Transcripts For CSPAN Politics Public Policy Today 20120911

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captions performed by national captioning institute] >> every suicide is a tragedy. while we may not be able to stop all of them, we want to try. they have asked us for resources that will help us feel more connected and receive greater support. technology, our ability to communicate over vast distances is -- can give us a unique opportunity to quickly reach anyone at risk or already in distress. if we enable enable people to speak up as soon as they see friends or family members in distress, then i think we are making a good impact. now i would like to introduce our next speaker, hayward donvan. she's a c.e.o. taking a leadership role to raise awareness about suicide prevention among other business leaders. one way she did this is by producing a video that's on the action alliance's web site. [applause] >> good morning, i guess. thank you to all of you who are up here with me. this is a very august group, and it is a privilege to be part of this great launch and this great program. value options is a health improvement company. what we do is we specialize in helping 32 million americans achieve emotional and mental well being and recovery. and it is difficult to find anybody today that is not impacted by mental illness or suicide. like the senator, i too have been impacted by this personally. i have a sister who has suffered from severe depression and has struggled on and off over the years with suicidal thoughts and in fact several attempts. we have been very fortunate that we have had the ability to learn how to handle this in a way that has caused us to actually be able to help my sister prevent suicide over the past few years. it has been -- if you have ever been to this, it is a pretty desperate feeling, desperate times. my family, and in particular, my parents have had terrible times with this. but with great support and with a lot of help from professionals and friends and they're pifts and -- therapyists and my own colleagues at work, we have been able to achieve helping her to the point where she has built-in resilience. she is able to live with, i believe, mental illness and suicidal thoughts. this is very important to me. i joined action alliance two years ago. to me it is personal, not just a mission. i realize the difficulties of mental illness and suicide. although it is not always tied to mental illness, that is a big factor in all of this. while we at value options serve a broad divergence of populations, we serve the military and are froud proud to do so, and we are very close to everything that you all talked about today. we also serve the lower income medicaid recipients, and then large fortune 500 corporations. so everything from a suicidal soldier to a depressed corporate executive, to a low-income skizophrenic. but today my focus is really to talk about corporations. what we are focusing on with corporate america is how to leverage the power of the workplace to create a culture of well being. and many of us -- in fact, i talked with some of you this morning, are engaging in a culture of health. and that is hugely important because of the obesity epidemic, et cetera. but we believe it is not just physical health, but rather emotional well being that needs to be addressed in the corporate workplace. in fact, i would argue, that without emotional well being, you knt have physical well being. and so many of the issues around obesity, for example, are around behavior and depression and food as comfort, prex. so we are very focused on developing the workplace as a culture of well being. and at value options, we are personally engaged in helping our own employees. we hope that the workplace will be a place where health-seeking behavior is destigmatized and actually encouraged. and i will say, this is going to be a difficult process. because the corporate environment is so much about productivity and so much about get it done that to allow people to become vulnerable in this with way, i think, is going to be a challenge. we at value options provide programs to employees and their families so they can reach out and get the help that they need. unfortunately, as you all know, most people that attempt suicide do not reach out to the resources that are available to them. and it may be -- all of the great resources that the army and the veterans administration provide or that they provide. we at value options are one of the largest employee assistance programs offered in the united states. in fact, in the world. and net, it is a very under-utilized program. no matter how hard we try to market it and sell it to our employees as a great resource, many people do not take advantage of it. it may be because it is viewed as, sort of, mental health. that -- what if my colleagues found out. so this is where corporate culture that walked the talk on health-seeking behavior can really make a difference. i learned this in my role. that's when i tell my -- why i tell my story. i tell my story to my employees, too. i say it is ok, because i believe you all need to seek whatever help you need to seek to be able to help with well being and also to do what's necessary to prevent suicide. and it really can make a difference. we have designed a comprehensive and effective suicide prevention program. we make a wide array of resources available to our members, employees, family members, to our clients' employees and family members, especially advocating for individuals to know when and how to seek help. this is available as well in the -- on the -- in the general public and available to the general public. we are really attempting first and foremost to destigmatize mental illness. with that i think will come the kind of behaviors to help folks contemplating suicide. mental illness affects one in four americans. that's twice the rate of breast cancer, and yet you don't see anyone walking around with a black plastic band around their arms advocating or walking for effective mental treatments. we have to destigmatize it. that's what we're all working on, and that is so important, and that i think is going to be critical to better our chances in the fight against suicide. i'm proud to represent value options and proud to support the action alliance and the national astrategy on suicide prevention. with that it is my great pleasure to introduce to you dr. regina benjamin, the 18th surgeon general of the united states. [applause] >> thank you. and thank you all for being here. preventing suicide is everyone's business. every year millions of americans commit suicide. that does not include the 50% of all suicide students who report having seriously considered it. years ago, just as i was -- the first african-american in our medical society. we were supposed to talk on monday morning. after i didn't hear from him, i started calling, only to learn that on friday night, he went upstairs, went into the closet, and shot himself. to this day, i ask myself what i could have done, what should i have done? i'm a doctor, and i didn't even know. today's suicide prevention strategy shows us how communities can come together to put programs and processes in place to help people like him. suicide is a tragedy of untold proportions. those of you who are part of that storyline know its anguish all too well. 10 years ago surgeon general david thatcher released the first national strategy for suicide prevention. he began a new conversation about suicide in america, making people aware of the problem. since then, the suicide prevention community has been telling anyone that will listen to them, that more than 33,000 people take their lives every year. that's one person every 15 minutes. now it is time to turn our conversation to prevention. from the national perspective, the biggest attempt is the launch of the national alliance of suicide prevention. this private and public coordinating body was called for in the 2001 strategy. as was said earlier, it was launched by secretary sebelius and then secretary gates. prior to this alliance we had multiple groups trying to address the issue of suicide separately. this brought us all together. several people have been brought together. we had broad input face-to-face. we had listening sessions, online opportunities, and engaged other task forces and advisory committees. we also want to make sure that this national suicide prevention strategy aligns well with our overall national prevention strategy that was released last year as was called for in the affordable care act. for the next five to 10 years, this strategy will be our nation's guide to prevent the burden of suicide and suicidal behavior. this revised suicide prevention strategy captures the progresses that we have made, the knowledge we acquired, and the problems in our grasp, that suicide is preventable. activity in the field of suicide prevention has grown dramatically since 2001. government agencies at all levels, nonprofit organizations, and businesses have started programs to address suicide prevention. we have been active in the garrett lee smith memorial act. the law that established the national suicide prevention hotline. that's 1-800-273-talk. and its partner, veterans crisis line. we have had establishment of the suicide prevention resource center. we have increased training for clinicians and community awareness programs. we have had an increased understanding of the link between suicide and other health issues, like mental illness and substance abuse. we know that connecting family members, teachers, co-workers, communities, organizations, and social institutions can help protect people from a wide range of health problems, including suicide risk. we have new knowledge on groups that are at increased risk. we now have evidence of the effectiveness of suicide intervention such as behavioralal therapy and crisis lines. we recognize the value of comprehensive and coordinated prevention efforts and we are providing new methods of treatment. the national suicide prevention strategy is organized with four strategic directions. they have 13 goals and 15 objectives. i am not going to list all of them. but there are major things that the national suicide prevention strategy would like to do. we want to have public dialogue, address vulnerable groups, implement behavioral health, to ensure continuity of care. we want systematic changes. we want to reduce means. we want you to talk about it. don't be afraid to ask. are you thinking about killing yourself or hurting yourself? knowing the warning signs, such as talking to someone who is wanting to die, talking about wanting to or feeling like they are trapped. they have talked about feeling unbearable pain or being a burden on others. somebody who has been looking for a way to kill them self or increased or decreased sleep. isolated. if you see these warning signs, don't leave the person alone. remove any objects that can be used. call the national suicide prevention line. the lifeline 1-00-273-talk. if all of that fails, take them to the emergency room. you know, working together we can all help prevent suicide. but we need partnerships to achieve this. a concerted effort from policymakers and health professionals, state and local governments, insurance -- insurrs, advocacy organizations, the faith-based communities and individuals. i'd like to share with you a few examples of individuals who are helping prevent suicide. >> i do all i can to support the physical and health needs of the older adults living in my community. so you can imagine how disturbing it was when i arrived at asbury methodist village in april of 2005, and by that december my campus had experienced its third death by suicide in just 14 months. i was particularly troubled by one death which has had a profound impact on me. suicide prevention is a system-wide effort at asbury. one in which everyone plays an important part. i am pleased that since 2005, we have not had another suicide. everyone plays an important part in suicide prevention. my role as executive director is to provide hope and health to seniors in the caring community. i am david denton and i am delighted to be here today to support the national strategy for suicide prevention. [applause] >> for me preventing suicide means creating an open community to help my classmates through any feeling of isolation and anxiety. my teammates often come to me when they have a problem. one classmate came to me with a problem she felt she could not handle alone. she was having trouble with some other students at school. i connected her with a teacher she trusted, and together they resolved it. we kept the student from reaching a point of crisis. this helped us change the culture of our schools. everyone has a role to play in suicide prevention. my name is audra hopkins and my role is to share my strengths with my school and friends. i am happy to be here in support of the national strategy for suicide prevention. [applause] >> what i'm about to tell you will feel like an open for -- open wound for me. i served in the military, and after serving i became unemployed and homeless. during my search for resources, veterans services were extremely limited to me, a single parent and woman veteran. suicidal thoughts were a constant problem. one day those thoughts turned to a suicide attempt. it is very difficult to say so, but it is true. i hesitated long enough to tell family and friends. my friend's words prevented me from killing myself. if it had not been for my friend talking me through, i would not be here today. that was 20 years ago. since that time i have received many degrees. i created a social network on facebook and we help women get the resources they need. since that time, those with suicidal thoughts have progressed. every one of you has a role. every one of you has a role. this strategy is a tool that's accessible to everyone for suicide prevention. i have found my own voice as a result of advocacy as a result of someone who cared and helped me when i was suicidal. i have found my own life. my name is bridget mccoy, and i support this national strategy for suicide prevention. thank you. [applause] >> i hope you will use this information to help us get this important message out. >> many americans know someone affected by suicide or someone who died from it. perhaps even you have had thoughts of suicide. for every american who dies of suicide -- i need your help. first call the number on your screen to learn how you can help prevent suicide. [applause] >> thank you to everybody. we are going to take some questions. as you can see, there are a couple people who have to leave. so they are going to do that. i want to just give you an opportunity one more time. 1-800-273-8255. that number is the national suicide prevention lifeline, and it is connected electroncally to the veterans vicis line. we want everybody to be aware of that. we're going to take questions first from the press. we