Transcripts For CSPAN Public Affairs 20121026

Good point. Our state constitution has a provision so that if you are selected you can still run a four the office at the same time. But the fact that he is trying to hold on as a safety vest for the likely proposition that he loses the guy running for Congress Come he is running a Great Campaign against paul ryan. He is on television right now. I think robb is one to give paul ryan a run for his money. Paul ryan has not come back to talk to the constituents, to talk to the people whose votes he is seeking for congress. Host this is our look at wisconsin, the battleground state. Joining us is mike tate, Wisconsin Democratic party chairman. On our line for republicans, adele, wisconsin. Go ahead. Caller we have it Tammy Baldwin running for the United States senate here and wisconsin. I believe she is also what we call the house of representatives, did she give up her thing and there as the house of representatives when she ran . I am not sure. But i want to say, i am really you talk about medicare. When they took away 716 billion of medicare, that scares me. Also, how can you broach or stand up for, i am sorry, but our president. And in benghazi, when that whole group allied for weeks on what happened. When the whole group lied. When the new two hours later the truth. I am sorry for you, sir. And you talk about spending money, about a recall, 13 million before the recall. Ridiculous. Thank you. Guest theres a lot going on and that col. Let us see what i can do to address it. Tammy baldwin is representing the district since 1998. She did give up her seat to run for the United States senate. The democrat is one to the next member of congress. And reference to the 716 billion, that was money that was allocated to actually defray costs and make medicare solvent for a little longer. It is the biggest lie that the republicans tell, that the president stroll 716 from medicare. He talked to a bunch of people and said, if we move these costs, we are going to make it solvent for a little longer. Was such a good idea that paul ryan put it in its own budget. It is a line the keep selling because they do not have anything real to offer the people of wisconsin right now. And it is unfortunate that they keep repeating this fly over and over again. That the president stole 716 million. Senior should be afraid people as young as myself should be afraid, the republican plan to turn medicare into a voucher care. It is a benefit we have provided for so long, now we would have a voucher or there would go out, Purchase Health care and likely have to make of the difference in costs. It could cost seniors up to 6,000 a year out of pocket. I do not think that is the right way to go. That is the way the republicans want to go, that is their idea. I think that is the wrong place to take our retirees, our seniors. It is why i think we are going to defeat mitt romney and paul ryan and reelect the president. And Tammy Baldwin will be a stalwart champion for Social Security. Piercing Tommy Thompsons campaign is about 1. 30 billion in cash. Is that a concern to you . As far as the numbers are concerned . Theres been a lot of spending in this campaign. I do not a scared or deterred by how much money the republicans have. Tommy thompson, after you left wisconsin went off to serve in the george w. Bushs cabinet. But one of the reasons i think his campaign has so much money, and you see so much outside spending is that he cut this deal on a Medicare Part d where he made it so that the government cannot negotiate with the Prescription Drug companies were lower drug prices. I think this is the ultimate payback for tommy, giving such a great giveaway to the Prescription Drug companies. Tommy thompson is not the same guy that people remember from his heyday in 1980s. That may be what is special interest friends are spending money as a reward for tommy for making himself so much wealthier. Host nate, missouri, go ahead. Caller romney is a businessman. Whenever he says, he is born to come to the president s way of thinking. You saw that in the last debate. We set up here and talk about, well, about the president and he doesnt have any idea. The president knows that whatever he is going to do, romney is going to copy it. The first debate they said romney won that debate. The seventh or third debate, romney doesnt win the debate, they do not want to talk about the debate. And then you polls, ryan i have not seen one paul where he is leading. And his own home state, they do not even want to make that a point. He cannot even when his own state, and i watched the polls all year. And the only reason why the republicans do half as good as they do, especially in a lot for college, is because a lot of the states like michigan, pennsylvania, a lot of the states up there, even wisconsin, is following for the president. And there will not move him over and keep him in a neutral,. Host can ask theres a usa today survey out talking about what people perceive as the victory of all three debates. And they say mitt romney. Guest i think the debate turned opportunity for people to hear from their candidates. And last debate mitt romney this is one thing when he is running in the primary. Toit is a completely different thing when he is behind in the polls. To moderate his extreme positions. It is hard to see where he stands on womens issues, taxes. He does not really tell the truth. And i think i do not know if we have ever had a president ial candidate in modern times a display such falsehoods in the debate as we have seen from mitt romney. Host on our line for republicans, jessie. You are on. Go ahead. Caller good morning. I am calling to talk about jobs if you do not mind. I am a kind of a republican. I am not really happy with my choice for president ial this year. But i am not really happy with obama either. He keeps on talking about jobs and what he is doing for america. But the only thing i have seen him do is run some program that takes care of a select group of people in this country. They are overpriced. These guys are making a fortune. It doesnt cost 30 million to do two miles worth of road. Is a just not right. Why is anyone why isnt anyone sitting down with the retail companies, and instead of farming money out to other countries, people that come in, and giving them money to develop holiday i cannns and convenience stores, basically for free guest president inherited a terrible mess. This country was absolutely hemorrhaging jobs. The Unemployment Rate is now down below 8 . It is headed in the right direction. We will keep going. The problem with the republican theory of government, you give of the money to the people at the top, and wealth will trickle down. It sounds good in theory, but it has never worked in the history of the country, i would argue the history of the world. It is an economic theory that makes the rich richer, while the people in the middle class are struggling to get into the middle class and get left behind by the side of the trail. The reason why the president is on the right track, the reason why we have had months of job growth is because we are investing in the middle class, we are investing into education, innovation and infrastructure. And making sure that we are going to lead a transition to clean energy and that will create thousands of new jobs. You really do see a clear difference between where the president will take us and between mitt romneys ideas. Host jay on our line for independents. Caller hello. Howre you doing . I want to ask a question. I am an independent. And i tend to look for some point of honesty in the campaigns. And i saw an interview during the Democratic Convention that was interviewing the Massachusetts Governor of the proceeding governor to mitt romney. And he was asked about his transition period into the administration. He said that was easy. They took all of the hard drives out of the massachusetts government computers. And for the life of me i cannot think of what legitimate reason you would take all of the hard drives of all of the government computers. It is beyond my comprehension. Host on our line for independents, maryland. Caller i am independent, but a little bit more progressive than most democrats. I tend to vote on the democratic ticket. You have a candidate in mitt romney hill, his entire focal point is fiscal issues and creating jobs. But when you look at his plan, it does not make sense. I am curious as to how someone would consider supporting this guy. His campaign oppose the plan is to increase the tax rate or lower the tax rate. And cut the debt. But it doesnt really add up when you think about it. We talked about the deductions. He refuses to tell us which deductions he would close. And even if you close all of the deductions that were there to close, it still would not make up for the lost in, that we would have with the tax rate lower. Host the question is caller the question i have is, how someone would support a candidate whose plan doesnt make sense. Guest if i could add to that, i think the caller makes a really good point. Which is, mitt romneys economic plan is give the people at the very top, the people have been doing very well, give them more money. And what you have got to do is replace that, you have to raise taxes in the middle class. What you basically do is to lock up the government. And you have to start cutting things, whether it is families that rely on Home Mortgage interest reduction as a way to make it and be a homeowner, weather is pell grant for students to study hard but cannot afford college, his whole plan, obviously in my opinion, doesnt enable the country to grow. And is an example of an Economic Policy that hasnt worked in this country. It has been tried other times and it failed. I understand the appeal, i understand it, if you give more to the people at the top, they will do more and it will employ people down the line. Has never worked. And i think that is the big problem that republicans face is the simple fact that their economic plans would not grow this country. Host 7. 3 unemployment in wisconsin, what does that do for voters . Guest it is been tough here. We lost the gm plant during the Bush Administration. We lost manufacturing jobs. We have had a governor who was had a regressive agenda that is not a lot of jobs to grow and flourish here. I do think that people in wisconsin know that things are Getting Better, we are turning the corner. Our Unemployment Rate is a little lower than it is a nationally. And i think they understand that this country is headed in the right direction. We are headed in the right track. We came from a big hole. The country has dug themselves of this whole. Host your job is it more difficult because of the recall election . Guest i do not think so. I do not know that it has an impact one way or the other. Host and so this is mike tate of the Wisconsin Democratic. Arty chairm one more call, ohio, on our line for republicans, barrette. Qr margatite. Caller there are so many people that are having to work part time jobs. Or are working two temporary jobs, trying to make ends meet because they are not hiring fulltime. Fullhey cant these as one job. I do not get that. The pride that obama can have on that. I like you skipped over benghazi. People are ignoring this and finding out the truth about how obama has lied about benghazi. And it is born to hit him in the face whether or not he is president again or what. As you guys think that you can hide everything from the United States people. Host go ahead. Guest i think the president has been very clear that we know that some people that have gotten back to work have not been able to find fulltime work. Unfortunately that is not helped by governors like you have an ohio and wisconsin who go out of their way to get organized labor and make it easier to provide healthcare benefits. The president is doing a loss to help that. With respect to foreign policy, i think that the record has been clear. I think this is a desperate act in a Desperate Campaign in the closing days to try to say that the president lied to the American People. I think that is not true, it is offensive to the good men and women who are neither democrats or republicans but get up and work for the National Security of this country. Host what are you going to be watching for in your state on Election Night . Guest in wisconsin, is a unique blend. About to turn that your base democratic voters and make sure you are getting the votes from the swing voters, from the milwaukee suburbs or the green bay, across markets. We want to see big turnouts in the madison area. 20 to hold our own markets like green bay. Is a swing market. I love wisconsin. Is a fabulous state to watch politics and. To be a top state politically. But it is a great formula to put together a democratic victory. Host joining us from milwaukee, mike tate, Wisconsin Democratic party chairman. Thank you for your time. Guest thank you. Host coming up next, we reduce switch over to our america by the numbers series. Housing in the United States. Joining us is raemeka mayo from the u. S. Census bureau and josh boak to talk about housing. That is coming up. I like cspan coverage because it is well diversified. It covers all sides, independent, democratic and republican views. Cspan is not boring. It is so topical. There are Current Events which is very interesting to me. I am a current event junkie. And i love what is going on right now. They are talking about issues that are important right now. Michael watch is cspan. Created by americas Cable Companies and 1979. Brought to you by your television provider. With people still talking about this months president ial debate, cspan student can the documentary competition once middle and High School Students to send a message to the president in a short video, tell us what is the most important issue the president should consider in 2013. For your chance to win the grand prize of 5,000. Cspan student cam competition is open to students in grades 6 through 12. Find out more at studentcam. Org. We are not very proficient. The dutch as well. During the very first days of the war, the japanese would occupy singapore, there would occupy the philippines and american possession they needed that oil to continue the war. So they occupy these areas. By the same token, the americans and the philippines were not only defeated by the japanese, but in many ways humiliated. This is a death march. 76,000 prisoners. About 11,000 of them were americans. 7000 of them would die in this 60 miles, 70 mile march there were forced on. And the way in which there were treated was nothing less than brittle. This is the real thing. The japanese be headed many of them. Tossed many of them into the path of oncoming tanks. Many of those american soldiers and of course the filipinos who were joining them, they died of starvation. This was war in its worst form. The americans are not going to forget that. Their plan to pay the japanese back. I would make the point now that the war in the pacific was in many ways a racial war. It became a racial war. The japanese mistreated the americans and the americans and turn would return the favor. This weekend on lectures in history, world war ii, with gary. Saturday night at 8 00 p. M. And midnight on cspan 3, American History tv. Washington journal continues. Host every weekend at this time we take at look would take a look of figures from the u. S. Census bureau. This time housing in the United States. Joining us raemeka mayo, with the u. S. Census bureau. We are also joined by josh boak of the fiscal times. On housing in the United States. Raemeka mayo, when it comes to the u. S. Census bureau, collect information when it comes to housing on three levels. Residential construction, residential sales and Construction Spending. Why is that important . Guest just to give you a brief overview, we collect data on residential construction, which is Building Permits, Housing Starts and housing completions. That is collected partially funded by housing funding urban development. How many units have been authorized to build in the United States. And new residential sales provides information on how many Housing Units have been sold and a majority of new homes a first currently for sale. And Construction Spending provides an permission on Construction Spending for the public and private sectors. In looking at that time it gives you a good overview of the measure of how housing and construction are doing over all for the United States. And again, this data is always available from the mobil added that we have. It gives you uptodate information on all of those indicators. When they are released and that sort. When looking at the data, many indicators have been improving, or appear to be improving over time. I would say the most recent release but we have had with the residential construction, the Building Permits and Housing Starts have increased over time. Host and that is with state authorized Construction Companies or whatever to start projects when it comes to Housing Starts . Guest that is how it works. A person or a contractor would go out and get a permit for the particular structure that would be built. That is an indicator of how much new construction will be for appendicular place. Host at this time we saw house is sitting on a market that have not been sold or foreclosed. Is there a balance problem . Guest one way to think about it is that the suit was and is improving, but it was terrible to begin with. There are still about 10. 8 million homeowners who are under water. We do not seem to be in the trenches, the pit of the housing crisis anymore. We are getting out, but it is slow going. Host according to one of the slides, race in the United States extent about 65. 1 in 2010. Is that correct . Guest the Home Ownership rate. If you look from 1980 on a forward, it has been slightly over 64 since 1980. It is a good indication of what the rate has been for the last 20, 40 years. It host that rate stays stable as far as the last few years . Guest based on the data we have, yes. We continue to see over 64 . And it is actually the largest sense the last census of 2000. That was 66. 2 based on the chart you see there. It is been consistently over 64 since 1980. Host what is leading to the current Home Ownership rate . What goes into it in the modern day . Guest one of the leading factors we are seeing is that a lot of new households are forming. Kids out of they are not forming. Kids are moving back in with their parents after graduating geared to 0. 6 million households did not form that should have. Eventually, those people have to start moving out and taking their xboxes and buying homes themselves. The question is, when . We are seeing them come back slowly. When they do, that will drive things like construction. But we have not really reached that point. Host are there signs of life in this area . Guest we are. We are starting to see that, if we look to us and 8, 2009, 2010, we are very bad. They are starting to see household formation pick up, but it is not starting to replace the levels we lost earlier. Host if you want to talk about your own housing situation or ask questions to them about where the market stands, here is how you can do so. We have two lines regionally. For those of you and eastern time zone 2025853880. For those of you in the mountain and pacifi time zones 202 58538801. This slide raemeka mayo, could you educate us on this. Guest for Housing Starts, this has begun. A home is about to start being built. And and looking at this, you can see that prior to the recession, in 2006, Single Family structures peaked at that point. And as you get into the recession, you see a steady decline. As become of the recession, you see how those numbers have increased. The multi families have had a smaller decline, but you can notice that coming out of recession, both of those had a steady increase in the numbers. And again, all of these numbers are actually available on the internet. And you can get the most recent uptodate information through the app that we have. Host what is the way of thinking about the multifamily home . Guest apartments and condominiums. Anything with two or more units. Those will be a multi family. Singlefamily is detached houses or town homes. Host those things showing a little bit of increases, even though we sought a decrease within the Single Family units . Guest that is correct. Host back to the idea that these families are not forming fast enough, they are looking for different ways of housing other than a Single Family . Guest you just frederick of school, have your first job, you are going to live in an apartment for logger time than cut seemsome and, to be the movement for those under 34. Despite the increase in construction we have seen, we have not seen the same increase in construction jobs. That is really important. We have to think about the overall economy and the role the Housing Police and it. We see improvement, but we see a number of people per housing start all over the last year in terms of jobs. Host i may be wrong, Housing Units under construction, is that after the starting process, after the foundation has been dogged . Guest anything after the start is considered housing under construction. Anything that has started but not yet completed. Looking at this, you can see it peaked in 2006. Housing also peaked. And coming out of that, you can notice that multifamily and Single Family on a converging as far as being under construction. They are under construction at the same rate of each other. This is an inventory not an estimate. You have homes that continue coming and, as well as those coming out. And those coming out on your completed. Host josh boak, i build houses for a living, what does this mean for me . With regards to the census card numbers. Guest you have seen a homeowners gearing up. There are a number seasonable factors. During winter construction slows. You ought to consider the availability of this. People have to be able to borrow and buy. That is point to be influenced. Vc the Federal Reserve make moves you see the Federal Reserve make moves. All of these factors play out, in a sense, we look at this and we see a market that appears to be rebounding because we have an economy that is rebounding. One of the things we are not talked about, you need Unemployment Rates to go down for a sustained timespan. So the inventory that does come on line can be purchased. This reflects some optimism to some degree. But it needs to be very cautious. We have to look out, and we have to see how they interact with each other. Host when talking about Home Ownership, you have got to be perfect these days an order to qualify for a mortgage to get a home run. Guest you struggle to refinance. Let us talk about policy on this. President obama had a series of programs meant to help refinancing that would put additional money in the economy, that would free up some of the Housing Market. There were expecting 7 to 9 million homes to benefit from this. And they have had less than 3 million. That is a problem they have been trying to get refinancing. In addition to limitation of programs. We are seeing a market, to some degree, growing alone. Host and as far as sales, obviously it depends on your ability to get a mortgage in the first place. To you can look at our sales of one of the charts that we have. It speaks to a new home sales. And in looking at the data, the sales of new homes, it is done in conjunction with housing and urban development. Existing homes if you look at this chart, you can see that, again, you have the decline going into the recession, but coming out, you can see how existing home sales have diverged. Existing home sales tend to be above new home sales. And that can possibly be attributed to foreclosed properties. And you do see come in looking at the numbers, new home sales have had somewhat of an increase coming out. But you notice a divergence in existing home sales versus new home sales data. Host is this for people, because prices are good as far as actual homes, these are firsttime buyers . People who are buying property for investment sake . Guest all of the above. , we also have to consider regional differences. Some parts of the country have excess of Housing Available for investment. Others tend to see increases in the building based on population growth. All of those factors are at play. The important thing is the diversion going on up. You usually move in tandem. But we see that divergence has continued. That is critical. It says something about the available housing stock. What people are able to afford. Host our guests with us if you want to ask questions about housing in United States and get your perspective, it is 202585 3880 for eastern and central time zones, 2025853880 format and and pacific time zones 2025853881 for eastern and pacific time zones. Caller go ahead. I am looking at buying might first home. I am wondering how long it takes for qe three to start having any effect on Credit Availability . Host an explanation of death qe3. Guest it is the latest policy introduced by the fed. Which will commit about 40 billion a month to Mortgage Backed securities. We should come in theory, make make it easier to buy a home. Mortgage rates are about 3. 