Dear Colleagues,
Please click here to read the latest e-COMESA Newsletter, Issue No. 270.
Highlights:-
· Eritrea Appoints a Permanent Representative to COMESA
· DR Congo delegation visits COMESA on STR
· We all aim to promote ideals of equality, international brotherhood and fundamental freedoms: Ngwenya
· COMESA at the 4th National Trade Sector Review Conference in Uganda
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An anti Abotion petition being deleverd at 10 Downing street by campagners

New survey reveals need for better information about abortion

Huge support for a woman’s right to know
89% of British adults support “a woman’s right, enshrined in law, to be informed of all the physical, psychological and emotional risks associated with abortion.”
82% support “a legal duty on doctors to provide access to advice and information about alternatives to abortion, such as adoption.”
78% support “a compulsory cooling off period between diagnosis of pregnancy and an abortion, to ensure that a mother is sure of her decision.”

Huge ignorance over the scale of abortion
Last year there were more than 200,000 abortions in Britain, yet only 3% of British adults accurately estimate the actual number within 50,000.
Indeed, nearly a third of people (30%) estimate that the annual total is less than a tenth of the actual figure and a further 4 in 10 people admit that they don’t know.
When the true figure is revealed, 62% of people say that it is too high and ways should be found to reduce it.

For more facts about abortion, click here.
Survey conducted by ComRes on behalf of Christian Concern’s Choose Life Campaign. ComRes interviewed 1,001 GB adults by telephone between 15th and 17th October 2010. Data were weighted to be representative demographically of all GB adults. ComRes is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules (www.britishpollingcouncil.org). Full data tables available at www.comres.co.uk.
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The Mayor of london addressing invited guests at the Africa @ 50 event

Press release

Monday 25 October 2010

For immediate use

Leader of the Labour Party Ed Miliband's speech to the CBI

Check against delivery

It is a privilege to have the opportunity to address the CBI Annual Conference as Leader of the Labour party.

I want to pay tribute to the work that the CBI does as the voice of British business and I want to pay particular tribute to Richard Lambert.

He has been an outstanding advocate on many issues for progressive business sense.

As befits a party that lost the election only five months ago and a leader beginning his fifth week in charge, I am not here to give you my manifesto for 2015, but to set out our direction for the future, and begin the process of engagement we need with you, the wealth creators and entrepreneurs of Britain.

New Labour’s insight in the 1990s was to recognise that we needed to be a party that understood wealth creation as well as its distribution, that we needed to be for economic prosperity as well as social justice and that solving our society’s problems could not be done without a partnership between government and business.

With Alan Johnson as Shadow Chancellor, John Denham as the Shadow Business Secretary and Douglas Alexander as the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, we intend to carry forward all of these New Labour insights.

Enterprise and job creation are fundamental to the good economy and good society and I will lead a party that understands that at its core.

The argument I want to make today is that because the world has changed so much since the 1990s and because we need to learn lessons from success and failure, what it means to be pro-business in the 2010s is different to what it meant back then.

The result of the financial crisis is that we have a deficit we need to cut, but the lessons are much deeper.

In tackling the deficit, we need to recognise the fundamental weaknesses in our economy that led to it and which we need to put right if we are to have a stronger economic future.

Let me start with the deficit.

I want to be clear: if we had won power in May, there would have been cuts.

We will therefore be selective about the cuts we will oppose and will support.

On welfare, we have said that we will work with the government on reforms to Disability Living Allowance, sickness benefits and other areas where there is genuine reform.

We will support reforms which bring greater value for money.

Now, this audience will know that we have a difference with the government on the pace and scale of deficit reduction. We do believe that a four year timetable for halving the deficit would be a better approach.

And, I do fear that the path the government is pursuing is a gamble with growth and jobs.

They have a programme which will lead to the disappearance of a million private and public sector jobs but no credible plan to replace them.

And their refusal to accept that a deficit reduction plan has to be sensitive to changing economic circumstances needlessly makes the British economy a hostage to fortune.

Time will tell whether they turn out to be right.

But my wider point is this - we don’t just need to pay down the deficit in a way that ensures growth now: we need to understand the causes of the high deficit and the deeper lessons about our economy to prevent a recurrence of the financial crash and build a strong economy for the future.

There is a view that the deficit arose solely because of spending choices made in the last decade.

In fact, the deficit was 2.4% of national income in 2007/8, broadly the same level as public sector capital investment.

It was what happened next that led to led to a deficit of over 10%: a combination of the loss of 6% of our national income, and the tax receipts that went with them; the consequent rise in benefit spending; and the discretionary decisions to stabilise the economy.

Not everything the last government did was right, but if we misread history we will fail to tackle the big structural issues we face in our economy.

There are important lessons to be learned about why the deficit went up so significantly and we need a wider plan for our economy which understands these deeper lessons.

Without profound change in the way we manage our economy, we are at risk of at best, sleepwalking back to an economy riddled with the same risks as we saw before the recession hit.

First, a new system of financial regulation which avoids a repeat of the crash and creates a banking system that works better in the interests of our economy.

Second, a new approach to industrial policy so we have a more balanced economy.

And third, we need to do more to create an economy which by supporting everyone to make a decent living, whether in employment or a by starting a small business, creates a more stable platform of economic growth.

First, on financial regulation.

British political debate in the last thirty years has been dominated by debate about the dangers of excessive regulation.

Government should always be vigilant about the substance and implementation of regulation.

But as is now widely recognised, the financial crisis revealed the real dangers of the opposite.

If government fails to play its proper role, businesses suffer.

The financial services industry in Britain is a major employer and it is important that it remains strong.

But over time, support for financial services led to competitive deregulation as countries sought to extract comparative advantage.

We need policy-makers and regulators who recognise that we need stronger rules but also that we need a culture that balances the need to support financial services with the need to protect our wider economy.

And, change shouldn’t just be about reducing risk but also about increasing opportunity.

We must also use this moment to tackle the historic problem that we have long faced in the British economy: our financial services industry is a great employer but does not do enough to support small business and industry.

As Richard Lambert said in a speech earlier this month: “One constant complaint I hear from SMEs around the country is that decisions which affect their business are not being taken by people who know anything about it. Instead, they are referred up to the centre, where loan requests are decided against a set of box-ticking benchmarks.”

This has been a decades-long problem and business as usual will not tackle it.

That is why I hope the banking commission and indeed the government looks radically at the structure of the banking system but also at the case for new models of ownership in the banking sector.

Both Richard and Paul Myners have suggested the case for greater public involvement in helping to finance the small business sector, for example through a new small business bank, like the ICFC created after the Second World War.

Others have made the case for mutuals and for public/private structures of banking ownership, as we make decisions about the stakes we have in the banks.

All of these issues should be on the table if we are to get the banking system our economy needs.

Secondly, we should learn the lessons of the financial crisis: that we need to more fundamentally reform our economy if we are to broaden our economic base.

The truth is that over time, Britain became over-reliant on the financial services sector - for jobs and for tax revenues. Financial services became the goose that laid the golden egg.

This is why, in part, the deficit went up so much in the UK after the financial crash happened.

Until late in its time in office, I believe our government did not do enough to support other sorts of industry in this country.

Scarred by the failed exercise in picking winners decades ago, government has been too afraid to support the industries of the future.

Under governments of both parties, we let other countries steal a march on us and I fear the same may happen again: from creative industries to green manufacturing to bio-sciences.

Despite all the talent in engineering and work in our universities, I fear Britain still suffers from an anti-manufacturing bias.

The way to support British businesses who want to lead in the industries of the future isn’t for government to do nothing.

Government action can make a difference, and government inaction can make life harder.

Where do we need to do better?

In finance as I have already said.

As Energy Secretary, I was constantly struck by the risk aversion in relation to new green industries compared to say, construction.

And in the absence of commercial finance, sometimes government needs to step in.

For example, the decision to withdraw support from Sheffield Forgemasters risks our traditional problem: bought by Britain, made elsewhere.

We need to do better in public procurement, where we do not yet do enough to get bang for our buck when it comes to supporting British business.

We need support for infrastructure that provides a platform for new industries, from ports for the wind industry to broadband and high speed rail.

And we need to make sure we have the right skills base, growing the pool of talent in Britain which can attract new industries.

All too often, British success is undermined by one or more missing elements. Too often poor public policy or a lack of action leads to failure.

As an opposition, a focus on the future sources of prosperity and growth will be at the heart of our policy review.

Nobody should pretend these are easy questions to answer but we must not ignore them and continue with business as usual.

Third, we must address a deeper and perhaps the most challenging lesson of the financial crisis.

We went into it with an economy in which rising living standards for too many lower and middle income families, depended on high levels of personal debt and rising asset prices.

Why was this?

We were successful as an economy at creating jobs but not good enough at creating and sustaining well-paying, high productivity jobs.

Indeed globalisation - trade and immigration - had the effect of squeezing out middle-income jobs, and holding down wages in a number of sectors in our economy.

And while for individual companies, this had benefits, for too many families they had no option but to take on higher levels of debt to sustain their standards of living.

In the world after the credit crunch, this is not a credible route to sustaining higher living standards or overall demand in our economy.

So the long-term task we face is to move towards an economy in which good quality jobs attract rising salaries, alongside rising productivity, both for the good of those families and the prosperity of our economy.