would like to ask you to make sure that you don't speak unless you have a microphone in front of you. there are people walking around with microphones, and if you could state your name and affiliation when we get done with questions. if there is still time, we will take questions from the rest of you. >> hi. i'm with reuters here in washington. a question for deputy gould. i'm here. you mentioned a 50% increase in telephone operators for the crisis line? why yes. >> can you give us more information on that? also you said you have been inundated with calls, possibly overwhelmed. can you discuss that need? >> first of all, we have seen increased growth in the use of the crisis line, and that is a good thing. it means that the word is getting out, that individuals know they can reach out and call to get help from these expert operators. you may not know that we also provide the service for our d.o.d. calling as well. the same individuals, the same training, the same level of care provides the services that the department of defense uses for the same crisis line. and lastly, to your point about the growth in personnel, we have approximately 200 people who man the phones now around the clock. we're adding another hundred on top of that. hence the 50% increase. we believe that it will fully meet the demand that we're currently facing. lastly, this administration has a commitment to make sure if that's not enough, we'll be hiring more. >> this is the best collaboration that you can possibly imagine. that number we have been pushing is for anyone to call with a special connection to veterans and service members. can you be specific about the role will be for primary care givers in that time? >> yes. >> we offer campus based efforts. those efforts range from suicide prevention activities and messaging to actual services for primary care and others who are trying to address that -- those issues and individuals in a particular way. if there are particular areas you are interested in, we can talk to you off line about those different grants. other questions from the press? other questions? yes, that you. >> i am from "clinical psychiatry news." i wonder if you can address what roles physicians play, whether they are primary care physicians or other providers that play a role in preventing suicide. >> all physicians play a major role. one of the things we are calling for is the increase in clinical training, and access to clinicians. we are targeting all fizz combransans, primary care specialists, everyone. >> i would also say the primary care are also involving screening tools for primary care physicians to do screening for people with depression, and then additional screening for people who screen for depression at risk for suicide. there is also training that they are working on. some of the dollars we have been talking about for all of these efforts actually come from the affordable care act, the prevention fund that's there. so there is a significant amount of work at both federal agencies and private sector health care for primary care physicians hoping to do some of that major screening. we are also interested in emergency rooms, understanding what they can do. we know often when a person is in an emergency room for a suicide attempt, getting connections and follow-up care could be one of the most important things to save a life. >> and they are not limited to just the clinicians, it is their staff as well. stoims sometimes they are the first people that encounter the patients. >> i'm jane nelson with "quarterly care." will there be changes in the strategy that you anticipate either next year or years out from now? >> the president's budget does include moneys for the garrett lee smith program and the other suicide prevention efforts, some of which we have announced here. the veterans in the department of defense and others have dollars as well. as you know, the fy-14 is still in process, so we're not able to discuss that yet. but this is a priority. >> in fiscal year 13 we'll spend $6.2 billion on mental health care. specifically $73 million will be dedicated to suicide prevention. both of those numbers are available. we just mentioned 14 numbers. they look like they will reflect the continued leadership by the president on this issue. >> other press questions? ok. seeing no further hands from the press, i will take one or two questions from the audience, and then we are going to end. yes? over here? >> i am the executive director of a center dedicated to bridging the military divide. i am also a military housewife. i think you can see the collaboration is key. one of our concerns in the community is integrating families more effectively into suicide prevention efforts. and i think some of the gaps in policy are making that difficult. i'll just mention, too, as far as i know, there is no policy to asua depfment e any privacy concerns. so we are basically directed to let our command know if our husband is having problems. for the most part, we know. but no one knows what -- no one talks about what happens after that. there is no policy to deal with concerns after that. there is also no policy to deal with the secondary trauma on the family. i have lost three friends, army wives, to suicide. and there is no plan to deal with that. finally, the d.o.d. regulation that is stringently organized, so all these nonprofits do not provide free mental health. i understand the d.o.d. is working hard to fill that need. they are never going to be able to fill all that need. and there is also a stigma that will always be attached. it makes it difficult for us to access or know about these nonprofits. or maybe asking the senate for an interpretative clsks moslem -- clarification memo to make it easier for these nonprofits to coordinate. >> one of the questions was also an increase in the number of peer supporters and peer workers. complete with families and peers can be incredibly important supports. i don't know, scott, if you want to add anything into that. >> a couple remarks. one of them is for standing up and identifying those issues. this is an incredibly complex set of interwoven policies that we will keep working harder at to resolve. the issue of destigmatizing, seeking help, and then figuring out how to manage that relationship after a person revealed that they are having a problem, i think is the core of what you are concerned about. we are working with this. we realize there are certain legislative edges to the services we can provide. we also have a national resource web site where we identify resources for folks, both family members, service members, and veterans that can use to seek help. >> one more question, and then we're going to end. come on over here. >> hi. i'm a student at montgomery college mental health program. >> the question i have, is how much emphasis is being placed on destigmatizing that patient, especially in the african-american community. because a lot of people, a lot of students will not talk about it. it's always, that uncle charlie, he's always been that way. we let go of it and sweep it under the rug, only to suffer as me myself have suffered from suicide attempts. >> thank you for that question. one of the thing that we at samsa are trying to do, whether it is suicide or any other issue is recognize there is prejudice and misunderstanding and lack of information associated with mental health and substance abuse conditions. we are trying to make it clear that these are public health issues. we are doing that through our communication efforts, through efforts like this, to have so many people stand up and say, this is a public health issue. it is a health issue. it is an act of courage to ask for help. and to help your college roommate, your friend or neighbor, your parents or sons to get help. so we're trying very hard in numbers of ways to ad depress that issue. thank you for raising it. >> that is one of the major themes of the nat3 >> that is one of the major themes of the national suicide prevention strategy. it is just that. take away that stigma. to make it ok to talk about it. in the past, we didn't talk about it. we didn't ask people, are you thinking about killing yourself. we are afraid it may give them an idea. right now we want you to change the idea we think about suicide, to think about it as a public health issue, as pam mentioned. >> thank you all for coming. we appreciate your support, and we hope all of you will help make a difference in this issue. thank you. difference in this issue. thank you. >> coming up, the international press conference. this is two-and-a half hours. >> good morning, everyone. welcome. i'm the director of programs for the national press foundation. we're very glad you are here this morning. i especially want to welcome our paul miller washington reporting fellows. how many of you are here? let me see a show of hands? yes, this is a fabulous group. this is your first official meeting of the year. we're getting off to a good start. i want to thank our co-sponsor for the event, also our host, and our partners "politico." i want to thank rolls royce and the evelyn y. davis foundation whose contributions are helping us do a series of programs on financial literacy for journalalists. today we're here to talk about the fiscal cliff, which is a phrase none of us had heard about a year ago, and now it seeprogr it is all we hear or s when we read a business section. i know it has caused confusion among a lot of people, and we are fortunate to have someone with us who will initially help us understand what it is, what has built the fiscal cliff. this is jared bernstein. he is a senior fellow at the public and private priorities. he is an expert on economic and state fiscal policy. he's also the author of the book "crunched, why do i feel so squeezed?" in the first sessiontegyared wi cover the basics and explain to us, what is the fiscal cliff? f.ter that we will talk about the implications of the fiscal cliff, what happens if we go over it? how might we avoid that? and then in the final session aimed directly at journalalists we will lo bo at resources for covering it. so jared, thank you so much. >> if you are in this room, you are pro the bbly smart enough t figure out the fiscal cliff. kind of tricky getting in here. first, let me start by saying, i am sorry that i have to run out like cinderella at about 9:55 to get to another heated discussion. so i apologize. i have to zip through the facts of the case. the -- leave ample time for questions. i don't care how careful you are, this can get cononfsing. i want people to -- it is a small enough group. if it is ok -- where is linda? if it is ok with linda who is not here to say it's not, why don't we make this more of a conversation. so if i say something tha sas unclear, raise your hand. if it is more of a philosophical question, we'll put that off for a few minutes. i think a lot of people who gel dwell on this, i think, think of this as directly coming out of the budget control aas d of 201 and it did. the tax cuts pursued by the george w. bush administration that took place inol 001 and 203 -- i'm sure you have heard people talking. if you listen to practically a paragraph about the fiscal policy in the campaigal is going to say bush tax cuts. that's what they are talking about, theol lac1 andol lac3 ta cuts. those cuts were passed with a biss bit of a time bomb implanted in them. they were not legislated to be permanent. they were legislated to last maybe 10 years. so they were going to eexire at the end of 2010. part of this was to squeeze the tax cuts. of course, when you cut taxes, you lose revenue as far as c.b.o. is concerned. they are the score keepers of such things. and in order to make the bu theet window look better after the first 10 years of these tn't cs ts eing in place, the t were scored to end after a decade. they were also passed -- there was something called reconciliation. we can get more details about that. but it is another con trantstraint that leth led them to be simply 10 years. there is no reason wot, congres couldn't have said, these are two-year tax cuts, 20-year tax cuts, or forever tn't cuts, bu they made them 10-year tax cuts. so you may ask, wot, didn't we hit the fiscal cliff inol as d well, we did. in december 2as d 0 there was a reecember deal between -- deal o extend these tax cuts for another couple years. guess what? another couple years is almost over. more pointedly, getting to the origins of the fiscal cliff as we know and donno love it toda, you have to go back to 2011 and talk about the debt ceiling de the bte -- i mean debacle, whatever you want to call it. in 2011 the u.s. treasury was about to bump up against something called the debt ceiling. there is an amount whi wh the government may not borrow. as folks may know we owe about $st trillion. it's -- there is another set of debt we owe to ourselves. that's not relevant here. the debt we owe to the public is a dheart we have to pay interes on. if we don't pay our interest on it, we would defaulttegyust lik if you didn't pay your mortgage. historically, we run into this deck ceiling many times, becaue it is just a dollar that's a nominal ncall ber. under the dheart ceiling, the amount was raised. it was never a big deal. this is the first time in my career following this stuff that the deck ceiling became a big contentious debate. and it was very contentious. iffou may remember, there were members of congress who were essentially saying, i donno cae if we default. i'm not going to sign on to a higher debt. iloo not going to put my rubber stamp on more borrowing. we can talk about the politics of that, whether that is responsible or an irresponsible position, but that certainly was the position of members of congress who refused to rubber stamp an increase in the deck ceiling. that led to a big squabble, and the nebt t thing youvernnow, yo have this agreement in 2011 which extended the dheart ceili. without the dheart ceiling, the government defaults and lots of really bre h things happen. i can go into detail later. they are not related to the fiscal cliff, but they are downright terrible. we have never come ly,ose to defaulting on our dheart, and there is no reason we should. that really was a dhearacle. that was a major self-inflicted wound that i believe hurt the economy and conti yes to reverberate. the president was able to raise the dheart limit by $2 trillion. that is estimated to be sufficient to get the dheart ceiling up to where it needs to be to be sufficient through earlyol as d 3. you are making me talk about an unhappy topic. we have the debt ceiling we're going to bcall p up a2011 inst in probably early 2013. ethwas arguing this point on cnbc. someone said, you know, no one has cut any spending yet. well, tha sas aas dually patent wrong. there was a trillion dollars of spending cuts whi wh has been implemented by lower the approprntentions, and so tha sa1 trillion through 2021. the point is, as part of this bu theet