Latest / BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback / Episode 477 The Fall of Bob Packwood (part 11) The Third Bonus Speech from The Gresham Area Chamber of Commerce July 7, 2015 - Dole 18

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Episode 477 The Fall of Bob Packwood (part 11) The Third Bonus Speech from The Gresham Area Chamber of Commerce July 7, 2015 - Dole 18 · BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

0:25
SPEAKER_10: Hi everybody, this is Randall Wallace, and welcome to the Randall Wallace Presents Podcast.
0:29
SPEAKER_10: This is our third bonus episode uh concerning Bob Packwood.
0:35
SPEAKER_10: Uh this is a speech that he will have given, he gave to the Gresham uh area chamber of commerce in uh Oregon.
0:43
SPEAKER_10: Uh this is uh a really interesting uh address which he will talk about the issues that were going on in 2015, and he'll talk about the U.S.
0:53
SPEAKER_10: Senate.
0:53
SPEAKER_10: He's got a great story about um about one of the heads of labor and the importance of relationships.
0:59
SPEAKER_10: He hits on a lot of the same notes that we've talked about on this podcast, which uh makes him a very interesting uh person to be profiling.
1:08
SPEAKER_10: Uh and so here he is uh uh speaking in 2015.
1:13
SPEAKER_10: Just so you know, uh as of our recording, he is still with us.
1:18
SPEAKER_10: Um uh Bob Pack is 93 years old, um, is retired now, uh, but had a very lucrative next life uh as a lobbyist and uh representative of Oregon uh with Washington, D.C.
1:32
SPEAKER_10: in Washington, D.C.
1:33
SPEAKER_10: with his Sunshine Um research corporation and his lobbying firm.
1:41
SPEAKER_10: So uh here we're gonna let him give this speech.
1:45
SPEAKER_10: I think you'll find it fascinating.
1:47
SPEAKER_10: You're gonna learn a lot about the inner workings of the Senate, you're gonna learn a lot about its different issues and in depth, and he is really interesting as he tells those stories.
1:56
SPEAKER_10: Also, we've got two more shows on Bob Packwood coming up.
1:59
SPEAKER_10: They are his oral history for the Bob Dole uh Institute of Politics that we've been using throughout our series on Bob Dole.
2:09
SPEAKER_10: Uh so you will have heard some parts of that before, but this will be uh the his oral history in its entirety for two episodes.
2:19
SPEAKER_10: So we got those two episodes coming up.
2:21
SPEAKER_10: With that, here is Bob Packwood speaking to the Gresham Chamber of Commerce on July seventh, twenty fifteen.
2:57
SPEAKER_03: So welcome someone who has been and continues to be successful against all this.
3:03
SPEAKER_03: It's my pleasure to introduce Senator Bob back when you're in the middle of the day.
3:17
SPEAKER_09: As we were talking, he says that has politics gotten worse or meaner?
3:21
SPEAKER_09: And I said, Yes, but it's understandable.
3:24
SPEAKER_09: I want you to think of Oregon.
3:25
SPEAKER_09: When I first ran, oh wait a minute, I didn't introduce my wife.
3:31
SPEAKER_09: Lynn, that's your fault.
3:33
SPEAKER_09: This is my wife, Elaine Franklin, who is an old old stand up, Elaine, so that everybody can see you.
3:43
SPEAKER_09: Elaine runs political campaigns, and when Lynn was in the legislature, she and Elaine were literally married to each other on political campaigns throughout the state.
3:53
SPEAKER_09: Now, way before Lynn ever even got involved in politics, when I first ran for the legislature half a century ago, 98% of the voters were Republican or Democrat.
4:07
SPEAKER_09: And you had moderating influences in both parties.
4:12
SPEAKER_09: Today, about one-third of the voters are not Republican or Democrat.
4:16
SPEAKER_09: They're independent or they're green or they're whatever, but they're not Republicans or Democrats, and they're not allowed to vote in the primary.
4:24
SPEAKER_09: So who does that leave in both parties to nominate candidates?
4:29
SPEAKER_09: It leaves the wings of both parties.
4:32
SPEAKER_09: And you get zealots from both parties, and zealots know they're right.
4:37
SPEAKER_09: They just know they're right.
4:39
SPEAKER_09: And to make a compromise is making a pact with the devil.
4:43
SPEAKER_09: And this same thing has happened in any number of other states in the United States.
4:47
SPEAKER_09: So you now have a Congress that is more partisanally divided, partially because of the electoral process, that drives out the middle of both parties because they're not allowed to vote.
4:59
SPEAKER_09: So that's part of the background.
5:01
SPEAKER_09: But is there still fun in politics?
5:03
SPEAKER_09: Oh, yes, it's great fun.
5:05
SPEAKER_09: Elaine, my wife, was my chief of staff for 15 years, and we would be on the road in different places or functions.
5:11
SPEAKER_09: One of the ones I remember most of all is Grants Pass.
5:15
SPEAKER_09: Evening function, I'm speaking to maybe 150 people in the city council chambers, but before I'm to speak, they're making a wonderful award to a woman about 75, I would say, of everything she had done in the community, the Boys and Girls Aid Society, the school district, didn't matter what it is.
5:32
SPEAKER_09: And it was so poignantly done, a person on the city, uh one of the city council or somebody else would say something, put a rose in a in a vase and pass it on to the next person.
5:42
SPEAKER_09: They'd put a rose in and say everything she had done.
5:44
SPEAKER_09: At the end of it, you wondered how on earth did she ever do this?
5:48
SPEAKER_09: For the first 20 years of her marriage, she didn't have a telephone.
5:50
SPEAKER_09: She had to go to the local grocery store and use their telephone.
5:53
SPEAKER_09: She was sensational.
5:55
SPEAKER_09: So she gets up and says, Well, I just am, I've been so lucky to be able to do this for the community.
6:01
SPEAKER_09: I could not have done it, though, without my husband Charles.
6:06
SPEAKER_09: And Charles, I wonder if you would say something.
6:08
SPEAKER_09: Charles get up and said, I'll tell you one thing.
6:10
SPEAKER_09: She don't dust.
6:17
SPEAKER_09: Or there are unusual friendships in politics.
6:23
SPEAKER_09: One of my closest personal friends was Lane Kirkland, the national president of the AFL CIO.
6:30
SPEAKER_09: As a young lawyer, I'd practiced a little bit of labor law and at least understood the issue.
6:34
SPEAKER_09: But in life, you meet people that you just fit.
6:37
SPEAKER_09: And Lane and I and our wives fit perfectly.
6:41
SPEAKER_09: We would go to the theater together, we'd go to movies together, we'd have dinner together, just the four of us.
6:46
SPEAKER_09: And in 1980, I was running for re-election against Ted Kulingoski, subsequently our governor.
6:53
SPEAKER_09: He was then a midterm senator from Lane County.
6:57
SPEAKER_09: So win or lose or lose, he'd still be in the legislature.
