 All right, I think we've had a very stimulating morning With some continuity between the panels, but certainly continuous discussion through the panels And it's with great pleasure that I introduce One of my former bosses actually a boss in many different respects Rudy De Leon Who I worked with as a colleague in the House Armed Services Committee and worked under his supervision So to speak at the House Armed Services Committees as well Although I think he sometimes wonder how much supervision I really took during that time But then worked with him closely When we came over at the beginning of the Clinton administration Both in the office of the Secretary of Defense and in the Department of the Air Force Rudy is somebody I've learned a great deal from I'm very thankful that he's Agree to come here participate later in the afternoon Introduce Secretary Cohen Rudy De Leon Well, thank you Clark Murdoch and thank you You know I just look out at the tables and I see a luminary at every table I had the chance to visit with Harlan Ollman and I see the former Titan of journalism Mr. Pat towel of the old Congressional Quarterly now of the Congressional Research Service in his years of covering the Armed Services Committees in the 80s in 90s so And Paul Gebhardt one of the principals at the Cohen group. So Ray de Bois from CSIS so anyway Clark you've assembled a great great group my pleasure to introduce Secretary Cohen as the keynote speaker the chairman and CEO of the the Cohen group, which is one of the formidable groups in Washington in terms of knowledge and capabilities of Global trends and global capabilities Also, the Secretary of Defense during a very challenging time, but equally important a Member of both branches of Article 1 the House of Representatives and then the United States Senate in particular the Senate Armed Services Committee the topic obviously is strategy for the future as we deal with a huge budget and confidence crisis in the United States It's also just catching the end of the earlier panel and all of the discussion on on strategy for many of us Because in many respects my experience is parallel Secretary Cohen's he was at the principal level. I was there at the staff level trying to get Clark Murdock to get his papers in Learning how to manage PhDs is a Mac But you know the challenge of the 80s after the Reagan build-up was to figure out how we were going to move from an era of debt To one where we could invest again and so from that period of 1987 to 1998 whether you were on the Armed Services Committee or serving in the Pentagon Managing the resources as well as the missions the strategies and the global responsibilities was at at the the heart of those duties and it's interesting Given that it took a decade and a half to reach that point Where the budget could be balanced and then secretary Cohen sent several of the senior staff over to start Negotiating with OMB in the White House in terms of how we were going to actually start spending on defense again resulting in The top line starting to go up from physical 99 and on But all of these pieces Together, but the decade and a half that it took to get to those budget increases of Graham Rudman The Bush Gebhardt dick Gebhardt not Paul Gebhardt agreement in 1990 the deficit reduction package in 93 and then the big package between president Clinton and Senator Dole After the government shutdown in 95 that really led us by 98 and then along with a phenomenal decade of economic growth So against all of those challenges, you know the Department of Defense left to its successors a budget imbalance and a capable force That was ready to respond to the challenges of of 9-11 and to the first decade of the 21st century So he's as current as the latest headline in the latest flashpoint And I know he's going to have many interesting perspectives both in terms of the crisis around the world But equally important the crisis of confidence that's here in Washington, DC right now. So Secretary of Defense senator mayor CEO of the Cohen Group Bill Cohen Well, you could tell by Rudy's introduction that he's a master of budgets. He Really underplayed his role at the Pentagon Because he was in charge of crunching numbers certainly and then became deputy secretary of defense who Essentially ran everything while I took all the credit for it. So Rudy you should be up here talking and not me I was intrigued with the subject matter Defense in the age of austerity. There's been so many ages that I have passed through There was Alan Greenspan's age of turbulence There was Joshua Cooper Ramos's book the age of the unthinkable For me I go back to the age of future shock That was really the first book that caught my attention way back in the early 70s When Toffler started talking about this Hurricane wind of change that was going to be blowing through the world and it seemed unlikely at that point But it has become a reality as we've seen how time has actually been accelerated and speeded up by by events Paul get part is in the the room today and he and Rudy both know I used to keep aside my desk two quotes I'm going to read them to you because they are still relevant to me first quote was Our earth is degenerate in these latter days bribery and corruption are common children no longer obey their parents Every man wants to write a book And the end of the world is evidently approaching and I'd like to say it has a contemporary ring to it There was none of the Syrian tablets some 4700 years ago Next quote that I kept beside me was this one It is a gloomy moment in the history of our country not in the lifetime of most men has there been such grave and deep apprehension Never has the future seemed so uncertain as it does at this time the domestic situation is in chaos Our dollar is weak throughout the world prices are so high as to be utterly impossible The political cauldron sees and bubbles with uncertainty Russia hangs as usual like a cloud dark and silent upon the horizon It's a solemn