 Good afternoon. I'm Maya McGuinness. I run the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget And I'd like to welcome all of you for joining us for the launch of the campaign to fix the debt So as you can see I'm joined today by many leaders from both parties from the business sector former members of Congress Experts who are all working in a variety of ways to help us move this country towards a serious resolution for the fiscal challenges that face us And it's really exciting because these groups are coming together to work with the members of Congress and Importantly outside of Washington to build a whole campaign to really put this country back on a sustainable sustainable fiscal path So the campaign to fix the debt is going to bring together CEOs business leaders former members of Congress budget experts economists But most importantly voters across the country to really lend their support and create a safe environment for People here in Washington to put together a package that will ultimately put in place a Plan to fix the debt to help strengthen the economy And to do so in a way that really will bring the country back to the strong position It was before whereas we know that if we fail to act the consequences will be immensely serious I just want to talk very briefly about what this campaign is going to do We will continue to work with members of Congress to build support in a bipartisan way for a debt deal We there will be a launch of a very aggressive social media campaign to bring together people all across the country who really want to Focus on this issue in a way that they can become active and have their voices heard It's building networks across the country of supporters to help get this done and most importantly It's partnering with all sorts of different groups both in Washington, but around the country there A lot of our partners are here today There's one group youth group that started that is called the can kicks back And I just think that there's so much energy that's popping up all around the country of people who want to get involved in this So we're so lucky today to be joined by the leaders of this campaign I'm going to turn it over to the co-chairs of the campaign to fix the debt governor Ed Rundell and Senator Judd Greg who are working with Erskine bowls Al Simpson and all the leaders of this campaign They will be talking about why this issue is so important and what it is that we can do to really help the country come Together and fix the debt the last point. I just want to leave everyone with is This is not going to be easy we know that that putting together this is definitely going to be difficult But the narrative so recently has been all about how the economy is broken the budget is broken and Washington is broken And there are times that many of us think that may well be true But what I have to tell you is there are so many people across the country and members of Congress who want to come Together and work on this issue and one of the things about the country is that Regularly it is our greatest challenges that inspire our greatest moments And so the people here and all the people we're working with really believe that as difficult as this will be This is a campaign that we cannot afford to lose and that's why they're here joining us today Taking time out of their busy schedules to get involved. So thank you so much and I'll turn it over to you governor Rundell Thanks Maya. Good afternoon everyone. We've just come from the first meeting of the fixed the debt campaign steering committee and it was a good meeting and we Set out a few basic principles our core principles are there has to be a significant debt reduction plan But it has to include number one cuts from all parts of the budget Number two it has to be a bipartisan plan number three It has to involve multi trillion dollars of debt reduction in the next ten years and number four It must be done so in a way that preserves economic growth and protects the truly needy in this country As Maya said, this is a unique group It's a Unprecedented bipartisan coalition of former lawmakers business and civic leaders and budget experts And our goal is first and foremost to galvanize public support to produce a Significant comprehensive debt reduction plan that can be passed by the Congress and signed by the president No later than July 4th of 2013 We think ideally it should be plan passed into law sooner the consequences of an action or a significant Secondly we believe that it's necessary for us to create an environment where it becomes not only good policy To vote yes on a debt reduction plan but good politics as well and we believe we can do this by Going after public opinion and generating public opinion and support in America's hometowns So that people in America's hometowns can deliver that message to people inside the Beltway That we want to act and we want to act now now Why did we think we can succeed where other? Very well intentioned plans have failed have missed the mark have not gotten to fruition Well for a number of reasons number one because this is an unprecedented coalition number two because we were all dedicated to getting this done Number three because the consequences of inaction We believe have become clear and much clearer to the American people each time there is a Budget fiasco like raising the debt limit the consequences of doing nothing are becoming abundantly clear And also because the era of debt denial is clearly over the conversation now is not Should we fix the debt the conversation is how we fix the debt and the American people as is often the case are Way ahead of the policymakers They understand that we need this to get done Herskin bulls will tell you about his