7:01
SPEAKER_09: He had represented the AFL CIO of the Lane, of the Lane County Labor Central Committee.
7:07
SPEAKER_09: I was trying to get labor to be neutral.
7:09
SPEAKER_09: I didn't, I knew I had no hope of getting an endorsement.
7:12
SPEAKER_09: But I wonder if I could get them to be neutral.
7:14
SPEAKER_09: Well, I didn't succeed.
7:16
SPEAKER_09: They endorsed Kulungoski.
7:18
SPEAKER_09: The Oregon Labor did.
7:19
SPEAKER_09: So I called Lane Kirkland.
7:21
SPEAKER_09: He was in Vienna at that, or in uh Switzerland at the International Labor Organization.
7:26
SPEAKER_09: I said, Oh, Lane, you know, darn it, they have endorsed my opponent.
7:33
SPEAKER_09: And he goes, Well, I guess we'll just have to make sure the unions give them 5,000, give them 500.
7:42
SPEAKER_09: And I actually raise more labor money than Kulungoski did.
7:45
SPEAKER_09: Not that I raise much.
7:47
SPEAKER_09: He would just cut off.
7:48
SPEAKER_09: This is what friendship means.
7:50
SPEAKER_09: But another wonderful experience with Lane, my wife and I are going to a dinner party at Howard Baker's house of major Republican donors.
8:00
SPEAKER_09: And we pull up and park in front of the house, and Lane pulls up and parks right in front of us.
8:04
SPEAKER_09: And as we walked into the house, he walks in with us and he asks where the bar is and downstairs.
8:09
SPEAKER_09: He goes downstairs.
8:10
SPEAKER_09: I said, I'm going to stay up here, Lane, and meet people as they come in the door.
8:14
SPEAKER_09: About two minutes later, he comes back up.
8:16
SPEAKER_09: He says, Where the hell am I?
8:18
SPEAKER_09: And I said, Well, this is Republican Senatorial Committee fundraiser.
8:22
SPEAKER_09: Lane, where's your check?
8:23
SPEAKER_09: And he said, My God, isn't this the German ambassador's home?
8:26
SPEAKER_09: And I said, No, no, no.
8:28
SPEAKER_09: The ambassador's home was next door.
8:34
SPEAKER_09: He saw my wife and I get out of the car, and he assumed we're going to the same place, and he follows us in.
8:42
SPEAKER_09: And then Margaret Thatcher.
8:45
SPEAKER_09: First, you have to appreciate this, you have to understand what Gibraltar is.
8:49
SPEAKER_09: It is not just a rock or the rock of Gibraltar or the rock you see in ads.
8:52
SPEAKER_09: It is a principal British naval base.
8:56
SPEAKER_09: And it has been for 300 years.
8:58
SPEAKER_09: Britain got it from Spain in 1707 under a treaty.
9:01
SPEAKER_09: Spain had lost a war, and they got it, and it's actually, you know, it's it abuts the Spanish mainland.
9:07
SPEAKER_09: But in a main, British still is a main British repair base, naval base.
9:13
SPEAKER_09: Well, Elena and I are at a dinner one night at the British Embassy, and it's an honor of Margaret Thatcher, and the British ambassador is the host of it.
9:23
SPEAKER_09: So at the end of dinner, it's his turn first to make the toast.
9:28
SPEAKER_09: And he said, Prime Minister, you may not remember when we first met.
9:33
SPEAKER_09: You were not then, Prime Minister, you were the Conservative Party Leader, and you and your husband, Dennis, came to Spain, and we had a good hard government-to-government day of work.
9:43
SPEAKER_09: And then that evening, you and Dennis, my wife and I, and the Spanish Foreign Secretary and his wife went out to dinner in that delightful little restaurant up on the hill.
9:52
SPEAKER_09: And when you left, you wrote in the guest book, Gibraltar is British.
9:59
SPEAKER_09: And she said, I was able, by dint of diplomacy, to keep the Spanish Foreign Secretary from seeing what you wrote.
10:07
SPEAKER_09: She responded, she went, Oh, Tony, his name was Anthony Ackland.
10:11
SPEAKER_09: Oh, Tony, she says, You're such a wonderful boy.
10:13
SPEAKER_09: She said, I didn't care if the Spanish Foreign Secretary saw that I had written Gibraltar is British.
10:20
SPEAKER_09: The Spanish know that Gibraltar is British.
10:23
SPEAKER_09: It's the British Foreign Service that forgets from time to time.
10:28
SPEAKER_09: So there is wonderful humor in politics.
10:31
SPEAKER_09: Let's talk today about just two things.
10:34
SPEAKER_09: Tax reform and spending.
10:37
SPEAKER_09: Tax reform is easy in theory, although I discovered I always had to be careful when somebody in the audience said, I want a flat tax.
10:43
SPEAKER_09: And I say, What do you mean by that?
10:45
SPEAKER_09: 10% tax, and I get to keep all my deductions.
10:47
SPEAKER_09: I said, no, no, that isn't what a flat tax is.
10:49
SPEAKER_09: A flat tax is you lose all your deductions and you can dramatically lower the rates.
10:55
SPEAKER_09: Hmm.
10:55
SPEAKER_09: Well, he's not sure of that.
10:57
SPEAKER_09: But he never thought of it that way.
10:59
SPEAKER_09: Indeed, at least uh when I was chairman of the Finance Committee a generation ago, you could have had a flat tax if you got rid of all exemptions, all deductions, and counted everything as income, it's not now counted.
11:11
SPEAKER_09: Interest on municipal bonds, uh fringe benefits that your employer provides.
11:15
SPEAKER_09: If you did all that, you could have a flat tax at around 11%.
11:19
SPEAKER_09: Now, that would mean, however, that the widow of two kids who pays no taxes now would pay eleven hundred dollars.
11:25
SPEAKER_09: So people say, well, that isn't that isn't fair.
11:28
SPEAKER_09: So if you allowed all families of four to have a$30,000 exemption, again, this is 25, 30 years ago, you could still have a flat tax around 19%.
11:40
SPEAKER_09: And you'd have to skew it just a bit.
11:43
SPEAKER_09: The flat tax very slightly, not a lot, uh, but only slightly favors the rich, mainly because the very rich who have all of these deductions would lose them all.
11:54
SPEAKER_09: The guy working in the mill that fires a 10-party EZ doesn't really have a lot of deductions to lose anyway.
12:00
SPEAKER_09: But that's what you would have to do.
12:01
SPEAKER_09: But here's what you run up against if you're going to try to have tax reform and get rid of deductions.
12:07
SPEAKER_09: You had better do it on a big scale, because if you try to do this, you know, if we eliminate the mortgage interest deduction, why we can lower the tax rate 3%.
12:18
SPEAKER_09: Top half, and 39 to 36%.
12:22
SPEAKER_09: And you will immediately draw the fierce opposition of the home builders, carpenters union, mortgage bankers, realtors to them.
12:33
SPEAKER_09: They are as passionate about that issue as right to life is about abortion or the NRA is about guns.
