Lets get started. It is my pleasure to introduce nick petaman. He was the founder and director of the huffington post, director of aslieps for democracy and editor of lincoln journal. Received praise from a politically Diverse Group including former republican allen simpson. He served on multiple nonprofit boards and the Homeless Empowerment project. Lets welcome nick petamen this morning. Thank you. Thank you to the Washington Center for having me here on this snowy morning. I heard from ann this is the first time some of you have seen snow. Raise of happennds. It hits your eye. Thats fantastic. Welcome. I would rather have a conversation with you guys today. Issue one was founded three years ago. We are the premier bipartisan Political Reform Group in washington d. C. We saw this tremendous opportunity to make the point that the perfection and improvement of the republic is every everyones cause. We recruited 200 former members of congress. They form this thing called the reformers caucus. It is roughly 100 republicans and 100 democrats. They are supportive of a caucus created on the house side by ten republicans and ten democrats. When we do our work we really pursue it in this bipartisan fashi fashi fashion. Let me rewind the tapes a little bit. When i was about your age this book came out called the end of h history. Some of you might have heard of it. What he proposed in the book was that the end of history was near. What he meant is that we had reached a point in the history of human kind which we no longer had to sort out the political and economic order of the world. He firmly believed and he is a conservative thinking of the time and he still is, he firmly believed capitalism and democracy had won. It was over. Game over. They were gone. Fascism, gone. I turned 18 and voted for george h. W. Bush. He had this famous line about how a new wind was blowing and the iron curtain was falling and tier a ti tierany was over and freedom was going to rush over the land. For me it did feel like the end of history. I think back to my dad. He did all of duck and cover drills during world war ii. A couple of times a month they would scramble under their desk and prepare for the possibility of the jgermans comes over to bomb baltimore. Then there was tremendous upheavals in the 1960s around civil rights and then the Antiwar Movement and then reagan came on board and things kind of settled down. The berlin wall fell and soviet union was cracking up. America was absolutely the victor of the world. The notion that democracy and capit capitalism is something i felt in my bones. It is more about what was next for america. Unfortunately today i think it would be hard for any of you to submit the same thing. That tremendous confidence that i had in your age no longer is this. This poll after poll after poll proves this. The one that i found most striking was a tracking poll that i found. It is basically the exact same question for year after year after year. The question is roughly do you believe that the American Government works for the benefit of all of 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 believed that it would work for the benefit of all of the people. Last year 8 of the American Public believed that the government worked for all of the people. So here we are in which the faith in this american way, this very unique thing, this experiment in american democracy all of a sudden feels like people dont believe in it anymore but it might be up for grabs. Unfortunately it is up for grabs at the same time that regimes are rising fast. I believe that what we are eptering into is a multidecade struggle. You guys are the new Ground Troops that are coming into that fight. The economist magazine does a thing they call the democracy index. It is based on five criteria. It includes Democratic Political culture and civil libertieliber. They concluded we have experiencing a global democratic recession. Here are the stats behind that, 72 countries experienced a deline in their score. It is almost twice as many as they recorded in improvement. The stat they come up with is half of the worlds population lives in a democracy of some sort and only 4 ppt 5 reside in a full democracy. It is down from 8. 9 from a previous year. The stunning report is america was downgraded in 2016. This is pretrump. It was downgraded from being a full democracy from being a struggling democracy. Thats pretty stunning, guys. This is america. To have america be downgraded by the economists from being a full to a struggling democracy is pretty amazing. Pause for a second and think about the fact that less than half the worlds population lives in democracy. When we wake up as americans every day and we have cell phones and so much media to consu consume, you guys are here. Youre political junkies. It is something roughly about 5 and the rest is kind of rough. There might be kind of the facade. They have the basic institution for democracy. If youre going to walk out in the street in venezuela and start popping off about the government youre probably not doing that for very long. We in america like to feel like democracy is a thing. Democracy will be the world. Only half the people love in democracy and the rest live in some form of tierny. This is a little more real. What i like to think about when i think about the political system is what i call the hardware and then the software. So the hardware for the political system functioning of our elections and voting, civil liberties, the press. Thats the hardware. The software is policies on immigration or on choice or taxation. Thats the software. My proposition to you today is that the struggle for your generation and for mine too is to fix the hardware. Its not that the software is not important, but unless we fix the software the hardware does not run very well. Here are some broken stats. I will focus in on one piece of it. I want to focus on money and politics. Does the government represent all of the people or does it represent only a few big interests . So the 2011 siecycle was a 3 billion election cycle. The clinton cycle was a 7 billion election cycle. So we more than doubled the amount of money comiing between the 2000 and 2016. In 2016 those lobbyists disclos disclosed. Here is what is interesting about the 2. 