Breast Cancer Medscape

kori schulman:good morning, everyone! audience members:good morning! kori schulman:welcome to the 6thwhite house tweetup. we're so excited to have you. we have about 150 tweepshere, some from nearby, some from d.c.,maryland and virginia. lots of you from across thecountry as far as texas, florida, ohio. in total you all representabout 20 states and we're really

excited to have you here forthe white house holiday tweetup. we have educators,teachers, students, tons of people that arejust passionate about the intersection oftechnology and government. lots of you that are just reallyexcited to see the white house all decorated for the holidays. today you'll hear from arange of white house staff, from the chief technologyofficer to the pastry chef, from the white house economistto the white house florist.

so we have a great lineup. we hope you enjoy it. and without further ado i wouldlike to introduce tina tchen, assistant to the presidentand the chief of staff to the first lady. (applause) tina tchen:well, thanks, kori. and welcome to the white house! we are especially delighted atthis holiday season to welcome

all of you. i have a confession to makewhich is kori is my guidepost to things like tweetups as is my15-year-old daughter so i am one of those who is sort of alittle past this at this age. but, you know, we have seenthe power of what you do. the first lady did her tweetuparound the garden a few months ago which was terrific. and we're really, really excitedto be able to share with all of you and then for you all toshare with the rest of the

country the terrific decorationsthat we have and the theme and really we hope the spirit behindthe holiday presentations that we have today. so i'll give you a little bit ofan overview but you're going to hear from more people like bradcooper who runs our joining forces initiativefor the first lady. and other folks who havebeen involved in it. but or theme, and you will get acopy of this booklet when you go over, is "shine*give*share!"

we have to thank students fromthe corcoran school of art and design across the street forthe development of this booklet. and all of the 85,000 visitorswho we expect through the house this month willreceive copies of this. this gives a little bit of thedetail of the theme and some of the information about thedifferent rooms and what's going on. shine*give*share really is toconvey that idea that this is a season to sort of shine forthwith all the glitter and the

decorations and the spirit ofthe season but to also to share it with others that you loveand to give back to them and to our community. a particular theme of ours anda particular initiative both of the first lady and of dr.biden and really the entire administration hasbeen our military. service to our -- our service toour military family members and service members who servethe rest of us so well. and you will see thattheme throughout the house.

in particular, we're veryproud of the gold star tree. when you first come in the eastlanding that is a particular area the last several yearswhere we've had an ability for people to leave notes and writenotes and be interactive with what's happeningwith the displays. this year it is agold star family tree. for those of you who don't know,gold star families are those who have lost a lovedone, a service member, in service of our country.

and the gold star familyassociation actually worked with us in designing the elementsof that part of the house. and so you'll have a tree there. people who are gold starfamilies have the opportunity to actually write the name of theirloved one on a ceramic star that is hung on the tree. and you will also see a videopresentation that's on a continuous loop next to thetree that talks about and shows pictures of their loved onesthat were submitted by the gold

star families. as you proceed through the restof the house one of the things to do as you look for it it issort of our version of a little game, it's calledlike "where's bo?" instead of where's waldo. there responsible several botopiaries of varying sizes from the, about, you know threetimes the realistic height, to about this size scatteredthroughout the house. i think every room has at leastone bo of some sort made from

different materials includingwatch out for the bo made of trash bags. so you will find that. and then the military theme isalso carried through our main tree in the blue room. the blue room is traditionallywhere the largest tree in the house is at. and that tree was decoratedwith the assistance of blue blue star families beingfamilies that have a service

member on active duty right now. and you'll see decorations thatrepresent all of the branches of the military and in particularalso cards that were submitted. we have thousands of cards inresponse to our request from children of military servicemembers who wrote cards and greetings to their loved ones,to their mom or dad or other, you know, military familymember who is in service. and those cards are decoratedthroughout the tree. you will see, i think,the numbers on it,

we had about 136 volunteersfrom across the country. people who really just give upthe end of their thanksgiving day holiday to come here onthursday night and spend day and night for the next fivedays decorating the house. so they have basically fromthursday till wednesday to get everything that you willsee up throughout the house, up and running. it's 37 christmas trees,five bo topiaries, 400 pounds of gingerbread andchocolate that make up the white

house gingerbread house. and approximately 85,000visitors who will come through the house. so we hope you will enjoy it andyou really share that kind of spirit of this really being thepeople's house and the themes that the first lady hopesthat everyone enjoys. we had a terrific session withour press preview last week where children of militaryfamily members came in and participated and here togetherwith the press the unveiling of

the decorations, and then theygot to decorate bo cookies and got to see bo himself whichwas a little bit of an extra treat as well. kori asked me to talk brieflytoo about really what the first lady has been doing and herinitiatives over the year. you'll hear, i think, in moredetail from brad about joining forces which is the initiativeshe and dr. biden launched in april of this year to supportour military family members. for the last two years she hasalso worked on something called

"let's move!" which i hope many ofyou have heard about. this is her effort toreally end childhood obesity in a generation. one-third of our children inthe united states now are either obese or overweight and it'ssomething that contributes to preventable diseasesthroughout their lifetimes. heart disease, diabetes, it isa whole level of just unhealthy results that come frombeing overweight or obese.

and if we can teach our childrento eat healthy, to exercise, you know, those are traitsthat will be lifelong for them; they'll pass alongto their children. it's remarkable when you seethe study and we have a study from the childhoodobesity task force, that is the foundation work forwhat the first lady and the rest of the administration isdoing on these issues. you see there is likea hockey stick chart, it was startling to me thefirst time i looked at it.

you know, this was not aproblem until about the mid to late '70s when all ofa sudden it shoots up. you know, we were at about a 5%rate of overweight and obese and all of a sudden it's reallyjust in the last 30 years, the last generation, that it hastaken such a remarkable trend upwards and it's somethingthat we can reverse. and we can do this workingtogether across the board with schools and parents andfood companies and stores. we have got some greatinitiatives that have announced

like wal-mart, and other, likesafeway and other stores putting more healthier options into their grocery stores, going into food deserts. restaurant companies like dardenwho has the olive garden who have changed their kid menusto get rid of soft drinks and french fries as thedefault for kids menus. and schools who are puttingsalad bars into their schools, who are starting gardens,who are really inputting. we had a thousand people fromschool systems and schools

across the country here inseptember on the lawn to celebrate their initiatives asbeing a part of the healthier u.s. schools initiativethrough the usda. to really individual parentsand kids taking responsibility for themselves. the first lady spoke last weekat the first ever partnership for healthy america summit hereon childhood obesity and she told a story of a letter thatshe received from a 15-year-old girl named samantha fromconnecticut who just on her

own wrote to the first lady totalk about how she had been unhealthy, she hadbeen overweight, how she reached out to herschool health teacher who then got her started in soccer andhow her own self-esteem and self-confidence built as she gothealthier and how she now wanted to be a spokesperson. she sort of wrote and said,how can i tell my story more? and she got to do it in a prettypowerful way because the first lady put her in her speech lastweek and really kind of got that

out and around. but that was just, you know,one child, one teacher. one life really changed. and as we do that one child ata time, i think the first lady, you know, thinks that thisis something that will really benefit our entire countryas we reverse this trend. and then we have joining forcesas well and i hope, you know, as you go through the house, asyou see what we're doing here in the administration today thatyou will be able to share that

with all of yourfollowers and, you know, are we taking questions? i'm happy to. yeah. if anybody has got a question. right there in the back. audience member:sure, you mentioned i thinkit was five days right after thanksgiving that you actuallyset up for decorations. when do you startplanning for it? and thanks so much.

