David Gergen's Blog, page 16

Deficit Commission.... Taxes....Social Security.... Retirement

David Gergen is a CNN senior political analyst. David, the debt commission is dealing with proposed changes like the ones I just talked about as well as changes to social security, the age at which you get it. Taxes, Defense spending, every single one of these, David, are highly charged issue.

Listen to the commission's co-chairman Erskine Bowles and what he said this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERSKINE BOWLES, CO-CHAIR, COMM. ON FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY & REFORM: Solutions are all painful and there's no easy way out. I think for many years, elected officials have been were worried they would be punished if they made the tough decisions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: David, what t does the president - what has Congress do with this now? Because there are absolutely tough decisions that come out of this commission. It's tough suggestion.

What chance have these suggestions to bring down the deficit and bring down the debt got of passing and being implemented? DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, they've got a heck of a lot better chance today than they did six months or a year ago, Ali. I think the one thing we can say about this deficit commission, while it did not achieve the 14 out of 18 votes it needed in order to make a formal recommendation to the Congress, it did build a healthy majority. It got 11 out of 18 members of the commission voted in favor of this whole package, and that was a significant step forward. It really has put the deficit high on the agenda for next year.

There is no way the Congress and the president can dodge next year because the American people are now fully alerted to the fact that these are huge problems coming at us very quickly, and if we don't want to go the way of what's going on in Europe, with a Greece or an Ireland or possibly Portugal and all the rest, we've got to get our act together.

So I think they've made a lot of progress, and you've got to give them credit for that. What has been disappointing to me, frankly, is that the president, during all these deliberations, has been pretty much on the sidelines. Yes, he set up the commission, deserves credit for that. But he -- I think he could have taken a much stronger role and gotten even better results had he gotten more actively involved.

VELSHI: Let's talk about this with Christine Romans, my co-host. She -- Christine, you know that it's hard -- we often hear that it's hard to do the math on this, to cut taxes, which Republicans want to do, or extend certain tax cuts and cut them elsewhere, to cut down the deficit and the debt, which many Americans share, but certainly Republicans rate that as their highest financial priority for the country, and to deal with this economy's, with high unemployment. So how do we deal with this without setting something else off track? I think if we've learned anything in the last few years, that everything you do has an effect on something else in the economy.

ROMANS: And then an effect on something else, and then it keeps going, and you don't really always know what the unintended consequences are breast cancer be. You're right, if you cut too much too quickly, do you hurt a nascent recovery here? The whole point, from all these people who are sitting around that table and discussing this, is how do you juice the economy and help jobs in the near term while still addressing structural problems in the longer term, and doing both of those things -- I mean, I think you've heard some of the members of the commission start talking about, I think this could -- this could lay the groundwork for good jobs growth. They're starting to talk about it in the terms of jobs growth eventually. So that is -- it's a discussion, Ali, that's been happening all over the globe. How do you juice the economy in the near term and tighten the belt at the same time --

VELSHI: Right.

ROMANS: -- in the longer term? It's a very, very difficult line to walk.

VELSHI: For those that don't know what's in this thing, Jeanne Sahadi and the team at Money.com have got a lot of detail on it. But Jeanne, I like this because it tells you there are ways to cut the deficit and the debt, but it tells you that they're going to be painful. Give us some highlights. There are some tax increases. There's a discussion about taking away the mortgage interest credit for people. There's a discussion about all sorts of things that we hold very dear.

JEANNE SAHADI, SR. WRITER, CNNMONEY.COM: Sure. Broadly, what the commission is recommending is to overhaul the tax code, which is not a new recommendation. Tax experts have wanted to do it for a long time. And a big piece of that is to eliminate all the tax breaks we know now, which, yes, includes the mortgage interest deduction, but also hundreds of others, and then only add a few back in as lawmakers decide is judishish -- sorry, judish -- judicious.