travels across the country and the tremendous amount of public interest and support For this concept. So can we do it? Yes, we can it involves just finding the political will to do it The basic framework Everyone knows in their hearts and in their minds what has to be done. It's finding the political will to get it done We believe that's our job to infuse washing in with the political will to make sure once and for all We make significant reductions in our debt and remain a great nation and with that. It's my honor to introduce Senator Greg who is In all of his public career been someone who's reached across the line and found the ability to find real solutions to real problems Judd Thank you governor and thank you for outlining rather effectively very effectively what our purposes are here It's great to be joined by so many extraordinary Individuals through across the community of America. These are all doers up here And they're all here to do something about our debt and get it under control Adam Smith over 200 years ago who defined markets got it pretty well. He said Great nations aren't impoverished by their people. They're impoverished by their governments acting badly And we unfortunately have a government that's acted rather badly in the area of its debt And what we're here to do is to try to help it act well To give it ideas and resources, which it can be used by the decision-makers. We're not the decision-makers We understand that but which can be used by the decision-makers To move us forward in addressing this issue of our fiscal crisis and our fiscal problems If we don't do this if we don't get the fiscal situation under control We all know that we're going to pass on to our kids a nation, which is less prosperous Where they have less opportunities and where the standard of living in this country drops rather dramatically And we don't have to look much further than across the pond so to say to see what's happening when you don't address the issue And address it effectively And when you look at the put the American template of fiscal situation over the European situation the European Union We're actually in more serious shape in a number of areas than they are our deficits are higher Our accumulation of debt is occurring faster We have the resources of our extraordinary nation behind us, which gives us a little more running room But we better take action on that running room And what we've what we're going to try to do here is support those folks in the Congress who are willing to do that by giving Them ideas and initiatives and one of the really strongest ideas in the marketplace was developed by Erskine Bowls now and Simpson the Simpson-Bowls proposal it is a vehicle that already has credibility and Updated to today taking into consideration what the gang of six has done taking into consideration what the president and the Speaker of the House did Taking into consideration the super committee bringing those ideas into the Simpson-Bowls process and producing a vehicle Which will give people on Capitol Hill some resources to use is I think a Very constructive effort and so it's great to join with all these extraordinary people in undertaking this Time is running short. We do have a major decision point coming up with the fiscal cliff occurring and probably the mother of all lame ducks in December and Therefore we want to make sure that people have what they need in order to make the good decisions at that time Well, it's a real I'm Bob Zelek just left the presidency of the World Bank It's a real pleasure to be here with Governor Rindell And Senator Greg and to build on the work that Senator Simpson and Erskine Bowls did About a month or two ago I had a visit from the foreign minister of Australia a very good friend of the United States named Bob Carr and What he said has stuck with me The United States car said is one budget deal away from restoring its global preeminence But he cautioned there are countries in the Asia Pacific that are saying this time the United States is an up to it And you better listen to what we have to say Judd mentioned Adam Smith 200 years ago Alexander Hamilton the first secretary of the Treasury his job number one was to restore America's credit and he and the other founding fathers by doing so secured a country Created a base so they could finance the Louisiana purchase and they made the strongest country in the world But our generations now risk Squandering a legacy of over 200 years The world economy is stumbling The European situation is a caution and warning about what can creep up on you pretty fast if you don't act so the task of trying to get Control of a budget and a debt that is out of control is not only an issue for future generations and maintaining the legacy But it's a question of whether the United States will continue to lead in the world. I Don't believe that a slow growth economy can lead So the issue that we're facing is one where we hope this group Building on the work that has been done before can provide a resource Perhaps can help organize some support for the decisions that ultimately the Congress and the president have to make. Thank you First Maya, thank you for bringing us together. I'm proud to be part of this group part of the steering committee I'm delighted to be working with the people I've worked with in the past and I have immense respect for Just a few points one is we have a fragile economy as Bob said Not just in the United States, but particularly around the world number two Neither party in my view even after the election is going to be able to impose its view on the country or other parties We've got to have cooperation Number three. This is not physics. This is not calculus. This is arithmetic and Right now