12:39
SPEAKER_09: They will bring absolute total pressure on a member to vote against that kind of a reform bill.
12:46
SPEAKER_09: And there is not any generic welling up of ground support for tax reform.
12:52
SPEAKER_09: It just isn't there.
12:55
SPEAKER_09: So the only way you're going to do it is if you really say, okay, no more charitable deductions, no more mortgage interest deductions, taxation on municipal bonds, fringe benefits will be taxed.
13:07
SPEAKER_09: You could do it in that fashion, but you'll never do it piecemeal, one issue at a time, because you will draw the opposition, ferocious opposition of whatever the group is.
13:18
SPEAKER_09: But if somehow you've taken on seven or eight groups and have lowered the tax rates by 20%, you suddenly have a different constituency.
13:27
SPEAKER_09: But that's the only way you will get tax reform done.
13:31
SPEAKER_09: Now spending.
13:32
SPEAKER_09: Spending's easy.
13:35
SPEAKER_09: Um I regard spending as a much greater problem than the debt.
13:40
SPEAKER_09: We can finance the debt.
13:41
SPEAKER_09: It's not unlike a mortgage on your house.
13:43
SPEAKER_09: You know, you make$100,000, you can afford a$200,000 house.
13:47
SPEAKER_09: You make a million dollars, you can afford a$2 million house, and you can afford you can afford to carry the mortgage.
13:52
SPEAKER_09: We can actually afford to carry the debt.
13:55
SPEAKER_09: We're paying an immense amount of interest, but can we afford it?
13:59
SPEAKER_09: Yes.
14:00
SPEAKER_09: The problem is the projections on spending in the future.
14:06
SPEAKER_09: If you took nothing but Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and then other government retirement, military retirement, civilian, federal civilian employees, and interest on the debt, they will be about 70% within a decade, 70% of the entire federal budget.
14:24
SPEAKER_09: That means that infrastructure gets squeezed, education gets squeezed, environmental protection gets squeezed.
14:30
SPEAKER_09: Unless you want to dramatically increase taxes to take care of that, and most people don't want that.
14:36
SPEAKER_09: But here is the inevitable history.
14:38
SPEAKER_09: A century ago, all of the governments in the United States, federal, state, local, fire districts, water districts, anything, spent about nine to ten percent of the gross domestic product altogether.
14:50
SPEAKER_09: Today, all the same governments spend about 41 or 2%.
14:55
SPEAKER_09: And over those hundred years it has been this.
14:57
SPEAKER_09: You know, does it dip on occasion?
14:59
SPEAKER_09: Yes.
14:59
SPEAKER_09: But it's is that the trend?
15:01
SPEAKER_09: And really the debate ought to be what is this, not the size of the deficit, but how much of the gross domestic product does this country want to spend on government?
15:11
SPEAKER_09: And local government is about a third of that total spending.
15:14
SPEAKER_09: Don't assume it's all federal.
15:16
SPEAKER_09: How much?
15:17
SPEAKER_09: Whether or not you can make that debate, I don't know.
15:20
SPEAKER_09: And we're obviously going into Obamacare now.
15:22
SPEAKER_09: It's not going to be repealed.
15:24
SPEAKER_09: Every medical program we have ever undertaken, especially Medicare and Medicaid, we have underestimated the cost of it year by year by year.
15:31
SPEAKER_09: Every time we underestimate it, I think we probably will on Obamacare.
15:35
SPEAKER_09: But will we get rid of it?
15:37
SPEAKER_09: No.
15:37
SPEAKER_09: Will, as we have with Medicare, since it was adopted in the mid-60s, tinker with it?
15:42
SPEAKER_09: Yes.
15:43
SPEAKER_09: Have we tinkered with it sufficiently that we have narrowed the cost or at least stopped the increase?
15:47
SPEAKER_09: No.
15:49
SPEAKER_09: But unless America finally says, you know, we don't really want to look like Denmark or Sweden spending 52%, 53%, 55% of their gross domestic product, we don't want to do that.
16:01
SPEAKER_09: That is the debate we ought to be having.
16:05
SPEAKER_09: And within that debate, how do you want to allocate the resources that we are going to spend?
16:11
SPEAKER_09: Do you want it to be disproportionate on health and pensions?
16:15
SPEAKER_09: Or do you want to spread it under a variety, a bigger variety of different things, and maybe have to narrow, and you want to phrase this very carefully if you're in politics, how to narrow the increase in spending on health and pensions.
16:28
SPEAKER_09: You never say, I want to cut it.
16:31
SPEAKER_09: And and you want to be careful of this.
16:34
SPEAKER_09: If the president's budget wants to increase something 10%, and Congress increases it 5% from what we're spending, they will be accused of having cut spending by 5%, even though it's up 5%.
16:46
SPEAKER_09: So as a politician, you just want to be careful of how you choose your words, and you think to yourself, how can they be taken out of context?
16:54
SPEAKER_09: God, it was so much easier in my day with no cell phones and no none of those instant cameras.
16:59
SPEAKER_09: And if somebody was gonna somebody really would have to have been in the room consciously listening to what you're saying, not just picking up something accidentally across a table when you're conversing.
17:10
SPEAKER_09: Anyway, that's it.
17:11
SPEAKER_09: That's politics then and now.
17:13
SPEAKER_09: Appreciate being here.
17:14
SPEAKER_09: Be happy to take any questions.
17:50
SPEAKER_03: Um for the good of the order, and then we'll open it up uh to uh to you if you have some questions you'd like to ask uh Senator Packwood.
18:03
SPEAKER_03: Senator, one of the questions uh in this 2016 presidential race, it appears that we have one party uh with an air apparent to the nomination, uh, and another party with enough candidates to field a football team.
18:20
SPEAKER_03: What uh what are the political implications for each party?
18:24
SPEAKER_03: Um and is there an inside the beltline favorite in the Republican camp, insofar as you know?
18:38
SPEAKER_09: Uh no there is no favorite inside.
18:41
SPEAKER_09: This is not like the time Bob Dole ran for it or John McCain ran for it.
18:45
SPEAKER_09: They were kind of favorites, but you be nobody in this race uh comes out at five to four and everybody else is ten to one.
18:52
SPEAKER_09: So you can pay your money and take your choice on this.
18:55
SPEAKER_09: Uh, I have a bet with my wife Elaine, however, that Hillary will not be the Democratic nominee.
19:00
SPEAKER_09: And um if that is not the case, it will be a very interesting uh race.
19:07
SPEAKER_09: Now, the the problem, in my judgment, a lot of Republican candidates have, is they have to tilt so far to the right in the primaries that they're stuck with the statements that they have made in the general election, and it kills them.
19:22
SPEAKER_09: Uh, Jeb Bush is trying to avoid that.
19:24
SPEAKER_09: He at the moment he has attempted to to uh moderate his tone, realizing that he's he has to compete, but certainly not making statements like Ted Cruz or others.
