HELLMAN: What got you into this and what was it that made you feel that there was a need to educate the public about how the government spends their tax dollars?

SPEETER: Well, I've always been involved in communications. I started out with VISTA in 1966, and I, so I had a chance to see whole...communities and the kinds of things that government programs, and the community people can do to address needs. So I've seen communities address housing issues, and health care issues, environmental issues and so on.

Um, in the late 1970's I was involved in a neighborhood that I had actually done work in throughout much of the 60's and early ‘70s. And I, at that point, I saw this neighborhood really come together and be able to make some major changes in its housing, um, in providing health care for the community, and really changing the nature of the community from being a very, a low income community to a neighborhood that was trying to provide decent housing for everybody and be able to provide housing that people could own. And they were able to very creatively, and very positively use Federal monies to be able to do that. This was the North End of Springfield.

Um, they were able to, uh, come up with monies to rehabilitate many of the housing units. They had money for, uh, young people to be able to help paint housing units. They treated______, They had a community development corporation that actually provided a number of jobs for people in the community to be able to rehab their housing units, and then turn those housing units back to the neighborhood.

So you really had a neighborhood that was turning itself around using resources to, sort of, pick itself up by the bootstraps. And what really frustrated me with seeing those kinds of programs cut. We, as a matter of fact, the year after the Reagan administration came in, 1980, in 1981 they saw that it was losing about 25-30 housing units a year. It had lost its day care center. It had lost its health care center. Um, it lost a number of programs that were providing employment for people in the neighborhood. Um, and it was really losing its ability to control what was going on in the neighborhood.

So instead of either having money that was preventing kids from getting involved in problems, um, towards the end of the decade, and in the early ‘90s, you saw that there weren't the kind of resources that existed and so kids were getting in trouble. And so finally by the mid 1990's, you saw, instead of preventive money, you saw money going into incarceration for kids. Instead of money used to house people, you saw money being, for homelessness.

And so I really saw money used positively to make a difference. And I saw that that money was drying up, and that's what we need. It frustrated me and made me feel that we need to take a look at what's going on with our federal tax dollars. We really need to go back to that commitment to do something in our communities because community monies can make a difference. Leadership... it builds leadership, it builds incentive and it turns neighborhoods around. So I always thought we need to be able to do this.

And so what we did was to, um, really build an organization that took a look at how much money was coming in in the early 1980s, community by community. And interestingly enough, we thought we could go to the federal government to get that kind of information... the government did provide that information. People, we no longer kept track of the dollars that were going in to cities from the federal government. So if you don't know what you're getting, you don't know what you're losing.

In fact we had a very broad based coalition of housing and health care and labor and religious and peace groups that did a major study of how much a congressional district had lost in the first three years of the Reagan administration, and found that it lost $63 million worth of, worth of uh, programs. And we put together this major 50 page report, and took it to a Congressperson, and the Congressperson was really quite upset... did not realize that the cuts were so severe. And so ended up doing a 101 page analysis of that 50 page report. But what we learned about the process is that people, once people can learn about how federal policies affect them, it becomes very much inspired to be able to continue to work on those issues.

So they saw they had been able to make a difference, they had worked with their Congressperson to begin to institute, reinstate some of those monies. So, um, and also, we learned that Congress really doesn't always know what it's building when it votes for this money. There is no information, um, by a congressional district, as to how much money comes in or how much goes out of a congressional district. People don't have that information. Congress doesn't have that information.

We're beginning to build a data base now that will be able to do that. That's one of the projects that National Priorities Project is putting together for the next couple of years. But we always thought that information could make a difference. If you know what you've got, if you know what you need to have, if you have some sense of what you could be losing and if you can communicate that to your Congressperson, you can definitely make a difference.

So what we've tried to do in the last, really the last 16 years, is to be able to provide community groups, elected officials and the media and policy analysts, with information on what their major needs are, how federal policies effect those needs at the local level, as much as possible. So that they can go back to their Congressperson and begin to hold those Congresspeople accountable for the needs of the community.

HELLMAN: Good. You're talking a lot about problems that you saw at the local level, and that responding at the local level is really the key. But do you find that most communities are running into the same types of problems? Is it a state-by-state issue? Are these general trends that reoccur across the country? How does it look when you look at independent states and communities?

SPEETER: Well, there are probably four or five major issues that we look at...

HELLMAN: Let's start that again, because... (sirens in background). Start with "there are four or five major issues..."