in my view. I speak only for myself on this point Neither party has a governing strategy Both parties have a very vigorous political strategy on fiscal matters, but not a governing strategy just to underscore one other point the governor made and Judd made and that is that the there are people Maya made this point on Capitol Hill who already are working together We've got a lot of smart folks on Capitol Hill. We got people who understand this problem But the ones who are trying to work together don't get support from their leadership They don't get support in most cases from the White House and they don't get support from their parties So what's happening? I think we've got two wings out there flapping in the American political system And the fuselage is missing the middle of America is going to have to rally and They're going to have to support people who are willing to work together to me The rallying point is right here. Erskine and Allen did a tremendous job their commission I happened to be driving back from South Georgia when the Commission reported Erskine And I had satellite radio on and radio on and I heard every commissioner speak that day And I must say I was impressed one final point We've got a cliff that we're going to be dropping off of in January unless something happens again just speaking for myself Why don't we substitute Simpson bowls for the cliff in early December so that at least if nothing is done This becomes the default position in June or in April or whenever the deadline is Thank You Maya for your leadership. It's great to be with you Thank You Maya Pete Peterson is my name, you know, it's been about 30 years When I started boring people About the long-term unsustainable debt of this country and today is not going to be an exception. I can assure you There have been a few moments over the last 30 years when progress was made like in the 90s And I'd like to make the case. Well, I think there's quite a good opportunity at this time There is a rapidly growing awareness of the problem in several sectors For example, former public officials who rarely agree about anything We surveyed a large number of former public officials from eight previous Administration and we asked them about the debt situation in the result that I have never seen before in the survey 100% of those former bipartisan officials Said that in and said they strongly agreed that the fiscal situation was unsustainable What about the think tanks that also rarely agree? our foundation went to six of them last year and Asked a what did they think about the sustainability of the situation and be what was their plan all Six agreed even though they covered the whole ideological spectrum that indeed it was unsustainable and came up with their plans Third the business sector Some of you may recall Tom Friedman said of us in the business sector. These guys are MIAs. They're missing in action Today Maya has put together an outstanding group of CEOs were joined on the platform by David Cody the vice chairman of the business roundtable and I think major progress is now being made among me business sector Finally, let's talk about the public level level Recently we had a survey firm survey one thousand Citizens of this country about this situation. I saw much in that survey to encourage me about the possibilities They seem to much more fully understand the problem than they used to understand and I'll give you just a few I hope not too boring statistics 83 93 percent of Democrats and nearly 80 percent of Republicans told us they believe that these long-term debt problems must be solved and Must include both tax increases and spending cuts so while Washington is mired in an Ideological and almost theological argument about no revenues and no entitlement cuts and so forth the public of saying I Want to compromise we want you to compromise and make a deal my son had Reminded me that it was Nike that said just do it and I think we're at the level where we just want to do it. Thank you I'm Dave Cody the CEO of Honeywell and As a member of Simpson bowls I was shocked at the size of the problem and the Inescapability of the problem as the baby boomer generation retired and one of the things that really struck me we were talking about this earlier was that in ten years We could find ourselves in a position Where our annual interest bill is a trillion dollars a year and we were talking earlier about so how do you? Represent what a trillion dollars is because after a million and a billion it just seems like the next number But if you had spent a million dollars a day since Jesus Christ was born 2011 years ago You still would not have spent a trillion dollars and that's going to be our annual interest bill if we don't do something the uncertainty of the resolution of this problem Is causing people like me to be extra careful when it comes to making hiring decisions and investment decisions And if we don't do something we could very well find ourselves in a position where? 