19:33
SPEAKER_09: I mean, uh here's an example of uh foolishness before the Supreme Court made the decision on gay marriage, thirty-two states had already legalized gay marriage.
19:44
SPEAKER_09: This really wasn't a decision that upset the established order.
19:47
SPEAKER_09: Had the court done nothing, and there's peep think people that wish they had, I would think in another five to ten years all but two or three states in the Union would have had gay marriage.
19:55
SPEAKER_09: But now to say my policy is gonna be if I'm elected, I'm gonna support a constitutional amendment to reverse the decision.
20:02
SPEAKER_09: That's just foolish.
20:03
SPEAKER_09: This is not gonna happen.
20:04
SPEAKER_09: Don't waste your time on it, don't waste your breath.
20:07
SPEAKER_09: But for heaven's sakes, if you are gonna keep saying that so that you win the Iowa caucus, you are dead, dead in the general election.
20:17
SPEAKER_09: And there is no Republican favorite, and uh we'll see how Elaine's in my bet comes out.
20:27
SPEAKER_03: Another question, uh Senator, is uh much is written today about the disregard or even the erasing of the checks and balances that were designed into our governmental structure between the legislative, judicial, and executive branches.
20:41
SPEAKER_03: What are your thoughts today on that issue and the effectiveness of our federal governance?
20:46
SPEAKER_09: Well, there's no question, starting roughly with the New Deal onward, incredible quantities of power have flowed to the president, to the executive branch.
20:58
SPEAKER_09: In most cases, however, because of actions that Congress has taken to give him the power.
21:04
SPEAKER_09: And of course, an ideal thing for a member of Congress.
21:07
SPEAKER_09: If the president does something you don't like, had I been president, I wouldn't have allowed that.
21:11
SPEAKER_09: He doesn't bother to say, but I did vote to give him that power.
21:14
SPEAKER_09: Uh it it it it it is it is still hard.
21:16
SPEAKER_09: I mean, you know, there are there are things a president can do that you question as to whether it's legal or not.
21:25
SPEAKER_09: But most of his powers flow from Congress.
21:28
SPEAKER_09: Example.
21:30
SPEAKER_09: In almost any criminal case in a county, the district district attorney has a lot of what they call prosecutorial discretion.
21:39
SPEAKER_09: Uh what kind of case is in you know he's only got limited manpower.
21:43
SPEAKER_09: Is he going to spend a lot of time on uh traffic offenses?
21:46
SPEAKER_09: He can spend a lot of time on minor things that he thinks is minor, he just isn't going to pursue those.
21:52
SPEAKER_09: And of course the FBI does the same.
21:54
SPEAKER_09: They have limited money.
21:55
SPEAKER_09: They they can't investigate every conceivable kind of federal that's a federal crime, but they just can't.
22:00
SPEAKER_09: Does the president, therefore, and of course the president is the chief prosecutor in the country, he's head of the head of the Justice Department as president.
22:10
SPEAKER_09: Does he have the legal right to say to the Department of Justice, exercising my prosecutorial powers, I choose not to pursue illegal immigrants?
22:23
SPEAKER_09: Does that violate the law?
22:25
SPEAKER_09: Law or not.
22:26
SPEAKER_09: My guess is it does not.
22:29
SPEAKER_09: Any more than he would say, henceforth, we're not going to chase bank robbers.
22:34
SPEAKER_09: They're not a big issue anymore.
22:36
SPEAKER_09: Get rid of your bank robber force and turn it over to something else.
22:40
SPEAKER_09: So I'm inclined before I start criticizing him to think to myself, one, is it legal?
22:45
SPEAKER_09: I think it is.
22:46
SPEAKER_09: Two, do I think it's wise?
22:48
SPEAKER_09: No, I don't think so.
22:49
SPEAKER_09: But but again, I get I get a little upset with people to pound the table and says he's acting illegally.
22:55
SPEAKER_09: And then when you ask them, what has he done that is illegal?
22:59
SPEAKER_09: They they really don't have an answer.
23:03
SPEAKER_09: What else you got there?
23:05
SPEAKER_09: Thank you.
23:11
SPEAKER_03: Given the amount of money being spent on even local uh nonpartisan campaigns, to say nothing of state and national campaigns, what ideas might you suggest in in terms of campaign reform to improve the process and the outcomes?
23:27
SPEAKER_09: Lynn will find this hard to believe.
23:28
SPEAKER_09: When I first ran for the legislature in 1962, Lynn, my primary cost$1,300, my general election$1,900.
23:36
SPEAKER_09: Today you can just make that thousands instead of what it was.
23:41
SPEAKER_09: At the moment, there's not much you can do.
23:43
SPEAKER_09: The Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United has basically said almost that any amount of money can be raised spent on politics.
23:53
SPEAKER_09: There are limitations.
23:55
SPEAKER_09: In theory, 501 C3s and 501 C4s, which are either charitable or social welfare organizations, are not supposed to spend their money on politics.
24:05
SPEAKER_09: But Leslie Candidate Jones is running for Congress against Congressman Smith.
24:15
SPEAKER_09: And without saying vote for Smith or vote for Jones, a group runs ads.
24:20
SPEAKER_09: Congressman Smith, in our judgment, has made a mistake in voting for this.
24:25
SPEAKER_09: Congress, it doesn't say vote for him, vote against him.
24:27
SPEAKER_09: It is educational.
24:30
SPEAKER_09: It's almost unlimited in what they can do.
24:33
SPEAKER_09: I don't see with the Supreme Court's decision on Citizens United that you're going to you're going to see any restraint in politics, but I have discovered this.
24:42
SPEAKER_09: For a number of years in the 60s, I was retained to re to recruit candidates to run for the legislature, and then for four years I was chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee and recruited people to run for the Senate.
24:57
SPEAKER_09: I don't know how they do it, but I have discovered if a candidate is believed to have a reasonable chance of winning, the money can be raised somehow.
25:09
SPEAKER_09: It's amounts that are that boggle my mind.
25:13
SPEAKER_09: But if you get to Labor Day and you're running against an incumbent, and six months earlier you were behind 5531, and now you're only behind 5143.
25:29
SPEAKER_09: The money will be raised for that race.
25:55
SPEAKER_09: Sure.
25:56
SPEAKER_09: You mean the soccer game?
26:01
SPEAKER_08: Yes, USA.
26:02
SPEAKER_08: That's great.
26:04
SPEAKER_08: You know, they had more audience than football or basketball all combined.
26:08
SPEAKER_08: It's amazing.
26:09
SPEAKER_08: But the question is, uh I noticed that ISIS is recruiting lots of young people into their hold, and that's a great international threat.
26:19
SPEAKER_08: And U.S.
26:20
SPEAKER_08: is not doing much to really trim their power.
26:26
SPEAKER_08: What would you suggest we can do with that group?
26:29
SPEAKER_09: We are gonna well, I don't know what I don't know what you do internally with ISIS.
26:33
SPEAKER_09: I don't know.
26:34
SPEAKER_09: Again, remember I talked about zealots.