control aas d, there were spending cuts. ok. now we're heading for the cliff. they sai one trillion is not enough. we want another 1.2 trillioal and the house and senate have to produce legislation to reduce projected bu theet deficits by at least $1.2 trillion by 2021. if they fail to do that, they will have to form a committee of members of both houses of congress. it was called the super fails, there is a fallback mechanism as it would called budget sequestration which is automatic $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction that has to be implemented automatically. automatic, across the board budget cuts, almost exclusively on the discretionary side of the budget. if it is discretionary, that's the stuff that's proped every year and -- appropriated every year. for the most part. there are a few cuts in the sequ sefment -- sequestration. for example the cuts in provider care. that's the fiscal cliff. the cuts are cut between defense and nondefense. those are the two sides of the discretionary part of the budget. it turns out, if you do the arith ma tick, and -- arithmetic, there is $110 billion of spending cuts will automatically occur in 2013 because the super committee failed to come up with a deficit reduction deal as required in the budget control act. that's part two, really. part one i already told you about. all bush tax cuts expire september 31 at midnight, like cinder relevantia. -- like cinderella. that's my second cinderella al usion. there are some other policies i associate with stimulus to offset the public demand in the economy which continues to be a tough -- continues to be tough for us. as part of the deal i mentioned where the bush taxes were extended, there was also a payroll tax cut implemented at that time. there was unemployment insurance implemented at that time. those also expire at the end of this year. so you have something to the tune tune, according to the c.b.o., around $600 billion in basically deficit reduction into 2013. most of that comes from these tax deficits either expiring like the payroll tax code or safety measures, or unemployment, like i just mentioned, and especially, of course, the tax rates resetting. and then, another chunk comes from the automatic spending cuts. so we have tax increases and spending cuts to the tune of, oh, i don't know, 3.5% of g.d.p. something like that. basically this is the nightmare. the economy -- and i'm now talking to you -- and let me tell you. i'm talking to you in a sense as a cagy economist. another way to look at this is, boy, that's really a big deficit reduction. so going from this year's deficit of $1.1 trillion down to something like $600 billion is a huge accomplishment in terms of deficit reduction. you might say, jared, what the heck is wrong with that? clearly you know we have a long-term fiscal problem. and the problem is, it is sort of like taking a dose of medsins cynthia you really need, but you take so much of it at once and it kills you. the economy cannot sustain a fiscal contraction of that magnitude all at once. the reason i say "can't" is because economists rarely make such bold a forecast as i did. this is not physical science, this is economic science. they predict the economy will go back into recession. they predict the economy will go back into recession, that g.d.p. will contract something like, i think, almost 3% in the first half of next year. 2.9% of the first half of next year. unemployment -- anyone know what the unemployment rate was? it was 8.3, now it went down to 8.1%. it will go up to 9.1. unemployment has been coming down. it will reverse course according to c.b.o. and go up to 9.1% if we go over this fiscal cliff and stay over this fiscal cliff. there is a scenario, and i'll talk about that a little more maybe later about solution scenarios. there is one that i am impartial towards. i'm partial toward the number. but there is one that says, the fiscal cliff is really more of a fiscal slope. if you go in and start going down all the damage c.b.o. predicts will not occur if you turn around and go right back up. so that's the lay of the land, the history, what we're looking at here, and before i go on and talk about other things, i thought, linda, if it is ok with you, i will see if there is any questions. >> is there any consequence at o.m.b. did not pass its budget transparancy? >> is there any consequence in terms of legal action or something? >> yeah, that, and also, you hear these agencies can't plan for the future, the private sector cannot plan for the future. what is the result of that of not knowing what's coming? >> that's a much bigger question. that has to do with the impact of the fiscal cliff. in your case, by the way, he's talking about the sequestration. there are two sides to the budget, mandatory and discretionary. i'm sorry if i'm -- i apologize if i'm not pitching this high enough. i find this useful to break it down to the building blocks. i can probably go deep in the weeds if you like. let me see heads nodding. is this a level that's useful? ok, good. so we're talking about the appropriations side of the budget, the discretionary side. and that's what funds the agency. so the gentlemen's question, let me answer that part first. the agency -- the automatic cuts are supposed to be made across the board proportionly across the agencies. in fact, i just read something the other day on the defense side -- this is how crazy this is. the way it is set up according to scott lilly who is now at the center for market progress, very knowledgible guy. he said the way it is set up, it is so proportional, that if you are a ship builder and you are building 10 ships for the navy, and you need a 10% reduction, you cannot do a 10% reduction on the cost of one ship, you have to do a 10% reduction on the 10 ships you are making. these are proportional across-the-board cuts. that, by the way, is what i expect to come out of the o.m.b. report, which won't be, in my opinion, particularly informative. i think it is something like 8.5% next year in terms of discretionary cuts or at least on the nondefense side. i have the numbers here. a little lesson the defense side. it is just going to say, we're going to take x percent from each one of these categories. so this is a little way that some politicians are trying to jam the white house and, you know, make them produce something. and they will. they shouldn't be late with it. i'm an advocate of transparancy, i just figure you are not going to learn a lot from it. whether agencies can plan for this? you know, the agencies, in my view, it is not that hard for the agencies to plan for this. what is really hard, is the results. ultimately, these dollars go out into the country and they fund stuff. so again, an example from scott lilly. the f.a.a., which is a -- an administration, the federal aviation administration, which gets funded through appropriations annually has a bub bunch of projects in play. according to scott's calculations, he was looking at a particular airport that is in arkansas. this airport is probably going to have to close because they won't be able to fund their air traffic control staff which is paid for through the budget appropriations, and they have to have -- i don't know, they would have to cut -- proportion a-- proportionally, they have to have 10 people doing air traffic control, they would have to close. they can't reduce their services, they would have to close. that's obviously quite disruptive. that's just one -- that's the way it plays out in the real world. on the defense side, there has been a lot of hand wringing about contracting, government contractors. we do about a half a trillion in government contracting every year. there are a lot of businesses that depend on government contracting. i have found it bemusing to watch members of congress that go around saying, cagy economics doesn't work, government doesn't create jobs, and then with the automatic spending cuts, they are like, this is a job killer! so clearly -- they both consultant be right. -- they both can't be right. in fact, government spending creates millions of jobs. i'm not saying they are good jobs. we can argue about whether we over-do that or under-do that. that's a different argument. you can't argue government spending doesn't create jobs. it does. if it didn't, we wouldn't see all this handling of the sequestration. by the way, there are 20 million government jobs. so that belies that conversation anyway. >> do we have some more questions? anybody? >> you had mentioned that if we did not raise the debt ceiling and we just locked it on certain payments, that would be a catastrophe. you said we can go into details about what would happen. i'm just kind of curious. >> well, it is a good question. nobody would want to lend us any more money. and like it or not, we owe a lot of money to a lot of different countries in fact, and to a lot -- most of us here, by the way. most of our creditors are domestic, but there are countries all over. china is a big lender to us. about 10% of our debt is owed to china. in order to continue to provide the goods and services, the public goods and services that make this country run, we would have to try to borrow money because we couldn't do it without that, and the interest rates would be prohibited. who would lend money to a country that just defaulted? in fact, if you look around europe, that's a great example. spain and italy have not defaulted yet. deprees hasn't defaulted yet. greece is on the verge of that. if you look at what they have to pay to borrow. right now our 10-year bond -- the government has to pay an interest rate of 1.5% on a 10-year bond. really low. in spain and italy it has been up to 6%, 7%, in greece it has been in the 20's. that's what we would be looking at. we simply could not -- it is simple. our creditors would not deal with us. >> i think we're ready to start the next panel. . >> what is your title now? >> i am defense of foreign policy reporter. >> you have been doing this for a long time. an editor and reporter for 23 years. he to be our expert on all things defense. -- he is our expert on all things defense. to his right is a staff reporter for the wall street turner -- journal. you are also one of our resident budget experts and can help us understand where a lot of this is headed. the fiscal cliff is something that we did you want me to speak into this or this? i like holding the mic. we want to start to break this down topic by topic. what would it mean. i would like to start with frank and work our way back. people are starting to talk about the sequester in a serious way. but we were doing stores at politico, i kept getting the word sequester out of the story. now, people are starting to search it. what does this mean. canids are talking about at the swing states. -- candidates are talking about it in a swing state. can you give us an overview and walked to the mechanics? it does not mean all the money will be cut on -- on january 2013. it is this thing that happens over time. but there is a process started to unfold as some extent, especially with defense contractors to sit it will have to put out layoff notices. can you give us the real world perspective on how the sequester will work and why we need to start paying attention to a right now? >> this is castor -- the sequester, the defense will say about $55 billion cut in the first year. it set a base line from which a build caps a year after year after that to try to get to a certain amount of savings. with defense and nondefense discretionary, they're hoping to raise $1.20 trillion over roughly 10 years. this draws the base line down. with the fear that a lot of people have about this is that defense has already come up with a plan to find savings over the next tenures of about cornyn and $90 billion. it is important to note i am a little bit -- a little less and to the fear mongering that seems to go on around defense cuts in general. we have done a lot of looking at the details. the fourth $87 billion was a planned cut to projected growth in defense. there is a real cut on either -- an actual cut but it is not $487 billion. you'll also learn as we talk to this that protecting budget out for five years is kind of dark magic. it really ever turns out that way. protecting overton years is like try to -- projecting over 10 years is like trying to figure out what dark matter is. a lot of this is tied up in the horse races. there is a lot of horse race that gets into the politics of sequester. i did a story on the virginia race as early on in the year and it comes down to a fight over whose fault it is. right now, everybody -- nobody is coming up with a plan to avert sequestered. you are hearing different sides, aia, talks about a million jobs leaving the defense industry. you have the chairman of lockheed martin coming up in front of the house terms services committee talking about having to put out those notices. you have a federal department coming out and sang you do not need to put out those notices because it is not notably at as to whether there will be sequestered. as you all know, congress never does anything until the absolutely must. one of the things we're learning about sequester is we do not know when it will fall. we know it is supposed to happen on january 2 but the office of management and budget is expected to manage what happens. one of our reporters define storage talking about how omb can decide when they start to apply sequester. it could be in the last quarter of the coming fiscal year before they actually do the cuts as a percentage of a whole which will be more severe. but the gives congress wartime to figure out what to do. it is a tough situation. would you have is both sides are demagoguing the issue. there are both using sequester to try to win an argument trade republicans are saying sequester was the president's idea. it is laughable that either side tries to blame the other because the majority in congress supported the thrust of being part of the budget control act. so there are a lot of things that could transpire or change things. i did a cover story for cq to see what happens when sequester hit. what could happen. the assumption about sequester and anything is that everything stops here. whether you talk about medicare, social security, sequester, everything assumes he will do nothing. between now and when it happens. which never happened. it has never happened that way. they always find a way, there is always a deal made to push the six opry the president proposed a deal that when push out medicare insolvency eight years. all the stuff is incredibly fungible. that is the difficulty in reporting about the offense this age. it is an incredibly costly business. there is enormous amounts of dollars and interests statewide, parochial interests. yet three different people, three different interest groups that feed off of this. you have congress and its parochial interests, the pentagon with this interest and