2% GDP growth and 8% unemployment is the case for the next five years We don't want to do that. We don't want to hurt a fragile recovery that I agree But at the same time it's important that we address on in the long term both a simplified tax system that collects more and a simplified entitlement system specifically Medicare and Medicaid that spends less if we don't do that We will never resolve this issue and like a lot of issues out there both Republicans and Democrats are right There's a rightness to both of their positions and when we need them doing is working together to address this as an American problem and we can't have people continuing to revel in discordant pluralism or just indulging in the joy of simultaneous Asphyxiation when we've got a problem of this magnitude that we need to address Now to build on Bob Zellick's point because I thought it was a good one about how the rest of the world views us as The CEO of Honeywell have traveled to about a hundred different countries during my ten-year tenure So you get to see a lot of people changing a lot of countries changing and you see everybody working harder to compete every day The competitiveness of the world is improving every day We're not keeping step and this is one of the biggest things we can do to improve the competitiveness of the country and get us back On the path that we I think we rightfully belong and that is that we have to solve the debt first There's a lot of people in the world and some countries even to think that we no longer have the political will to act That as a once great country We've begun a path to decline because we can no longer do the tough things in life Make the big decisions that we need to I don't believe that I know this group doesn't believe that I can also represent that Most us CEOs don't believe that but we have to exercise that that political will to actually act and make those tough decisions Thanks I'm Alice Rivlin. I'm at the Brookings Institution and I may have served on more debt commissions than any Anybody in Washington we're calling this effort fix the debt but I think what we really mean is fix the economy and Restore a vital high-growth US economy that is capable of leading the world Fixing the debt and growing the economy are Not antithetical. They are necessary to each other We can't grow the economy Without fixing the debt because at the moment we're in an unsustainable situation And we can't fix the debt without growing the economy So what I was proud to serve with the Erskine and now on Simpson and Dave Cody On Simpson bowls. I also served with my friend Pete Domenici on a different task force that we called Domenici Rivlin and If what I learned from this double experience is As somebody said earlier, it's the arithmetic that drives the problem If you have a bipartisan reasonable sensible group Looking at what do we do they come to the same conclusion We have to reduce the rate of growth of the entitlement programs especially the healthcare ones and we have to reform our tax system so that it raises more revenue in a better way Those are the key so it isn't very complicated. It is doable and This group is set out to convince the American public and our legislators That we're on a track that can't lead to any good But we have the potential to get off it To grow the economy and to fix this problem. Thank you Hi, I'm Steve Ratner, and I I think I guess I'm the Wall Street representative here having spent Well, I hope that's okay still having spent Having spent most of the last 30 years on on Wall Street Let me let's say a couple things from that point of view There's been I think at least two I counted maybe more references to arithmetic Everybody on Wall Street can do arithmetic and some can do calculus and physics and all that stuff And Wall Street is a very diverse place. We have people from every end of the spectrum and many people in the middle I cannot think I've been trying to think but I have not been successful of a single person that I know or work with on Wall Street Who does not believe this is a major? Threatening life-threatening problem for our economy if we don't deal with it now There are many many different views about what to do about it probably some different views about how urgent it is But everybody on Wall Street can do math and everybody on Wall Street understands How big a problem it is the second thing I want to say about the financial markets Is that you can like them or not like them and certainly the trend is in the latter direction at the moment But you can't you can't deny their importance They are the critical lubricant a critical lubricant of any well-functioning economy and we fortunately have historically had the best functioning capital markets in the world and we want to keep it that way particularly in terms of how they view our debt you've heard a couple of mentions made of places where The markets have gone awry One place where the markets almost won awry which a number of people in this room will remember Well was in 1993 when Bill Clinton arrived and was hoping to do some expansionary stuff and the bond market said Not so fast. We need to deal with deficits interest rates started to go up Bill Clinton was known to use four-letter words to describe bond traders and the markets and so forth But ultimately a deficit reduction package was put in place and really ushered in a pretty sustained period of low inflation And growth and indeed even lower budget deficits as as the 90s wore on Europe was mentioned and we certainly have seen the consequences in Europe of when you get off track now Some people say to me many people say to me well interest rates are so low in the US right now So markets clearly don't care about this. So why should we care about it? So a couple things about that first in the land of the blind the one I made as king We have all these problems But most of the world has worse problems and we are the flight to safety Incredible as that may seem if you actually study our numbers, but secondly markets are not Quite as fast acting and as responsive as you might expect them to be they Markets are not perfect And so you can it's a little bit like the parable of the boiling frog You can go along and feel like you're just fine and the next thing you know you're boiled Greece had interest rates that I think were very close to Germany's until just four or five years ago Markets sort of thought it was all part of Europe. They didn't quite understand it and now you see what's