26:36
SPEAKER_09: I don't know, excuse me, I don't know what you do about zealots that are really blow themselves up uh on their way to heaven.
26:42
SPEAKER_09: So internally, I don't know what you do.
26:45
SPEAKER_09: And I can understand a handful of people around the world uh of the Moslem religion being attracted to that and leaving the U.S.
26:53
SPEAKER_09: or leaving Britain or leaving wherever they are and they want to go participate.
26:59
SPEAKER_09: The fundamental question in uh what I would call the Western civilized countries is how much do we have to give up in terms of personal liberty, in terms of surveillance, in terms, frankly, of undercover agents to attempt to ferret them out before they get out of this country or something.
27:18
SPEAKER_09: And it's an interesting battle.
27:20
SPEAKER_09: And you saw the battle that has just gone on in terms of the the federal government's right to listen on your phone calls.
27:27
SPEAKER_09: They really weren't listening.
27:28
SPEAKER_09: What they were doing is simply keeping track of who you were calling.
27:31
SPEAKER_09: And if they finally discovered that you had called Yemen 33 times in the last 60 days and you'd had phone calls back from Yemen, they're inclined to put you on the watch list.
27:42
SPEAKER_09: Um and just multiply that ten times over, and then think to yourself, which is the greater risk?
27:52
SPEAKER_09: The power the power of the of the federal government, especially, but the power of any government to uh falsely accuse, falsely imprisoned, falsely bring cases against people they think are a problem, is is overwhelming.
28:10
SPEAKER_09: You don't want to be, unless you're a multi, multi-mont multi-millionaire, on the side of having to defend yourself against the federal government on some charge.
28:20
SPEAKER_09: It uh the the ca that's why so many people plead guilty.
28:24
SPEAKER_09: They cannot afford to fight it, and they get some kind of a plea deal with the prosecutor.
28:29
SPEAKER_09: But I don't I don't know the answer.
28:32
SPEAKER_09: The one thing I hope we do, and we're doing pretty well on fracking, there's no reason we can't be independent in oil and gas easily within the next decade, and especially counting the resources of Mexico and Canada.
28:45
SPEAKER_09: And whether or not we want to say, you know, that's it.
28:48
SPEAKER_09: We're getting we're getting out of the Middle East.
28:50
SPEAKER_09: It's no longer our problem.
28:52
SPEAKER_09: They'll have to sort it out.
28:53
SPEAKER_09: Uh they've been fighting religiously for years, not much we can do about it.
28:57
SPEAKER_09: Uh we'll just pull out and let them have at it.
29:00
SPEAKER_09: And interestingly, that is what happened in Europe uh in the Thirty Years' War that ended in 1648.
29:07
SPEAKER_09: Up until that time, there had been tremendous religious wars.
29:11
SPEAKER_09: It was mainly uh Southern Europe Catholic against the Northern European newly come along Protestant religions.
29:19
SPEAKER_09: And that Thirty Years' War, uh, 1848, was savage.
29:25
SPEAKER_09: As savage as anything you're seeing ISIS do now.
29:28
SPEAKER_09: And finally, at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the European powers said, We're not going to go to war anymore over religion.
29:39
SPEAKER_09: How you may prosecute somebody in your country is one thing, but we're not going to go to war with each other over religion.
29:45
SPEAKER_09: And by and large, even though we've had wars, innumerable wars since that time, they have not been religious wars.
29:55
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
30:00
SPEAKER_02: So, uh Senator, you were in the in the Congress in 1993, and so far as I know, that was the last time that uh there was a increase in the federal gas tax.
30:12
SPEAKER_02: I was driving up here today and I was listening to the CEO of Skanska, USA, talking about the crumbling infrastructure in the United States.
30:20
SPEAKER_02: The State of Oregon couldn't even pass a$300 million transportation bill, and the federal government's the Federal Highway Fund is essentially broke.
30:31
SPEAKER_02: Is there a formula for realizing we need to fix this infrastructure, a political formula for fixing that problem?
30:37
SPEAKER_09: There's no formula at the moment.
30:39
SPEAKER_09: Remember what I said about earlier about where we're spending more and more of our money?
30:44
SPEAKER_09: There is an element in Congress that says no more taxes.
30:48
SPEAKER_09: If you want to increase spending on infrastructure, we're going to take it out of something else.
30:52
SPEAKER_09: And the something else you want to take it out of has absolutely zealous supporters that don't want anything taken out of that program.
31:00
SPEAKER_09: And so long as you have no more taxes, and I can understand that.
31:05
SPEAKER_09: In the past, taxes lead to more spending.
31:10
SPEAKER_09: If that's what you want.
31:12
SPEAKER_09: Now, having said that, my hunches are going to get in the next two to three years an increase in both at the federal level and the state level in the gas tax, because the infrastructure is so bad.
31:22
SPEAKER_09: But it's going to be over overwhelming opposition about, by golly, I want this not only spent on infrastructure, I want to see cuts in other areas that equal what we're going to increase on in infrastructure.
31:39
SPEAKER_04: Other questions?
31:47
SPEAKER_04: Well, the board president wants to speak.
31:53
SPEAKER_13: Senator, could you uh comment a little bit on um what you see will be happening, especially to the European Union, if with the Greece thing, if Greece actually My hunch is Greece is going to win temporarily.
32:09
SPEAKER_09: That the the tug to hold the Union together will be so great that there will be another bailout of Greece.
32:17
SPEAKER_09: And Greece will make promises to do things.
32:22
SPEAKER_09: Whether they won't do them, whether they get the money and still don't do them, and six months from now Greece comes back and has another vote and we want out.
32:30
SPEAKER_09: We won't take this anymore.
32:32
SPEAKER_09: I don't know.
32:34
SPEAKER_09: Sometimes I think to myself, again, I'm hardly involved in European Union matters, but I'm I keep thinking to myself, what difference does it make if Greece drops out?
32:47
SPEAKER_09: They're not a significant worldwide economic figure.
32:50
SPEAKER_09: They're not a significant inter-European figure.
32:56
SPEAKER_09: But everybody seems to you know feel that's the dropping shoe.
32:59
SPEAKER_09: Britain's gonna have a vote in uh 2017 on should they withdraw from the Union.
33:05
SPEAKER_09: My hunch is they will vote no, but it will be a ferocious battle.
33:09
SPEAKER_09: And we saw the stories in the paper today of both the fringe left and the fringe right cheering at Greece's vote.
33:20
SPEAKER_09: Sort of as if the the European Union is a bureaucracy shoving their their views down on us.
33:28
SPEAKER_09: And um I I don't know what what will happen, uh, but uh I think they will be bailed out temporarily for a modest period of time in exchange for promises.
33:49
SPEAKER_12: Senator Packwood.
33:51
SPEAKER_12: Recently Vice President Biden said that the Republican Party is not the same as when you were in it.
33:57
SPEAKER_12: I was wondering if you agree with that statement.
33:59
SPEAKER_12: And if you do, how would you suggest that they get back to it?