This requires the kind of broader industrial base I talked about earlier, but it also requires a shift away from Britain’s competitive advantage being in low paid, low skilled jobs.

As the last government and many of you have rightly said, this depends on having a better skilled and higher productivity workforce.

Government must play a role in this: sometimes through direct support for training, but that does not always make it happen.

We therefore need to find new ways of rewarding those employers who invest in their workforce.

So I have suggested, for example, tax cuts for those employers who pay the living wage as an incentive to develop the skills of the people who work for them.

We also need to do more to support people and local communities to take control of their own economic future.

That means much greater emphasis on small business.

There have been and still are too few in British politics who speak up for small business.

The change Tony Blair brought to our party rightly made us more open to the business community, but we have not yet done enough to understand the real importance of small business as a way of liberating individuals and creating the economy we need.

I want our party to stand up for small business and entrepreneurs.

And I look forward to working with you to help create this high wage high productivity economy in Britain.

Our country faces some big choices in the months and years ahead.

We can accept an analysis that nothing matters bar deficit reduction.

But I fear that is a gamble with growth and jobs.

Even more importantly, it does not address the deeper risks and flaws in our economy.

To think this is the best we can hope for is a deeply pessimistic view.

I believe we need to take a different and more optimistic approach – an approach that sees deficit reduction as a start not an end and is willing to learn the profound lessons of the crisis.

My view is that it is only this that truly serves the interests of British business.

It is only this that will insulate business from the risks that are part and parcel of the financial services industry.

It is only this that will actively support the creation of British industries that can lead in the global economy of tomorrow.

It is only this that can combine fairness, prosperity and economic stability.

That is what I believe it means to be pro-business in the wake of the financial crisis.

It is the pro-business approach I will adopt.

I look forward to working with you in the months and years ahead.

Thank you.

Ends

FOREIGN PRESS CENTER BRIEFING WITH DAN RESTREPO, SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR WESTERN HEMISPHERE AFFAIRS AT THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL; AND ELIZABETH WARREN, ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND SPECIAL ADVISOR TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY ON THE CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU

THE WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.

TOPIC: WALL STREET REFORM, REMITTANCE PROVIDERS, AND PROTECTING CONSUMERS

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2010 AT 2:00 P.M. EDT

MODERATOR: Good afternoon and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. With us today are Dan Restrepo, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council; and Elizabeth Warren, Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Our topic today is Wall Street Reform, Remittance Providers, and Protecting Consumers. And before I begin, I would like to remind you that it’s important for us to stay on topic today. And our speakers will take questions at the end of the briefing about Wall Street reform, remittance providers, and protecting consumers. We’ll begin with Mr. Restrepo.

MR. RESTREPO: Thank you very much. It’s good to see some familiar faces with us today and thank you all for being here. I’m going to provide a little bit of the context in which remittances occur, and particularly in the Americas, which is the area of my responsibility at the National Security staff.

The President has made very clear in our relationship with countries throughout the world, and particularly here in the Americas, that we want to work as a partner, as a good partner to address the most important issues that are facing countries throughout the region and around the world. And obviously, increasing sustainable and equitable economic growth is one of the pillars that has guided our policy.

And our policy in the Americas – and again, in an increasingly globalized world – is predicated on the interconnections that exist between the United States and countries throughout the Americas and throughout the world. And one of the obvious points of interconnection are remittances, the money, the hard-earned money that family and friends send back to their countries of origin to support their families.

And one of the ways that the Administration has been working – and this was laid out by Secretary Clinton on September 22^nd when she signed two memorandums of understanding with El Salvador and with Honduras – to utilize these remittance flows to leverage them into greater support for development, not to interfere in any way with remittances getting from family and friends in the United States to, in this instance, family and friends in countries of El Salvador and Honduras, but rather to partner with strong financial institutions in those two governments – in those two countries, excuse me, through something – an initiative called Building Remittance Investment for Development, Growth, and Entrepreneurship, for BRIDGE by its initials, to use remittance flows to lower financing costs for long-term financing for infrastructure projects, for public works, for microfinance, for entrepreneurs, to build a kind of bottom-up economic growth that is so important in those countries, countries throughout the Americas, and around the world.

And that – encouraging that kind of economic growth is important for the United States as well because it builds more secure communities, more resilient communities, internal markets in those countries, and markets for United States goods and services, which obviously generates jobs here in the United States.

The BRIDGE project – important to understand it will not affect the flow of money from remitter to remittee but will allow in a partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank, the OPIC here in the United States, USAID, and State to use mechanisms to, again, lower the cost of financing for the kinds of medium-term and long-term finance that is necessary to create the conditions for greater economic and equitable growth in those countries.

One of the things that the President has made clear throughout our relationship with countries in the Americas and elsewhere is that our policies, to be effective, to be the good partner that we are seeking to be with countries in the Americas, needs – these policies need to start at home. We need to live what we are encouraging others to live.

And that, I think, ties us into what my colleague is going to talk about, which is the protection of remitters here in the United States to ensure far greater consumer protections than ever before for the folks who are in – are the interconnection that things like BRIDGE and other projects that – and other partnerships that we are working on with countries in the Americas and around the world to create greater economic and equitable – sustainable economic growth – excuse me, sustainable economic growth. It all begins with the remitter here in the United States.

And with that, I will turn it over to Elizabeth Warren to discuss that and other aspects of Wall Street reform. Thank you.

MS. WARREN: Thank you, Dan. I am here to talk about the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It is a new agency in Washington designed to help fix broken consumer credit markets. It’s going to be a cop on the beat for families in this country in their dealings with consumer finance.

The companies – let me just see if I can spin out what the problem is right now. The companies that provide remittances in the United States are not required to price them in advance. Now, I just want you to think for a minute about what that means. This would be as if you bought a television set, you walked in, you pick out the television set you liked, you took it home, you plugged it in, you used it for three weeks, and then later someone, when it was too late to return it, told you how much it was going to cost. It’s pretty tough under those circumstances both to evaluate whether or not you want to do this and whether or not you want to spend that kind of money, and also to make comparisons in the marketplace among products so that you go perhaps to the one that’s less expensive and start driving that market in a way that works for families.

With remittances, you put your money in and take your chances. Money comes out at the other end, but how much money comes out at the other end depends on what kinds of fees and what kinds of exchanges have been added in – things that are not necessarily exposed to the consumer up front.

Now, over the last year and a half, this Administration has made real progress in the areas of consumer finance. And I actually want to start with the CARD Act for just a minute, just so everyone is aware of the comparison. The credit card industry – and credit cards are ubiquitous. We’ve got about eight out of ten American families have a credit card. About 50 million American families can’t pay off their credit card debt and end up rolling it from month to month.

But one of the things that was very worrisome about the credit card market were a number of practices that took place, in effect, behind closed doors that people couldn’t see that profoundly affected the price, and that some information was revealed in the credit card area but not – in our view, not enough. So with the CARD Act, which is one of the first bills that President Obama signed into law, certain practices were simply prohibited, things that were costing money for consumers are just gone.

But one of the features – and I think a really important part of understanding the direction of good regulation was to make the monthly statement on a credit card bill much clearer. And so now, for the first time, any of you who have seen your credit card statement recently – took a little while for this to roll in to law. But if you’ve seen a credit card statement here in the United States, it now says here’s the minimum monthly payment and if you pay it, here’s how much you will pay in interest and how long it will take you to pay off your credit card making minimum monthly payments.

And that’s had a couple of profound effects already. There are a number of families who have looked at that cost and said it’s time for me to shop around. There are also a number of credit providers who have decided to rethink some of their credit charges, so that when one has to tell what the price is up front, it can change the market.

So what we’re hoping for is to build on the success out of something like the CARD Act and the fact that this new consumer agency will work with many different credit products and payment products that families use, and to push in that same direction and to say with remittances people should be able to know up front what it costs, know where all the charges in, the all-in fees for using it. And that way, customers are better informed and we get a market that starts to work for consumers. It’s not a market based on hidden fees, on tricking people on the costs associated with products, but a market based, open and fair, there it is, that’s the price, and let’s see what we can do with it.

Now, I want to point out on this, this is a lot of money. For any of you who have ever sent remittances, you may think, well, it’s a modest market, and it’s true. The average remittance sent from a family here in the United States to a family outside the United States is under $300. But collectively, that’s a hundred billion dollar market annually. There’s a lot of money moving in remittances and we believe if we can make that a more competitive market, a more transparent market, a fairer market for families, some of that money is going to stay with the families instead of draining off to other institutions.

So that’s what this one is about. It’s about making markets work. Families that can understand pricing up front and make comparisons among products and institutions who want to provide products at lower prices now being in a competitive environment that advantages them. So that’s where we’re hitting.

We hope that when families think they’ve been cheated or tricked by a remittance provider that this new consumer agency will be a cop on the beat, someone to listen to the complaint, someone to investigate the complaint, but most of all someone to help make this market work for families.

So that’s mostly what I wanted to talk about, and I think Dan and I are here to answer some questions for you. Actually, I do want to say one more thing while I still get the chance. I’m really pleased you’re here to talk about this issue. I think remittances are one of the credit products, those ways of moving money, that don’t receive a lot of attention and that’s part of the reason that a market has grown up in which the consumers are not getting full and fair information to be able to compete. So I am delighted that this is one of the areas that we’re going to move front and center with this new consumer agency, build on what we’re learning in the credit card area, take it over to the remittance area. So I just want to thank you all for being here too.