tina tchen:good question. well, we started planning thetheme of this and really going through some of the ideasback sort of late spring into the summer. it takes that long. it is a little hard tosit there in april and think about christmas. but you do. that's a really good -- you dohave to in terms of setting up

the theme and then reallystarting the process of doing the design work. audience member:a quick follow-up. the president and mrs.obama also approve the theme (inaudible)? tina tchen:the first lady in particulartakes a pretty good strong interest in selecting the theme. okay, right down here in front. audience member:yeah, what was the firstlady's -- hi, what was,

considering the first lady'sspecialization in childhood obesity, what was her reactionto the recent lobbying, successful lobbying efforts tokeep pizza as a vegetable in school lunches? (laughter) tina tchen:well, she does not get involvedin congressional issues like that although it is somethingobviously here in the white house generally through thedomestic policy council we've been tracking pretty closely.

and i think the overall issuethere is the standards that we're trying to promote. and there was an effort to sortof actually undo much of the good work that our u.s. department of agriculture isdoing in raising the level of school lunches,you know, overall. and so, you know, we're goingto keep working on that and keep moving forward on that effort. all right.

there's one over time. audience member:thanks for takingthe time to be with us here today. if there is such a thing, whatis a typical day like for you? tina tchen:ha-ha. there'sreally no such thing! you know, a typical day for mein the white house is, you know, is starting off with a speaking,you know, engagement like this, you know, is not uncommon. we have regular staff meetings,both in our east wing staff.

as an assistant to the presidenti participate in the president's senior staff meetings as well. i have a dual hat here becauseno one in the white house only does one thing. i am also the executive directorof the white house council on women and girls so there isfrequently times when i am doing work on women andgirls policy, you know, throughout the administration. we do a lot of bothoutreach to groups.

we do, when the first ladyis traveling to a speech, sometimes i willaccompany her in that. if we are traveling overseasas we did to africa in june, a lot of our staff went onthat because we had about 25 events, public events for herin the span of five days so it required a lot of effortto put that together and a lot of planning. as to the question in the back,everything that we do, i think, for the president and the firstlady requires a tremendous

amount of planning even for ahalf an hour event and so there is a tremendous amount of workalways being done on that front. plus as you'll hearfrom brad, you know, our staff is constantly workingin the areas that the first lady has focused on with groupsand outside organizations. you know, we're a pretty smallstaff and in order to accomplish a lot of the things that we wantto we really have to work in partnership with folks like you,really getting the word out, getting people to be active intheir own communities on these

issues and to speak out aboutthem is an important part of what we do. right down here. audience member:what feedback, if any,did you get from malia and sasha (inaudible) as wellas the "let's move" campaign -- tina tchen:well, i can't speak to that. i can't speak to sasha andmalia's reaction to that. but, you know, i think we havehad lots of kids come through and be very excited about itso i'll be interested in your

reactions as you go throughthe house and tweet about it. audience member:hi, you talked a little bitabout the "let's move!" program. how do you measure thesuccess of the program? what are your metrics? tina tchen:well, i think overall,over the long-term, the metric is going to be to tryto see a downturn in this trend that i talked about, aboutthe number of kids who are obese and overweight. and there are sort of annualsurveys that come out.

and we've only been at this twoyears and the surveys actually don't even go back that faryet, don't even cover that time period yet, so wewill see over time. it's a good question because ithink one of the things as we've been at it for two years as wehead in to sort of expanding the strategies we're working onwe've been starting to talk about how do we look backand see which ones of these strategies are reallyworking or not. and that's something we're goingto need to keep working on.

so, great, thank you. that gentleman over here. audience member:i know the first ladyat one time had met with alice waters in the garden. i was just wondering, is shestill involved at all with the eatable white house garden? tina tchen:well, you know, we'reinvolved with a lot of movements across the board anda lot of grassroots actually. alice, we saw alice mostrecently this summer.

she did, she participated ina fund-raiser, cooked brunch, i think, for a fund-raiserthe first lady appeared at in the summer. so what i think we've tried todo with the garden is really empower people across the boardin a lot of different ways in which people are usinggardens, using local foods, using what they're producing,you know, in their own homes, how they're cooking, you know,to encourage the many ways in which people can, you know, eathealthier in their lives and

have more accessto healthy foods. and so it's really kind ofreally looking at lots of different ways in whichpeople are doing it and lifting those up. kori schulman:tina, you could be here all daywith questions so if you would like to take -- tina tchen:one more? there's one more right here. audience member:the white house and thefirst lady in particular

have been such powerfuladvocates of health initiatives and the white house has donethings such as going pink for breast cancer awarenessand with world aids's day. are there any plans to continuethat going forward such as going red in february for heartdisease since that's such a big issue? tina tchen:well, i can speak tothat from my former job. my former job before i was thefirst lady's chief of staff was i was the director of the officeof public engagement here which

is the outreach office and iknow sort of all of the many reasons, i think it is red infebruary, it's blue, you know, for prostate cancer, it'steal for ovarian cancer, it's purple fordomestic violence. we've had a whole series ofrequests for that and we made a decision last year sort oflooking at all of those requests and just sort of tryingto balance, you know, really what's appropriatefor the house, that we would juststick with just two.

there are two that have becomesort of traditional in the sense that they have been done over acouple of administrations now. and that is the pink in octoberfor breast cancer and the world aids's day ribbon thatwe hang on december 1st. and i think for now those arejust the two we're going to stick with given then there isjust sort of seasonal decoration that happens to the house. if we did it otherwiseit probably would never be a white house.

so i think -- is brad? yep, okay. well, thank you, very much. please enjoy your dayat the white house, enjoy your decorations and wewill look forward to seeing you again here. thanks. kori schulman:thanks so much, tina. now i'd like to introduce bradcooper whose the executive

director of the joiningforces initiative. brad cooper:i do this fairly oftenand one of the things i note immediately is thedisappointment in many of the ladies who thought they weregetting another version of brad cooper so i apologize. but i am appreciative ofall that you were doing. i have a couplethings to pass along. to complement what tina talkedabout and you heard her speak of really the focus of this year'sactivities and events and the

decor for the white house as shealready spoke to you about the gold star family tree which isan amazing relaxing ornate tree, the planning design to becomplimentary to the overall effort as is the tree. and the other thing that ican think of adding here is the first lady just afterthanksgiving, just -- (inaudible) uh-oh! i have one of these. -- just during thanksgivingstarted off with kind of a new tradition and called a militaryspouse and i'll talk to you

about why she did that. and that was a great event. surprise a military spouse whosehusband is deployed right now. and also kicked off along withthe uso this great event called "thanks from everywhere." where you have a chance if yougoogle "thanks from everywhere," you have a chance to go on toa uso joining forces site and just send a little note from thearea code that you're in and you can go on there and there isa little red dot that depicts

where all of the people in thecountry have sent a note from. and it is incredibly powerful. so with that, let me give youjust a quick scene setter on joining forces in general. for those of you whoaren't familiar with it, back in april the first ladyand dr. biden announced joining forces, this concept of reallyrallying the country around military families, veteransand service members. and when we talk about thecountry it's the effort that's

all outside of the departmentof defense and the va. so we're talking aboutindividuals, businesses, communities themselves,nonprofits, philanthropy, faith-based institutions. the whole and mighty capacity ofeveryone of the communities that we live in in order to give backto those veterans and service members and families and givethem the support, quite frankly, that they've earned. and as we've traveled aroundthe country there is a pretty