moment of our troubles and no man can see the end Could be in the Wall Street Journal in Washington Times any contemporary publication that was written in Harper's Weekly in 1897 so I used to keep those by my desk just to try to put some perspective on Things that have happened in the past the anxieties apprehensions of our forebears and how we managed to to get through it all something Even though I try to keep that in perspective something different today Rudy touched upon it in terms of I would say the three D's You have deficits running roughly 1.4 trillion on an annual basis you have a death that's 14 trillion and I think you have dangers that we have not seen before in terms of their complexity and Unpredictability in fact when Rudy talks about crisis of confidence I think we're suffering from a lack of confidence that we have the ability to manage the forces that tend to surface like a tsunami unannounced and then they sweep and overwhelm all of our plans and assumptions a Quote that I have always kept near and dear to me as well has been that of John Kennedy Because he really was the individual who inspired me when I was a young law school a student And I was thinking about his quote as well and how it applies today Let every nation know whether they bear us ill well or ill that will pay any price bear any burden endure any hardship Defend any friend oppose any foe in order to ensure the survival and success of Liberty Wonder could any political leader make that statement today? Is there any presidential candidate that could say we'll pay any price bear any burden in order to ensure the success of Liberty and freedom so we're living in a time of constraint As you've called it austerity And the question is how do we function? What do we do? What's our role and it's interesting You're all the experts in the the audience and it's kind of difficult for me to be talking to you about what needs to be done But if you think about it, you can't talk about how to deal with a budget and so you decide What it is you want to do? What is our role in the world today? What are our responsibilities in this world that is one of turbulence uncertainty age of unthinkability? age of Austerity what's our role that we have to decide that Kennedy said any will go anywhere do anything and now we're saying different voices saying come home America It's not George McGovern 1972 come home America. This is Ron Paul 2011 come home America President Barack Obama saying it's time for the United States to start nation building at home So we have this notion it's time to come back and deal with problems here It was interesting that I came from a lecture this morning or speech this morning by one of our colleagues in the Cohen group but Lord George Robertson and he was giving kind of an overview of how he's thing sees things in Europe and He said what's taking place there is rather fascinating because it's the the renationalization of issues That have no national solution Something similar taking place in this country be we're talking about going back to states rights For which no state is able to solve the issues And so there are interesting dynamics underway and talk about the renationalization of issues when in fact There is no nation that can deal with the kind of problems that are likely to confront us And so we have to decide under these circumstances. Who are we? What is our role? When I was at the Pentagon Rudy was there as well Paul Gephardt Amos Goodman comes later and the Cohen group in life But there was a book written by Richard Haas and was called the reluctant sheriff and that's pretty much how I saw our role in the world be a reluctant sheriff Have the best military you can but really choose wisely before you decide to deploy them anywhere and Pat you may recall how reluctant I was to get engaged in the Kosovo campaign I said over to you Europe your problem not ours and the European came back and said we can't go without you You need to lead this particular effort, but I was reluctant I wanted to be that reluctant sheriff and we could afford to be at that time The the Berlin Wall was down the Soviet Empire no longer existed Life was a little bit more with simpler then so we could be more reluctant Then came 9-11 and you have a new president. You have a new Theory a new doctrine that of a preemption And so you go from being a reluctant sheriff to almost the Texas terminator, right? and that had its consequences politically speaking because a lot of countries resented the fact that we were a little bit too big and Too too boastful and too aggressive and too unilateral So we learned some of the limitations of the exercise of power at that point now the question is who are we today and It's almost are we a member of an international posse Sometimes taking the leadership of that posse in Libya by way of example and then saying over to you members of NATO and will lead from behind Is that something that the United States is going to do on a more regular basis in the future? What is it? We see our role as being in a world in which there is greater and greater turbulence and and forces of disintegration in some cases The point is that we can't walk away from the world There are those who say come home America whoever is saying it We can't walk away from the world because the world's not going to walk away from us. That's simple We can't retreat to a continental cocoon and think we can watch the world unfold on CNN and think we're safe So we have to be engaged. That's a word. We like to invoke. We have to be engaged Amos you came up with a nice quote for me today I Think it's a ubiquit and Tango we like we like Latin phrases in Maine Derigo I lead is the estate model. This one is I touch everywhere And we had that philosophy as well And we want to be forward deployed booty will tell you we had three mantras at the Pentagon shape respond prepare Shaping was critical. We've tried to be forward deployed in as many places as we could in Order to try