then have the industry which makes lots of money off of this stuff. it is a very mixed up pitcher. oftentimes the defense department, they cannot do an audit. when you get down and $2 and since, they cannot tell you how much they spend. they try to cut a command a couple years ago and said with it would say when they cut the command. when they finally shut it down, they sound -- found out is a price as much as what they said they would save which tells you they do not want -- no with their spending. the defense the parker represents a huge part of the budget with the war -- the defense department represents a huge part of the budget. it is a very complicated thing. right now, of we do not have answers. we do not have answers because it is caught up a in the horse race. and they are all trying to blame and figure out. some of these races will come down. in a state like virginia, it will come down who can make the ase that it was x's party's fault for sequester to happen. some of the biggest hitters of sequester on capitol hill -- buck mckeon hits sequester but he voted for the budget control act. his counterpart, adam smith's who hates sequester, voted against it. there is no clean answers here. at the end of the day, everyone is responsible for it. >> can ask a question i think is very germane. i have been waiting to run into someone like you because it is my understanding that we did we have a fragile jobs situation already. a lot of defense contracting and hiring -- an plymouth currently in place in factories and producers along the supply chain making this stuff is funded by contracts that are a year or too old to read so we might not see -- year or two old. so would have much less impact? >> we have been asking a lot about this. the defense department yields in two types of numbers. there is budget authority, essentially what congress gives. it's as you have budget authority to spend this much and the appropriate to that authority. then there is such a thing called budget outlays. this is the money actually spent by treasury on these various items. in budget authority, all we like to focus on budget authority. but the outlays do with how many is spent out. right now, the defense department is spending money and contractors are spending money that may have been authorized a year ago or two years ago. some accounts ben more quickly than others. operations and maintenance spends critically. then you have to do you have your personnel have spending progress that is exempt theory >> personnel as exempt theory that it's an interesting point. in sequester, the president andomb will set the standards for how sequester is applied. currently, they have decided to exempt personnel. that makes sense in one regard because you do not want to lay off a bunch of very experienced fighters. we have probably the most experienced military ever in the war. we did the world. we have been at war for a number of years. they did not want to do that. thus the economy would take a huge hit if you are laying all of these people off suddenly. what that means is a question that gets applied more heavily to other areas. this gets into what i was talking about adjustments in managing sequestered. they have now said the overseas contingency operation fund, the war front, was exempted from dca caps. the initial savings is tempted -- exempted. one of the most powerful lawmakers in the senate's said we will use the overseas contingency operation fund to grow so we create flexibility in the base budget. they love to use it to shift money back and forth. except that now -- this is also an interesting twist -- omb said oko -- oco will be susceptible to sequester. that might sound terrible. like the guys on the front line will suffer happily. -- heavily. he is added $5.9 billion to the oco to all of it back costs. it allows the despair about the payment more. soon i year six and a billion dollars in. -- so now you are $6 billion in. >> if the defense sequester went into effect in january, it doesn't necessarily mean a bunch of defense workers to lead off right away. they may be working on projects funded well before that. >> , asked about -- can i ask about the warren act. contractors saying we will have announced massive layoffs days before the election. can you talk about whether that is a political thing more real thing? >> i think it is both. somebody came out and basically said you do not have to send these letters out. >> explain what that is. >> you do 60 days. when you're doing mass layoffs, you need to tell people. you need to send out a warning this coming. in defense, the defense industry has come out and said we are looking at heavy layoffs here. the defense folks would not necessarily have to make cuts immediately. publicly owned companies often times use moments like these to find efficiencies to save money so they do layoffs. they are going to do mass once, they have to notify people but in the political context, administration makes the case it is not knowable yet. it is not devin that there will be layoffs there sure -- therefore you should not because it would be disruptive to the economy. where the difference in the law lies -- who will prosecute these things? we will learn about sequester this week. what we learned a be a dubious content. we are in place of not knowing. the administration might not want to share everything about it because they like the pressure it creates on congress to come up with some kind of deal. we learn about these things, is set to have an effect on the economy. if suddenly somebody drops out businesses as part sending out pink slips and says in 60 days a job is gone, that will cause disruption. both sides disagree on this. it is not to politicize now because we are in the middle of the election. however places on knowable at this point -- is unknowbale at this point. >> if i slipped out, did not take it personally. -- if i slip out, do not take it personally. >> i wanted to do this for a few minutes ma he is still here because he is a trained economist who we call on frequently. i wanted to run through while he is here some of the presentation, some basic concepts. i realize sometimes sometimes you understand these numbers and figures but this walks you through how you get to some of the big figures like a 2.9% drop a dented btp ended the the first half of 2013. we may get to this point about the debt ceiling, where are we all are in about the size of the debt and every time you look at the news, the u.s. government borrowing costs have dropped lower and lower? why is this even a debate? one of the big reasons is in part due to a study i referenced here. two well respected economists did a recent book looking at 800 years of government borrowing. this particular study goes back like half a century and that government borrowing. what they conclude in the act scheck is that once you get to 90% debt to gdp ratio, you start facing risks to your economy. growth slows by about 1% annually wants to get to that point. this is a simplified version of their exhaust is -- exhaustive study. everyone tries to redefine what happens -- what basic economic theory means. this is a particular point double, a lot to read a lot of people think we have reached the breaking point when it comes to u.s. government debt. if he were to look at to figures i put up your -- up here, there are both figures of u.s. debt. that would be 100% of gdp but to me over time the u.s. economy will be slower because of higher debt. the opposite cannot have that slow-growth if our interest rates are as low as they are not very the of the figure is that held by the public. there is a an interesting debate among economists on which figure you should use in interpreting the study. it is not possible to get a clear answer on this. even their own work looked at different types of figures across economies. >> limits respond. he took you through -- let me just respond. he just took you through a huge debate. very confusing because of all the issues he just raised. i will give you my view which i would argue is the correct one garrett -- the correct one. [laughter] first of all, who believe vis a vis the debt? cbo, i consider them to be a very non-partisan scorekeeper in this town. i get my feathers ruffled when you use cbo numbers and they object and have their theycake baking. it is the debt held by the public that determines the interest rates on bonds. that is absolutely true. if the story that they're telling is about the cost of borrowing, the reason growth slows because so much public borrowing crowd out private borrowing. the rate of interest is very low now. i think it is debt held by the public that matters and i did not believe there 90% very much. i do believe we have an unsustainable budget problem and we have to fix it. i deny care of it is told% or 112%. -- i do not care if it is 12% or 112%. the key to markets, the key to fiscal stability is that the level of the debt, but the direction of the debt. that should not make you feel good. the direction of the debt is all wrong. there are too many moving parts to say this level is unacceptable. 89% is ok but 91% is not? it does not work out well. >> that is one of the reason there is fear about inflation and things like that. suddenly if interest rates were to jump on us, if that could translate into billions of dollars. >> exactly. these things happens suddenly without much warning. there is to some sort of person bidding effect in other economies were you see this -- there is usually some sort of precipitous affect in other economies where you see this. i also want to stress the united states is not like europe. anyone who tries to tell you that in that sense is trying to mislead you. in some says the u.s. is going to become like greece, their debt to gdp ratio is 160%. the bigger problem is chris cannot evaluate -- it does not control its own currency. everyone is rushing toward instead of fleeing from it. >> it is a great example of what i just said. ito to the debt to gdp ratio and a decrease is 50%, i doubt unifil better. they did not collect taxes. it is the currency issue. they have some a structural problems. >> you had a lot on the campaigns -- hear this a lot on the campaigns. we do not want to become greece, spain c. how will his current trend lines -- whether we kick the can down the road. >> you can usually put two and economists in the room and get a least three opinions. in this case, there is one issue every reasonable economist agrees on. this trajectory for our debt right now is unsustainable. nobody knows what that figure is. at the same level you're willing to lend before anyone charged more. the more likely trigger of something like this is the united states congress to an something stupid like defaulting or if you were to see a divergence between u.s. economy and say emerging market economy to the point where they became better vehicles for investors than they might -- then investors might start to shift in that direction. that would be more of a slow change. if you were to see further downgrades in u.s. debt, we do not know what happened. you could see a higher borrowing costs for the united states which makes the entire budget problem a much bigger mess. as we learned last august with the debt downgrade, that lord our borrowing costs. investors rushed into the united states. they were looking for the arms of the state government. that is fairly telling about where we are as a country. we are still seen as the safest place to put your money. >> if we get past the election and into november and december without any resolution on any of the main elements of the fiscal cliff, do you think there will be an average market reaction? >> i have to leave so let me be a little provocative and then jump out. i'm afraid you're probably going to corrine over the fiscal cliff. i have a hard time -- the three of you can speak more to the politics at play here than i can but when i look at different scenarios, i view us as somewhat likely to go over the cliff. i think the answer vis a vis market is if it looks like post-election, post-lame duck january and there are enough grown-ups talking about a plan to reverse the impasse quickly, i do not think the markets are the economy will have a large negative reaction. i think it will be really bad. this economy does not need another self-inflicted wound. that's what this would be. however, if we can turn around quickly, it will not be deep wound. i view itu'll be -- more as a fiscal slope of the necklace. -- slope than a cliff. if we can reverse it quickly, i think it will be ok. but i would much rather us not have to go here. >> thank you so much for spending so much time with us this morning. [applause] we will continue the panel. >> sorry. i am leaving on good hands. >> and a walk through a few more things. i did not mean to interrupt. i wanted to walk through a few other numbers in case you have not really dealt with economics. to get you up to speed on some of the things you will see in terms of numbers. if you are covering this issue of, you should get the shouldcbo report -- you should get the latest cbo report. a lot of it is easily digestible if you have not studied economics or followed any of this before. it is worth looking into. despite which you might hear on capitol hill, they actually do a balanced portrayal of the issues here. it is worth the for a lot to the cbo. there are people there who are passionate with their analysis. you have seen the -- if you have to economics, the basic format for measuring gdp. i include this because there is a simple formula here based on the arithmetic that you have to look at. gdp is basically total consumer spending, business investment, government spending, and net exports. i include this because there is a figure for government spending in here. when you remove that from the economy, gdp will go down. that is a simple mathematical fact that at least in the short run, you cannot argue against. the argument you're hearing a lot of that cutting government spending will boost the economy. the only reason they're saying that is because they believe that it will increase the confidence among consumers. there is a short-run effect when you take out government spending, you have to calculate that. that is a critical issue to understand why the fiscal cliff occurs to the point where if you are looking at the cbo figures, you see a recession in the first half of the 2013 and the recovery after that. that is a fairly important issue. can look at the charts later. if you ever need to get economic data, the st. louis fed has an excellent website that gets it from around the world worth looking at. the components of the fiscal cliff, going over the cliff would be a recession in the first half of 2013. there's no debate about this. there will be a recession if you go over the fiscal clipper you cannot raise taxes on some many people and government spending at the same time and not have an economic -- it is not conceivable. the