unanimous consensus isthat they've earned it. after ten years of war, youhave groups of people who have deployed inunprecedented numbers. if you know someone in themilitary who's been around for the last ten years pretty commonto find people who deployed three or four or five or six orseven -- we met someone just a couple of weeks ago who deployed12 times, not always for a year, but to ask of this 1% of thecountry over the last ten years, and that's who they are, it's 1%of the country fighting for the

rest of us, the remainder ofus 99%, has been incredible! so that with that askind of the underpinning, the first lady and dr. bidenrolled out joining forces. and we're focused in four areas. and you see some effortsrecently in these four areas. the first one is publicawareness, employment, education and wellness. public awareness, if you've beento a movie lately or if you've been watching tv, any footballthis last weekend you may have

seen tom hanks or stevenspielberg or oprah winfrey in a public service announcement. you've seen the first ladyand dr. biden at game one of the world series. you've seen them down at nascar. and you'll continue to seemore and more of that as time moves on. the goal here is to increase thepublic's knowledge of what is going on with the militaryand what this group is doing

for our country. there was a survey just a fewweeks ago that pointed to the fact that 60% of americans hadhad no impact in their lives over the last tenyears of the war. so there's a lot of workto be done in terms or raising public awareness. the other three areas we'reworking very particularly -- we're working particularly hardin starting with employment. and we've spent most of ourtime in this area particularly

because it has been reallyaround the country the subject of most interest and we got themost feedback initially, hey, hit, hit employment hard. so we have. and our effort has beenengagement with the private sector and we have seen peopleeven in the last few months leap to lend a hand. at the end of the summer we hadabout a hundred private sector companies engagedin this process.

as of last week we had 1500. and we're on a trajectory tocontinue to increase this. in august the president in anannouncement here in washington challenged the privatesector to hire or train 100,000 veterans or militaryspouses by the end of 2013. so about a two anda half year period. and the reason was inparticular, veteran, young veteran unemployment ratesfor a very strange reason were higher than the nationalaverage despite this being

an unbelievably creativeand innovative and experienced population. so the presidentsaid, private sector, let's get energized and hire ahundred thousand in two and a half years. so now we're four monthsas of today past that. the private sector has alreadyleaped out and hired 25,000 among these 1500 companies. in addition to hiring 25,000they've also committed to hire

another 135,000 which isobviously a target which would exceed the president's goal. fantastic news. so we're going to look to takethis great momentum throughout the country on veteransemployment and military spouse employment andkeep pushing it on. it's an issue that hasgreat bipartisan support, both the house and the senateapproved a measure that attacks veteran unemployment that thepresident signed just a couple

of weeks ago, 520 to 0. so it clearly is an areathat people want to help. and it's consistent with joiningforces where we say people ask what can they do? and you'll hear the first ladyand dr. biden say all the time: do what you do best! and if you are anemployer, hire a veteran, or three or ten or 30 or 500 orsome people have stepped up and said we'll hire 3,000!

so it really is a great newstory that we're going to continue to nurture. we also have groups thatare working on education, big education issues likegetting a hundred universities throughout the country toadopt curriculum that includes familiarization with issues thatmilitary kids would be going through so that when they'reteachers in the nation's public schools -- and, oh, by the way,the overwhelming majority of military kids go to publicschools throughout the nation.

they no longer really go todod schools in the continental united states. there is a familiarizationin perpetuity, in a training in perpetuityof the nation's teachers to understand better the issuesthat military kids face. also an organizationcalled medscape. a great online organizationdeveloped and is continuing to develop military family andveteran-centric videos and education pieces.

some of these actuallyare valid for continuing medical education. they stood up their sitejust a couple of weeks ago. it's fantastic. it's a great depictionof what joining forces is. it's people rallying andstepping up in doing what they do best. and in this case what they dobest is helping to train and educate the nation'sphysicians and nurses.

and as of yesterday, 40,000doctors and nurses had used this site. so i think you can get asense of those three areas: employment, education,and wellness. that's where we're pushing. we're always lookingfor new partners. and we're looking inparticular for aggregators. big associations that have lotsof people that can move this issue in the country.

i think that is what i willleave you with and happy to answer any questions. oh, i appreciate that. that was good. yes, sir. audience member:the four areas youtalked about: employment, education -- the third area? brad cooper:wellness. wellness reallykind of focused on two areas. it's military family resiliencyand as we continue to move

forward we'll also see a littlebit more emphasis on the first lady and dr. bidenaddressing post traumatic, the issues of post traumaticstress and traumatic brain injury, pts and tbi, whichas you know are kind of the signature wounds of this war. we have -- here's two statsthat most of america has no idea about: nearly 50,000americans have been wounded in the last ten years. many of these are severe wounds.

and you see these on tv. these people are all young. they're in their 20s and30s, some even younger. so they're going to live foranother 50 years where their needs are going tohave to be cared for. so this is why we'regoing to talk about this. and tbi is to a certain extenta little bit of a mystery. we're a lot smarter thanwe were ten years ago. but we want to help to bettereducate the nation and that's

where i think you'llsee our effort here in the coming months. yes, sir? audience member:(inaudible) brad cooper:this is inherently adod and va effort that the government is leading. but we think that when you startto make the education of the nation, increase education ofthe nation on pts and tbi that we would be able to helpin that way as well.

this is where i think theprivate sector can step up. and it's also fair to say thatthe nation in general is unaware of -- when you talk topts around the nation, most people reallydon't understand it. so this is where we're going togo and we think as a by-product of that we'll have some inroadsinto the suicide which is our position is obviouslyone is too many, but you've seen somegreat efforts by dod and va at this point.

yes, ma'am. audience member:(inaudible) focus on why thatis so high besides the usual that they move a lotand things like that, is there a specific(inaudible) -- brad cooper:yeah, so there'san organization, there is a specific partnershipthat was established over the summer that dr. biden rolledout and we talk about it all the time called the militaryspouse employment partnership. this, when it was rolled out, ithas 72 companies who bought in

to this idea of i'm going tohire talent and the talent that they're pooling, that they'retargeting is military spouses. they're well educated, they'rewell traveled, they're loyal. they have an incredible abilityto be innovative and they're used to working as part ofa team and leading teams. so that partnership whichstarted off at 72 companies now is at 96. they have really taken offlike a rocket and they are continually expanding.

they have more than a hundredmore companies who are part of the -- who are in the queue tobe part of it and they all buy into this notion of we wantto get these spouses into a job because, number 1, it'sgood for their bottom line, but they're also committed tothe portability aspects so that folks cannot just get a job,but retain it as their military service member moves around. so as of this weekend, 8,000spouses have been hired which is a huge number relative to fourmonths of effort and i think

you'll continue to see more andmore of this and you'll hear the first lady and dr. bidenspeak about it a lot. it's a big deal. she's had several op-ed's aboutit saying, hey, employers, just because you have a militaryspouse who has moved around a lot, that is not a red flag;this is the nature of their life and let's do somethings to accommodate it. audience member:(inaudible) federalhiring of veterans? brad cooper:yeah, absolutely.

the federal actually hasdone a tremendous job. in the last two years there'sbeen more than -- there's been a hundred thousand -- more than ahundred thousand hired into the federal government. so the government has madethis a priority as well. that effort started a coupleof years ago and agencies of the government havereally stepped up. so it kind of speaks to thebroader strategic piece of you have the federalgovernment leaning into it.

