> why would tangibly change between wednesday and thursday -- what would tangibly change between wednesday and thursday? >> i think the american people saw some agreement on issues on which there has just been, in many ways, back and forth screaming over the past many months. i think it was in now wait a productive section -- a productive session to cut through this and find out whether there are any common ideas. in many ways, if you look at the proposal that the president started with and posted on the

internet at the beginning of the week, it is modeled after a proposal similar to what former senators daschle and baker outlined at the beginning of last year. it is similar to an idea that was passed in massachusetts that is now a state law there, except the president has taken steps that massachusetts did not in the beginning to address skyrocketing costs. one of the main ideas is allowing small businesses and individuals to pool their resources -- quite a popular republican idea. i think in many ways, despite some of the rhetoric, that the initial sort of benchmark proposal is predicated off of some agreement. i think the president heard more yesterday. >> when senator mccain, at the

health-care reform summit, talk about the medicare advantage car about 4 -- davcarve out for florida, obama said he made a valid point. can we assume that will be removed from the bill? >> i am not going to add to that. i think the president was clear. as he moves forward next week, we will have more on that. >> to clarify -- what you guys put on the web site on monday is not necessarily what an outline would look like if a bill goes to congress? >> look -- i think there are concepts, again, concepts that were discussed yesterday that the president would work with the team on adding to a piece of legislation or series of ideas we started with on monday. add to those and see if

agreements on selling insurance across state lines, some movement on dealing with medical malpractice, if some of those issues cannot garner greater bipartisan support. >> if the think somebody late -- it's he thinks somebody raised a legitimate point, -- if he thinks somebody raised a legitimate point, that will be reflected. there was a statement released saying the first lady did a tremendous job. can you specify what she did? >> countless numbers of people have come to events here that showcased the people's house, as they said in a statement. i think the doors of this house were opened to folks that had not necessarily always gotten to be here, whether it was

schoolchildren from the area, whether it was low-income kids that got an opportunity to see the white house not from outside of pennsylvania avenue's defense or date, but instead of clothes and inside of it. i think the president is tremendously grateful for all of her hard work in organizing literally hundreds of events over the course of the past many months, and things are very much for serving your country. >> the white house has been criticized for the chicagoans who are part of the season. i know that people from every white house brings people from their home state and they get criticized by washington cronies. is that an unfair criticism? what does the president think when he hears people going after chicagoans like axelrod?

>> look -- i have not talked, specifically, to the president on that. there are criticisms of many people that work here, including myself. but i did not realize you blog under that name. [applause] [laughter] but that is part of what comes with this. nobody who works here, including myself, thinks they are free from that criticism. if you look at the enormity of the number and size and scope of events that transpired here at the white house, a thinker service -- i think her service as first lady should be commended. >> if republicans could come on

board and support a reform bill -- yesterday they seemed to be saying they could find areas of disagreement, and want to start over from scratch. do you start over? >> that is a question, honestly, for them, based on the idea that we have not only previously taken and put in a series of ideas but ideas of common agreement from yesterday. the question is whether or not the philosophical differences of regulating the insurance industry, regulating insurance companies, and providing people with a base level of protection is a bridge too far for the republicans to cross. i think if you take -- if you look at statements from the past from almost everybody in that room, there is a law in the president's proposal and a lot that was talked about yesterday

that i think most people could agree with. the question is whether we are going to put aside game playing and do something on behalf of the american people. that is a question that they alone can answer. but the notion of starting over again, i would say this. insurance companies are not starting over. they are mailing out letters right now increasing insurance by 39% in the individual market. so they have not decided that they are going to start all over. and they are taking an individual's health insurance rate and increasing them somewhere on the order of 10 times health-care inflation for the previous year. so we know what happens if we do nothing. more and more people pay more. more businesses drop the coverage they are already extending to their employees.

our budget deficit continues because of the amount we are spending -- it continues to get worse. the president believes we have to act. >> why is she leaving? when she pushed? >> use of disarray -- you saw desiree, many of you, her interview. she was asked to come here by the president in the first lady. she decided at the beginning of the year that it was time for her to go back to the private sector. she was not asked to leave. she has decided it is time to go back to other things that she loves. yes ma'am. >> what is the president have the audacity of hope for the health plan when the perception from yesterday is that he struck out? >> helen, i do not agree that that was the perception of

yesterday. did the clouds part in the angels sing? and 0. not even during the lunch break. i do think -- you saw this in comments in the newspaper today. you have people that have in many ways spent a good part of the last year talking past and around each other talking honestly about what needs to be done to make a situation better on behalf of their constituents and on behalf of the american people. >> will we see health care in any way? >> watching yesterday, there is a philosophical bridge, particularly on making sure that insurance companies act the way we expect corporate citizens to

act -- >> they do not want any health care. >> we will see. i think the president outlined a series of proposals based on good ideas from democrats and republicans in the past, and i think you will likely see him take issues that they agreed on yesterday and add them into a proposal going forward. i am going to wind -- i can hang with you guys. >> was the purpose yesterday to make clear once and for all the republicans only want to obstruct health-care? does that give him the freedom to move on the democrat-only plan? some in washington believe that was the real purpose, the ulterior motive. >> leaving aside my normal commentary on washington conventional wisdom, i do think

that what cannot be doubted, again, is what i said to dan. we know what happens if we do nothing. people walk to their mailboxes and their insurance goes up nearly 40%. that is the outcome. that is not going to happen now -- not just next year, but the year after that and the year after that. i think the president has come on so many occasions, asked for the ideas, the help, and the support of people on both sides of the political aisle. their desire not to help solve the problem on behalf of the american people is something that they have made a decision on. >> the president has clearly stepped up his involvement in this go around by putting in his own bill, by holding and then dominating this meeting. does he now see it -- is also going to step up his involvement in getting it passed?

whose responsibility is it? is it pelosi and reaed? >> the president will likely make an announcement next week on where he sees the path moving forward. we have discussed this many times. >> is he going to up his role? >> i do not believe the president has been a passive observer. look -- >> but he has dramatically increased his role in the last couple of weeks. >> i do not think this legislation would be at the point that it is, having gotten votes in both the house and the senate, without the president involved. >> but he is more involved now with his own bill and with this meeting yesterday. is he going to carry that through to lobbying and twisting arms, or is he leaving that up to pelosi and reed? >> you will have an announcement next week on what the president believes is the best way

forward. i can assure you, chip, that whatever he decides, he will put his energy into. the president is spending his time looking at what was talked about yesterday and how it relates to the proposal that he had on monday. >> the white house is working on a fall back? >> we have been working on any number of issues for many months related to health insurance reform. >> on desiree - you said she was not pushed, but did the president in treat her to stay? >> she came to the president and the first lady to give her decision in wanting to go back. i do not have the exact date. i pointed to what she said in an interview. it was close to the beginning of the year. >> who will replace her?

>> i do not have any announcements to make at this point. >> on health care, some of the senate say there could be a scaled-down health care bill. is that realistic? >> i am going to let the president make a decision and announce that decision as the best path forward. look -- we had a bill. we have had a bill that has passed a majority in the house, and frankly a supermajority in the senate. that is where health care is right now. again, i am going to let him make a decision. >> does the president agree with speaker pelosi and the ethics committee -- the findings on senators rangel?

>> the president is not going to get involved in internal house matters as it relates to chairmanship's. the president has worked on ethics reform as a state senator, as the united states senator, and as proposed -- and has proposed reforms as president. he has said many times that he believes rules are put in place for a reason and that those rules can and must apply to each and every person. he would expect that members of both the house and the senate's understand -- and the senate understand and ought to be accountable for those rules, and any violations would be acted on as appropriate. that applies to everyone. >> this morning, prime minister brown and chancellor merkel -- did they address the situation in greece? is enough being done by the

europeans to address the debt problem? >> the issue did come up. i do not have a ton to add except that, as i have said here before, we believe that the european union can and will act appropriately to insure an effective response to the crisis in greece. >> did the president not believe the republicans he heard from yesterday's were not talking to him in good faith about why they opposed his healthcare plan? >> i am not going to doubt the reasoning or the rationality for why somebody opposes a certain effort. watching yesterday, mark, i think most people could see a difference, particularly in how

one treats insurance companies. the motivation for their belief is for them to talk about. it is certainly not for me or anybody to question. >> a minute ago, you used a phrase calling on republicans to put aside game play. if they are putting -- if they are speaking in good faith, who is playing games? >> you heard the president discussed this when he was down here last. there has been a tradition in this town of working together to solve problems. i doubt the president, in every piece of legislation he signed into law, that the legislation was something he agreed with 100% every time. bipartisanship cannot be -- i do not agree with your idea that you have to agree with my idea, but we have to work together to

find common agreements on areas that matter to the american people. i think it is clear from yesterday that there are both disagreements but also a healthy amount of agreement. the idea of getting past those games is understanding that bipartisanship cannot be that the president gives up every one of his ideas and the only way forward is to accept every one of somebody else's ideas. that has never been the definition of bipartisanship at any other point in time. i do not think it is the president's belief that should start now. >> the medical on sunday -- is that the president's first medical checkups since taking office? >> yes, it is. i spent some time with the doctor this morning. we will hopefully have, fairly early in the afternoon if not late morning -- i am raising the

bar on myself, which seems to be a rhetorical mistake. we will have something on that as quickly as possible. >> as a social secretary, was the restriction on lobbying? >> that applies to everyone who works here, so i would say yes. >> does the president have a perspective on governor patterson? >> let me find that out. >> what is on the agenda for tuesday in savannah? >> let me get some more details on that and get back to you. >> on reconciliation -- you said the president will make a decision. >> know -- i said the president -- >> in the context of that, the congressional democrats have ceded the idea of the advisability of reconciliation.

>> i did not make a value judgment on how we go forward -- just that the president would announce a way forward, likely some time next week. i would say this. we discussed a little, in here, the use of reconciliation in the past. there have been various and sundry articles about this over the past several days. it has been used legislatively to pass big tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. it has also been used in a lot of occasions to pass health care legislation. we have cobra. the last two letters of cobra, r a, are for reconciliation act.

>> speaker pelosi said today -- she was asked about incrementalism. she said when somebody is 20 feet out and you throw them a rope that is 10 feet long, incrementalism does not work. what does the white house think? >> i think the president addressed something along those lines yesterday. many of the protections that we want, relating to the insurance industry -- many of those protections can only be afforded, particularly making sure that people are not discriminated against by their insurance companies relating to the possibility of a pre- existing condition, unless you have a broader coverage. look -- i think that there have been many steps over many years

to add different parts of the population to health-care and have accessibility for affordable health care. we have got to go the rest of the way. >> after the meeting, the president said he was going to contemplate republican ideas. are there some he has expressed an interest in exploring to enhance the proposal he has made? are you going to talk to republicans? are you going to bring them over here? is there going to be a legislative process to incorporate what the president heard into a new proposal that will be visible on the website or someplace else? is the white house going to take those ideas and do something with them? >> look -- we had the meeting yesterday because -- it was not because cable lacked something to show. we wanted to have an honest discussion about different

ideas. as i have said today, the president is going to look at those ideas and see where they fit in and add to the proposal that he put up on the internet on monday. i do not have any announcements to make now. i think you heard and saw the president agree on a number of areas yesterday. i do not have anything new to roll out from where i stand at this moment, but i think the president and the team will work on that through the week. >> to what degree is the president watching? is he engaged in all this? it is he watching the olympics? >> i have already talked with my canadian counterpart about the possibility -- he wanted to know what the consolation was for double or nothing up there. there will be specific on that later.