issue have to think about is the credit rating effect. which nobody really knows the effect of a credit rating cut but we know that if you are to kick the can down the road for a year, it is almost certain he will see further credit rating downgrades. while u.s. borrowing costs dropped after the downgrade, i creates other problems because it raises investor awareness about borrowing costs and risks. that is in the united states but around the world. the credit rating might not affect the united states but it could draw investors to look at spain and italy and realize that they need to start thinking more about political risks involved in other economies. most investors are probably looking already. >> could you tell or recall how much money left the markets when just the threat of a failure to raise the debt tillich was out there. >> it is very difficult to measure. one of the things you'll find an -- in looking at the economy is there some the things going on, it is impossible to pinpoint one specific issue. last july and august as it were threatening to inflict a wound on ourselves, europeans were doing one to themselves. your was going through one of its worst periods of the crisis last year. i include this figure in year from two investment banks. economists to run to the numbers. this action will help you understand there are specific costs for each individual measure. you can see i could two of them here because he conceded economists will look at this differently in estimating what the effect on the economy will be. if you look at this woman left side -- this one on the left side, to lead to $80 billion at morgan stanley. -- $320 billion at morgan stanley. it can involve how much spending drops as a result of a tax increase. all of those things are difficult to tease out. which is why these are variable estimates. some of the figures mentioned earlier on what happens to the unemployment rate, the baseline projection is going or the fiscal cliff. the alternative version is this one be cbo came up with. if he would extend the provisions. this shows you what the costs of kicking the can down the road is versus actual having a recession which nobody wants. if he were to go to the fiscal cliff, you would actually see the u.s. debt held by the public figure we were talking about all over time and said a rise. -- instead of rise. this is the deficit as a share of gdp. the goal here is trying to divide the u.s. deficit as a share of gdp. if he were to look at the total deficit over the last three or four years, at its peak almost 10% of gdp. the 13% of gdp because that is roughly in line with the growth in the economy. if he were to have your deck growing at the same pace, he can manage that and keep it under control. this is not in your packet. it is really a confusing term. this is how financial markets are try to came out -- to game out what happens over the next few months. there are trying to determine how they should trade at a treasury market, the stock market. the only thing that matters is if you draw -- look at every single point. there are only two options. one of the grand bargain. the others said they will enacted that happens that we do not know how to calculate. -- the other thing is something really nasty that happens that we do not know how to calculate. >> what brings out? what is built into the calculation? >> overtime, if he were to look at what happened over the obama table tax cut took effect, that had an immediate affect on gdp. if you with the first quarter were too, people suddenly had more money. this was the increase in the cut in the social security payroll tax. people suddenly had money and you saw that go into the economy. when you're looking at the gdp mass, a cousin to the economy -- math, it goes into the economy. when you have something out, you have a sudden hit and the economy can start growing again after adjusting to that kind of shock. the risks for anyone saying we will recover after six months with confidence among consumers and businesses is the slow about our political situation, you run the risk of going into a self reenforcing downward spiral rabbit and gives up and decide they're not going to plan to buy a new car a year from now or invest in their new plant six months from now theory that it turns out to a much worse. it is very difficult to turn a recession around. this is what they're doing the basic gdp math without looking at the other facts. >> i would like to go back to the sequestered since it is hard to explain and misunderstood. there is another half of this sequester. i do not know if it is exactly half. there is descended billion dollars of the domestic related cuts -- there is $600 billion in sequester related cuts. they talked about the sequester as a purely defensive thing. the web laos, it is going to be horrible. but the other half of this is domestic cuts and the democrats have not done as good a job elevating that part of the discussion. can you talk about what that money is and what kind of impact it may have ostmarks -- it may have? >> could democrats are eerily silent on the domestic side. they did not talk much about it. there's a lot of talk on the defense side. there are groups coming out with studies. if you take the types of cuts on domestic programs he would be taking domestic discretionary programs, you will see hundreds of thousands of not a million more jobs the economy. it will be significant. one of the reasons the obama administration keeps saying that job growth over x number of months has been a consistent but it is in the private-sector, where we are hemorrhaging jobs is in the public sector. this would really hammer the public sector we have a lot of public jobs. these cuts do trickle-down to states. did not have the kind of money. most of these states, i cannot know if a live event of virginia. i lived in alexandria. we are seeing our property taxes climb every year because they are having to figure out how to make up the money they're losing some other places. the impact on the domestic side, some people think it is far worse. defense is awash in cash. between the start of 2001 and 2009, the base defense budget had effectively double. that the backlog of all 12 $4 trillion this bet on the wars. so when people say you're cutting the defense budget during a war, they're actually not. the oco fund funds the war. the base budget funds a lot of the basic needs -- the pay, projected nd. on the domestic side, these cuts are and tactful. -- impactful. the effect of this would be pretty grave and seven on the domestic side. a lot of funds that federal government provides to these agencies is that much more quickly. it is heavily personnel driven. on the domestic side, there is no such exemption i know of. that may yet to be defined. i know people are suddenly worried about furloughs and being laid off. it will have a huge impact on our economy. >> most people when they talk about fiscal cliffs talk about the bush eric tax cuts and the sequestered. there are a lot of other provisions that are worth paying attention to in here. some of them are included in these figures. the medicare cuts. they are useful ways to localize the story if you are looking to bring this to a local level. there are physicians across the country worried about the cut in medicare payments they will receive. if he were to see these take effect, there are plenty of doctors who are not accepting medicare because they do not think there reimbursements are high enough. if he were to call your state medical association, they have people who will talk about this and doctors. plenty of them are not taking medicare any more. though obviously most still are. these have actual economic effects. if you are taking money away from the economy in this sense, there are -- there is a loss in extended unemployment benefits. congress has generally extended unemployment benefits to up to 99 weeks for people who are unemployed because we have such a huge problem of long-term unemployment. they had been getting extended benefits. you will see them dropping off. we are already seeing this in economic data. there are a number of ways. if you are on twitter, if you are looking for somebody brought the, start searching for jobless benefits. people identify themselves say their jobless benefits are running out. that is a good way to find people who are unemployed because they announce it on twitter that they have lost their jobs. i have used this to find people and get their stories. you can use this in that sense. obviously if you are localizing a story, the tax hikes that people will see will lay everywhere and it is worth looking into. there are a number of business tax incentives that are harder to pinpoint. you might be able to try the national association of manufacturers park chamber of commerce or state associations to get people, businesses concerned about this that have been benefiting from these tax incentives, and would see them come off. that is the debate he will see with any tax break coming off this. >> do you think you can go back to the chart that showed the scenarios? it is a complicated chart. the markets in areas. the one with all of the dots. as someone who covers congress and overseas our congressional coverage, i always think of the worst case scenario. congress either doing nothing or kicking the can down the road or doing some version of a -- economic decision with a box. coming up about that scenario? depending on the outcome of the election. there is a lot of scenarios. if we have a status quo election, obama wins, almost an equally divided republican senate and democratic house. then there's the of republican washington scenario. i did not think there is an all democratic washington scenario right now. what is possible versus what -- in the lame duck and then into generic -- january and how do the markets react? >> it is conceivable that congress will kick the grenade down the road, figure out some way to take this problem and pushed it down for three months. that is probably a reasonable timeframe where markets will say they are trying to work towards a grand bargain that gives them some time to come up with a bigger package. or say six months and congress is going to try to -- if the action have statements from leaders, to come up with the biggest package of overhaul you can imagine that deals with corporate tax rates, individual rates, the jobless benefits. every piece of this and come up with one giant package that you have to deal with. that could buy enough time from rating agencies for them to say there is something there. if he were to just say let's say congress were to say economic decision, we do not want to see a recession, we will delay this for a year. that last line you see there, disciplined by the market is what they will be betting on. they will be saying we cannot make a decision until the market forces us to. this is what you're seeing in every democracy right now. they are pushing this to the limit as much as they can until they are forced by the market. >> do you think began to a longer-term version of what we saw in five minutes on the day of the bailout? if you remember the day the house voted down the bailout, we had a split screen where the dow dropped 700 something points. and the roll-call vote -- the first time i had seen the stock market and the roll-call vote in a split screen. as it went down, the market went down. do you think we can see a stretched out version of that over all of 2013 with the markets -- if congress is unable to do a grand bargain? >> you will definitely see that in the context of the debt ceiling. treasury can use its tricks to extend or delay running out of money. at some point, congress will have to vote on raising the debt ceiling. every time you get one of those votes if you continue to see the same kind of threats from some members of congress that you have already, then you will see markets running the split screen or putting this up. i am not billy sure you are going to see something like that when you just are kicking the can down the road on the basics of the budget. there is no clear trigger for what the sustainable level of debt is for the united states. you could probably push this out for a couple more years without actually seeing a market backlash but there are so many outside factors involved. if europe were to melt down while we were doing that, that could force the judging of u.s. debt differently. >> and congress, this is not a congress that is working well together which is a huge understatement. we have been watching this -- the congress is so divided on these issues at this point. i have been pretty pessimistic about even a simple deal to a sequester. a perfect example is if you go to a house armed services committee hearing, it is one of the most bipartisan places you will step into in the congress these days. they are pretty close on most issues. the big fights they have are shades of gray. they try very hard to be bipartisan. they are one of the two committees out there that actually do authorization bills every year and largely agreed. but jeffrey zients who does not usually appear before the armed services committee showed up on august 1 and i have never seen a more partisan hearing. what happens is usually they will use the general officer or the defense appointee as the strongman to push their political agenda and those guys sit there and swallow their tongues. they are not planning a political game. except this time the republicans started to make some of these statements and then they were shocked because jeffrey zients came back and that what republicans for asserting that the sequester was the president's fault-not showing leadership, a debatable issue, he comes back and says they have a sequestered because republicans did not want to make a deal with the debt ceiling. the debt ceiling was the thing that forced all of these other things. so it became really caustic. in a place for you do not see it, it became incredibly nasty. this colors everything. you go on to the house floor. people say anything on the floor. we know what generally the facts are but they will say anything. the senate is not getting -- it used to be in place that's a more conservative and had responsible chatter. it is not anymore. we hear things on the senate floor that is not an accurate representation but it has become so partisan. the water has been poisoned in so many ways that a lot of us feel like there may not be a deal on a sequester. there may not be a deal to raise the debt ceiling. they may not come to an agreement to the taxes or they may come to a deal on the taxes backaches it down the road. you have a tremendous debate about whether there will be a deal. there is a set of congress that says change the dates. and slip it down a few more months. keep kicking it down the road. but cr's and that kind of action comes with enormous cost. so we are talking billions and billions of dollars of destruction. there is