SPEETER: There are four or five major issues that we've tracked over the last fifteen, sixteen years. And we take a look at the impacts state by state. And in some cases city by city. And really it's the same trend.

I guess there are problems with what's going on with health care, um, state by state. You'll see that people are losing access to health care nationwide. We lose about a million people a year for the last 13 years, who have health insurance. So we've gone from about 31 million people who needed health insurance in 1986, or ‘87, to now 44 or 45 million people who lack health insurance.

We've seen a dramatic, dramatic loss of affordable housing units. In 1980 we needed about 1.2 million affordable housing units. We now need about 4.5 million affordable housing units. We just don't have them. That is directly related to cuts in federal expenditures.

Um, we've also taken a look at the issue of education and we see that schools are falling apart. The GAO has done a study that shows one out of every three schools is in major need, is in need of major repair. It's going to cost $112 billion dollars to repair the schools in this country. But you know, we had worked with a group in New York City that told us, two years ago told us, about the fact that a brick a had fallen on a child and killed a child. A week later a wall fell and nearly missed many other people. And we said "well, maybe that's just New York City. Maybe that's just because it's the biggest city in the country."But if you take a look at what's going on with this GAO report, you see that state after state, community after community, um, cities and towns just aren't able to keep up with the infrastructure and need of the schools. So that's a major, a major problem that we're trying to address.

Um, there are other problems. Environmental problems, in the, we have made a difference in many of these areas. The environment is a good example. In the early ‘70s we had, only had a third of the water... were able to be fished or swimable. We now cleaned up 60% of that water. But we need to clean up another 40%. But we've cut back in the amount of monies that we provide cities for waste water preview plants. We used to provide 80 or 90%, now we provide less than 10-15%. But that's a problem that every city has had to address, and they don't have that kind of money available to address some of the capital needs, and some of the infrastructure needs. Um, so those are some of the major issues. Environment, housing, health care, education.

The other big issue, perhaps the biggest issue that we've looked at, is what's happening with economic security. That's an issue that keeps coming up. And, what we've seen is state by state, people are working hard, working harder, but they're really earning less money than they were in the past. Studies show, state by state, um, that we've increased the number of low wage jobs compared to decent wage jobs. And that's really made a difference in terms of, I guess, who's really winning and who's losing in this so-called "economic boom."

In fact, we found that, um, about 20% has made some major gains in economics. They've gone from having a median income of about $90,000 to a median income of $117, 000 in the last 20 years. That's a 30% increase. The middle 20%, people making, in the late 1970s, about $44, 000, now make $43,000. They had a decrease, a slight decrease in their earnings. People in the lowest 20% have seen a major decease in their earnings, from making around $11,000 to making around $9,000. They've seen a 20% decline in their income. So, we're really saying that a few people have a really gained, and a lot of people are______.

We did a job, we did a report... let me start over.

We did a report last year called "Working Hard, Earning Less." And what we did in that report was to take a look at the kinds of jobs that were being created and we established the "living wage" for every state. We figured out what it really cost for people to, sort of, survive. How much does it cost to____(audio quirk)education, healthcare, housing, um, for a family of three, or a family of four, and how many jobs actually pay that kind of a wage. And, we established nationally, about $32,000 a year and found that about 75% of the people made less than the living wage. Even more dramatic, we found that about 45% of people made less than half of living wage. In fact of 4 of the 5 jobs with the most______, waiters, waitresses, retail clerks, jobs of that nature are paying poverty wages. They're paying less than half of living wage. They're paying $15,000 or less.

And so when we don't have this kind of money we then______ well, how do you deal, what do you do in a situation like that? What are the kinds of choices you have to make? Really it means that people, either in many cases, heat or eat. It means that they might not be able to afford health care. It may mean that they make choices that they won't be able to get new clothes. So we're really seeing that more and more people are struggling to make it. Um, they're not being able to make it and it's really having an effect on them. 90% of, um, the people without health care are people who are working. 70% of the children living in poverty, are living in families where there's at least one worker. So people are working and they're working very hard, but they're not making the kind of money that should be making.

And so what we've seen happen is that there's been this dramatic cut in programs that help them. There's been a dramatic cut in job training that could really help people. Um, there have been cuts in housing assistance, dramatic cuts. And we're spending, providing about 1/10 of what we were provide in the late ‘70s and the early ‘80s in terms of, um, new affordable housing units. We're cutting back on mass transit. We don't have the kind of money we should be providing for child care.