(LAUGHTER)

SAHADI: One of them would be the mortgage interest deduction, but it would be back at a reduced rate. They recommend only allowing the people to take the deduction up to $500,000, as opposed to $1.1 million loan, and also to only take the interest deduction on a first home and not a second home. Yes, it's not going to make home owners happy or the real estate industry, and there's going to be a lot of lobbying against it. But it is really just one of the many things that has to happen in order for our tax code to get simpler, to lower income tax rates. To do this, they're going to use a lot of them savings from reducing tax breaks to lower everybody's income tax rates quite dramatically.

GERGEN: Yes, but Ali two points. One is, you can do both at the same time. The whole point of the deficit commission is to pass these deficit reduction bills next year but don't have them kick in for a couple of years. And the theory is, of course, that will send a signal to the markets that we're serious about deficit reduction and it will be a tonic to economic growth. It will help produce jobs, even as you do some other things to create jobs.

But I want to disagree with the notion about how painful this deficit commission proposals are. I think they're rather mild, actually. They're very extended out. They come in -- you know, in terms of raising the retirement age to 68, that doesn't happen until 2050. And this plan doesn't even balance the federal budget until 2039. That's a very gradual, you know, slope, glide path. And you -- and they're talking about narrowing deductions, not getting rid of them.

This is not -- yes, it's going to put more of a tax burden on the upper income. But if we do this right, we get spending under control, there are a lot of upper income who would say, Yes, it's time to do that to save the country.

VELSHI: Right. Excellent. Good conversation to all of you. Thanks so much, David Gergen, Jeanne Sahadi. And Christine Romans will be back very shortly.

Transcript from CNN's your Money Aired December 4, 2010

Adventures In Obamaland

Transcripts and video from CNN's The Situation Room, NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams and CNN's John King USA that aired on December 3 ,2010.  Topics discussed were The Deficit Commission and President Obama's overnight trip to Afghanistan.

The Situation Room :
BLITZER: The Senate has delayed votes on Bush era tax cuts until tomorrow. Democrats say they want t0 put their support for extending breaks for the middle class on the record. But the measures aren't expected to pass the Senate. Republicans are standing firm in wanting to extend tax cuts for everyone, including wealthier Americans. Both sides have engaged in lots of political maneuvering in an effort to try to strike a deal before the tax cuts expire at the end of the year.

President Obama's Debt Commission failed to approve its controversial recommendations for slashing the federal deficit. But it doesn't necessarily mean bipartisanship in Washington is a lost cause.

Fourteen votes were needed to present the plan to Congress as legislation. Eleven of the 18 members voted yes -- five Democrats, five Republicans and one Independent -- while four Democrats and three Republicans voted no.

Let's talk about this with our senior political analysts, David Gergen and Gloria Borger -- Gloria, you got a chance to speak with a couple of those senators who -- who voted yes, in favor of these recommendations. And they don't see this, necessarily, as a complete failure.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. They don't.

I spoke with Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Kent Conrad of North Dakota, both the top people on the Senate Budget Committee, and they say, look, they did get 60 percent of the votes, which was more than a lot of them thought they were going to get, but they said, you cannot end it here.

They are happy with what happened. They said they bridged a lot of philosophical divides. But Senator Kent Conrad said to me, the next thing that has to happen is that the president needs to call for a budget summit so that people don't write worthless budgets, they get together, use what the commission did as a template and actually get some deficit reduction done in this next Congress.

BLITZER: You know, they had 10 months, David, to get the job done, to come up with some sort of recommendation that 14 of the 18 members could support and submit it to Congress as legislation that the Congress would have to vote yea or nay on. They failed in that mission and now it's just a bunch of recommendations that may or may not go anywhere.

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: well, that's true in one sense, Wolf. It's, you know, it's a glass half full/half empty kind of proposition. But I think after the elections an given the partisanship and polarization we saw coming out of the elections, that it was a miracle they got to 11, that they got 60 percent.

BORGER: Right.

GERGEN: And again, what has been disappointing to me is has been that the president and the White House have sat on the sidelines while this has gone on. I think they could have given it a real boost during the process.