6 billion. It is more than it costs to operate congress itself. If you take all of the pepnsion plans, lights on, deepikeeping e f fed. The reinvolving door. In 2016 50 did. Increasingly Public Service in washington is seecn as a steppingsto steppingstone. Typically these members of congress and their staff, as you can imagine, are going to go work for those that are supposed to be regulating on our behalf. Time spent fundraising. Typically when you talk to Members Congress they will say that in the 1980s and 1990s they spent 10 to 15 of their time advertising. They go to a breakfast here and there and make fophone calls. Now Members Congress tell us that they spend roughly 50 of their time fundraising. What that looks like because they cant fund raise is do it from the actual capital billing is they walk over and they sit in little little cubicals. You listen to them talk about it some times they do a situation where they get done with one call and they have another phone the staff will happened thnd th. They will see they are calling john johnson. Here are his kids names and wives name and you say john, its nick. Im running again for reelection. By the way, how is your retirement going and your son . She at overland right now. Can i ask for 2,700 . It is hours on end, guys. I was talking to a current female of congress is because she a woman a lot of people feel like they can confide in her. I said tell me your worst story. She said its awful. I called up this hollywood executive one day and i got his wife on the phone i said i would like to talk to your husband or you about renewing your commitment to my campaign. The woman said im so glad some one called. I ordered these curtains and they just arrived. They were supposed to be a he mo lemon color. Here is a member of congress having to talk this woman through her crisis around the color of her curtains so she can get reelected. Steve israel who works pretty closely with us, he is head of fupd rai fundraising for dccc. He estimated by the time he Left Congress he had spent 4,200 hours personally just doing call time. Here is an interesting stat too. When Ronald Reagan was reelected president he attend fundraisers. When barack obama was reelected he attended more than 200 fundraisers. For these public servants, we are them to do their job. The Cash Committee is the finance committee. Now, its not called a Cash Committee because its easier word for finance. Its because your ability to ingest money from wall street executives is ever presented. So in 2016 members of the committee, the finance Committee Received more than 30 million from the finance insurance and real estate industries. These are the very industries they are supposed to be regulating. In most organizations in the world that kind of fundraising and that kind of interaction would be such profound conflict of interest the organization would ban it. If you serve and youre supposed to be representing the public good you should not be allowed to take my money. You took 30 million of my money in 2014. The last thing i will mention is the rise of big spenders. So tom styer committed 100 million to the 2016 cycle. Now you have a situation in which the 2016 republican primaries most of the republican candidates flew out to las vegas and performed for him. So now you have people running for president of the United States who feel as if a necessary part of the job is to perform appropriately for the billionaires who are writing the 100 million checks. So again, you know, what im submitting 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 very difficult in washington. You saw the struggle with obamacare when they were doing that. I dont know if you guys remember this but one of the first things they had to do is they had to completely exempt the pharmaceutical industry. There was no way to kind of mess with the insurance policy country at the same time. It has such a grip on both parties. They basically said, you get a total pass on this stuff. For that pass you are going to support whatever you do. Thats what they did with 150 million in ad buys. They supported the passage because they knew it would not touch them. This is at a time when Prescription Drug prices are not all time high. They are one of the major drivers of Health Care Costs in america. So even if you take a moment like that where you get first aft African American elected. Democrats are runs are senate. They have a big dream of Getting Health Care done which is something harry truman talked about and could not make happen. The first move is to exempt one big industry because they can want tackle two industries at the same time. Insurance Company Stocks had nearly doubled since obamacare became law. When you talk about the environment one of the best leaders in the world, he said there is no way we will be able to tackle Climate Change unless we derig the system or deal with money in and politics. You might also remember that in 2009 they atectempted to pass a cabin trade bill. I think about how they spent 500 million on programs tries to reduce obesity in the country. It was about the same time they announced the pledge they came out with a report about attempts at the state, local and federal level to reduce obesity. The conclusion is that the sugar and fast Food Industry and corn industry