happened to Greece So I don't think we should take any comfort or any reassurance from the fact that we have Historically very low long-term Treasury rates that could change in an instant I think one of the great fears that many people who have been involved in this project have is that that could That could well happen The last thing I want to comment about is the is the fiscal cliff Among the many things the market hates is uncertainty. Maybe almost the most it hates is uncertainty We saw some of that during the debt ceiling debacle last summer which produced the second sharpest drop in consumer confidence in the history of recording consumer confidence second only to hurricane Katrina and And And not as bad and a bigger drop than occurred after the invasion of Kuwait the collapse of Lehman brothers 9 11 None of them produced a sharp a drop as that the stock market went down 8% It's only recently come back to where it is now So I think we have to be very mindful not just about the long-term picture But about how we operate in the short term I would like to leave this on a positive note and say that I think is the example of President Clinton in the early 90s as the example of What happened when Paul Volcker came into the Fed in the early 80s and and cleaned up and even far bigger mess and the sustained period of Growth that we had after that There is there is hope and there is a way to fix this problem But as I'm sure everybody up here agrees every day that we let it fester it simply gets more difficult and Harder to fix I'm Paul Stevens. I'm the executive chairman of World Fuel Services Corporation But first and foremost, I'm an entrepreneur and the company that I started with my partner my Casbar back in 1985 And has grown to be 70 offices in 26 countries and is 85 on the fortune 500 It never occurred to me in all the years of building a global company. We did all the right things, right? We were proof positive that American ingenuity could compete and be market leaders in the world But it never occurred to us that there would come a time in my career where the single greatest long-term threat To my ability to compete in the global marketplace was the fiscal solvency of the United States And that's quite a shocking thing to wake up to and I think there's a sense that life would just go on that We would be okay And as Dave alluded to his business people when you whether it's about deploying your cash Whether it's about training people creating jobs, whether it's about the issues related to long-term health care costs Whether it's the issues related to tax policy all these things are derivatives of a root cause and it all gets back to the debt and that crisis is Real and it is unsustainable and we're having you know We're headed towards as Erskine has said all over this country to a seven trillion dollar mess in December And that level uncertainty makes it very difficult to run a business So but to solve that problem requires political will has been said by many people here And we live in a highly polarized and oftentimes, you know highly hostile political environment And I think that we need to stop trivializing the debate I think we need to talk about this substantively, you know, we've got a not confused advocacy for governance I think we have to think about getting beyond and transcending the partisanship Partisanship and realizing this is an issue of citizenship. So I'm here not as Paul Stebbins as the you know executive chairman of a company I'm here as a citizen of this country And I think we all are citizens of this country and this campaign is about galvanizing broad support across all segments of the society To get citizens in all spectrums of this society to help create the political will to get this done and to take control of our economic destiny and you know William Jennings Brian said that you know destiny is not a matter of chance It's a matter of choice, right? It's not something that happens to you It's something that's achieved and I think that this is achievable And if there's anything I've learned from Erskine Bowles who's I don't know how many thousands of man hours around this country Is that there is a framework in place? There are people have been up here who put a lot of work into building a framework that allows rational Well-meaning people to get together and solve this problem, but it's not easy, you know We don't get a free pass business is part of the problem, too Everybody's part of this. We all own it. We all own you know, we've all put in the election The office the people in government who have actually contributed their problems so nobody gets a free pass We all own it, but you can't stand back and watch Right that would be reckless. We don't we owe this country better. We owe our citizens better We owe our children a lot better than that So to sit back and be passive is like being the accomplice to a crime you can't do that So I think that now more than ever there's an urgency that is unprecedented And I think that I'm proud to be part of this campaign I agree with the statement that I travel all over the world like Dave and I tell you people were stunned last year when we Fooled around with the deficit ceiling. I mean the debt ceiling that was something that shocked the world They thought boy if America the greatest free country in the world the greatest economic power in the world cannot get the political will to Do this then we've got a real problem. So I think we have an opportunity to be great I mean this was the country, you know of the people by the people for the people I think we need to take back control of our destiny I think we can do this and there's no greater statement we could send to the world than to get a debt deal And that's