And now, with the president of Afghanistan today, he is not even meeting with this commission. Instead, he is keeping his distance and he's asking his Treasury secretary and budget director to meet with them. I don't know why he doesn't invite them to the White House as a prelude to the kind of summit that Senator Conrad is talking about.

And by the way, both Senators Conrad and Judd Gregg deserve credit for getting this off the ground and Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson deserve enormous credit for the superb job they did in chairing it.

BLITZER: The real conservatives on the panel, they hated the fact that there would be any tax increases at all, and the real liberals on the panel, like Jan Shackowsky, they hated tinkering at all with Social Security.

Well, if you don't deal with taxes, you don't deal Social Security and Medicare, you are probably not going to deal with the deficit.

BORGER: And that's the real problem. That's the real problem, Wolf, you had three leading House Republicans, one of whom is going to run the Budget Committee next year, voting against this.

Now they say it didn't go far enough. And Congressman Ryan, who is going to run the Budget Committee, said, look, I'm going to use some of this in my next budget.

But what if the president said in his State of the Union speech said, OK, step two, we'll take it, we'll use it, we need to talk about it. Would those Republicans then be a part of that summit and could they then come out with first steps here? I think they have a template they can use. They ought to use it.

BLITZER: Well, we'll see if they do.

David, you want to make a quick thought?

BORGER: I jus t-- it's an irony that this week the Congress is struggling to reduce taxes by $4 trillion over the next 10 years. At the same time, we are talking about trying to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion in the same week.

BLITZER: Yes, that's a good point.

All right, David, thanks very much. Gloria, thanks to you as well.


NBC Nightly News:


Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy



John King USA:
When we come back, we woke up in Washington to a surprise today. The president wasn't here, he was in Afghanistan. David Gergen breaks down the president's trip after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: A white house photo there of the president of the United States. Barack Obama with the troops in Afghanistan today, a pre- Christmas holiday visit by the president that was a surprise. I checked the president's schedule every night. And last night at 10:00 at night, the president's schedule said he would be here in Washington today, delivering in a statement this morning on jobs. But guess what? Just before 10:00 last night at Andrews Air Force Base, air force one took off. It's a 13-hour trip across to Afghanistan. You see it going half way around the world to Afghanistan literally. It arrived at the air force base and touches down after a 13-hour flight at 8:35 Friday night local time there. What does he do? He has an intelligence meeting with the top generals on the ground. You see them all there. That's one thing he does. The president also takes some time while there, again, at Bagram air force base to meet with the troops. He awards five purple hearts to troops. He awards three purple hearts. And a quick phone call to President Karzai. Flight back to Andrews. When you wake up tomorrow the president will be back at air force base. Why be on the ground for just three hours? Good question for our senior political analyst David Gergen.

David Gergen, the president three hours on the ground in Afghanistan seemed clear in his speech to the troops, yes, he was there to boost morale a bit but to deliver a message to people back home in the United States who might be getting tired of this war. Listen to one of the things the president said.

PRES. BARACK OBAMA (D), UNITED STATES: We said we were going to break the Taliban's momentum. That's what you're doing. You're going on the offense. Tired of playing defense, targeting their leaders, pushing them out of their strong holds. Today we can be proud there are fewer areas under Taliban control and more Afghans have a chance to build a more hopeful future.

KING: How important is that part of it, David, talking to the audience, the skeptical American public?

DAVID GERGEN, SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It's important, John. I think he did a much better job rallying the troops and thanking them for their sacrifices than he did persuading people back home. Americans are going to say, yes, it was nice to go to Afghanistan and thank the troops. That's an important thing to do for a president, but you're out of town on a day we get the worst economic news on the unemployment front in a long, long time. A deficit commission struggling to get a report out on the big problem facing the country and Congress trying to get tax cuts passed for next year. Why aren't you here on the home front?

KING: It seems like you're saying they seem a tad tone deaf to the politics of the moment?

GERGEN: You plan these trips out in advance. If you don't recognize how many things are going to come together on the same day.

KING: The unemployment report is always released on the first Friday of the month. The debt report commission was scheduled for weeks if not months.