6 . That is a historic low. To some degree, qe3 already kicked and because the stock market has been anticipating it. We will see how it progresses over the months ahead. Because it is an indefinite form of stimulus, the fed has not said how long it will go on, it should be helpful in that regard. But, the real critical issue right now seems to be insistence that there will be a 20 down payment manama. And that is important. In the past, you could buy a house without a that threshold. You have got to have the sufficient savings. And is sufficient credit for. In that way, borrowing has become much tighter. And that is probably as critical a factor as anything that the fed is doing with regard to qe3. When you think about it, with rates this low, you should see more refinancing, based on historical pattern. We are not seeing that. The market is not necessarily working the way it needs to. Host it deals with regionally, how much people are paying for a home. Of a chart taking a look at northeast, west, the United States over all. What are we finding as far as how home prices differ . Guest you notice the northeast and west are above average. In the south and midwest tend to be under the United States average. But in looking at you can see northeast and the west, since about 2009, a little after that, you can see there has been a decline in the prices for the northeast and the west. In the midwest and south, the pretty much, they are relatively stable in that arena as far as average, prices for new homes sold. Host 400,000 for those in the northeast. The west about 300,000. 200,000 or so and the south. And the midwest as well. Guest exactly. Host where they so different . Guest i cannot say why they are different. We do have the data to substantiate what we are doing, but i cannot give you a rationale as to why. We consider that come if you noticed in the charts, the northeast and me midwest seem to a higher prices. Guest it goes back to the old statement, location, location, location. We have been looking at prices with regards to the election. And you see those differences manifest. For example, down in palm beach county, which can be very critical and florida, compared to four years ago, prices on new home bills are down by about 100,000. And in a county where cleveland is located, it will be very in the decisive in this election out in clarke county, nev. , las vegas, prices are down by about 100,000 over that four year trend. A lot of this house to do with supply, demand, in the, both florida and nevada have higher rates than the rest of the country. It is not surprising you see these issues. Host charlie from annapolis, california. Go ahead. Caller it had a friend was under water in her mortgage. And in california with a program to save your house. Pampa, and she qualifies for it, but her bank, city mortgage does not participate in this. What happens to people like that . Host this is a rightwing from twitter, what will be government do about underwater homes when it cannot refinance. Guest this is a real issue. I wish to say theres one good way to try to get this done in d. C. , it is for your friend to call her congressman, or send a letter laying out the issues that she faces in terms of refinancing. Because there are multiple programs the federal government has on refinancing. There may be an avenue for her there. That is that practical level. On the broader sense, the problem is that we struggled in d. C. To find an effective way of refinancing homes. If you look of the president ial campaign, mitt romney attracted a lot of attention and nevada, saying the markets should bottom out. Since introduced a plan that is kind of short on details. But once alternatives to foreclosures. One of the issues that we face is that if you have a principal refinancing of mortgages, someone has to take a loss. And no one wants to take a loss. So we kind of pushed that off as long as we possibly can. It is clear to the Companies Like fannie and freddie, it can be taxpayer, it can be home honor, the banks. That is a very tough choice. And yet it is one that needs to happen. Refinancing programs of the stigma of being considered bailouts. They are not necessarily bailouts because, in theory, if we should be able to refinance if the market is working as it should. The market does not work as it should come it requires some correction. Because of the Public Perception that these are ballots, it makes it a tough haul politically. Caller good morning. I love the show. I love the census data. I love the data without any political spin on it. My comment is, as far as the banking community, had the opportunity to refinance my mortgage recently through this new 2. 0 program. Am also a small realestate investor. I am finding it hard to get investment money. So is Banking Institutions to come up with more money available for small investors and for people able to refinance. The gentleman there is made that comment. I would like to see more money available in the markets. You have any other comments . Guest i think we are in one of those wait and see moments. Theres a lot of new regulation coming out in d. C. That republicans say will restrict access. What democrats and to say is that there needs to be the demand out of their spirit and that is one of the complications. If theres not sufficient demand in the marketplace, the banks will be reluctant to lend. They want to minimize their risk right now. They are seeing a high degree of risk, political uncertainty, political differences or does to the with the markets are flowing, it is hard to get capital regardless of what you do. That seems to be were the situation is. I do find it interesting that you were one of the few to succeed harper. Host could you paint a picture of what is happening on the purple states. What is happening in the states and why is north dakota the only state in red . Guest this gives you a snapshot of how the percentage of change of how humans are authorized by state in 2010 and 2011. The reason north dakota is an orange as well as washington, d. C. These two states of the largest percentage of change in the number of units authorized by between 2010 and 2011. The percent change in last year versus 2011, the head is 61 increase in north dakota. And in d. C. The head by a 524 increase in the number of units authorized. I cannot say why. There are a lot of factors that go into why units are authorized. I cannot say why, but there could be factors that could relate to things going on in that state. That could attribute to are the numbers of housing is authorized for the state has gone up so much. Host so if the state economy is good, we would authorize more Housing Starts, that could be one thing. To that could possibly be it. As far as people wanting to build or builders wanting to build Additional Units in their state. If you look at the white states that are highlighted, those had a decrease in the number of units authorized. Host pennsylvania and rhode island. Guest pennsylvania 24. 2. Rylan being 25. 1. This is based on the numbers of units authorized. To put this in perspective, this is the only data we can provide at the local level. Can get this in a state level, and metropolitan area level as well as a county level. This is the only data we can say at a lower level. Host generally you see some states showing signs of growth and some states just showing their early signs of growth . Guest correct. And the you can see that from the chart. You can see where there were increases and decreases. Whether there were large or small. Host if you want to go to our homepage, we provided the data. But if you want to look and the kind of makes sense for yourself, that is the purpose of this segment. Taking a look and trying to make sense of it. New mexico, joseph. Hello. Caller this is a perfect segue, the chart she was just showing. Obviously new mexico, we have lost a whole industry and construction. Which means, that is a lot of entrylevel positions, especially coming out of high school. I see so many kids, 19, 20, 21 that are coming out of high school, they cannot even get a parttime job and they are homeless. If we had a Construction Industry, we had to switch service, instead of new home construction, to stay in business, we had to move into a grudge just to do our work in a storage unit. Host do you own your own home . Guest i do. My mortgage is very low. It is 60,000 or so. That is what i go on it. It started out at maybe 100,000. Host thank you. Guest that is very indicative of the situation. Even the we see signs of a rebound in housing, the Construction Industry is still getting its foot back on the ground. You are seeing younger workers suffer any longterm consequences of what is happening in the economy. Even if we do recover in terms of gdp and construction, there are consequences that will continue to echo through the economy for decades. Host 10 c, joe, go ahead. You are on. Caller the inflation, right now we are in the highest inflation in United States. Made by government and oil companies. Have they contributed to people losing their homes . Guest i am not sure what he is basing his stops on. The fed sees this as very close to the target inflation rate of around 2 . With regard to that, that is not that high. Especially with regard to the 1980s when paul volcker had to crack down on inflation. However, we have seen higher gas prices as of late. And that hit pocketbooks. Host in among the factors but lead to the issues in the housing world, this is a viewer who asks wall street inflected, prices by asking for structured assets. Shouldnt they take the loss . Can you expand on that . Guest homes were bought for mortgages were people paid very little down. They may not have made that traditional 20 down payment. The mortgages were sold and bobbled a securities and bonds as a way to deal with the risk. Wall street did not see succeed in engineering risk out of these mortgages. Prices became unsustainably high and inevitably crashed. Because this machine could not keep going. The question then, who takes the loss . And how . And what do you do . To some degree, wall street has taken losses. Have they taken adequate losses. Other cases, they have been protected by the government. A classic example of this conundrum is fannie and freddie. They have been under government conservatorship since 2008. If we let them fail, the entire Mortgage Market fails. And in a sense, the majority of all mortgages right now come through that government support. And so you are literally picking between the level of two. And that is the lesser of two equals. On the one hand people must take losses in order to move ahead. But at the wrong party gets too much in terms of losses host our guest, raemeka mayo, of the u. S. Census bureau. And josh boak, of the fiscal times. Washington journal continues. Caller it seemed like they do not have any problem, this is on cspan show i think, talking about the markets. But they get governmentbacked loans for housing. And the they are contributing to most of the growth in america as far as housing goes. And i was wondering what he has to say about that. In my neighborhood where i lived, there is no problem selling houses. These people are getting in houses and what not by governmentbacked loans. So, i think we could be better if we played more fair and dispersed the money out to more people instead of just certain parts of the society. Guest i will have to back up and explain to me what program you are talking about. This is in illinois . Caller yes in illinois. But it is statewide. For the latino community. And three of obamas appointees. One was for Housing Development and jobs, and they had a gentleman like yourself on the show talking about where the housing was going. Host thank you. Can we expand it to the national level. And as far as how you can qualify for loans. Was that person . Is there an average of the person qualifying for these governmentbacked refinancing or help when it comes to mortgages . Guest it tends to be someone who could do the paperwork first and foremost. There are restrictions in terms of who has access. In terms of which Government Programs to benefit from. There are more than attend. Which that creates difficulty. But to look at it. They are designed to help underwater bar hours. The real fundamental issue is that not enough people in total are being helped. If you look at it, you can effectively to the refinancing. Glenn hubbard, one of mitt romneys economic advisers figure out a refinancing plan that an adopted that would help 40 Million People refinance. That would save them about 2,500 to 3,000 a year there would not have to pay for their mortgages. That circulates through the economy. At the end of the day, the people or qualifying, not large enough to get total economic benefits. Caller hello. Host you are on. Go ahead. Caller i have three statements. Home ownership is not growing among the lower class of the 47 the largest portion of americas population. They have a better chance of buying homes because of their middleclass education and earnings. The only way the state of United States Housing Market could help the lower class would be by earning 125 or more per hour from jobs of a lower class education. Host thanks. Guest not only to collect information on new homes and home construction, we look at how much construction is being done within the United States. In looking at this, you can see how in the overall, you notice in 2006, it peaked at the total Construction Spending. We can break it down into private and public. If you look at the public, you can also see that sometimes that small increase may have been affected by the recent stimulus we had. You can see hal total private and public coincide with all of the other Housing Starts, housing completions and that data. Host the total spending . Guest right. If you go to the next chart, if you look at past construction, we broke down to private residential and private non residential. This is an indicator of what other nonresidential structures are being built. If you look at this, you can identify that, if you notice that the nonresidential portion, if somewhat lags the residential portion. When they build homes in an area, you notice that there will be building other amenities to go along with that. You can see an increase in the nonresidential. That is when people start to build other amenities that go along with the residential portion. Host we have a few more minutes. Vince from indianapolis. Go ahead. Caller my question to both of your guests is how they feel about the use of Eminent Domain to acquire properties that are under water. Out in california how you feel about that . Guest this is a tremendous controversy that will be settled by the courts. Eminent domain is a local government being able to take over your house. For a variety of reasons. It might have to do with code violations, the bill there to provide upkeep, abandonment of the house. But this is a vehicle being used in states like california. It is very controversial. It might even be necessary. But this is a court issue that will be growing and growing. Host a couple things from the data that released the information, Single Family houses completed in 2011, the averag 280 square0 feet. Guest those could be indicative of what other things are going on, and to give you an idea of what is going on in the nations economy. This data is on our website. And you can access any of the data from the americas economy app that we have which is available at census. Gov. Host as it stayed the same . Our house is getting larger, smaller . Guest and one of the previous chart showed you if you look on the chart, it showed there was a slight uptick in the average square foot of homes that were completed. For overall for the ad states. Host one time there was a term mansion when it can to people building houses with a lot of square feet. Are those trends changing . During that term did not die it just went away a little bit. Kind of like the rolling stones. When the Housing Market bust occurred we have now seen it starts to recover. Square footage is important. This is how we live in this society. If we are living in a bigger homes, that also means more rooms to fill, or energy costs, bigger kitchen, all of this to get to this question of, are you better off than you were four years ago . A decade ago . Host give us one more fact about things we did not have a chance to learn. Whatever mission would you like to share . Guest overall how the economy is doing. With the economic sense is going on. That tells you how United States businesses are doing. That is what we need to look at. Outside of construction you want to know how businesses are doing. And again, this data is available from our app, it gives you uptodate information on housing information. Host raemeka mayo and josh boak, thank you very much. That is it for washington journal. Tomorrow a look of battleground states. Join us then. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2012] qr the road to the white house continues to wind through swing states such as iowa. That is where mitt romney will spend part of his day. We will have live coverage of his remarks as his Campaign Said they would use his speech to help crystallize the differences between each candidates economic approach. On the same day the issue the same report on gdp growth before the election. The g. D. P. Announced just over 2 in the last quarter. We will have his comments at one p m on cspan 2. And the Funeral Service for George Mcgovern, the former democratic senator and president ial candidate died every weekend at the age of 90. It and what that live starting at 2 00 p. M. Eastern. According to a new study by former commerce secretary robert shapiro, the influence of americans grew steadily from the 1970s and the last decade when income progress for most people stopped. He discussed the findings thursday at the nbn based in washington. There he is the current chairman. It is one hour and 25 minutes. Edward luce of the Financial Times moderates the discussion. It is one hour and 25 minutes. Welcome, everybody. Simon rosenberg. We are grateful that you came out here today. If we had done an event around polli,ng we would have a few more people, but we are lucky to have joining rob shapiro, the chair of our globalization initiative, our good friend edward luce, who is now the former bureau chief of the Financial Times, now chief american commentator and is also a published author. He has recently written one of the more influential or at least highly commentated there was so much commentary around his book about whether or not america was in decline in the Economic Issues we will be talking about today and we feel lucky he took time out of his busy schedule to guide us. Many of you know rob shapiro, who has a long history of policy leadership here in washington, starting in the early days working for Daniel Patrick moynihan, to helping advise bill clinton in 1992, and eventually becoming the undersecretary of commerce in the second clinton term. What brought us together is the subject we will talk about today. Back in early2005, when ndn was reborn as a thinktank from being a political organization, i started calling people, and i found something i could not explain. Do we have to have sound issues . Ok. We began a collaboration that has gone on for eight years in a series of papers we had been writing. Rob shapiro wrote a book during that time, taking a deep dive and what was happening with the globalization, that looked at the essential issue. We were looking at wages and why job growth was slowing down. One of the things we have come to believe as we try to make sense of the events. The question is, and it is what edward gets to in his book, are we facing a new set of economic circumstances that are fundamentally different than the ones we faced before . We were joking the other day that it is a little bit like the u. S. Is going through a copernican moment, instead of us believing that we are at the center of the universe, it could be that the universe did i get this right . Im getting my analogy wrong. The idea that the rise of the rest of the world was not only creating a new geopolitical environment, but an economic one and it was possible that our political leaders have not gotten their arms around it, and i believe rob shapiros paper today will provide a better handle on what has actually happened to the American Economy so hopefully the next president can take policy actions to make things better than the last decade or so. Please join me in welcoming rob shapiro, good friend, a thought leader and economist. [applause] thank you. Thank you for coming out. Thank you to my friends that are here, including senior officials under the secretary of state. I also want to acknowledge doug of the senior economic analyst at 9 Advisory Company at my Advisory Company who did the numbers crunching for this, which is a capacity of mine that has become very rusty. My interest in the issue of what is really happening to the incomes of americans really began in 1988. I was running Economic Policy in the Michael Dukakis campaign, and he was making the statement comparing the Median Income in 1988 and the Median Income that some significant point in the past, whether it was 10 years or 15 years, and he said the incomes of the American People have stagnated. I went to him, and i said in know, that is really not correct. The median has stagnated, but the incomes of the actual people, as people age, they move from below the median to above the median. Youre never really capturing the experience. I spoke to political people, and i said people know their incomes did not stagnate over the last eight years, so when they hear the governor say that, and i tried to make it a political point, which is the way economists get listened to in campaigns, theyre going to think he is talking about somebody other than them. He must be talking about poor people. That is what the response will be. But, it was still hard to grasp. This has been a common complaint of mind, because this is a mean that has been in american politics now for 30 years. They looked at medians and the same and they say the average of income of beverage americans has stagnated. To an economist, or a statistician, this is really meaningless, because the sample is changing so much over that time. If you have Median Income in 1970 and 2000, think of the tens of millions of people who were in the sample in the beginning who are retired or dead by the time the sample is over. Tens of millions of people who were not in the sample entered the sample. It is a kind of basic principle that the sample has to be stable in order to have anything medium meaningful to say about it. This has always been a problem. Then, it came to our attention region what i always wanted to do, and when i always wanted to do, and what would be meaningful, would be to track peoples income as they age, and you could capture their actual experience, what was happening to their income. Earlier this year, the Census Bureau announced it was putting online data which gave you the Median Income of all of those by each age in each year. So, you could track the income of those that were 25 in 1975, 26 in 1976, 27 in 1977, etc. , etc. , and by doing that you would be able to see what was happening to peoples income directly, so that is what we set out to do. The results are what i had believed they would be from observing other data, and that income, theles incomes of americans in general that were working, because i only decided to look at earnings wages and salaries i was not looking at capital income. I thought i want to know what is happening as a result of people working in the economy. I was not looking at income, but what economists call earnings. Earnings, in fact, it grew at a healthy rate. We started with the expansion in the second half of the 1970s, the carter expansion, 1976 to 1979, where they grew by an average of 2. 