Clinton administration, and blair levin spent many years there, most recently as part of their National Broadband plan, the executive director. Gentlemen, thanks for being on the communicators. Mr. Hundt, your books subtitle, how can technology fix the budget and help us over the so soof called fiscal cliff . Guest well, it is a the subtitle. Its a bit of a mouthful, but the fundamental idea here is if you spend time in silicon valley, if you spend time in detroit where the Automobile Industry is being rebuilt, if you spend time outside the beltway, you feel that america has the potential to generate abundance for it own citizens and for the world. If you spend time only inside the beltway, it looks like a zero sum game, it looks like lose lose, and whos going to lose the most is the gist of the negotiation. So what we tried to say in this book is or what are the lessons of the Technology Sector, what are the lessons that come from the optimism in the Technology Sector and how can they give us some ideas that we could pass into law here in the United States, here in washington, d. C. . Host blair levin, you talk two different platforms in your book, the politics abundance. What are those platforms . Guest the basic idea is how do we drive abundance by looking at the areas that absorb a lot of private cap tag capital, and they can drive productivity not just in those sector, but throughout the entire economy. And the two were really focused on are what we call the Power Platform, the energy grid needs to be redone, and the knowledge platform. We dont we need to do some work on the networks of what we call knowledge, which is to say broadband, but its really about how do we apply it, how do we deliver bandwidth that can really change education, change health care, change all Government Services so we get faster, cheaper, better . The same kind of phenomenon that we see on our phones and our or networks we want to see if public goods and Services Like education and health care. Host well, as a former executive director of the National Broadband plan, mr. Levin, how important is speed when it comes to improving our economy, in your view . Guest well, it depends on a variety of different uses. For example, in medicine were now moving to a place where we can have wire lessen sores really improve medicine, and thats great. But if we want to do degnomic medicine, we need a much faster network. Bill clinton, the former president , was saying we cant really expect our businesses to compete internationally if they only have access to speeds a fourth the speed of korea, and hes absolutely right. Host reed hundt, energy is included in your book on testimonying. Technology. Why . Guest to quote the smashing pumpkins, we all know that we need a Clean Energy Economy where its really, really cheap to buy the energy and where the energy that youre buying is not polluting the atmosphere. It is not causing Greenhouse Gases that are driving up the temperature and producing droughts. It is not producing a number of other healthrelated effects from from air pollution. We all know this. We know what were after. How are we going to get there . The way we discovered in the book is its pretty simple. Could you have the federal government buy all the new things that are necessary and then give them away . Its not practical, its not going to happen. We dont have that capability in the federal government to add to the deficit. So you have to open the door to private investment to do this job of rebuilding the Power Platform in the United States. Host and the Technology Aspect of that is guest the Technology Aspect is manifold. In the last four years alone, the Solar Industry has gotten on what they call a moores law curve meaning Price Performance improves by roughly two times every 1824 months. In the last four years, weve gotten ourselves in an innovation cycle in batteries so that by the end of 2020 electric vehicles actually will be price competitive with gasdriven cars. The problem with these things is that we cant wait. We cant wait because of the environmental effects, and we cant wait because we need the economy to grow quickly right now. So the book lays out a whole bunch of different ideas for bringing private investment much, much more quickly into the job of rebuilding the power plant. Host reed hundt, recently on this policeman james glans was on this program. Hes written a series on some of the new york power plants, and he doesnt necessarily agree that the internet is completely green or is terribly green. Whats your thought on that . Guest well, hes right about that. People say the data centers in the United States account for 2 of all electricity consumption. If it isnt exactly that number, it certainly is the biggest single new, additional element of demand in the whole electricity area. And where do they put data centers . People are talking about putting them in finland or canada or on the shores of major rivers because they want the atmosphere to be really cold, and they want the electricity to be really, really cheap. Theyre trying to deal with the engineering demands of data centers. Those are stopgap solutions. In the long run, what we need is a Clean Energy Platform that includes, as the president often says, all of the above; lots more natural gas, lots and lots more solar, more wind, better transmission systems. But heres the beauty part of it, it all will require a trillion dollars of private investment. And because of Technological Breakthroughs and new financing ideas, the electricity at the other end of the change