and shape events in ways that would be Advantages to the United States having a presence is really important and when you pull that presence away Some bad things can happen on a domestic level think about it because one of the recommendations going to be to consolidate bases That's one thing we can do. We got 10 15 percent overhead out there that we still can consolidate more bases There's an efficiency aspect of that. There's a money-saving aspect of that But there are political consequences that go with that I happened to have represented the state of Maine and I saw a Dow Air Force base leave Bangor And we had roaring Air Force base up in northern Maine What happens when you have the uniform military that? Departs from your community and they are very valuable members of that community They attend the Lions clubs the Rotarian clubs, etc. They are part of the community and when you remove them Guess what happens? The public doesn't see them the public thinks of other issues. They no longer think about defense How many times have you heard any debate take place in Iowa on the size of the defense budget? Not many because it's not an issue for them. And so there are political consequences to Shrinking back pulling back consolidating you can do it for efficiency But you have to then think about what are the consequences and we have to think about this as well as we look for ways to Live in this age of austerity and look at the choices. We have to make Understand that there are consequences. I could go on and tell you for example Secretary Gates was in Singapore And June of this year just as he was in June the previous year interesting if you were to look at the coverage back in June 2010 and June 2011 June 2010 he was Publicly decrying what had taken place the Chinese had canceled his visit as a protest of the arm sales of Taiwan Very kind of acrimonious sentiment at that time between the Chinese and the United States He was there this year in June and we were making Very positive overtures of the Chinese who were also there at that conference But the whole notion was at that time That we want to be engaged in ASEAN in the Asia-Pacific region and Secretary Gates said to the skeptics in the audience He said I will predict to you that five years from now will be even more heavily engaged throughout the Asia-Pacific region To a number of skeptics in the audience saying hmm interesting Let's take a look at your budget and tell me how you're going to accomplish more engagement In the ASEAN countries now and I'll get to that in a moment But I think as we look at this and you say well, how do we do all of this and the QDR has always been important We try to look into the future and say what what are the threats out there and if we can see these threats How do we shape our forces? What is the force structure? What are the end strengths? What are we what is it? We need in terms of equipment to deal with these threats that are coming at us those that we can identify and those that We have to try and anticipate to make sure that there are not too many black swans Out there that are coming at us that we haven't foreseen We've got our roles and missions study underway that will be important as the Magnificent 12 up on the hill the special select committee has to decide how they're going to allocate these reductions if we look at the Middle East again The world has changed rather dramatically We had one individual set himself on fire and lit a fire that had spread throughout much of the Middle East The Middle East is going to be different from now on. We're not going to have as friendly Closer relationship. I suspect with Egypt as we had in the past The same is true perhaps for some of the other countries in the region. The world has changing over there rather Dramatically, what does that mean for us? Was it mean in terms of the stability of the region if we look at Iraq, okay, we can say there's no Saddam But as yet, there's no democracy that is truly stable and secure So we still got instability in Iraq Afghanistan al-Qaeda is on the run, but they're still out there and they're out there And on the run as long as we're there We have some 80,000 troops that are committed to Afghanistan for at least according to the president's timetable 2014 So yeah, things are okay as long. We're there as they were there, but that may change Pakistan is a democracy that is fragile increasingly under assault from within and then there is Iran which has on his way to a Nuclear capability and what does that mean in terms of stability in the region? So that's a region that we have to focus on say well What are what will be our access to the region both from a military point of view? Will we still continue to have major exercises each well every other year? In the with Egypt and others Will we have access that we've had in the path political access as well? So we have to take into account that the world has changed in the Middle East One of the biggest changes of course is China and China has emerged I can tell you I started going to China back in 1978 and at the time I went there they had one hotel and they had no cars So you're looking at a dramatic Probably the most dramatic Transformation of a society and the shortest period of time in the history of mankind And at that time I met with Deng Xiaoping and he talked about his four modernization programs And he put military last said we'll get to that blast. Well last is now here And so they are feeling much more confident about their role in the world Many feel that the 21st century will be theirs and that the they are on the ascent and the United States on the decline and so that's an an issue which we can contest in terms of the reality of it, but it's something in terms of growing sense of national pride nationalism and And a growing military capability to match their economic power So it's going to present some challenges as we now know that the Chinese have indicated the South China Sea is theirs It's