GREGEN: Well, so that raises the question, does the right hand know what the left hand is doing? That's one question. I run into the cynic who says, I think we'll get the hell out of town when the report comes out, let's change the subject to Afghanistan. Come back to this, John. We both agree, I think, it's a matter of judgment on national security and you do need to do things. Be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, go thank the troops. It was important to do before Christmas. But to do it on this day and this weekend with so much going on that's so critical to the wellbeing of millions of Americans, you know, I would have voted to postpone the trip. I must tell you. I appreciate why he went.

KING: And to add to the oddness, if not the awkwardness of the whole thing, he's on the ground in Afghanistan and spends no face to face time with President Karzai. First he was supposed to helicopter to Kabul. They say dust storms prevented that. They were supposed to have face to face on a secure conference but a hiccup line stopped that. The president of the United States has a call with the leader of Afghanistan at the end of the week in which the world read diplomatic cables from U.S. diplomats on the ground says he's paranoid, erratic, can't be trusted, he's corrupt and not setting his feet into the business of nation building.

GERGEN: Given all that John don't you think he would welcome the fact he couldn't go see Karzai? Would you rather have a picture on John King of him sitting there with Karzai or talking to the American troops? I think you'd talk to the troops. Maybe they chose a day they thought there would be bad weather.

KING: We also haven't heard a word from him about the Wikileaks.

GERGEN: Exactly. I think this white house is still struggling with the aftermath of the election. They really haven't settled on what's their strategy, what are their priorities, what are they trying to do for the next two years? You have a sense they're rolling with the punches now rather that grounding control of their destiny and asserting themselves in a way I think they have to if they want to go.

KING: A lot of Democrats are nervous about that, saying where's the president, why isn't he speaking out about the unemployment, extended unemployment benefits. Why is he perhaps, many Democrats think he's in a room about to cut a deal with Republicans on taxes that they won' will like.

GERGEN: The Democrats and country are looking for him to stand up and say this is what I believe in, this is where I want to go, I'm willing to compromise, but this is have I stand on a number of issues. We have no idea on where he stands with most of what the deficit commission has proposed. He's come out with this modest proposal on freezing pay for the federal workers for a couple years. That's a tiny part of the big picture. I had thought by now we'd have a much more assertive president sort of trying to shape his destiny and the destiny of the country in the aftermath of a shellacking to be sure. You have to rebound from that and what people look for is get off the mat and take charge. Don't be sitting there on the sidelines and why are you going to Afghanistan?

KING: David Gergen, as always, thanks.

GERGEN: Thank you.

Obama looks to boost troops on surprise trip

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

R.I. conference gathers state officials from across U.S. and Canada

01:00 AM EST on Friday, December 3, 2010 By Philip Marcelo

Journal State House Bureau PROVIDENCE — More than 500 state government officials and experts will meet at the Rhode Island Convention Center for the Council of State Governments national conference this weekend.
David Gergen, a senior political analyst for CNN who was a White House adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, and Gwen Ifill, managing editor of PBS' Washington Week, will headline the conference, which is being held from Friday through Monday.
Governors, legislators, justices, appointed officials and agency directors, as well as other public-policy experts from 36 states, 3 U.S. territories and 3 Canadian provinces, are expected to attend, according to Jo Brosius, communications director for the Council of State Governments.
The 77-year-old Kentucky-based organization provides policy analysis and tracks national issues for all three branches of state government (executive, legislative and judicial).
The four-day event is expected to bring a boost of $750,000 to $1 million to the state and the city's hospitality, restaurant and tourism industries, according to state Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed.
"This event brings the best and brightest minds to the city of Providence and will showcase our state on a national level," House Speaker Gordon D. Fox said.
About 50 state lawmakers are registered to attend the event, according to Brosius. Governor Carcieri will give welcoming remarks on Saturday morning and participate in a panel discussion on Sunday. Governor-elect Lincoln D. Chafee declined to attend, according to a spokesman.
A major focus of the conference will be the impact of national health-care reform.
One session, for example, will discuss the health-insurance exchanges that are due to launch in every state by January 2014. Outgoing Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican, will be among a panel discussing the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama earlier this year.
Another focus of the conference will be what's ahead for state governments next year in key policy areas such as education, transportation, energy and the economy. Conference attendees will enjoy several other activities scheduled during the busy weekend, including the Rhode Island School of Design's alumni holiday art sale, tours of Newport and Providence and a performance of "A Christmas Carol" by the Trinity Repertory Company.
They'll also attend a reception at the State House on Saturday, take in a special "WaterFire" on Sunday and tour the ChemArt Company, the Lincoln-based manufacturer of custom brass ornaments and keepsakes, including the official White House Christmas ornaments, on Monday.
The conference has reserved rooms at the Providence Biltmore and the Westin Providence, but no conference-related meetings or events will take place at the Westin, where hotel ownership and the hotel workers' union are embroiled in a labor dispute.
pmarcelo@projo.com