i know that you have states andat the local level leaning in to it and now you have theprivate sector pushing hard. and clearly the capacity ofthe country lies in the private sector so this is that key thirddimension that is really getting some good momentum. great question. audience member:(inaudible) protected theagainst losing their house from foreclosure but recentlymany have lost their houses. is the white house doinganything to try to help them?

are there any futureprograms for that? brad cooper:there are a whole hostof folks who are aware of this andlooking into it. and in many casesalready taken action. you have mrs. holly petraeus,the wife of general petraeus, who works for the consumerfinance protection bureau who is all over this issue. doing a great job. i think you're going to continueto see her more and more engaged

in this. she travels around thecountry speaking about this. her organizationis looking into it. and past looking into it, theyare -- they are attacking it. and doing really a great job. one more. in the back. audience member:since military issues for familyand service members are such -- is so importantacross the board, we work at the red cross and wewere happy for you guys to come

out last month andparticipate in our program. just out of curiosity, about howmany requests do you get on a daily basis for participationprograms, either for you, mrs. obama, dr. biden. brad cooper:that's a great question. an enormous number. more than any of a few ofus that can possibly do. that kind of goes back to we arealways looking for aggregators, and people who can independentlyoperate and step up and are

operating in one of those threelanes, of either employment, education or wellness, becausethe one data point i can give you is the wednesdaybefore thanksgiving, i sat down and said, hey let'stake a look in the next few couple of months of theinvitations and there were about 175 of them throughthe end of february. so a lot, which signalspeople want to help. in many cases they just don'tknow how or they are looking for a little nudge.

and what we always do is say goto the joining forces website, you can -- you can go tothe commitment's page. i can go and take a look atwhere service opportunities are. i can guarantee something isthere for you to lend a hand, and do what you do best. okay. great. well,thanks so much. i appreciate it. kori schulman:thanks so much, brad. now i'd like tointroduce macon phillips,

the director of the officeof digital strategy. macon phillips:all right, thanks, do i needthat mic or this mic or -- let's go handheld mic. what's up washington? before i start, because this-- it's awfully easy to forget, but we should just give a roundof applause to kasey and kori who have done an incredible jobputting this all together and get you guys here. it's really -- so i workon the team with them.

it's called the officeof digital strategy, used to be called theoffice of new media. who knows what it will be callednext year, but, basically, we are a little group thathasn't really existed at the white house before. it started when the presidentwas sworn in 2009. and, we think about threethings with our job. i'll give you a quickoverview of those things, how we approach that problem andjust dive right into questions,

because i found that usuallymore productive and interesting than me sitting up hereand talking for a while. but, the three goals that wethink about are amplification, openness and participation. amplification is really aboutmaking sure that we are getting the president's messageout, as technology changes, how and where peopleget information. so we are sort of beyondnewspapers and evening newscasts now.

people are gettingit from everywhere. they are getting itfrom their friends. they are getting it from blogs. they are getting it fromjust a whole host of sources. and we want to make sure thatwe have relationships with those sources and that we are actuallygetting a content information out to them. the second thing is openness. which i think kind of gets atthe idea of being a transparent

administration, helping achievethe president's commitment to transparency, good government,but more generally, it's looking at theresponsibility we have in an age where people can just google tofind information and come to our website, really expecting thatthey are going to be able to get information about issues. and not just putting outinformation in sort of wonky reports, but actually thinkingcritically about how we can boil a lot of this content downdigestible things that regular

people can understand, infact that they might actually appreciate and share. so that means lookingat rich media, developing videos about issues,developing you know, blog posts, all sorts of things like thatto really try to get information out, but also make it accessibleas people find it from us. and then the third piece whichis the most exciting but it's been the biggest challengefor us is participation. so how do we actually use ourtechnology platform to create

meaningful opportunities forpeople to be able to participate in their government, becauseafter all that's sort of the point of this whole enterprise. so that to us is somethingwe think about every day. we've had somesuccess with that, mostly sort of online q&a's,giving people a chance to sort of ask questions topolicy officials, but more recently we watched aproject called we the people, which we think is a reallyexciting step forward into

that area as well. how many people herenow about we the people? okay. all right that's good. that's more than the last time. so, just very quickly, wethe people is a new future of whitehouse.gov where anyonecan create a petition, and if they get enoughpeople to sign it, the white house will issuean official response. and we've already seen overa million people creating an

account on the system andwe've answered i think, 30 some odd petitions andwe have quite a few left. to answer. and it's been a whole new way ofworking here at the white house and we certainly address someissues that we probably wouldn't have otherwise addressed. and so we really feel likewe are able to understand what matters to people andaddress the issues directly. so those are our three goals.

the way our team is organized,to sort of achieve those goals on a day to basis,into four competencies. our first is our content team. so those are the folks thatare looking at writing for the website, developing videos,graphics and that sort of thing. the second is ourengagement team. they are the folks that arelooking at how we respond to input, making sure that we areable to process that input and get it around the whitehouse to the right people.

the third is outreach. so they are the team that isbased on this joke that i tell at every one of these, thatthe only person who has whitehouse.gov as theirhomepage is my mother. and understandingthat, you know, people are going to other placesonline to get information, we recognize that. our websites are areally important asset. but it's not the starting pointfor every american citizen,

so we want to actually go tothe communities where they are getting information, thesimplest example is during the fight around the affordable careact and getting that pasted. we did a lot of work on thewebmd to try to find people as they were in the context ofthinking about health care and thinking about those choicesand those situations. and making sure that we had apresence there to engage them on the issue. and then the final group is ourplatform group which is really

sort of the technology andgraphic design group that has a whole relationship. the whole other office here atthe white house that does the straight up softwareengineering and development. governments are really goodat having a bunch of different offices with a bunch ofdifferent acronyms to do the simplest things. so, that's how weliaised with them. so that's thestructure of our team.

those are our goals of our team. i'll give you a little bit of mybackground just really quickly because it's really pertinent. i'm from alabama. we just found out that we aregoing to be playing lsu in the national championship. it's a really big deal, right. so i hope -- i'm still not surewhether i thought the last game was good or bad.

it was just sort of a thing. i just couldn't getmy head around it, but -- so that's my background. so, i -- (laughter) i'm from alabama, originally,but i became a americorps vista in 2004 -- 2003 which reallyturned me on to politics. i didn't studypolitics in college. but really, got engaged insort of social justice issues, right around the same time thatwe were going to war with iraq

and really becameengaged in this. and got to know a couple ofpeople that are on the dean campaign and had a bunch ofconversations when people are realizing you can send anemail and actually raise money. how is that goingto change things? and saw a lot ofthat from the inside, although i was neveron the campaign. one of my friends came downhere to start a consulting firm, called blue state digital,around this idea that political

campaigns would be interestedin using the web, you know, on a day-to-day basis,had a lot of work, called me up and said i havemore work than i can shake a stick at. it turns out no one knowswhat they are doing with this. it was before youtube, beforefacebook, before twitter. we were still -- we were tryingto figure out how you actually post a video to the internet. that was 2005 and i got theopportunity to come join the

campaign in chicago,which was a real thrill. no matter your politics,i highly recommend getting involved with a politicalcampaign of some sort at some point if you're interested inthis line of work generally, because it's just amazinghow quickly things move, how quickly good ideas riseto the top and how nimble an organization can be -- thatwas a very exciting time. then we won. so we were like, oh, wow, whatdo we do now and the next day,

you get the speechon a tuesday night, wednesday morning i was back inthe office launching change.gov which we ran for a few weeks. and then we came here. and when the president wasgetting the oath of office, i was across the street managingthe relaunch of whitehouse.gov which was really kind of fun. and then my first day of work iran against the crowds to get in here and rightinto this building.