>> what about the president? >> i know he has been watching, i think, a lot at night. some of us have watched curling during the day. somebody emailed me the rules. but i haven't the slightest idea. [laughter] i do not disagree. i know on the flight out last week to denver and then to las vegas he watched some of the skiing. at that point, he knew that lin say vaugn had fallen out of one of the last dates. . .

>> i think everyone has, both about hockey and all of these other sports, and amazing amount of pride as it relates to that. >> the karzai announcement,

surely you do not need to check with someone to tell us what the white house reaction is? >> i think you all have written on what the white house viewpoint was on the governor paterson running for reelection. obviously, the reports that we all read about over the past many hours, the past couple of days were disturbing. i have not talked to the president about this. i think it is safe to say, though, that anyone who read these articles believes that at a minimum he made the right decision about his reelection. >> [unintelligible] >> no, she will be here for some transition time, but i do not have a final day. >> two questions on health care. this morning and i heard an interesting criticism of the president. i wonder if you could respond to it. it was said that the president's ability to engage the opposition

is both a strength and a witness. it is a week is because the american people who like a fighter, but they prefer a president who will stand back and achieve. >> i do not know the context of the comments. i think what the american people got a chance to see and what they have seen over the course of his presidency is someone who is willing to sit down, like yesterday, and sit and listen to people's ideas, to engage lawmakers, and to engage the american people directly in discussions about the problems that we face. >> do they speak so much into the weeds? >> well, i think in fairness, there have been criticisms even within the past 20 minutes about the president not having been in the weeds enough. i think the president felt good about the discussion yesterday and feels good about the

prospect of moving forward. >> thank you. secondly, the president now admits that on health care, the white house felt somewhat short on transparency. will the white house be willing to go back and rectify that and make available trans kips, documentation of meetings that -- transcript, and documentation of meetings from the summer? >> there are nine tapes of meetings. i think that ended about the mid '70s -- there are not tapes of meetings. i think that ended about the mid '70s. there's not a stenographer in these events. >> about the question of do not ask, do not tell, there is support in congress right now to kill the law. the president has said he is going to work this year to end the don't ask, don't tell. what is the white house doing to get congress to support that

effort? >> what the president has done is work with secretary gates, admiral mullen, the military and the pentagon in setting forward a process for evaluating, studying, and ultimately, the peeling of don't ask, don't tell. i think you have heard for the first time ever a chairman of the joint chiefs discussed the need to repeal don't ask, don't tell. i think that is a very strong start in place for a process that the president believes -- starting place for a process that the president believes will ultimately overturned off. >> our lawmakers in support? >> we have talked to many about the process for this. we have talked to them prior to

making some of these announcements and prior to some of this testimony. >> on aig, is the white house in in -- is the administration in a mood to hobnob with their millions of dollars in the hole? >> -- in a mood to help now that they are millions of dollars in the hole? >> an extraordinary amount of assistance was rendered in 2008 to prevent the giant collapse of aig, which had previously been a somewhat successful insurance company when someone had the crazy idea of stopping a hedge fund on top of it. first, i think the president believes that financial reform making its way through congress has to include strong resolution authority, which would allow us to break the insurance company

and the hedge fund, break those two entities apartçó and deal wh them before they cause systemic risk to the economy. >> and on reconciliation, does the white house believe there is enough -- there are enough votes to pass this? >> i will not get ahead of the president. i will mention one thing, the cobra has been in reconciliation. certainly, the white house has seen reports of center bombing -- center pawnsenator bunning r, and think, nine times proposals to extend cobra benefits that are expiring for those who have lost their jobs. one senator has decided to hold onto unemployment benefits that

will expire at the end of this month for 400,000 americans. one senator has decided to hold up legislation that would prevent a drastic cut in the payments for doctors serving medicare patients. we have seen over the course of the past week -- we saw this thursday with the president's health care meeting, and as on wednesday the house passed with more than 400 votes the opposition health care, and we saw the senate move forward on a bill that would help hiring. we have seen some good results in the past week in bipartisanship, only to have the week apparently end with one person decide that 500,000 people might not -- or will lose their insurance that they have had extended because they unfortunately lost their jobs.

400,000 people will lose their unemployment insurance. doctors that serve medicare patients will suffer a drastic cut in their payments. that is fundamentally not fair and the white house would call on senator bunning to agree to even vote on his own proposal so that the senate and house do not leave town with the health care benefits and the unemployment benefits of those that have lost their jobs, that we would not see those expire over this past weekend. >> i want to follow-up on that. senator bunning complained that he was missing the kentucky- south carolina game. >> well, kentucky won and we

should get about insuring that 500,000 people because one senator wants to see a game in which his team thankfully onwon, i am sure -- senator bunning rejected voting on his own proposal. it is hard to understand why -- if a senator from your own state said, i object to the way this is happening, why don't we have a vote on your proposal, and you object to that, these are the types of games that the american people fail to understand. these are the types of instances where, for some reason, one person can throw out all measure of common sense and heard hundreds of thousands of americans that have, unfortunately, lost their jobs as a result of this economic downturn.

>> two question spirit you will come back to me? >> not necessarily. [laughter] >> why not? >> i do not want to ask you what is in it, but i do want you to clarify what it is. is this a preference, or what kind of procedure he would like toee congress undertake last week? or receiving a lot -- or is he laying down a lot? >> i want to give you guys something to do next week other than the absence of curling. [laughter] >> i am not asking you what it is, but what it will be. i need to find it. >> i think the president will put forward an updated proposal on how to move forward. i will not give more detail than

that. >> going back to governor paterson, are there any thoughts as to whether or not he will -- he should remain as governor? >> that is part of what i wanted to talk about. >> [inaudible] >> i think it was wednesday president of the former vice president to wish him a speedy recovery. the vice president had previously called him. that is the only read out i got. but they did speak, yes. >> democrats made hay in 2006 and in 2008 by stressing ethical lapses by republicans. is the white house concerned the republicans can now turn the table, given congressman rangel

and other issues involving democrats? >> i can only speak for the president's viewpoint on this, and that is, as i mentioned this is an issue -- when he worked on this issue in illinois, you could literally buy a car for your personal use out of your campaign fund. the president as a u.s. senator worked to ensure that we strengthen ethics rules are around what had been ethical lapses in ethical and 2008. -- ethical lapses in 2006 and 2008. i think we all serve because the people elected, members of congress and the president, we do that based on their votes and

their trust. we should not do anything to violate that trust and if that trust is violated, as i said earlier, the house and senate should hold anyone who violates the trust accountable. >> can i ask you one other thing? [inaudible] [laughter] >> as you well know, it is a wonderful place to visit. i think the president has got all over the country talking about our efforts to get this economy moving again and i do not have the prep -- precise reasoning of why savannah was picked, but as you know, it is a wonderful place to spend some time. >> in response to the criticism

of rejection, he said "tough s- word." any reaction? >> we have talked about comments that people have made before we have talked about the tone of their politics. i hope that one senator does not stand in the way of and tell hundreds of thousands of people that could lose their health insurance and their unemployment benefits -- i hope he has more encouraging words than that for them. the senate should act on insuring that nobody loses these benefits as a result of one person standing in the way. thanks. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national

cable satellite corp. 2010] >> this month marks one year since congress passed the economic stimulus money. of the $787 billion approved, $339 billion has been committed, with just over $186 billion paid out so far. to learn more, go to c-span.org /stimulus. saturday, president obama recognizes artists that have contributed to the arts and humanities in america. some recipients will be singer bob dylan and actor clint eastwood. that is tomorrow at 8:20 p.m. eastern here on c-span. and sunday, c-span errors the entire white house health care summit, six hours or more, and see the president and congress debates what should happen next. they spoke about health care costs, insurance reform, and deficit-reduction. see the entire event sunday,

beginning 10:30 a.m. eastern. >> he is best known for his novels, "animal farm" and " 1984." this week on my discussion with george orwell. it is part of c-span2's book tv weekend. >> i come from latin america. i am accustomed to see poverty. i never thought i would see this kind of poverty in the capital of the u.s. >> a photographer and photographer on poverty in the u.s. that this sunday on c-span's q&a. >> earlier today, governor david paterson announced he is ending his campaign for reelection. his comments came in the wake of a top aide, and reports that his administration may have intervened in a domestic violence case involving another

aid. from new york city, this is 10 minutes. ñr ñi>> thank you. ñifor theñr past 25 years it has been my highestu privilege to serve the people of new york and the governor's office. all the while, i have tried to improve the quality of lives for families and fought special interests who would maintain the status quo. in that sense, every decision i have made asnb i sit in math -s i said in my state of the state address, focuses around this question -- are we doing what is right for the people of new york? at times, it has not been easy, but no matter how difficult the

circumstances were, i have never forgotten my oath, under my responsibility to serve the people of new york with faith and with integrity. over the past couple of years working with the legislature, we have reduced $33 billion worth of deficit. by this april, that number will probably go over $40 billion. that is three times as much as we have ever had to do before and over six times the deficit collections in a normal to debt -- two-year. -- in a normal two-year time frame. and in that time i have often had to act alone to save the state from insolvency by delaying payments, which kept the state from going bankrupt and preserved our credit rating at the same time. all the while, i have laid the foundation for our fiscal economic rescue, making new york a leader in technology,

knowledge and innovation. i have lowered the playing field for minority and women-owned businesses. when i came into the executive branch in 2007, they were receiving only 5% of state procurement contracts. can you imagine this? women, 51.8% of the population, 29.2% of the preapproved contracts, about two 0.6% of the business. -- 2.6% of the business. we have increased deprivation four times in two years. we have eradicated the drug laws. we have an active struggle penalties against kingpins and also reunited families ravaged by the ineffective, unworkable war on drugs. in addition, i have introduced

landmark legislation reforming our pension system, our public authority system, our public higher education facilities and health insurance coverage. the legislature passed them all and, also, i signed into law a bill passed by the legislature that defined the parameters of what would be a valid mortgage loan and predatory lending. all of these measures and others have improved the quality of life for new yorkers immediately, but will have values for generations to come. but there is more work to do, and up until the last few days i was looking forward to participating in that work in a full four-year term. but i am being realistic about politics. and has not been the latest destruction. it has been an accumulation of on obstacles that have bought these kidded me from bringing my message to the public. therefore, -- i have obfuscated me fsmm getting my message to the public.

step back. that moment has come for me. today, i am announcing that i mendon my campaign for governor of the state of new york. it has become increasingly clear to me in the last few days that i cannot run for office and try to manage the state's business at the same time, and right now, new york state needs a leader that can devote full time to this service. in addition, i am looking forward to a full investigation of actions taken by myself and my administration. but i give you this personal oath, i have never abused my office, not now, not ever. and i believe that when the facts are reviewed, the truth will prevail. let me make this clear. there are 308 days left in my term. i will serve every one of them fighting for the people of new

york. we still have very serious challenges and we're going to have to come together from different areas of the state in a non-partisan way and address these issues. our budget still has a massive deficit. families are still struggling for survival. businesses are still fighting to make payroll, and new yorkers are still losing their jobs. right now, what we need is a governor who will devote his full attention to those issues and other issues that come into this jurisdiction. i would like to thank all of the people love work with me here in the governor's office, all of my staff, all of you who have covered me, those who worked in my campaign, and all new yorkers for this wonderful opportunity to serve all of you. i hope that history will remember that i fought the good fight, that i did what was hard, and that i put the people first. thank you very much.