Dan.

MODERATOR: Before we get started, just to remind you, give your news organization, state your name, and then we’ll go to questions. We have Luis.

QUESTION: Hi, I’m Luis Alonso with the AP. For this $100 billion that make that market, how much money do you project to remain with the families instead of going, and by when? Thank you.

MS. WARREN: I wish I could answer the question, Luis. Part of the problem we have is that we know something about the money put in and much less about the money that comes out on the other side, which means the calculation of how much is being drained off in fees and charges is not well known. The advantage to having a new consumer agency is that we will be able to collect systematic data from the providers of financial services, so I’m going to have a lot better answer to that – well, anything would be a better answer, but I will have a better answer to that one.

QUESTION: You don’t even have (inaudible)?

MS. WARREN: I think it would be unwise to speculate here. We just – we don’t have good numbers on this.

QUESTION: By when?

MS. WARREN: So the agency is in the process. It’s a baby agency. We’re in the process of standing this agency up. We will receive what are called our transfer functions – I know that’s – starting on July 21^st of 2011, which provides us with an opportunity to engage in certain kinds of rulemaking. We’re not waiting until then to start our work, so we are going to begin the process of collecting data, of talking with the industry, of talking about product design and product disclosure. I am hopeful that that may start to make a difference even sooner.

But we start with the bully pulpit and we move to the period when we will start to have the capacity to force. So we’re in that growth period right now. We’re still hiring up and staffing. I just came to you from an office that we have only been in for four days. So you really have caught us on the front end, but you’ve caught us with the wind at our backs, starting to move.

MR. RESTREPO: Let me add the – one of the things that partnerships like BRIDGE and other financial inclusion and transparency work that’s being done by agencies like USAID, by OPIC, by others in the U.S. Government with partner countries in the Americas and elsewhere is to increase greater transparency, to be able to add to the data that will help answer the question that you just posed to Elizabeth, so we can compare at both input and output these flows to better understand where the money is going.

MODERATOR: Okay, we’re going to go to New York for the next question. Diego.

QUESTION: Yes, this is a question for Dan Restrepo. My name is Diego Senior from Caracol Radio in Colombia. It’s two questions, actually. One of them is if you can tell us about the amount or any number that you have on remittances sent the foreign countries in the Americas, now in the U.S., compared to post-recession.

And the other question is: There’s a group of members of the Obama Administration that are heading to Colombia this very same weekend; they’re going to meet up with members of our government. Can you tell us about what is in their minds and what is in the Obama Administration’s plans to providing our country from now on?

MR. RESTREPO: All right –

QUESTION: Answer in Spanish, please. (Laughter.)

MR. RESTREPO: Well, let me – I’ll do both. Consistent with the ground rules, I’ll answer the first question, which is – approximately, last year, there were almost $60 billion remitted from the United States to countries in the Americas; I believe it’s 59 billion according to World Bank figures. Their – the recession obviously had affected remittance quotes. As the recovery takes place here, we are seeing remittance quotes increase or recover two countries in the Americas and beyond.

And do we want me to do the answer in Spanish as well?

MODERATOR: You can go ahead and respond in Spanish. That’s fine.

MR. RESTREPO: Okay. (In Spanish.)

MODERATOR: Okay, but for the sake of time, for the rest of the questions and the transcript, and so you’ll have more time to ask questions, we’ll do English. So you’ve got one Spanish soundbite.

Jordi, you had a question?

QUESTION: Yeah, thank you, both of you for doing this. But I wonder, you mentioned those initiatives regarding the bank – the bank revelations on – and the credit card statements. I wonder if you have something similar, or are you thinking of something similar regarding remittances? I’d like to know whether there’s any concrete or particular measure that you are already thinking that you could tell us of.

MS. WARREN: What I can tell you is the direction this agency wants to drive in general. And that is, for all credit products, that the cost is clear upfront, that the risks are clear upfront, and that it is easy for a customer to make comparisons among products. If those three features have been met, then markets start to work for consumers, people can make good decisions on their own behalf, and that market will tend to be a better functioning market. And that’s true for remittances, for credit cards, for mortgages, for many products. So that’s at least the direction. I hope that’s helpful.

MODERATOR: Okay. We’re going to go ahead and take another question from New York and we’ll come back to D.C.

QUESTION: Oh, hi. Thanks, Elizabeth and Daniel. I have two questions for you both, respectively. The first question is for Elizabeth. You mentioned this new agency will be very much contributing to protecting the consumer rights. I mean, definitely, this is very welcomed, but as you look into the – at a reflection, where actually, the reaction from the financial institutions given – is there any voice from them saying that this will add up to the cost of their products, of their services? I mean, are they welcoming this or – yeah, and what is your preference, your – I mean, assumption of the ongoing future prognosis of your work being conducted in the next, say, two or three years?

And the question for the Dan is: It’s interesting that the Inter-America scheme to promote business as well as entrepreneurship only – I mean, reinforced by this remittance program. And what exactly is the Inter-American Bank is doing in this? Is this a special tunnel, or channel program, if you will, through – put the remittance together at the – it’s different lump sum of money so that you can use for investment? Or how do you organize that?

Thank you.

MS. WARREN: Well, I’ll just start by saying the financial services industry did not support the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Indeed, their chief lobbyist from the American Bankers Association announced on the front page of the New York Times in August of 2009 that they would kill this agency. And so there was a healthy difference of opinion about whether this agency should go forward.

It, however, became very much, I think, the heart of the financial reform bill, a part that affects the lives of all American families in very direct and tangible ways, and a part that connects to our financial crisis. Had it not been for the terrible mortgages that were fed into the financial system, and that ultimately ended up in mortgage-backed securities and the – that ended up echoing not just around this country, but throughout the worldwide financial system, the entire world would have been in a more stable economic place.

So, the agency is here. We’re starting to put it together. It has good, strong tools on the table. But I should say this, having started with that history, because that is the history that most people think about when they think about this agency – I’ve been reaching out and talking to the CEOs of some of the largest financial services providers, as well as the heads of the smallest community banks around the country. And many of them acknowledge that the consumer credit market is broken, and that we need to find, together, a way to make this market work better, work better for families and work better for those in the industry who want to provide good products in a transparent way at a clear price.

So at this moment, I am actually quite optimistic that there are significant differences that we can make, and I hope that we will be able to make soon.

MR. RESTREPO: To answer your second question, with respect – consistent with how President Obama and this Administration has operated throughout to work as an equal partner in the Americas, we’re working with the Inter-American Development Bank on BRIDGE, as we did with the microfinance growth fund that the President announced at the Summit of the Americas in April of 2009, so that different institutions can bring their expertise, their knowledge, and their resources to bear.

Here, the Inter-American Development Bank is likely to serve as a guarantor of the mechanisms that’ll be used to expand the reach and to leverage the reach of remittance flows. So the bank, as well as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, OPIC, are looking at different mechanisms appropriate to the countries, appropriate to the financial institutions that they are working with in, in this instance, in Honduras, in El Salvador, to ensure the safety of the remittance flows, to ensure that the money gets from the remitter to the remittee, but also helps drive down the costs of medium-term and long-term finance necessary for infrastructure, necessary for public works, and necessary for greater microfinance available in those countries to promote economic development from the bottom up.

MODERATOR: All right. We’re going to go over here to Zoltan. You have a question? And then we’ll go to Francisco.

QUESTION: My question is about the political influence of the (inaudible) of this agency. Is there some hope that there will be – not hoper – or (inaudible) who are against the agency, they will support more the Republican Party than the Democratic Party? Do you not fear that this will all influence also maybe the midterm elections?

MS. WARREN: I don’t know, and I am not the politician in the room. All I can say is that the agency does not have a secure place. It has enemies, both political and economic. There are those who are running for office who have said that they would like to restrict the power of this agency to undercut what it can do on behalf of the American people. And so I think it’s going to be an issue in the sense that there are those who proudly say, “I supported this agency, and helped this agency become law,” and those who are saying, “I didn’t support it, I don’t like it, and I’d like to get rid of it.” So it’s certainly part of the political mix.

MODERATOR: Okay. Francisco?

QUESTION: (Inaudible.) It’s a market – the remittances market has diversified a lot in the last, I don’t know, five years, ten years from Western Union. Many banks have gotten into it. We talked to customers this morning of a bank that specializes in remittances – at least most of their business is in that, it’s a foreign bank. And they seemed satisfied with the level of what they call clarity, or of the fees, that they were well explained, that they didn’t see – that they had a clear idea of the money that they were putting in, how much was coming out on their end.

So, the – my question is: Is there any sense of the degree or variation of how different banks are doing this at this moment?

MS. WARREN: I think this really goes back to the information question. In an area in which disclosures are not required, the variability is – among the costs and kinds of services is high. Part of the function of this agency is to bring that to light and, in part, to let customers know the key pieces of information so that they can make better decisions, and in part to get markets working better.

