Julia all right, folks, lets get started. We are once again being filmed, so when you ask a question, come up to the question mike, state your name and your school and keep your questions nice and concise. It is my great pleasure this morning to introduce you, Nick Penniman. He was the founder and ceo of the American News project, and others. In 2015, he coauthored nation on the take, which was which received praise. Former george w. Bush indications director Mark Mckinnon and Bernie Sanders. He serves on nonprofit boards and advisory boards, including the homeless apartment project. Lets welcome Nick Penniman this morning. [applause] responsive politics and the homeless improvement project. Responsive politics and the homeless improvement project. Let us welcome him. [applause] thank you, and thank you for the Washington Center for having me here this morning. I heard from anne that some of you all, this is the first time you seen snow. Is that correct . To see a show of hands, because that is fascinating for me. First time . It hit your eye . Welcome. [laughter] planned a talk, but it would rather just have a conversation with you guys, today. Issue one was founded three years ago. We are a bipartisan Political Reform Group in washington dc. We saw this tremendous opportunity to make the point that american democracy, the perfection and improvement of the republic is not a is not a conservative cause, but everyones cause. We have three bills cooking on capitol hill. We have recruited several members of congress to work on them. Roughly 100 republicans and 100 democrats. We willthree bells that talk about later, and our support of a caucus which was created on the hill on the house side, by 10 republicans and 10 democrats. When we do our work around political reform, we pursue it really, in this bipartisan fashion. We think it is essential for all kinds of reasons that we will discuss. Let me rewind the tapes a little bit. When i was your age, this book came out called the end of history. It was written by a philosopher and historian. You might have heard of it. It was written by francis fukuyama. The end of history was near. That was what he proposed. What he meant by that was not that the end of the world was near, but rather, we had reachet a point in the history of humankind in which we no longer had to sort out the political and economic order of the world. He firmly believed and he was a conservative thinker at the conservative thinker at the time, and he still is, although he has taken somewhat liberal viewpoint, he firmly believed that capitalism and democracy had won. It was over. It was game over. Communism, socialism, authoritarianism, autocratic regimes, they were gone. Fascism gone. Democracy and capitalism had won. They were the twin sisters that would march forward and a fine humankind probably until the earth froze over. About the same time i turned 18 and voted for george h. W. Bush for president and bush, in his inaugural speech, had this famous line about how a new wind was blowing. And the iron curtain was folly in the soviet union and thierry and tyranny was over and how freedom would rush over the land. For me, coming out of college, that all felt right. It did not feel like the end of history. I think back to my dad, who grew up in baltimore. Because it was on the coast, he did all the dock and cover drills during world war ii, where a couple of times a month, they would scramble been a fair theirer scramble under cover their heads in this fetal position. Preparing for the possibility of the germans coming over to bomb baltimore. Obviously, there was the tremendous upheavals in the 1960s, the very useful up evils useful upheavals in the 1960s around civil rights. The Antiwar Movement in vietnam. Then reagan came on board in things settled down. And as you know, the berlin wall fell and the soviet union was cracking up and america was absolutely the victor of the world. Completely the victor of the world. So the notion that democracy and capitalism were a feat accomplished was something a fait accompli was in my bones. Now what was next for america, as opposed to his democracy working or is this experiment freshening . It was clear that it was functioning very well. Unfortunately today, it would be hard for anyone of you to submit , the same thing, that that tremendous rush, that tremendous confidence that i had when i was your age in the american way no longer exists. Poll after poll after poll proves this. The most striking recently was a tracking poll since the end of world war ii. It asked the same question year after year after year. The question is roughly the you believe that the American Government works for the benefit of all the people or does it only work for a few big interests working on behalf of themselves . Coming out of world war ii, 75 of the public believe that the government work for the benefit of all the people. Last year, election year, 8 of the American People believe that the government worked for all the people. 