>> can you say whether you endorse andrew cuomo, who i expect will [inaudible] >> well, i offer my assistance to attorney-general " should he become a candidate. -- ñiattorney-general cuomo shod he become a candidate. but let's let that come to pass. >>ñi you feel you are being pusd back and if so, by whom? >> i will be leaving because of the ballot box, because it will be hard to reelect me if i am not running. >> [inaudible] and you feel that you have been dealt a raw deal, and by whom? >> by side of for public service. this is what happens in public service. i will it meant that i was very disturbed that for three weeks, unsubstantiated rumors, all of

them dispelled in the end, lined the front of newspapers and demanded a lot of the coverage. it was impossible and very difficult for me to stop that. and it was painful, both michele and i and other members of our family were accused of things we did not do, despair's without sources. it was very difficult. -- disparaged without sources. it was very difficult. but i hope that i have spent my time on behalf of those in public service to release signed up to do the right thing. we all make mistakes, but i think that we are trying to do become sort of celebrity cartoon characters to make fun of, we forget that these are real people who are trying to do a good job. and i hope that some weisfeld work disrespectful will be more respectful of those who come later -- some who i felt were disrespectful will be more

respectful of those to come later. but i'm not angry about it because i am -- i rest assured that i did my best. i worked hard. i had a lot of difficult decisions. i had to stand alone at times trying to make it clear what our economic situation was and what our responsibilities are. and i am perfectly restored -- berkely satisfied with that. -- perfectly satisfied with that. thank you. >> next, a joint economic committee hearing looking at ways to recover from the recent recession and how to create more jobs. we will hear from economists on the recent employment numbers and what can be expected from 2010. this is close to 2 hours.

>> hello, the meeting will come to order. i am thrilled to be joined by senator bingaman. and congressman breaky is here he will be here momentarily. -- congressman brady is here. he will be here momentarily. i first would like to thank mr. joerres and mr. hassett for their willingness to come and return to testify. last month we were snowed out and the weather continues to cause problems. and roger altman, deputy treasury secretary for our country is going to testify, and he has been snowed out and not able to come. so, has not -- unanimous consent to put his testimony in the

record. today's hearing continues our in-depth series of job creation. today will be examining the prospects of a marked recovery from the great recession, which is fueled by double-digit crises in both the housing and financial sector. a recent op-ed by professor alan blinder, which was raised by the -- based on the testimony he was supposed to give this committee before he was snowed out, presents a clear picture of the tip of a possible policy options to increase private sector employment. either increased demand by consumers and businesses, or give employers the incentive to hire workers. on tuesday, the jec heard testimony from dr. daud elmendorf from the congressional budget office. it showed -- is testimony showed this is one of the most

efficient ways of spurring hiring. his testimony also showed that raising unemployment benefits had the biggest bang for the bout. and -- bang for the box. -- bang for the buck. we have come a long way from last january when the economy lost 797,000 jobs in that month alone. last month, we lost 20,000 jobs and in the most recent three months of the obama administration, the average monthly job loss was 35,000. so, we are headed in the right direction thanks to the recovery act. the economy is growing. the bureau of economic analysis reported in the final quarter

of 2009, the economy expanded at a rate of 5.9%. the recovery act included a tax cut for 95% of all american families, and created jobs while investing in a clean energy, infrastructure, and education. while we have brought back the economy from the brink, we are not get where we need to be in terms of job creation. over 8.4 million jobs have been lost during the great recession and in addition to the 14.8 million workers who are currently unemployed, there are 8.3 million workers who are currently working part-time, but would like to work full time. in the last year, congress has enacted policies that support struggling families and encourage job creation. these actions include creating and extending the first-time home buyers credit, boosting funding for small business loans through the small business administration, extending safety

net programs and extending the next operation loss carry vision that will help businesses hire new employees. but we need to redouble our efforts to create jobs. the son a jobs bill that was passed this week is a step forward and an encouraging sign of bipartisanship. it includes a scaled-down version of the employer tax credit. i am happy that the senate has included this. as dr. blinder said in his op- ed, "reducing costs to hire new workers will create jobs." during today's hearing, we will explore other options and hear other ideas for helping workers get back on their feet, spark consumer spending, and brighten our economic future. i am pleased that dr. brenner was able to testify today and provide us with his forecast of which sectors and regions of the economy are expected to grow in the coming year. mr. joerres will be giving us

manpower's on the ground experience about increasing demand for temporary workers, job creation -- for temporary workers. job creation the temporary sector is a leading indicator of the market. since september, 2009, a temporary help services has added over 247,000 jobs, 52,000 in january alone. finally, dr. hastert -- dr. hassett will be giving his views about the future of the growth in the labour market. i am also pleased to see that today's panel will touch on another topic, discussed tuesday with the cbo, and that is the role of uncertainty about government policies on dampening economic employment growth. i did for to revive a discussion with the panel today, one that i hope -- i look forward to a lively discussion with the panel today, one that i hope will create certainty so that households and businesses will feel confident that we will lead

our country out of this recession. i recognize my colleague. i thank you all. i do not really have an opening statement. i look forward to hearing from all of you about prospects for accelerating the economic recovery and creating jobs, and your best suggestions as to what policies we can adopt that have not been adopted. thank you for being here. >> ok, let me just start -- unless you have some preference in the order that you would like to testify. dr. brenner -- berberner, have u been adequately introduced? >> i am happy to proceed. >> let me just indicate, he is the managing director, co-head of global economics, and chief u.s. economist with morgan

stanley. we appreciate you being here. you direct the firm's forecasting and analysis of the global economy and financial markets and co-heads the firm's strategy forum. you have served, of course, here on the research staff of the federal reserve in washington where yuko directed the fed's model based forecasting -- where you co-director of the fed's model based forecasting. there are a lot more things i can say about you, but i think this gives us an indication of your qualifications. we're pleased you are with us today. what are you go ahead and let me hear from you and then i will introduce mr. joerres. >> thank you for inviting me to this hearing. following the deepest economic crisis since the great depression, u.s. and global economies are starting to recover. in our view, however, the recovery will be moderate and job gains modest. in 2010-11 we expect gdp to

grow 3.5% and we expect annual job growth to average about 110,000 monthly over that two- year time frame, excluding high yields for the senses. even those job gains, however, are not a foregone conclusion. we have yet to see job growth in our economy, as you know. and while indicators have improved, it is still a forecast. more important, as you also know, it will take a stronger job and economic growth over the next few years to regain the 8.4 million payroll jobs we have lost in this recession, or to gain the 10.6 million jobs required to restore the employment rate, or the employment population ratio to the one prevailing before we got into the downturn. and important as well, our important -- employment problem has become -- the median duration has reached 20 weeks,

and a record 41% of the unemployment have been jobless for six months or longer. in my testimony i will tackle four specific obstacles to hiring, each with a cyclical and a structural element to them. for each i will talk about policies that will help foster economic growth and job creation. but first, i want to identify where job gains are likely to be over the next two years, and why. we think advances in export infrastructure, capital goods, energy and health -- health care related industries likely will account for most of the job gains in the next 18 to 24 months. that echoes our views of sources of growth in our economy. the combination of strong global growth, fiscal stimulus, and improving conditions thanks to the efforts of the federal reserve will continue to promote growth and promote improvement in many of those industries. and of course, rising demand for

health care services continues. when you think about where the regional strengths will become a that is a bit harder. for example, industries that likely will benefit from exports and other strong sectors happen to be located in regions that are hard hit by regional housing problems. the pacific northwest, part of the rockies and upper midwest, parts of the southeast and parts of the southwest seem likely to us to be the strongest regions. turning to us -- export markets and export gains and volumes are around 10% to be sustained for 2010. many of our trading partners will average 6% to 7% this year and canada will probably grow more strongly than the u.s. although slower growth in 2011 is likely to occur as u.s. and overseas policymakers exit from their fiscal and monetary

stimulus. in manufacturing, some 20% of unemployment in 2006 was directly or indirectly related to exports. i expect that share to grow over the next two years. capital equipment and industrial supplies exports likely will continue to do well, while consumers will represent a rising share of overseas demand. now let me turn to some of the obstacles to hiring. i think worries about the sustainability of the recovery are legitimate, as they often are early in a recovery. that is maybe holding hiring back. the fallout from the bursting of the housing and credit bubbles has intensified such concerns. i think it remains a essential to pursue policies oriented towards reducing housing imbalances, reducing debt and improving the functioning of financial markets and financial institutions. in addition, i think there are four specific obstacles to hiring today -- rising benefit

costs, mismatches between skills needed and those available, labor and mobility resulting from-equity housing, and uncertain policies here in washington -- resulting from negative equity housing, and uncertain policies here in washington. i will illustrate what we can do to recover as good as possible. let's talk about the cost of labor. thanks to high fixed costs on labor and benefits and taxes on labor to pay for the social net -- a social safety net, our labour costs are out of line with other countries when adjusted for living standards. i say fixed costs because benefits do not vary with work, but are paid on a per worker basis. the recession made the wedge bigger as cost-cutting of private-sector employees cut take-home pay while leaving benefits intact.

median pay suffers. the long-term solution to this issue would include comprehensive health care reform and innovation to boost productivity and labor skills. a short remedy might include the payroll tax credit that we just mentioned in the hearing. the house confirms that they increase their peril. it would be one of the most effective short-term -- increased their payroll. it would be one of the most effective short-term remedies. the second would be skills in the workplace and what there are. there are big changes in the structure of our economy. dislocations in several industries from the recession have magnified the mismatches, workers that have been trained for one occupation lose their job and have difficulty taking another. even in health care, there's a growing nursing shortage that requires new training facilities. the long term solutions include

policies that keep students in schools, provide access to education, reorientation of the higher education system, specialized and vocational training in community colleges, and of course, training programs at firms like mr. joerres'. the short-term remedies are a little bit harder. when my pair short-term training and basic skills that are needed for work with the income support me through unemployment insurance to help people bridge the gap through jobless spells. two other groups seeking employment, newly minted college students, and recently unemployed teachers could be an ideal nucleus, in my view, for an ideal training corps of seekers with new skills. the third is the housing bust. --- -equity for -- -equity for housing honorowners is leading a

wave of defaults in which borrowers who cannot month -- can no longer afford to pay decide to walk away. this is undermining the economic and social fabric of communities and reducing job opportunities. so far, the policies that we have employed have not dented the problem. the long term solution, of course, is financial and mortgage regulatory reform, which are essential to restoring housing finance. -- housing and finance. in the short run, efforts to stabilize communities plagued by foreclosure are essential and worthwhile, but not enough. modifying existing mortgages has not worked. bree default rates -- we default rates are between 50% and 60%.