Protecting Secrets

A major new blow to WikiLeaks, though, today. It's been ousted from the I thought server space it rents from Amazon.com. The Senate Homeland Security chairman, Joe Lieberman, says Amazon cut off WikiLeaks after being contacted by his aides. The State Department says its offer to provide protection to human rights activists who may be in jeopardy right now, after their identities were revealed in some of these leaked diplomatic cables.

And Turkey's prime minister is threatening to file a lawsuit, saying he was slandered in one of those leaked diplomatic messages. The U.S. ambassador to Turkey reportedly alleged, back in 2004, that the prime minister had canceled his wealth in some Swiss -- concealed. Excuse me -- concealed his wealth in some Swiss bank accounts.

Let's bring in our senior political analyst, David Gergen, who's trying to digest this. All of us are right now.

They name a guy to be in charge of security, protecting the secrets today -- but, David, this has been going on for months and months and months, and only today they say, you know what, we're going to come to grips with this?

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: Very surprising, Wolf. You know, there may be more to this story inside. They may have a lot of things that they have actually done very privately and we don't know about yet.

But normally, in this kind of situation, if you're in the White House and you've got something bad coming and you know it's coming, you try to prepare for it in advance. So that the day it happens, or even days before it happens, you go to the public and say, we've done the following five things. We've severed the State Department from all of its communications from anybody who's a private first class sitting over in Baghdad to make sure this never happens and nothing like this ever happens again. We've had a point man working on this for the last three months. He's done -- he's recommended the following five things. We've had our intelligence advisory board working on this for three months, knowing this was coming. We -- we have communicated to all the foreign embassies and, by the way, we've done what Joe Lieberman did today, which was to get WikiLeaks off Amazon.

You know, so, there -- there were a series of things you would have think they would have packaged and said, boom, we are on top of this. We're going to get this SOB if we can, but know that your security is in good hands, rather than this sort of sense of scrambling.

BLITZER: Yes. And that's the -- the impression you get. Pete Hoekstra, the Republican ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, he said very bluntly. He said this. He said: "I think there are still other government databases out there, that are out there that have similar types of materials that may be vulnerable to penetration," meaning even right now, some 23-year-old young guy working for the federal government can start downloading thousands of thousands of secret documents, that they haven't necessarily cleaned that up yet.

GERGEN: Well, that is a worry. And I think that the -- the country is due an explanation on that. But, of course, the -- the additional worry is that there are higher level secrecy documents that -- it doesn't take much, in a big organization, to have a couple guys who are really, really alienated or hostile and want to bring the organization down. If they have access to this kind of stuff, especially at a very high level, it can -- it can cause huge problems for this government.

So they -- I -- I'm -- I'm appreciative of the fact of how hard this is, the technology, and how hard they've been working to make State Department documents more available to DOD people and -- and vice versa. They've been doing -- trying to do the right thing. But somehow in the computer side of this thing, they got it really screwed up.

BLITZER: Yes. They've got to really work that -- that part of the story.