what this campaign is about. Thanks Good afternoon. I'm Al Simpson You know we've had William Jennings Bryan quoted We've had Adam Smith We had Alexander Hamilton, so I'm gonna quote my hero Al Simpson. I Talked to Al a few minutes ago. He just texted me and he said how is it there? I said it's so hot. You wouldn't believe it. He said God it's so cold out here I saw two lawyers walking down the street with their hands in their own pockets Now you know I really talked to him I Would be here, but he's had some surgery done on his legs and He gave me some notes just to speak from as he always does I Just want to make a few short points because I'm the tenth of ten people you've had a chance to listen to I am really proud Maya to be part of this bipartisan effort to To put our fiscal house in order But more importantly, I'm really delighted to have a chance to work For Judd and Ed. I've worked with them both many times in the past They are my kind of leaders. They know how to work. They know how to work hard They know how to get something done and that's what we've got to do in the days and weeks ahead And I think I would be a miss if I also didn't say I'm really proud to be up here on the stage With people who have been in the vanguard of this effort real pioneers people whose shoulders I certainly stand on people who supported this effort and actually saw we'd end up where we are today long before I Did people like Pete Peterson and Sam Nunn and Alice Rivlin and I wish to Dickens Pete Domenici was here because those kinds of people Have recognized this problem for a long long time I Do believe and you all have heard it me say it before that our nation does face the most predictable economic crisis in history It is just math Fortunately for all of us, it's also the most avoidable economic crisis in history The fiscal path we are on is simply not sustainable And these deficits of over a trillion dollars a year They are a cancer and a cancer is going to destroy this country from within if we don't get the politicians Here in town in both parties To wake up and decide now is the time to act We Have to have a comprehensive Long-term fiscal plan that reduces the deficit by at least four trillion dollars and four trillion is not a number We made up Four trillion is not the maximum amount. We need to reduce this deficit. It's not even the ideal amount It's a minimum amount you need to reduce this deficit to stabilize the debt and get it on a downward path as a percent of GDP Our commission of a commission that Alice and Dave and Al and I served on our commission Came forward and and Judd are actually this whole commission idea came out of an idea of it Judd and Kent Conrad had if they hadn't held the Administration's feet to the fire. I don't think we would have ever had this commission So thank you Judd and thanks to Kent Conrad for that But this commission this national commission on fiscal responsibility and reform did come forward of a plan That does exactly what I think this nation needs to do But Alan and I have always said that this plan is no more than a starting point There are lots of good ideas out there I have read the plan that Alice and Pete Domenici put together and it has some better Ideas then we put forward it is terrific You know I've looked at the work that was done by the gang of six and they're good ideas there that we can all use if you look At the work that was done by the super committee if you look at the work that was done by the president and the speaker if you Look at some of the work done by the the Biden commission You can see some really good ideas and we've got enough really good ideas out there What we need now is to act we need real action As everybody said who came before me we do face a fiscal cliff if we do nothing and we Barrel through this fiscal cliff at the end of the year You know, we're gonna have about seven trillion dollars hit this country right in the gut And that is crazy because the effect of that Will be somewhere between one and two and a half percent of GDP and that is enough To put our country back into a recession that we cannot have That's why Al and I have spent You know, I'd say 90% of our time during the last year traveling around this country We spent some time here in Washington Meeting with members of the House and Senate from both parties and we got some great ideas We have visited with the think tanks and gotten some really good ideas there think tanks on the right and on the left We have designed And hopefully it will be kicked off today This effort to put together a social media campaign where we hope That we can get as many as 10 million people To sign a petition to encourage Congress to act and act responsibly now and lastly we've been putting our plan in legislative language It's gone from that 65 page report that senator none held up To over 600 pages and while I think that's crazy. It's probably one of the many reasons I would have been a terrible senator It does we do hope it will help as a framework For the real decision-makers in the House and Senate to come together We had hoped from this effort we have made and the effort we have made putting together this CEO fiscal Leadership council which has over a hundred members of a fortune 500 now as part of it We had hoped That common sense would overrule politics and people in this town would be hard at work at this now But it looks like politics is going to override common sense and nothing is probably going to happen until after the election What the hope of this group is? Is that we can provide the decision-makers the kind of vehicle and the kind of support and the kind of Support from the country at large Where they can come together during the lame duck and put together a