their exclusive jurisdiction and we are not to intervene in any way So now you have the great irony and Vietnam has called upon the United States to help out Resolve the issue for the Chinese and the Chinese have said thanks very much but stay out of it None of your business So we have an issue in which China is likely to develop They have Demonstrated stealth technology you call then Secretary Gates made his visit. It was purely coincidental I'm sure That they they hauled out their their latest or their only version of a stealth Fighter But it's coming. It's coming. They'll have stealth technology They have acquired a an aircraft carrier not capable as ours to be sure But it is symbolically very important for the region to say that they're going to develop a power projection capability and just that one aircraft carrier alone tells the the rest of the the world in that region that They're going to be a neck and a military power as well as an economic power and I'll come back to ASEAN as I mentioned I Was there with the Secretary Gates and conducting a series of meetings I along with Hank Greenberg are co-chairing a study that has been commissioned by CSIS As you talk about the relationship between the United States and the ASEAN countries and to put it shorthand All of the ASEAN countries are doing an enormous amount of business tremendous trade with China and that is likely to increase I think it's fair to say there's also enormous apprehension on the part of all of the ASEAN countries that China is going to dominate The region and they would like the United States to basically be a security blanket Basically say that you know, we need you we need you to be engaged. We want you to be engaged not by establishing bases Perhaps by paying more import visits, but having a stronger Relationship across the board not simply military but diplomatic economic culturally. They want us to engage Not to the point that we annoy or agitate the Chinese But that's a strict and pretty tight balance that we've got to maintain And it's a hard argument to make the Capitol Hill saying we're going to commit resources to a region But we can't really be too aggressive because that will be contrary to their interests in ultimately two hours So a lot of diplomacy is going to go into this effort because the Chinese are rightfully going to say we're an economic power We're entitled to have a military to protect it And we're going to do so And so we have to take that dynamic into account. I pass over Russia Russia we're likely to see the remit. We know we're going to see the reemergence of the president Putin We've tried to recalibrate and restart this relationship with with Russia through the Obama administration and Perhaps it will improve But I think that they are unlikely to be a close ally or friend of the United States in the Immediate future, but there are issues that we can work with the Russians on we'll have to work with the Russians on And I think that President Putin is going to continue to insist that he is going to be in Russia is going to be a player on the Geo strategic landscape so What is the world looking like them Middle East a lot of change ASEAN the whole Pacific Area China is likely to be a major player And so we have to be concerned about what Joe Nye wrote about remember Joe Nye wrote the book the paradox of American power Namely that when one country displays Or exercise power To a point where even your friends or your allies will align themselves in ways that will restrict the exercise of that power The Chinese have to face that as well They are becoming more powerful, but they've got to be careful. They don't show that power Too much or too eagerly now. I'll give you an example of that You recall when the Japanese had arrested the captain of a fishing trawler that had ram one of their boats I happen to be over in Tokyo at during this time and the Chinese demanded his release and the Japanese said no and The Chinese said we're asking you again They said no and then finally there was somehow a shortage of rare earth minerals being shipped to Japan And the Japanese said here's your man Now that was a very embarrassing moment embarrassing for the Japanese and On the other hand it certainly sent the signal to the Japanese and to others who were watching That perhaps this exercise of raw power by the Chinese Concentrated the minds of others saying maybe we shouldn't be so dependent upon China for rare earth minerals So now you have Australia doing their own Mining for rare earth minerals you have other studies underway So there's also this paradox of power the Chinese have to be careful That they don't display a power to the point where it causes Many others to align themselves in ways to constrain that exercise of power I mentioned all of this simply I passed over cyber warfare Which may be the biggest threat of all that we have to confront and that reminded me of Woody Allen's speech to the graduating class where he said America is at a Crossroads critical time in our history one path we face other despair and frustration And on the other hand on the other paths that we face total extinction May you choose widely wisely graduates him? And sometimes we feel that way Except that we have to remind ourselves that we still are a great power There is if you I like to do what more Saul used to do rip and read from the other papers Pick up the article that David Ignatius had on today's in today's Washington Post dealing with Mike mullin Pointing out that we have the finest the most combat hardened Military the most efficient military All volunteer force in the world and we do We still have a 700 billion dollar budget It's going to decline somewhat. We have had 13 Paul. I correct me 13 years successive years of of real increase in growth in the military budget and Yes, we're going to and we still have the enormous support of the American people So we're going through some harder times right now But the real issue is is one of what Rudy talked