8 a year as people age. Then we looked at the reagan expansion, from 1983 through 1989, and they grew that is the median growing by 2. 2 a year, i believe 3. 2 , and then we looked at 1992, and it grew by 3. 8 , all adjusted for inflation, and then to test the proposition, which i have written about a lot, the basic Economic Conditions have changed in the last decade, but there is something very distinct which has had a significant effect on job creation and income, which has happened since 2000, and which was not there before, so detracted from the 2000 to 2007 expansion, and it falls to 0. 5 . That is what the data says. As people age, during expansions, incomes grew persistently and steadily with the expansions of the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, and then we hit 2000 and that stopped. The reason i thought about this is i have looked in the early part of 2004 when i became interested in what was happening to job creation, and i looked at what happened in the 2001 recession, the briefest and most mild recession in the postwar area, and we had lost more jobs than we had in much deeper recessions, and i adjusted for declining growth, and in fact, where as there was a general pattern of how many jobs you lost based on how deep the recession was in the recessions of the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s, and this was six times as much, and we did not begin to create jobs again for two more years. We kept on declining after the recession ended four a year, and then after that it was creating privatesector jobs have half the rate, relative to growth. So, that was my first in sight into Something Different happening in the economy today. I used to talk about it in 2004 and 2005 with other economists and brainstorming sessions, and you were at some of those. And they would say you see structural changes everywhere. People now and acknowledge that something very fundamental has happened to job creation, and wages are the flip side of jobs. The same thing. It is the labor market. To me, this was not unexpected. When you track income during recessions in the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s, people give up between 1 4 and 45 of the gains they make in the previous expansion. You still start off significantly better off than you were at the beginning of the preceding expansion. It always goes like that, and then it stopped going like that. So, what we have to understand the depth of the political disappointment and anger that has dominated the political cycle, is that we have to understand that for the first time in the history of anybody working americans went through a long expansion, and got virtually nothing out of it, then went to a deep recession where they lost a lot of ground, so for the first time they really are worse off. We have been seeing this now, as Simon Rosenberg as always pointed out to me, 43 electoral for three elect four of cycles, and the first one in 2006 they said we are throwing out, the democrats came in, and then in 2008, and then in 2010, republicans make a. I think this year, both parties are going to take the blame. I want to make two other quick points. I tend to talk too long, and one is in the paper. There are two startling findings, and they have to do with gender and race. The gap between how much progress men and women make, of the same age, as they age, is much bigger than i expected. It is very large. We are talking about between 40 and 50 over lifetime earnings. It is much bigger than the gap in pay between men and women at the same job. It has come down by half over the last 30 years because 35 years ago, remember, over a lifetime we are making double, but it is still very large, much larger than people will expect and that i expected. I think it reflects two things. One is different races of jobs different faces of jobs and professions. There is a much greater share of women that work parttime instead of full time. This captures just working men and women, and it does not distinguish fulltime and part time because if you did you would lose a lot of the Actual Movement in income because a lot of people move from fulltime toparttime. If youre only looking at full time, you would miss a lot of this. That is one finding. The Second Striking finding is that the gap between earnings and the rate of growth earnings of blacks and whites is much smaller than i expected, and much smaller than that between men and women, and i think that is a new finding as well. Now, i think part of what that does not take account of is the differences in employment rates. Were only looking at working people, people that are actually working, so it does not take account this is not average income. This is earnings. So, everybody has some income, but you have to work to get earnings, so i think that is embedded in that, but i think we have underestimated the process that has been made in economic equality with respect to people on the job by race. There is data for hispanics as well, but frankly it is not good enough. The samples are too small, so i did not attempt to do that. If we do not know what is actually happening to peoples incomes over time, we can never hope to fashion policies to affect it. If we do not recognize that the choice is not between the policies of Ronald Reagan and bill clinton. They both achieved strong income gains, and carter, for that matter. So, the question is what happened under bush. You have to look at the change in the conditions, and i do not blame bush, except that he did not respond to evidence that conditions had changed with respect to what was happening in labor markets. It focuses on what was so different about the last decade as compared to the last 30 years that can begin to explain what has happened, which we first noted in jobs and can now document in peoples incomes as they age. That is the beginning of a serious Economic Policy discussion. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much, that was very interesting and provocative, and i will get into that presentation. When i moved for the second time, rob shapiro and Simon Rosenberg, and to some extent jared bernstein, really gave up the huge amount of time to give me a crash course in these issues. I feel sort of dirty interrogating you now, but i have been in india for the last five years and the idea but Median Income stagnation mattered that all had not gone on me, but since moving back here i have come to see it as a central fact of americas political economy. Thank you for that presentation. Here is a geeky question from a nonstatistician, since the early 1970s, we have had overall Median Income stagnation, but during that time, most age cohorts have seen their incomes rise over their lifetime. Now, these are perfectly compatible with each other, but a little bit counterintuitive. If the median is flat, how much how come most age groups are Getting Better off . The meeting is just taking a midpoint in the distribution of data. So, you have everybodys income or earnings in this case, and you are just picking the mid point, when youre talking about the median. It is the success of midpoint year after year. I do not want to suggest that the fact that Median Income looks much the same and kind of goes like that it does have significant. What it tells you it is after tracking peoples incomes as they age is that the gains that people are making mayor, in effect, the gains theyre parents may. That is the whole structure has not moved up. If people become a prosperous as their parents became, where theyre older sisters or brothers became, and not more so. Not less so, which is in effect the notion of stagnation would have said, but rather that ive not done the analysis, but i suspected she looked at the 1940s, the 1950s and 1960s you would see Something Different, that in the fact and this is another way of expressing it, that the income of each generation rises at faster rates than the incomes of the previous generation. I suspect that happen in the 1940s and 1950s, coming off of the depression and so on. What we have seen is incomes rising at largely the same rate, blood rising steadily but rising steadily, predictably, until the 20022007 expansion, then it stops. That is the most important rupture. It is between what happens with the middle class up until the late1990s, and what has happened since then. You say the differences between how the Clinton Administration and Bush Administration had of the economy does not explain everything. Could you handled the economy does not explain everything. Could you explain everything . Yes, i can, and now have to take a call from the nobel committee. It begins with a commonsense observation. If you have this big of a shift in the way the economy operates four 150 Million People, you have to look at something very big to move the economy to alter the way the economy produces rewards to that degree. I began to try to think this through not to understand this, but to understand what happened to job creation, which had also been very steady. To me, there are three phenomena that are big enough. I just have not proved this empirically. One is globalization. There is a clear shift in the intensity of globalization from the 1990s until this decade, and you see it in china. China is the leading example. In 1995, chinese exports were about 65 billion. In 2008, they were centered 85 billion, Something Like that 685 billion, Something Like that, at enormous, unprecedented increase. It is in part because of the creation of the wto, and in part because of technology. You have this perceptible takeoff with respect to their relation to the Global Economy, not just china, but india and parts of latin america, and certainly Eastern Europe you saw this all over the world. It is connected in the proportion of sales derived overseas, a rapid steepening of that curve . Right. So, what difference should that make . To me, part of it reflects, yes, outsourcing of jobs from the United States and other advanced economies, and that has a hit on incomes and jobs. To me, the larger effect is for a second i tried to think like a micro economist this is globalization is actually about the creation of tens and tens of thousands of new businesses that are competing with our businesses, usually in their own home market. So, Chinese Companies competing with u. S. Companies in the Chinese Market or asian markets where china is exporting to kill. And, also exporting to. And also, you have u. S. Companies competing with European Companies in Chinese Markets, and as it progresses, in our market as well. Even if it is u. S. Companies in china, the importance of this is the intensification of competition makes it much harder for companies to raise their prices, and it reduces price leverage. The importance of not reaching we know this is happening because the importance of that we know this is happening because they could not raise their prices and we have had low inflation over the last decade. The importance of this is that u. S. Companies also had very significant increases in costs, and in particular in health care, energy and pensions. So, what do you do when you have thesethis has put enormous prese on wages. That is part of what is happening. The editing that is happening is of the scale that can move an economy like this, which you first have to recognize the movement has occurred and when it occurred, is the spread of Information Technologies across the economy, which is part of an even larger phenomenon, which is the dominance of ideas or intangible assets the creation of value in the u. S. Economy. This is not really a big development. It didnt start in 2000. It came to fruition in the last decade, where the most important assets of u. S. Companies became their intangible assets, not their equipment, bought their equipment, buildings, etc. When you look at the share of the book value of the company, that is, how much of its value could be attributed to its physical assets, you see a sharp and steady decline that begins in the 1980s and continues into this decade, falling from 75 to probably 35 . That means not only was everybodys using Information Technologies, meant you had to be good at it in order to prosper, and one of the things we see is the older the generation is the worse they did in 2000, and that is part of what were seeing there. In addition, the value that most companies were creating depends on your ability to create these intangible assets or work with them. And so you saul also and so you saw also it wasnt just that you had that ever but it was using Information Technologies and some new how to use it better than others, but rather that those people whose training and abilities allow them to create and build on ideas, in whatever context, their labor became much more viable because that was creating value from those corporations, not your ability to use machines. That is where i begin to think about it. Final question. The general and narrative in most peoples understanding has been that we have had stagnation since the 1970s. The 1990s was the exception. Your take that makes us look at those decades differently, and the 1990s was a continuation of the 1980s. In terms of the woes that are besetting the middleclass, i tend to think of this as a triple cocktail, and maybe this is a phrase you have used first, mediumwage stagnation, rising income inequality, and declining enter generational income mobility. This triple cocktail is very much something that has been in each case getting worse for the last 40 years or so. The other bits of that cocktail that you do not address in the paper, how do those decades fare . The declining mobility of americans. We did not look at any quality at all in a quality inequality at all, we know the aggregate data, and this is a way of short handing it to. In 1928, the top 1 claimed 23 of all income earned in the United States. That percentage fell was a high, false steadily and gradually, not quite steadily, but nearly steadily, and it gradually from 9029 to from 1929 to 1976, and then it starts turning around. From 1977 to 2008 it goes to 23. 5 . Remarkable. And there is economists are trying to figure out how inequality can affect growth and incomes, but one thing is clear, and that is even though it should not really affect it does affect the median. It affects both the median and the average, and that is in come and incomcrease in income inequality leaves less for everybody else. It may be that inequality be another way of describing the increase in inequality, and i have not looked to see how it increased to two dozen 8, is another way of expressing what was happening to the median, because it was less left over. The fact is it was rising very sharply in the 1980s and 1990s as well, and you would think it was pretty high in the 1990s if it reached 23. 5 by 2008. I assume it was maybe 16 or 17 . And it did not have an effect or the effect was overwhelmed by other effects. It is it has virtually stopped in the last decade. You can interpret what we found effect you startin middleclass, you are likely to end up middleclass, too. That is you are likely to follow the same in come pat as your parents income path as your parents. This is our first cut at this these data you are less likely than their parents to jump and income bracket . Its just your equally likely, not more like the or more less. More likely or more less. There are lots of other things that we can find in these data when we go back to them, and when doug goes back to them. And we will have more findings over time. Globalization, that has gone n since the 1990s, the i. T. Revolution, that two biggest explain years, but he said the shift in policies between the book clinton and bush eras was also playing a part. Could you discuss which policies . What we can say is it is interesting ok, i was gone to avoid your question by talking about clinton and reagan, which i find interesting, but we will talk about clinton and bush. What we saw in 2000 certainly was there were two things. One was obviously a large reduction in taxes, and the second was not so much deregulation as an explicit policy of very lighthanded regulation. To me, that actually goes more to the financial crisis as contributing factors in the financial crisis than in what to jobs ande t wages. I do not blame bush for what and jobs. To in cocomes i blame him for not try to figure out what was happening, that a lot of us know clip president clinton. If bill clinton seen the jobs record that was an emerging under bush after a year, he would have called everyone in his office and said, what the hell is happening . Do something about it. There was no sense of urgency about that. What could they have done . These were do conditions. I would not say that the policies. It was the absence of the policies to respond to the new conditions. The shift in the taxes, but two bush tax cuts, and the differences. , one of the things that is interesting with respect to the comes, f peoples in this co there does not seem to be any continuity when you cut tax rates and raise tax rates. The clinton and reagan and this is important for the current era their records tell us you can address deficits aggressively and not interfere with Income Growth so long as the economy is expanding aggressively. Which is something and you can exploit that. Yes. So long as you pull them back. Which is what reagan did. And reagan did it of course largely through tax increases, or through tax increases than the only he did in spending after the deficit exploded in the 1980s he stabilize the defense spending. He had very few cuts. He raised taxes repeatedly. He raised payroll, energy, business taxes. To be clear, on bush, it was the fact that he did not recognize the problem that you blame him most for. Get in a minute to what you think the remedies should be, the data goes up only to 2010. This problem has been getting worse, not better. Under the Obama Administration, there has been no change of trends. In fact it is worse. That is, you had what you expected, which was we had a recession and in previous recessions you give back some of what you gain, and in this case which came to almost nothing, but we gave back almost a lot. 2002 tos in the 2000s, 2007 expansion, plus the gains that carried over from the expansion in the 1990s. That is why people are really annoyed. , are to blame them. Hard to blame them. I got to remarks, when we think about those bigger large structural issues of the importance of ideas and Information Technologies and globalization and global markets, there are certain cohorts, professional cohorts, who have been untouched by this, literally untouched in this last cycle, and that is those who are perfectly positioned to be to sell their Services Globally and to operate entirely in the realm of ideas. It describes a lot of people in washington. I do not like the term political class, but the insulation of people with influence on policy, one would expect has an effect on the sense of urgency that is brought to these questions. I believe that is the case. Again, i do not have any data that is a very elliptical criticism of the Obama Administration. No, it is of everybody here, including myself. There has not been a sense of urgency. There was no sense of urgency in the Bush Administration. I think the Obama Administration has shown more, and at real political cost, and the Obama Administration has begun to address some of the factors. The Health Care Reform includes the first attempt to put in place across the board ways of slowing the rate of growth of health care costs. I think those provisions they need to be on a bigger scale and they need to be stronger, but they are there. The first time we have never put them there. The first time we have ever put them there. They have also made a concerted effort to increase Energy Efficiency across businesses as well as individuals. That is the only effective way we can address energy cost as a factor in the business costs that squeezed wages. One more question for the people here. I remember wind pugh gave your first briefing on the subject to me six or seven years ago, it struck me what an enormous problem and complex problem were talking about here, namely, how to sustain the incomes of most americans, the Income Growth of most americans. At the time i felt they were rather small in comparison. I used the phrase he died of cancer, but you are prescribing aspirin. Had you come up with stronger medication since then . Have you come up with stronger medications since then . I have come up with some medications, but i tried to be realistic in the sense that we can stabilize health care costs, we can do it the way japan does that, the way britain does it. We can control all Health Care Prices and wages. That is what they do. That is what every other Major Industrial country does. We will have less innovation, but we will stabilize the costs. I think there are other things we could do in health care, but it would entail a lot more kind of mandatory provisions in the way we operate in health care that americans have ever and accepted. I have got some recipes, but they are not likely once to accepted. Ically i have always said that the goal of the job of an economic adviser to a National Politician is two fundamental jobs. One is be honest. Tell them the truth. They do not hear that very often. The second is to figure out a way to advance what you or what you believed to be the right economic course in a way that is politically beneficial to the politicians, because that is their business. You have to fashion it that way. I also believe that, frankly, that Economic Policy, however it is rendered, the goal of Economic Policy should be any effect to get the direction right. That is, what i would like to do is come up with policies that will make it more likely that Income Growth as people age will be positive rather than i want it to beat 3 . Too big and economy. The government affected the direction of the elements. Presumably you rule out protectionism and trade wars with china, is worse than the disease. You are obviously strongly in favor of a Marshall Plan for a middleclass skills. Absolutely, and we could do some pretty radical things in education and training. I do not see why education should cost why Higher Education should cost any american more than a nominal amount. I think that we can give tuitionfree scholarships to everyone who attends Public Schools, public universities, and we have great public universities in america, and it would be a matter of d weanneling student 8 leaiod now provide. I am a fan of private universities, but a matter of public policies, the distribution of money between the private and Public Sector in education i think is a matter of indifference. What matters is peoples access to College Education, tuition should not be a barrier. I also think that we could and we have been proposing this in various forms for 15 years, use thehe mid 1990s Community College system as a means of providing any American Free access to