framework of a policy That will move this country forward. I think if they do Not only will the people of this country rejoice I have literally met in the last year with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people People from the right the left the far right to far left the center Democrats Republicans conservative liberals and If we got an hour with each one of them at the end of the time that Alan I spent with them We always got a standing ovation because for people get it They want real solutions to real problems They understand the problems are real the solutions are painful that there's no easy way out But I believe those same people will rejoice and I think Steve is right too that the markets Will rejoice if we come together on a common sense bipartisan balance plan and I think if we do that the future of this country is very very bright Maya Thank you for letting me be a part of this we're gonna take a couple quick questions from the audience and Then we are gonna have a time afterwards for people to stay and talk with all the budget experts as well So I'm gonna turn it over to Governor Rondell and Judd Greg to manage the questions Time's up Great job I don't think it's our job to tell the Congress and we're not trying to tell the Congress We're just going to be here as a resource for the Congress now. Were I in the Senate, which I'm not I Would suggest that they set up a procedure with very ascertainable standards, which would have cause them to either act or for things to occur if they do not act Before July 4th On these big issues of entitlement reform and tax reform Yes, I want to thank Maya for putting this August prudent group together and rational group I also want to thank her for launching this campaign I have a question really basically a question concerning two elephants in the room that I see one is The fact that there's no present existing stock of outstanding Entitlement so we approach when you talk about that that doesn't include this huge overhand And I want to mention that's a bold letter. So that I need we need to underscore anything about the entitlement as well as the second thing has to do with this The the the the combination of the wing knots that people were talking about this airplane no fuselage and the campaign contributions If you have a billion dollars with a campaign contributions twisting representatives and the wing knots twisting them as I see it I don't see the logic the political real-life logic for putting this together and reaching something rational as you're suggesting and If I'm missing something on the arithmetic the $1,000,000 Let me know if I'm missing something on the wing nuts I guess my question is are we doing anything to mitigate the major contributions to the wing knots and And voting for the wing knots on both sides. Thank you Anybody This is not an absolute direct answer to your very good question But several of us as part of this coalition Concord coalition Bob Bixby's here on the front row Warren Rudman who's very much part of the Concord coalition he and I co-chair that now that Bob carries out running for the Senate in Nebraska CSIS which historically is focused on security and And on foreign policy, but we believe that this is a security issue The those two groups and others including Pete Domenici very prominently and Alice are going to have a set of hearings in September We're gonna have four hearings one on fiscal policy One on entitlement policy one on taxes and growth and one on security Now what'll come of that? We don't know but we're going to get the best witnesses We can find and we're going to try to get the consciousness raised around the country And we're going to try to get the middle of America as assertive as those on the wings I think you should also note that we're not trying to engage in the presidential election at all What we want is when this election cycle is over We want to be available as a resource for whoever the next president is to be able to govern well and for the Congress to Govern well, and we're going to give them a lot of different ideas so they can accomplish that and hopefully the American people who Have an inherent common sense which quite often exceeds what's happens here in Washington Understand that need and will be supportive of that effort all the way in the back Yeah, that's you Well, I don't think it's that big a jump if you listen to what Pete Peterson said in the poll that was taken 93% and 80% agreed that we have to do both raise revenue and Reduce spending and reduce entitlements or slow the growth of entitlements. So I think the the stage is set We've just got to galvanize those people to speak up in politics if you're an elected office holder you hear from I Don't want to use the word wing nuts, but you hear from some people on the extremes At a higher percentage of their numbers than you do the people in the middle What our job has got to be is to get those people in the middle to speak up whether it's through social media Whether it's through traditional letters and emails into their congressman centers We basically need them to give the legislators here in Washington our permission slip. It's okay We'll stand by you we need we know this is important We know it has to be done go do it and we'll be there and I think that's eminently doable Erskine Bowles's experience tells you that the poll that Pete Peterson cited tells you that I Think this is doable. It's not gonna be easy But I think if you can get Americans to understand how important it is and people are growing their understanding literally every time there's another bump in the Road, I think we can do this. So that's our task German Bernanke's testimony to the Senate Finance Committee Senator Schumer