about is it's political It's a question of confidence It's a question of leadership and I think the danger is for us It's that we will do what we have done in the past. We will cut research development training Education We'll cut modernization We'll fail to invest in the future And we will continue to spend more on personnel to the point where we start to hollow out the force and That's one of the greatest dangers that we face it. We can have a smaller force We're going to have to have a smaller force. We can't do more with less We can't do as much with less and the question is can we do less with less in the answer is we'll have to So we can construct a force that is still very powerful very efficient very expeditionary and not hollow Secretary Panetta has said he will not He will not rain over a hollow military But these are the forces that work in terms of what will take place Up on Capitol Hill unless we act with some wisdom here. There are tough choices, but they can be wise ones I mentioned Brack That's a likely Area of consolidation, which will have saved considerable money It's been talked about in terms of retirement benefits to reform the system to make it a bit more equitable in terms of commitment and and job description healthcare When I was at the Pentagon the healthcare bill was 19 billion It's scheduled in three years to be 60 billion on an annual basis So the healthcare is going to have to change somewhat in terms of co-pays which have not been increased since 1995 And to privatize that which is not core to the operations So those are things they're they're third rails As we like to talk about third rails, but as compared to what are you going to start again? Cut the budget in terms of our DT&E Are you going to start hollowing out the force? You're going to stretch out programs to the point you get fewer at higher cost So there are ways to go about Cutting the defense budget and we will have to I know there are some in in the town So you can't have a constrained defense budget. Well, we've got a 14 trillion dollar deficit debt rather and one point four trillion on an annual basis in terms of deficit and a Force structure on the circumstance. It's just not sustainable Let me just conclude with observation made by a 13th century Turkish poet His name was Yusuf and he said to keep the realm requires many men on horse and foot To keep many men Requires the people to have money For the people to have money it requires them to be rich And for the people to be rich the laws must be just If any one of those four pillars is undone Then all are undone and that's what we have to continue to think about We have to have a strong military in order to do that We need money in order to have money We must generate prosperity in order to generate prosperity the people must feel that they are being treated justly Fairly and if there is any gap between that sense that they are bearing burdens Which are inequitable unfair and fundamentally unsound Then that support for each of those pillows will come undone I'll conclude on that happy note Because I think it's important that as the members of Capitol Hill look at the budget make decisions don't do it in a Easy and an easy fashion to say this is cut everybody take a percentage That's not the way to deal with our national security We can do it systematically analytically taking into account roles and missions What are the threats one of the like the most likely threats keeping in mind long-term threats are out there? China Russia others may become peer competitors and either hostile or friendly But competitors at the very least How do we hedge against that? How do we do so in a way that still maintains a stable relationship with either country or others who may emerge? As we deal with the short-term Types of threats that Secretary Gates and now Secretary Pena are going to have to confront. Let me stop here I was told that you had excuse me had some questions. I'll try to give you some answers. Thanks very much Time for a few questions I Refuse to answer that question on the grounds that Thank You mr. Secretary. It's very good to see you Let's go to those those third rails you presented them sort of like Woody Allen's dilemmas You know we can do something about retirement or hollow out the force and then choose wisely is the you know Now you've been away from electoral politics longer than I've been away from journalism. That's hard to remember But you played at a very high level very effectively for a long time And I'd like people don't think of politicians as being expert in anything, but still I agree But they are it's a real art and you were a master of I know and it's still Is there some way? Let's just take retirement and health care Is there some way that either of those you can construct a scenario that either of those could be? Approached in a constructive and practical way where you don't just you know roll the dice and hope that people choose wisely Yeah, well it really comes down to easy-word leadership if you have leaders who are willing to go out and to talk To the troops and I'm talking about at all levels not just dictating over to get the Joint Chiefs on board Let's go we can talk to the Budget Committee up on Capitol Hill and we got OMB signing off that won't do it because the The leaders in the military say well wait a minute That's a real disincentive if we don't explain what we're doing if we don't have buy-in By the people most directly affected Some will choose to leave but morale can turn very quickly So making sure that you sustain morale is going to be critical to making sure you don't have that hollow force And so I think it really depends upon leadership Admiral Mullen on the don't ask don't tell he was very forthright pointed out in the Ignatius piece today Didn't flinch went straight ahead on it But he said let's take the year to go out and and deal with our troops in the field Give us a year to see if we can make this work And I think if you go out