i'm not quite surewhat i was going to do, but three yearslater, here i am. and we built areally great team. so in addition tokasey and kori. we have people who haveall sorts of backgrounds. we have some folks from new yorkwho are doing really interesting graphic design work. we have people who have beenthink tanks here in d.c. for a while and really understand theissues and understand how to

translate sort of the walktalk to regular people. and we've got some people thati've worked with in the past who saw the way that online advocacyworked and didn't work in 2005 and really saw an opportunityto come into the institution an figure out how we could takea step towards that -- that activism and really engagein a more meaningful way. so, it's reallygreat to work here. we work with just anamazing group of people. obviously, the president andvice president are just really

powerful figures. but there's also sort of thesenior staff in the middle management here, are justreal exceptional people. so i feel veryfortunate to work here. so with that, i'll justopen it up to questions, because i'm kind of interestedin seeing where we want to take this thing. let's start with you. audience member:(low audio) i workhere in washington d.c.

i suppose this conversationactually relates to exactly what we are encounter heretoday, as part of a tweetup where we can't really tweetat this -- (laughter) -- but notoriously there's been alot of discussions about how you guys came in. and had all of thesereally great awesome ideas, but maybe had to run to thestarbucks to have a wifi network that would let you access thingslike twitter and facebook. i know it's also a big issuewith social media emergency

management ideas and conceptsand how effective that's been for folks like the red crossand other organizations like crisis commons. could you talk or reflect alittle bit on just kind of where you were that first day andwhere you're hoping to be? macon phillips:it's a great question. i hope everybody can here. basically, it's how difficult isit to work here and how much of those barriersimpact innovation.

and i think it'sa very fair point. you know we're here in southcourt and you can't tweet at our twitter. that has not been loston the organizers. kori mentioned thatto me the other day. but -- it is aninteresting example. because we don't havewifi here, anywhere. we have ethernet. i don't know how many peoplestill have ethernet cables.

we do. we don't im each other. we don't use gmail or anyof those other things. and, that's kind of frustratingbecause you really don't want to kind of -- you want to be ableto, particularly in our work, i think, the biggest opportunityis to communicate in the medium that people are already using. you don't want to create aparallel structure when you're asking people tocome and engage. and that's just when we want totalk about what is important to

us or what we think theyshould care about, but, when you get to levels like theemergency management stuff -- i mean it's critical. it's been a huge issue. but, we've in the last threeyears really improved it. i remember the first day weweren't able to work from home and we had blackberries but icouldn't publish web content. and it turns out we did theweekly address every morning at -- every saturdaymorning at 6 a.m.

so, i was coming in everysaturday morning at 5:30 a.m. just to post a video. and that's sort ofwhere we started. now we have becomemuch more flexible. so we are able towork from home. able to do work more quicklyand more productively. and i think it gets at a largerissue for the white house. and this is one that we grapplewith every day which is how incredibly isolatingit is to work here.

i mean, you had to go throughtwo security checkpoints. it's like going ona plane to get here. i do that every day. there's giant fences andguards that keep people out. and we try to get out of here,but it's not really possible. you know? and even when youdo, you're in d.c., which is not you know -- it's avery special place and a lot of good things about it, alot of bad things about it,

but it's sort ofunique in the country. and so we are constantly lookingfor opportunities to really engage people outside of d.c. and that comes back to the realvalue of our online program which, you know -- howmany people are from outside of d.c. here? how many people are fromoutside eastern time zone? that's really cool. so this is a start for us.

i'd like to see it evenlydistributed, you know, but i also recognize people haveto fly here and do all of these other things to get here. but, to the extent that we canactually tap into our online program to get perspectives fromoutside of d.c. i think it's a huge benefit for therest of the building, but it's a constant struggle. how about over here? go ahead.

audience member:i used to work(inaudible) government. and now i do it fora larger corporation. so i was just wondering,obviously knowing the roadblocks you run into, but what are yourrules on replying to people that ask you about specific questionsthat you actually want to respond to and do you guyshave plan around that. macon phillips:so we've taken a differentposture than i think many agencies and are verysympathetic to the challenges of the agencies.

what's unique about the whitehouse is it pretty much have 100% turn over witheach administration. when you think about it, right? but there's someadministrative staff. there's security guys andthere's all sorts of people who are still here, buton january 20th, 2009, a whole new crew came in, andmost of us had known each other from the campaign or new eachother from d.c. and so forth. so there's a level of sortof collaboration and trust,

i think that is different thanthe agencies which are much bigger and muchmore bureaucratic. so we enabled to really takea posture of at least a web content, social media contentperspective: go ahead, go forth and prosper, get thecontent out there and if you feel uneasy about itraise it up a flag pole. so, kori just postthings -- hey kori, she just posts things to thewhite house account as they come up, as they are relevant.

the president is going to speakabout this if there's news about that, if somebody asks aquestion and she knows the answer, you knowshe's off the races. she feels kind of queasyabout something, you know, like she's not quite sure orsomething -- you know she may you know, reach out to me. and oftentimes, i don't know. so i'll reach out tomy boss and so forth. and so that sort of level.

and you know, i think what thatreally gets at is this idea that you can very quickly overprocess things in social media. the government isreally good at that. and, what's cool about socialmedia is it's conversational and you can't have a conversationwith someone where you know they are like, oh, hey, howare you doing today? i'm good. it doesn't work that way. and so, 90% of the stuff we puton social media is really either

a derivative of something elsewe've already publically said or just conversational andnot that controversial. so having this posture togetting content out makes us, i think, a lot moreinteresting to the public. at the agency level, they haveall of these clearance processes that were born of a pre-internettime when you know you had a newspaper go to print and it wasin the print and you couldn't get that back, thatbullet was fired. and so they are very carefulabout the kind of content they

put out. and to be sure the issues theydeal with are super important. matters of foreign policy,matters of public safety and so forth. and we've seen some progress. but i think there's a lot moreprogress we made at how you actually have that nimble orquick flexible clearance process in the social media. but it's a new one.

audience member:i'm getting a signal here. macon phillips:so what is your serviceprovider, at&t or verizon. audience member:verizon. macon phillips:verizon. okay. there you go. you guys with at&t,you're out of luck. audience member:kind of make a bigjoke of the at&t subscribes here. any how, what would be the thing-- your biggest success -- the thing that you'remost pleased about.

macon phillips:biggest success? lately, the we the peoplething has just been terrific. and it's a success just gettingout the door and seeing people use it. it's also one of ourbiggest challenges. i wouldn't use theword failure for it, because we are stilllearning from it. but, we are really grapplingwith a whole host of non-technology issues; morepublic engagement issues.

when you give people theopportunity to tell you what matters to them, what isthe reasonable expectation for response? and is it good enough just totell them where you stand on it? and how do you show them thatit's actually being brought into the process andmore to the point, how do you actually bringit into the process. and i think the progresswe've made on that is something i think our wholeteam is super proud of.