have won every major battle. Whether it is a Public Health concern, environmental concern, health care, serious reform on any of the issues you care about, all of that software, your ability to get anything done is diminished because the hardware is busted. He talked about how the market was rigged and anything but free. He argued that it is about the aggressive and proactive use of resources to gain something that would not be achievable by the markets. He wrote about a year and a half ago. He said lets call the system they have created what it is. It created inside of america. The system is controlled by a handful of people. And then finally gridlock, obviously you know it is hard to get much done in washington. When tom harkin was giving his kind of exit interview he was asked about gridlock. Instead of saying the far left is too radical he said this. He said gridlock is worse than ever. We would have a Senate Dining room. We go down there and sit around there and a bunch of us we would have lunch and joke and tell stories and have a great come r they were not here on mo mondays and we are back home on fridays. As a result it leaves basically tuesday through thursday. Guess what people are doing then . They are out raising money. So part of of what it takes to create a functional congress is for people to sit down and get along with each other. When they are spending their lufr lunches with dinners, it inhibits their ability to hang out with each other and to forge the bonds that are necessary for governing in the democracy. So i think what ill end with is that this is your moment. This is our moment. This is what we have to do as americans. Democracy isnt something you set up and it stays there. Democracy is something that you have to fight for and work for and con standpoistantly perfect. I swear, guys, unless we can accomplish this, restore the hardware in the system some time really soon i fear that in 10 years, 15 years we could be waking up in a situation in which democracy looks like it did, you know, kind of back in the 1940s, where it looks precious. It looks fragile. It looks like something only a few countries are committed to. I did not expect we would be here in a situation when i was your age. Here we are nonetheless. With that i would love to have a conversation and hear your questions and talk about this. Goo goods morning. Thanks for being with us this morning. Thank you. Thefeit produces a chilling t to speak out when corporate interests respect fringes on private interests. Do you think its possible for us to move forward given the overallfect of lawsuits against Public Participation is to chill private speech and advocacy . Is it possible for us to fix this and revisit the sit sociti united decision . How do you see that even happening . Yeah. So i cannot speak much about the chilling speech. I know something about that. Citizens united which advanced the notion that corporations have speech rights in the political context, i can tell you it has been heavily vilified, but it really was not a bad decision but it was not the atom bomb we expect it to be. Here is what Citizens United says. David who heads Citizens United will be speaking later today. It is a Nonprofit Corporation. 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. It was a great idea to create a quiet period where they would be silenced and only candidates could run ads and speak to the people. Citizens united said wait a second. This is a documentary. Youre trying to chill our speech. You can want do that. They said yes r, we could we we to the supreme court. One of the things we ruled is that the Nonprofit Corporation does have the right to air this movie. Thats something i think we all agree with. If you want to create something you believe is a documentary 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 sit zocitizens u said. Are there ways for corporations to then take that too far . The answer is we will be finding that out in the coming years. Thank you. Good morning. Im a graduate student in boston. My question is since the interest of billionaires, big corporations 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 things we can do as young professionals. Yeah. Everyone wants a Silver Bullet. I will mepntion it really fast. There is no Silver Bullet for anything except for maybe diseases. You come up with a vaccine and you can we rat kado that. There is no Silver Bullet to any problem our country faces. So with money and politics you have to address four things. Number one we we have to finance politics completely differently in this country. What we saw with howard dean and Bernie Sanders and in part trump was the beginning of a revolution and political fu fundraising. If politics is funded that way in the future, if 90 of the money is coming from small donors in this country we should all want that. It is a democracy. If the money, power and politics lies with all of the people thats great. We need to radically speed up that revolution and get these guys off the phone calls with the millionaires and billionaires. Thats the one thing that will shift the loyalty back to main street and away from wall street and the very wealthy. So thats a. You can do it through all kindsover differekinds of different means. They match small contributions 61. When you talk to members of the new york city counsel what they said before is they were spending time going to all of these fancy dinners collecting highdollar checks and afterwards holding barbecues back in our districts. Thats what we want them to do, talk to people they represent. Number two is transparency. There has been a rise in something called dark money. 