a chance to come back in march that they may come out with a bill. but they will be diving into fiscal 2014 in february, march time frame. they may not want to take up 12 again. the major say in march we are going to another six months cr and deal with 2014. conventional wisdom is if mitt romney wins, he runs the table and they -- the republicans when the senate theory that you are talking about reconciliation. that does not require 60 votes. >> that is on my list. if mitt romney wins, he will bring just enough republicans along to give them the tie- breaking vote. they can do this with under 51 votes with reconciliation. this is a really important point. >> the deal with issues in reconciliation like taxes, tax structure. it is a forum in which they can make major changes to the budget structure without requiring what has become the benchmark which is 60 votes. if you want to bring a bill to the floor, you got to get that 60 vote threshold. everybody loves talking about the founders these days. it was designed to be this way. we might have been even that more disruptive over the last 10 years if we did not have a go- slow senate. but reconciliation is putting the pedal to the metal. the party in charge could really start making some cigna began changes. they can make their medicare changes and restructure and take a whack at entitlements. also as mitt romney has said, they want to see an increase in defense spending. they want to tie defense spending to gdp. this is my expertise but in defense spending and we spent so much more than every other country in the world. we spent probably more these days than everybody else combined on defense. everybody else. for example, we have 11 battle carrier groups were asked everybody was so frightened that china had one suddenly. it was one of the former soviet union and the georgians were using it as a museum. but we have 11. so we are a very powerful military nation. even after 12 years of warfare three european nations in nato were very upset with them sometimes because some of them spend well less than 2% of gdp on defense as required by the treaty. all this stuff has to be kept in perspective. i am very pessimistic. i do not see it as a path to them finding a way out of sequester. it is so poisoned right now. after the elections are over, the dynamics are not going to be that changed. in a lot of other ways. reconciliation -- that is what republicans are banking on. once they get to that 50 thresholds, they can really make a lot of changes. you can see by both sides are very passionate about this. republicans can get their entitlement changes. >> one of the things i want to get into -- what does compromise like? -- look like? you are used to covering a congress where republicans have taken a pledge to never vote for a tax increase. democrats are genetically incapable of cutting entitlements and domestic programs. that is why we are at the point where we are. you are pessimistic, i am pessimistic but where are the soft spots for compromise? is there a threshold, a new level of marginal tax rates? 400, 500, 1 million. is there some sort of partial sequester? is there something on the debt ceiling? a middle ground? i might be dreaming here were people salish just cut the pie in half. >> i think there is a way you could see a middle ground as a statement of possibility. it is possible for compromise to occur that would relieve a lot of concern out there. when i talk to people in business or markets, all they are looking for is one side or the other, preferably both, to come off of their inference positions. if he were to see moving coming closer to the center on any of this, there would be a fairly meaningful purchase of time to deal with some of the larger issues. if you just keep pushing it down which i think is the base case for myself. the will find some way when they get to that end, they realize they cannot go home with nothing and they just say we will deal with this in two months and then debate it and come back to that same point again. but at some point, you will see the stock market reacting. i think this is the case where it is not really about the debt of the deficit. they react to the recession to a writ for whatever reason, the u.s. public businesses and consumers are more sensitive to changes in the stock market than people in most other countries. when you look at stocks fluctuating in many parts of europe, they cannot really react -- you cannot say business confidence reacting as sharply as here. markets are taking a dive here. businesses are looking at markets as a signal. at the fiscal cliff approaches, the stock market was stuck to drop a little more and in force lawmakers to try to make some kind of move. a tax hike could also mean removing some of the tax provisions in place. there are a lot of ways to do a tax hike without actually calling a hike in income tax rate. >> it boils down to just two things -- revenue and spending cuts. it is really quite simple. an issue spending reductions in taxes. until they can get to a point -- and with the democrats did propose some spending cuts. they are not the kind of cuts republicans want to see. not perhaps as far as the like to go. on the other side, the republicans have their backs against the wall. . . . . [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> and hope to reestablish those relationships and the like clout. i do not see a big change path promising special operations has been doing in the past. special operations will make in a court -- an important contribution. >> thank you. i want to know if fernand though it would like to respond -- fernando. >> i will not speak specifically about particular books. i will just say, i will push back a little bit on sean on the way they have allowed operators to do certain things. having this thing supports that. they are in a discussion about what it means to be -- they are tight lipped, or should we be as military professionals with experience, should there be more people that should speak about it in a way that informs and advises. we are here to provide insight about the things we have seen in the field. i think that is something as valuable. as far as the need for secrecy, i think -- one of the reasons i brave -- i be a green a brav think, again, provided they did not give away tactics and procedures. that is the million dollar question. rick you draw the line between what is harmful. that is something that is tough to answer. >> i have to say as a retired special forces officer, it concerns me that there is -- there are elements in the special operations committee who planned to speak for the entire special operations. and i disassociate myself from those organizations. while i absolutely believe everyone has the right to organize and speak their mind and engaged in the political process, my concern is that some will hijacked special operations and use it for political purposes. i respect everybody who exercise their first amendment rights. i support it. but i would ask that those who speak in the name of special operations to remember that not all formal special operations personnel sign up to the way that they are conducting themselves. >> when you speak, if you could sit your name and affiliation. >> there is no microphone. >> i have a question. we used to have five helicopters. there were pulled back to be replaced. you talk about increasing the forces. they will be moving starting next year about 10 cp 22's. he says he plans on putting additional gunships. i think that is a clear indication. he talks about the enhancement of the [unintelligible] . they get more qualified people. if you can talk about the initiatives of financing the capability. >> the tsocs -- the theater usher was asian command -- there are assigned to the geographic commander. made up of special operations personnel. they did not technically be long to socom. they advise the commander in staff. i did that is sorely needed. when i talk about the rebalancing of priorities, they are clearly an organization that needs to have the right priorities so they can serve the geographic commanders in ways that will support our strategic priorities. i have heard some of the air force -- i know the longer plans. i think we should keep in mind, those that returned to fort lewis -- there's a focus. although it is not in a theater, there's a kid ability aport los that is a portion to the theater as well. that has been growing since before these initiatives going back a number of years. >> this is a question for you colonel. is there a sense that the first that did not go through the pre- publication we view, there needs to be an example made out of the author or else you will see potentially a cascade of formal special operations operators writing unauthorized accounts of their service. >> i will take that. first of all, i do not know the history of all books that have been published. whether or not they have all gone through all reviewers. i would tend to think there are books published the have not gone through read yours. i did not know that for a fact. we signed on the statements. week signed an agreement. even in retirement, i am bound by that agreement. i respect that agreement. it is part of being a good american citizen. i have not read the book. i did not know what is in it. i did not know what will be revealed. he is a very passionate and articulate -- he has a very passionate and articulate testimony. there are procedures in place and you should follow those. whether an example will be made, i do not know. but we have a responsibility as military and former military to follow the proper procedures. what happens is what will happen. >> do you fear there could be more if he is seen to profit from this? >> it is hard to predict human nature. some people profit or try to profit from many different things. i have heard that this offer is contributing all of the proceeds to charity. i do not know if that is a fact. i have read that in the press. others may. but i would stand by the fact that, we have to follow the rules. >> [unintelligible] you have your soldiers being killed. the beginning of this year we had a terrorist attack with civilian casualties in afghanistan. should it be more stable after 10 years? >> i am not sure we are going to talk too much about that. >> a couple words, yes. that is extraordinarily challenging. what i often speak to is -- the past four that i went on. and what i saw as far as the trajectory that i saw. were there are some gains that we have seen. increased stability through the areas were the search for says were. southwest where the marines are. we have seen those things. the down sides are that there have been real for actions that are starting to grow between our forces and the afghans. that is something that we have to figure out next year, this year, next year. and post 2014. in my opinion, that is the $10 million question. does that undermine the strategy. can we find a way to successfully fix those issues. especially the green on the blue issues there. there are ideas out there. but it just cannot be a thing of -- there's something to that. the venting and reinventing. -- revetting. are they going to of the experience and aptitude? are they going to interrupt with the afghans? >>i am also a retired special forces died. i commanded a special forces team in the 1970's. and recently i was the program manager that the major talked- about. the thing that bothers me now, and you alluded to it. the role of the ranger mafia. if you go to a special forces group, i will bet you that there is not a special forces group member who is not a ranger. i am worried about the mindset. -- a friend of mine was the corporate manager in iraq. he called a commander to ask and to help put together a training program for the iraqis. he said we are not interested. that bothers me. do iss a good -- what we not all trigger pulling. i think you are right on the mark. i think there needs to be a policy review. on what they can share. they need really strong public officers that can deal with what we do. for one thing, staying totally black, during things that might just be outside of what the american people would really go along with. one of the points they made was interesting. the can bring in someone with cultural understanding, a language, but they have to fit in with the personalities. one of the things they do, and we ought to think about doing this, and a psychiatrist's on their staff. people are interviewed. if people do not have what is considered to be the mindset that is needed to do the job, they are not considered. they do not take them. we ought to do something like that for the kind of folks that you are proposing to get into the afghan pande. a new drug the right to buy and set it seems to me. across the board, i appreciate listening to all of your thank you. >> i want to pick up on one point that you made. the trigger cooler mentality in -- the trigger puller mentality. i as somebody who knows many people has seen its that there has been a tremendous tension since 9/11 in the committee between the traditional unique skill sets of a form internal defense, and more of a direct action mentality to which you are referring. some people say this goes group by group. certain groups, and certain group commander's have more of a direct action mentality, and others have more of a uw foreign internal defense mentality. and it is not for me to say which is right and which is wrong. but the tension is certainly there. certainly, i think it is accurate to say that special forces is at least prior to the establishment of marine special operations command, the only force of the united states military has a that specializes in unconventional war and foreign defense. it goes without asking, whether direct action and spending specialized units is the best use of special forces. >> the first thing that was said to me what i wanted to special forces -- you have to understand, you are a teacher. that is why you are here. you are teaching. >> yes. i think -- those are great points. first i would say -- there is a lot more special forces out there that get it. and your points are well taken. we do not see -- the house but is not a burning does not make the news. we see a lot of those types of operations that make the news. they are easy to talk about. what i am talking about is very difficult to articulate in a news article. and it -- especially things that take a long time to achieve effects. they are not newsworthy. we do not hear about it. there's a lot of emphasis on a direct action. and i remind everyone that special operations committee is not out there on its own -- acting on its own. like any military force, they are executing the missions there given from higher headquarters. we should keep that in mind. >> i absolutely agree. we have evolved over last 10 years. we can find and take out anywhere -- anyone anywhere in the world. we need to be just as effective -- wading into uncertainty. i need to