the fourth obstacle is policy uncertainty. i think that is a negative for the economy. the debate around major initiatives to address the problems are obviously an important part of the democratic process. but the uncertainty that has been made for a policy change is weighing on business and consumer decisions to hire, expand, buy homes and to spend. the rise in uncertainty increases the option value of waiting as volatility in markets and the economy rises. moreover, this reasoning suggests the uncertainty reduces the potency of policy stimulus. in effect from it raises the threshold that you have to clear to make a business choice

worthwhile, and conversely, it certainly declines as the threshold falls with it. in financial markets, the market participants are used to thinking that political gridlock is good, that it prevents politicians from interfering with the marketplace. and by the way, i think that interference is sometimes essential and important. the flaws are exposed with respect to financial regulation, whose absence allowed abuses. indeed, gridlock is bad for markets -- likely to be bad for markets. the long term solutions here and efforts to tackle those complex problems one by one share and advice and benefits. the short-term remedies are no easier. they involve, obviously, getting together, but there will be a tonic for growth in my view. the reduction of the uncertainty

around the political environment here in washington would give some clarity, some direction to head in and it would improve support to the economy and pave the way for renewed job growth. thank you very much. i will be happy to take your questions. >> thank you very much. we appreciate you being here and we appreciate your testimony. jeffrey joerres is the chairman and chief safety officer with manpower inc.. he joined manpower in 1993, served as vice president of marketing and later a senior vice president of european operations and global account management, promoted to president and ceo in 1999. in 2001, was named chairman of the board. again, i have more information that i could put out here explaining your imminent qualifications, but thank you for being here and we are anxious to hear your perspective

on these questions. >> thank you, senator. job creation is the topic that we absolutely, deeply believe in as we every day connect people to jobs as we do for a living. but globally, we have more than 400,000 associates on assignment at any given day. in 2009, we interviewed over 12 million people through our network of more than 800 offices in the u.s. we have a pulse on the -- we have a finger on the pulse of the labour market. what are we seeing? companies are starting to hire, no doubt. however, like the recovery in the last few recessions, it will be a jobless recovery. this is because companies are much more sophisticated in their ability to assess their workforce needs. companies can -- can determine exactly when they need workers for the demands of products and services. from now on, companies will logger engage in what was considered anticipatory hiring.

table instead wait for increase in demand before making -- they will instead wait for increase in demand before making hiring decisions. as a result, we would expect a short-term increases in the level of job hiring will be created by new businesses or actual demand. our latest survey, a survey of over 28,000 u.s. companies as a forward looking survey come off 12% of the company said it would increase staff in the first quarter. 73% said they extent -- expected no change in hiring. why is that important? in the 42 years of this survey, that number has never been that high. that number of companies stuck in the middle of civilization waiting for a signed to be able to take on -- the normal number in this category would be around 50%. -- 58%. this is the first time we have seen a number of this large. additional surveys show

employees in the mining, manufacturing, government are expecting hiring in the fourth quarter of 2009. a slight increase in nonverbal, transportation, utility, professional and business services. wholesale will have a soft first quarter and a softer second quarter as well. using the seasonally adjusted rate -- the adjusted data, all expect moderate growth from hiring levels, with the highest coming from the south and midwest. and you can see why, because of the growth in manufacturing jobs right now. a major trend emerging from this down cycle is the number of unemployed workers who will be forced to find new jobs outside their industry of expertise. in our company, we have labeled these people. they are industry migrants, very similar to a migrant coming into the country. they face challenges including how to adapt old skills to a new

demand in the marketplace and how to represent those skills in a brand new light. an example of this would be what we would call basically a foreman in an auto company on the shop floor, possibly having problems fitting into a manufacturing environment, but a very different kind of manufacturing environment. another one of these major challenges that these workers based in this recovery is the lack of mobility exacerbated by a housing crisis. this inability is slowing down employment. the inability to help homeowners get out from underneath their negative equity problems means that many jobless are unable to take jobs in different locations when, in fact, there are available jobs. we believe that any initiative that the government implements to address the level of unemployment and foster job creation should focus on three specific areas. the individual job seeker, companies, and potential new businesses.

what can be done to assist in individual employment? training programs, again, as dr. verner mentioned, these have very good track record. they also have the challenges associated with them. i might suggest they should simply focus on these industry migrants. not just focus on existing skills, but move them into different industries. what can we do for corporations? corporations are more specific than ever about their hiring needs. this is the conundrum. there are people saying they have the skills and the companies are saying the skills are not good enough for me. they have to have softer skills, flexibility, adaptability, intellectual curiosity, an interest in lifelong learning, things that we did not have to have before. the velocity in the change of these required skills, all industry migrants will need to develop them. tax credits and incentives for

companies to increase the size of their work force will put needed money in the hands of businesses. however, companies have gotten smarter. in that from this recovery going forward, hiring decisions will be made based on demand for products and services and goods. offering incentives will not create new jobs, in my opinion. rather, they will subsidize the cost of coast -- because of growth of companies where they would have hired anyway. this money is well intended, but at the same time will create a tax break for companies, which is good. but if you look at the long term core, it is not getting at true job creation. business is create new jobs. one of the biggest challenges of any federal government initiative is getting to the end citizen and how that is in can participate in these programs. programs to provide these people with access to start up capital, grants, access to

cheaper this day, perhaps even using some fdic-owned real estate will create jobs. in conclusion, i am suggesting three specific actions that should be used to address the three areas of which i just spoke. one, a targeted investment aimed at new business creation, a comprehensive program breaking down the silos within government to support entrepreneurs to set up and establish new businesses. a new pipeline of businesses must be there in order to replace the continued product and efficiency. a program targeted at unemployment and the homeowner. we need to create a more flexible and flow with labour market. we need to be able to have people continuing to pay their mortgages so they are not trapped in their city when there is a job in another city. a target to address soft skills, these migrant populations. this is an opportunity to develop a training and

curriculum program to work force and assessment boards. all of these can introduce the likelihood of this migrant moving to other industries. manpower has been in the business of jobs and training business for over 60 years. we have seen the economic ups and downs. it is clear that this recession is by far the most severe in its downturn. it is a privilege to get some of the thoughts and feelings that we get on the ground and share them with the committee. partnership between government and industry is critical to move forward quickly. it is also critical that we get it right, and right means systemically so that we are not solving this 18 months from now again by and the employees of manpower are ready to -- 18 months from now again. i and the employees of men are ready to assist in whatever way we can. >> thank you for that testimony. our third and final witness is

kevin hassett, director of economic policy studies, a senior fellow at the american enterprise institute. his research areas include the u.s. economy tax policy and the stock market. he is a senior economist at the board of governors at the federal reserve system and a professor at the school -- the graduate school of columbia. he also served as a policy consultant to the treasury department during the presidency of george h. w. bush and the clinton administration. dr. hassett, thank you for being here. >> thank you for having me. it is an honor to be here in the room. have -- i have turned amarah -- my microphone. is it not working? the microphone is not working. >> no, it is working. i think if you will just pull it a bit closer. >> how about that? >> that is great. >> it is an honor to be here, especially before this committee, which you can see in

looking at my fellow panelists has a long tradition of inviting people here to give the unbiased truth and help people think about where we are and what we need to do. as you know, senator, my testimony was fairly long and after listening to my two predecessors, a lot of the things that they said are things that i grew so -- agree with explicitly in my testimony. i will go through the parts of my testimony that offer a slightly different or alternative perspectives and not emphasize the areas of agreement. i will begin with a brief overview of our current economic situation, discuss what i see as the most pressing challenges for employment and growth, and then describe policy changes that i think would address our current challenges, especially those in the u.s. labor market. the headline of my testimony is that it is absolutely clear that the recession is over, although that is not commonly discussed. but it is certainly accepted by most economists.

i think in the end, the trough of the recession will probably be sometime in july of last year. but even though the recession is over, as was the case in the previous two recessions, we have begun with something that looks a little bit like a jobless recovery. the labor market is improving far too slowly. although, it may have suddenly turned the corner lately. the fact is that we are coming out of what economists now call the great recession, but i think we need to amend that as we think about our policy changes because it was a great recession for whites, but has been a great depression for blacks. if you look at the differences across races and unemployment, for example, it is startling and disturbing and an urgent call for action. i think also, that apart -- the great depression for blacks is not over. we are starting to see some signs of improvement in labor

markets, but if you decompose the statistics and look at the different experience of whites and minorities, you find the minorities are trailing in a way that challenges policy makers. i think in looking at the economy, we are clearly out of the recession. and we have had a tremendous growth quarter, but that growth, a lot of it came from inventories and traditionally, inventories bikes are followed by weak quarters. they tend to be negatively correlated, which means there is a downside risk at the beginning of this year and ample room for caution. i think given that, and given the state of the labour market, we would be wrong not to think about additional measures to take. before i go on to the specific proposals that i would urgently encourage you to consider, i would like to talk a little bit about what we did last year because i think it is crucial to

not repeat what we did last year for reasons i go into in depth in my testimony. the cbo report this week provided estimates of the impact of the stimulus and they offered broad ranges in the report when estimating the economic effects which were intended to encompass most economists' views, and thereby, reflect the uncertainty in such estimates. most estimates were fairly favorable, giving ranges of above 1 million or 2 million jobs. my view is that the cbo report is incorrect and i make a these observations not to make political statements about what we did last year, but rather, to emphasize that is crucial that we look elsewhere now. why do i disagree with the cbo report? the cbo analysis relies in large scale on keynesian forecasting models that were mostly

discarded by the economics profession and a long time ago. the cbo analysis concludes that we got lots of jobs created and that the broad range of economists' views would support that. but i disagree. that is not my read of the literature. a sign of how far off their analysis is comes in their comparison to the broad range in comparison to the analysis na "wall street journal" article this week. it has tried to observe the economic data rather than assume, as is done in the keynesian model. the author is a virtual lock to win a nobel prize and his work has been followed by many others who have made similar findings. the key statement is that he estimates the government spending will declare for the stimulus in 2009 was about 0.4%,

pretty small, and the multiplier for your two would be about 0.6%, a bit bigger, but both of these estimates fall near the bottom of the range of cbo multipliers because the cbo chose to ignore the literature that relies on experience rather than keynesian speculation. i believe that the correct position for policymakers as we look ahead for what to do is to adopt skepticism concerning these effects and openness to different approaches. . .