34:04
SPEAKER_09: Uh the Republican Party is is much more conservative, especially on the social issues, than when I was there.
34:12
SPEAKER_09: And and part of it is the Republican Party is now heavily influenced by the South.
34:19
SPEAKER_09: With a disproportionate number of the House members are from the South.
34:24
SPEAKER_09: And a social policy in Alabama just probably is not Oregon's social policy.
34:30
SPEAKER_09: And yet it is held up as the Republican policy.
34:33
SPEAKER_09: I'll give you an example in this state on abortion.
34:37
SPEAKER_09: Over the past quarter of a century, we have had five different abortion votes.
34:42
SPEAKER_09: In each case, the pro-life forces lost.
34:45
SPEAKER_09: Two of the votes were on parental notification.
34:48
SPEAKER_09: And you think, well, that would be one of the easiest ones.
34:50
SPEAKER_09: Not only did they lose, they lost on the second vote bigger than the first time.
34:54
SPEAKER_09: Well, you put that on the ballot in Alabama, it'll pass two to one.
34:58
SPEAKER_09: Uh, remember Barry Goldwater was one of them.
35:01
SPEAKER_09: Barry Goldwater hated platforms.
35:03
SPEAKER_09: He says, why can't our platform just be the Republican Party will defend the shores and deliver the mail?
35:10
SPEAKER_09: And that's it.
35:12
SPEAKER_09: And let every candidate in every state interpret that as he wants instead of trying to saddle us with something that might work in some states and doesn't work in others.
35:20
SPEAKER_09: Having said that, the party is much more conservative than it was when I went there.
35:26
SPEAKER_09: And part of it is this how candidates are now selected in terms of zealots rather than centrists.
35:34
SPEAKER_12: How do you recommend that they get back there, if you don't mind me asking a follow-up question?
35:38
SPEAKER_09: Or to a please.
35:39
SPEAKER_09: Well, here's why I always have hope.
35:41
SPEAKER_09: But if it isn't working out, sooner or later, if you continue to lose elections, a party a party would rather win than lose.
35:50
SPEAKER_09: And if they keep losing elections over the same issues, they'll change.
35:54
SPEAKER_09: But as a matter of fact, they're doing sensationally in races for Congress and the Senate.
35:59
SPEAKER_09: So they're buying clients.
36:00
SPEAKER_09: Why should we change?
36:01
SPEAKER_09: The public is with us.
36:03
SPEAKER_09: Although you again you've got to separate the public.
36:06
SPEAKER_09: In 2010, the Republicans had their first big sweep.
36:11
SPEAKER_09: It's when they took over the House of Representatives.
36:13
SPEAKER_09: It's gotten bigger and bigger since then.
36:15
SPEAKER_09: But on each of those elections, 2010, 2012, 2014, the Republicans did not defeat a single Democratic incumbent west of the Sierra Nevadas of the Cascades.
36:31
SPEAKER_09: It tells you something about the makeup of Oregon, Washington, and California once you get west of the mountains.
36:37
SPEAKER_09: Well, I'll just say it.
36:40
SPEAKER_09: If a candidate in this state was anti-gay marriage, anti-choice on abortion, I think they would have a very difficult time winning a statewide race.
36:51
SPEAKER_09: I think you could win it easily in Alabama.
36:55
SPEAKER_09: So why don't we let Oregon do what we want and Alabama do what it wants, and neither the neither the twain shall meet, probably.
37:05
SPEAKER_05: Other questions?
37:11
SPEAKER_01: Okay, over the the past several years there's been a lot of talk about um the rich and how they should be taxed.
37:20
SPEAKER_01: Um if there was some program that taxed the wealthy, and I don't consider two hundred and fifty thousand dollars wealthy, and that seems to be the cutoff always discussed.
37:32
SPEAKER_01: Well, we're not gonna touch you know the two fifty thousand below.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay, but when you're talking about the upper echelon, half a million, million and and beyond, um, would it make a significant difference if there was some tax legislation in that direction only and and uh raise that from the two fifty to five hundred or a million?
37:55
SPEAKER_01: Because frankly, um it it is it is really hurts the middle class, which I consider under two hundred and fifty thousand.
38:06
SPEAKER_09: If you really want to excuse me, if you really want to hit 'em, don't think about the income tax, think about a wealth tax, which is sort of like a property tax.
38:15
SPEAKER_09: That's a wealth tax.
38:16
SPEAKER_09: How uh how much is your property worth?
38:18
SPEAKER_09: You pay more.
38:19
SPEAKER_09: If you've got all these wealthy people that have scores of billions that they've made one way or another and have paid taxes on it at some stage, they no longer pay taxes on that unless they sell something and have capital gains.
38:31
SPEAKER_09: If you really want to hit the rich, that's the way to do it.
38:34
SPEAKER_09: But here's the downside, and I don't mind hitting the rich, however you want to define it.
38:39
SPEAKER_09: It is not going to solve our spending problems.
38:42
SPEAKER_09: It may make you feel better, but it is not going to solve the spending problems this government faces.
38:48
SPEAKER_09: One time I had the Joint Tax Committee, which is a professional uh group that is hired by Congress to help us on tax estimates.
38:59
SPEAKER_09: And I once asked them how much money we could raise if we confiscated all of the income above 200,000.
39:05
SPEAKER_09: We'll just take it all.
39:06
SPEAKER_09: This is, again, 30 years ago, that was a lot of money then.
39:10
SPEAKER_09: Well, they did a little study, and they came back to me and said the first year we would expect we'd get$60 billion more, and then the second year we'd get$80 billion more, and they had a five-year estimate going up each year.
39:21
SPEAKER_09: So I called up the head of it, I said, I want to get I want to get something straight here.
39:25
SPEAKER_09: You're saying if we confiscate all of their income, then our revenues will continue to grow.
39:31
SPEAKER_09: He says, Well, we presume no change in behavior.
39:34
SPEAKER_09: And I said, taxing the rich heavily will not solve our spending problems.
39:47
SPEAKER_09: Whether you want to do it, it looks like Britain may be is a maybe about to do it on how much can you make as a bank president, the the banks are especially vulnerable.
39:55
SPEAKER_09: But it uh uh it it simply will not solve our problems.
40:00
SPEAKER_09: And and I've seen these figures, you know.
40:03
SPEAKER_09: Fifty years ago the president of General Motors made twenty times as much as his uh employee, and now it's two hundred times as much, or whatever the figure may be.
40:13
SPEAKER_09: Uh just disproportionately large.
40:16
SPEAKER_09: But the the only way, if you really, really wanted to do it, would have to be a wealth tax, not an income tax.
40:26
SPEAKER_03: Other questions?
40:27
SPEAKER_03: We have a couple of more minutes.
40:29
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
40:30
SPEAKER_03: From legacy.
40:33
unknown: Thank you.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: Your statement earlier about underestimating the cost of Medicare.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: Have you thought about how we're underestimating the cost of Obamacare?
40:43
SPEAKER_00: Because that statement really scares me.
