All right. Okay. All right. It's a guy's turn. It's a gentleman's turn. This gentleman right here in front. Go ahead -- hold on one second, we've got a mic coming over here.
Q I'm Gary Meyer. I live in Hampton, New Hampshire, and I was a quality leader who worked with (inaudible). And I know you're well aware that there's a lot of non-valuated work both within health care, within education, and within a lot of businesses and government. You also talked eloquently about the need to have more jobs and to be more energy efficient. All these things together require that we get a health care act reform passed in the Senate, a better one than we have today, and that we also get a clean air act passed. Would you be willing to meet one on one with Senator Gregg to get these things passed in the Senate?
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, I wasn't -- I'm willing to meet with anybody, including Senator Gregg, who I offered a job to. (Laughter.) I don't know if you guys remember that. (Applause.) I like Senator Gregg. I think he is a -- he is a serious person. But you know that fiscal commission that I just talked about, that was Gregg's proposal. That was his proposal. It was Senator Judd Gregg and Senator Kent Conrad. And they had been advocating for this for years. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate -- Republican Leader had just a few months ago said this was the way to deal with this. So I said, great, let's do it. And, suddenly, they're gone -- not Judd, Judd is still supportive of it. So what we're going to try to do -- we're going to try to do it by executive order.
My point is the easiest thing to do in politics is to point fingers, to figure out who to blame for something, or to make people afraid of things. That's the easiest way to get attention. That's what reporters will report on. You call somebody a name, you say, look what a terrible thing they've done and they're going to do more terrible things to you if you don't watch out. And you'll get a lot of press attention. And, in some cases, you can win elections, particularly when unemployment is 10 percent.
What's hard is to figure out how to solve these problems. Our long-term deficit, if we can't control health care costs -- I don't care who's talking about eliminating waste from the government, we can't solve the problem. A lot of people just -- let me just give you one example. If you ask a lot of folks what accounts for the federal budget, they'll say foreign aid and pork projects, and if you just eliminated all the foreign aid and the pork projects, somehow we'd bring our deficit under control. Foreign aid accounts for about 1 percent of our federal budget -- 1 percent, not 25 percent, not 20 [percent] -- 1 percent. Earmarks -- all these pork projects -- a lot of them, by the way, people like, a lot of them are wastes of money, and we got to be able to distinguish between the two and make it more transparent so that they're not stuck into bills without anybody knowing about it -- (applause) -- but they only cost -- they amount to about 1 percent of the budget as well.
What really accounts for our federal budget is Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, defense, interest on the national debt, and then everything else, from national parks to the environmental -- the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency. And in order -- if you just wanted to cut the deficit to balance the budget, only on non-discretionary -- or on discretionary non-defense spending -- so if you wanted to exempt out all the entitlements, exempt defense, you'd have to cut all those other things by 60 percent -- 60 percent. Can you imagine?
So we've got to have an honest conversation about all the aspects of the budget, and that's what this commission was designed to do. That's why I think Judd Gregg was absolutely right. I support him on this. And we're going to set up an executive -- by executive order a commission to do this.
But I want good ideas. It is not in my interest to bloat government with wasteful programs, because every time I spend money on a program that doesn't work, that's money that I'm not spending on early childhood education that would make a difference in a child's life -- (applause) -- or on college scholarships to send kids to school. We've got to use our money more wisely. But that can only be done if both parties are responding to the interests of the American people and not their short-term politics.
All right, let's see, a woman's turn. That young lady up there. Yes, you -- yes. You sound surprised. (Laughter.) Oh, wait, wait, wait, I was calling on this young lady in the black blouse right here, I'm sorry. Sorry about that, but it's nice to see you, though. I may call on you in a second. (Laughter.) Go ahead.
Q My name is Ashley Sevins (phonetic) and I live here in Nashua and attend Nashua High South. (Applause.) There were a lot of -- during your campaign, there was a lot of promises of transparency, but lately a lot of stuff in the media said that most of health care has been behind closed doors. I was just wondering how you would grade yourself on your transparent government.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you know, I've got to be careful about grading myself. (Laughter.) But I will tell you that a recent independent watchdog group took a look and said this has been the most transparent government, most transparent administration, that we have seen in a very, very long time, perhaps in the modern era. (Applause.)