i highlight the number of things in my testimony which i am going to have to give a helicopter view of, as i am running out of time. the first thing is that we should recognize that we have a serious opportunity if we get our house in order. uncertainty about feature policy and about the course of u.s. prices and the value of the dollar is certainly having a depressant effect on the u.s. economy. there have been many countries in the past that have been in circumstances similar to our own, and the literature suggests that those countries that get their house in order by having something like the bipartisan commission that was proposed in the senate recently to reduce the deficit in the long run -- they have seen even at near-term economic booms, in part because the uncertainty about future policy is removed. the first thing we think about

is not to a sharply cut back government spending in this year, but rather to recognize that we have an opportunity to move the uncertainty about future policies by getting our house in order in the long run. such fiscal consolidation would be beneficial policy going forward. it would give people a reason for confidence as they make plans about the future. the second policy that i emphasize in my testimony is something known as job sharing, which is a smart and clever idea that has been floating around for years, perfected by some european nations. i am running short. i will summarize it in this way. right now, we have unemployment insurance. if a firm lays a person off, they will have a reduction in their wages they have to pay and the person who is laid off will çóget someone unemployment

insurance. job sharing its fractional unemployment insurance. you could reduce a workers' hours and they would get a share of their unemployment insurance. in germany, they have had gdp decline similar to our own, and yet the unemployment rate has barely gone up. many analysts contributed to their job sharing program. i think it would be very cost- effective to adopt one now. it is important to note that it is not too late even in the first stages of a recovery. the fact is that each month 4 million jobs or so are created and destroyed. there is job creation out there, but there is still a lot of job destruction. if we can use job sharing to slow destruction even 10%, that migt add 400,000 to the net job numbers in the top line unemployment report. i go on to discuss the idea of creating jobs directly, which is not something i would naturally

choose to do if asked. but given the state of the labor market, we need to really be creative. the good news is that the new programs that we have seen that have tried to create jobs directly have done so in astonishingly cost-effective ways compared to things like the economic stimulus. for example, one jobs program, h r 48564 crated jobs at a cost of $10,000 to $20,000 a job, which is about one-tenth the cost of creating jobs to stimulus. -- of creating jobs through stimulus. it want to give people optimism, we can consolidate physically, but we also have to give businesses a break. the rest of the world has been reducing corporate taxes for years. the average in our trading

partners is about 10% below our current corporate tax rate. if you're a multinational firm deciding where to locate your activity, are you going to located where you have to pay 10 percent more of your profits in taxes, or are you going to choose another place? the literature is clear. if your corporate tax is far out of whack with the rest of the world, the revenue costs are extreme. you can reduce the rate without losing much revenue, if at all. i even have references listed in my testimony that suggest the cost of reducing the corporate tax rate might actually be nonexistent -- it might raise revenue because we are on the wrong side of the black for curve -- of the laffer curve. we do not have much revenue to give. the corporate tax area it is one that is harming our competitiveness and could be fixed without deep cost.

thank you for your attention, senator. that includes my prepared remarks. >> thank you for your excellent testimony. let me put an article on the record that relates to your testimony. it is entitled "stimulus arithmetic." it is by a professor at uc- berkeley. it discusses the analysis of the fiscal stimulus act and its effect on jobs. let me start with a few questions to you, dr. richard berner. i think your testimony is very useful, particularly in that you organize it in terms of the short-term and the long term. that is obviously the reality we

are faced with here in trying to make policy for the country in the weeks ahead and the months ahead. one big debate that i think i hear all of you taking a position on is we have got some in the senate who are taking the position that we should not be spending any more for unemployment insurance, any of these job creation initiatives, payroll tax holidays, these types of things, unless we offset that spending by cuts elsewhere or, presumably, by increased taxes. somehow or other we need to pay for any continuation of the job creation provisions that we have in law today, or the job

maintenance provisions that we have in law today. i guess i would be interested, if i am understanding your position, dr. berner -- your position would be that is not the right policy in the short term or in the long term. there is a distinction we need to keep in mind about what we do now versus what we do with regard to the long-term deficit and fiscal situation in the country. is that accurate or not? >> that is accurate. i think there are two things that are important. in the shortñi term, what we are all saying is we need to be smarter about the way we implement programs and the way we use taxpayer money to implement them. we are all interested in getting the maximum bang for the buck out of those programs. income support, for example, is important in a period of great stress for american families and workers. but as i suggested my testimony

it might better be paired with training or other things that would make it more productive. kevin and mr. -- kevin talked about how we could spend our money more effectively in short- term programs. here is where i joined dr. hasset. we need a credible plan to get our fiscal house in order. we have not seen it yet. i think markets would derive great benefit from that. not only would we reduce uncertainty, but i think that people would understand that while it is going to take some time, because we have difficult problems to solve and big challenges to address, a credible plan can resolve our fiscal problems over time. i think it would be enormously beneficial to markets and the economy. >> the deficit reduction

commission that the president is establishing is the right thing to be doing for the long term, and but continued support for job creation initiatives now is also the right thing to be doing. is that what i understand? >> it is, senator. it is the right thing to do as long as we do it in a way that is both creative and where we get the most bang for the buck. >> this suggestion that dr. hassett is making about work sharing, job sharing -- is that something you looked into, dr. berner? does that make sense as a policy issue we ought to explore or adopt? >> senator, i have not looked into that, but it doesn't count -- but it does sound like something we could explore. we should leave no stone unturned. the appeal of what he is talking about is that if you have people who have their our significantly

cut back, but there is a level of income support their for those people, that builds an automatic stabilizer into the system while at the same time we reduce our spending. we get into consumer saving in a precautionary way if there is a lot of uncertainty out there. that kind of support could be useful. i think we ought to also look at the other kinds of creative ways to both support demand and to get our economy going, to support job creation. >> mr. joerres, did you have any thoughts about the questions i have just posed here about what short-term policies make sense for us to consider here in congress? >> anytime you can get somebody back to work instead of sitting at home, it makes a big

difference, whether it be some form of job sharing or the industry that we are in. it makes an awful lot of difference. the longer you are unemployed, the more you get to a long-term unemployment situation. even if you group -- if you do comparisons between us and europe on the long-term unemployment rate, a lot of that has to do with getting people back to work fast enough. we could separate it this way. there are forms of safety net that must be employed now, because we are in a period where you have to have a safety net. but safety net programs do not necessarily create jobs. but if we look at this as a safety net and then creating jobs, we will have an s curve environment. there have to be some parallels in order to do that. this all cost money. we are going to have to make choices.

are we interested in troop system and job creation, which is new businesses filling in the slack of mature business is continuing to enhance efficiency? i have 5000 employees. i moved it to 4500. there has to be another business coming up employing 500 people, just to be the same. our pipeline of new businesses is not there. safety net services and short- term job creation or preservation, and then longer- term programs to pipeline new jobs. >> dr. hassett, maybe you can just comment on the general question that i opposed to dr. berner. as i understand your testimony, you said we have a near-term

opportunity to get our long-term house in order, and that is the deficit reduction commission. you believe that is a good step to address that problem. >> i am not sure about the deficit reduction commission, although i have a great deal of respect for the people who have been in charge of setting it up. the fact is, we have tough choices to make. as you know, senator, there have been many more failed commissions in the past than successful ones. i wish we were a little more ambitious in this regard. i would also highlight a charge -- a chart that looks at the u.s. debt situation and points out that we are pushing the envelope in terms of our debt. again, i am not here to point fingers at who is to blame, but it is something that started about a decade ago. we began running up big deficits. right now, our external debt

relative to gdp is worse than the external debt we saw for latin american companies that have defaulted over the last few decades. if you are to say the u.s. is like another latin american country, i would respond, "you wish." it would be a big improvement from where we are. that is the circumstance. we have to be wary of expanding things without figuring out how we are going to pay for them. we do not have to time them so they all happen this year. if you could find -- i know this is something that politicians often refer to that never really exists or happens -- lots of money we could save from reducing waste three years from now, or some program we are going to cancel, that the present value for that cancels out our jobs programs, then i think the panelists would all agree that would be a policy that would have a significantly better effect than one that just added to the uncertainty about how we're going to fix this mess.

but the good news -- in some sense, it is depressing to think about our fiscal situation, but i think there is a twist on it that one could think of as good news, in the sense that if you are a person like me who likes to watch medical mystery style television shows, if somebody shows up with a knife in them, you take the knife up, pull it out, and they are fine. if there is something wrong with somebody and you cannot tell what it is , that is bad news. we know there are knives in us. it is not a mystery. the question is how to navigate the political world, not what the problem is. >> your endorsement of direct job creation is interesting. we get into real is the logical discussion around here whenever we tried to appropriate money -- into real deal logicideologi

discussion around here whenever we tried to appropriate money for direct job creation. we will make tax provisions to send somebody else to create jobs instead of directly creating jobs. i understand you saying that direct job creation seems to be a more successful way to get jobs created at a reasonable cost. am i understanding you right? >> thank you for pointing that out, senator. i would add that the thought that started me in this direction -- if we had started the stimulus package by hiring people and paying them the median wage of $38,000, we would have created 21 million jobs. with the higher cbo job, it is climbing to something like 23

million. i am not saying that is something we want to do, but it puts into question what the multiplier is. creating jobs directly is more effective than a public works program that creates jobs. the idea that creating jobs directly means big government is incorrect. i think that one could easily envision a program that i would probably want my colleague to the right of me to design, where we arrange for firms to hire someone who is unemployed, to give a fraction of the salary for the first few months of that person in terms of wage sharing or some kind of contribution. if you did that, firms would have access to cheaper labor, so their profits would go up. we would get someone back into the labor force before they are lost forever. as my colleague mentioned, if people stay out of the work force for a year or two, they often have a hard time

returning. we have to send a lifeline to these folks. given these concerns, especially if it focused on private job creation, it seems that people of both parties should agree that it is a much more cost- effective way to create jobs and many of the other things on the table. >> dr. berner, i would be interested on your comment about this proposal about reducing corporate tax rates, indicating we are at a competitive disadvantage because of the top marginal corporate tax rate here being so much higher than it is in many oecd countries. my impression is that while the tax rate is higher the effective taxes paid by corporations are not out of line for corporations operating here verses corporations operating in europe.

am i wrong about that? do you have thoughts about this? >> i have not looked into that comparison, but i think your intuition is probably correct. many of our largest corporations are global. when i think about the tax liability and how they structure it -- in my testimony identified something else on a cross- country comparison basis that i think is important. that is the role of health care in the workplace. i think that is one area where we are out of line with other countries, even though those benefits are a tax deduction. nonetheless, the represent a fixed cost that, when hours are reduced, still persist. they put our cost structure -- our composition -- our compensation cost structure out

of line with those of other countries. how we deal with health care and health care benefit provision would make us more competitive. i think that is a really important issue. >> let me throw out a radical view of things. if -- sort of three of our problems -- one is strucshort-tm job creation. a second is eliminating uncertainty for the long term. third is getting our fiscal house in order for the long term. if those are three big challenges, it would seem to me that major reform of our health- care system accomplishes all three, or hold out promise for progress on all three because it holds out promise for job creation in the near-term. there are direct jobs being created in the proposals we have been talking about.