basically asked him why aren't you acting to fix our economy because it was one of the most Unbelievable statements I've ever heard It just shows how the Senate is cannot do anything How do you address that in this process that type of attitude? I actually think the Senate's where the constructive action will be Energized at a fairly high level are you have functioning in the Senate right now at least the gang of sixes and sixes at all It's probably 30 to 40 people Erskine Bowles and I went up and talked to a group of senators. They were probably 40 people there Chuck Schumer was there People from both sides of the aisle were there. They were very engaged. They're very interested and they understand that some Very significant action has to occur So I I do think the Senate is quite fertile ground for getting something very substantive done And we're going to try to be of help to them. We're going to try to be a resource for I can tell you the way we fought through it It's not exactly a hundred percent of a wave that everybody up here would would would do it But you you have roughly the right numbers in 2020 I think the forecast were for Spending to be around 24 25 percent and revenue to be around 19 percent if we wanted to To get the deficit down to at least 1% of GDP that meant we had to get spending down to around 21 percent and we had to get Revenue up to around 20 percent. That's in fact what we were able to do in our plan I believe you can get spending down to 21 percent even with the changes in the demographics and even With health care growing at a you know a rate of let's say GDP plus one if we can slow it down to that kind of level Somebody asked earlier. How do you do that? You make really tough choices? There's this This Nobel Prize winning scientist his name was Ernst Rutherford and his Nobel Prize Project was running out of money and he turned to his team and said hey, we're running out of money Now we got to start thinking That's what America is we're running out of money, you know, we got to start thinking, you know We've got to make choices tough choices, you know, we've got to make the hard political choices I just ran the University of North Carolina for the last five years one of the things I really wanted to focus on was making sure that we did our part to improve K through 12 and You know, we produced most of the teachers So I wanted to try to figure out how could how could we produce quality teachers not just more teachers But better teachers more math and science teachers And so I turned to our team and said gosh surely there's some federal programs that we can look at to improve the quality of Teacher education there are there 82 Do we need two or three good ones? You bet don't need 82 we do 1.5 billion dollars of annual federal scientific Research at the University is all of that high-value added research It's not you know nor is it at the 3,000 other colleges and universities that do scientific research I want to invest in education. I want to invest in research I want to invest in infrastructure, but we've also got to look at how we're spending our money today and make sure we Spend it more wisely. That's why we can bring spending way down and that's why I believe as the economy improves And we go through the measures of broadening the base and simplifying the code and get rid of some of the spending in the tax code But we can also create additional revenue last question Well first off I think most Republicans and most Democrats and almost all independents Recognize the seriousness of the problem and recognize that you can't resolve this problem In a partisan way because the American people do not accept action On programs that they consider Critical to themselves and to the nation such as entitlement programs like Medicare Medicaid or their tax policy unless they think it's fair And by definition fairness requires bipartisanship so I think most people if they look at it honestly recognize there's got to be a bipartisan solution and I think Republicans look at it this way, or I hope they do anyway, and that's this if we get a solution like Simpson bulls which Recognizes that the majority of the effort on debt reduction has to come on the spending side and then Simpson bulls It was about 70 percent Then a revenue side can be accomplished through tax reform major tax reform along the lines of what president Reagan did with speaker Ross Chairman Ross and Koski chairman the ways the means committee which gives you a different tax law Which is much more oriented towards investment and and economic growth And so I think there's there's very fertile ground for Republicans to step into this debate and be extremely constructive And I think most of Republicans want to do that and again I'll return to this meeting at the Senate both sides of the aisle were there in large numbers Very interested very engaged in how to get this done and these are really Solid folks who really want to be constructive and and are just looking for different ways to do it You know members of the Senate will use almost any reason to kind of get out of a boring meeting and they had three votes during our session and They ran out to vote but boy they were all back in there. Nobody pulled out people are really interested They know we face this fiscal cliff and they know they've got to deal with it And we don't ignore the fact that this is going to be a formidable challenge Every aspect of tax reform has some strong special interests and lobbyists Backing it and that's why it's absolutely necessary to galvanize strong uniform Public opinion from virtually every area in this country and with that I think some of us will stick around if anybody wants to talk to us individually and thank you all for coming