but it's incremental and it'sless -- because, as i said, technology based and moreculture based and how do you actually have a building that isreally interested in using tools to get mass public input, notjust the groups in d.c. who have an executive director whoeverhere to represent them and meet with them for lunch withpeople here and have very like, sort of normalconversations, you know, we are now opening up thewhite house to all sorts of conversations through all sortsof avenues and how we process

that and bring that into thebuilding is something we've made a heck of a lot of progressat in the last three years. but we recognize we havea lot of work to do. and it's reallyhard to articulate, but that -- i feelreally good about that. yeah. audience member:(low audio) -- macon phillips:i'll get you next. audience member:(low audio) -- congrats!

macon phillips:okay. well, wait. you're not anauburn fan, are you? audience member:no, no. macon phillips:okay, good. audience member:south carolina. i know that the campaignand the white house photo team is on tumblr. i was wondering if the whitehouse has any interest in getting on tumblr?

macon phillips:we've looked at it, yeahwe've talked to those guys. and, this is sort of falls intokori and some of the folks she works with; that area. and we haven't yet. and i think it bringsup a really good lesson that we've learned. we've learned thehard way at times, which is that it's very easyto open up a lot of presences. right. you can get on quora,you can get on myspace.

you can get on tumblr. you can get on whatever thenext one is, like in two weeks, you know. but you have to reallyunderstand why you're doing it. i think that the way i've seenthe campaign and other folks use it for storytelling isreally powerful, visual, that sort of thing. i think we are thinkingabout how we would actually use tumblr.

and once we get our head aroundthat there's no reasoning we wouldn't use it, it's justparticularly having constrained resources compared to whatwe had on the campaign and what other groups have. we really want to focusenergy on what's working, develop that andthen gradually grow, rather than sort of set upshop at a bunch of presences. but you may see that in thenext few months; maybe, weeks. we'll see. but -- go ahead.

audience member:(inaudible) huge shift as wenoted before in terms of how the best governments use thetechnology, infrastructure (low audio) et cetera. did this come after in thecampaign or was it any specific person's idea or was it a numberof people that came up with this modeling, you know,reaching out to the tweeter, facebook and getting feedbackfrom you know citizens like us? macon phillips:i don't think it was anyone's single idea to do this. i think if you'll look at thehistory of political campaigns

over the last few cycles. the obama campaign was one ofthe first one to use you know, these things. they benefitted from thetime because these things as, twitter and facebook as theyare now didn't exist previously. but just first touse the internet, you have mccain using it, youhave kerry, you have cain, you have a bunch of thesefolks trying to figure it out. i think one of the things thatreally made it different in 2008

was that president obama was acommunity organizer at heart. that was his first job. that was his instinct. and more than anyone, herecognized the power -- or the possibility when you createtools that empower regular people to do extraordinarythings together. i think that's the secret to howwe won was our ability to create opportunities for other people,many of whom hadn't been involved in the processbefore to get together

and drive us to victory. we were just in the rightplace, at the right time, off of the right tools. that is really powerful in apolitical campaign contents. it is all together morepowerful in a governing democratic context. but i think we are in an earliercycle in the governing idea than say the obama political onewas where it had a few previous campaigns to really figure outwhat set the public expectation

of participation, figure outwhat tools would really work, and we are still tryingto figure that out from a governing perspective. but it's less about the specifictechnologies and more about the ethic that you want to givecontrol to regular people who haven't been involved andthese tools offer a great way to do that. and then where theytake it is up to them. kori schulman:(low audio)

macon phillips:okay, great. audience member:i have a question mostlyabout the legacy that you as a digital strategistand your team are thinking about leaving behind. i mean it would be very easy ofcourse for a new administration to come in and not do tweetupsor not do these types of things. there are steps that you all aretaking to ensure that the people that you're reaching out toacross america are able to do that perpetually in the future.

macon phillips:not intentionally. it's not like we think howcan we lock this stuff in, i feel like there's a knewprojects that are perhaps forgettable andperhaps should be. you know. but there's a few projects thati think are if effectively done the types of things thatset public expectation, like the we the people thing. as i said earlier, we are stillfiguring out where this is going

to go, i though thepublic expectations, how to do it right. but i really believe firmly, ifwe can get it right and set a public expectation that theywill have a mechanism for letting the presidentknow what matters to them. that it will be verydifficult to walk that back. maybe it will be easy toreplace it with something else. maybe it's easy to replace itwith something that seems the same but it is actually not.

but, those sorts of things arereally cemented once the public understands how they workand continues to expect it. the other thing is thisstuff is fairly inevitable. i mean, when you look at thesort of changing news media, it's not like that'sgoing to unchange. and so a lot of things wedo are in response to that, the sort of changingnews landscape. so i think any futureadministration, regardless of the party, isreally going to have to have

a team like ours to understandhow they can make sure they are communicating with the public,because the public is changing how it gets information,where it gets it from. just the generationalshifts are amazing. so we'll be here in some form. and i think the publicengagement piece is really where we can see expectations gettinglocked in some sort of legacy. all right. so we'll take thelast question, back here. audience member:you spoke to diversificationof platform but not necessarily

to diversity itself. and one thing i've noticed withfederal accounts is that there's typically a spanish languageaccount and then there's the english languageaccount, for instance, nasa might have well over onemillion people following their nasa account, but onlyten's of thousands following the spanish language. has there been any discussionabout integration of content. so is a spanish tweet,white house tweet up.

macon phillips:that's a really great question. we could do a lotbetter of a job at that, but we do work on it. we approach it from thestandpoint -- we have la casa blanca which is the white house. that's our twitter account andwe also have a spanish language version of our site. we don't just translate theenglish content wrote to the spanish language.

we do repurpose some of thatbut we also try spanish language content first that we maytranslate back to english, that's been something thatwe've heard from folks that they really appreciate, sortof writing to -- writing in a language first and then justsort of having available in other languages, rather thanhave a spanish version of all of the english language stuff. but from a resource standpoint,it's very difficult. and so we try to get the mostimportant things that we feel

are sort of high level of newsout through our spanish language programs, but rightnow it's not a parody; it's not 100% of everythingon the english side. we'll see where that goes. it's something we'vebeen beefing up, but as i said we still havea lot of work to do on it. audience member:(low audio) audiencecan do to facilitate that. macon phillips:that's a good question. i mean, take a look at whatwe are currently doing through

those accounts, and tell us whatyou like and what you don't. what we should do more of. from just a translating makecontent more accessible. you know, we've looked at someof the models like what ted talks does, which is reallyfascinating stuff with the crowd source translation. not just for thewhite house program, but like the state department. imagine if the state departmentdid something and all of a

sudden american contents wasaccessible in every language, translated by native speakers,that would be brilliant. i mean, that's nothappening tomorrow, but seeing it happen at asmaller scale for ted is really encouraging to look at it for alarger scale for the government. and that gets back to that ideaof giving citizens a way to participate in their governmentthat's different than just asking questions, gettinganswers, actually pitching in, helping make government better.

that would be a reallygreat project to do. but we are not there tomorrow. but appreciate the instinctand take a look a what we are already doing in the short-termand you can get in touch with us to let us know. i'll take one more questionfrom the lady in the back. audience member:i was wondering, there are so many initiativesand projects and things that the white house does and how do youstreamline what you put out so

that the messages don't getmuddled and all of the things get confused with one another. macon phillips:it's a huge challenge. the simple answer is, we havesort of a main message that we are pushing. so this week, our focus isreally around extending the payroll tax. in addition of that, there'ssome work that's being done on the consumer financialprotection bureau to get

that director in sothat it's beefed up. you're going to hear a lot moreabout that in just a second. so i'll let otherstalk about that. but the opportunity is that inaddition to having sort of our national single message that weare focused on there's a whole host of communities thatare passionate about other issues -- related issues. and so kind of have towell, walk and chew gum. and so there's a number ofenvironmental issues that

people are really keyed up on. there's a bunch of foreignpolicy issues that people are really keyed up on. and the opportunity for usis to not be limited to one conversation at a time, butactually be able to do a bunch. i think what you get at is whenthey cross over and someone is coming and they say oh, theyare talking about iraq, no, they are talking about payrolltax, what is going on here? keeping that stuff organizedis really important.