one of the uncertainties i think you referred to in your testimony, dr. berner, that businesses look at is the uncertainty about what is going to happen with health care reform. and then cbo and most economists are in agreement that, over the long term, if we cannot reduce the growth in the cost of health care, we cannot get this debt problem fixed. we cannot get our fiscal house in order. so it would seem that doing something significant on health care ought to be a priority, as it has been for the president. do you agree with that? >> i do strongly agree with that. the three things that are important in health care are cost, access, and quality. many people view them as in conflict with each other. i actually think that if we do it right then we can actually

achieve a lot of those objectives, and the objectives you just mentioned -- namely reduce the cost of health care for businesses and for consumers, improve the quality, increase the access. and because that is such a big part of our fiscal problems going forward, and it is only growing under current law, that fixing that is imperative to get our fiscal house in order. >> joerres, do you have a perspective on whether this is an important policy initiative for us to try to deal with or whether we can put this off and deal with it down the road? what is your thought? >> because of the complexity, it is difficult to put off down the road. having said that, we have over 200,000 clients, many of them small and medium businesses that say they are not hiring a person until they find out what that

cost of that health care is. >> of the health care costs associated with that hiring? >> right. so right now, those businesses are not going to make a move until they absolutely have to. they can do the math. when you take 10 people to 12, it is too much money for them. they are holding out and stopping. what we need to address it. this process of addressing such a complicated issue during a period of time when you want hiring is creating a stumbling block. after something is passed, it will still require some time of digestion. shifting it down to the additional burden cost over pay is going to take a while. it needs to be addressed for the long-term health. portability of jobs, and so forth -- health-care allows for

a lot of that. the more we allow for that, the more vibrant our economy will be. but we are in a time when we are vapor lock in small businesses, and they are saying, "i am not moving unless i have to." i think that has become the biggest issue right now. >> if i could add -- he has pointed out something important. lots of americans are staying in their jobs essentially to keep their health care benefits. that frustrates the mobility we have in our work force, the dynamism of our economy. i think that when you make policy, you have to consider that that is going to be an important benefit to health care reform -- that it is going to make our work force and labor markets much more efficient and dynamic, and free labor mobility. >> there are some very good examples of that. if you were to study what happens in singapore, with portability of health care and

the portability of your pension scheme, it allows a high velocity that is required in a smaller environment. even in this larger environment, palin needs to move quickly, but without the portability of pension schemes and health care, you are shortening the ability to create a robust economic and job creation environment. >> dr. hassett, did you have a perspective? >> thank you. i understand that the political clock and the economic clock are sometimes in harmony and sometimes are not. i understand why health care was addressed this year, but i agree that it was probably the wrong time and that health care is probably best folded into the consolidation -- we need to build a program of fiscal consolidation, and it will not work without addressing health care. many of the facts are long-term objectives. those facts are unassailable. i would like to make one last

aside about corporate tax issues. you are correct that if we look at corporate taxes in the u.s. that the actual number -- the average tax the firm will pay is not the highest on earth. it is the corporate tax rate that is. it is because of this laffer curve in the data. these companies move their profits into low tax environments. the move their profits around to reduce their global tax rate. that includes moving things out of the u.s.. if we lower our rate, we will not lose revenue. we lost it already. it is going to somebody else. there is a way to make us a better place to do business with a lower corporate tax. i think we would be wrong to ignore it. >> 85% of our business outside of the u.s. is going to 90%.

$20 billion of our company, $2 billion is in the united states. our largest competitors are a swiss-based company and a dutch based company. in our current environment we have a $120 million deficit disadvantage because of taxation between those two. that means i have to do a hundred $20 million more of productivity in order to maintain competition with european companies. none of those jobs have been off short. i am growing markets in china, vietnam, and others. when i look at minimizing the effective tax rate, it can be done much more effectively in the manufacturing in parliament through the use of transfer pricing. that is not done in the services industry. it is a very serious issue. >> right. i am informed that chair maloney

is on her way back, will be here in about 15 minutes, and would like us to recess for a short period. then she would like to ask some questions. if you have the time on your schedule, we would put the committee in recess at this point. she will reconvene the committee. thank you all very much for being here. i think this is all very useful testimony. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

>> it is called back into order. i regret and apologize that we had hearings right in the middle of it. i will be looking at the tapes of this and hearing your testimony. mr. brady is on his way back and will be here in a moment. i would like to ask the witness is something i always ask at the monthly hearings of the bureau

of labor statistics. do you see any bright spots for job growth in our economy? anybody who would like to give any positive news about job growth in our economy? >> i think i can do that. as you mentioned earlier in some of your remarks, there is a very traditional flow of what happens in the economy. when there is some uncertainty of demand, we are the ones who come back first. the amount of people we are adding on a weekly basis, and the additional people that are out on assignment, says this is clearly a recovery. the majority of jobs are in manufacturing, spread across the entire u.s. we have not seen a growth rate like this since 1993. yes, it is happening. we, like you, have questions about whether it is sustainable. i would say right now our field of 800 offices in the u.s. are

feeling like it might be over. we are on our way. >> could you tell us some of the things we could do for people who have been unemployed or underemployed for a long time? >> if it is something we have worked on. we have programs for the underemployed and the unemployed. we spend a lot of time on training and development to put them in jobs. what we have found is that worker readiness is becoming more and more of a difficult issue for the longer and long- term unemployed. >> that is important. 40% of the unemployed have been unemployed for over a year, and their skills are deteriorating. this is a problem. do you have ideas for programs to put in place to reduce the long-term unemployed? "programs, unfortunately, the we have seen -- that we have seen

-- they work, but they take a long time. get them back into training. training that is tied to a job, not training for training's sake. we work closely at a community level with a workplace investment board to say where are the people and try to do training -- and try to do surgical updates to get people into a job quickly. >> would anybody else like to talk about the green shoots they see in the economy now? >> i think we are starting to see some advance indicators. we do, actually, a survey of all our industry analysts where i work. hiring plans, and i think this echoes what mr. jorres was saying -- hiring plans are back up to where they were before the recession. those are plants that have not

yet matured into action. i think the discrepancy between the plans and the action has something to do with the uncertainty that we all referred to in our testimony. coming to the issue that you raise about the long-term unemployed -- in both of our prepared remarks, mr. joerres and i referred to training. the history of training programs is, to some extent, a checkered one. the importance of training cannot be denied -- the importance of education. there is a short-term and long- term component. in the short term, i propose that repair the unemployed who are getting income support which is very much needed with a pool of unemployed, for example college students or teachers who have been laid off, and get them together in a training program that can give people basic job skills. in that way, you are giving

people important things to do while they are looking for a job. i think we all agree that when you have long spells of joblessness that erodes the chances you are going to get a new job. it erodes your skills and it arose your ability to find a new job. all of those things are important. >> do you see any bright spots? >> i think that first of all an interesting chart -- we always follow up hearings with those. this chart shows the geographic distribution of the recovery. there are some states that are starting to look pretty solid again and others that are still in deep trouble. when correlation that i have seen in some of the work i have done is that the states that had the real-estate market that you read the most about are the places that are still going in the wrong direction, and maybe are not even seeing a recovery yet.

>> where are we seeing recovery? which regions? >> i wish i had the chart with me, because it has been about a month. texas seemed to be doing pretty well. the other thing i would say that is a bright spots and the op opportunity that makes me psyched about job sharing -- there is always construction going on. that number in the labor report is often one-tenth or one 20th of the actual growth flow of that month. in november, there were 4 million jobs created a 4 million destroyed, so destruction is still winning. in our economy, there is always creation and destruction going on. we need to create the circumstances were the creation can overcome the destruction. >> my time is expired. mr. brady. >> thank you, madam chairman for calling this hearing.

i just got back from the to spitting in uneconomic council conference. a lot of people are interested these days. i think the corporate tax rate in the u.s. does put us at a competitive disadvantage. internationally, proposals to raise a hundred $20 billion more on top of our companies that are trying -- to raise $120 billion more on top of our companies that are trying to create american jobs -- it seems to me the economic models on the stimulus are outdated. they seem to be $1 in of government spending generates this much, but back home, you look at small businesses. their behavior is modified

because they know increased spending leads to new debt and new taxes. the business community looks at cap and trade, health care mandates, spending taxes, international tax provisions -- they are frightened by it. one of them said it is tough enough to predict the markets. trying to predict the market and you guys -- they are holding their money. that is affecting those older economic models. my question to you is -- thinking about the study examining the forecast of senator romer and others -- were using keynesian forecasting models instead of dealing with those rational expectations of businesses, consumers, and others. do you think, looking at cbo, who does a terrific job at things -- based on your

extensive knowledge of macroeconomics, were the cbo multipliers to hide? where their estimates of the stimulus impact perhaps a little larger than you see. >> thank you, mr. brady. i am a big fan of the cbo, and especially a fan of its current director, who i think has gone back to exactly what we expect from directors. the infrastructure that has been built up to analyze these things has been there since day one. too often, in washington, truth proceeds by induction. something is true today if it was true yesterday. if we adopt the model of the 1970's, it is very unlikely that a government agency will stop using the same model. the fact is that the literature has moved on. one metric -- i was trying to think of the most different way i could describe this. the place where these big, large macro models were pushed

the furthest was the university of pennsylvania. larry klein got a nobel prize. a mentor of mine designed the federal reserve on a large keynesian macro model. those were designed in the '70s. i started graduate school in the '80s. at the university of pennsylvania, the models had already been rejected by the literature. and yet these are the models that are creating the sound bites. that does not mean that we think it hurt growth last year, or that we know precisely that the stimulus was a failure and made things wose. it does mean we should have a great deal of skepticism that we know what the right thing to do is. going forward, we have seen the success of some programs i highlight in my testimony. we should trust evidence more than models and the skeptical about what the model say, especially when the model

predictions are so at odds with what we see in the literature. >> my gut feel is that the economy has changed, but those models are not as reflective. stimulus is almost always arrive after the recession has peaked and is slow. i think today that we downplay the economic boost from lowering the after-tax cost of capital on a permanent basis, where businesses can count on that rate of return and the ability to invest. your thoughts? >> i think you are right, mr. brady. the way i like to think about it is not that the stimulus, again, made the economy worse last year. there is no question that growth was higher last year because of the stimulus. the question is how much. as we see, when we consider the jobs measures that i mentioned

in the testimony could have created jobs for 0.1 the cost of the stimulus, and that we spent a lot of money but did not repair broken policies like the corporate tax that could make people optimistic in the long run, i view it as a squandered opportunity. >> thank you. doctor unbowed bernerbernger,ere with him? >> as someone who modeled the forecasting at the federal reserve, i would like to point out that we were constantly changing our methodology and constantly adapting it to reflect new considerations -- structural change in the economy, globalization, and a number of other things. the models that we use -- and we do not rely exclusively on models, because i am old enough to use judgment and experience

as my key model. but the models that we use explicitly incorporate the role of pacs dictations -- the role of expectations, whether in financial models or the type of uncertainty that reflect business decision so importantly. i think that that is really important in thinking about how to use those models. quite frankly, i think that is something people have looked at. >> can you tell me, in your opinion -- and i am asking all of you this question -- the number one thing that can be done to stimulate job creation in the short run? can you give the number one thing you think we could do? of course it is a combination of things, but if you had one thing, what would it be? >> jeffrey joerres talked about

the role of small business, and new business is what we really mean by small business. when we think about what their main problems are, small businesses are telling us in surveys that their problems are poor sales, access to credit, and the cost of employee health care. so we need to continue to use policies that improve the functioning of our financial system, that get people access to credit on reasonable terms. we need to address, in the short run and overtime, the cost of health care, and reduce the uncertainty around that. and we need to have policies that will continue our ability to access global markets, because that is the key source of growth that i indicate in my testimony -- exports and the access to global markets. jeffrey joerre>> i would like t.