92 said the government basically worked for a few big interests on behalf of themselves. Very tellingly, i have never seen this before in a poll. 99 of trump voters said the American Government only works on behalf of a few big interests. So here we are in a situation now in which the faith in the american way, in this very unique thing, this experiment in american democracy, almost seems like nobody believes in it anymore but might be a for grabs. Unfortunately, it is up for grabs at the same time that authoritarian regimes around the world are rising fast. I believe what we are entering into is a multidecade struggle between authoritarianism and democracy. And you guys are the new Ground Troops that are coming into that emerging fight. The economist magazine does the democracy index to measure the functioning the level of democracy in every country based on five card tear. Those include the electoral process, functioning government, local participation, Democratic Political culture, and civil liberties. The last years report, they reported we are experiencing a global democratic recession. Here are the stats behind that. Liberties. 72 countries experienced a decline in their total score compared with 2015. Almost twice as many as the countries which recorded an improvement, which was 38. The other 57 countries stagnated with their scores remitting to 2015. , compared half of the worlds population lives in a democracy of some sort, that is what came out of that, about 49 . Only 4. 5 of those reside in a full democracy. From 8. 9 from the previous year. There was a report that america team, israded in 20 not a reaction to trump, child the reason why is a stunning revelation. America was downgraded in 2016, pretrump, not a reaction to trump, downgraded in 2016 from being a full democracy to being a struggling democracy. That is pretty stunning. This is america. To have america be downgraded by the economist from being a full to being a struggling democracy is pretty amazing. But also, think about the fact that less than the worlds population worlds lives in democracies. When we wake up as americans everyday and we have our cell phones and so much media to consume and we literally can walk on the sidewalk and criticize the president of the United States or any religious leader or anyone in the world that we want and then do so on social media, however we want, whatever we want, you guys are here, you are political junkies, that is something that according to other economist only 5 experiences living in a full democracy. 8. 9 , partial democracies. The rest are kind of rough. If you walked out on the street in venezuela and pop off about the government, you probably wont be doing that very long. So where is we in america like to feel like whereas we in america like to feel like democracy is a thing. It is spreading, it will be the world. Actually, half live in democracies. The rest live in some form of tyranny or authoritarianism. So it very much is a struggle. The way i think wind up talking about this in america often is we talk about the broken political system. Which makes it a little more real, as opposed to authoritarianism versus democracy. I think about the hardware and then the software of the political system. That is how i think about it. The hardware is the functioning of our elections, the functioning of our government, whether or not we have gerrymandered districts or whether or not we dont. Voting, civil liberties, the basic hardware. The software is that your policies on environmental and immigration, on choice, my proposition to you today is the struggle for your generation and mine, too, which is now coming into power, is to fix the hardware. It is not that the software is not important, not that we dont have pressing issues around immigration that we need to figure out a way of expanding jobs, now that the wells divide is extreme in this country. But unless we fix the hardware, software doesnt run very well. Im going to focus in on one piece of it. I want to focus on money and politics. Does the government represent all the people are only a few interest . We should focus on money and politics. The 2000 election cycle in aggregate was a 3 billion election cycle. The trumpclinton cycle was 7 billion. We more than doubled between 2000 and 2016. When john kennedy was elected president , there were roughly 250 registered lobbyists in washington. There are now 12,000. In 2016, those lobbyists disclosed 2. 6 million in 2. 6 billion lobbying expenses. That is what they are required to disclose by law. There are other billions of dollars are spent every day in various ways to influence congress. Here is what is interesting about that 2. 6 billion more, it is 600 millions more than it costs to operate congress all of the staff salaries, pension plans, keeping the lights on keeping people fed, that is to billion dollars to run congress. The lobbyists just disclosed 2. 6 billion just to lobby congress. The revolving door. In 1974, 3 of former members of Congress Left capitol hill to become lobbyists. In 2016, 50 did. Increasingly, Public Service and washington is seen really as a means, almost as a stepping stone to go to k street, which is the big lobbyist corridor in washington, and cash out. Typically, these members of congress and their staff will go work for the exact same interests that they were supposed to be regulating on our behalf when they were in congress. Time spent fundraising. Typically, when you talk to members of congress, they say, we recruited so and so members and star group. They will say 1980s and 1990s, they spent maybe 10 to 15 fundraising. It was not an afterthought, but it also was not a big word of their job. They would go to a breakfast here and there, a lunch here and there and make some phone calls and assembled what they needed to run for office. Now members of congress been roughly 50 of their time fundraising. 