40:45
SPEAKER_09: Oh, yes.
40:45
SPEAKER_09: I think there's no the You know, this is just based upon experience.
40:50
SPEAKER_09: Uh I saw the figures when Medicare and Medicaid were passed in 1965, the estimates it would cost in 1970, 1980, 1990.
40:59
SPEAKER_09: We were off by hundreds of percent.
41:02
SPEAKER_09: And we will be off on Obamacare.
41:05
SPEAKER_09: But for better or for worse, we're into it.
41:08
SPEAKER_09: And it is not, you know, certainly isn't gonna be repealed with this president.
41:14
SPEAKER_09: And if you assume you had a Republican president and a Republican Congress, and you were to repeal it, you're now gonna have spread throughout the state 10 to 15 million people that are on this medical subsidy.
41:27
SPEAKER_09: And they're gonna be as much of a firebrand about that subject as realtors will be about uh reducing the the mortgage deduction.
41:36
SPEAKER_09: So we will tinker with it.
41:38
SPEAKER_09: We've tinkered with Medicaid.
41:39
SPEAKER_09: For the last 50 years, we've tinkered with it.
41:42
SPEAKER_09: In each case, hoping somehow to restrain its growth.
41:45
SPEAKER_09: We just haven't succeeded.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: Do you have any suggestions on how we might be able to prepare for if the prediction is true and Obamacare follows?
41:57
SPEAKER_09: Here is one.
41:57
SPEAKER_09: I think you'll see this coming on Medicaid.
42:01
SPEAKER_09: I think within a decade almost all Medicaid will be basically contracted care.
42:08
SPEAKER_09: The federal government will no longer pay a doctor$100.
42:11
SPEAKER_09: It will be basically a health maintenance organization.
42:15
SPEAKER_09: And the way you pay them, you say, okay, and Medicaid is a federal, state, and local, okay.
42:22
SPEAKER_09: We will give you$200 a month per person covered in your plan.
42:28
SPEAKER_09: You have got to live with that.
42:30
SPEAKER_09: Now you have to take anybody that's pre-existing illness, doesn't count.
42:36
SPEAKER_09: And I on occasion I've talked to these organizations where they really get hit.
42:40
SPEAKER_09: They said, okay,$200, this is just an example,$200.
42:44
SPEAKER_09: And then you have a flu outbreak, and they just get killed with people coming in for, you know, taking care of flu.
42:51
SPEAKER_09: But somehow they they make it.
42:54
SPEAKER_09: They don't have great profits, but they make it.
42:57
SPEAKER_09: And I think you're going to see all of Medicaid in that.
43:00
SPEAKER_09: And it will be compulsory.
43:02
SPEAKER_09: That will save money in this sense for the government.
43:07
SPEAKER_09: The government knows what it's going to cost them.
43:09
SPEAKER_09: We're going to pay you$200 a patient.
43:11
SPEAKER_09: You can count on that.
43:12
SPEAKER_09: The only reason that's going to go up is if they have more patients.
43:16
SPEAKER_09: And the government likes the idea of at least being able to figure what it is.
43:23
SPEAKER_09: You know, I used to discover this years ago in politics.
43:25
SPEAKER_09: Business complained to me more about environment and regulations than they complained about taxes.
43:31
SPEAKER_09: The taxes, at least they knew what they were.
43:34
SPEAKER_09: But regulation had just had no way to plan for it.
43:43
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, we do.
43:47
SPEAKER_11: I thought maybe you might comment a little bit about um in the last year or so we're reading about China, and China is uh this um economic drive to be then the powerhouse in the world, and the whole goal is to minimize then United States as being a leader economically.
44:10
SPEAKER_11: I thought maybe you might comment your your perspective on that.
44:14
SPEAKER_09: Well, every country in the world wants to be an economic power.
44:18
SPEAKER_09: Every country in the world wants to be a leader.
44:20
SPEAKER_09: Most of them, smaller countries, can be niche leaders.
44:25
SPEAKER_09: Switzerland can be a niche leader in hiding money.
44:31
SPEAKER_09: You know, um Sweden makes Volvos.
44:34
SPEAKER_09: I think it's Sweden that they were where they were made there.
44:37
SPEAKER_09: But the major powers, they want to be major powers.
44:40
SPEAKER_09: And we've had this head-to-head power struggle for years.
44:45
SPEAKER_09: For you know, when Winston Churchill used to say, what has been the English uh policy in Europe over the centuries to oppose whoever the most powerful force was on the continent?
44:57
SPEAKER_09: If that was France, we allied with Germany.
45:00
SPEAKER_09: If that was Germany, we allied with France.
45:03
SPEAKER_09: And we're going to go head to head with China.
45:05
SPEAKER_09: The one the one interesting thing about China, as opposed to most dictatorships, unless you want to argue about Tibet, which they've always always thought was part of China, and Taiwan, which they've always thought about was part of China, they have not been a particularly imperialistic power.
45:27
SPEAKER_09: Well, in fact, I'll tell the story, then I'll say, this is 1978.
45:32
SPEAKER_09: I'm visiting China with a congressional delegation led by then Senator Ed Muskie from Maine.
45:41
SPEAKER_09: And we are not yet recognizing China.
45:44
SPEAKER_09: Nixon had been there, but we're still recognizing Taiwan as the government of China.
45:48
SPEAKER_09: But there we are, a congressional visit.
45:51
SPEAKER_09: We're there about two weeks.
45:53
SPEAKER_09: Every place we went, the issue is Taiwan.
45:55
SPEAKER_09: We want Taiwan back, it belongs to us.
45:57
SPEAKER_09: We could be 1,500 miles inland at a duck farm, and the farmer who's never seen the ocean has never heard of Taiwan.
46:03
SPEAKER_09: Taiwan is ours.
46:04
SPEAKER_09: So every place we are in.
46:07
SPEAKER_09: On the last night we're there, there's a goodbye banquet, and Ed Muskie spoke first, the Chinese Foreign Secretary.
46:15
SPEAKER_09: I keep thinking, you know, we don't recognize this country, but the Chinese Foreign Secretary is putting on this goodbye banquet for us.
46:21
SPEAKER_09: Ed is about six foot four.
46:23
SPEAKER_09: The Chinese Foreign Minister is maybe five foot seven.
46:26
SPEAKER_09: And Ed is standing making the toes.
46:28
SPEAKER_09: So here he's standing up.
46:29
SPEAKER_09: Here's the Chinese Foreign Minister down here.
46:32
SPEAKER_09: And he goes, Mr.
46:33
SPEAKER_09: Secretary, I want to thank you so much.
46:34
SPEAKER_09: Been a most informative trip.
46:36
SPEAKER_09: He goes, Oh, but I said, points out.
46:37
SPEAKER_09: He says, I want to tell you one thing.
46:39
SPEAKER_09: We are going to Ed had had several drinks at this stage.
46:42
SPEAKER_09: We are going to support Taiwan economically, militarily, socially, and every way.