right now, we are in a critical spot. i do not want to underestimate what we need to do as a safety net to stop some things happening now. that is not job creation. that is stopping the slide. i think we need to do that. i have spoken before -- >> how do we stop the slide? >> we stop the slide by giving additional visibility to what will be coming and not coming. we have limited opportunities to do that. it is difficult to say that we have long-term and short-term objectives. it comes down to confidence. hiring is a confidence in demand. those two combined. we are starting to see the demand. does the demand start to level off? we do not know that. but i can feel very confident in saying the demand may not level off as much after there is a certain amount of inventory

replenishment if we give them confidence that we are not going to give them any more -- any type of thing that is going to get in the way of them expanding their business. small business must create jobs to back up the efficiency that will be driven out of the job deterioration in large businesses. >> dr. hassett? >> i hate to waffle and sate two thanks. i think reducing the corporate rate is urgent if we want to create the context that is necessary for long-term growth to really ignite. i think if we were to adopt a job sharing proposal, we could see a response from it right away. the reduction of the corporate rate would have benefits that would be spread out over many years. a job sharing proposal would stop job destruction almost immediately if there were generous, and you would see an increase labor markets in the months after that as well. >> is that uncertainty among

your client's real -- clients real? do businesses look at -- our tax credits. our small businesses are not responding to that. is that uncertainty an issue with your clients in their hiring practice -- in their ability to rehire, hire new, or buy that new warehouse and make expansion? >> it is the number-one discussion we have with our small clients, the amount of uncertainty. their business is growing. when business is growing at a place where uncertainty is overcome by demand, they will do that. as demand is somewhat tepid, the uncertainty is driving for them. they are looking at tax rate -- the additional burden on top of an additional person. i cannot emphasize enough that in our organization of 30,000 people, 5% 10 more people -- the

math works out. if i have 10 people and am adding an additional person, i do not know if the additional staff are going to have an increased burden of cost to pay. that slows it down. >> looking at job opportunities, a lot of the world's customers live outside the united states because other areas are recovering faster than us. it is important not just to buy american, but to sell american throughout every corner of the world. sometimes we can do it with a company from here. other times, they have to have a presence overseas. today, there is almost an attitude of benedick arnold. if you are large and are out there competing -- a company that expands into another state, we say "way to go."

if a company expands into another country, it is viewed as a bad act. every study shows those jobs create stronger companies here -- research jobs, development. a company that has 40 people on site in algeria has 400 here, monitoring. should we be encouraging instead of discouraging companies who are finding new customers in every quarter? is it outsourcing of jobs or is it looking at opportunities to sell more of our products and services? >> all of these have some complications. it would be easiest for me to talk about my specific situation. we are headquartered in milwaukee. we are 62 years old. each of our three ceos has been

born in milwaukee. a 90% of our business is outside the u.s.. in six to seven years from now, it will be 96% to 97% of our business. the chinese business is growing fast. none of this is outsourcing. we're putting thousands of people into jobs in china, the middle east, abu dhabi. in the process of growing our business from a $10 billion business to a $22 business, which built a building in downtown milwaukee that employs 1200 people. the mayor of the city was in favor. we have reenergize a part of downtown. we could not have done that without our expansion overseas. our two largest competitors are foreign companies. their tax rates are anywhere between 8% and 15% lower than ours, which puts us at a disadvantage annually of hundred

$2,120 million annually -- a disadvantage a newly of $120 million against our competitors. >> that is a great story. we need more of you. >> that is an amazing story. congratulations on your success. dr. richard berner., greece and its financial problems -- we are all concerned. i'm concerned about the potential impact to the united states if greece and up defaulting on its debt. i know that you have previously reported that the impact to the u.s. of slow growth in the european union is relatively small.

i believe you said that one percentage point reduction in growth in europe would shape only 0.2 percentage points in u.s. growth, but that you were worried about financial contagion. can you speak about the crisis in the european union and greece and financial contagion? >> yes, i can, congresswoman. briefly, the big problem is that you have the potential for what is happening in greece to spill over to other countries on the periphery of europe, portugal and spain for example. it is important for greece to be able to refinance its debt over a long period of time because they have a huge fiscal problem. they are having difficulty rolling over that debt on terms they can afford. they're just postponed an auction of tenure debt this week, as you have heard, so they

can cool off and get better terms on that debt. one way or another, they are likely to get assistance from their other partners in the european union. that assistance will come with strings attached, of course, because the other members of the european union do not want to pay for the mistakes that greece made . one way or another, that assistance is going to have to come. they are paying together. that is a real problem that the europeans have. it is because of the fiscal consolidation, because of the increased cost of financing the debt which will spend -- which will spill over into the core of europe. the increased cost in funding for european banks -- all of that is going to slow down the european economy. we have been very pessimistic about europe to begin with.

these developments make us more pessimistic about the prospects for europe. we talked earlier about coming up with credible plans to fix fiscal problems. it is also important here. if greece and the european union can fix these problems that are prevalent at the periphery of europe, and do them in a way that we instill confidence in investors, bringing down the cost of debt for greece, for its people, for the banks in europe, that is going to reinvigorate the greek economy and the european economy. the key is to come up with a credible plan to do that. as we think about your question -- as we think about the potential for this contagion to spill over into other economies, the point is that people are drawing parallels now between what is happening in greece. they are saying, "where is the next greece?"

it is like the financial crisis, people saying, "where is the next bear stearns?" while there are many differences between what is happening in greece and in europe and what is happening in the united states, there are some parallels. i think the thread that draws them together is that lawmakers around the world need to think about how they are going to deal with fiscal problems and to articulate how they are going to come up with a game plan to do that in a way that we instill confidence among investors. >> can you tell whether the impact of the reduction in the export sector would be spread across the u.s., or whether some regions will be particularly susceptible to any reduction in exports to europe or greece? in particular, i am concerned

about the greek american community and represent -- community i represent. i am worried they may bear a disproportionate share of this burden. >> i have not done the work on that, so i would be pleased to get back to you if i can uncover -- if i can uncover the answer of that question. >> can you talk about the potential impact on new york if the contagion spread to the u.s.? >> i will do my best to get back to you. >> lastly, you mentioned that your growth -- since 92, 96% in foreign markets. do you have offices in greece? >> yes we do. >> can you tell us what is going on -- on the ground information on employment with your company and its employees? >> hour operation in greece is

feeling the effect on this. things have ground to a halt. companies are very concerned about what may be happening. i can also say that in markets like france, italy, germany, the netherlands, and the belgian market, they are not feeling it at all. we are still seeing improved trends. conversations are what might merkel and others do. we think the numbers will have more of an effect further down than what they have now. our gris operation -- they are very idle right now. >> dr. berner, exports are one result of successfully selling american products and services throughout the world. as you point out, one out of five manufacturing jobs is tied to that.

when service companies like mr. joerres' have a surplus they sell overseas, it has huge economic impact. we are looking at three pending trade agreements with colombia, panama, and south korea. we are seeing other countries ahead of us -- canada, the eu. that would put us at another competitive disadvantage. do you support those trade agreements, opening those markets for u.s. service and production companies? >> did you for your question. i support, in general, the idea that we should have free and open trade, and also the idea that it has to work both ways. when we open our markets to companies in other countries, and to other countries. we want to make sure that we have access to their markets. we want intellectual property

agreements that make sure we have a level playing field, to the extent that is possible, in which our companies can compete. and so it does work both ways. >> we are such an open economy in the united states. panama and colombia have 1-way trade. we have obstacles from we try to have two-way trade. in every other case, it has worked beautifully for us. we have doubled or tripled our exports. we turned a trade deficit into a trade surplus. we even have a manufacturing surplus with our nafta countries. unrelated to exports, but related to your view of going forward -- i noticed in your testimony -- your gdp growth percentages are higher than the blue-chip this year, but lower

next year, and much lower next year than what the white house forecasts. i know there is always a rage. is there a reason why you see significantly lower growth than blue-chip? >> yes, there is a reason. to make it explicit -- up until very recently, we have been assuming that the bush tax cuts would probably sunset as scheduled on january 1, 2011. if that is not the case, and some of those tax cuts are extended, we would see somewhat faster growth in our forecast. . .