Head Start is a good example of a program that's worked very well. I've had the chance to see Head Start programs be created. And I've seen what happens when a parent gets involved in a child's early education. Often a parent becomes involved in working at a Head Start center, really becomes committed to that child's education, sees the growth that the child goes through, growth and learning that lasts for a lifetime. Studies have shown a dramatic change in a person who's graduated from Head Start ability to, um, to get out of poverty, to have a decent job, to continue on in school. And yet this country has never provided more than 1/3 of the funded needed to provide people who are eligible, with that eligibility, but with the eligibility for Head Start.

So, we're not, I'm not talking about a lot of money. If we provided an other oh, $20-$30 per average tax payer, we could provide everybody who's eligible for Head Start, with the Head Start program. And yet, we haven't put that kind of money in. So, that's just one example. We've cut back in a lot of areas when we're just not addressing the kinds of needs that we should be addressing.

HELLMAN: Good. You talk a lot about, and I'm going back to some of the things you said earlier about how effective these programs are when they're neighborhood based. Is the federal government necessarily the best way to handle these problems? There are a lot of people who believe, you know, taking money out of federal government and putting it back in the hands of individuals, really is the way to go. And that the federal government doesn't necessarily do the best job of setting priorities as it ought to. And it seems to me that this is part of what you're saying; that Congress doesn't necessarily know what it is that it's voting for. It doesn't have good information. Um, do you think that the federal government really is the place where this type of involvement really ought to start?

SPEETER: Well, I think that we have some major critical national crises that deserve national attention. One of them is child poverty. An other one is the lack of child health. An other one is affordable housing. An other one is clean water. An other one is really addressing some of the infrastructure needs of that we have with education. I think we need a federal commitment to address those issues.

That doesn't mean that the federal government needs to go in and tell communities what to do and how to do it. I do think they could provide monies, make those monies available and that that could make a difference.

We work in groups in 70 different cities. Many of those groups are housing groups. They are desperately, desperately looking for seed money to set up community development corporations so that they can bring in people from their own community to address housing needs. Um, they know people who need jobs. They know how to provide skills for people who do that. What they need is a pot of money to help them get started. Um, just like any business does. And they, that just isn't available.

I think that if we had a federal commitment, um, to address some of these issues, that that alone could make a difference. We could have a, you know, literally people back of resources to be able to help us address those concerns as well. But I think it's going to take some time to....

But I also think that, that, that federal government, that, I think that state government and local government have done an awful lot in the last 15 to 20 years to try to address these needs. And you're going to see some uneven quotes, uh, in some cities maybe doing real well. Some cities are not doing well. Um, I think we need a federal commitment, um, to address some of these issues.

Health care is another example. Um, you know, we've got, we've got 11 million children right now who don't have access to health insurance. If you took a look at all the leading countries in western Europe and Europe, you wouldn't find one child without health insurance. Um, we have 11 million. That doesn't make sense. Something's wrong. We need a federal commitment. I don't think that we should have all the children in Massachusetts have health care and all the children in Alabama not have health care. That's a, that should be a national priority. When kids are sick it effects our economy, it effects who we are as a country. It effects what we stand for. And I think we need to have children who, who are healthy. I mean, that should be one of our natural standards. Certainly the standards of other countries. So I think that's another example.

We need a commitment to say these kinds if things are important. How to get that addressed is up to people at the local level, and believe me, there are_____ down there that know how to address these issues but they often times need resources, and you need some leadership from the national level saying that these issues are important.

HELLMAN: That's good. That's really good. Um, we've been sort of jumping around here. Um, you identified four or five of what you consider to be the highest priorities. Let's talk specifically about some of those. Um, you were talking earlier about Head Start. What are some of the other areas in education that you feel that we need to concentrate federal commitment and resources.

SPEETER: Well, the first thing I think deal with the 26,000 schools that are in dramatic need of repair. We ought to be able to fix them up so that people can walk into a building and feel safe and comfortable. You can't learn if you don't feel safe. And there are children in schools who just don't feel safe walking into those buildings because they're 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 years old and need to be repaired. Um, so I think we need to do that.

The second thing we need to begin to do is provide them with some of the technological infrastructure so that they can access the Internet. A couple of years ago we were talking about 46% of the schools not being able to have the technological expertise to access the web and you need to be able to do that.

We also ______ don't have kids learning in bathrooms and hallways, in loading docks. And one of the things that we're hearing, um, on a weekly basis from some of our local groups is the over crowding of schools. Um, kids can't learn when they're_____ in an over crowded school. And ______ in Chicago, um, that person says "how are we going to be able to have people learn when we've got 50 or 60 people learning in a loading dock?" And how are we going to provide them with computers? You need to have a smaller classroom to be able to address that kind of an issue.