50 of the time fundraising. What that looks like, because they cant fundraising their offices on the hill thats against the rules to do it from the actual capitol welding, they go over to the dnc or rnc headquarters. They sit in little cubicles with headsets on and sometimes closets, where they can close the door. They are given stacks of call sheets to call the richest people in america and the dial for dollars and will say dollars endlessly. It is quite sad. When you listen to them talk about it, sometimes they do a situation where, when they get done with a phone call and the theve another phone which staff will handle them. And what you see on the sheet is that they are calling john johnson and he has so many kids and here are his kids names and his wifes name and he retired last year so you say, john, it e staff will handle them. Is Nick Penniman, i am running again for reelection. It is a tough race. By the way hows your retirement , going . How is your son . He is at oberlin right now. Thats great. Can i ask for 2700 for my reelection . They do this for hours on end. I was talking with a current female member in congress who said the sad thing about the call she makes, because she is a woman, a lot of people think they can confide in her on various things. So i said ok, tell me your worst torry. She said, it is awful. I called up this hollywood executive one day and i got his wife on the phone, and i said i , would like to talk to your husband or you about renewing your commitment to my campaign. And she said im so glad someone called. I ordered these curtains a while ago from i living room and they were supposed to be a lemon color but they are a mustard color and its just awful. Has this ever happened to you . Heres a member of congress having to talk this woman through her crisis on the color of her curtains so she can get to the point where she can ask her for 2700, which is the max out contributions or she can get reelected. Steve israel was the head of fundraising for the dccc. He estimated, by the time he Left Congress and he served for 15 years he had spent 4200 hours personally just doing call time. Here is an interesting stat. When Ronald Reagan was reelected president in 1984, he attended two fundraisers. When barack obama was reelected president , he attended more than 200 fundraisers. So just in terms of the functioning, the ability for these Public Servants to do their jobs, we are completely inhibiting their ability to do their jobs just because of the fundraising alone. There is a thing called the cast committee in congress. The Cash Committee is the finance committee. Because when he serve in the finance committee your ability , to ingest money from wall street lobbyists and executives is ever present. That is why it is called the committee. In 2014, members of the committee, the House Finance committee, received more than 30 million from the finance insurance and real estate , industries. These are the industries they are supposed to be regulating. Talk to your mom and dad about the corporations are the organizations that they work in. In most organizations in thethey world, that kind of fundraising, that kind of interaction would be such a profound conflict of interest that the corporation or the organization would ban it. If you serve on the finance committee and you are supposed to be representing the public good, and i am a bank lobbyists, you should not be allowed to take my money. And yet you and your fellow colleagues on the committee took 30 million of my money in 2014. The last thing i will mention is the rise of big spenders in the system. It used to be that wealthy people of course participated in , funding politics. Thats no secret. But ever since Citizens United, we have really seen the rise of the Billionaire Fund or billionaires are now looking at politics as being the next great challenge for them, the next big sandbox that they want to play in. Sheldon adelson committed 150 million to the in 2014 cycle. Tom stier, a liberal donor, committed 100 million to the 2016 cycle. Now you have a situation where most of the republican candidates throughout the las vegas to Sheldon Adelsons casino and perform for him. So now you have people running for the president of the United States who find a necessary part of the job to get the job is to perform appropriately for the billionaires who are writing the 100 million checks. So, again, you know, what i am submitting here is that the hardware is completely broken. The results of this are that the ability for anything involved in the Public Interest to get over the wall of influence, the wall of cash, is very difficult in washington. You saw the struggle with obamacare when they were doing that, how they had to i dont know if you remember this, but one of the first things they had to do when they were doing obamacare is they had to completely exempt the pharmaceutical industry because they knew there was no way to take on the pharmaceutical industry and to mess with the Insurance Company at the same time because the pharmaceutical industry is so powerful and has such a grip on both parties in washington. They basically said the pharma, the pharmaceutical trade association washington, you get a total pass on this stuff. And for that pass, you will support whatever we do. And thats exec we were farm i that is exactly what big pharma did with 150 million in ad buys. They supported the passage of obamacare because they knew it would not touch them. This is at a time when Prescription Drug prices in this country are at an alltime high, in fact, they are one of the major drivers of Health Care Costs in america. So even if you take a moment like that, where you have the africanamerican president first elected, democrats