i. T. Skills, open up the computer labs, staff then, anybody who walks in can get training for nothing. It is paid for by grants to the Community Colleges. It is consistent with the Community College mission, and this is clearly plays a role in peoples ability for people to function effectively with rising salaries. If you could state who you are and where you are from. I would be interested in your theysis that the labor, role labour has played in changing these statistics. I have thought about that a little. I have not done an analysis of it, and i do not have the data, but i think that there is a role. The decline in the reach of labour and the power of labor coincides with both a period of income stagnation as people age and periods of income gains. The 1990s and the 2000s. So that tells me it is not explained a lot. We also found that we looked at four cohorts in this version of the analysis, people who were born in 1940, 1950, 1960, and 1970, and we call them from age 25 up to age 55 in the jobs market. We cut out before 25 because there are lots of changes between generations in the number of people going to college, and i wanted to wash that out. The cut out after 55 because the data become very inky, and i think it is because of people retiring early. That is what we looked at. If you look at those who are born in 1945, who we tracked in the labour market, from 1965 200, bor market 19965 to they did not have the same patterns as everyone else. They made big gains at the beginning, and then they stopped making gains. My intuition about that is what we are seeing there is the collapse in manufacturing jobs. The core of which were union jobs, jobs of organized labor. I absolutely accept we might have had a marginally different outcome in 2000 if there were a broadbased and strong unions. It could have kept wage gains. My conclusion from this is that it played a role in the past, but that role was probably mainly in the 1970s an 1980s, that that is where we see the fa effect. The 1990s, you have large gains, we can unions. It is possible to have them with or with out strong unions. That is my inference from it. That plays a role, clearly. [indiscernible] a larger portion of the labor force, and it obviously plays a role [indiscernible] they would not be in that cohort at the outset. The cohort begins for analytic purses when people are 25. You are right. And i thought about that. That is, i thought, here is something you are not taking account of, that the sample is not as stable as i would have liked it to be, because you got people coming into the samples. This would be people who come to the country and join the labour age 25. Fter we start with those born any particular year, but we do not look at their incomes until age 25. , i have done other work in this area, seeing the impact of immigration on wages, and it is very interesting. It largely affects increases and creases and immigration largely affects the incomes of other immigrants. There is some small defect on the income of lowerskilled nativepoor americans. But there is also a positive defect on the incomes of managerial americans, because what happens is your labor force gets bigger, you invest more, and you need more managers, and their responsibilities go up. You see a positive relationship between immigration and management salaries. Otherwise, the fact there is that but the main effect is on the incomes of other immigrants. We did not take account of it, and you are right, the data just do not tell us. The lady in the back row and this gentleman. Physician and a Health Policy analyst, not an economist. Did you look at what seems to be the financial a station of the economy, what stieglitz distinguishes between people who made the pie bigger and those who just take a larger part of equity, capital, where they come in but they make a company more efficient by hal ving the staff, and they did not take that money and invested in the business, so the money does not go to new companies producing new thing is, offering new jobs. It just goes to reverse mortgages toxic mortgages that produce a lot of money, but did not produce a lot of jobs. And the first person to raise this with me was ed, the impact of growing inequality, and i said to him, gee, you mean there is new evidence that inequality has an effect on growth, c. F. Stieglitz. And the imf. Right. We avoid a lot of the issues that you raise, however, by looking at median rather than average income. If we had looked at average, and the fact that we had these enormous gains at the time would skew the average. So that was why we chose median. We wash out some of that. Is that an independent factor in trying to explain what is happening to the economy, that job creation and wages and salaries, however you measure it this has happened to me to be the perfect or the best available way to measure it. All i can say is there are economists who think that it is a significant independent factor, and, you know, we have seen their share of National Income claimed by finance doubled. It came out of somewhere. Now, you know, there were a lot of arguments about the value that they were producing. Fewer, or lesser arguments after the crisis, because now we have not only the value that they produced, which i think look, we have the best system of financing for new businesses in the world. We do better at that. And there are lots of reasons for that. He b. C. Funding. But now we have the costs to the consider, and the costs of the financial crisis were enormous. You made the point and criticized the Bush Administration for not recognizing the problem soon enough, and yet in terms of prescriptions for policy change, the only two things i have heard from you were making public universities free and available, and opening up the Community Colleges for free i. T. Training. That would require a major fiscal policy change and would take decades at best for which . Free public education. I think he could do it quickly, and i proposed it to president clinton in 1995, and there are states that have these programs, there are a couple of states. It was modeled on the hope scholarships in georgia, where anybody with any High School Graduate with a b average in georgia could go to any Georgia University for free. I said lets make that a national program. You are right. Im speaking of long term responses. Shortterm responses look, i think the president has given a number of them, that bush could have done, which were you recognize you have a particular problem, a new problem with creating jobs. It used to be if the economy grew at a certain rate, we were a jobs machine. In the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, you did not have to do anything in particular to get businesses to create jobs. For some reason that stopped. That fell sharply. The relationship between how fast the economy grows and how many jobs businesses created changed by about 50 , very sharp discontinuous change. You do not see that very often in economics. That is the problem. You say, ok, what do we do to create jobs . One of the things i said to this administration at the jobs summit in 2009, i said reduce the cost of business of creating new jobs. Create more of them. The best way to do that is reduce the employer side of the payroll tax. In fact, they did go to a version of that. But that is an example. The president has other proposals for credits for particular kinds of businesses to create jobs, a new deduction of salary costs for new hires or increases in pay. I do not know that the particular designs of the policies from my perspective are ideal. I know that is thinking about the problem and saying, we got a real problem with job creation. The economy on its own is not doing this. We will eventually figure out the underlying reason. In the meantime, how do we stimulate . I have had this i had the jobs summit, i had a discussion with an old friend of mine, who had a different approach. He said public jobs. Public works. 1930s. I do not think we are there yet. I do not think we could ever do it. But we certainly can justify and indeed, there is a demand for increased investments in infrastructure, across the country. And they create jobs, and that is part of the president s jobs proposal. Construction jobs, or how does that affect the rest of the job market not in construction . Not just construction, but, yes, in the short term it only affects the people involved in the planning and construction of highways and airports and broadband, etc. That is not only construction workers. There are design, Service People of all kinds. Do we have or is no silver bullet, but what i am saying is you can begin to think about this in lots of different ways and say lets strike a range of ways and see what works, because we have got this persistent, real structural problem. And part of my argument in this is what is happening this is not simply about the financial crisis and the slow recovery that followed, typically follows a financial crisis. This is about larger structural change in the economy for which we have hard evidence from the last decade. So this is not simply a matter of an emergency response. We need something more serious. That is why we are talking about a longerterm thing. Bush did not try any of this. How they got away with that the 2004 election at this point in the 2004 election, the Bush Administration had created less than 2 million jobs. We have created over 5 million jobs. I do not know how the hell i got away with it. I do not know how the hell they got away with it. Karl rove. [indiscernible] if i had my druthers, i would be spending 10 of gdp on education. History tells us that that is the level which the best performing economies in the world typically 10 . Now we are about 8 . We used to be 10 , and korea, the single most successful economy in the last economy, is at 10 and has been there since it was an incredibly poor country. To me, that is what i would do. All i am saying is i would start with the public system. I think that is what government should do. But in my view, would also provide assistance very incomedependent assistance to private institutions as well. [indiscernible] well, look, it is the market that produced that growing inequality. These are inequalities of pre tax income. The posttax income is a little less unequal, but the truth is we provide lots of tax benefits for people at the top, too, as well. We are certainly not doing anything to counter it. To counter what the market is producing. For some reason, and it has got to be changes in the market and the conditions under which it operates, the market was producing a broad income gains for people as they age, and it stopped doing that. The policy responses policy responses you described, high Government Spending and very accommodative monetary policy, those are policies in response to the particular problems that have arisen from the financial crisis and the recession that followed. I actually believe that the constituents for a much stronger expansion are in place today, and that for the First Time Since the crisis, and that it needs a little push because the psychology people do not believe it. For example, the biggest example is what is happening in housing. We had five years of steadily falling housing prices. In addition to very high foreclosure rates. Set aside the foreclosure rates. The house is virtually the only asset that about half of americans had, owned virtually no Financial Assets, the middle class. They owned housing assets. Their wealth fell by about 35 over five years. It kept on falling. That is what economists dress up and call what is athe health of fact, which is you get the poor and you respond. You respond by spending less. You respond by paying down your debt defeat because you feel poorer. The fact is, housing prices have stabilized and are beginning to move up. So we are moving past the negative wealth effect into at least a mild positive wealth effect. People did not yet believe it or did not too confident about it because they have lived through five years of declining wealth in their homes. So it will take a little while for that to settle in the, and people to begin to respond to that by saying, i can afford to spend more than i thought i could. Consumer spending has been the big problem in the recovery. Business investment follows from that. I think those pieces are in place, and i placeqe3 is an attempt to get it that push, frankly. But government is not so give good at giving that pushed. A question from the gentleman here. [indiscernible] i will stop being an economist and be a tv person. [indiscernible] it depends on the advanced economy you are talking about. You look at the 1990s and germany performed very badly, japan performed very badly, germany continued to perform badly into the last decade, a couple of years of deceptions. Of the exceptions. They did not have the gains they had. France looks more like the United States. But what has been happening in the last decade is also true yo udo see it i have not done this kind of analysis because the data are not available to me for other countries, but all the normal indicators of how well those economies are performing, that they have been underperforming in much the same way the United States has been underperforming for the last decade, which again lends credence to the notion that what this about is globalization and Information Technologies and a shift in the relative value of intangible assets versus tangible assets. And the Health Care Point youre making . There is a big difference. [indiscernible] in terms of the Financial Planning markets and what that has to do with [indiscernible] the Savings Rates of americans how would you say Financial Literacy is with income disparity [indiscernible] we talked about the disparity between income equality of men and women [indiscernible] well, on the question of womens earnings, yes, the fact that women are the primary caretakers of children in our society as compared to their husbands, and a lot of women with children do not have husbands, is certainly a factor, and i thought that the biggest factor here was a greater proportion of parttime work rather than fulltime workers. Full time worke, that is an artifact of our child care policies. It tells us that that might be a very good investment would be to expand public support for child care, which you could do and lots of different ways, by increasing public support the child care expenses that this is as bare as part of the benefits for their workers. Yes, i think the parttime issue is large. I think the choice of professions i think is a big issue. You just think and maybe this will change, but you go to google or facebook or microsoft, and the preponderance of the Young Workers there are men. There are a lot of women, but this is still a profession that men feel more comfortable in than women, for whatever reason. I do not know if that is how Computer Science is conducted in universities, and i am not with larry summers. I think it is all social and not physical. On the other Financial Literacy we did not address that here because were only looking at earnings and not at income from Financial Assets. We purposely made that decision to focus on earnings. As it is, that is an issue for the top 20 of the country. 93 of the value of all Financial Assets and that includes pensions and retirement accounts and savings accounts and stocks and bonds, all Financial Assets which is to say every asset in the economy accept homes and art and gold, or what ever. These are held by the top 20 of the country. The bottom 80 control 7 of the value of all Financial Assets. But Financial Literacy and the top 20 i think that probably does have an effect on alternate be a goodd would it thing to have greater Financial Literacy across the income discovered russian the Income Distribution . Absolutely, and it would be better to figure out a way and there are lots of ways to do it for average people to it accumulate assets other than their own homes. Baby bonds, but that is another subject. Thank you, rob, for a very stimulating presentation, and we hope to hear more. Thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] the Commerce Department reported that the economy grew at 2 from july through september. Romney is in iowa. We will have the speech live on cspan2. At cspan, it is the Funeral Service for George Mcgovern who died over the weekend. That service at 2 00 p. M. Live from sioux falls, s. D. The early going was not propitious. During the very first days of that pacific war, the japanese would occupied singapore, they would defeat they would occupy the philippines, Dutch East Indies where they were receiving 40 of their oil. Needed that will to continue the war. By the same token, the americans in the film and the were humiliated by the japanese. 76,000 prisoners. 11,000 of them were american. 7000 of them would die in the 60mile march. The way in which they were treated was nothing less than brittle. This was a war atrocities story. The japanese beheaded many of them. They forced many of them into the path of oncoming tanks. Many american soldiers, and the filipinos who were joining them died of star patient. This was war and its worst form. The americans are not want to forget that. I would make the point right now that the war in the pacific was in many ways a racial war. It became a racial war. The japanese mistreated the americans and the americans in turn they would return the favor. This weekend, world war ii with a professor on cspan3s American History tv. Next, a debate between candidates hoping to represent nvs third Congressional District. Joe heck Democrat John oceguera. This debate was hosted by vegas pbs. Good evening, and welcome to an election special. For the next 30 minutes, i will be moderating a debate featuring the democratic and republican candidates running in Congressional District 3. The candidates will be making opening and closing statements. They will respond to questions that i will ask that each candidate. The campaigns have agreed to exclude candidatetocandidate questions. I would like introduce candidates. They are republican incumbent congressman joe heck, a Democratic Assembly speaker john of oceguera. Lets begin, and according to the point toss, have the Opening Statement. Good evening. Thank you for putting this together. All the talk coming out of washington, all we get is bickering and fighting, not solving any problems. All people want is some solutions. I know what it is like to struggle. I was raised by single mom, to my way through school, joined the Fire Department. The fight for the middleclass is in my bones. It is why i am running. We got the balance the budget and do it the right way. Cut programs that are not working and tax breaks for corporations shipping jobs overseas, protecting Social Security and medicare. We have got to get the economy back on track and get nevadans back to work. It should not matter if it is a democratic or republican ideas. If it solves problems, i will be for it. Your Opening Statement. Thank you for hosting the debate and for all of you watching. Two years ago the voters had decided they had suffered long enough with high unemployment, the increasing cost of putting food on their table, and the uncertainty associated with the new Health Care Law. It is no less important to send someone to washington today who understands those issues. Tonight you will hear two different visions for the future of our community and country. The first is the pathway to a larger government. The other the other as a safety net that protect future generations and rains in debt and allows you to keep more of your hard earned money. That the pact more opportunity and prosperity. Thank you. During several prior interviews you refused to answer questions about whether your support the Affordable Care act, commonly known as obamacare. Im asking for a simple yes or no answer and then you can elaborate on your response. Do you support the Affordable Care act, including the individual mandate and an expansion of medicaid by the state . Spanx. Yes. Thanks. My wife was about to have a baby a year ago. I was just retiring from the Fire Department and we had to pay our own Health Insurance. The cost was 1,440 per month. I could afford it, but i know many people who could not. Weve got to bring down the cost of health care in this country. I believe the Health Care Law is a good start and weve got to expand on that. My opponent has voted to repeal this lot and has done it 30 times. That will cost 33 Million People in this country not to be on health care. Some good things in the bill, if you are 26, you can stay on your parents help insurance. Theres no cap on the amount of money insurance can pay. Preexisting conditions, thats good as well. We ought to reform, but we have to keep going. Your response . There are good things within the Health Care Law and i have always talked about keeping pre existing no preexisting condition exclusions. But the good things are in about the first 50 pages of the bill. Then the rest has nothing to do with health care. So we have to figure out ways to provide stability and security for people with insurance and for people without insurance and how to bring down the rising cost of health care and to make insurance more affordable for everyone. If i have introduced legislation which would keep the importance healthinsurance reform provisions while opening up additional pathways for people without insurance to be able to get costeffective coverage. We have the bellaterra appeal s we have the best Health Care System in the world. I have been on the front lines in the medical community and seeing what works and what does not. I have a plan. Your response . And he says he would like to repeal and replace, but thats not what he has done in the past two years. He says this is a horrible bill and he will do everything he can do to get rid of it and thats what hes done. Lets reform and keep working on it, but we dont need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Democrats have attacked you over a statement you made on june 2, 2011, in which you called salsa security a pyramid scheme. You subsequently said it was a poor choice of words. If current wage earners are paying for the benefits of current retirees, why is it not a pyramid scheme or at least a ponzi scheme as paul ryan has suggested . Do you support allowing individuals to divert a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into a personal retirement account . As i mentioned earlier, i am worked in an Emergency Department over 20 years in this community. Part of that is knowing how to present bad news to people. The fact is the Social Security trustees have said Social Security will not able to pay full benefits by 2037. We have to look at ways to make Structural Reforms that provide the benefits current seniors expect while preserving and protecting the program for future generations. Thats what i was talking about when i was talking about Social Security. Part of the problem is the high Unemployment Rates under this administration and fewer people paying into the system because they are not working. We need to get the economy started, get people back to work. After that we need to look at other ways to increase the solvency of the program and that should include allowing people to pay into a private account. It could include changing the retirement age. It could include raising the cap on the amount of earnings to which Social Security is taxed. The congressman says he had a bad choice of words. However, he has quadrupled down on that and said it multiple times. I want to preserve and protect this program. I dont want to privatize it and turn it over to wall street. He got caught saying what he meant. Recently he said again, we have to get into Social Security and medicare if we want to fix this debt. He wants to privatize it. I will not do that. I will preserve the program for generations. With 50 of the federal government driven by medicare, medicaid, Social Security, that if we are to get serious about bringing debt under control, we have to look at structural changes and make sure its present for those that will retire in the near future. Thats what i am committed to doing. Every option has to be on the table to make sure the Program Seniors currently rely on will be amount. You said that you want to protect Small Business, speaker oceguera, but how can you do that when you want to let the bush tax cuts expire for those making over 250,000 . Arent those the job creators we want to protect . If they have less money, do you think they will hire more people . Thanks for the question. I think the majority of jobs are created in Small Businesses in this country. A majority of those jobs those businesses are in someones home. We ought to give a Small Home Office tax deduction, a simple one. We ought to do that right now. On top of that, in 2010, Congress Approved a doubling the startup deduction for Small Businesses from 5,000 to 10,000. We should make that permanent peridots are ways we could help Small Business. Weve got to invest in our Education System. Earlydo, whether its touted education, k through 12 or Higher Education, we would have been educated work force. That would help us prepare ourselves into the future. Getting back to the expiration of the bush tax cuts for those making over 250,000, would people be less inclined to hire people if they are paying higher taxes . On taxes, lets talk about this. Theres got to be a global solution. I do agree that we should end the bush tax cuts on those making over 250,000. I also believe we should institute the buffett rule. I also agree that we should quit giving tax breaks to big oil and corps shipping jobs overseas. The balanced approach would be cutting where we need to cut. Theres 50 different programs over 20 agencies that deal with Financial Literacy. We should combine and consolidate those programs so that we are in a position to grow the economy. What is going to help us overall is growing economy, not arguing about taxes or cuts every year. Representative . While in the Assembly Raised the modified business tax and doubled the business licensing fee. He talks about wanting to give our home office deduction. Thats all he permitted. Hes out of touch with what really drives Small Business owners. 