We... in 1989, uh, our, uh, Congress and the President and other, um, education leaders established goals for the next ten years to take us to the end of the millennium (Coughing interrupts audio)

HELLMAN: I'm sorry.

SPEETER: Okay. That's okay...

HELLMAN: Go ahead.

SPEETER: In 1989, uh, our national education group and national political leaders established goals for the year 2000. Um, and they were goals that addressed a number of things: how well we learn; are children ready to learn?; um, have we dealt with school infrastructure needs?; and so on. And if you took a look at each issue you would see that we have not made much progress in those ten years in addressing those needs. Other countries got that much better than we have so we're not doing as well as we should be doing in terms of test scores. Our children, many of our children are not ready to learn.

We have done a couple of things right. We have immunized our children, at least many of our children. In the early 1990s only 55 or 60% of the children in the United States were fully immunized. Now we're up to around 80%. So we've made a difference in some areas, but we have a ways to go and I think we really need to begin to address those needs.

Another problem with education is that because education is funded primarily through property taxes, wealthy communities do much better than other communities in terms of addressing education needs. So we have this, this really basic inequality in education. Um, we have, uh, taken a look at differences in, um, in per people expenditures in suburbs versus cities and seen in many cases, suburbs that spend 11, 12, $13,000 a year on a student, where city schools can only spend 5, 6 or $7,000 a year. So we're seeing as much as 6 or $7,000 a year differences. You multiply that times twelve years and you've got, um, students who've received, you know 70, $80,000 more in educational investment than other students have. That makes a difference. That really makes a big difference.

And so I think we've got to find a way to re-provide opportunities for everybody. Equal opportunities for education. Um, if we don't, we see people who are in somewhat troubled school systems, and somewhat troubled communities having fewer resources, and they just begin a downward cycle, and it's just hard ignoring the quality that I think this nation needs to address. I might take up with_____ you know, 20 or 30 years ago, I'm not addressing the way we could today.

HELLMAN: Um, our leaders in Washington, both in the White House and Congress, have said that education for them is a priority. Um, but has this actually been reflected in the federal commitment of resources. Has education continued to be a priority?

SPEETER: Well, let's take a look at where your tax dollar goes: we, for every dollar that we spend on education, meaning elementary and secondary, higher education, post-secondary education - for every dollar we spend on that kind of education, we spend $9.9 on the military. We have a $30 billion, uh, $34 billion education budget, of uh, $1.6, $1.7 trillion federal budget. So it's a very, very small percent of where your tax dollar goes.

Um, nationally, um, most of the, in 1980, uh, the federal government provided about 10%of a local school district's education needs. We're now down to about 6 to 7%. So we, we've got a real declining commitment, federal commitment, in education. Uh, both percentage wise and in actual dollars. So if we really wanted to address these issues we could.

For the last several years, um, there have been a number of proposals just to put money into addressing school infrastructure, and school modernization needs. The GAO report came out in 1996. We're now about to enter the year 2000 and we haven't put a nickel into addressing those school infrastructure needs. We have a ways to go. We have a ways to go.

HELLMAN: That's great. Um, okay. I'm reading from a list that I was handed by one of my colleagues, so I'm trying to work it in. Um, I think you mentioned before, but I"m going to ask you again, this may be from the GAO report: how much money will it cost regular schools up to acceptable standards? And what do you determine, what are considered "acceptable standards?" If you have anything you can say on that.

SPEETER: Well, GAO says it will cost $112 billion to bring our schools up to acceptable standards. We're talking about 26,000 schools that need to be brought up to those standards.

HELLMAN: Now is this just infrastructure, or is this, you know, providing teachers, classroom size, stuff like that.

SPEETER: This is, this is dealing with the physical structure of schools. Um, there's another $80 plus billion that needs to be spent in the next few years just to begin to address the, sort of, baby boom that the new children coming into schools. So we're really talking about , we want to add money to both the money to rebuild schools and there's a lot of money that's going to be needed to uh, build new schools. We're talking about a $200 billion investment. Now, not all of that has to come from the federal government, or could come from the federal government. But some of it's going to have to because, um, as, I said before, the federal commitment has declined year after year for the last, for the last 20 years. Um, so....

HELLMAN: Okay. I think we're pretty much - I just want to spend a little time going through the some of the problems caused, regarding environmental restorations and stuff like that. Um...