So, we – this is part of the problem. We can’t document how much variety we have, because we don’t really have a good sense of all of the practices in this area. And it would serve no one well for me to stand here and tell anecdotes about difficulties that families have faced. And – but nonetheless, we can’t ignore those anecdotes. And that’s really the point. We can’t live in a world in which people put their money in and hope that they will be charged only fair fees, and that most of the money will make it to their loved ones in another country. We can do better than that, and we should do better than that.

MODERATOR: Thanks for your question, Fernando. Carlos?

QUESTION: Hi, Carlos Chirinos from BBC Spanish. This is a question for Dan. What connection do you make between remittances, the way the industry works, and the national security, which I understand is your business, no? Do you see any area of concern there?

MR. RESTREPO: Well, I think the connection, if you will, is one of the points that I made at the top, that the President has been guided by the premise that – in the Americas, that what’s good for the people in the Americas is good for the United States. And one area where that is particularly true is where there is greater sustainable, equitable economic growth that creates greater security in communities.

And, obviously, there is a security challenge in many countries in the Americas today. It creates greater economic opportunity and, therefore, economic activity in internal markets, but also markets for U.S. products, which helps in terms of the U.S. national security, because the strength of our economy is an important part of our national security. So this is – and because remittances are such a part of the connection between the United States and countries – particularly Mexico, Central America, but well into South America and the Caribbean, $59 billion of connectivity between people in the United States and people outside the United States necessarily implicates the well-being of the United States and the interests of the United States throughout the region.

So, the more we can both make this transparent here at home – because our policies and our attitude of partnership begins at home, that we can conduct ourselves in a positive and transparent manner here – that also has a very important signaling mechanism to our partners throughout the region to create better conditions in societies throughout the Americas, which ultimately speaks to our national security.

MODERATOR: Okay. Sonia, you had a question?

QUESTION: Thank you. Sonia Schott with Globovision, Venezuela. I am sorry if you already explained that, because I came so late. So I understand that this is a domestic initiative, but will have an impact internationally with other countries. I would like to know who is setting the rules, and if you have been in touch with other countries trying to reach an agreement or anything like that to work better to moving into the future. Thank you.

MS. WARREN: So, we have – as I was explaining earlier, we are only in our offices – this is our fourth day in our offices. So we are just getting started with this new agency. But this is about when people in the United States hand their money to those who issue remittances. And we have, with this new agency, full jurisdiction to supervise that transaction, and to insist on a level of disclosure and transparency that has not been present before.

So, that’s where we’re headed. We want –

QUESTION: Here? I mean --

MS. WARREN: That’s right, “Here.” We want – if someone is taking $250 from someone in the United States and planning to send it to Mexico, we, here in the United States, through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, want the fees and charges associated with that to be made clear, upfront to the person who is giving the $250. That’s what this is about.

MR. RESTREPO: And to add to that, to – I think, having missed the top, we’re talking about two aspects of the equation – the equation Elizabeth just described, in terms of what her agency and the consumer protections here in the United States for remitters, but the United States Government, also understanding that there is a real opportunity to partner with countries elsewhere to ensure that these flows both get to the recipient, but also that they can be utilized by banks in – for the examples that I have been using today, because of the BRIDGE memorandum of understandings are with El Salvador and with Honduras, to utilize in those systems to lower long-term lending costs so that those governments and private sectors are in a position to finance infrastructure – so the roads built for products to get to market – for public works, for greater electrification, for example, or clean water, and for creating microfinance opportunities for entrepreneurs in those countries.

This is the BRIDGE that was – these two memoranda of understanding that were announced by Secretary Clinton – or were signed by Secretary Clinton on September 22^nd on the margins of the UN General Assembly are what we hope to be the beginning of a process, both with those partners, and potentially with other partners in the Americas and beyond, to leverage or to better utilize these remittance flows without affecting what reaches people, but better utilize them for helping build and sustain bottom-up economic growth.

MODERATOR: Follow-up, real quick follow-up, and then we will go to Antonieta.

QUESTION: Do you expect this initiative will have any impact in immigration or illegal immigration in the United States?

MR. RESTREPO: I believe, in the case of – I will speak directly to the BRIDGE, Honduras and El Salvador, to – where in both countries, President Funes and President Lobo have spoken of the importance of building vibrant and sustainable communities in those countries to give the opportunity to Salvadorians and Hondurans to live out their dreams in El Salvador and Honduras. Greater economic growth, bottom-up in these societies, will help achieve the goal that those presidents have set for themselves in their countries.

MODERATOR: Antonieta.

QUESTION: Hi. Antonieta Cadiz, with La Opinion. Elizabeth, besides the changes that we have already seen that Fernando mentioned, are there any more changes that the agency is thinking to put in place in the future for remittance senders? I mean more disclosure, changes, or, you know, analyze how the system works and then incorporate different kind of aspects to the system?

And then on BRIDGE, I was wondering – my sense is that this is just a starting, that everybody is discussing, and see what everybody can do on this. So I was wondering if you have any timeline in terms of future sets on the BRIDGE.

MS. WARREN: So we will start with better information about what’s happening throughout the remittance world. One of the things I like best about this new consumer agency is that it is authorized by statute to collect information from the various service providers.

So we’re going to get a much better handle on how that market works. And when we are sure that we understand this market fully, then we will start to design what are ways to make it work better for families. And part of that will mean doing it, I hope, cooperatively, both with the communities that are affected and with the financial services providers, but always remembering, thanks to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the financial reform bill, there are tools to compel, if that’s necessary.

This is a voice on behalf of consumers who use financial products, a way to level the playing field. That’s our job. And so we will start with data. We’ll see what we can work out. And, if necessary, we move to rules. But we are going to protect American families.

MR. RESTREPO: You are correct that we are at the beginning, or in the early stages of the BRIDGE project. A great deal of work went into – at the front end of analyzing the financial institutions and the structures, both in El Salvador and Honduras, to understand that they – to make good partners, and to understand how we were entering into this process.

Signing the memorandum of understanding was a very important step in that process. Work continues. One of the nice things about BRIDGE is that it’s built upon a proven concept. You’ve seen successful use of remittance flows to lower lending costs in Brazil for development projects, in El Salvador itself, through some work of the Inter-American Development Bank, in Peru, other places in the Americas, in India, and beyond.

So, it is a proven concept. So we are confident that we will be able to move out fairly quickly, now that the memoranda of understandings have been signed, and the governments – the three governments and the two bilaterals – are working, as we speak, to continue to bring this into fruition, and to reach out. Again, this is a public-private partnership. This is working with financial institutions in these countries. And we will go as fast as we can, because we see a real opportunity here to utilize, in a positive fashion, the interconnection that exists between the United States and El Salvador and Honduras, and to continue building that out into other partnerships and similar partnerships in the Americas and beyond.

MODERATOR: Okay. We have time for a couple more questions. Macarena, you’ve had your hand up for a while. Wait for the microphone, please.

QUESTION: Yes, Macarena Vidal, from EFE news services. This is a question for Dan, and actually a follow-up on the question from Antonieta. You’ve mentioned that you would like to expand bridge. I was thinking – I was wondering whether you have any particular countries you would like to expand it with, and what would be the conditions to expand it.

MR. RESTREPO: Yes, I think the – to not get ahead of ourselves, we do want to move forward with the countries that have been identified, and the memoranda of understanding are in place, so – with El Salvador, with Honduras – to get that up and running as fast as possible, and as responsibly as possible. As I said, this is built upon a proven concept. But each situation has its own intricacies, and we want to make sure we get that right.

At the same time, we’re continuing to – and partners throughout the U.S. Government at the State Department, at USAID, at OPIC and elsewhere are looking at other opportunities that – and I don’t want to prejudge those, but – because those processes are underway, but there are other countries that are being looked at, other countries that have expressed interest, having seen the memoranda of understanding that have been signed between the United States and El Salvador, between the United States and Honduras, other countries are also coming to us, expressing an interest and seeing how we can do this or similar activities with them.

And we are going to continue to look at those and move out with them as quickly as we can, ensuring that we are doing it in a way that is protective of these flows, and that maximizes the development growth and entrepreneurial opportunities that can come from this kind of work.

MODERATOR: Okay. Last question. Silvia.

QUESTION: Hi, I’m Silvia Pisani with La Nacion in Argentina. This is a question for Dan.

Dan, I understand that when we talk about remittances, we are mainly speaking about a small amount of money. But by any chance is there any link or any concern about this – that this lack of information, or this lack of transparency by any chance can help the money laundering, or nothing to do with it?

MR. RESTREPO: As Elizabeth noted, the average remittance – average remitter is a very small amount. It obviously adds up to large sums of money – in the case of the Americas in 2009, nearly $60 billion.

We are always vigilant and there are parts of the U.S. Government that are working very hard with our partners throughout the region, not in looking at remittance flows, but looking at the financial system to ensure that the financial system is not being taken advantage of by transnational criminal organizations, and, to the extent that it is, that we are working in partnership with countries throughout the Americas and around the world to shut those flows down. It is an essential part of being – of assuming our responsibility in combating transnational criminal organizations to cut off their money.

And there are lots of folks in the United States Government at the Department of the Treasury and elsewhere who are dedicated to working those issues to ensure that the – our financial system is not being exploited by illegal groups, and that our borders are not being exploited by illegal groups moving money in bulk in cash. That is a responsibility of this government, one that President Obama has taken very seriously, and one that we will continue to increase our efforts on. But we view those as separate tasks from protecting consumers on remittances, and working to leverage remittance flows for economic growth and development in countries in the Americas and beyond.