be able to put a small amount of gas on the ground and have them go in in a very ambiguous environment, and seek to understand it and try to figure out how to influence it best. influence without authority to achieve. that is what we need to do. >> do we have time for one more question, maybe two. >> if i would like to thank you all. especially in a moment when the number 1 best seller is on this topic. things will be changing quite dramatically. two months ago, my predecessor here, leon panetta spoke. and secretary panetta chose to speak about sequestration. i know you have spoken about it today. is there any concern that you all have about the impact of sequestration, severe budget cuts, --? >> i mean, i have been focused for the last nine months on events, 3, 5, 10 months ago in iraq and afghanistan. >> thank you for the question. i am concerned with it. i am concerned with anything that interrupts our ability to plan for the future. i think we are going to face cuts. already there have been cut outside of sequestration. they are obviously debatable. what i do fear is that if sequestration happens, what i think is right to suffer the most are people. in the times of uncertainty and fiscal constraint, our number one resources ar people. we have to protect our military equipment, our programs, ensuring that we are cutting edge technology wives and have better capabilities than anyone in the world. -- technology-wise. and ensure that our soldiers, marines are well trained in addition to being well equipped. my fear of sequestration is that the individual soldier will suffer, perhaps at the expense of equipment. it is all about the people. that is our most important asset. >> last question. >> [unintelligible] >> i am not privy to that information. our two countries, afghanistan and that states and what we agree, it comes down to the strategic construct of ways and means. what are we try to achieve and what are the ways we are going to do it. the message and the means. but it is going to have to be a result of the agreement between our two countries on the way ahead and what meet our national interests as well as afghanistans. >> clearly, this is a decision is being carefully decided upon. we are going to have to decide what is the best way to empower the afghans that we have seen. the afghans that i did spend the months working with, they really impressed me. they are amazing. especially at the junior levels where we have these young guys who have been working with us for 7, 8, 9 years. what i expected to seek from them -- when i went and, i did not know what i would find. whether there were going to be on the lines or after their own agendas. but it was not the reality. would find an occasional -- corrupt officials but were there, holding on to positions. but for every one of them there were 4, 5, 6 young enthusiastic guys. how do we, given what our leadership besides, how we best empower these afghans that we are leaving on the grounds that will determine what happens to the whole campaign. >> we did write a report that is available outside. i would like to thank our panel for coming. this was a great discussion. i hope we continue to get the point of view of the state department to see how these into agency relationships will move forward. thank you all for coming very much. [applause] >> today is the 11th anniversary of september 11 attacks. on washington journal -- mark begich talks about national security. and. mac will speak about al qaida . plus you are e-mails, phone calls and tweets. "washington journal" live at 7:00 a.m. on c-span. have you visited the campaign 2012 website? you can also read what the candidates are saying on major issues like the economy, the deficit, national security and immigration. what and engage at c-span.org/ campaign2012. >> watch and engage with c-span as our campaign coverage continues towards election day. and the presidential candidates prepare to face off and 3 90- minute debates. domestic policy is the focus from the university of denver. to state 16, there will take audience questions in a town hall meeting. and the final debate monday the 22. from a linn university in ohio. and from centre college in ohio on october 11. all of our coverage on c-span, c-span radio and online at c- span.org. >> we will be live through a 9/11 remembrance ceremonies. events from ground zero. at 9:10 on c-span 2, the ceremony from the pentagon in arlington. and at 11:00 a.m. -- members of congress under the victim's with a ceremony on the steps of the capital. and on our facebook page, we are asking how you think the united states has changed since the attack. this is facebook.com/cspan -- visit to let us know what you think. -- for either president obama or gop presidential candidate. the campaign 2012 project held a panel discussion on the differences in the differences between the two candidates. this is 90 minutes. >> welcome. my name is josh. i am a white house reporter for politico. i want to welcome everyone to the discussion on terrorism issues and the 2012 election. this is part of a series of discussions brookings is having, moderated by a politico, talking about a bunch of different areas that are coming up, or in some cases not coming up in the presidential election and why they are and what points are of most interest in the campaign. the format for these discussions has been to of a paper written by one of the scholars here at brookings, as well as a couple of responses, laying out questions or thoughts or critique of the initial paper. we are joined here today by, starting to my right, a senior fellow here at brookings. he wrote the main paper we will be talking about. along with daniel, a fellow at the center. he is best known to me as one of the founders of a blog, sort of required reading for anyone who does a lot of reading about national security and terrorism issues. to his right we have stephen from the perkins institution, another fellow here who works in the area of -- of brookings institute. and another senior fellow at brookings. he is standing in for another who wrote ple 0 response responses. on how they should go forward on terrorism issues. in a second term of obama or the first of mitt romney. we thought we would start off the discussion talking about how we got to this place in the presidential campaign and to the discussion of terrorism. you can always find someone who predicted just about anything. but it would have been hard to predict that we would be right where we are right now in terms of where this issue is a debt to the campaign and how it is playing the general consensus at the moment is the national security and terrorism are an issue where president obama has a pretty substantial advantage over his challenger mitt romney. there's a debate over how significant the issue over other issues like the economy. but most feel it is an area where obama feels he has a pretty strong advantage, which is a pretty surprising that -- development if you think of where we work just four years ago. 3 or four years ago. i covered these are the course of the first term. terrorism is really an issue where president obama was on the ropes for the first years of his administration. his plan to close guantanamo was thrown back right off of the back by members of congress. and never really recovered its footing. and was eventually just disposed of by the administration by the end of 2010, the beginning of 2011, there was public relations debacle over try to try terrorism suspects in new york city. and there were pretty close calls and the terrorism area, particularly christmas day bombing attempt of a flight and bound to detroit that could have been a very serious disaster in which the administration's reaction was not seen as sure footed. it is amazing that we are here just about two months before the next election and it is somehow seen that the president has an advantage on these issues. i guess the main that has not been mentioned could be the killing of osama bin laden in may 2011, and the president abandoning some of the policies that were so controversial early in his term. i will start with you ben, maybe you want to add other factors about how we have gotten to this place. terrorism and national security issues and how democrats feel they are such an advantage. and how they feel like they can waive them like a flag at their convention here it seems like republicans are on the run over those issues. mitt romney did not mention afghanistan and the loss over this whole area with seen as a real advantage for republicans. >> think you are. and thank you all for coming out. -- thank you. it is great to have people gathered over a topic as not plan significantly in an election. there was a time when we all thought counter-terrorism was very important. i. josh has really hit on the central paradox for both parties on with this issue is playing in the election. i think that three years ago, 3.5 years ago, none of us would have predicted that this would have been an issue that the president would be talking about in his acceptance speech at his convention. and the republican candidate would not be talking about in his acceptance speech. i do not think any of us -- i would not have predicted that. i cannot know a lot of people who would either. when you look at these poll data, it suggests that this is an issue that the president -- terrorism in particular, it pulls much more strongly on terrorism, handling of terrorism and he does on handling of other things, including the economy. when one poll for example -- year is 65 percent of people said they approved of his handling of terrorism. he tends to pull better than mitt romney on this question. he tends to pull in absolute terms pretty high. it is the common area of real strength for him. this is a problem for the republican party in the sense that running candidates who are supposedly tough and campaigning on the basis of the supposed weakness of democratic candidates is kind of a mainstay of republican and presidential campaigning. it is very awkward for the republican party to be sort of outflanked on this. i also think there's a paradox in it for obama. and one that is a -- has governance implications in going forward, should he be reelected. and they are as follows. obama came into office wanting to make a big change and make a big splash in this issue. but the splashy wanted to make is that he was going to be the guy who closed guantanamo, restore the rule of law, got us out of iraq. ended torture. and did counter-terrorism according to our values. he did a lot of those things. we could talk about that. there is a lot -- he had some sort of solid accomplishment along those lines. but those are not actually the reason why he is polling at 65% on his handling of terrorism. the reason why he is polling that i and the reason why he is talking about it in his convention speech and his opponent did not is that he launched, he ramp up drone strikes, killed a lot of people, he killed two people in particular, osama. and the second of those people is a united states citizen. and the result of the aggregate of these very strong, aggressive actions is that he has come off as a tough guy. so you have the republican party -- has been sort of deprived of the place is expected to be. but an a significant respect, obama is not talking about this issue the way i think he wanted to be talking about it at this point either. i do not mean to say that is an unfortunate position for him to be in the debt to the sense that you would rather be the guy who got osmama bin laden tha not. what it does highlight is that his record in counter-terrorism is dramatically stronger than his record of doing a set of things that he came into office wanting to do. those efforts, which josh alluded to in his introduction, bring up a real area of a failure on the part of this administration, which is that it came in wanting to fundamentally change the framework in which it was going to be operating. and it has done a much better job of confronting al-qaida then it has done in confronting the congress of the united states and creating that framework. and so you have a really until the end of last year with the passage of the national defense authorization act. and almost continuing series of antler locking it clashes between commerce and the presidency over the course of the obama administration that he has not managed to get real control over. and i think the challenge for him, should be the recollected going forward, the challenges for mitt romney the would be different. the challenges for obama would be really, how do you settle these relations with congress in a fashion that would be even remotely as successful as you have been in confronting the enemy? >> i just wanted to start by asking you -- on the issue of the political ramifications here. many of us have been trying to figure out what mitt romney's policies are on these terrorism related issues. struggled at the convention as a result of not having mentioned afghanistan. when you get into some of the specifics of the afghanistan -- pakistan policy, or terrorism policies are generally, it seems hard to pin him down. mention one in your paper that he favors free codifying are coming up with an extended version of a umf. we are about to have these debates where i am told that perhaps as much as half of the time is supposed to be devoted to foreign policy issues, presumably including terrorism issues. where you see. presumably romney will have to differentiate himself from the president. were these to the republicans having a direction to go here that tosell to voters. >> it is a difficult problem for them. the areas that have tried in the past or to oppose trials in federal court. suspect spirit which is not a good idea. to oppose the tool that you are likely to have to use repeatedly. and that both the carter administration and former administration has used repeatedly as a mainstay, especially on the domestic side how you handle terrorist suspects. be supportive military commission as part of the answer to that. except that obama is now conducting military commissions, and so that does not really differentiate you from the opponents. youcan, as romney has flirted with in the past, focus on the interrogations side and try to differentiate yourself. he ended enhanced interrogation. i am really an enthusiast of the sleep deprivation and waterboarding. but it is not really clear that is a winning -- it is clear that by the way when you poll people, people tend to like that stuff a better more than elites do. but you will recall during the republican primaries, there was sort of an -- i love waterboarding more than you. know, i love waterboarding more than you. i think in a runoff to a general election, that stuff would play pretty badly. in addition, there's not actually been, on a more serious level, there has not been any recent cases that i know of that you could even plausibly say we have had operational setbacks as