And here's the reason. Let me just list off the things we've done. This is the first White House ever where you know every single person who visits the White House. Now, that seems like a small thing, but that means any lobbyist, any company -- anybody who comes to visit the White House, you know who it is.
The Recovery Act that I just talked about -- we put every dollar of spending in the Recovery Act on a Web site. You can go and look up right now every dollar that's been spent in the Recovery Act. You know where it's been spent, who got contracts, how it's been spent. That's all there, plain as day, for everybody to see.
So we've put more information online. We declassified things that used to be classified. We've revamped the classification system so it's not used for us to just hide things that might be embarrassing to us. We posted salaries for everybody in the White House all on a Web site, which as you might imagine, when it comes out, everybody is looking in the White House. (Laughter.) Hmmm. (Laughter.)
But seriously, we very much believe in transparency and accountability.
Now, when it came to the debate, think about all the hours of congressional hearings, all the meetings that were on C-SPAN. They were constant. It took a year, remember? I did town hall meetings all across the country in August talking just about health care. So when people say, well, the negotiations weren't on C-SPAN, what they're frustrated about -- and I take responsibility for this -- is that after Congress had finally gone through its processes, the House had voted on a bill, the Senate had voted on a bill, it is true that I then met with the leaders and chairmen of the House and the Senate to see what differences needed to be resolved in order to get a final package done. And that wasn't on C-SPAN.
And, look, I made that commitment and I probably should have put it on C-SPAN, although one of the tricky things is trying to figure out, well, if it is on C-SPAN, are people actually going to be saying what they think about trying to get the bill done or is everybody going to be posturing to say things that sound good for the camera.
But I think it is a legitimate criticism to say, if you say that all of it is going to be on C-SPAN, all of it is going to be on C-SPAN. Which is why, at this point, it's important for me to say that when the Republicans put forward their proposals for what they want to do on health care, and we put forward what we want to do on health care, I very much want that on C-SPAN, and I want everybody here to watch. (Applause.) I want everybody here to watch. Because I think it will be a good educational process for people to weigh the arguments about the relative merits of the bill instead of listening to millions of dollars' worth of insurance industry ads that have been put out there or whatever pundit on the left or the right is saying about these different issues.
So we're going to keep on doing it. Have we gotten it perfect? No. Have we done better than any administration in recent memory? Absolutely. And we'll keep on trying to improve on it.
All right? Good. (Applause.) It's a gentleman's turn. This gentleman there in the back, in the tie. He got all spruced up for the meeting; I want to make sure I call on him.
Q My name is Dick Swett, I live in Bow, New Hampshire. (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: Hey, Dick, you got a big fan club here.
Q I used to occupy the seat that Paul Hodes holds now, and he's doing a great job.
THE PRESIDENT: He's a good guy.
Q He is. First of all, thank you for coming to New Hampshire. We are very pleased and proud that you're here. And we are grateful for the opportunity to talk.
Now, in your discussions, you have said that you're ready to listen to anybody with a good idea. Well, I'd like to go out on a limb and say I think I've got a good idea; I'd like to share it with you.
THE PRESIDENT: Good, please do.
Q When we talk about energy issues in this country, we are talking about jobs; we're talking about dependence on international oil, some coming from difficult places that are feeding terrorist organizations that are causing harm to our citizens; we are talking about a problem of keeping our money here at home as opposed to send it overseas when we purchase that foreign oil.
I think what we can do is we need to put all of these issues together in one basket, and first set a date by which time we can be independent enough of foreign oil; I can't say that we could be completely independent, and I think you understand the reasons why.
But if we can invest in technology here at home, to develop clean technology, place that technology in developing countries, not only just where they can have energy and electricity to be productive with, but establish with that an economic system where they have jobs and they are opening up new markets that we can sell our products into and that we can build our relationships with their leaders through.
And at home, if we can focus on making ourselves more energy efficient, because we are a very inefficient country when it comes to the use of energy, just like all of the industrialized countries. These two things, I think, done first can help us to avoid having to do cap and trade and other aspects with environmental controls that are going to have negative impacts on our economy. We need to make productive use of our technology and our people so that we can clean up the economy, put people to work, and then if that isn't sufficient enough, we then go to the kinds of programs that have been talked about at the Copenhagen summit. (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me respond by talking more broadly about energy. First of all, those are such good ideas I've already adopted them, although I didn't know they came from you. (Laughter.)