that's why we like to thinkwe have a site that does that fairly well. but we also are very intentionalin our outreach to reach to communities that are alreadytalking about these issues and then making sure thatwe are getting content. to them that's relevant and notjust sort of spamming them with what we think is important. and it's something that wethe people is all about. it's a mechanism by which peoplecan self-organize around issues

that they care about and wereable to respond very efficiently to those specific issues. so, we are workingon that problem; very much agree it'san ongoing challenge. we feel like we've achieved somethings to really get at that. i'm going to handit over now to kori, but thanks such for coming in. as i said earlier it's justgreat to have people from outside of d.c.

have a great day! kori schulman:thanks, macon. i'd like to introduce davidkamin who is a special assistant to the presidentfor economic policy. david kamin:hi, it's great to be here. so, as i said at this work overat the national economic council which is the body in the whitehouse that helps coordinate economic policy forthe administration. i'm going to start off with anoverview of sort of where we are

in the economic, sort of themajor initiatives that we've got going forward to get theeconomic going again and to create more jobs. and then we'll, ofcourse, be very happy to take your questions. so, where we are rightnow is a very, very, different place than wherewe were a -- now coming on three years ago. i think it's sometimes importantremember where we started at.

when the president took officethe economy was losing something like 800,000 jobs per month. we had suffered a shock in termsof people's net worth that was larger than was sufferedgoing into the great depression of 1929. we faced a very, very real riskof a second great depression. because of decisive actionthat was taken by this administration, we avoided that. we've now seen 2.9 million jobscreated over the last 21 --

private sector jobs createdover the last 21 months. we've seen an economythat is growing. and that is a far better placethan where we were when we took office when the economy wason the precipice of what could easily become asecond great depression. however, economic growth isknowing you're as strong as it needs to be. when you have an 8.6%unemployment rate you can't declare victory, it issomething that no one

here is satisfied with. and we need more jobs right now. the president understandsthe risk the economy faces. we are growing but weneed to grow faster. we are creating jobs but weneed to create more of them. we also face risks comingfrom outside this country. so there's a financial crisisand hopefully one that will be resolved, but a potential crisisis you're represent that is a head wind to our economy.

those were the reasons why thepresident, a few months ago, gave to congress theamerican jobs act. the american jobs act was aninitiative to try to create jobs right now througha variety of mechanisms. it included, you know, a payrolltax cut for all americans going into next year, extending thepayroll tax cut that's in place this year. that's a two percentage pointpayroll tax cut for typical family making $50,000,that's in the $1,000 tax cut.

going to next year, we proposeexpanding that to 3.1% which would provide about $1,500for a typical family. that's right now at issueright now in congress. we've actually seen votes lastweek on the payroll tax cut. now importantly, you know, thepresident proposed that we think this payroll tax cutwill create jobs, goes both to middleclass families, also goes to small businesses. because we cut in halfthe payroll taxes for

small businesses. the senate democrats it proposedthat that tax roll tax cut be paid for by somethingmillionaires to pay a little bit more. that was something we supported. it got over 50 votes but didnot get the supermajority, 60 votes needed. it was blocked. and we going intothe next few weeks,

we are making an absolutepriority where we see that past. we think that when, you know,the american people support this, they support the idea thatmiddle class families going into next year should begetting additional relief. independent economists say thepayroll tax cut that we propose would add about -- between600,000 million jobs next year. it's something that we need toget done in order to both give relief to familiesand create jobs. also in the next few weeks,another part of the american

jobs act will be up for vote,which is per the extension of unemployment insurance. so even as we provide reliefto middle class families, through the payroll tax cut it'sabsolutely essential that we continue to provide the supportto america's workers when they lose a job, because we continueto see unemployment that is far too high and we need to makesure that we are providing people who are working for work,and these are people who are looking for work, the benefitsthey need in order to make ends

meet and give them thesupport they need while they try to find work. it's important to also note thatunemployment insurance is one of the most effectiveways to create jobs. these people who receivethose benefits then go out and spend it. and so, an extension ofunemployment insurance next year would create hundredsof thousands of jobs. now, those are two pieces of theamerican jobs act that i expect

will be debate and should be onthe table coming up this month. there are a number of otherpieces that we are committed to and that we have askedcongress to pass. those include, for instance,rebuilding america and creating jobs now. so for instance, the americanjobs act included a $50 billion fund for infrastructure,an immediate investment in america's infrastructure. it would go to roads,railways, america's airports.

we think that those types ofmeasures, they both, you know, as -- infrastructure is one ofthe most important things that we can invest in for long-termeconomic growth and it also helps create jobs now. so it sort of hitsthat dual bid, we think it's reallyvery important, and we hope thatcongress acts on that. there have also been a numberof other measures that, unfortunately, congress didvote on, they got blocked.

we are going to continueto fight for it. so for instance,there was a fund, a $30 billion fund toreconstruct 35,000 schools across this country. that's actually something thatwe hope will be acted on by congress soon. there was a $35 billion fundto prevent teachers from being fired next year, that's againsomething that we think is absolutely essential.

that represents an investment inhuman capital in this country, even as it saves jobs. and we think that that type ofmeasure can be very helpful for creating -- for both savingjobs right now and getting the economy going againover the long run. now, importantly, the entiretyof the american jobs act was fully paid for. and that was something thatwas important to the president. we understand that we havea long-run deficit problem,

something that wedo need to act on, and the jobs measures thatwe put in place right now, we thought it was importantfor them to be paid for. and so the american jobsact, as part of that, we proposed a number of measuresincluding cutting back tax expenditures for some of thehighest income americans, cutting back some of theoil and gas subsidies, cutting back the carriedinterest loophole, that paid for theamerican jobs act.

also the senate then put on thetable another -- an alternative, which was to impose a small taxon the highest income americans, those making overa million dollars. that was also a fair way todo it, and we supported that. the point is that this bill andall of its iterations has been so there is no excuse fornot acting on these jobs measures now. it does not add tothe deficit over time. now even as we face asignificant deficit when it

comes to the economy, and we do,we need to create more jobs and get people back to work. we also face a significantfiscal deficit going forward. so when we took office, we faceda deficit of $1.3 trillion in the very first year andtrillions of dollars in deficits going forward over the decade. that -- the president iscommitted to putting the budget on a sustainable course. that's why this fall he proposeda $4 trillion deficit reduction

plan that begins reducing thedeficit -- the debt as a share of the economy. now obviously, in d.c. wehaven't agreed on exactly what, you know, what we should do tobalance the budget, because, you know, we had anegotiation this summer, we signed into law thebudget control act, which was a trillion dollar downpayment on deficit reduction, but the presidentwanted to go, do more. he wanted the big deal whichwould manage to both create

jobs now, put in placesome stimulus now, and also reduce thedeficit going forward. now, that didn't happen. and again, with the jointcommittee on deficit reduction, again a deal didn't happen. i think the basic fact of thematter is we are committed to a deal that's a balanced deal. a deal where we seecuts across, you know, across the budget but at thesame time protects those areas

where we need toinvest in our future, and also protects some of themost vulnerable americans, and finally, andvery importantly, asks the highest incomeamericans to contribute to deficit reduction. because we think that is animportant principle and we think it's also probably the only waywe're going to put our budget on a sustainable course, while atthe same time maintaining the core responsibilities ofgovernment and investing

in our future. now that's something the otherside isn't willing to do. they've put forward,for instance, in the house budgetresolution last spring, they put forward a plan to tryto achieve deficit reduction through only spending cuts. it involved massivecuts to medicaid, it involved cuttinginfrastructure by a third over the next ten years.