90 of businesses in the state and nevada are Small Businesses. The corporations that report taxes on their personal returns, they employ 54 of the nevada work force. What is their incentive to want to grow and make 250,000 when they know they will wind up paying more in taxes . I have talked to many Business Owners and right now theyre not hiring even if they have the ability, because theyre not sure what will happen on january 1. They are afraid if they hire somebody now, they may need to let them go in february or march when their tax rate goes up. We need to provide stability and certainty right now so they can start to grow the economy. You have 30 seconds. What he forgets on a modified business tax is we actually lower taxes for 74 of all businesses in the state. On top of that, he talks about the business license fee, we raised the business license fee from 100 to plunder dollars. We have close loopholes so that thousands of businesses were escaping paying the modified business tax. I dont think thats fair and its not right. If you are going to do business in the state, i dont think 200 is too much to ask. The foreclosure crisis, bloomberg reported nevada is the only state in the nation in which the total value of Single Family homes is less than the amount owed on them. Some say Congressional District 3 has been the epicenter of the housing crisis. One has your office done to help struggling homeowners and why have we not seen a turnaround . I give a great deal of credit to my District Office staff. What theyve done for homeowners, helping them navigate the difficult process of trying to keep their homes. What have we done in washington to try to help solve the problem . I was the only person in my party to vote to maintain certain housing programs when the rest of the party wanted to do away with them. I was told they would only help 17,000 people in nevada. The program was important to them and i voted to maintain that. One of the biggest issues of folks will have lost their homes who are in a position to get back into a home but they cannot because of the negative mark on their credit report. We have introduced legislation that would allow folks currently renting to be able to get back into a home as long as the market was not more than their current rent and forgive them themark on their credit report. We know Home Ownership adds secondary jobs to our community. It will raise everybodys property values. Every night when i drive home, id drive down my street and theres not one home on my street besides mind that is not foreclosed on, short sold, or the people of walked away. I am 50 and under water in my own home. Theres a couple things we should be doing. We have a Mediation Program at the state level that forces banks and homeowners to get together. We should be copying that at the federal level. The second thing we should be doing is principal reduction. We ought to be looking at principal reduction, but everybody has to get in the game. If you are the bank, you win because you dont have to sell your house. If you are the homeowner, you win because you get to stay in your house. On the flip side, the bank gets a piece of action on the backside when you sell the house. Theres a bill that would make Affordable Housing harder to obtain for middleincome and seniors. We should not do that. We should try to keep people in their houses. Our office has been very involved in helping people stay in their homes and have introduced legislation to help people get back in their homes. The legislation that my opponent supported while in the assembly that actually put a stop to the foreclosure process and now we have an artificial decrease in the number of foreclosures moving forward in Southern Nevada and we will see a double dip wants the banks understand the new rules that have been put into place. So we really have not helped anyone get through the process. We have simply delayed it with that legislation. On foreign policy, as the president done everything he could to protect the security of israel . Do you support an israeli plan to attack iran if it is known that iran is close to possessing a Nuclear Weapon . We have to do everything we possibly can to prevent iran from obtaining a Nuclear Weapon. It is a threat to israel and we have to make sure that we use every tool in our toolbox, whether thats diplomacy or sanctions or the threat of military force. I believe that israel is one of our closest allies and we have to stand by them at every opportunity. I think the congressman and i will probably agree on that. Ing a Nuclear Weapon is a threat to the Global Economy and to the United States. You would support an israeli plan to attack iran if they determined there were committed to possessing a Nuclear Weapon . I believe we have to support our allies and take every method possible before military action. If military action was required, i would be willing to do that. . Congressman it cracks the question is not whether or not iran gets a Nuclear Weapon. We have to prevent iran from getting the capability to have a Nuclear Weapon. Once they have it, the horse is out of the barn. Thats the difference. This administration has failed to issue a red line where we would engage and take action. Baftas support israel to be able to secure the sovereignty of their state we have to support israel. I would firmly support any actions israel would take to defend itself against a nuclear arms to iran. You have the last word. I would use diplomacy, sanctions, but i would not rule out the threat of military action. It representative heck, the Clark County School district is the fifth largest in the nation. With more and more states getting waivers from no child , what is your plan to provide accountability and the resources for student achievement in Public Schools . The next generation of leaders are being groomed in our schools in clark county and we need to make sure the School District has what is needed to educate the future leaders. What the Education Bill was known prior as was no child left behind. They cannot use the money effectively because they have to use the requirements of spending where we tell them to spend it. We dont want to force you to spend money left over. We want you to spend it where you need to. We want to allow the districts to come up with a mechanism to judge the growth of their own students within their own districts and report that data back to the federal government for accountability. Education has played a huge role in my life. My mother was 16 when she got pregnant with me and ive watched her get her High School Diploma and then her college diploma. It took us from a poor family to a middleclass family. The congressman wants to cut pell grants. I dont. My mom went to school on a pell grant and i went to school on a pell grant. I know hundreds of thousands of students across this country do. He also wants to cut headstart. That the program that gives kids a stark they need. I drop my kids off at preschool every morning because i believe in the value of Early Childhood education. College loans is another area where we disagree. He wants to turn College Loans over to the banks. I dont think thats where they should be. He feels we should cut education. My feeling is we should invest in education. He voted to cut textbooks and supplies. My opponent is moving with false statements about cutting headstart. The tactic is you look at what the budget cut is going to be and finding that will resonate most with the folks back home and use that an example that any type of spending may cause. Theres nothing in what we voted on that would cut head start directly. The issue is how to control the cost of education. Just putting more money in the system and allowing schools to charge whatever money they can get will never help students achieve their dream of a post secondary education. One more question, on the subject of abortion. You have been criticized by several political pundits for an ad you are running that claims congressman joe heck tried to restrict the rape victims access to abortion b. Are you willing to stand by that . And how does your position on abortion differ from your opponents . I will stand by that ad. His record on Womens Health and safety is clear. He voted to repeal the violence against women act and to defund planned parenthood. He voted to make sure the irs could audit every deck them, to ask them to prove theyve been raped. It goes back to his history in the legislature where he voted to not Fund Domestic Violence programs, rape crisis programs, and a vaccine to help women be protected from cervical cancer. This is not just a womens issue. Every son, father, brother, should be interested in what his voting record is on this issue. There he goes again would blatantly false accusations. The fact is i voted for the reauthorization of the violence against women act, which contains an additional 660 million for Domestic Violence protection. On with the transparency and accountability, if he wants to pass pet projects in the middle of the night, what will he do in congress . The public has a right to know whether taxpayers dollars are going. I believe that federal dollars should not be used to Fund Abortions with the exception of rape or incest or the life of the mother. Thats what my position has been and will be. Thank you very much. Speaker . As the front of the victim of Domestic Violence, i dont care what he thinks. I believe he should have voted for increased funding for Domestic Violence programs and the rape crisis centers. The violence against women act eliminated certain class of women, minorities, children, lesbians. Are they less people than others . I dont think so. It does not matter to me why he voted. He should have voted the other way. Congress mman . Another blatant lie by my opponent. For hosting us. We have all had struggles and challenges throughout our lives, whether in our families, our business, or in our nation. What makes America Great is we have always had an opportunity to overcome the obstacles and make ourselves a better person, a better business, a better nation. Im running for congress to make sure our children and grandchildren have the same or better opportunities than i have. Were seeing those opportunities slip away. Winces for the decisions we make in november. If you want to restore our nation to prosperity and make sure it remains a land of opportunity for future generations, i ask for your vote. Thank you and good night. I would like to thank mitch and pbs for putting this together and all of you watching at home. A lot of our friends and neighbors are struggling out there. All we see in washington is arguing and not solving problems. I was known as someone who would work with you, in the legislature. It did not matter whether you were democrat or republican. On a fire engine, we would put the fire out, we did not argue, we solve the problem. My party is will be the middle class, protecting the middle class, women, seniors, children, and those who cannot stand up for themselves. His last two years have been spent looking out for special interests, looking out for wall street, looking out for millionaires and billionaires. I will not do that. Man heck just does not get it. I do. Weve come to the conclusion of the program. Thank you both for participating. And thank you for watching. Good night. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] you have been watching the debate between the candidates to represent a vans third house district, one of dozens of debates we are bringing you this campaign season. Gedaliah scheduled updates on twitter and find us at facebook as well you can get scheduled updates on twitter and facebook. Cspans studentcam video documentary competition once middle school and Highschool Students to send a message to the president. Tell us what is the most important issue the president should consider in 2013 for your chance to win a grand prize of 5,000. The competition is open to students in grades six through 12th with a deadline of january 18, 2013. Find out more on the web site. A report on the role of gender, a new Associated Press poll, on this mornings washington journal. Host jennifer hunt, welcome. Thank you. Good morning. Host can you tell us what information was used to come to these conclusions when it comes to and gender . Guest the poll does a random sample of adult and we try to identify likely voters within that group. This was among women likely voters compared with women likely voters in our september poll which was conducted before any of the debates occurred. We asked them who you plan to vote for in the november election and noticed a big swing. \ a lot of it seems to stem from shifting views among women on the economy. Mitt romney has gained great ground among women as being the candidate more trusted to handle the economy. President obama had a 56 to 46 advantage of that in september. Now with 49 trusting romney and 45 testing obama among women. Host it says theres a renewed focus on social issues that would not be a Welcome Development from mr. Romney. Factor in the social aspects and what you are finding as far as the shrinking of the gender gap. Guest it could change the trajectory of the campaign. The poll was completed entirely before Richard Mourdocks comments which brought the. Issues back to the. The event is the president has among women on that question, saying they trust him over romney to make the right decisions on womens issues, ben holt, among men as well. 51 of men say they trust obama on those issues and only 40 for romney. This could be a problem across the board for mitt romney. Host did people get to offer specifics on why specifically when it comes to gender issues . Guest really just that particular question. But we have seen throughout the year when we ask about social issues such as abortion and samesex marriage, the president does have a really big advantage of that over mitt romney. It is one of his strong points, generally. Host could you talk in generalities as far as historically how the gender gap has factored into elections and especially was leading that . Guest there is typically a gender gap where women tend to support the democratic candidate more so than the republican. That has been true in National Elections according to exit polls back soon 1980. In this poll showed women split evenly. Men broke a 42 for, and 47 for romney. So theres a slight difference between the two, but not a big enough difference to be significant. A small gap like that has happened in previous years and women have split evenly between the democrats and republicans, notably in 2004. And again in 1988, which was a much bigger victory for republicans between dukakis and bush. Host who was pulled and how did you gather the opinions . Guest we serve their random sampling of adults and do all interviews by telephone, landline phone sand itself owns. And cell phones. Host banks for helping us understand your findings. I like cspan because it covers all sides, independent, democratic, and republican views. Cspan is not boring because it is so topical. There are a Current Events which are interesting to me. Im a Current Events junkie. I love with going on right now and they talk about issues that matter to americans right now. Michael watches cspan on cox communications. Cspan, created in 1979, brought to you as a Public Service by your television provider. The u. S. House is about to gavel in to start the day. No legislative work is expected as members are in proforma session. The house and senate have been holding peace proforma sessions every few days to prevent the president making any recess appointments among other reasons. They will resume legislative work after the electionyear i. The speaker pro tempore the house will be in order. The chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker. The clerk the speakers rooms, washington, d. C. October 26, 2012. I hereby appoint the honorable lynn a. Westmoreland to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. Signed, john a. Boehner. Speaker of the house of representatives. The speaker pro tempore the prayer will be offered by our guest chaplain, the reverend Andrew Walton from the Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church from washington, d. C. The chaplain let us pray. God of the universe, known by many names and worshiped in numerous ways, yet present in common experiences of life, we come in thanks and gratitude for the gift of democratic process. With which the members of this body are elected to serve by representing the particular needs of their communities as well as the common good of the nation. In this season of discernment and decision, may all who are involved in the electoral process from candidates to campaign staffs to voters, to poll workers be filled with shared imagination. Collective wisdom, and mutual compassion that transcend selfinterest, personal gain, and individual pride. May we ultimately find peace, rest, and hope not in institutional systems but in the sure knowledge of proeffectic words that the arc of the universe not only bends toward justice but does so guided by the spirit of love that sustains and binds creation itself. Amen. The speaker pro tempore the pledge will be led by the gentlelady from new york. Mrs. Maloney i invite the members in the gallery to join us in the pledge of allegiance to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The speaker pro tempore pursuant to section 3a of House Resolution 786, the journal of the last days proceedings is approved. Pursuant to section 3b of House Resolution 786, the house stands adjourned until 10 00 a. M. On tuesday, october 30, 2012. That wraps up another pro forma session in the house with no legislative work. You may have been a democrat from new york trying to get the attention of the speaker pro tem as democrats have done, to call the republicans back into session. The next proforma session will be next tuesday the 30th at 10 00 a. M. Eastern. We will have live coverage on c span. The road to the white house continues through the battleground states. Mitt romney today in ohio and iowa. He will speak about the economy. The Commerce Department reported today the economy expanding just over 2 . We will have that for you live from ottawa at the Construction Company at 1 00 and eastern on cspan2. On cspan, the Funeral Service for George Mcgovern, a former democratic senator and 1972 president ial candidate who died over the weekend, and thats live from south dakota at 2 00 p. M. In austin, texas, this weekend, saturday from 11 00 until 6 00 eastern. 