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. The late scalia wrote that. He said anyone who is brave enough to stand up and talk about politics has to be brave enough to disclose who they are. Number stthree is conflict of interest. If youre a registered lobbyist you cannot make political contributions. They have upheld the constitutionality of that law for more than 20 years. Why should you be allowed to give me money on top of that . It looks like bribery. It would basically turn the finance committee into a committee that would be to study and regulate the finance industry. The last one is you to put a better they gridlock on every issue. Only Little Things get enforced. We are piloting this in a bipartisan fashion. Check this out. Good morning. Im representing Miamidade College down in south florida. It seems to me one of your main points today is bipartisan ship and really the American Government towards part partisanship are favoring what has shaped the great moments in American Government in the 1940s and whatnot. What can we do to prevent this up willingness that has been growing. 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 and just not continuing to go forth with this gridlock that is not taking us any where . Yeah. I would never claim money and politics are the only driver but when they dont have time to study legislation, thats a part of it. And i probably have some gui guilt factor of that. The partisan ship is a huge driver too. It rewards all of the fighting. And then obviously jerry mandering. Only about 10 are competitive right now. 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 dire district. It is above and beyond anything else. Thats what they said. If youre republican and youve got a pretty secure district youll go there and keep throwing candy to the base. They will shout and yell and turn out when you want to get reelected. So it has got to be addressed in addition to that. From a kind of regular perspective, regardless of whether youre in a competitive district, go to town halls and push the members on why they are not engaged in compromised. Ask them how many bills they have cosponsored with the over side. Ask them how many times they have reached out. They have to feel uncomfortable. They have to feel like the s citizens are yeearning from people that want to fix stuff again. Unless they hear that they wont go there. Thank you. Hi. My name is brook. You mentioned that 70 plus countries speerexperienced a dee in their democratic score. What is the leading factors into why this happened and do you think it can be rectified in our lifetime . Typically upheaval will take a country back to more authoritarian principals. The ones that are typically talked about in this context in the last 30 years, russia, obviously, we thought russia would become a democracy but recently turkey was grooms itself. It was liberalizing internally and now it is pretty much an autocratic regime. People are very toopen to thinkg about other forms of government. How Many Americans would actually be ready to go shed blood to retain our Current System of government, 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, their logical conclusion is maybe there is Something Better out there. They start appealing to them. It is om nly if we get our acts together and start shining a bright light that it works. Peop when people look at america they say its clearly not working so is it worth it to fight for my country . Hi. A person making 500,000 a year received a substantially higher Tax Deduction than the average person that makes around 30,000 per year. 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 can tell you when you look at the way this tax bill was created it has a poe ttential t hurt groups like miep. If people can want 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 conserve tiatives w want. They want to outsource those to individual groups at the local level. So you want to incentivize. In terms of that specific question im not prepared to answer it. I learned a long time ago in washington that its much better to say i have no idea than to try to fake it. Thank you. Good morning. My name is adrian. How has a bipartisan lens shaped the belief. At what cost would it take to alleviate the con standpoistant . What would the basically what would it take . It does not cost a dime. Thats the wonderful thing. All of the things i mentioned earlier, it would not cost a penny. Maybe depending what kind of program but it would be chump change in the context of a 1 ppt 4 trillion federal budget. 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. It is easier than trying to change the game. We have got to create a bipartisan movement so we can begin fixing other stuff. Okay. Hello. Im from new jersey city university. My question is what can Us College Students do to help reconstruct or future democracy . You have got to get involved. You have got to get involved. I feel like you guys generation, you amazing at whats called identity politics, on Climate Change. I think you see it as something that has to be solved in your lifetimes too. This political reform stuff, this hardware stuff is kind of geeky. You know, it often times did you want touch people as clearly as identity politics does if you have a gay friend or transgender friend or Something Like that. It makes it harder to engage your friends in. Again, you have to kind of go there. Its something you have to get engaged in. If people see the generation is clambering to fix the broken political system they will respond to that. Its coming right at everyone in washington. They are desperate to know what will turn you own and off. If they see what will turn you on is fixing broken politics they will respond to that. You have to get involved in that. You to fight and you to agitate. Tlahank you. Looking back to 2016 election we have seen effects of corruption on our democratic system. How will it shape our