MODERATOR: Okay, I would like to thank everybody for coming today. We appreciate you being here. And thank you to our briefers for being with us and spending so much time. Thanks.

FOREIGN PRESS CENTER BRIEFING WITH ALEXANDER BURNS, POLTICO REPORTER

THE WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.

TOPIC: HOT HOUSE AND SENATE RACES

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2010 AT 2:00 P.M. EDT

Mr. Burns: Thank you for having me here today. I understand you had a sort of overview briefing on where the landscape is and the likely big picture outcomes from the elections, so I’m going to start by just running down some of the specific races that we’re going to be watching most closely at POLITICO over the next three weeks. Then I’d like to get relatively quickly to your questions. I think that’s probably where I can be the most useful.

We just published a story on our site this afternoon outlining how each of the four federal campaign committees are going to be allocating their resources over the next three weeks. So the Republicans on the House side and the Senate side, Democrats on the House side and the Senate side. The big picture of how they’re approaching the home stretch of the election is very very different for the two different parties.

Republicans, the trend is that they are making a lot of bets on a lot of different races in the hopes of taking advantage of the national environment even with smaller amounts of money. That is to say that rather than putting, these are just figures for example. They’re not actual spending numbers. Rather than putting, they may be spreading $10 million across 30 races where they think that even a smaller sum of money, the wind that they have at their back will be able to bring them over the finish line. Where the Democrats might take that same sum of money, put it in 10 races that they think they are especially capable of holding. That’s because Democrats have a lower but possibly more difficult bar to clear. They need to control both chambers by even one seat; Republicans need to pick up a net of 39 seats in the House and 10 seats in the Senate if they want to take control.

So Democrats are trying to build a firewall of seats that would enable them to hold back a Republican wave, whereas Republicans are trying to make that wave as big as possible. They’re going up in the House in districts where the GOP hasn’t been competitive for years. Just this week they were putting an ad down in a Tennessee district represented by Democrat Lincoln Davis who was viewed as completely secure at the beginning of this cycle and is now potentially in the fight of his life.

It’s more difficult to identify the individual House races that are sort of the hot ones to watch than it is for Senate and Governors elections, but the sort of broad contours of what to watch in the House campaign. Republicans are targeting currently 56 seats with television ads from the National Republican Congressional Committee. If you include money that they’re spending, that the NRCC is spending in coordination with campaigns, that number rises to a little bit over 60. So you get a sense of the scale of the effort that we’re talking about here. If they need to win 39 seats on election day, they’ll probably lose a couple, so let’s say they need to win in the low 40s in actually to take control of the House. They are betting maybe on a third more seats right now than they actually need to win.

They’re going up in districts like Colorado Representative John Salazar’s district. They are increasingly optimistic about their chances of knocking off Bobby Bright, a Democrat in Alabama. I mentioned Lincoln Davis. They are targeting New York members of Congress who were not viewed as competitive at the beginning of the cycle.

If there’s a region to watch on the House it’s probably the Midwest. Democrats have a decent shot at holding a bunch of House seats in the Northeast. Even in a place like New Hampshire where they have an open seat to defend, they have a fairly strong candidate, it still is a state where Democrats can be competitive. They’re fighting off challenges in Massachusetts, in New York, to a lesser extent in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Because the northeast is still so Democratic they have a decent shot at holding on the Republican gains there.

In the south, it’s much much harder for the Democrats. There are two or more seats in the state of Georgia that were not competitive in 2008 that are competitive right now simply because the region favors Republicans. Florida is going to be a very very difficult state for Democrats.

And if there’s kind of a toss-up belt, you’re looking at seats in the Midwest like in the Illinois suburbs, Representative Bill Foster, who was elected in a special election in 2008, is a very strong candidate but is in a very very tough environment, in exactly the kind of suburban affluent area that the president did well in in 2008 where voters are very frustrated with the economy.

The Democrats would point you towards a set of Republican held seats that they are hoping to pick up. If Republicans manage to pick off folks like John Salazar and Bobby Bright or Jerry McNerney in California, Democrats are going to need to take over even more Republican seats in order to offset those losses. They’ve been talking from the beginning of the cycle about seats like the open House seat in Delaware which is currently occupied by Mike Castle, or the open House seat in Illinois which is occupied by Mark Kirk who’s running for Senate. They’re now trying to push the map a little bit farther looking at seats like Florida’s 25^th Congressional District where the Republican candidate David Rivera has had some real problems out on the campaign trail.

The bottom line, I understand this is a lot of information, a lot of names and districts to be just throwing out there. So to try to sum that up, the big picture is that both parties are increasingly convinced that this is going to be a very very very close race for the House. That whoever wins control might win control by as few as two or three seats, maybe even one. So for Republicans, the ability to play in a seat like the Massachusetts 10^th or for the Democrats, the ability to pick up a seat like the Florida 25^th could end up deciding the election. The bettor’s odds are still probably in favor of Republicans taking control of the House. But it’s certainly not in the bag.

On the Senate side, the question is really not will Republicans take control. It will be it’s possible they’ll take control but it would be an astonishing night if they did. There are probably about 12 races that are genuinely competitive at this point. They would have to win 10 of them. And at least three of those are real sort of reach elections.

So the question is, in the Senate, do the Republicans have a night where they can get five seats, which would be a real success in relative terms for the Democrats; or do they have a night where they get eight, nine, on a spectacular night, ten seats.

The way the playing field looks like is I would say roughly as follows, and I would say this is basically the consensus view at this point.

There are about three seats that are currently held by Democrats that are essentially guaranteed Republican takeovers. We’re talking about the seats in Arkansas, in Indiana, and in North Dakota. National Democrats are not spending money in those states in any substantial quantities. Republicans are not spending substantial money in those states either because they are very very confident of their chances.

There are six states that are either toss-ups or very close one way or the other. Those are the races in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Illinois, and West Virginia. Of those states the most competitive are probably Colorado and Nevada and Illinois. Those are all states where both parties feel very good about their odds which means somebody is going to be very very wrong just a couple of weeks from now.

In each of those states you have one party with a nominee they are basically happy with and one party with a nominee that they’re a little bit less comfortable with. In Colorado, Republicans did not get their chosen candidate. They didn’t get their chosen candidate in Nevada. Because of the environment, and because those candidates had actually performed better than expected. We’re talking about Sharon Angle in Nevada who’s challenging Harry Reid; and Ken Buck in Colorado who’s challenging Michael Bennett. Those two candidates have done a bit better than Republicans anticipated and those races are neck and neck.

In Illinois, Democrats were not thrilled at the fact that Alexus Junelius, he’s the State Treasurer, won the Democratic primary just because he carries a lot of baggage from his business career, but he has actually been a stronger candidate than they believed he would be against Mark Kirk, the Republican, who has under-performed in some ways.

So if you’re looking for the races that are really on the bubble, those are the three. If they all tip one way or the other, that probably gives you a pretty good idea of who’s going to be celebrating the next morning.

For Republicans to take control of the Senate they would have to win those races, they would have to pick up West Virginia and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which are not quite in the toss-up category in the same way that the other three races are, because they are actually slightly more appealing targets for Republicans in some ways. And then they would need to play in three other states. Those would be Washington, California and Connecticut.

In Connecticut Republicans are fortunate to have a nominee who is very very very wealthy and can afford to put as much of her own money into the campaign as she wants. Linda McMann, she’s a wrestling executive worth hundreds of millions of dollars, also carries a lot of baggage from her business career that is going to make that race a tough one for them.

In California, Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard CEO is certainly one of the most watched candidates of the year, but she is also struggling to catch up to the Democrat, Barbara Boxer.

So more and more we’re looking at Washington State where you have Dina Rossi, a former state legislator and real estate executive; and Patty Murray, the incumbent Democrat as maybe the Republicans’ best chance at getting that tenth seat.

Governors races are sort of a different category but I’ll just touch briefly on them because they are very important, particularly to the president’s reelection campaign in 2012.

There are 37 governor's seats up for grabs this year. By one seat, that’s the largest number of governor’s races that have ever been up for election at one time in American history. Among those seats are Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, Michigan, Texas. The big ones.

Some of those states are more important than others in presidential elections. California is not going to go Republican in 2012, I think we can probably bet pretty confidently. Texas is probably not going to go for a Democrat. But in many of these states, the party that controls the governorship in Ohio, the party that controls the governorship in Florida, that gives them a leg up in the next presidential election. So both the Republican Governors Association and the Democratic Governors Association have a lot on the line in those elections. So does the White House. If you look at where the President is campaigning, he’s going to campaign for Ted Strickland in Ohio, for Tom Barrett in Wisconsin. He has been down to Florida but not recently, and that’s because it’s still a fairly conservative state where he’s not necessarily a great asset to Democrats. All those races that I just mentioned are either tied or within a couple of percentage points. Republicans still do have the tide with them in the governor’s races.

I hope that’s a helpful rundown of just a couple of bullet points to watch on each of those levels of the campaign. I’d be grateful to hear what you are watching. I understand there are some trips going out to California, Florida, in Delaware now.