13 years in the network News Business for david westin. And douglas brinkley. And others on lbj and ladybird johnson. On sunday from noon until 6 00, on ulysses s. Grant infiltrating mexicos drug cartel, and inside the house of representatives. The texas book festival this weekend on cspan2. Nats, the third debate in new mexico for the senate race. This is leaning democratic. We picked up the debate after the candidate Opening Statement. This is about an hour. Good evening, and welcome to the u. S. Senate debate. Our sponsor is aarp. We are glad you are with us. This debate is being simulcast on 770 kkob am. Joining us on the stage is democratic candidate Martin Heinrich and republican candidate Heather Wilson. Both candidates have agreed to the debate rules. Each candidate will have one minute to make an Opening Statement. Later, they will have one minute for a closing statement. The candidates will be given one minute to answer each question and then 45 seconds each for rebuttals. Later, the candidates will be allowed to ask the other candidate a question, which is often very enjoyable. The answers will be limited to one minute each and answers will be and there will be 45 seconds for a revival. Martin heinrich won the coin second. With your Opening Statement. Thank you. Good evening. We still have to give kids at home, one who is about to go to college, and one who is still high school. I worry about them. I worry about if there are going to be jobs for them when they finish school. There is nothing more important in America Today than keeping the economy strong and job creation. Reducing the red tape coming out of washington. It means and all of the above energy strategy. The fastest way to an american child is american energy. It means Going Forward with acrosstheboard spending cuts so we do not lose another 20,000 jobs next year. That is why i will do in the United States senate and i look forward to the discussion this evening. Martin heinrich, your Opening Statement. Growing up, my dad was an electrician. My mom worked in a factory. They worked hard and they stretched every dime, and there were some tough times along the way. I know what it is like to struggle in the economy. I want your children in mind to inherit the kind of country we all believed in growing up, an america where you prosper if you work hard and played by the rules. I want you to know that my priorities are and in mexicos priories, protecting Social Security and medicare, tax are new mexicos priories, protecting Social Security and medicare, tax cuts for the middle class, creating jobs. I have always fought for the things that matter most to new mexicans, and i will continue to do that in the senate. With the u. S. Deficit increasing by the second, threatening the economic recovery, what would you as a u. S. Senator do about taxes and spending . We will begin with martin. I think what is critical here is that we take a balanced approach. Every single Bipartisan Group that has gotten together, whether it is simpsonbowles or others, has said it you can only tackle this problem if you look to both sides of the equation, and increase revenues and make cuts. We are going to have to weather some challenging cuts because spending is too high, but we are also going to have to increase revenue. I think it is fair to ask people in the upper income level to shoulder the same responsibilities that middle class families shoulder today. It is not right that people like mitt romney who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year pays 13 14 while Small Business people, teachers and firefighters, pay much more. With a balanced approach, we can meet this challenge. This is one of the areas where the congressmen and i flat out disagree. He is holding the entire state hostage for a tax increase in january because he wants to increase taxes on the two upper brackets. Half of the tax returns on those two abroad its our Small Businesses, the engines of economic on those two upper brackets are Small Businesses, the engines of Economic Growth in america. Ernst and young said that would cause us to lose 4300 jobs in new mexico. I think we need to go through a yearlong process of tax simplification. Take almost all of the exemptions and special provisions, lower the rates, broaden the base, and give ourselves a tax code that is pro Economic Growth. Then we have to control spending and have spending growth that is lower than the rate of our economy. We are also going to have to reform some big programs and i believe we need a balanced Budget Amendment to the constitution. You have 45 seconds for rebuttal. We have a simple proposition. You can either embrace the kind of approach the congresswoman wilson has embraced. She pledged to sign the cut, a cap and balance program, 80 Party Approach to the budget. It is so draconian eight t eight a tea Party Approach to the budget. It is so draconian, it would make deep cuts to medicare. We can go back to the tax rates of the clinton era. It is amazing to me that you can stand here, having voted for trillion dollar deficit for the last four years, the largest debt increase in American History and say that we have to control spending. U. S. Done nothing to control spending over the last quarter of the you have done nothing to control spending over the last four years. You have done nothing to control spending over the last four years. I think we should force congress to set priorities, stop funding things like so lender and prioritize Social Security come solyndra, and prioritize Social Security and medicare. With the fiscal cliffs looming and the president saying we need to cut defense spending, what would you do to save jobs at military bases and national laboratories. This is also an area where congressmen heinrich and i have strong disagreements. He was the only member of our house delegation to vote for the prospect that would lead to acrosstheboard defense cuts starting in january. We have party lost 3000 jobs here in new mexico since he went to already lost 30,000 jobs here in new mexico since he went to congress and average takehome pay is bad. Congressmen is down. The read work to restore defense cuts and avoid a devastating i would work to restore those defense cuts and avoid a devastating impact on our economy here in new mexico. I think it is important to remember whose seat we are seeking to fill. Senator Jeff Bingaman said that version of what i voted for was a huge distortion, and it is. I voted to make sure as a country that we did not default on our obligations. It was the tea party that forced us into the position of not passing clean legislation. I think what is incredibly important is that if we do not bring a balanced approach to this, we can completely erase the impact of sequestration. I have stood up to my party and fought for our bases and fought for our national labs. I opposed by president when he said we should put off funding the facility at los alamos. I wish Heather Wilson had stood up to congressman ryan when he said we should cut it by 70 . You voted for the continuing resolution that zero out the funding for the national lab and the plutonium facility at los alamos. You did not offer a single amendment or lift a finger to try to save it. I think the mexico needs the United States senator who understands new mexicos unique contribution to National Security and who will fight for it. You lost the aircraft for the air guard here in new mexico and we now have the smallest air guard of any state except guam. I think we can do better and i intend to. There were one of the people working at the air guard when i am joined the senate 1000 people working in the air guard when i joined the senate and there are 1000 people working there today. To me, it is not just about the airplanes. It is about the people. It is about the jobs. It is about the people who are putting food on their family from those jobs. I will continue to fight for for rethinking, forwardlooking emissions to make sure that both defense and energy are strong well into the future. Nearly half of the people in new mexico are hispanic. In a study we reported just last week, it showed that the second most important issue to hispanics after jobs and the economy is immigration. What do you think about amnesty for some Illegal Immigrants and children who came here with them. Martin. I do not think we need to embrace amnesty, but we need a comprehensive approach to Immigration Reform. Our system is broken and has been broken for many years. Congresswoman wilson had a chance for over a decade to do something about that. When i was elected to congress, not only did i sponsor comprehensive Immigration Reform, but i made the dream act one of my central tenants in congress. We fought for the dream act because many of those kids do not know another country. They are willing to serve in the military, get an engineering degree or become a doctor and come back to the give back to the community. This is an issue that needs leadership. I have shown that leadership and we are going to continue to fight for forward thinking immigration policy in this country. I oppose amnesty because i do not think it is fair for people standing in line in embassies around the world waiting to come to this country and respect our laws. I support Legal Immigration and think we need to make changes so that immigration is based more on talent and skills, so that we have a proamerican immigration policy. With respect to children brought here at a young age, i think we need a solution to the problem. Would i have voted for the house version of that bill . Yes. But the problem is the bill never made it to the senate. Which is why we need bipartisan approaches. I look forward to working with senator marco rubio and others to make sure a lot passes, not just that a single faction can pass something through the house. With my respect to the work in the house when i was there, the primary objective was securing the border. That has now opened up opportunities to reform immigration. One of the first things i did after being elected to congress was vote to appropriate the funds to send 1000 new Border Patrol agents to that border and hundreds of customs agents. But that does not fix the underlying issue. Were very lucky in new mexico. We have a very active community. Various groups have come forward and said we need to embrace comprehensive Immigration Reform. We could not get the dream act through the United States senate because the tea party had taken it over to the point where republican u. S. Senators were afraid they were going to be primaried for supporting a sensible policy. I think we need to stand up for common sense and get this done. Actually, the problem in the mid2000s was not that, congressman. It was that we had failed to secure the borders of Immigration Reform really could not be done until we took out first secure the border, so that Immigration Reform really could not be done until we took care of that. That opened up the possibility, i believe, Going Forward, for further Immigration Reform, not only to allow more people to come to this country who are highly skilled, but also to have a guest worker program, which worked very well in new mexico. Tell us what has been said about you in this campaign that has urged you the most irked you the most and why. I am not sure irked is the right word, but there is an advertisement congressman heinrich is running that implies i do not care about people who depend on Social Security and medicare. I find that not only personally offensive and untrue, but the reality is my family depended on Social Security when i was a kid. I know what it is like to be afraid, and i think preying on peoples fears is a new low. I think it was reprehensible to try to make people afraid for something that was false. That bothered me a lot. Martin, is there anything that has irked you in this campaign. I have to say, i have gotten a pretty thick skin in the last few congressional races, and i have also learned to use netflix and some of these on demand television thing so my kids do not actually have to watch the commercials this time of year. But i do stand by my advertisements, and i will tell you that if you want to see the truth, type Heather Wilson cap and balance on youtube and see her indoors this radical plan. Then see what the aarp endorsed this radical plan. Then see what the aarp says about it. It would impact Social Security. It would impact medicare. It would Impact Education and health grants here in new mexico. I think we could take a better and more balanced approach. Heather, 45 seconds for rebuttal if you wanted. Thank you. Congressman, you are implying something that is not true and you have intentionally approve that. The cut, cut and balance pledge is something i completely support. I do not see any problem with cutting wasteful spending and prioritizing Social Security and medicare. It will force congress to set priorities just like all of us to around the family dinner table so that congress stops spending money we do not have. There is nothing radical about that. By preying on peoples fears, i think that is morally wrong. Your response, martin. If you want to look, there are plenty of places we can make cuts in our programs. One place i am not going to make cuts in Social Security and medicare. Social security has been critical to many of our families. My parents are very reliant on that program despite the fact that they saved and invested. But i am not going to balance the budget on the back of our senior citizens. I do not think that is right. I think we take a balanced approach. They all say the same thing. You have got to work with both sides of this equation. It is the only reasonable and effective path forward. I think it is time that we actually produce some results for the American People. We are happy that aarp is cosponsoring this primetime debate with us tonight. Joining us on stage is leonele garza. He will present the next question. Thank you. On medicare, there have been recent discussions about having seniors buy insurance from private insurance plans with a fixed contribution from the government to pay for the premiums. This is commonly referred to as the premium support plan. Would you favor this approach instead of traditional medicare . Martin, you are a. Absolutely not. I will not see medicare voucherized. I know this plan is what paul ryan has bet his career on, but it would immediately have an impact on our seniors. I think protecting medicare is absolutely essential. It is why i cut subsidies to Insurance Companies so that we could put more money back into medicare. We took medicare savings from the Insurance Companies and plowed into filling the doughnut hole and preventative programs, extending the life of medicare. I will not see this program vouchered. My father has had a tough year. Unfortunately, he has used medicare a lot this year. It was there for him. It was there for my mother when she had to take over many of the family duties that he had previously filled. So, no, i will not support the plan. Heather. Medicare is important now and it is important in the future and we have to do things to save it. I actually do not like this part of congressman ryans approach. I do support medicare advantage. That is a program in new mexico that four out of 10 seniors choose to have. I was talking to a gentleman who likes the fact that it is a wraparound program. He does not have to deal with a lot of different pieces. Congressman heinrich is the only candidate on this stage who has voted to cut medicare by 700 billion in the Health Care Act. He says it went to Insurance Companies. He means medicare advantage. That is what hes talking about. He is going to deny seniors that choice. About onethird of it also went to payments for hospitals. That is why between 15 20 of our hospitals are going to go under, because of the Health Care Act that he supported. It took 700 billion out of medicare. Martin, your rebuttal. I have never cut a single benefit under the Medicare Program and i do not believe in cutting benefits under the Medicare Program. We added benefits that we pay for bite eliminating by eliminating subsidies to Insurance Companies that were pulling money out of medicare and into corporate profits. Now, the ryan plan, when it came out, i fought back hard against that too. Unlike my opponent, who was absolutely silent when the ryan budget plan came out. She was not there defending medicare. She said she did not have to comment because she was not in the house of representatives. Heather. Well, i was not in the house of representatives, but when i was, i voted against congressman ryans budget and his cuts to medicare. I have more concern about your approach saying we will not cut a single benefit. What you are cutting is the payment to your doctor or hospital. 40 of doctors now will not take new medicare patients. 15 20 of our hospitals are going to go under because of the slash in payment rates that congress man heinrich was responsible for. So, we will all have benefits, but we will not have a doctor . This is the reason the Health Care Act needs to be repealed and replaced. I will take that 700 billion and put it back in medicare. Your second question. On Social Security, i have heard politicians talk about raising the income level subject to payroll tax or raising it the payroll or raising the payroll cap entirely. What are your thoughts . The most important thing for Social Security today is the check needs to be there on time and in full. There are three other principles that are important when we talk about how we save Social Security for future generations. One is that i think it needs to continue to be the safety net program. It is the defined benefit program. We do not want it to be invested in the stock market. It needs to be a safety net. Second, the solution for Social Security should be bipartisan. There are a couple of models. Simpson bowleses one. Lets look at what Ronald Reagan and Patrick Moynihan did back in 1983. The third thing is we have to start now. Because the problem becomes worse as we go forward into the future. Congressman heinrich as recently as june said we do not need to deal with this now and i disagree. Social security did not create our federal budget deficit. When congresswoman wilson was elected to congress, she inherited a balanced budget. We got to be structural deficit we to the structural deficit we have today from very specific votes. Congresswoman will send voted wilson voted to stop the pay asyougo rules. She got us into a war in iraq without paying for it, a war in afghanistan without pain for comment tax cuts to the wealthy without paying for it, afghanistan without paying for it, tax cuts to the wealthy without paying for it, Medicare Part d without paying for it. We need to start paying for all of that before we use Social Security as the whipping boy for her bad behavior. It strikes me that congressman, i do not think you understand that Social Security is completely separate in the budget from all of the programs you just discussed. Social security is a completely separate account. The problem with Social Security right now is that for the last two years we have been paying out more in benefits than we are taking in in payroll taxes. It is a separate line on your paycheck. It is completely separate. And it is in trouble. We are taking out more in benefits than we are taking in in taxes. Under your approach, to do nothing, it means that seniors would open up their checks and find that instead of 1,000, it is 750. That is your plan, to do nothing, and it would mean automatic cuts for every senior on Social Security. 45 seconds for a bottle. Heather wilson has repeatedly said in this campaign that she plans to make changes to Social Security. I would ask you, dont you deserve to know what those changes would be . Trust us is not a policy. Trust us is an approach to get past the election and then you make policy. I think if we are going to make any changes to Social Security, that you deserve to know what those changes are going to be. I will continue to press Congress Woman wilson to know what plans he has, what specific changes she wants to make to Social Security. The third and final aarp question. Do you support reducing the deficit without harming medicare and Social Security for current and future generations . Martin, why dont you begin . Absolutely, and we can do that if we take a balanced approach, if we bring new revenues in and cut existing programs. I will not cut medicares ability to produce results for seniors. I will not limit the things it can pay for. I will not what i will do is say we need to do a smarter job using every single medicare dollars. We can use electronic records to root out waste, fraud and abuse. We can pay our providers in a smarter way. Today, medicare has a volume based system. The more you order, the more you get paid. Doctors should get paid a salary and get a bonus if they produce high quality results. That would bring costs down, extending the life of the program without cutting benefits. Heather, your answer. I think it should continue to be completely separate as it is now. The principle to making sure it is solvent for the long term is no changes for those who are on or near Social Security today. It should continue to be a safety net and not invested in the stock market. We must start now. Listen to what he said in his answer. He did not give one indication as to how he would approach saving Social Security. He said and has said as recently as june that it is fine for the next 20 years. 20 years for now from now, the trust fund will go broke. Everyone says we must address this now or else we will end up with Social Security recipients getting 25 less in their checks than they expect. That is irresponsible. Your rebuttal. It will not take decades for cut, cap and balance to start hitting Social Security hard. That is the more serious threat in the short term than anything coming down the pipe several decades from now. The things driving our deficit are specific decisions that congresswoman wilson made. This tea party cut at an balance cuts only approach will be a disaster not only for Social Security and medicare but for the entire federal budget and new mexico. Congressman, this is important. The money that comes in from peoples payroll checks can only be used for Social Security. Challenge the challenge is demographic. We are much better off starting to deal with that today. All of the other things we have to do, we are going to have to deal with that too, but it is completely separate from Social Security, and we have to deal with that now. There will be a 25 automatic cuts in benefits if we do not fix this. As part of tonights debate, we also asked viewers to submit questions. Here is stored bison with some of those questions. Stewart dyson with some of those questions. Describe a time when you voted against the majority of your party because you felt an issue was so critical to new mexicans that Party Loyalty took second place. I think there were a number of times when i demonstrated my independence. Let me give you a couple of examples. When i was a freshman in the house of representatives, i forced the speaker to pull a bill off the floor because it would be devastating to our national laboratories. I was the only republican to vote against the spending bill in 2004 because i did not think it treated education sufficiently. There were insufficient funds for title 1. The third is on Health Insurance. I was a handful of republicans that voted to override the veto of president bush because i felt Childrens Health insurance was important. I have a pretty long history of standing up to my party and even being punished for it from time to time, but that is who i am. I think mexicans deserve an independent new mexicans deserve an independent leader. When president obama voted to cut funding for the laboratory in los alamos, most democrats supported the approach. I did not. I supported the program. I felt it was absolutely necessary for us to meet our obligations under the new start treaty and i voted to refund that program. I also stood up when i was a freshman in congress, stood up to the speaker, stood up to the majority leader, and said enough with the congressional pay raises. In the midst of a recession, it is not right. We stopped congressional pay raises. Heather wilson voted for pay raise after pay raise, 38,000 over the horse of her career. I have stood up to my party and will continue to do that. With respect to your vote in armed services, you voted to authorize the spending and then you voted to zero it out by creating a Checking Account for the new plutonium facility in los alamos and and not put any money in the account. As a result, 700 people have lost their jobs and another thousand will not be hired next year because you did not effectively fight for them. With respect to pay raises, you know that has been debunked. I never voted to increase my own pay. Here is the question for you. The very week you were sworn into congress, you got a 5,000 pay raise. Did you cash the check . When it came up for the annual pay raise in congress, we stood up and said enough, it is not write any more. We sponsored legislation to get rid of the costofliving adjustments. You have to vote for each individual pay raise. The Previous Congress voted yes. Our congress did not, not only that year, but the year after word and to this day. I want to return too to this issue of the laboratory. When we really needed congresswoman wilson to stand up and fight for our national labs, when the Vice President ial nominee was fighting for huge cuts, she was nowhere to be heard. She was silent. I think that speaks volumes. How do you plan to change education in america . I am talking about elementary, middle and high school. I am a teacher, and it seems as if it is getting worse, including teacher pay. Lets start by repealing no child left behind. It is not working for new mexico schools. It is not working for new mexico student and it is not working for new mexico teachers. It was a top down washington prescribed approach the congresswoman wilson embraced when she was in congress, but it is not working. It is not working for my kids who are here in school in central new mexico. We should not do testing that compares this years fifth graders to last years fifth graders. We should do testing at the beginning of the year that tells the teachers where each individual child is so they can tailor their instruction and then know what kind of progress they have made over the course of the year. Heather, now i see you making a face. What is that about . It was a smile. The note child the no child left behind act is federal funding to aid education. I strongly support that funding, but i think the decisions about how that funding should be spent should be made at the local level. What no child left behind did was push decisions down to the local level and allow teachers and principals to move money around. That is massive flexibility. In terms of the testing requirements, for a year now mexico has been exempt from those requirements and has its own grading system. I think those texts tests and requirements should have been tweaked and replaced five years ago, but what they did do was narrow the gap between the rich kids and poor kids, anglo and minority, with respect to achievement, and ultimately, that is what we want to do. I would urge you to go out and as kids in public school, asked them about the last decade of Public Service in the schools of new mexico. Asked teachers what the impact of no job left behind was. Did it really put the power in their hands . I have not met a single teacher that said that. They all said it put lists and lists of requirements on us without any funding to do those things. And it took the creativity of one of the greatest jobs in the world. Before no child left behind, you could not use money that was supposed to be for Curriculum Development in middle school math to help with reading instruction in elementary school. What they gave was a lot of flexibility for schools to move funding around. What we did say was we want schools to be accountable to their communities for results. How those results were reported and the whole issue of annual yearly progress was something that did not work. I think they were right to set that aside. We now have a difference in new mexico. The important thing is to look at results. The kids who were first generation americans and were being left behind under the previous system. Our third and final question. Dawn hall from rio rancho once to know where do you stand on wants to know where you stand on Renewable Energy and related tax incentives . I believe we need a balanced, Long Term Energy plan for this country that increases American Made energy and keeps the cost down. American energy is the fastest way to american jobs. Here in new mexico, we have plenty of sun and wind in april. I am and all of the above energy gal. Congressman heinrich voted for cash and trade. It would cost 11 belsen jobs in new mexico and increase our electric bills. 