I know for a fact that foreign governments, some of them not necessarily friendly governments to the United States, but even some so-called friends of the U.S., they're going through all of these cables that relate to their government and they're trying to find out the individuals who may have had sensitive conversations with U.S. diplomats and other officials in their countries and they may retaliate. And I know this is a source of grave concern to U.S. officials.

GERGEN: Absolutely. And Bill Clinton was here in North Carolina last night. And he said, look, this could cause some -- cost some lives and it will definitely cost a lot of careers.

BLITZER: I'm -- I -- I know a lot of people are really worried about that, the first part...

GERGEN: As they should be.

BLITZER: -- because careers are one thing, but lives, obviously, much more serious than that.

GERGEN: Yes. Yes.

BLITZER: All right, David.

Thanks very much.

GERGEN: Thank you.

Transcript form The Situation Room Aired December 1, 2010

Awaiting Leaks of More U.S. Secrets

Right now, many world leaders are wondering what else U.S. diplomats may be saying behind their backs after the embarrassing leak of thousands of diplomatic cables including the documents released by with WikiLeaks. The Saudi King Abdullah, for example, urged the U.S. to attack Iran to halt its nuclear program. United States keeps (ph) bombers are ready to strike al Qaeda targets in Yemen.

The state department directed U.S. diplomats to engage in intelligence gathering at the U.N. and elsewhere. A claim that the Saudi king also proposed implanting electronic tracking chip in Guantanamo detainees, and an account about the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, relies on what was described as a voluptuous blond nurse.

Some news reports are also suggesting that the French president, Nicholas Sarkozy is called in some of these documents an emperor with no clothes and that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is described as risk averse and rarely creative.

Let's bring in our senior political analyst, David Gergen. David, just a little bit of what's in some of these documents. You've worked in the government. You've worked for four presidents. When a foreign leader meets with the Secretary of State or U.S. Ambassador now, why should that leader not be worried that whatever he or she says is going to wind up on the front pages of "The New York Times" or "The Guardian" and their speaker (ph)?

DAVID GERGEN, SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: He won't be worried, and he won't tell us as much. You know, as a journalist, Wolf, if you got an anonymous source who's fin (ph) your reach information, and then you burn that source, you expose who that person is, you'll never hear from him again. He'll never tell you anything again. Well, that's the situation that American diplomats are now calling you because some outrageous person has leaked all this stuff out there.

And WikiLeaks has engaged in this contemptible behavior, and it will put a chill on conversations with U.S. diplomats especially in the gulf region where this is so sensitive. You know, they have the Saudi king quoted, you know, cut off the head of that snake telling the United States to go after Iran. To have the Yemenis quoted in this way, to have others, Abu Dhabi quoted in this way is going to make them very, very reluctant to have straight conversations with any sort of ambassador.

They're going to want to go just to the top and make it -- it's going be much, much harder for our diplomats to do their wok.

BLITZER: It makes some of these Arab countries seem to be even more concerned, if you will, that the Israelis about Iran's nuclear program which will be very embarrassing to some of these Arab countries. But here's another question that sort of jumped out at me.

The Security of U.S. Documents, doesn't this make the United States government look ridiculous when these hundreds of thousands of documents can simply be pilfered or stolen or copied into some sort of small CD or thumb driver by a young private first class? That's the allegation.

GERGEN: Yes, that's the most embarrassing part of this. A great power, the world's greatest power has somehow erected a system that a young private first class, setting 40 miles outside Baghdad, can crack into it and get all this stuff and dump it out in the world and cause this enormous problem. How can we possibly let this happen? It is a question of there has been a big effort on the part of the state department and the defense department to have their computer systems much more sophisticated and talk to each other, share much more information.

But it allows as allowed this individuals as this very anti- patriotic person to get in and do this. I have to say, one of the things, Wolf, on the positive side, having looked at all these documents, you know what's really striking also, though, is there's no scandal here. There's nothing here in which we find that the U.S. government has been lying to us as a people. They've been telling one thing publicly but saying having a very different conversation privately.