TVA Canada: Richard Lantendresse. I’m a TV reporter at the Canadian TV Network.

I’d like you, Alex, to talk a little more about Nevada. How come Sharon Angle hasn’t been hurt more by many mistakes that were made? And how come Harry Reid can’t overcome the incumbent factor in this case?

Mr. Burns: I think folks in both parties will tell you that Sharon Angle has been hurt pretty badly by some of the mistakes that she’s made. If Republicans had gotten maybe any other candidate out of that primary, Harry Reid would be down by a substantial margin.

The fundamentals of that race are very very difficult for Reid. He’s the Senate Majority Leader in a very very anti-establishment year and doesn’t get more establishment than the Senate Majority Leader. He’s not a great campaigner. There’s a story that over the summer he held a rally where he was trying to rev up a crowd, talking about the banking reform bill which is a pretty popular piece of legislation and he revved them up with the line, “We’re going to get this conference report done,” which people don’t know what that means. A lot of people in Washington don’t know what that means, let alone voters in Nevada.

Unemployment in Nevada is I think 13 percent -- Over 14. So even worse. And his personal approval is not great. He’s a partisan, he’s a very very partisan figure in a state that is essentially a swing state at this point. It went for Bush in ’04, Obama in ’08.

So Reid’s plan since ’06 has been to figure out who the Republicans are who would run against him and sort of bump them off before they can get to the general election. He targeted several state senators for defeat; he targeted a congressman for defeat; got rid of all of them. In the primary there was a Democratic independent group that ran ads against one of the Republican candidates in the hopes of getting Sharon Angle into the general election. He got Sharon Angle in the general election. And it’s a mark of how unpopular he is, how bad the economy is there, how unpopular the White House is there that at this point that race is absolutely a toss-up.

Sharon Angle, you may have heard yesterday, announced that she raised $14 million in the last three months of the year. We don’t know how much money she actually has in the bank. She spent a lot of money on television; she uses a method of fundraising that’s fairly expensive so her burn rate is going to be high. But that’s how I would answer your question of why it’s not, why Reid is not in a better position right now.

Canal Plus (France): Laura Haim, I’m a writer with [inaudible] for French TV Canal Plus.

What’s your analysis about Florida, what’s going on there? Because a lot of people are thinking, especially all over the world, that Florida is a very sensitive state in this country.

The other thing is, is there someone in the Republican camp to watch in those races for 2012?

Mr. Burns: Florida, the races in Florida are -- If I could cover only one state in the country it would absolutely be Florida. Every race in the state is totally fascinating and also like ridiculous in its own way.

The Senate race was supposed to be Charlie Crist, formerly then the Republican governor, was supposed to win the Republican nomination in a walk and crush the Democrat in the general election. As you know, Charlie Crist is now running as an independent, sort of competing for the center left with Meek against Mark Rubio. Rubio is heavily favored at this point. He is up in the sort of low teens in the polls. Crist has a very hard time raising money as an independent, although he has plenty left in the bank. And Meek is a liberal down the line Democratic Congressman in a state that’s a toss-up state.

There was a poll released yesterday that showed that if Meek were to drop out of the race it would be a tie between Crist and Arubio, but Meek’s not dropping out of the race. And part of the reason for that is that the Democrats view the Florida governor’s mansion as one of their strongest pickup opportunities. Their candidate is a woman named Alex Sink. She’s the State’s Chief Financial Officer. She’s running against Rick Scott who is a very wealthy former health care executive who is not doing as well as you would expect a Republican to do because he is tied to a number of fraud cases from his time in the health care industry. Part of the reason why it’s important for Democrats that Meek stay in the race is that he will appeal to liberal voters, he will appeal to African American voters, and he will help get them out to the polls so that even if he doesn’t win that could help Sink in the governor’s race.

To address the second part of your question, Republicans to watch for 2012, there are a number of folks, particularly in governor’s races, who are viewed as very promising prospects for the GOP. Meg Whitman in California. If she were to beat Jerry Brown, and that’s a very close race at this point, is someone who Republicans view as a potential national candidate. Susanna Martinez, she is a District Attorney in New Mexico who is now leading in the governor’s race. Nicky Haley in South Carolina, the same sort of appeal. For Republicans, these are candidates who don’t look like what you think of when you think of a Republican presidential candidate. You are unlikely -- Who knows in 2012, but you are unlikely in 2016 to have a field of middle-aged white men competing for the Republican nomination for president.

The sort of cold water to pour on all of this is that I think some of these very promising Republican stars look at 2008 and see that Sarah Palin, when she was chosen to be vice president, had been governor for less than two years, was viewed as a very promising national prospect and is probably -- I don’t know that I would say this definitively, but it’s probably more difficult in some ways to see her becoming president or vice president now than four years ago just because she’s so much more controversial. The experience argument was used very effectively against her.

Die Zeit (Germany): Could you tell us a little -- Martin Klingst from the German weekly Die Zeit.

I have a question about the electorate. If you look at the American landscape, how come -- people are dissatisfied and disappointed about the economy. But how come they tend then to vote for the GOP if the GOP, when you look at their program, doesn’t offer much else than they offered in the past? That really did not solve the problems. So is there something like amnesia or --

Mr. Burns: When you look at how the two parties are rated in opinion polls, particularly the two parties in Congress, the Republicans are rated as badly as Democrats or worse, when you ask people what’s your impression of Republicans in Congress, what’s your impression of Democrats in Congress? So I think folks on both sides of this election would probably concede, many of them do, that voting for Republicans is not necessarily a full-throated endorsement of their program. It’s a way of saying we’re not happy with what’s going on right now.

The president’s party typically loses seats in a mid-term election. That didn’t happen for Bush in 2002 which was as testament in part to his political operation and partly to the effect of 9/11. And in an economy this bad, the party that is in charge is generally held accountable for what is going on.

The Democrats have, I think it’s fair to say, lost the public relations war of the stimulus. They have not won the public relations war over the health care law. So while Republicans may not be everybody’s ideal alternative to the party in power, they are the only alternative to the party in power and folks are unhappy with the way things are.

Malaya (Philippines): My name is Jenny Ilustre of Malaya, Philippine news daily in English.

There are surveys that note six out of ten Americans are not happy with the direction that the country is going. How much of a factor is that in terms of the turnout and the outcome of the elections?

Mr. Burns: I think when you talk to most pollsters, that’s for many of them the most important question on a survey. Do you think the country is basically on the right track or is it going off in the wrong direction. I don’t know if you’re referring to the Wall Street Journal poll a couple of weeks ago, but it was 59 percent said the country was in the wrong direction; 32 percent said it was on the right track. I think that goes to the point raised in the previous question, that folks are simply dissatisfied with the state of the country right now. It’s easy for folks in Washington to compare the two parties’ economic programs and say this one doesn’t really address the issues at hand; this one is controversial; maybe these provisions are popular and these provisions are not. But for many of the people who are actually going to vote in this election, the decision is going to be I think a much more sort of gut check decision. Am I comfortable voting for two more years of what I have now? Or am I not? That’s the frame that the Republicans have put on the election pretty effectively.

So when you see that three in five voters think the country is in the wrong direction, that’s a big part of the reason why Republicans have the opportunity they have right now.

NHK (Japan): Shin Soji from NHK Japan TV.

In 2010, unlike 1994, the ’94 race the Republicans were so unpopular, but in 2010 both the Republicans and Democrats are unpopular. So what makes the Republicans think they could exceed or equal the 1994 achievement when they’re not popular in the first place?

Mr. Burns: I think everything you just said is totally right, and when you look race by race it’s actually even more striking in some cases that some of the Republican candidates who have been nominated are less appealing than their party brand. If Republicans had run a standard issue Republican candidate, generic Republican candidate in Nevada, they would probably be winning that election. If they had run a standard issue candidate in the Kentucky Senate race where they nominated Rand Paul, sort of a tea party aligned candidate, that race would probably not be close to competitive right now.

The fact that the Republican brand is still damaged, many of their candidates are sort of sub-optimal, and they’re still so competitive is a sign that the electorate is restive, the economy is bad, and Republicans think they can take advantage of that.

The parallels to 1994 are strong in a lot of ways, and I think in some ways the biggest difference is that in 2010 Republicans only need to look back 16 years to the last time they took control of Congress. In 1994 it had been four decades since Republicans had control of the House. So despite a favorable environment, despite missed steps by the White House and Democrats in Congress, the idea that you could have a Republican House of Representatives was still pretty far-fetched. It isn’t now.

World Business Press Online (Slovakia): Zoltan Mikes, World Business Press Online.

My question is regarding if the tea part is just a prospect for Republicans, or do you see also somewhere a minus, like in Alaska that they are competing with each other. The conservatives with more conservative, and then maybe the liberal campaign.

The second part of the question is what do you see in the future for the tea party after 2012? Is there a possibility that they will get another third party? Is there at least a slight chance that Sara Palin will be something like Ross Perot in 2012?

Mr. Burns: I think Republicans tend to look at the tea party and see it as a symptom of the conservative enthusiasm that’s out there in the election. One of the biggest problems for Democrats is that folks on the right are just more fired up about voting than folks on the left. Some percentage of those conservatives who are really excited about the election identify with the tea party movement. So in that respect it’s going to be a big asset to Republicans that their base is so energized, particularly in comparison to the Democrats’ base. But as you mentioned, there are races that you can point to where because of the tea party or tea party backed candidates, Republicans are having a tougher time than they would have otherwise, or are likely to lose.