and you explain to our military look these are the choices that we face Would you rather pay a little more in terms of your premium if it means? sustaining our health care system for our military if it means it's going to Put you and your family in a position. Yeah, it'll cost you a little bit more But just look at what if you didn't have this look what's going on in the private sector So you can do that if you really engage them if you really go down and work from the top level right to the To the sergeants who are out in the field with them that can be done and I'm convinced that can be done If you stay away from it much as you can when you're dealing with Social Security, you can't raise Social Security I think you can I Think you can even you start talking about Means testing these programs. I think we're getting to that point where we say here are choices Here's the dilemma if we don't take this action These are the consequences and if you start talking to the American people and doing it on an educational basis I think you'll find them Willing if you just want to throw red meat you can do that May I I meant mention this the other day? I said when I when I went back to Maine to To meet with my constituents for the safe farmers up in northern Maine some of my staff members I had younger ones at that time who were with me. They said, why are you reciting T. S. Elliott? And I said look I'm gonna give the same speech in northern Maine to my potato farmers I'm gonna give to CSI down here in Washington And what I found was people want you to lift them up lift their spirits don't underestimate them Don't talk down to them. Don't think that all you have to do is throw red meat to them on any given issue if you Want to reason with them saying here like here's my problem Can you help me out? Here's a solution here. What do you think so if you engage them at that level? I found it very successful for me over a 24-year period of time and I Was with a group yesterday talking about how do you get civility back into our political system in? All of the years I was in politics. I never once faced a negative campaign Never once at an issue of in civility now that was then this is now life has changed 24 and 7 on cable shows etc But I think we do a disservice to ourselves when we don't go to people and explain The hard choices they had to make and ask them to participate to say you know what made this country great That we were willing to share The pain as well as the opportunity. There's great quotes from Walter Lippman. I used to use and some of my commencement speeches and Lippman went back to his 30th reunion class of 1910 at Harvard and he went to his former college He said you know something every time we had a tough decision to make we took the easy way out He said following world war one. What did we do? We cut our defense We started passing the the bubbly around enjoying life and then what happened. We knew there was a mechanized evil Over there in Europe and we ignored it and then we had to pay a price He said this is the standard to which the wise must now repair He took the good things for granted and now you must earn them again for every right that you cherish You have a duty you must perform for every good that you wish to achieve you have an obligation you must perform And for every hope that you have you must sacrifice your comfort and your ease because there's nothing for nothing any longer Boy those were tough words they were true then they're true now and I think if you talk to people at that level you'll get a response I'm Harlan Oman. Good to see you again. Thanks for sharing your wisdom It seems me that probably the largest problem collectively we face on the globe Whether in Afghanistan or Brussels or Washington is bad or an absence of good governance Especially here and you focused on that I wonder if you could share some more of your wisdom as to how we might deal with us in the United States Because it seems to me that our biggest problem is failing governance and I'm not sure one sees the leadership emerging at this stage That may be necessary boy Tough toughest question of all. I don't bore you with a senatorial answer to this But you know, it's discouraging to me when I see what is taking place up on Capitol Hill When a president of the United States and we can disagree with his policies and have philosophical Differences, but when the president of the United States offers you a deal 80% of what you want Usually you take that fight later for the other 20% But to walk away from something that say no under no circumstances we get a hundred percent or nothing at all What I fear is taking place is we're having a parliament without a parliamentary system And so you've got you know You got those on the right over here and those on the left over here And there's nobody in the middle because those in the middle get punished Bob Bennett one of the most conservative senators from Utah gets booted out of the party because he did what? He talked about supporting TARP or he talked about working across the aisle on immigration issues out of the party You start looking what has taken place that the punitive measures taken about anybody who wants to work across the aisle It's pretty pretty dramatic and pretty quite a Difference of the way life used to be I mean every every everybody looks back You know we're all looking back over our shoulder all the good old days But when I first went to the Senate think about you had people like scoop Jackson You had musky had a river coffee had Jack Javits had Howard Baker You had Ted Kennedy you had people who had real strong opinions And they would fight like hell during the course of the the day and they'd always end up finding a way to make it work And right now I don't see a sentiment for wanting to make it work We want to win the next election, and we're going to do practically nothing between now and next year Because Republicans are going to do everything they can to prevent