SPEETER: (inuadible)

HELLMAN: That's okay. Don't worry about it. If you don't, that's fine. Um, talking specifically about the environment - let's not talk about that.... Uh, did you talk to anyone about any of these questions?

SPEETER: Well, I gave them to some people, that union line_____

HELLMAN: Yes

SPEETER: ... for instance was______ looking at some of those issues... a couple of things. I mean, I know how many people that are drinking form watersheds that were....

HELLMAN: Why don't you just tell me what you know and we'll go from there? Alright.

SPEETER: ...in terms of addressing some more environmental needs. The major environmental need that's a budget need is keeping our water clean. And, right now there are 41 million people in this country who are either drinking from water sheds that are in violation of EPA standards, or are drinking from water utilities that, that have not yet been tested to see if they're, they are in violation. So, I think we've really go to begin to take a look at some of our water needs and begin to see if we're putting the kind of money into it that we need to be putting into it to address these needs from the federal level.

State and local government, especially local government, has really picked up, um, the responsibility for addressing our, our water needs and I am talking with a number of local leaders. One of their complaints is that they just don't have the money to do it. We may just want to take a look at what's happened to a city, for instance, what's happened to a city in the last, uh, 20 years. Because, I think, what we found is that it bills housing, environment, education, health care and so on - all those issues were issues that the federal government has walked away from in one way or another.

It, it's really disinfested(?) in cities. So in 1980, um, we were, we were putting a lot of money into addressing housing issues. And just the other day the US Conference of Mayors comes out with it's annual report, as it does every year, that says that homelessness, once again, has been on the increase. That hunger, once again, as it has been every year that they've done this report since the mid-80s, is on the increase.

But we've cut back. We've spent, we provide about 1/10 of what we were providing in that late 70s, and early 80s in terms of affordable housing units. Um, so we have a housing crisis that has a lot to do with cutting back the federal commitment to affordable housing. We went from $70 billion in today's dollars, to $26 billion in terms of affordable housing for low to moderate income people. Yet in that same period, in 1980, we were providing about $50 billion worth of tax breaks for moderate and wealthy people as tax payers, for, for housing. And right now we're talking about a $99 billion tax break.

So, we've almost, we've always provided money for people to address housing. We've realized that the market alone can't do that alone - can't provide housing. But the people we're providing the benefits for, and paying for, in federal government, are not low income people. They're moderate and wealthy people. But that, that's one issue.

Another issue that elected officials have had to deal with: we've cut back in job training, from, we've cut that back by 56%. And that's not a roll that the state and local government has ever played. So we have now 5.5 million people who've been taken off of Welfare, and they really could use some job training. But that money, you know, we're spending a lot less than we were 20 years ago on job training. So we see, studies are showing, that people who are getting these jobs who are coming off of Welfare, are not making any more than 11, 14, or $15,000 a year. And yet for a family of 3 it's going to take about $30,000 a year to live. They need job training. They need access to decent jobs.

You cut back, we've cut back in mass transit.

We've, we haven't provided the money that we should have been providing in terms of health care. We have provided more money for Medicaid, a little bit more money, during the 80s and, better yet, in the early 90s. But what we've also found with, uh, with the advent of Welfare reform, is that as people were, were taken off Welfare, they assumed that they weren't eligible, or the children weren't eligible, for Medicaid. So we've seen a drop, a 14% drop in children, um, who are on Medicaid. And a major reason for that is people assume that they just weren't eligible for that, when in fact they were eligible.

The CHIFS program, Comprehensive Health Insurance Program, has it's policy reach out to people who are from poverty to twice the level of poverty: who make, who earn anywhere from 15 to $30,000 a year. But we've, we've seen that the kind of people who are receiving health insurance from, are in families that make $15,000 or less.

We've cut back in community development block grants. We've cut back in environmental programs. So we've, we've cut back a lot of different kinds of programs that, that have helped cities really be able to press these issues. And so I think, and we see, that some urban areas are seeing people leave the area. Um, at least people who can afford to provide a tax base, leave the area. Um, part of it has to do with the, crime (?) and federal commitments we need to keep our cities together.

HELLMAN: Um, there are some people that say that these are important programs - that the problems that you have identified are, are serious problems but that the reality is: the American tax payer can't afford to do all the things - that we have to set certain priorities as far as, you know, what it is that the federal government can be called on to do.

And, one of the issues has been, you know, we need to reduce federal spending on all sort s of programs in order to get our federal, you know, our financial house (?) in order. Is this a mistake. Clearly we've, we've got in an area where federal spending is on much better control, um, but are they right when saying that these are things that the federal government shouldn't be involved in. And is this the way that we need, you know, if getting our financial house in order, is this the way we ought to be approaching that?