Number one, we have to invest in innovation and new technologies. There's no doubt about it. And by the way, we've got to upgrade some old technologies. I know it's controversial in some quarters, but if you're serious about dealing with climate change then you've got to take a serious look at the nuclear industry. If you are serious about climate change, you've got to figure out is there technology that can allow us to sequester coal and the emissions that are set out.
The reason for that is not just for the United States. China is building a coal-fired plant once a week, just about --India is doing the same -- because coal is cheap. And unless we can come up with some energy alternatives that allow us to franchise that technology so that they are equipped to burn that coal cleanly, we're going to have problems no matter what we do in this country when it comes to the environment. So technology is key. And, by the way, we can make significant profits and create huge jobs just upgrading traditional technologies. Then you've got the whole clean energy sector, which is ready to take off if we provide the kind of seed capital, the kind of R&D credits that are necessary.
This past recession almost killed a lot of our homegrown clean energy sectors. And the industry will tell you. You talk to the wind industry or the solar industry, if we hadn't passed the Recovery Act and all the support for clean energy, a lot of them would have completely gone under and we would have been ceding leadership as we already have, unfortunately, to a lot of countries like Spain and Germany and Japan that are doing a lot more work on it. So this is a huge engine for job creation, and we've got to make those investments.
The third thing you said, energy efficiency. We are one of the least efficient advanced economies when it comes to energy usage. And it's estimated that we could probably lop off 30 percent of our energy consumption just on efficiency without changing our lifestyles significantly. I say "significantly" because you'd have to start buying LED batteries or LED light bulbs. But it's still a light bulb. You don't have to sit in the dark. You don't have to use gas lanterns. You just have to make the investment. And one of the things that a company like ARC Energy is doing is trying to bring down the unit cost for each of those light bulbs.
A school building like this, guarantee you that we could make this school probably 10-15-20 percent more energy efficient. But the problem is school budgets a lot of times don't have the money to put the capital up front to make it more energy efficient. So are there ways we can help universities and schools and other institutions -- more efficient? We could retrofit every building in this country that was built over the last 50 years and get huge increases in energy, huge decreases in greenhouse gas emissions. But it requires some seed money. It requires some work. And that's why part of our jobs package is actually -- it's a very simple concept: Hire people to weatherize homes that will save those homeowners' heating bills, or cooling bills, and at the same time put people back to work and train them in things like insulation and heating systems. So there's a lot of opportunity there.
Now, here's the only thing I would say. The most controversial aspects of the energy debate that we've been having -- the House passed an energy bill and people complained about, well, there's this cap and trade thing. And you just mentioned, let's do the fun stuff before we do the hard stuff. The only thing I would say about it is this: We may be able to separate these things out. And it's conceivable that that's where the Senate ends up. But the concept of incentivizing clean energy so that it's the cheaper, more effective kind of energy is one that is proven to work and is actually a market-based approach. A lot of times, people just respond to incentives. And no matter how good the technology is, the fact of the matter is if you're not factoring in the soot that's being put in the atmosphere, coal is going to be cheaper for a very long time. For the average industry, the average company, we can make huge progress on solar, we can make huge progress on wind, but the unit costs -- energy costs that you get from those technologies relative to coal are still going to be pretty substantial. They're going to get better, but it might take 20-30-40 years of technology to get better.
And so the question then is: Does it make sense for us to start pricing in the fact that this thing is really bad for the environment? And if we do, then can we do it in a way that doesn't involve some big bureaucracy in a control and command system, but just says, look, we're just going to -- there's going to be a price to pollution. And then everybody can adapt and decide which are the -- which are the best energies. And that's -- that's, by the way, remember acid rain? That's how that got solved, was basically what happened -- the Clean Air Act slapped a price on sulfur emissions. And what ended up happening was all these companies who were saying this was going to be a jobs killer, et cetera, they figured it out. They figured it out a lot cheaper than anybody expected. And it turns out now that our trees are okay up here in New Hampshire. That's a good thing. So we should take a lesson from the past and not be afraid of the future. (Applause.)
There's a signal that I only have time for a few more questions. I'm going to try to take two more. It is a young lady's turn. I shouldn't be biased against the folks back here. Here you go.
Q Hi. I'm Judy Loftus. I teach at Nashua South High School. (Applause.) I teach in the careers and education program, and that's a career and technical program that prepares students for lives working -- to work with children, to make a difference, from pre-school up to elementary age.