are running the house, democrats are running the senate, they have this big dream of Getting Health Care done, something that harry truman talked about and couldnt make happen, bill clinton and Hillary Clinton talked about and make happen, finally bakr Obama Barack Obama tries to do it and the first thing they do is exempt one big industry because they cannot tackle both at the same time. One would argue that they did not really tackle the Insurance Industry either because Insurance Company stocks have nearly doubled since obamacare became law. When you talk about the environment. You know bill mckibben, the guy , who started 350. Org, he said there is no way that we will ever be able to tackle Climate Change from a legislative wespective, d unless firsterig the system we system, deal with the money in politics and reduce the power of the influence industry. In 2009, when the democrats have the house on the white house, they attempted to pass a cap and trade bill, which started as a conservative idea piloted by the heritage foundation, picked up by republicans over the years, and they couldnt get that done because the power of the call the coal and oil industry was just too strong. You could go on and on. Think about this foundation here in washington about 15 blocks away they spent 500 million , trying to reduce obesity in america, on programs trying to reduce obesity in this country. Right at the same time, reuters about the same time they said they were going to honor their 500 million pledge reuters came out with an , investigative report about attempts at the state, local and federal level to reduce obesity through legislation. And the conclusion of the report is that the sugar and fast Food Industry and corn industry, because of high fructose corn syrup, have one band every major battle. So whether it is a environmentally concerned or is an environmental concern, health care, serious reform on anyone of those issues you care about. All of that software, your ability to get anything done on the Public Interest is radically diminished right now because the hardware is busted. The other big effects and to talk about are twofold. And then i want to have a conversation. Part of what you are seeing with the neopopulism of the day is a profound concern about cronyism, that cronyism is taking over the economy. David stockman, who was reagans director of Office Management and budget, recently wrote a book called the great defamation, the corruption of capitalism in america, in which he talked about how the market was rigged and anything but free. He argued crony capitalism is about the progressive and active use of political resources to gain something from the governmental process that wouldnt otherwise be achievable by the market. So it is a betrayal of the free market system. Money dominates politics. As a result, we have neither capitalism nor democracy in america. This is Ronald Reagan, guys. This is not one of Bernie Sanders staffers. Oligarchy, Mark Mckinnon, george w. Bush is medications director, communications director, again at no radical liberal, he wrote a year and a half ago in wrote, that it, creates an oligarchy and set of america, this system. The system is controlled by a handful of ultrawealthy people, most of which you got rich by the system and will get richer by the system as a result by their participation in it. Finally, gridlock, as you know, it is hard to get much done today in washington when retiring democratic senator tom harkin was giving his exit interview to the Washington Post in 2013, he was asked about gridlock, instead of saying, oh, its because the tea party is too radical and the far left is too radical and thats why nothing in happen, he said this yeah, good luck is worse than ever. We used to have a Senate Dining room that was only for senators. We would sit around and joe biden and Fritz Hollings and dell bumpers and ted stevens and Strom Thurmond and a bunch of us, democrats and republicans alike, we would have lunch and tell and have a great camaraderie. That dining room doesnt exist any longer because people could quit going there. Why did they quit . We are not here on mondays and then we are gone on fridays because typically they are back home or traveling. As a result, that leaves basically tuesday through thursday. And guess what people are doing then . They are out raising money. Part of what it takes to create a functional congress is just for people to be able to sit down and get along with each other. But when they are out there dialing for dollars, when they are spending their lunches with lobbyists that they are supposed to be regulating, it inhibits their ability to go to committee hearings, to hang at with each other, and to forge the bonds necessary for governing in a democracy. I think i will end with this we can talk about the system. This is your moment, this is that we have to do as americans. Democracy is not a statue that you set up and it stays there and gets weathered by the storms. Democracy is something you have to fight for and work for and constantly perfect and reperfect. And it will fall apart again and you have to reconsolidate it and work for it again. I swear, guys, unless we can come push this, collectively accomplish this, restore the hardware in the system sometime really soon, i fear that come in 10 years, 15 years, we could all be waking up in a situation in which democracy looks once again like it did, you know, back in the 1940s, where it looks precious, fragile, like something that only a few countries are really