You look at the private stuff. It's pretty consistent to what they've been saying publicly. And I thin that part of it is reassuring as well as the fact that our diplomats look like they're pretty darn smart, and they've been doing some good things especially in the Iranian front. You have to give the state department more credit. From what's revealed in this, they've done a pretty good job.

BLITZER: Well, their mission is about to become a whole lot more difficult now as a result of this leak. A lot of foreign government is simply not going to share that kind of information if they're afraid it's going to be made public.

All right. David, thanks very much. You make excellent points, as usual.

GERGEN: Thank you.

Transcript from The Situation Room Aired November 29, 2010

Social Security and The President's Bipartisan Deficit Commission

Happy Thanksgiving, David. The president's bipartisan deficit commission are going to be releasing their formal recommendations next week. A lot has been leaked already and people are not happy about hearing the retirement age going up, Social Security benefits going down. One of the co-, Allen Simpson, said this. He says, I've never had any nastier mail or had been in a more difficult position in my life, just vicious.

People I've known, relatives saying, you son of a bitch, how could you do this? His life, wish not ours (ph), but clearly, I mean, to tackle the deficit here, if you can't tackle Social Security, I mean, how are these guys going to do this without just being slammed all around?

DAVID GERGEN, SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it's a very, very tough proposition, and we're really on -- I think United Nation and president and Congress are now going to have to face some very tough decisions. Just think about Poppy's report here, the very encouraging report about the shopping today. Folks from Ireland here shopping that's good news. But at this very moment, Ireland is about to go bankrupt, and you know, had to be bailed out by the European Union.

At the same time now, fears are spreading about Portugal and maybe about Spain, which is a much, much bigger economy. So, this question of when a government gets too far and the debt is serious and it can have huge consequences, and what we know now is the bipartisan commission is supposed to report next Wednesday on whether it can come to an agreement on how to deal with America's exploding deficit. Our national debt has almost doubled. To nearly -- has nearly to nearly doubled to $14 trillion in just the last seven years.

MALVEAUX: Well, David, let me ask you this. Obviously, they have some examples, some recommendations they've made, and perhaps, these are not going to be put into effect right away. The other co-chair, Erskine Bowles, says that the changes will be relatively slow. None of our recommendations take place in 2011 while the economy is still going through its recovery.

In 2012, we'll have $69 billion worth of cuts. What it will do is send signals to the market that America is serious about dealing with this deficit. Do you think this is going to work? Is it -- is that going to be enough?

GERGEN: It could work if, in fact, the White House and the Congress will rally to it. And Suzanne, I think this is a big test, another big test of President Obama's leadership. You know, we've had this one test now we talked about a couple days ago with Regard to China and South Korea whether you can get the Chinese to help play ball with the United States and get the North Korean situation under control.

Here, this is his commission. Is he going to put pressure on this commission now between now and Wednesday and really come to an agreement and get the kind of votes they need in there to make a recommendation or is he going to sit back on the side lines? Is he going to send people from the White House to talk quietly to the commission and assure them if they offer tough medicine, he, the president, will support it? He's much more likely to get the votes if he's willing to take the tough steps, and it starts with Social Security.

MALVEAUX: All right. David, thank you so much. Appreciate your time.

GERGEN: Thank you.

Transcript from The Situation Room aired November 26, 2010

ACUMEN 2010 Investor Gathering

Tanger Modeled Innovation, Philanthropy By Christopher Gergen and Stephen Martin

Son Christopher and his co-author Stephen Martin are steadily getting better as they draw upon inspiring stories in North Carolina and beyond to explore ways that innovation and entrepreneurship can advance our country.  This column about StanleyTanger is one of their best. 