I have a couple of questions. First of all, what are you going to do about No Child Left Behind? We've had a lot of legacies from the last administration. And as an educator I've seen the impact of that in my school and it hasn't been a positive impact. We're focused more on testing and worrying about test scores than what's right for kids. (Applause.)
And the second is, what are you going to do to help my students, who want to be teachers, who want to make a difference in this world, be able to afford a college education and not be saddled with so much debt that they're working -- as many teachers in Nashua are -- two jobs, to make ends meet to pay their student loans? (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: It's a good question. The short-term proposals that I put forward are designed to accelerate job growth, that inspire a company that's right on the brink of hiring but it's still kind of uncertain: Should I make that investment, should I bring in somebody out of the workforce? Well, maybe if I get a $5,000 credit or maybe if I can get a loan from SBA, I'm going to go ahead and take the plunge. So we're trying to induce hiring to start a little quicker than it's been -- than has taken place so far.
But long term, the question you ask is the most vital one for how our economy performs. Look, this is a very straightforward proposition here. Countries that have a highly skilled workforce, that innovate, that excel in science and technology, are going to dominate the future. And countries that don't are going to see, over time, their standard of living decline. It's pretty straightforward. If we're the country that's innovating and creating new products and at the high end of the product chain, then everybody here is going to have enormous opportunity. And if we're not, we don't.
So what does that mean? On the education front, our elementary schools, our secondary schools, have been slipping. We used to have the best; now we have pockets of the best, and then we have mediocrity, and then we have some schools that are just terrible. We've got to make sure every child is getting a good, solid education. (Applause.) And what that means is, it means we continue to invest in early childhood education, which my budget does. It means -- so that our kids are prepared when they start school. It means that we help schools with just their basic budgets. And as I said, the Recovery Act prevented a lot of layoffs and really patched holes in a lot of school budgets. It's not sexy, it doesn't get a lot of credit, but it made a huge difference.
We've got to make sure, though, also, that the single most important factor in an elementary and secondary school education is fulfilled, and that is, we've got excellent teachers in the classroom who are getting paid a good salary and are getting the support that they need. (Applause.)
Now, traditionally what's happened is the debate between the left and the right has said, well, the left just says, we just need more money in the schools and everything will be okay -- you know, it's for new equipment, new computers, smaller class sizes. That's been the argument on the liberal side. The conservative side has said, the whole problem is bureaucracy, teachers' unions -- you got to blow up the system. What my administration believes is, it's not an either/or proposition, it's both/and. We need more money, but we need to spend the money wisely and we need to institute reforms that raise standards and push everybody in a school -- principal, teacher, student, parent -- to pursue excellence.
So last year what we did is we started with something called Race to the Top, and it's a pretty simple proposition. We carved out a little bit of money that doesn't just go to general revenue -- Title I, all the general federal support for schools -- and we said, this money, this Race to the Top money, you get it only if you're working to make for excellent teachers, you're collecting good data to make sure that your students are actually making progress in the schools, you're dealing with the lowest-performing schools in your school district. You've got ideas that are showing concrete results in improvement, not in absolute test scores, but in the progress that that school is making, we're going to fund those improvements.
And we've already seen reforms across 48 states, just because we incentivized reform. That's a good thing.
This year is when reauthorization for what's called No Child [Left] Behind would be coming up, as part of the broader education legislation that's up for reauthorization. And what we're saying there is, on the one hand, we don't want teachers just teaching to the test; on the other hand, we also want to keep high standards for our kids. And I think the best way to do that is to combine high standards, measurable outcomes, but have an assessment system that you work with teachers on so that it's not just a matter of who's filling out a bubble, and you're also taking into account where do kids start, because not every kid is going to start at the same place. So you want to see where do they end up at the end of the year. (Applause.)
So I just -- I just had a meeting with my team this week about this, trying to find ways that we can improve the assessment system so we're still holding schools accountable, we're still holding teachers accountable, but we're not just holding them accountable for a score on a standardized test, but we have a richer way of assessing whether these schools are making progress.
All right, so that's the answer to the No Child Left Behind.