committed to. I didnt expect to be here in this situation when i was your age. But here we are nonetheless. With that, i would love to have a conversation and hear your questions and talk about this. Good morning. I am coming from cambridge. Thank you for being with us, this morning. I dont know if everyone in the room knows what a strategic lawsuit against participation is but they are lawsuits that corporations can levy against private citizens who publish negative speech against the corporation. Effect ons a chilling the ability of citizens to speak out against corporations one of those interests are infringing our interests. Speaking of hardware, do you think it is possible for us to move forward given the overall effect of strategic lawsuits against Public Participation is to chill private speech and advocacy . Is it possible for us to fix this hardware and revisit the Citizens United decision . How do you see that even happening . Nick i cant speak much about the corporations chilling speech. I know something about that, but not enough to give you an Expert Opinion on it. On Citizens United, which advanced the notion that corporations have speech rights in a political context, i can tell you its been heavily vilified as being this incredibly awful decision. But it really wasnt. It was a bad decision, but not bomb thatnd atom many people present it to be. Let me go over this with you guys. We talk about how to fix stuff, people say the only way to fix politics problem with money is to overturn Citizens United. Citizens united is a Nonprofit Corporation. , it is a nonprofit organization. They wanted to run a movie about Hillary Clinton. They were going to broadcast that within 60 days of the primary election between barack obama and Hillary Clinton, the democratic primary. According to a law passed in 2002, outside groups couldnt air political ads 60 days before primary or 90 days before general election. The concept was a good idea, which was to create a grace period, a quiet period, where outside groups would be silenced and only candidates could run ads and speak to the people. Citizens united fought back against this law and said, wait a second. This is a documentary. Youre trying to chill our speech. You can want do that. And the fcc said, yes we could. They went to the Supreme Court. One of the things the court ruled is that the Nonprofit Corporation does have the right to air this movie. Thats something i think we all agree with. If you guys want to create something you believe is a documentary, even if it is propaganda, you should be able to get it out there. Im a radical when it comes to free speech in this country too. So thats what Citizens United said. The question is, are there ways for corporations to then take that too far . And the answer is we are going to be finding that out in the coming years. Good morning. Im a graduate student in boston. My question is since the interest of billionaires, big corporations, lobbyists are taking priority over the interest of public, or at least it seems that way, i was hoping you could speak to some of the solutions that either nonprofits are looking towards or even things we can do as young professionals. Yeah. Everyone wants a Silver Bullet. Excuse the fact i am about to mention four things. I will mention it really fast. There is no Silver Bullet for anything in the world except for maybe diseases. You come up with a vaccine and you go to the government and they scale the vaccine up and you can eradicate the disease. But unless you have a vaccine, there is no single Silver Bullet to any problem our country faces. The dysfunction of our political system is like that. You have to address four thi ngs. We have to finance politics differently in this country. What we saw with howard dean and Bernie Sanders and in part trump too, wasdid a good job the beginning of a revolution and political fundraising. Small dollar fundraising. 20 campaignus donors. If politics is funded that way in the future, if 90 of the years is coming from small donors in this country, we should all want that. It is a democracy. The power lies with the people. If the money, power, and politics lies with all of the people, thats great. But we need to radically speed up that revolution and get these guys off the phone calls with the millionaires and the billionaires. That is number one, the big thats the one thing that will one. Shift the loyalty back to main street and away from wall street and the very wealthy. So thats a. And you can do it through all kinds of different means. New york matches small contributions 6 1. If you give me 50, that is worth 350 to me. When you talk to members of the new York City Council before and after it was in place, what they said before is they were spending time going to all of these fancy dinners, collecting highdollar checks, and after they were holding barbecues back in our districts. Thats what we want them to do, holding barbecues in their districts and talking to people they represent. Number two is transparency. There has been a rise in recent years of something called dark money. It is run through organizations. They dont have to disclose their donors and yet they can very actively participate in politics. There should be no dark money in american politics. Actually, the late scalia wrote that. He said anyone who is brave enough to stand up in the Public Square and talk about politics has to be brave enough to disclose who they are. Number three is conflict of interest. In the state of south carolina, if youre a registered lobbyist, you