a result of insufficient aggressiveness and interrogation. there's not really a there there even if you put aside all of the moral and legal concerns. the result is that i think that you do have a problem of what you should talk about at -- as a republican candidate. the result in mitt romn's case is to talk about it as little as possible. which is very awkward for him. and i think, underlying that, is the fact that both sides, want there to be a great difference between them on this issue. it just is not there. and you end up with certain things that, for example, neither candidate is going to close guantanamo. one candidate says he is committed. and one candidate says he is committed to keeping guantanamo. but we know that obama is not actually going to do it. we know that mitt romney is not going to do it. answer the boater has the sense there is much less difference then there may be rhetorically. especially because obama is not talking much about closing guantanamo. both candidates are enthusiastic about attacking the enemy with drones. both candidates as a practical matter will use both military commissions and federal court trials to try the enemy. both candidates will reserve the right to hold detainee's in military custody without charges at all under certain circumstances. and both will probably try to reduce to a minimum the number of circumstances in which i have to do that. and you know, neither candidate is really moving aggressively against talking about how we should -- how the nsa shouldn't be conducting the surveillance that used to be kutcher results before the act. i think you have to underline his silent in real convergence between the candidates that makes it very hard for him to identify what the areas that he would really differentiate himself look like. >> do you think mitt romney they would be likely to detain someone on u.s. sorrell outside the traditional united states legal system -- on u.s. soil? >> obama has basically said he will not do it, although he does not forswear the legal authority to do it. he just says he will not. mitt romney has not said anything like that to my knowledge. as a practical matter, no president after the cases is. be looking for a case to do that. and so you are born to be looking at a way to figure out a person in the criminal justice system. so far we have always found one. hypothetically, i think mitt romney might be more willing to contemplate it. but in practice, their behavior will be the same. they will look to the detainee in front of them and say, can we make a criminal case? they will find a way to make a criminal case. and the question will not arise. i agree, mitt romney may have more conceptual willingness to do that than obama. but i doubt you will ever see it. not as long as the numbers stay small and terms of number people you are resting domestically. court's and the pressures from within the government would be to stay the course? >> it is not 2002 any more. in 2002, we did not have barry developed systems for when you pull someone off of the plane that provokes a real panic. and we have stood up the national security division. we have routine cooperation between intelligence agencies and law enforcement all designed to ameliorate that problem and make sure that when you have to confront that person, you can do it in a fashion that secures your interests without compromising your law enforcement. those systems are not perfect. there are trade-offs. but so far, they have not resulted in a situation where we simply could not proceed with the law enforcement case and what was unthinkable to let the person go. >> i want to ask you one thing about your paper. before we move on to their reactions. your paper talks a lot about what the next president should do in terms of trying to reach a meeting of the minds of congress on how to proceed on some of these issues like detention, probably also dealing with the aumf, the authorization for military forces. the only operative congressional enactment that we have dealing with a lot of these issues related to terrorism. why you think reaching an accommodation between the executive branch and it would split of a branch here is so important? why do think it might not be a panacea? when you think it would be -- i can't see people saying, congress as of august 2012 pooll has a 12% approval rating. a lot of experts view those , col.s as lies and, g why is it necessary to get a stamp of approval for these policies? when not have the executive branch continue to work out these policies? and let them serve as a referendum validating them? >> first of all, you have to go through the complicated dance of commerce because congress forces you to. if congress were willing to -- as it did for much of the bush administration -- simply sit back and say, if you take responsibility for the outcome, we will keep our of this shot. we will not say do not do it. but we reserve the right to say bad things about you if things go badly. that becomes a viable option. the problem is that, starting at vendor response to the guantanamo closure plan, that was not a game congress was willing to play anymore. and congress passed a series of restrictions on the president's ability to transfer people out of guantanamo, including to the ad states for criminal process. there was a very deliberate and active effort on congress's part to get involved, in a way that requires, if you are serious about doing these things, that you engage with congress nearly at least as a defensive proposition in order to not have these options cut off. secondly, and i think less situational late, or more fundamentally, it is not a healthy thing for -- to go years and years with the central contours' of a very robust executive actions, done on the basis of statutory -- or sometimes no statutory authority. anytime you can have the congress of united states behind you, even with the 10% approval rating, you would much rather as president, have a federal statute saying you are within your right to do this very controversial thing, thank not. the bush administration suffered terribly. for not getting congress on board on the things that they would have been prepared to do had they been asked. the obama administration sometimes against its will actually, has been through this back and forth with congress -- has built more curable architecture that is a very salutary thing, including in litigation that they have going on everyday. >> i said the amf was probably the only big piece of legislation there are others. validating the nsa program or putting it into a legislative framework. >> and you have another of 2009. a very important piece of legislation in recent the democratic party on board the fundamental architecture by which we are likely to end up trying muhammed and the 9/11 conspirators. >> i will move to you and we will change the discussion and talk more about what might call a long-term pro-active kind of responses by the administration. >> can i just ask a question? i am intrigued by some of what you said. does this mean that we never reached a bipartisan consensus on a american foreign policy, should be post-9/11. >> both parties want to deny that such a consensus exists. the consensus violates both parties self-image. the democratic party -- i think you will recognize some truth. the democratic party sees itself as the party of the rule of law, or the people who live our values, who believe that security and liberty are not at odds, and we can do well by doing good. the other party is the party of macho aggressiveness. and it is not think about the place that we are going to occupy in the world. and our image in the world. and the republican policy looks at it as we are the party of toughness, the party that understands that something is good and and your interests, and it man at the same period where the party that has the discipline to do what is necessary, even if it is not popular. and the democratic party is in weak. they are very deeply -- deep in de self images of the political movements. i think it is harder for both sides to understand the degree of consensus that does exist. and the degree of consensus that exists is the following -- one is, we are going to use both law enforcement and wore power on its systematic, sustained level for the foreseeable future, in confronting terrorism. we are going to use more powers overseas, law enforcement powers domestically but also overseas. the second is, the war powers include the power to target with legal force, people consider to be part of the enemy, and to detain a subtext to the walls of war, not the criminal justice system. third, we are going to be very aggressively surveiling all kinds of people in the course of doing those two things. four, we are going to use certain hybrid tools for those that we do capture. we may use military trials for some of them. we may use civilian trials. those decisions are largely going to be matters of executive convenience. and finally, i think the other sort of core element of the consensus, and this is a political consensus, not a legal consensus, is that we are going to be on offense. and we are going to be doing as much offense as possible on the basis of a standoff robotic platforms, because that saves our people from getting hurt. i think, neither mitt romney need nor barack obama put in this room would disagree with a word. i think the reason they have so much trouble figuring out what to disagree about is that they both basically, and a huge percentage of both of their parties, actually operationally do not descend from a word of that. >> do you think it is fair to describe that as a george w. bush term to consensus where what we should be doing, what the default should be on a lot of these policies? >> your definitely right to distinguish between the bush term one and bush term to. bush moved a lot and he changed. and obama has gone further down the road that bush was already moving in the latter part of his second term. i do not think you would see -- i see it more as a continuation of the directional momentum of the late bush administration. the bush administration learned a lot of lessons or the course of its time in office. obama learned lessons from the bush administration's time in office. i think largely those of geled around a certain degree of consensus. i think the administration was moving in that direction. i think obama made important innovations to further its down the road. equipped do you have any thoughts before we go to the formal responses? >> my thoughts delivered later -- of the whole debate is too narrow. it just messes a huge area of issues that need to be tackled. the security aspects, yes, the war effort aspects. i believe they are not as important as they have to be. all of the other issues -- social issues, political issues. what i would have liked to see is a debate on how with all of the changes happening now in the arab world, how can we seize the opportunity to use those changes to fight terrorism? because i see what is going on now with that. it creates a great opportunity. that is where i would like to see the debate of the united states going. >> why do not we start and on that a little bit here discussed in your paper some of that issue, how the united states can take advantage of the arab situation. dupage the net in states as a by standard -- you paint the united states as a by standard. i think a lot of folks in the arab world saw as i covered the obama administration, them actually reinforcing some of these rather despot of regimes. it was largely pursued by fortifying leaders in the arab world, and places in egypt. the president went to cairo with a speech that was not really focused on dramatic change in cairo in egypt, but with other goals. other people who might not be discussed in polite company, like president assad. there were efforts to romance them. all of which has been dumped as the united states has intended to adopt the arab spring. what i would say -- says the united states have the credibility and then to the arab world to be a proponent of democracy in this arab movement? or does it have to try to take advantage of it in a more subtle way? the sense i get from the administration is that they kill the latter is the case. that they cannot take a vantage of it fall on but have to do it more carefully because the united states -- credibility is sort of damaged. >> the big question on the table is -- this institution deals with the bad guys. how you deal with terrorism? the program are from looks at how you engage with the 99.9% of muslims that have nothing to do with al-qaida. and what this the engagement look like? the arab spring created new opportunities for america. -- for america to engage in a different way with the people of at least the middle east and north africa. to your point, i think there is some reticence to get out front for fear that our prior reputation will undermine legitimate voices in the region pushing for change. you are seeing a disillusionment within the region about moving more boldly. syria being the most recent example. feeling that -- returning to american values, it is turning a blind eye, or is least not doing enough to counter what is a tyrant turning on his own people and killing them. >> have you detected any differences on those policies between the obama and mitt romney campaigns or their rhetoric? >> interestingly, as someone who cares deeply about what is happening, i kind of wish that both campaigns were talking about this more. that this was more of an issue. i think if it were, we would see more pressure for there to be a more forward looking united states policy. but mitt romney has not removed that much from the administration and. >> do you think matt mitt romney is caught, in a sense, between two wings of his party. 18 traditionally hawkishne, and another wing, the tea party wing, seen as resurgent and powerful. and to have a more isolationist -- they tend to be more skeptical about united states military involvement and foreign policy involvement. and that mitt romney is trying to wreak both. and the moment to get more specific about that is sure some of the issues -- the monti takes a position, he starts to undermine his standing with one of the constituencies. is that part of what is going on? >> i think the larger issue that has only become clear over time is that the russians have put on a red line on this issue. but for the administration -- this has become an issue larger than syria. this has become an issue of what you do when you have a human rights crisis on your hands? and a major power within the security council does not want to reduce potentially two major powers did not want to. do you push forward? knowing that if you push forward there could huge fallout in terms of long-term relations with russia, china to balance of power within the world. >> the paper you are speaking for today talks about development and

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