You mentioned Alaska where you have a competitive race, where you would not have had a competitive race previously. I think the odds are still that one of the two Republican candidates wins more likely than that the Democrat wins, but it is very unpredictable. But certainly in Delaware you had a seat that Republicans were all but assured of winning in the Senate and are now all but assured of losing. I think that it will be interesting to see, depending on how close they get to taking the Senate on November 2^nd, if they were to fall one seat short and that seat were Delaware, I think there would be a lot of people very very frustrated with that outcome.

Der Tagesspiegel (Germany): Christoph Marschall, the German daily Der Tagesspiegel.

I would like to follow up on the enthusiasm gap. Isn’t that the most important factor for the outcome? Is it not even more important than the question where the sympathies are and that we have backlash against the White House or the party in power? However you put it. Could you a little bit comment on that? And is everything already decided? Or is there still a chance the President is traveling a lot, he’s trying to mobilize his base? But is that realistic that he can change that? The enthusiasm gap is so important because so many races are close, and just by the enthusiasm gap they say well that’s a decisive factor in my view. But please.

Mr. Burns: Yes, I think there is a lot to that. At the very beginning of September you had this wave of analysis come out that said the campaign for the House is over, Republicans are going to take this in a walk. They might win 60 seats, 70 seats. A lot of that was based on looking at polls where there was a very very wide enthusiasm gap. Where you had seats that should be Democratic, that are in Democratic areas, but Democrats weren’t necessarily going to vote in those elections.

Then over the course of the month you started to see those polls narrow. You saw the generic ballot where they just asked people, are you inclined to vote for a Republican or are you inclined to vote for a Democrat? You saw those numbers get tighter. And when you talk to folks on both sides, they say that’s because Democrats sort of clued into the election. That they either realized there was a campaign going on -- it’s hard to imagine that there are people who were not aware that there is an election, but they’re out there. Democrats who were not paying attention started paying attention; or Democrats who were paying attention and kind of disaffected decided this is maybe a campaign that I should care about.

The trouble is there’s still a gap and even though those numbers are getting closer, they’re not necessarily getting close enough to protect the Democrats in the House.

You mentioned the President’s campaigning and I think if you look at where he’s going, it tends to be in races where he can help remedy the enthusiasm gap in a decisive way. He was just in Maryland last week. He recorded a radio ad for the Democratic governor there, O’Malley. He rallied on a college campus. Young voters are a big part of his base. And the radio ad was certainly targeted, at least in part, to black voters who represent a big part of the electorate in Maryland.

The Democratic Governors Association put up an ad in Hawaii today attacking the Republican candidate for governor as sort of an enemy of Barack Obama. Hawaii, as you know, is his home state. So that’s a way of getting Democrats more engaged than they might be.

I think it’s difficult to rank the most important factors in the election between the unemployment rate and the general right track/wrong track and enthusiasm gap. But right now the enthusiasm gap is probably the most important factor that Democrats have a chance of changing. They’re not going to change the unemployment rate in the next 20 days, but in some of these races on the margins they can probably do their candidates some good by -- The President’s up in Philadelphia campaigning on a college campus.

Der Tagesspiegel: I was asking because if there is a general poll which party has the better ideas, then normally the Democrats are ahead in almost every field except for national security or terrorism. So this contrasts to the prospect that the Republican will win huge. My explanation was always the enthusiasm gap and that is why I said it might be the most important factor, but it’s a question.

Mr. Burns: Sure. I think that I referred to the Wall Street Journal poll before. Part of the reason why Democrats are having trouble is that yes, they may be the more trusted party on energy or -- Well, probably until they passed the health care bill they had a huge lead on that issue. That number has changed. But on the economy, it is still very fluid and Republicans have a better chance of making their argument there. The President’s approval rating in that poll was 46 percent positive, 49 percent negative. But his approval rating on the economy was 42 percent positive, 54 percent negative.

So on the central issue of the campaign their standing is not as strong as it was two years ago.

CTI TV (Taiwan): Guohua Zang, with CTO TV of Taiwan. Two questions.

How real is this anti-incumbent sentiment in the country? I’ve spoken to a very small number of voters in a number of states. Most of them, it’s like 8 out of 10 would say I’m not anti-incumbent. I go with the best candidate. It seems to me the voters place more importance on the personal character or qualifications of the individual candidates than on the party affiliation. So my question is how real is this anti-incumbent sentiment? As the election day draws near will there be any change? How big is the change? That’s the first question.

Second question, is the economy almost the only issue for most voters? Are there any international issues? When people talk about the economy they probably think of China, how China factors in there. Thank you.

Mr. Burns: On the first part of your question, if Democrats hold the House it’s going to be because voters consider the individual candidates more than they consider incumbent or non-incumbent. Part of the reason why the polls in these district by district House raises narrowed over the month of September is that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and individual candidates went into these races and just carpet bombed very specific Republican candidates on very very specific personal problems. Some of them -- I shouldn’t say personal problems. Some of them are personal problems -- divorces and court cases and things like that. Some of them are business problems, or their voting record in the state legislature. The Democratic mantra in this election has been it’s a choice, not a referendum. So they hope by saying well, yes, the incumbent voted for the bailout and the health care bill, but his challenger has been sued 40 times and has an assault case pending. That actually is one of the choices that has been lined up in a district that’s now looking better for Democrats.

On the whole there are a striking number of candidates who would have been, a striking number of Republican candidates who would have been probably unelectable in 2008 who are likely to win this year. People who have those personal problems, and voters don’t seem to care.

I mentioned the Florida governor’s race before. Rick Scott was tied, Democrats say closely, Republicans say not so closely, to a $1.7 billion Medicare fraud case in the 1990s. He is either tied or slightly ahead or slightly behind in that election. That’s unthinkable that that would be the case if people weren’t, if the electorate wasn’t trending very strongly toward rejecting the party in power.

As for international issues, I think that you see those playing out most prominently through the lens of the economy. That you see some ads from Democratic incumbents on Iraq or Afghanistan saying that Ike Skelton, he’s a high ranking member of the Armed Services Committee in the House running for reelection in Missouri. You have a guy like him running ads like “Ike Skelton has stood up for the troops; my opponent is not standing up for the troops.”

On the whole, and I’m glad that you mentioned China. The ads that are being run on international issues tend to be Democratic ads accusing Republicans of trying to ship jobs to China, or to India or to a number of other locations. That is an argument that worked very very well for the party in a special House election in Pennsylvania last may where they were in a tight race. Again, sort of nuked this Republican candidate with claims that he wanted to raise the sales tax and protect tax breaks for companies that out-source, and the Democrat ended up winning by eight points.

In addition to the sort of person by person attacks that the Democrats are rolling out, the more standard issues or paint by numbers attacks, a lot of them do involve trade, a lot of them do involve outsourcing. And China is a specter in all that.

Times of London (UK): Christina Lamb from the Sunday Times of London. I have a linked question which is that the war in Iraq was a big factor in the presidential elections, and yet the war in Afghanistan doesn’t seem t be mentioned at all in this mid-term elections despite the fact that it’s going to badly. I wondered if you could comment on that.

Also, specifically, I wondered if you could comment on the Senate race in South Carolina between Jim DeMint and Alvin Greene.

Mr. Burns: In Afghanistan I think the reason behind that is really straightforward. Republicans are supportive of the President’s war policy, or to the extent that they have criticism, it is that it is sort of not pro-war enough. That’s not a great point of contrast. The perception of the country is the President has endorsed the war in Afghanistan. Republican candidates also endorsed the war in Afghanistan. So it’s not necessarily a great wedge issue to use. Democratic candidates, if they were going to break with their own party on the issue, they would be breaking to the left which is not what you want to be doing if you were fending off a Republican opponent. There have been a couple of isolated instances where people have criticized the President on the war. Joe Sestak, the Democrat running for Senate in Pennsylvania, I think it was last week, maybe the week before, wrote a letter to the administration asking them to reassess their policy in Afghanistan. That’s a way for Sestak to create some distance between himself and the White House. Pennsylvania, a lot of the swing voters there are sort of affluent suburban voters who are not necessarily enthusiastic about the war. He’s also the highest ranking foreign military official ever to serve in the U.S. Congress, so you can’t really attack him for being soft on the war. But generally speaking I just think there’s not a lot for candidates to gain one way or another from attacking the President on Afghanistan.

On the South Carolina Senate race, that’s one of a couple of races that is genuinely not at all competitive that gets an astonishing amount of media attention. And we’re all guilty of it. I think some are more guilty than others, but people will never stop covering Alvin Greene. People will never stop covering Christine O’Donnell in Delaware or Carl Paladino, the Republican running for governor of New York, just because they are these sort of outlandish characters.

I think that initially, Democrats said that Alvin Greene was a Republican plant. An investigation was conducted and it turned out that no, he wasn’t. He saved up checks from various government benefit programs and filed for Senate. The guy he was running against didn’t take the primary seriously.