cannot make political contributions. Is a conservative state and a sicker conservative state Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of that law for more than 20 years. The idea that you obviously have an axe to grind of the government. Why should you be allowed to give me money on top of that . That looks like bribery. It looks like quid pro quo. That would be amazing. It would basically turn the finance committee into a committee that would be to study policy and regulate the finance industry as opposed to suck up money from the finance industry. It has been a gridlock commission for years. The commission is comprised of six people, three democrats and three republicans. They gridlock on every issue. Only Little Things get enforced. Big things dont. We need a bigger cop on the beat. We are piloting this in a bipartisan fashion. So, check this out. Good morning. Im representing Miamidade College down in south florida. My question is, it seems to me one of your main points today is bipartisanship and really the tendencies and American Government toward partisanship are really favoring themes and ideas such as concession im sorry, succession rather than possession of compromise. Which in my opinion has shaped the great moments in American Government, such as in the 1940s and whatnot. What can we do to prevent this . To prevent this unwillingness that has been growing . From my perspective also, its not just the idea that our representatives are not sitting together anymore and they are not conversing and hanging out, as you said, but rather because of the lobbying. But rather, theres just a mutual dislike and the animosity is up in the air. What can we do to prevent that from leading to ideas such as succession and just not continuing to go forth with this gridlock that is not taking us anywhere . Yeah. I would never claim that money and politics are the only driver of it, but when they dont have time to study legislation, thats a part of it. And i probably have some guilt factor in this because i helped create this entire division of huffington post. Bipartisanship is a huge driver too. It rewards all of the fighting. And then obviously, gerrymandering. Which is when you talk about the kind of hardware that needs to be addressed. According to the pew research center, only about 10 are competitive right now. 90 are essentially noncompetitive. So whether youre republican or democrat, the way you see your job this is so sad when you think about it from a higher level. The way you see your job is to please your base back in your district. That is not what the founders said. The founders said your job is to represent the Public Interest, the common good, above and beyond anything else. Thats what they said. If youre republican and youve got a pretty secure district, you are just going to go there and keep throwing candy to the base. They are the ones who will shout and yell and turn out when you want to get reelected. They will suppress whatever opponent may get in your primary. Gerrymandering has got to be addressed in addition to that. From a kind of regular perspective, regardless of whether you are living in a highly gerrymandered district or a competitive district, go to town halls and push the members on why they are not engaged in compromise. Ask them how many bills they have actively cosponsored with a republican or a democrats, with the other side. Ask them how many times they have reached out. They have to feel uncomfortable. They have to feel like the citizens are your earning for folks who want to fix stuff. Unless they hear that really clearly from their constituents, they are not going to go there. Their inclination is to keep going back to their base. Thank you. Hi. Thank you for coming. My name is brook. I attended Suffolk University in boston. You mentioned in your discussion that 70 plus countries experienced a decrease in their democratic score in 2016. In your opinion, what is the leading factor or factors into why this happened, and do you think it can be rectified in our lifetime . Typically, economic upheaval will tip a country back to more authoritarian principals. Or any other kind of incredible tensions inside the country. The ones that are typically talked about in this context in the last 30 years, russia, obviously. We thought that russia would become a democracy. It collapsed in that respect. But recently, turkey was grooms was grooming itself for the european union. It was liberalizing internally and now it has snapped back to pretty much being an autocratic regime. In part because of the turmoil we have seen in turkey. I think the big factor is that when people feel that the Current System of government just isnt delivering to them anymore, they are very open to thinking about other forms of government. Even if those forms of government might contradict visible they kind of find dear. What i mean is how Many Americans would actually be ready to go shed blood to retain our Current System of government, to contain to retain our Current System of civil liberties, to speak out in the streets, to have what we have . How many would really shed blood for it . Only half the population votes. So i think far lot of people, when they see democracy is kind of messy, congress cant get anything done, congressional Approval Ratings are below 10 , their logical conclusion is maybe there is Something Better out there. The authoritarians start appealing to them. If, it is possible, but only democracies like ours get our act together and start shining a bright light that it