that was not a vision thepresident would agree to. we are willing to compromise,but we think that compromise means compromise from all sides,and making sure the deficit reduction is a balancedplan going forward. so the immediate thing thatwe're dealing with right now, in the next few weeks, is makingsure that the economy going into next year has the support itneeds and that we continue to, you know, that growth continuesand that we continue to support job creation, and thatit becomes stronger.

that will require passing apayroll tax cut going into next year, expanding thatpayroll tax cut, and also passing an extensionof unemployment insurance, which expires at theend of this year. i think going forward we'regoing to continue to have a debate over the budget, and ithink you're going to see that we remain committed to makingsure that we put the budget on a sustainable course, butwe do so in a balanced way. so -- and with that, i'mhappy to take questions.

audience member:a question aboutthe euro debt crisis. i know that wasn't underconsideration until back in 2009, but how has it impactedwhat the administration is doing now because it's stillreally not settled? david kamin:yeah, no, i thinkit's a great question. so first of all, you know, oneof the most important things we can do is act on the things thatwe have immediately under our control, and, you know, oneof the reasons the president proposed the american jobs actwas both because we saw that

even right now, you know, theeconomy's growing but it's not growing as fast as it shouldbe, we're creating jobs, not creating enough. we also need aninsurance policy, because if the rest ofthe world is, you know, if the rest of the world didn'tmanage to get its act together we needed to make sure that wehave in place the measures we need next year so that theamerican economy is not put -- subjected to, you know, a riskof a downturn because of what's

going on in therest of the world. so one of the most importantthings that we can do is actually act on the thingswe have control over, and that is the american jobsact that the president proposed, the payroll tax cut thatthey're voting on right now, unemployment insurance that'sup at the end of the month. so those are thingsthat we can control. congress can pass them,the president can sign them into law.

that's the first step. now, obviously, when it comesto the crisis in europe, we've been veryactively involved. the president, secretarygeithner have been very actively involved in talking to theircounterparts in europe. and one of the things we thinkthat we bring to the table is our own experience with thefinancial crisis just a few years ago. you know, obviously going into 2008 and 2009 the american

financial system was sufferinga crisis of its own, and, you know, what it took, whatwe did then was not necessarily popular, but it did endthe financial crisis, it managed to put theeconomy, you know, give it the stability itneeded to begin growing again. and we think thatwe bring that to, that experience to the table,and telling europe that, you know, they do have theresources they need to solve the crisis, it is a question of willand making sure they actually

use the resourcesthey have to do so. in 2008 and 2009 we found thewill to end the financial crisis here, and it's that experiencethat when the president and secretary geithner are talkingwith their counterparts in europe that they'rebringing to the table. audience member:i'm wondering what you -- whatthe white house's position is on occupy wall street andconsidering that you've been talking aboutthe 1% giving -- paying higher taxes, and isthere any chance that president

obama might mention the occupywall street movement in the state of the union? david kamin:so, i doubt that -- given my ownposition on the economic team, i doubt i'm going to make afundamental pronouncement on occupy wall street and theadministration's position. but what i can sayis that, you know, from the get-go the presidentand this administration have been committed to theidea that, you know, we need an economy that isgrowing and also growing fairly.

where, you know, the gains ofthe economy are shared fairly across the country. you know, so, of course,when it came to, you know, to getting out of thecrisis of 2008-2009, i just spoke about the factthat, you know, that it took, you know, somewhat unpopularmeasures in order to resolve the financial crisis. now, something that wasimportant and that is often not talked about is we are alsocommitted to make sure that any

cost, any cost of tarp thatremains on the federal books gets fully paid for by the typesof institutions that receive financial relief. and that's why the presidenthas proposed a financial crisis responsibility fee, which asksthe largest institutions to contribute to deficit reduction,fully pay off the cost of tarp, and is actually focused onspecifically the types of risk that got us into thisfinancial crisis to begin with. now we go beyond that.

you know, the president alsoenacted financial regulatory reform, which, you know, ismeant to be a bulwark against the very type ofirresponsibility that got us into this crisis. and, you know, so if, you know,there's ever any need again to go in and make surethat, you know, the types of institutions thatimposed risk across the economy, that they need toget resolved, that, the financial regulatory reform,make sure that those banks pay

back the full cost. it has, you know, a specificmeasure in there where if you need to put money into thebanks the banks then have to pay it back. and, you know, beyond just whatwe're doing when it comes to the banks, as i said, we arecommitted to the idea that the richest americans in thiscountry do need to contribute to deficit reduction, thatthey do need to pay more. that's why the presidenthas said that, you know,

when it comes to the-- at the end of 2012, the tax cuts for the highestincome americans should expire. that will save $800 billionover the next ten years. the president has on top ofthat proposed limiting the tax expenditures that go to therichest americans by cutting them back by about a third. that raises another $400billion over the next ten years. we've also proposed anumber of other measures, whether it's getting rid of thecarried interest loophole which

goes to, you know,hedge fund managers, whether it's gettingrid of the -- you know, the loophole that allows privatejets to get depreciated faster. all of those measures we haveproposed and put on the table. the point is that we agree withthe idea that we need to have a fair, you know, that when itcomes to getting the deficit down, we need to make sure thatwe do it in a fair way where we ask the richestamericans to pay more. we're also committed to the ideathat economic growth needs to be

fair and widely sharedacross the country. kori schulman:we've got one more question. david kamin:okay. audience member:more recently we've seen theadministration sort of step up their aggressiveness indealing with -- sorry -- chinese fiscal policy. i was just curious, shouldwe continue to expect the administration to take astronger line towards china on those issues?

david kamin:you know, i thinkit's a great question. you know, obviously we'vebeen speaking with our chinese counterparts since comingto office, and, you know, telling them that, you know,it was important to us that the chinese currency policy change,and we've actually seen some movement on it. we've seen, you know,in terms, in real terms, which is sort of theimportant thing to look at, we've actually seen anappreciation of the chinese

currency relativeto the u.s. dollar. we think that's animportant movement. it's obviously somethingthat's, you know, it continues to remain veryimportant to us as we talk to our chinese counterparts becausewe think that going forward it's actually in the best interestsof the united states and the best interests of chinathat we come to a, you know, sustainable course. because what we've seen goingup till now is not sustainable.

it's not good for the u.s.economy if we continue to have the type of currentaccount deficit that we're running against china, and thetruth is it's not a sustainable way for the chineseeconomy to grow. and so i think we have seenimportant movement there. i think that it's something thatwe continue to discuss with them and remains very important tous to make sure that we get on a sustainable path, onewhere we see, you know, fair trade going onbetween both countries.

so i think we've seen progresssince coming to office because of the efforts that we've taken,and it's something that we continue to work on with them. thank you very much.