President Obama from having any successes. Well, what does that mean for all of us in terms of we have to wait? 13 months 14 months before we said well, okay now we've got Obama's either anneries out. We've got new members of Congress now We have our supermajority and then what so then you'd have a What 40 member minority in the Senate on the Democratic side 40 members can still do a lot of Blunting stultifying right so what are we talking about in this kind? Why is it we are not rewarding people for being willing to take principal position if you don't use the word? Compromise you remember when Congressman Boehner? He was doing a I think a 60-minute interview way in the beginning and he said I will never Compromise my principles Always seek ways to develop a consensus Common ground what happened if they poll tested the word compromise use the word compromise that means you're weak That means you're on principle so therefore you can't use that word. All right. We'll give me another formulation of that word and so I think what we've got to do is we've got to raise the level of of criticism against those individuals who walk away from something that is both reasonable and fair and We'll deal with the issue. We should be willing. I think the president made a mistake frankly on bold Simpson They came back after a commission, right? Commission makes recommendations. I didn't agree with everything there, but it was an approach That could have been fleshed out and the president gave it short shrug Couldn't get a majority members to sign on it couldn't get the the 14 so it just went to the side So where are we now? We've got 12 members who've been empowered to make these decisions. You've got six and six Who's gonna cross over? Which which one going to brave enough to go with the other side to break the tie? At this point and maybe they'll be able to come up with something because the Republicans said no taxes no revenues under any Circumstance no matter how fair they might be warm buffett aside No taxes and the Democrats ain't don't touch social security. Don't touch Medicare They're both impossible positions if you're trying to find a way to really have a systematic solution here and I think Also, we have to be aware that other people are watching us Not just us American people watching us. They're watching us overseas everything that we do China Russia ASEAN countries all of them saying what is the United States doing? Do they take us seriously anymore if we don't deal seriously with the issues? And so we've got big problems And I think what we have to do is to commend those people who are willing at their own risk Political risk to reach across and say, you know something I don't like this, but I think it's necessary I don't want to do this. I understand the impact, but I think it's necessary and I think if we do that I still believe that vast center out there that is growing increasingly angry I was at this session yesterday in which the Pew polls were 82 percent of those polls were angry and they're all in the middle Now what does that mean? Means that you're going to see possibly and Tom Friedman has written about this, but this guy named Peter Ackerman Peter Ackerman has been trying to find a way to circumvent the convention system He's going to do it through the internet and he's going to go out He's going to propose that you have a bipartisan ticket If you have a Republican presidential nominee must be a VP must be a Democrat and vice versa sounds implausible in practical He's going out on the internet to get a ticket on the ballot in every state So that you'll have the Republicans the Democrats and you'll have the other Out there and it could be any way it could be it could be any of the candidates who are not going to make the final cut And either party could end up on a ticket now that may not work out this time But that is out there and people trying to find ways to resolve this dilemma I've always felt personally that if a Democrat has a good idea. I want to I want to be with him if Republicans have I want to be with them And I think we have to have more of that rather than taking ideological positions that are so absolute You plant them in cement and say anybody who differs and seeks compromise Is part of the mushy middle unprincipled when in fact you can maintain your principle of lower taxes lower regulation But recognize that under the some circumstances. Yeah Higher income people can pay a little more Under we can we can make changes in terms of retirement age for those who are white-collar as opposed to those who in the coal industry Etc. We can do those things if we have the political will and what is missing right now Is the political will to solve issues rather than simply structure and posture for the next campaign? So the crisis of confidence Use that phrase today. There was a book written about the recovery of confidence by John Gardner. Remember that book the little thin book Had said something I have never forgotten it. He said the problem today He said that our institutions have been caught in a savage crossfire between Unloving critics and uncritical lovers And what he meant by that on one end of the extreme you had the unloving critics People who only saw negativity and everything that we were doing and would simply criticize with nothing Constructive to support the planet at the other end you had these uncritical lovers People who always embrace the status quo and would do everything they can to blunt and nullify any change And what he was recommending is you've got to have critical lovers You got to have people who love our country and our system and and embrace it and also know That you've got to have change if it's going to be viable and alive If you have a still pond you've got death and decay you have a Moving stream you've got life and regeneration and that's what we have to do to put back into our system Anyway, I'm starting to sound like a senator and I don't want to end on that We'll get started