works. When people who are struggling democracy or suffering under authoritarian regimes, they look at america and say, that doesnt work. It is clearly not working. Hi. Good morning. I am from Miamidade College. A person making 500,000 a year received a substantially higher charitable Tax Deduction than the average citizen that makes around 30,000 per year. With this in mind, the United States spends 7 million on charitable did actions charitable did options. My question is if you think it would be a good idea to replace a Tax Deduction with a tax Credit System . I honestly cannot answer that. I am not a tax specialist. I can tell you when you look at the way this tax bill was created, it has a potential to hurt groups like mine because we are a nonprofit organization. Believe they will not get as much of a deduction, it will hurt the Nonprofit Sector in a very serious way. It is the opposite of what you would think conservatives would want. What they want is to be able to decrease the size of the government and outsource those functions to individual groups at the local level. Mainly nonprofit organizations. You want to incentivize the Nonprofit Sector. In terms of that specific question, im not prepared to answer it. I learned a long time ago in washington when i was working with these magazines that its much better to say i have no idea than to try to fake it. [laughter] the chef ok. Ok. Good morning. My question is how has a bipartisan lens shaped the idealist believes that dictates that political reform can be achieved . At what cost would it take to alleviate the constant changes in our political system . Do you mean what kind of basically what would it take . What societal changes . It does not cost a dime. That is the wonderful thing about all this stuff. Il of the four things mentioned earlier, it would not cost a penny to achieve those things. Maybe depending what kind of Incentive Program you put together for small contributors would be something, but it would be chump change in the context of a 1. 4 trillion federal budget. They are basically cost free. The keep right now is the political willpower. Unless politicians believe there is a rising revolution that says you have got to fix this political system now, they are not going to go there because they are comfortable. It is not a good life because they are spending so much time raising money. It kind of stinks, but they will keep doing what they are doing. That is easier than trying to change the game. We have got to create a bipartisan, Everyone Movement that says lets fix this political system now so we can begin fixing other stuff. Hello. Im from new jersey city university. My question to you is, what can Us College Students do to help reconstruct our future democracy . Nick get involved. You have got to get involved. I feel sometimes like your generation is amazing regarding identity politics. On Climate Change, you see the wealth divide is something that has got to be solved in your lifetimes, too. This political hardware stuff is kind of geeky. It oftentimes does not touch people the way identity politics does. You have a gay friend or a transgender friend. There is an ethereal quality about it that makes it harder to engage your friends in. But again, you have got to kind of go there. It is something you just have to get engaged in. Clamor. If people see the millennial generation is clamoring to fix the broken political system, and tothen they will respond that. You are the new wave of the electoral system coming to washington. They are desperate to know what can turn you on and off. If they see what will turn you on is fixing broken politics, they will respond to that. But you have to get involved in organizations, whether it is ours or common cause, you have to get involved and fight and agitate. Thank you. I am from ngcu. Looking back to the 2016 election, we have seen the effects of corruption on our democratic system. How do we shape our political system . Looking forward to the 2020 election, what do you think we can change . What shapes or affect can we have on corruption . By 2020 . Not much. Not much, im sorry. The movement isnt strong enough. Our best hope at this point is in 2020, whether you want to call it corruption or fixing broken politics, that is a top 3 issue. Is we can make it a top issue in if we can make it a top issue in the 2020 cycle. 2021 is when we can Start Talking about change. But the political class, the political elites, the politicians have to believe there is a mandate for change, that jobs are on the line. If they dont get it, they will knock down the people standing in their way. I think we will see more of that emergence of that dialogue in 2018. We certainly saw it with sanders, sanders and trump. Trump claimed to be the populist who was going to clean up the swamp. We saw the beginning of the dialogue 2016, expansion 2018, and 2020 will be the drumroll. This is all about agitating, injecting it into the political dialogue, going to town halls, grilling your politician about it, etc. That is when we are seeing this big change. 