will actually be lower priced than electricity today. Guest if i could just add, when we started the National Background plan, we started with the broadband plan, we started with the question what are some key problems that could be potholes in the information highway, what are some things we should worry about. And one of the interesting things i didnt anticipate was the number of companies that really wanted to deliver great connectivity and great applications, theyre very worried about this problem, about the amount of power it takes to run these data centers. Turned out, that was beyond the scope of the broadband plan which was pretty broad, but its absolutely a concern of everybody. So we need to do something, things like what reed has been working on over the years to enable it. But the other point is it is green to deliver goods and Services Using bandwidth and chips instead of atoms. And so theres a lot of things if the economy where we know this is where the economy is going. We want to do it faster, but we also want to do it in a sustainable way, and the United States should want to lead in how we do that. Host mr. Levin, in the politics of abundance, theres civil instances where you say the president could act on his own without congressional approval. What are some of those instances . Guest we lay out, for example, in the area of education we i think the secretary of education, arne duncan, has done a great job laying the foundation, and now its just a question of how do we accelerate it. And the things where the president , working with the department of education, could, for example, create a Data Exchange system which allows us to both digitize and personalize education. Very similar kind of thing in health care. And so there are all kinds of Different Things that the president using executive authority as, in fact, they have laid the foundation for already, could act to really accelerate that Movement Toward the digital platform. Host where does Congress Come in . Guest well, Congress Comes in in a number of places, and we lay out at the end of the book four trades we really think congress should take part in. Ill mention one thats very related to the broadband area. Um, there was a hightech ceo council that suggested that theres a trillion dollars of savings if the government moves all of its goods and services to the digital platform. What we propose is a base closinglike commission where you get those ceos in the room, you make them look at it, those problems, and have very specific solutions and then, basically, give congress an up or down vote on what to do. Theres in order to do that, you have to be able to use some of the savings in the outyears up front to buy new equipment which is more efficient and things like that. I also think we need to make sure that everyone in the country is online. In other words, if were going to move all of Government Services to the digital platform which we really want to do, we cant leave anybody behind. So that would be one where i think Congressional Authority is necessary, but theres some others that maybe reed guest well, heres some other examples. Lets take Corporate Tax. It seems likely that therell be a yearlong debate about Corporate Taxation here in washington in the year 2013. Most businesses are global in some respect now. Not all, but most big businesses for sure. If youre a big business and you look over to china, youll see in their fiveyear plans in energy or in Information Technology specific promises to have a 15 Corporate Income tax rate. You come to the United States, you have no predictability, you dont know what it is, and the current rate is much, much higher than that. We need reforms that say to businesses we want you to invest here in the United States. While were having this big debate about Corporate Tax reform, lets include in it specific reforms for the Energy Sector that, in fact be, are designed to attract a massive amount of new investment to build a Clean Energy Platform. Lets have that be a subpart of the Corporate Tax reform debate. Another example, the carbon tax. The carbon tax is a prodbased broadbased tax that does not, in fact, have to have a big impact on consumers. It could be placed on electric utilities, it could be something they avoid by moving to clean energy so that they wouldnt have to pay it. But if we had that carbon tax, it would, for a while, help close the deficit, and it would be a stimulus to the utilities to move to clean energy. So thats the second idea. And the third, many states now are following the lead of connecticut which is the first state to have created the state green bank, an institution that couples with the private sector and finances distributed solar or wind or electric utility grilled rebuilds or Energy Efficiency measures fending on the state. Depending on the state. Lets have the federal government loan money to state green banks at the extraordinarily low rate the federal government current libor rowing at. So these are a handful of different ways to provide a financing support and a tax policy support for massive private invest bement. Host reeled hundt, to achieve some of the goals in the politics of abundance, whats the role of the fcc . Guest well, the fcc can take the lead on a handful of topics, and on other topics it should provide policy ideas that congress and the executive branch will need to work out together. An example of what the fcc can do is it can reform the erate, the program we were involved with back in the 90s, so that the things that School Districts and libraries