46:48
SPEAKER_09: Why?
46:49
SPEAKER_09: You would not get Taiwan for 50 years.
46:54
SPEAKER_09: The foreign minister who speaks English looks up, goes, fifty years?
46:58
SPEAKER_09: Well, we can start to bargain tonight.
47:03
SPEAKER_09: They waited 50 years and they got Hong Kong.
47:07
SPEAKER_09: We're a wonderful engineering nation.
47:08
SPEAKER_09: Put a man on the moon this decade, we do it.
47:11
SPEAKER_09: We don't have patience.
47:12
SPEAKER_09: You can see this in long wars.
47:14
SPEAKER_09: We don't have patience for long wars.
47:15
SPEAKER_09: Why can't we end this thing now?
47:17
SPEAKER_09: It only took us three and a half years in World War II.
47:20
SPEAKER_09: Britain would say it took as Elaine's English.
47:22
SPEAKER_09: She would say it took a bit longer than the three and a half.
47:25
SPEAKER_09: England having been in it uh two and a half years before we got in it.
47:31
SPEAKER_09: But, you know, we're gonna I will give Nixon credit for basically opening up China.
47:39
SPEAKER_09: In fact, there's an inside story as to how it was done.
47:41
SPEAKER_09: Henry Kissinger went there ahead of time several times, but no one knew he was doing it and the way he did it.
47:45
SPEAKER_09: He went to Pakistan and he flew commercially on a Pakistani airline to China.
47:51
SPEAKER_09: And for whatever reason, nobody picked it up.
47:54
SPEAKER_09: And so he was there making the arrangements.
47:56
SPEAKER_09: And, you know, it's like Cuba.
47:58
SPEAKER_09: You we can't ignore Cuba, it's there.
47:59
SPEAKER_09: We can't ignore China, it's there, they're gonna be there.
48:02
SPEAKER_09: So you make the best of the situation.
48:04
SPEAKER_09: But is there any way we can attempt to stop them from wanting to grow?
48:09
SPEAKER_09: No, no.
48:10
SPEAKER_09: No, we uh uh can we stop them?
48:13
SPEAKER_09: Do we know how to legally how to stop them or physically uh from hacking hacking our computer systems?
48:21
SPEAKER_09: And the only reason I pause there is I'm sure we're doing the same thing.
48:26
SPEAKER_09: I'd I'd be surprised if in fact I'd be surprised, frankly, if we weren't ahead of them in in that business, but of course we don't talk about that.
48:35
SPEAKER_09: You may recall about two years ago the Iranians had a terrible time with their centrifuges flying apart.
48:44
SPEAKER_09: And well, what had happened?
48:45
SPEAKER_09: There was a bug called Sixtant.
48:48
SPEAKER_09: It had been invented by the Israelis with our support, and it inserted itself in their computer system, basically left an egg to do the damage and disappeared so that you had no way to trace where it came from, and it absolutely wrecked their compute their centrifuges and set them back several years and what they were doing.
49:08
SPEAKER_09: My hunch is we probably have a few more rabbits like that also in our hat.
49:15
SPEAKER_03: We have time for one more question.
49:20
SPEAKER_09: I have another speech.
49:21
SPEAKER_09: I mean it.
49:27
SPEAKER_03: Let me grab the microphone.
49:34
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
49:35
SPEAKER_07: Senator Packwood, this gives back to uh current Congress right now.
49:40
SPEAKER_07: It used to be that the Speaker of the House and the Senate President had absolute power.
49:45
SPEAKER_07: And now it seems that they're there as figureheads.
49:49
SPEAKER_07: And if they don't want to follow Speaker Boehner or President Um I call him Uncle Minchie, but I know he's got a different name.
49:59
SPEAKER_07: Um that's that McConnell.
50:01
SPEAKER_07: He's that seems to me a big change.
50:04
SPEAKER_09: You mean the power of the leadership?
50:05
SPEAKER_07: The power of the leadership, it seems like it's just not there.
50:09
SPEAKER_09: When when I went to the Senate, seniority was absolutely sancrosaced.
50:15
SPEAKER_09: You did not touch it.
50:16
SPEAKER_09: Lyndon Johnson did not touch it.
50:18
SPEAKER_09: You were there long enough, you got to be a committee chairman, and you know, let hell or high water come.
50:24
SPEAKER_09: You weren't going to change your position for Lyndon Johnson or anybody else.
50:28
SPEAKER_09: Gradually, that system has changed, and everybody says, Well, that's a good idea.
50:33
SPEAKER_09: You trade it.
50:35
SPEAKER_09: Now, in both the House and the Senate, the leader can make appointments to some of these committees or can advance people to chairmen that are not senior.
50:43
SPEAKER_09: Well, who does that make that person beholden to, other than the leader who has appointed him?
50:49
SPEAKER_09: When the seniority days, the leader didn't have that power.
50:52
SPEAKER_09: In addition to that, which has weakened the committee structure.
50:58
SPEAKER_09: Both the House, and this happened starting with Newt Gingrich in the House, it's not new, but started with Newt in both houses now.
51:05
SPEAKER_09: The power has accreted upward to the leadership.
51:09
SPEAKER_09: And if it continues, you're going to have a system not unlike the party structure in Britain, where you've got the prime minister in a cabal of 10 to 15 people, and the rest are basically backbenchers.
51:22
SPEAKER_09: The decisions are made by that little cabal.
51:24
SPEAKER_09: And that is that is happening.
51:26
SPEAKER_09: I don't like it, it is happening in the Congress.
51:41
SPEAKER_03: It's been a pleasure to have you.
52:28
SPEAKER_06: But one of my most coveted times during that year, which was an amazing year, was having lunch with Senator Packwood and in DC.
52:38
SPEAKER_06: And the picture that I sent out earlier was that, and I'm only bringing this to your attention because you never know when paths cross, how they will recross again.
52:49
SPEAKER_06: Never in a million years did I think for a minute that the highlight of my 20-year-old would be a friendship, not only with you, Senator, and a mutual respect, but of Elaine too.
53:02
SPEAKER_06: And this is a perfect example of where people don't have to agree.
53:06
SPEAKER_06: You just have to trust each other.
53:09
SPEAKER_06: You have to trust each other to work hard and you have the same goal eventually, but you don't have to agree with everything.
53:15
SPEAKER_06: And the hard work that you did in the Senate and that white your wife does in campaigns is because people work for them because they trust them.
53:24
SPEAKER_06: You trust that the right thing is going to happen at the end.
53:26
SPEAKER_06: So thank you for that and for being such a big part of my life.
53:29
SPEAKER_06: And there aren't a whole lot of pictures in my house, believe me, of when I was that age.
53:37
SPEAKER_06: But this one I do covet.
53:39
SPEAKER_06: So anyway, all right, enough about me and back to why we're here.
53:42
SPEAKER_06: I want to thank Riverview so much for your sponsorship and Portland General Electric so much for being presenting sponsors for Metro East Community Media Media and Progression Bar Logistri.