11,000 jobs in mexico and increase our electric bills. He also said that coal is the fuel of the past. Well, if that is the fuel of the past, then those are the jobs of the past. He spent the last four years in washington chasing a green dream, and that is going to cost us all. Is not the dream for the thousands of people working in new mexico today because of those policies. In fact, today, despite the fact that we have been mining coal for hundreds of years, there are almost five times as many people working in renewals directly in the state of new mexico as in that industry. There is nothing wrong with mining for coal. My father was a minor. My grandfather was a minor. It is hard, hard work. But when it comes to setting policy, we need to be looking to the future. We need to be investing in infrastructure. Los alamos labs said if we had adequate infrastructure, we could grow 25,000 jobs in clean energy, which is affordable. Producing an Energy Portfolio that over time its ever more domestic and ever more clean. Heather. The los alamos study did not say 25,000, it said 1200 jobs for 20 years. I am fine with that. I support Renewable Energy. The difference is he supports Renewable Energy and not coal, oil and natural gas. 70 of our electricity in this state comes from clean coal fired generation. It is not only the jobs in the coal mines that are at stake. By increasing the price of energy through all the green legislation that he wants to pursue, we are going to have fewer jobs here, because one of the big drivers of whether a manufacturing operation is going to locate here is low cost energy. The renewable he is pursuing cost two or three times what clean, coalfired generation does. We have quadrupled the numbers of rigs produced in the continental United States and yet you are still paying through the nose at the pump. I do not think it is fair to support the kind of policies congresswoman wilson has supported year in and year out in her over a decade in congress. She supported tax subsidies for exxon and mobil and conoco phillips, companies that made over 100 billion in cumulative profits last year. It is time to take those subsidies and put them to work on the jobs of the future. Yes, i will continue to invest in geothermal, wind, solar, and all the jobs of the future. Clearly, the outcome of this years election will have a big impact on young people as they look to the future, so we asked a student to ask a question. Joining us on the stage is valeria. I understand your concern about how to pay for college. As a father of college students, i share that concern. It is my understanding that the government involvement in pell grants has caused universities to raise tuition. To you do you support any programs that will help offset loan amounts for students . I do support pell grants and i think they have been critical in the state of new mexico for many of our students, especially students who do not come from a family that has already benefited from Higher Education. In fact, when the ryan budget sought to eliminate enormous amounts of funding for pell grants, i offered an amendment to put funding back. And we paid for by cutting of administrative costs at the department of education, and yet all the republicans still voted no. We also kept the banks out of government loans to students, absolutely critical, because it saved so much money that we could put back into individuals education, making sure those loans were as low cost as possible instead of that money being siphoned off to the banks and put to work on wall street instead of in education. I strongly support pell grants and always have. I think you have made a good point. Every time a pell grant comes up, it seems like the cost of college goes up that much or more. I think our universities, particularly our public universities, need to spend more time looking at how to control the escalating cost of college. When i applied to college or when congress banned heinrich congressmen heinrich applied to college, the inflation rate is two or three times more than how much Household Incomes have gone up or minimum wage or the average salary. It is bracing people out of Higher Education. I think we need to look at how to control the costs, particularly in our public universities. This is a breath of fresh air because we agree on something. We do need to make sure our public universities are really thinking about the decisions that they may, the investments, the infrastructure investments, what they are charging in terms of tuition, and making sure they are focusing what they are doing on their core mission, not trying to be everything to everyone. When they do that, it drives up the cost of tuition within those institutions. We can do a better job of keeping those costs down. It should be our job at the federal level to partner with our great institutions here in new mexico to make sure that is possible. Heather, i think i owe you a rebuttal. I do not think i have too much more to say. I do think it is worth pointing out that there have been times when i opposed my own party with respect to education. One of the things that is going to create another American Century and keep us ahead of our competitors is to have a well educated citizenry. That in my view is one of the roles of government and something i am willing to support in the United States senate. As i mentioned at the top of the debate, we made time for the candidates to ask each other one question. Martin, what is your question for heather . Well, we talked a little bit about this already. Obviously much of this whole National Election cycle has handson Social Security and medicare. I told you a little bit hinged on Social Security and medicare. I told you how important it was for my family to be able to utilize those programs despite the fact that my parents worked hard, saved and invested. They still rely on Social Security to have the kind of middleclass retirement that they enjoy. My question is that the urgency is not an doing if the urgency is not an doing the things that really put this into a deficit, what specific kind of changes would you suggest to Social Security . At one time, you said you were open to private accounts. Today you say you are not. Rather than just say a process and say trust me, i will tell you after the election, are there specific things you would want to change. With respect to your comment about if youre going to quote the, i would appreciate if he would be accurate. I did not say privatization. I said personalization. One thing we were discussing was there being an account with your name on it so it could not be used for something else. That is what i meant by personalization. As i said before, there are principles the drive how i look at this. One is that those who are on Social Security today and in return near retirement should have the checks on time and in full. Second, it should be a benefit program not a defined contribution program. Third, starr was some symbols as a framework and a road map. Start with some symbols as a framework and a road map. Simpson bowles as a framework and a roadmap. Whether you call a privatization or personalization, it does not change what it is. What i am saying is we need to address the very serious fiscal situation we have now, and we need to address the issues that our most urgent and pressing us toward a budget deficit that is unsustainable. I think we can do better than that. What that tells me is he either does not understand the Social Security is separate from the rest of the budget or that he believes it is ok to let it go down to zero. I think that is irresponsible. Some of the actuaries running Social Security, all of whom are president obama appointees, said we need to address this as soon as possible. There will be an automatic cut in benefits and it is easier to address this now than it would be 20 years from now or 15 years from now or 10 years from now. We have to move forward and save Social Security for those on it today and those out in the future. Heather wilson gets to ask Martin Heinrich a question. Marilyn anderson owns two talk nobels in farmington, new mexico. Taco bells in farmington, new mexico. When the economy went soft, she told her 75 employees that they would stay on. She would just cut profit. She told me she now lays awake at night that she is going to have to lay off 25 employees to get down to the magic 50 number where she does not have to provide Health Insurance. Who would you tell her to lay off . Should it be the kids who are working there to pay for college . Should it be last hired, first fired . Should it be Single Parents who are dependent on that job . How would you tell her to handle it because of the Health Care Act you forced on her. I am not going to give Business Advice not knowing the situation, but we did exempt Small Business employees of to Small Businesses up to 50 employees. New mexico has one of the highest uninsured rates in the nation. A father came up to me and said when my daughter comes of age, she is not going to be able to get Health Insurance because she has epilepsy, a previous existing condition. My opponent said we could just send her to a high risk pool in the state. The highrisk pool does not accept people with epilepsy. Heather, your rebuttal. Two things. The highrisk pool covers a whole lot of people that if you have to be denied insurance, that is how you move to the highrisk pool. I have had this happen to friends and family. The Insurance Companies in new mexico routinely refer you over to the highrisk pool. But you failed to answer the question. This is a woman with a Small Business who has 75 employees. She has to lay off 26 people or put them back to parttime because of the Health Care Act you passed because there is not enough profit in the 0. 99 tacos. Her competition are the Small Businesses below that cut off. She has to lay them off and youre not taking responsibility. I think Small Businesses are critical, but so is Peoples Health care. People should have access to health care. If that means i have to pay 1. 10 for a talk show instead of 0. 99, i will pay 1 for a taco, i will pay that. We need to stand up for things that are hurting our state. We of children without health care. We have working people without health care. They get their primary care in the emergency room and we all get hit in our taxes because they get charged 10,000 for something that could have cost two hundred dollars. I think we can do better than that. We have come to the end of this debate. Each candidate will have one minute for a closing statement. Martin heinrich, you go first. Thank you, and thank you to all of you. My priorities are new mexicos priories, protecting Social Security and medicare, tax cuts for the middle class, keeping our promises to our veterans and making college more affordable. Heather wilson has had all the wrong priorities. She supported and voted for the wall street bailout. She voted for the bush tax cuts that exploded our deficit and now wants to give more tax breaks to millionaires. And she supports a radical plan called cut, cap and balance that would require deep cuts to Social Security and medicare. Let me be clear. I will never balance our budget on the backs of our senior citizens. I come home nearly every weekend to meet with our citizens, hold job fairs and raise my family. I always fought for the things that matter most to the people of new mexico. If you will give me a chance to serve in the u. S. Senate, i will continue that fight and i will be honored to have your vote. [applause] all right, lets move on. Heather wilson, you have one minute for a closing statement. Over the last four years, we have lost 30,000 jobs here in new mexico. The cost of groceries is up. The cost of gasoline is up. The cost of College Education is through the roof. Our Household Income on average has gone down 4,000 per household. Congress then heinrich wants to put in a cap and trade system that will increase the cost of electricity and cost us in other 11,000 jobs. He wants to raise taxes on Small Businesses, which will cost us another 4300 jobs here in new mexico. And he voted for the across theboard defense cuts that would cost us 20,000 more jobs here in new mexico. I think we need a United States senator that will stand up and fight for the Small Businesses struggling with the tough decisions they have to make because of the lousy policies you have put into place and force them into. We need to get back to strong Economic Growth and job creation, and that is what i am going to do in the United States senate. [applause] thank you, audience, for holding your applause until the end. And thank you, you come out there, for joining us tonight for our debate. In 12 days, make your voice is heard. Please vote. We will see tonight on the news at 10 00. Good night. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2012] you have been watching the debates, one of dozens were bringing you this is election season. Follow campaign 2012 on the c Span Television networks, online, and on radio. Get live updates on twitter and facebook. Winding through iowa, mitt romney is there today talking about the economy. He will speak at a Construction Company in ames, iowa. That is at 1 10 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. George mcgovern died over the weekend. We will have the Funeral Service live at 2 00 p. M. Eastern. I like cspans coverage because it is well diversified. It covers all sides, independent, democratic, and republican. Cspan is not boring because it is so topical. Current events, which is interesting to me, and i am a junkie and a love whats going on right now and talking about issues with going on right now. Michael mccarthy watches c span on cox communications. Cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies in 1979 and brought to you as a Public Service. Next, Kyrsten Sinema and vernon parker, 49 districts, added after the senses. She was elected to the Arizona Senate in 2010. Parker was elected to the Paradise City town council in 2008. This is from kata tv it runs about half an hour. Tonights show is a debate between the nine Congressional District representatives. This is an opportunity for giveandtake between candidates and one of the states most important offices. Interruptions are allowed provided that those interested are allowed to respond. It includes tempe, phoenix, valley. Le, and paradizese three candidates are in the race to represent this district, a democrat, Kyrsten Sinema, republican burn and parker, and vernon parker, and libertarian powell gammill. He is making his fifth run for congress. Each candidate will have the opportunity for one minute Opening Statements. We would drew numbers to see who goes first and that is powell gammill. I differ from the other two candidates because i am not here to rule over you but to advocate for our personal freedom. I live by a single principle that it is illegal to initiate force or from others and i expect everyone else to live by that same standard. That is what the Founding Fathers were trying to give us, a system that maximizes personal liberty and profit and minimizes the cost to optimize our life by providing the freedom to keep and enjoy the fruits of our labors and not to let a bunch of thugs come along and steal from those. Tonight is really about the only two choices you have you choosing who rules over you are you choosing not to participate in that process. It is wrong to initiate force or fraud on others. Thank you very much. Next, Kyrsten Sinema. Good evening and thank you for having us. Im running for congress because i believe congress is no longer serving we the people. Across the country, folks are struggling especially right here in arizona to get jobs and keep jobs and take care of their families. With a congress that is more interested in political bickering and taking ideological swipe at each other. I believe we deserve better. Across the state, people are trying hard to get jobs. Folks who have jobs are struggling to keep them and take care of their kids and prepare for their kids future. We need folks were willing to work across the aisle to solve problems. I have a record of doing just that. In the seven years i served in the Arizona State legislature, i worked across the aisle with folks on both edges of the political spectrum. There have been folks in the past that have provided roles to continue that great tradition in arizona. Thank you very much in our final Opening Statement is from fernand parker. Thank you all for tuning in. Our country is going to her some very difficult times. We have out of control spending, we have unacceptable unemployment. When i served as mayor, had to make some difficult decisions to either raise taxes or cut spending. I work with republicans, democrats, and independent and we cut our spending by 30 and our town was better off for it. If you sent to congress, i promise you that i will work across the aisle to work with republicans and democrats to make sure that we get america back to work and we get the middle class back to work and that we have a Health Care System that is second to none and an Education System that is second to none and that we restore the 716 billion that has been rated for medicare. I promised to work and put the American People first and not to put republicans or democrats in front of the American People. Thank you very much. How best do we create jobs in arizona and america . I put out a 12point jump a plan that talks about specific ways that congress can help with a better job climate. First, companies reap tax rewards for shipping jobs overseas. That put americans out of jobs. I want to switch the tax code around and provide tax breaks for businesses that hire folks in america. I would also support businesses and give them tax credits to hire veterans who have served our country and have great skills we can put to use right here in arizona. Research and Development Tax credit when i served in the state legislature, i helped pass a research and Development Credit for arizona. We need to do that federally to bring those jobs right here to america. How best to get jobs in arizona and america . I have a 16point plan so maybe my plan is a fourpoint better. We should freeze the current tax rate. If we do that, we would put 4,000 in the pockets of middleclass americans. We must become more competitive on the global scene. We can no longer have the highest Corporate Income tax and the world. Right now, if we lower our Corporate Income tax, we will create 2 million jobs here in america. If we reinvest and make sure that the research and Development Tax credit is extended by 25 , there is another 500,000 jobs. I fully support building i11 to las vegas from phoenix because that will create jobs. Also we should keep Luke Air Force base open. This is something i find offensive. My grandfather is an army veteran who served in World War Two and my dad served in vietnam. I have big brothers that served in the marines and a little brother who currently is serving in the United States navy. There are lots of guys in my family that our military so i have a strong record of supporting military families and records. Im the only candidate here this evening who has a record on Luke Air Force base. I voted eight times to preserved Luke Air Force base. Did you ever advocate to close the air force base . In 2002, when i ran for the legislature as an independent, i was from a Republican Party so it took me awhile to become a democrat. When i was younger, based on the information i had told, the was a good idea but my brothers taught me the most and toward important thing we could do is to keep those jobs open and thats why it passed legislation to protect military families and veterans throughout this state. Seriously, this is how you reduce the debt we are in is keeping an air force base open . Comeon . How the jobs into this state . Jobs are created when businesses have surplus money and needs. With the federal government ribbon of businesses, with high taxes, you have to go in there and gut that. We should eliminate all federal and corporate taxes. We should see how good the baking skills of these two are. We also need to get rid of all the regulations and mandates that the government puts on businesses that crushes a life out of them. You do that and is suddenly have surplus money in those businesses and they will start to hire people. The idea of supplyside economics, some would argue why dont we return to that ideology . Some see that as one of the reasons we had the Great Recession in the first place. We must be very competitive on the global scene. We cannot have the highest Corporate Income tax and the world. Must reduce our Corporate Income tax. Our number one export right now we are exporting jobs to china and to india. I firmly believe that in order for us to be more competitive, we must take a look at our current tax structure what do you think about the idea that cutting taxes is the best way to stimulate the economy . Will tax cuts pay for themselves . Some tax cuts make a lot of sense a sense like the bush tax cuts. Families are struggling to put food on the table. I have a fundamentally different idea how to help middleclass families to get families back on their feet. I think the way to do is to support middleclass families. I believe we should stop the bush tax cuts for the richest 2 in our country. If we continue those tax cuts, it will add 1 trillion to our countrys deficit over the next 10 years. I dont think we can leave that for our kids and grandkids. What about that tax . Let me respond she has proposed in the past that we raise taxes on middleclass families who make 75,000 or more. She has also proposed that we tax Services Like barber shops and here drivers and has proposed that we tax plastic bags 25 cents per bag. That will put an enormous burden on middleclass families. When people talk about not cutting taxes when you cut taxes on people making 200,000 or more, those are smart Business Owners. They are paying at the individual right and hiring americans. The notion that someone who makes 250,000, that they are rich and wealthy and they should not receive tax breaks, that is unimaginable. I would like to clarify my record. When i served in the state legislature, i never proposed a tax increase on middle class families. This is a highlight of the difference between us. He wants to give tax breaks to the wealthiest americans and i want to give a break to middle class families. If it had not been for all low income tax credit that helped folks like me with pell grants get our feet, we would not have made it. The reason why mr. Sununu did not make taxes because the legislature is controlled by republicans. She never had the opportunity. She had advocated tax increases. That is unfair to say that she did not vote for tax increases because she never had the opportunity. Would you raise taxes and the federal government . We have heard that in debates around the country, the idea of the 250,000 earners per year should pay more. Those are individuals, smallBusiness Owners who have scorps and llc that pay at the individual rate. They must have the resources to reinvest into our community. They need the resources to create more jobs. It is unfair to tax those individuals who supply 90 of the jobs in this country. It is trickledown economics that does not work. Teachers, nurses, doctors, i dont think that make 250,000 and they cannot be considered a millionaire. I never got a job for my poor person. Dont ever where their money. Dont take away rich peoples money and expect jobs to go up. It will go the opposite way. No corporation or business in this country pays any tax. All those taxes that are out there, that gets taxed tacked on to the products the company manufactures. Effectively, you are taxing yourself. We move on to health care would you repeal but Affordable Care act . I work hard to help shape that law and make it fit in. This law is not perfect. There are important parts of law that must be protected. Protections for kids and pre existing Health Conditions like kids with autism, protection for folks who have Breast Cancer theirs dont kicked off insurance. We need we dont need a repeal. That is not practical or likely to happen but what we need is bipartisan action to come together and fix parts of a law that did not work well for Small Businesses and families. This topic is very personal for me. My wife had a third stage Breast Cancer and lost their insurance because we could not afford it. She recovered because we had the best doctors in the world and the best Healthcare System in the world but it is not affordable. The Affordable Care act did several things that went too far. It is too expensive. It will cost us 2. 