buy under the erate are closer in description to modern technology and are really not just the old things that arent as efficient as the modern technologies permit. Host blair levin n your book you spend quite a bit of time comparing today to the clinton gore era. And what occurred in the 90s, what worked. What worked. Guest well, what worked was that there was this massive private investment starting really in the middle of the decade that to a surprising degree drove surpluses in the federal government budget. And as george will recently pointed out, it was really the internet that drove that wonderful period where we werent arguing about falling off a fiscal cliff. Rather, we were arguing about do what do we do with the surplus. And i think that lesson is a lesson you can actually see at various other points in history. Wherever you have economic growth, its often due to the fact that theres, essentially, a technological change going on. So we had railroads, we had steel, we had cars. What was great about the 90s was, yo u. N. You know, in part because of some of policies we adopted, but really there was a wonderful consensus in the federal government about the deregulation of the telecommunication cans sector that i think worked extremely well. There was an understanding that this is a sector that can help drive growth. And what weve tried to say were what were the lessons of that time, and its how do we get rid of the rules that may have made sense 20, 30 years ago, but dont make sense now. Also how do we deliver public goods and Services Better for all americans, and thats what really asking that question of each other was what led us to want to write this book. Host well, blair levin, begin what you just said, whats your take on what the itu is doing right now . Guest um host when it comes to the worldwide internet . Guest well, the itu just finished up their work. I cant say ive had an opportunity to either examine it in detail from the written product or have a chance to talk with a lot of friends who were over there to do it. I certainly like a lot of other americans am very worried about countries that believe that what we need to do is regulate the internet more or have countries simply suppressing both the expressions of speech as well as the economics of what the internet can be. Theres certain countries that want to protect Certain Industries and have ideas in mind to do that, so i would put myself as kind of nervous about that. I think we ought to be moving in the direction which, you know, is more about opennesses and economic and the Free Expression of ideas. Host reed hundt, when it comes to the internet and the politics of abundance, your book, there is a real role for government, is that fair to saysome. Guest oh, absolutely. Lets talk about the power grid for just a second. Theres one thing that we dont know how to change. You can have a Wireless Industry in communications, but when you talk about wireless and electricity, that is called lightning. It is dangerous, it is not a consumer product. You have to recognize in the electric grid that theres a local distribution network, those lines that go up and down the street and reach your house, and they need to be owned by a company x that Company Needs to invest to keep the trees from falling on these lines and to repair them and to deal with health and safety issues. And so we have to have that be the pivot point and not say, oh, well, that just isnt important anymore, right . But around that you can move to a Clean Energy Platform. There are more than 100 million buildingsing in the United States on buildings in the United States. On average we ought to be having about 10,000 of investment for every one of the 100 million buildings on average to have it be that they consume less electricity and get the same heating and lighting and airconditioning. There are about six million businesses in the United States. Many of them, millions of them ought to be able to have solar power on their roofs to provide their own electricity because many of them have flat roof buildings, warehouses, buildings if a strip mall, grocery stores. They all should have solar power on their of roofs. Even in cold gray states in the far north, solar power can provide up to 15 of the electricity with appropriate financing at prices that are at or below the levels that exist today. So these changes around the electric grid are really easily possible if we just change the regulatory policies, if we change the financing policies. We dont have to have a massive overhaul. We dont have to have a nationalization of businesses. We just have to open the door by some regulatory measures and some deregulatory measures to what we can reasonably estimate to be a trillion dollars of private invest bement. Host what would you go ahead. Guest i was just going to say, if you look back in history, theres always a role for government when you see this kind of growth that were looking for. Exactly 150 years ago the Congress Passed three laws which i think if you consider how america became a leader in the world economy, it really goes back to those three laws; the Transcontinental Railroad act, the morrow act which created the public universities and the homestead act. We took assets which were underutilized in terms of land, in terms of human capital, and we said were going to find a way to utilize them. And thats the kind of inspiration were talking about now. How do we leverage what we have now to have another generation of American Economic leadership . Host blair levin, how you ubiqu