Democrats are quick to point out that they never thought that they were going to beat Jim DeMint, the incumbent Republican, so they don’t view that as a huge loss. But you do, the Republican rejoinder is that when you have such a weak candidate or virtually a non-candidate at the top of the ticket, that doesn’t help people who are running for the House or state legislature.

China Times (Taiwan): Ping Liu, China Times, Taiwan.

I think maybe more than one month ago there was a poll saying that more than 20 percent of Americans think that President Obama is a Muslim. I think that’s why President Obama and the White House Press Officer tried to clarify that. My question is, will that sentiment have impact on the voting behavior? Thank you.

Mr. Burns: I think there are a couple of schools of thought on why that number is as high as it is. One says that you can get a decent number of people to agree to anything in a poll. That if you poll-do you believe in UFOs- you’re going to get a number in the teens of people who say yes, I do believe in aliens that visit earth. Some people say that’s not a reflection of people genuinely believing that the President is secretly hiding his faith and pretending to be a Christian, but that it’s a way of saying I don’t like the President. For some voters saying this guy is a secret Muslim is a way of saying he is not one of us, I don’t approve of him.

Certainly the fact that that number is so high, whatever reason is behind it, does reflect that there’s a decent slice of the country that is deeply, deeply opposed to the President and uncomfortable with him being in charge. Whether the specific sense that he’s a Muslim is going to make a difference on election day, I think that’s probably a tougher case to make, although there have been a couple of elections where you’ve had candidates run commercials about opposing the construction of mosques, either the one in New York City or in their local area, and that has had, the effect of it has varied from race to race.

China Radio International (China): Shanshan Wang with China Radio International.

If Republicans take the House, what would be the immediate policy changes that they are likely to make? And will they represent an obvious diversion of the direction where the House is going?

Mr. Burns: I think that depends to a great degree on if they take the House how many seats they have in their majority. If they have a two or three seat majority there’s not very much they can do in terms of implementing actual policy. They can certainly stop any policy from being implemented that they don’t like, and that’s probably true, by the way, if Democrats hold onto Congress by two or three seats, that at this point when you're talking about such a small swing one way or the other, the House is probably going to be paralyzed after January.

If Republicans were to win a bigger victory, or if they were to win a small victory and convince some Democrats to switch parties; or win a small victory and build a more stable coalition with some of the very conservative Democrats in the House, and there are a handful of them who are pretty far to the right and who are likely to win reelection. I think then Republicans have a real choice to make and I think that part of the reason why they’ve done so well in this election is they’ve been a little bit vague about what the next thing they would do would be.

They’ve talked a lot about reigning in spending, so I think that probably means that some appropriations bills would be tougher to pass. I think they’ve talked about stopping earmarks. I think that would be tougher, if you were a member of Congress to get earmarks passed. But when you think about the big ticket conservative prorities. Things like tax reform or entitlement reform. They’re not going to have anything close to the kind of majority they would need to get that stuff through the House of Representatives. They’re not likely to have control of the Senate, so even if they did get something like that out of the House, good luck. And even if they did take control of the Senate they would have to beat a filibuster and then somehow convince the President to sign it, which is not going to happen, ever.

So I think the safe bet is that if Republicans take control of either chamber, the person to watch then is probably the President and see does he take a combative stance towards the Congress? Does he keep trying to bring up things like energy reform or like education reform, things like that. Or immigration reform is an even better example. Issues that Republicans would very likely block. Then would he run against that Congress in 2012? Or would he say let’s try to find some very narrow areas where we can agree that we do need to rein in spending in some measured way, that we do need -- Education is actually an area where the President might be able to work with some Republican Members of Congress.

VOA (Turkey): Baris Ornarli, VOA.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on what impact these elections might have on 2012? You mentioned the governorships. That was very interesting. In either scenario, how might it all impact 2012, if any?

Mr. Burns: The governorships really are the most important races to watch in terms of the electoral math in 2012. If Democrats can somehow hold the Ohio governor’s seat and take the governor’s seat in Florida, that makes the President’s job much much easier almost no matter what happens in Congress. And if you look at where the Democratic Governors Association is spending its money, that reflects that.

A lot of the areas where the President won in 2008 are very likely to have Republican governors next time around. A state like Michigan, a state like Pennsylvania -- Republicans are heavily favored. At the end of the day those states still do lean fairly strongly to the Democratic side on the presidential level, but it doesn’t help the President that they’re likely to have Republican governors.

There was a story published in the New York Times Magazine on line today that said that the White House anticipates that the tea party movement, the Republican primary process is going to produce an opponent so conservative in 2012 that it will be very difficult for the GOP to beat him. I think that one thing the Democrats are going to be watching is how do the race by race results of this election sort of push the Republican party to the right or maybe more to the center. If you see a lot of these candidates like Sharon Angle not winning on election day that you might have some more voices inside the GOP saying we’ve got to moderate ourselves a little bit more. On the other hand, if you have an election that produces Senator Sharon Angle, Senator Joe Miller, very unlikely but Senator Christine O’Donnell, that gives the Republican primary voters next time around a lot more incentive to sort of vote with their heart rather than their head in terms of electability.

So I would say watch the governor’s races, watch what lessons the Republican party learns in terms of where it should tack for the next campaign.

Die Zeit: Can we go back to the ’94 election? A lot of parallels are being drawn, but I have a question concerning the political landscape. That was quite different in ’94. You had a government and a president that didn’t really accomplish anything. Everything got stuck. Now you have a government that has really done a lot. You might not agree with it, but that might also have an impact on the upcoming years. This parallel is only if they take over the House or not, but the political landscape seems to be quite different if you compare 2010 to 1994.

Mr. Burns: If you recall earlier this year, after the Massachusetts special election where Scott Brown deprived the Democrats of their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, there was this internal debate among Democrats that was this election a repudiation of the health care bill that had not yet been passed? Was this a sign that we should scale back everything that we’re trying to work through right now? They’d already passed the stimulus, but a lot of the biggest things they’ve accomplished -- health care, Wall Street reform, those have happened since Brown’s election. And ultimately the party decided they were, if they had to choose between a party that did too many controversial things and a party that was perceived as not doing anything, they would rather be the party that did the controversial things.

So I think you're quite right that the record that they’re campaigning on and defending or trying to defend is very different than the one that they had in ’94. In some ways that’s very difficult because Republicans have specific things to attack them on, but they can actually go out and say -- you may not always use essentially the George Bush line from ’04, “You may not always agree with me, but you will always know where I stand.”

You hinted at the landscape -- I don’t know if you intended to raise this, but the landscape just being generally different. I think that point holds geographically and this is something I would just sort of throw out there as something to watch in November and something to watch in the next election cycle. In ’94, a lot of the reason why Democrats got killed in the Senate, particularly, and in the House, is because you had a lot of these long-time conservative Democrats serving in southern states where they had no business being in Congress. Where they had been elected before the parties sort of realigned after Civil Rights and Watergate and just sort of held those seats because people reelected them as a matter of habit. When people realized, actually we could vote for somebody else, they did.

That’s not the landscape that you see this time around. You do have quite a few Democrats who were elected in ’06 and ’08 who were carried by the President or by an anti-Bush wave into seats that are very very difficult to defend. But you also have a number of members this time around, again in states like New York, states like Connecticut, even California, Washington state, Illinois, places where Democrats actually have a pretty good record of winning who are likely to lose. That means that the republican Congress that comes in, the majority they win might be harder to defend than the majority that Newt Gingrich won in 1994, which is I know that folks in my line of work are very excited about the idea that the 2012 cycle could be as competitive on the House level as it is likely to be.

Canal Plus: What’s your view on Sarah Palin? [Laughter].

Mr. Burns: You mean her affect on the election?

Canal Plus: Yeah. Her prospects for 2012.

Mr. Burns: We wouldn’t be talking about 2010 if we didn’t get a good question about Sarah Palin.

The answer I would give to that is very much like the answer to the tea party question. That she does represent this insurgent conservative energy out there. She announced her fundraising numbers for the last quarter, she brought in $1.2 million for her political action committee which is a very very strong performance. It shows that there is a lot of energy behind her and behind the candidates that she endorsed. I mentioned Nicki Hayley in South Carolina earlier. If Sarah Palin had not endorsed her in the primary for governor she probably wouldn’t have won. Palin also endorsed Christine O’Donnell who is very likely to lose the general election in Delaware. So I think much the same way, she cuts both ways.

Der Tagesspiegel: I would like to ask you to comment a little bit on Ohio. If I am correctly informed, Ohio is the single state where the highest figure of seats might switch from Democrat to Republican. To which degree Ohio is still the bellwether state as far as Ohio as opposed to the nation?

Mr. Burns: I think the Democrats, if Ohio is still a bellwether state on November 2^nd, it’s going to be a very long night for Democrats. They’re likely to lose multiple House seats there. One of the first House seats that they cut off from DCCC funding was in Ohio. The Senate race Democrats don’t think is competitive anymore. You’ve really got the governor’s race and a small number of House seats there in basically Democratic seats that they’re trying to defend.

I think part of that is because Ohio has been hit very hard by the recession, as has the whole Rust Belt, which is why Democrats are having such a hard time across the Midwest. But I think certainly if you’re looking for lessons going into 2012 and if you’re looking for places where Democrats were really on the upswing last cycle and on the down swing this cycle, you can’t do much better than Ohio.

Thank you so much.