60 billion. The one provision is that it robbed of medicare of seven of its 60 billion. When i get to congress, i will fight to make sure that those cuts are restored. We are going to have bureaucrats in washington, d. C. Destroying the doctorpatient relationship telling us when and how we can see doctors. It will destroy Small Business because never before in American History if you hired more than 50 people and they work more than 30 hours per week, you will be penalized. I think the Small Business is likely to happen. What we need to do is Work Together to create more affordability for midsized businesses. Businesses between 5200 employees businesses between 50 and 200 employees. The Affordable Care act cut out waste, fraud, and abuse and all agree we want to get rid of that. The concern is that mr. Parker supports the romneyryan budget. He supports their approach to entitlements. That would voucher eyes medicare and cost your grandmother 6,400 per year. I never said i supported the budget. Lets get back to the health care i agree with certain aspects that we should be able to purchase insurance for our children up to the age of 26 and we needed now because these kids do not have jobs. We must also address pre existing conditions. In order to drive down those costs, we must be able to purchase insurance across state lines. Doctors practice defensive medicine. We had to pay for these tests and we told the doctor that you need certain tests and i said i have to pay for this and he told us which ones we dont need. He was afraid he would be suited he did not prescribe them. Is there any greater example for why the constitution and the federal government are completely at odds with one another . The constitution is supposed to limit the federal government. Theres nothing in the constitution about health care or permitting congress to pass healthcare laws but they do. I would have voted against it. Shows the difference between myself and the other two candidates. I completely oppose the federal government having any say in any aspect of peoples medicine, especially the mandate. Should Social Security be privatized . Should medicaid be turned over to states . Thats a great question. This is another area where we differ. He said he was interested in the romneyryan budget as far as entitlements. That is not true. All right, there are three key areas medicaid block them as would cause us to lose half of the funding we get to pay for health care in arizona. It also means [inaudible] if people are paying those taxes, we to get those dollars back. Ion grandmother was widowed when she was in her early 20s in tucson. She had three kids on our own and worked minimum wage at a cafeteria. When she retired, all she had was Social Security and medicare. Republicans in congress are proposing to of voucherize medicare , that is a dangerous idea. Absolutely, i have never advocated privatizing Social Security. I am on record for continually saying that we must oppose our commitment. We must preserve medicare for our seniors and Social Security. The system is broken and so we will have to do something to fix the system. When i get to congress, i will sit down with republicans and democrats to make sure that, in the future, we resolve the issues surrounding Social Security and medicare. What about returning medicaid to the states . I have no problem with that. So you think that is a good idea . I think that is a good idea. It medicate was returned to the state as a block grant, we would lose 50 of the funds we would get and that means that lowincome workers, people with disabilities and seniors, 65 of the folks who benefit from access in this state that would mean that my grandmother would not take care and people with disabilities would not get care. Someone argue that we cannot afford what is going on right now with access. Cant afford to not do it. When people cant afford health care, they show up for health care anyway in the emergency room. It does not benefit arizona to cut this program. She will continue to believe that Big Government is the answer and the federal government should be on patrol. I believe the decision should be made at the state level. We are here. We dont need washington, d. C. To tell us how to do business in the state of arizona. I am appalled that you would toss her grandmother out into the street simply because she does not have Health Insurance. That is what i just heard you say. I thought youd come up with the money and help her out. Arent there people would simply dont have the means. Absolutely, until the 1950s, we had charities that would take care of such people, Church Groups but the federal government has come in and run them out of the business of doing that and taken over. As you can guess, Social Security, medicare and medicaid, nothing more. Is manmade Climate Change real . Do you believe in that . I dont believe in al gore in the internet and believe that al gore invented the internet either. We must be good stewards of our environment and make sure that we protect our environment. Is Climate Change real . It is real and there is overwhelming evidence. That is why i support laws to help create solar energy and alternative energy and arizona. It is not only important but it is important for National Security perspective. If we can become more dependent on renewable sources, the less likely we will be dependent on volatile markets in the middle east. Heres the problem we have the Largest Oil Reserves in the world. If we tap into that reserve, our economy would takeoff. We have to make sure that our president does not bowed down to a saudi king. We have to utilize those reserves and i am in favor of nuclear and solar. Whatever it is that gets us independent, we need to pursue. Find more resources within america . I think that is important to keep all our options on the table. We can make more, nader energy using solar Energy Without in danger in some of our greatest land and natural resources. Would drill . Have to stop it right there. We will have closing statements. This was a lot of fun. Supportng you today to me and sent to congress. We must get our economy going. We must put the middle class back to work and we must protect our seniors and protect medicare and protect Social Security. We must have an Education System that is second to none. You have my commitment that i will work with republicans and democrats. Right now, we have a congress that gets nothing done because they are more concerned about pinning the tail on the donkey or trying to lasso the elephant. The American People have been lost. I will make sure that we keep the prosperity of this country and we work to ensure for future generations that they have a future. Put me in congress and i will work for you. Our next closing statement is from Kyrsten Sinema. Im running for congress because i want things to be better for arizona. When my dad lost his job, we lost everything. Thanks to this great country and the opportunities here and a good public Education System, i was able to get back on my feet. I want that same opportunity for every kid and every family in this country. Im running for congress because i believe we can keep the doors of opportunity open. When you combine hard work and a commitment to help each other, we can be the country we can be proud of every day. Back in the day, Barry Goldwater was known for his Pragmatic Solutions and comments and this is the same situation. I will reach across the aisle and i will do that for you if you send me to washington, d. C. Our final closing statement is from powell gammill. Another two years and yet another opportunity for people to run for office for one candidate will win and your vote will not count. Both candidates are unacceptable. You get to choose between the lesser of two evils. In choosing between evil is still evil. The only art turn it is to choose not to participate. Do not vote. You have Better Things to do than reaffirm the process were a bunch of rthugs divvy up your hard labor. Either candidate is acceptable to washington, d. C. They need your participation and consent for it denied them both by finding Better Things to do this election. Thank you very much an package for joining us tonight on this special edition. That is it for now. You have been watching a debate for the arizonas ninth district, one of dozens of debate were bringing you this season. Yet live schedule update on twitter ran you can find us on facebook. I think we have to have the discussion about political ideology in this country when we talk about progressivism and the history of progressivism and where it came from. Its easy to talk about communism, socialism, marxism. That is what separates this country. As far as what happened with goebbels, someone asked me a simple question. How do you feel about the fact that the majority of americans believe the only people on capitol hill republicans . I said there was a Propaganda Machine out there that he would be proud of. I thought we live in a country a freedom of expression. Im running because of the extremism of the tea party. At the end of the day, whether it is your family or business, you have to work across the aisle and do what is best for your district, your state, your country. When youre spending your time comparing them to not seize, thats no way to get things done. At the end of the day, we have to compromise and make the tough decisions in our country. Theres no way we will be able to reach across the aisle and do what is best for everyone. Follow the key races on c span. Org campaign2012. Coming up at the top of the hour, the Funeral Service for George Mcgovern, the former south dakota senator. There was a Prayer Service for him yesterday. Among the speakers, Vice President biden. We will show you his remarks next while we wait for the Funeral Services to get under way. [applause] thank you very much. Thank you. Nadal, suzy, to all the grandchildren, great grandchildren. I feel like an interloper in a sense. You all had such an intimate relationship with george for so many years here in south dakota. Hunter and die, my son and i, were generally genuinely honored to be here. Somebody said to me, you are in the middle of a campaign. How can you be here . Where i come from, the question is how could you not be here . How did you not be here for a man who did so much for so many people. How could you not be here . Its an honor to be here with my colleagues. [laughter] you crazy son of a gun. I love you. Jim and i served together. We are both nuts. We say whats on our mind. All the years i worked in the United States senate, and tim, your courage, you have such incredible courage and character. [applause] stephanie, thank you for helping hunter get through georgetown. [laughter] you really screwed him up. He went to yale. It bothered me a lot. It is good to see you, old buddy. You are still punching. Thank you for the help. 1980 was a tough year. A real tough year. In 1980, we lost gaylord nelson, we lost George Mcgovern, we lost we lost frank church, george mccovern, we lost the heart, soul, and spine of the United States senate i have joined. The speech you heard george giving, i remember like you do, but maybe from a different perspective. I was a 29yearold kid. I was a Senate Nominee from the state of delaware. At my first convention. Sitting there, mesmerized by the man who was speaking. Much too late in the night, but speaking. I ran with your father in 1972. I was not old enough to serve. I got elected when i was 29. I had to wait to be eligible to be sworn in. I not only served with your father in the senate from 1972 to 1980. I kept contact with your father and, to my great good fortune, he kept contact with me. I admired him from the day i became aware of him to the day he died. His face in his speech, we do love this country, i do not know anybody who loved this country more than George Mcgovern. I tried to get a nomination and i was not successful as he was in 1988. I used to end my speeches in the same style from the George Mcgovern speech in 1972 but with a different phrase. It is a hymn in the Roman Catholic church. He will raise you up on eagles wings and make the sun to shine upon you. That was my notion of the country and the obligation we had that i had learned from George Mcgovern. Our function in public life was to raise people up on eagles wings. And let the sun shine upon them. If we did, the one thing i shared from my family upbringing with George Mcgovern was i had never had a doubt i am more optimistic today than when we were elected, i am never optimistic than i was now to shed a little light in the dark corners of this country. The American People respond. They are capable of anything given half a chance. That is maybe what jeff and i i have not seen you in a while but we were attracted to George Mcgovern for the same reason i got involved in public life in my state as a kid. My state was segregated by law in the state of delaware. I got involved in a civil rights movement. I was no congressman louis. I was picketing and marching to desegregate our movie theaters and working on the east side of my city. It was the dogs. Torge mcgoverns call justice to end the war in vietnam helped shape my political sensibilities. I will leave you with that and line. He said, i am fed up to my ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. [applause] he not only spoke for our generation, he spoke for our souls. Spoke for us all. I still feel the same way. I marvel at the courage. Every time any event or historical footnote reminds you of that moment, that speech, i think, as tom and jim and anyone who served in the house of senate can tell you, particularly in the senate, what incredible political courage and gumption and it took to make that speech before the senate. The only thing i shared different with my friend who served is i suffered from having served their longer than all the 13 people in American History. [laughter] isnt that a hell of an indictment . [laughter] excuse me. [laughter] [applause] the reason i mention it if i had been there for 36 years. You have no idea the institutional unintended but intended pressure that everything from the walls to the marble, this feeling preying upon those of us who served there to try to the hardest thing to do is to actually confront the body of women and men when they are out of line. It takes remarkable political courage. Can you imagine anyone doing that . I think to myself, and i remember as a kid, a young man, the phrase, this chamber reeks with blood. The only speech i ever heard that came close to that was a speech by an iowan, a speech on Capital Punishment which was similarly profound. I always thought to myself, if i ever got there, and i was not thinking at the time, but as i ran, i hope and pray i have that kind of courage. I tell you what courage i did draw from George Mcgovern. I come from a family not like most of you, i suspect. A typical middleclass family, three bedrooms, four kids. In relative living with you all the time. Grandmas it dies, grandpa moves in, and san dunkels. Aunts and uncles. It was great for the kids. Probably hard for mom and dad. [laughter] i am the first United States senator i ever knew. [laughter] it was literally true until i ran. Other than my opponent, i am the first United States senator i knew in my family. It is a typical american story. People say to me now and i wonder now, what ever gave you the courage as a 29yearold kid to announce to the United States senate against a man who had an 82 favorable rating, in the year where we knew it would be tough, senator mcgovern knew it would be tough, it was solidly red, overwhelmingly republican, but gave you the courage to run . Some thought that made you so foolhardy. The answer is your father. Your father. I did not know him but i believed i could maybe go help him and the war. End tehe ware. I honestly believed it. What an incredible privilege it was to serve with him. I remember what frank church, i was on the Foreign Relations committee, the young kid on it. Serving with your dad. We got a notice that dr. Kissinger was coming to an executive section, that meant the private section, before we have for 07 in the senate Foreign Relations with a big conference table. It looked like a table in the oval office, excuse me, cabinet room. This was in 1974. He did not say anything and everybody thanked him. I said, he did not say anything. I said, we should have the president come up and tell us. [laughter] i will never forget jack called down and arranged that afternoon for us to go down in the president , gerald ford, kissinger, and the whole team. As we were walking in, your father turned to me and said, i like you. [laughter] [applause] the irony is i am taking too much of your time. I apologize. The irony is the chair i sit in now as Vice President is the chair directly across from the president. In the middle of the conference table, facing inward, and i face in the middle. Based on seniority, you can see when you attend a cabinet meeting, it is not the cabinet itself. The most junior members sit where the Vice President sits. I was sitting there. It got to me and i will never forget how nervous i was. I look at president ford and said, i beg the president s pardon, but i am sure if the president were in my position, the president would ask the president my question. [laughter] i said, with all due respect, you have not told us anything. Sector 1, 2, 3. With that, the president turned and said, henry, tell him. That was the first time it was decided we were not going to try to sustain our presence. It was five weeks later helicopters were taking off the roof. Not because of me. That was the plan. The point was, i remember walking out of there thinking, i was right. I got to go to washington and the with George Mcgovern and play a little tiny part. People do not realize had your father not been there, had your father never been in the senate, so much more blood and some much more treasure would have been wasted. The war would have never ended when it did. It would never have ended how it did. Your father gave courage to people who did not have the courage to speak up to finally stand up. Your father stood there and took all of that beating. Your father who was characterized by these right wing guys as a coward and unwilling to fight. Your father was a genuine hero. The irony used to make me so angry that your father would never speak up and talk about his heroism. Your father had more courage, physical courage, in his little finger, than 95 of those guys. They continue to fight a war we should not have fought in the first place. Because he took such a miserable beating, even though he did not win that election, he won the end of the war. It would never have happened. The other thing your father did, which will not go unspoken. His instinct for decency transformed my party. Unrelated for the war. Opened it to women, young people, minorities. He is the father of the modern democratic party. Your father is the father of the modern democratic party. [applause] that is a fact. That is a fact. I am proud to be a member of it. [applause] i was determined not to become emotional about this. [laughter] i had more to say here but i will skip it. Let me just end by saying this. My dad had a great expression. He would say, you have got good blood, kid. Just remember whenever you are down, think of literally hundreds of thousands of people who are alive today because of your father and the lesson he brought back. Everybody brought back different lessons. But your father brought back the lesson of seeing the Italian Women and children searching through garbage pails and decided he was going to make part of his life to end hunger in the world. Monsignor, you said you hope that there is a thread of connection that continues to tie us. My son, hunter knew your dad when he was a kid, a little boy when i got elected. He had the good fortune of knowing your dad and being able to work with your dad. Today, hunter is the chairman of reorganization that exists only because of your father. To fight hunger, feeding hundreds of thousands of millions of people around the world and teaching them to feed themselves. The World Food Program usa is your dads. I cannot tell you how proud i am of my son. I amproud because that thread, the same thing that brought me into politics, and thats my son to your dad, and, in turn, my son to you. The idea your grandfather must have smiled knowing my son is holding a fundraiser for you. [laughter] i know this sounds corny but i cannot tell you how much joy that gives me. It makes me believe we Irish Catholics believe there is that thread. It does run. It runs through it. So, folks, George Mcgovern did what probably no more than two hands full of men and women have ever done in the history of this country. He summoned the public life. Hes inspired a whole generation, literally, of leaders to get engaged in the 1960s. Many people in the room tonight and so many in washington and capitals all over the country, people who served with passion, conscience, conviction, and they literally, not figuratively, got started because of George Mcgovern and the courage to stand up and holler for justice. He summoned thousands of people who now summon new people. Think about it. All kidding aside. Think about it. Maybe more than a handful of other women and men in American Public life who had such a generational impact. It was a great honor to serve with your dad. It was a great honor to know your dad. It was a great complement one that told me his grand pop watched my debate with paul ryan and said, i want to call joe. [laughter] [applause] [applause]