so coming up with the plan, if it is credible, with making material difference to the outcome here >> can go back to why the tax cuts are before

america? i am kidding. with consumer demand, it is hard to know what families are thinking about. they are worried about their jobs and a lot of things. it may be intangible from an economic standpoint, the dead and the spending is the number- one concern for consumers. does that way on the decisions that a family makes in purchasing a new tv set or making an economic decision? >> there is a great deal of scholarship that goes back to milton friedman's basic observation about temporary tax cuts that do not really have an effect because people know that there will have to pay for them in the future with higher taxes. so they're sort of skeptical about that. if you take a dollar from them next year and you give it to

them this year, they do not feel better off. if they think they're better off, they will regret it next year when they get the tax. if you look at the numbers of future taxes associated with things like the stimulus, they are really mind-boggling. if we divide the stimulus among all taxpayers, then the cost of the stimulus last year is about $8,000 per taxpayer. but about half the taxpayers do not pay taxes. but if you are someone who does pay taxes, if you have a positive number on your tax return when you mail it to the irs, your number is about to be double that. if we raise the money for the

stimulus, aboard -- according to the distribution of the income tax that we now observe, for people within, of two hundred thousand dollars or $500,000 range where small businesses that have more money, their bill for the stimulus is enormous. for someone with an income between $300,000.500000 dollars, the stimulus cost will be -- between $300,000 and $500,000, the stimulus cost will be $41,000. one reason why we see a spike in the savings rate is the expectation of future taxes. some of them is that people thought it was picked in the cake. >> so people may not know the

amount they will owe, but they do know that some of them will pay. >> they know that their taxes will go up and they are consuming accordingly. >> thank you. >> i would like dr. hazmat and dr. bernard to react to -- dr. have sessett and dr. berner to t to a letter from one of my constituents. to take the unemployment and tie it to job training and tie it to job hiring, give it to a business that will hire the unemployed and have it to run through that business. can you comment on this idea or any new ideas you have on how we can help just developed in our country. >> as i indicated in my

testimony, that is one of the fourth things that i thought would be very helpful, specifically, if we look at training programs, we all agree that education and training and training job skills are extremely important. if you compare training with the income support which we all agree is so necessary to the health of american workers and families at this time, that is going to give them the skills they need to go out and look for jobs and perform those jobs when they are available. we have a skills mismatch in america that is profound. i just read in the other night, for example, that microsoft to build a development facility in british columbia because it could not find the skilled workers that they needed in the united states at the right price. they ran out of room under their

h1b the subprogram -- h1b visa program. it would also help to look at newly minted college students, retirees, people who have experience and skills who can train others in digibasic job ss and link them up to a partnership that could help to acquire the skills. >> we have a fair amount of experience. many work with several wibs across the united states and in other countries. when there is a disconnect between the job training program and finding the job, it is much less efficient. when those are two different organizations, your training for

government dollars, if i could be sold, in other words, giving $15 for a person presenresume. when you can connect the ability to find corporations that almost sponsor or take on the individual as they are going through the training program, the efficacy of that person making it through the program is dramatically improved. many times you do not need a resume. they can just get the job. when we put the training programs, we also have to say that you have to have an eye on who these companies are that will go there. i am sure you have heard many times that the companies are saying that you're not giving me the skills i need. you not -- you are not doing this. we need people who can get in the game could get in the game and tell us and bring these people all the way through. we need a connection between job training and job placement, as

opposed to a handoff. that hanna is a very dangerous and dr. >> -- that handoff is a very dangerous handoff. >> we were discussing a related point. the unemployment insurance program is designed for the old fashion economy where people took a break in august and got laid off. now we have an economy that requires moving between jobs a lot of times. search costs are really high. that is an important factor for firms. it is urgent that we redefine the unemployment insurance program where we can have job sharing within the unemployment program.

it seems like most are mutations. >> i have anecdotal evidence that is compelling we have about 2500 accountants in one of our organizations that we own. there are people who have been unemployed in the finance industry. we have been able to find them jobs, put them in jobs that would be contract jobs. in other words, they might work three jobs -- three months. they refuse those jobs because their unemployment compensation goes away and they are not sure what will go away. in fact, 70% of all the people we put on assignment get hired with the company that we place them with. the individual is put in this poor position of either sitting at home all working on job board and getting paid or possibly improving their skills. it is almost like a job sharing

the environment. it is a way of splitting the unemployment dollars where they may be paid less, but getting work experience and getting hired. >> there are two spikes in reemployment for workers. there's one in the beginning and one near the end. it is exactly because of that. once you are in, if you go for that job, you give up a big part of the unemployment insurance that is costly. people are very cautious about the jobs they except. >> thank you. my time is expired. >> there have been passed proposals on job training. there is a lump-sum for workers were they can continue training. they were not penalized for what they were given. even part-time jobs, as long as

they had continuing education and skill building, we need to be innovative like that. in a time when business investment is scarce, why are not we repatriationg a lot of their foreign investments to the u.s.? it is because of our tax code. our tax code -- we propose to lower a minimum of 5%. let the investment flow back to the u.s. $300 billion came through that year. today, it is regenerated. we have $600 billion to $800 billion processed outside of the united states that is too expensive to bring back. why are we not lowering the gate again to bring back that kind of investment? it is the size of the stimulus

outside of the u.s. trying to find a home, right now finding a home in another country. i know the government cannot and directed an investment. it has to go straight into the marketplace and decisions of that benefit companies and full fully the workers. but do any of you have any -- and hopefully the workers. but do any of you have any ideas on why we are not bringing back those investments? >> i can speak purely from a mathematical view. our largest operation in the world as france, where we use $7 billion to $8 billion a year. we have never repatriated that cash because it was a pure cfo operation. the late time we use that cash is to buy assets in the same denomination, euro-denominated. two weeks ago, we bought a

company in houston for $431 million. it was a very good i.t. contract staffing company. we decided to pay it had cash and half stock. we did that because we cannot get the cash back from france. this is just pure math. this is not just about the tax code. when we look at a transaction like this, when we look at it from the efficacy of the dollars and the return to the shareholders. >> many believe that the reason that this mess is happening is because our tax policy is out of whack. our corporate tax rate is so high that people have to locate their profits overseas in order to compete. so the problem i have in this proposal, and it is not that i would, and combat, is that it has two problems. one is that it is sad on the wound. what we really need to do -- it

is salve on the wound. the temporary holiday creates uncertainty about when the next time will be that they have one of these. islamic people repatriate in the interim. >> -- it will not make people repatriate in the interim paren. rather than focus on the gate, i would focus on reducing the corporate tax. >> thank you. one effort where we do have bipartisan efforts is our efforts to cut the debt. currently, about $12 trillion, about 85% of annual gdp. where do we come para next to other countries? -- where do we compare next to other countries?

>> congresswoman, i don't have the statistics in front of me. what is important is that our debt is growing rapidly. as you know, at the end of fiscal 2008, the debt held by the public, you referred to the growth that statistics, the debt held by the public is about $2 trillion. here we are in 2010. by the end of this fiscal year, it will be 61% of gdp. it is rising rapidly, obviously, because of the recession. we're just on the cost, as you know, of seeing a major increase in our deficit, whether you look at the cbo forecast or adjustments for realistic consumption.

our guess is that, in the next 10 years, we will see the debt held by the public at 87% of gdp. there is no magic threshold in my view. investors start to question the fiscal sustainability of your policy. personally, i think they are already starting to question that. we have not seen it in the interest rates. they are low. and they are low because other countries are, in many cases, in worse shape. so they look to us. we want to maintain that status. we have to think seriously about

making the tough choices for our fiscal health. >> in making those tough tricks is, how much can we reduce the deficit by -- in making those tough decisions, how much can we reduce the deficit by cutting discretionary spending? how much of government spending is really discretionary and how much is mandatory, such as health care? >> or the next 10 years, if we take medicare, medicaid, and social security, they will account for 50% of the budget. it is assumed that state and local governments will get back on their feet and pay their fair share of medicaid. if they do not, the federal government will be asked to take up an incredible share of that. that is the fastest-growing

health care plan that we have. so that percentage will likely rise even further. >> on that note, state and local governments are facing enormous budget shortfalls. we have had states come to the federal government and ask for a bailout. at the same time, the swelling ranks of the unemployed are putting further pressures on the budget. i would like to hear your ideas about to problems, the short run problem in the state and local governments and the potential impact on employment and how do we deal with the long run problem of these budget problems in the states? as you said, as medicaid cannot be assumed by the states, a tremendous problem going forward water your comments on

these two points? >> from a better perspective, we have a system that is not working medicaid is one of the key issues in that system. we all know that, when we go into a recession, particularly the deepest recession we have had in 40 years, medicaid grows dramatically pared that puts the burden on states that they cannot pay. in my state, your state, the state of new york, for example, 50% shared. in mississippi, it is only 2% at the state level. efforts to offset medicaid have been short run with that making cuts. in the longer run, part of health care reform, it seems to me, has to involve fixing the

way that we share medicaid and the way that the medicaid program is designed. at the state and local level, we have enormous fiscal problems that need to be addressed. the governance there at the state and local level varies state-by-state. there are 50 different kinds of problems in 50 different states and thousands of problems in local governments as well. ultimately, tough choices will have to be made there. like it or not, we have been making promises for health care for pension benefits and other promises that have not been found in and they cannot be kept. we're going to have to make a lot of choices. >> i could listen to this panel all day long. all of you have been inspiring

and insightful. you have given us a great deal to think about. but i am told that it is impossible to get back to new york. the airplanes are not running. if we do not watch out, the trains will not be running. we will have to call an end to this. i hope you'll come back to testify again. you have given the tremendous session today. the truth is we will have a slow, long time to get out of where we need to go in terms of creating jobs in this economy. but we are beginning to see glimmers of opportunity and certain strategies in certain sectors. this will help on an upward trend toward future growth. my goal is to work with my colleagues in a bipartisan way to develop and enact policies that will create jobs immediately and in the long term that ensure we are getting the most value for our dollars and

help our economy move permanently in the right direction. i want to thank all of you for the tremendous work to do in your lives. we really appreciate your time here today. thank you very, very much. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you for being here. >> i come from latin america.

i was never expecting to find this kind of poverty in the u.s. >> a different side of the nation's capital. in the shadow power, sunday, on c-span's q&a. >> he is best known for his novel "animal farm" and "94." this week -- "1984." this week, a discussion on the george orwell.

>> i want to thank the members of my staff who work here. people look at the mission statements and wonder who wrote that? i do not know who wrote this one, but it says pretty well what the national institutes of health is. the pursuit of fundamental

knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to extend a healthy life and reduce the burden of illness and disability. there are two parts to that, the fundamental basic science and the applications. we are very serious about both of those and find ourselves in very exciting times right now. i hope you have seen a brochure that was distributed. if not, this is what it looks like. there are some copies outside, too. this is a new description of what nih does. let me mention a few of the things in this brochure as far as ways that my local -- ways that biomedical research in the world has made differences in human health. if you look at longevity, for instance, over the last 20 years or 30 years, the average life

span has been increasing by about one year every six years. that is pretty impressive. if we got to one year everyone here, we would all live forever. [laughter] but we are not quite there yet. we are worried about the epidemic of obesity, that that might find out and go the other way. but if you look at the statistics so far, the evidence that our medical research is leading to low -- to longer lives is compelling. you can reach a direct line to those observations. similarly with a disability -- if you go back 30 years, 26% of individuals over 65 were disabled for some major life function. that is down to 20%. this is done at a pretty amazing cost in terms of the investment and the return on that investment. take heart disease, for

instance. deaths have fallen by 60%. that has been at the investment of about $4 per american per year in biomedical research. that is the cost of a latte. that is a pretty good deal. [laughter] in fact, you can make some of those arguments about investments in cancer and diabetes and so on. you can see results in terms of the kinds of advances made. in the last few months, we have seen two major figures in past administrations with heart problems, president clinton and vice president cheney. both of those afflicted with circumstances that, in the past, would add a minimum lead to a hospitalization of many weeks and may not have been survivable. we almost take that for granted.

all that comes out of nih research. look at hiv/aids. when i was starting out as assistant professor, the average life span for somebody after a diagnosis of having hiv aids was about 15 months. today, for someone who is 20 years old and turns up hiv- positive for the first time, the life expectancy for that person, because of anti-retro viral madison, is about 75 years. obviously, we need to go further with that and come up with better means of prevention with vaccines and other approaches. it is amazing to contemplate how much we have gone with a disease that was such a death sentence only 20 years ago.