On the college front, here's the deal. We've already increased Pell grants, and we want to increase them again. (Applause.) We've already increased both the size of each grant that's permissible, but also the number of grants available so more students can get to them. The next step -- and this is legislation that's pending that we are strongly supportive of and I think our entire congressional delegation from New Hampshire is strongly supportive of -- what it would do is it would say to every student all across America, and this is especially important for somebody who wants to go into teaching -- not a high-salary profession -- that you will never have to pay more than 10 percent of your income on student loans. (Applause.) And to every student, we would say that after 20 years your debt would be forgiven as long as you were making payments commensurate with your income. But if you went into public service, we would forgive those student loans after 10 years. (Applause.) And teaching obviously is one of our most important public services.
So we think this is a fair deal because what is says is you won't go bankrupt if you decide to go to college, but what it also says is you can make the choice for the lower salary but greater fulfillment, greater satisfaction pursuing your passion -- you can do that and it's not going to be cost-prohibitive.
Now, you may ask, how are we going to pay for it? Remember, we were -- we said we're going to pay for everything from here on out, pay as you go -- PAYGO. Right? So here's how we're going to do it. It turns out that right now a lot of the student loan programs are still run through financial institutions and banks. So you got this middle man and they get billions of dollars per year managing loans that are guaranteed by the federal government. So think about this. You, the taxpayers, are guaranteeing that this is going to be paid back. These institutions are essentially taking no risks, and yet they're still extracting these huge profits.
And what we've said is, look, cut out the middle man. You take those billions of dollars, give it directly to the students; with the money that we save, we can make sure that nobody goes bankrupt because they're going to college, because we need every single person to go to college. We think it's a good idea. We're going to make it happen. (Applause.)
All right. I've only got -- I got one last question. Oh, and it's a guy's turn. It's a guy's turn. All right, this gentlemen over here. We figured -- are you a student? Oh, you look like a student. That's why I called on you. (Laughter.) You've got a baby face.
Q It's my young face. Thank you, Mr. President. My name is Ronnie Camile (phonetic), I live in Nashua, New Hampshire. Three weeks ago, as you know, there was an earthquake in Haiti. I traveled to Haiti to visit my family. And I know times are tough for the American people. And, as President, what will you do to ensure that Haiti will be continued -- will receive help, because many people down there have yet to receive help?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I appreciate that you went down. I appreciate what the students did here at Nashua North. (Applause.) There's been an outpouring of incredible generosity in response to this earthquake, and it's a testament to the American people. Our military and our government has responded, I believe, in exemplary fashion. We got Marines and aid workers and helicopters and food and clean water facilities -- we got those down in record time. The devastation, and the fact that Haiti already had such poor infrastructure to begin with, makes it that much harder. So, yes, there are still a lot of people there who are going through enormous hardship. But America should be proud of what we've done so far. We really should. (Applause.)
Now, part of the point you're making though is, you know, the headlines start to drift in another direction, right? So, it was 24/7 Haiti for about a week, and then the media decided it was time to move on to something else, so now you're not hearing about it as much. And what can happen is that everybody's memories of the devastation start fading away, and then pretty soon people are asking: Why are we giving money to Haiti? So what we have to do is to build a strong consensus around a long-term recovery plan for Haiti that is not just shouldered by the United States but the entire international community. (Applause.) I'm going to be working with countries like France and Brazil and Canada, the European Union, Japan, China. We want to get countries that have capacity and resources to come together with the United Nations, with the Haitian government, to determine how can we see if out of this incredible tragedy we can start actually rebuilding in a way that makes life even better for people over the long term than it was before the earthquake. And that's going to require improving our schools, that's going to require improving the infrastructure in Haiti, that's going to require providing the ability of Haitians to sell their products like textiles into advanced countries at an advantageous situation so that they can start rebuilding their commerce and their industry.
It's in our interest to do so, though. I want everybody to do it. We do it because it's right, but we also do it because when the United States sends the USS Vinson to Haiti to allow a bunch of helicopters to unload food and Marines or -- helping and we've got a hospital that's set up -- that sends a message of American power that is so important, because too often what other countries think of when they think of the United States and our military is just war.
But when they see us devoting these resources and the incredible capacity that we have to help people in desperate need, that message ripples across the world. And it means that when you've got a guy like bin Laden out there screaming, "blow up America," it's a lot harder for that seed to take root when people have been seeing images of America making sure that people in desperate need are helped. (Applause.) So it's part of our national security. It's a smart thing to do. It's great to see you, Nashua. I love you guys. Thank you. Appreciate it. (Applause.)
END 3:21 P.M. EST