Tanger modeled innovation, philanthropyARTICLE [image error]BUY PHOTOPHOTOS BY HARRY LYNCH - HLYNCH@NEWSOBSERVER.COMShoppers stroll the open-air sidewalks of the new Tanger Outlets during the grand opening Nov. 5 in Mebane. Stanley Tanger opened his first strip outlet center just down the road in Burlington.BY CHRISTOPHER GERGEN AND STEPHEN MARTINThe opening weekend of Tanger Outlets in Mebane this month created plenty of buzz, drawing more than 150,000 visitors to a crossroads between the Triad and the Triangle.
It's the newest venture for Greensboro-based Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, which operates 33 outlets around the country, including Blowing Rock and Nags Head. Tanger Outlets' reputation for gathering major brand names, from Brooks Brothers and Chico's to Reebok and Polo Ralph Lauren, is well-known to shoppers.Its founder's history as an industry pioneer and major philanthropist, however, is less familiar - and offers a model for leadership and innovation that can sustain economic growth and better our communities.Stanley Tanger, who founded his namesake company in 1981 and served as its chairman until last year, died in October at age 87. In the business world, he's recalled as a legend - the man who invented the outlet mall, creating hundreds of jobs in his own company and thousands more, indirectly, through the stores in his outlets. Launched with a skeleton staff, Tanger Outlets now employs 445 people and earned $271.7 million last year.Among advocates of health care, recreation and youth development throughout the state, Tanger is a hero for a different reason: the millions of dollars he quietly contributed on their behalf.With his wife a longtime cancer survivor, Tanger made the disease a special focus. He was a major backer of Duke's Comprehensive Cancer Center and the expansion of a cancer treatment center in Greensboro, making better, higher-tech care and patient support more accessible to thousands of state residents. He also invested heavily in breast cancer research and awareness, as well as nursing education. The Boy Scouts and the preservation of public parks also ranked high on his list of funding priorities.In an uncertain economy, North Carolina needs more entrepreneurs capable of pioneering large, new markets, reaping the rewards and reinvesting in their local communities. Tanger's legacy provides at least three crucial and often overlooked lessons on how to spark and nurture innovation.First, know how to reframe a challenge. As a businessman, he relied on market research, valued deep analysis and knew how to manage risk.Still, as innovation experts Dan Buchner and David Horth remind us, traditional business thinking also has its limits. It's more about advancing existing ideas than dreaming up new, game-changing ones.New results require what Buchner and Horth call "innovative thinking," the ability to reframe a situation entirely by imagining a desired future state and figuring out how to get there.After retiring in 1979 after a successful career running shirt-maker Tanger/Creighton, Tanger looked long and hard for a new project. He knew the apparel industry well. He'd also observed the power of the cluster concept, through which competing fast food restaurants or car dealerships open in the same vicinity to attract a larger customer base.Tanger got a fresh view on his own future with a simple question: Why not apply the same principle to outlet stores?Second, there exists a popular misconception that management is the enemy of creativity and innovation. In fact, you can't have one without the other.Growth requires new ideas. Transforming those ideas into useful products and services requires smart strategies, the right systems and the assembly of talent and partnerships.Armed with a singularly innovative idea, Tanger put his own seasoned management skills to work. With a business partner providing the land, he opened his first outlet strip shopping center in Burlington. Gradually, his modest venture blossomed into an empire of outlets stretching from Barstow, Calif., to Myrtle Beach, S.C., and 20 states in between.His staff of professionals grew along the way, as did a leadership culture designed to develop and retain them - and therein lies Tanger's third lesson.Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile has found that employees are most innovative when they are inspired by the challenge and satisfactions of the work itself. Tanger set about creating the kind of work environment that fueled intrinsic motivation through collaboration, communication and respect - and carried that approach over to his philanthropy.He promised Moses Cone Health System in Greensboro $1 million if it could raise another $5 million toward a larger cancer treatment center desperately needed to meet rising demand.Ground was broken on the new building just a week before Tanger died. He was at the opening ceremony, ready, as usual, to see another big idea come to fruition.Christopher Gergen is the founding executive director of Bull City Forward and director of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Initiative at Duke University. Stephen Martin, a former business and education journalist, is a speechwriter at the nonprofit Center for Creative Leadership. They can be reached at authors@bullcityforward.org.

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/11/21/813906/tanger-modeled-innovation-philanthropy.html#ixzz15xAYxrlx

Coming Home Empty Handed