2021, lets start legislating. Hello i am with harvard extension. You mention this is our moment. Given the most recent tax reform act, which some people called the donor relief act, how is it even possible to remove that kind of money from politics moving forward . Nick it is entirely possible. There is nothing about the way that money and politics interact intractable. If we said we want to copy these to accomplish these four thigns, intractable. Small donors, transparency, removal of complex of interest and enforcement act and isms, what it completely and enforcement mechanisms, what it entirely fix everything . No. It would change the way that money flows around politics so that politicians would lean toward main street and not wall street. What i am proposing is never reaching a perfect nirvana state between money and politics, but rather a situation in which how the netherlands deals with water. They stopped trying to fight the water and accepted that the water will exist. The question is how to channel it so it doesnt destroy towns. Right now, it is destroying the town. How do we channel it in a way that is productive for the public good, and makes our system of government lean towards that common good . It is entirely possible. This is america. This entire country was created from scratch, with a piece of paper that was three pages long, that was it. And the constitution that followed it up. This is what we do in america. We dont accept fate fait accomplis. We dont say it is too difficult the way things are. The rich are so powerful. Screw that. That is not the american mindset. The mindset is we have a serious problem, democracy is precious, we have to do it we can to change it. In terms of jurisprudence and the Supreme Court, there is not much standing in our way of making major changes tomorrow. It is all about developing political willpower. Hello, my name is david, from new jersey city university. How would you respond to the growing popularity among farleft and farright ideologies among young people, in the face of how it has affected the hopeless state of the status quo . Exactly. That is what gives rise to radicalism. Says it works for them. Or 1 of trump voters say it works for them. Then they looked toward the extremes. One of thet conversations i have had about trumps election was with a cloud with a cab driver in boston about trumps election. I asked what he voted for him, and hehe voted for him, said, i dont know what to do anymore. I know it was kind of nihilistic, but basically washington is so screwed up. I just wanted to send a kamikaze pilot into the hull of the boat. That is an active nihilism, and a lot of people acted nihilistic nihilistically. Is anything represents the status quo, it is Hillary Clinton area trump seemed very appealing in that environment. Sanders did, too. But that is what is going to happen. If we dont fix stuff, and people continue to have virtually no belief in our system of government, improving their lives, we will end up with a country heavily radicalized on the left and right. Which is why the urgency factor is upon us. I am from celtic university in boston. My question is, do you think the United States will ever separate corporate and businesses from government . And if so, will this give us more room to grow democracy . We darn well better. I will read you something from the end of my book. Here are a couple sentences for my book. See if this resonates. The gap between rich and poor has never been wider. Legislative stalemates paralyze the country. Spectacular mergers produced giant companies. The influence of money and politics deepens. That was not written by us about our current moments, it was written by the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin about the era that gave rise to Teddy Roosevelt. We have done this before. Wasteddy, what he saw fixing the political system was a means to accomplish the ends. It was a means to get somewhere. I will read this real quick and we have to shut it down. He gave a speech called the square deal speech. Called it the square deal it was a way of revitalizing the middle class. Their confidence was horribly shook up. Teddy said the reason why we needed to focus on political means was, he said, this our governments, national and state governments must be free from the control of special interests. Exactly as those special interests of slavery slavery threatened our interest before the civil war, so do special businesses corrupt men for their own profit. Not one man is entitled to a voice on congress, on the bench, or to representation in any public office. We have done this before. This is what i said. This is not something where you prop up democracy like a statue and it sits there. There are these moments where you have democracy and the corporations, special interests, big powers overwhelm it and take what they can from it. Basically, what else is left behind . That is what the public sees right now. It is time for us to do what we saw culminate in the Teddy Roosevelt presidency. But it is going to take a big movement to make that happen. Thanks, everyone for participating. Thanks so much to our speaker. [applause] thank you guys. Thank you. Great questions. [applause] [captioning performed by the cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Come up this morning, alex bolton and jason dick discuss the week ahead in washington. K talks newalza deductions in state and local income taxes. Join the discussion. Today, a conversation on inflation and Monetary Policy with former Federal Reserve chairman bernanke and former treasury secretary larry summers. Posted by the brookings institution, it is lied at 1 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan 3, live on cspan. Org, and on the free cspan radio app. Cspan. Where history unfolds daily. A 1979, cspan was created as Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. This week on q a, hendrik meyer. He talks about his book Arthur Vandenberg the man in the middle of the american century