SPEETER:Well, I think that if you took a look at the amount of money we're spending in a lot of these areas, you would see that - we're really not spending a whole lot of money. We spend about 3 cents out of every tax dollar on education. That doesn't sound like education's a major priority. Um, we spend less than a cent of every tax dollar on the environment, on environmental protection. That doesn't sound like it's much of a priority. We spend less than three cents of every tax dollar housing. That doesn't sound like that's much of a priority. Um, so, you know, I don't think we're spending a lot of money on these areas.

If you take a look at other countries you'll see that they're doing much better in these areas because they are providing much more money.

Um, one of the things that we ought to be taking a look at is where our tax dollar is actually going. The United States spends about $1000, or a little bit more than $1000 per capita on its military. I believe that_______ countries and major industrialist countries spend about half of that on their military. They spend much more on education, much more on health care. Um ,and I think we need to begin to take a look at whether out, our spending priorities are providing us with the kind of security that we think we deserve as we enter a new millennium. And I could go on with military budget...

HELLMAN:No, that's fine. Um, I think we've covered everything I wanted, so now we've reached the part of the program where I say is there anything that you feel you want to talk about that we haven't already covered? And realize that's opening the door very wide.

SPEETER: I think we have seen, over the past 30 or 40 years, that there are programs that are really working quite well. And those programs are not being provided the kind of funding that they should be providing. I think we've got a scale of funding, and we begin to provide programs that work with the kind of money it's going to take to address major issues. We know that we provide a certain amount of money for health care, for health insurance, so we can deal with children who don't have health insurance. That ought to be a priority. Meanwhile, they're expecting more. That, we ought to be able to put more money into that.

We know that our schools are falling apart, and I think that we can see an investment in that can work as well.

We've seen that investments in housing can make a major difference. I think we ought to be able to address those kinds of needs.

I think that one question we want to be asking ourselves is: where do we want to be in the next century and the next millennium? Um, are we all going to be a military leader? Are we going to be able to address other security issues that other countries are able to address? Are we going to have top rate schools? OR are we not going to have top rate schools? Um, and are we going to add those schools throughout the country or are we just going to let certain states be able to pay for them and certain states not be able to pay for them? Are we going to be a national leader? Are we going to have, is our nation to going to be able to have the ability to address the needs of all of its constituents as other countries are able to do? I think those are real questions that we need to begin to address.

So , I didn't say exactly what I wanted to say.

HELLMAN: You can take another crack at it.

SPEETER: Well, we've seen ... we've seen over the past 30 years that investments can work. We should take the best of those and _____them from being practice.... We should... I'm going to start this over.

HELLMAN: Think of something else for a minute. How are we doing time wise? We're fine right? (Chit chat amongst Speeter, Chris and Betsy)

HELLMAN: Whenever you're ready.

SPEETER: Okay. What we've seen over the past 30 or 40 years is that there are certain programs that really make a difference. And what we've not done is fully fund those programs so that they can really take advantage of the needs that need to be addressed. We've dealt with models of programs, and I think we need to take them up to scale.

Um, Head Start is an example. Providing health insurance for children is an other example. Being able to address affordable housing is another example. I think we really need to begin to think about where we're going as a country, in the post Cold War era. We're about to enter a new millennium. We need to think of whether or not we can take the leadership in the world to be able to address, our nation needs to be able to address issues of inequality and to be able to provide people with real security needs that go beyond our borders.

And state______ can we provide people with the kind of housing, the kind of health care, the kind of education security that they really deserve? In the past we've found that we provide programs like Medicare and Social Security that have made a difference and ended, not ended, but substantially reduced poverty for the elderly. I think we need to begin to make that same kind of commitment for our children and other people.

HELLMAN: That's good.

SPEETER: So, um... well, that's probably, is that enough?

HELLMAN: Yeah actually, that's fine. In fact that's going to be my outro. That's how we're going to close the show. So that's good.

SPEETER: Okay. Good. Um, I didn't deal with specific numbers or specific cities or anything like that.

HELLMAN: No you didn't, but um, I mean we can do that with a narrator, using any of the charts from any of your things. You say for example : dah, dah, dah. I mean, we don't want to put, this is not an NPT show. This is a priorities show. So we can use your stuff and I definitely want to get a copy of "Working Hard, Earning Less," so I can shoot that as a still so we can put it up as you're talking about it.