political system and looking forward to 2020 election. What shapes can we have through corruption . By 2020 . Yes. Not much. Im sorry. The movement is not Strong Enough yet. Our best hope is there 2020 whether you want to call it corruption or fixing broken politics, is that is a top three issue. I dont think it will ever be number one but if we can make it top three in the 2020 then 2021 is when we can Start Talking about change. The political class, politicians have got to believe there is a mandate for change, that their jobs are on the line and people want it and if they dont get it they will knock down the people standing in the way. I think well see more of an emergence i mean trump promised to come clean up stuff. We s we need an absolute drum roll moment. It is all about injecting it, going to the town hall meetings, talking to them. So thats the way we are kind of seeing clahange occur. 2021 lets start legislating. Five minutes, okay. You mentioned this is our pee moment. Relief act, how is it even possible to remove that kind of money from politics moving forward . Its entirely possible. There is nothing about the way that money and politics interact that is intractable. So if we said that we want to accomplish these four things, we want small donors, transparency, removal of conflicts of interest and enforcement mechanisms, would it completely fix everything . No. Would it change the way money flows in and around politics again so politicians lean towards main street and not towards wall street and the wealthiest among us . Yes, it would. What im proposing is never reaching a perfect or nirvana state when it comes to money and politics. Theres always going to be some kind of chafing in between those two things, but rather a situation its almost the way the netherlands deal with water. They stopped trying to fight the water. The question was how to channel it so it doesnt destroy the towns. Right now its destroying the town. The question is how do we channel it in a way thats productive for the public good and makes our system of government once again lean towards that common good. So i think its entirely possible, guys. Is america. This whole country was created from scratch. Initially the declaration of independence was three pages long. That was it, and then the constitution followed that up. This is what we do as americans. We dont accept fait accomplis, we dont say its too difficult, its too tough, the rich are so powerful. Screw that. Thats mott the american mindset. The american mindset is weve got a serious problem. Democracy is precious. Were going to do what we can to change it. In terms of the Juris Prudence in the supreme court, there isnt a lot standing in our way from making major changes tomorrow. Its all about developing the political will power. Hello. My name is david from new jersey city university. How would you respond to the growing popularity of various far left or far ride ideologies, in particular among young people in the face of how disaffected they feel the status quo is . Exactly. Thats what gives rise to radicalism. When people look at the crept status quo system and 8 say it works for them or 1 of trump voters say it works for them. Then they look towards the extremes. They look for some reason to smash it. One of the most insightful conversations ive had about trumps election was with a cab driver in boston a couple months ago. I asked him who he voted for. He said trump. I said why did you vote for him . He said, man, ive got to tell you. I just dont know what to do anymore. He said i know it was kind of nilistic, but he said basically washington is so screwed up, i just wanted to send a kamikaze pilot into the hull of the boat. Thats an act of nile lichl. And i think a lot of people acted nilisticly because the status quo was so untenable for them. If anything represents the status quo its hillary clinton, the clin tan family, the clinton machine. Thats about as status quo as it can get. Trump seemed very appealing in that environment. Sanders did, too. Thats whats going to happen. 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 the right which is why the urgency factor is upon us. My name is angela from Suffolk University in boston. My question is do you think the u. S. Will ever separate corporations and businesses from government . And if so, will this give us more room to grow as a democracy . We darn well better. Ill read something to you from the end of my book. Here are a couple of sentences. See if this resonates with you. The gap between rich and poor has never been wider. Legislative stalemate paralyzes the country. Corporations resist federal regulations. Spectacular mergers produce giant companies. The influence of money in politics deepens. That was not written by us about our current moment. That was written by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin about the area that gave rise to Teddy Roosevelt in her recent book called the bully pulpit. Weve done this before. Weve done this before. For teddy, what he saw was fixing the political system was a means again to accomplishing an ends. Let me read this real quick and i know we have to shut down. When he he gave a famous speech called the square deal speech in which he outlined his cousin franklin called it the new deal, teddy called it the square deal. It was basically a way of revitalizing the middle class and peoples faith in democracy. At the end of the last gilded age, it was heavily shook up. Teddy said the reason we need to focus on political reform, he said this means our government, national and security, must be freed from the central enter southwest, exactly as the special interest of cotton and slavery threatened our democracy, too often it controls the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a voice in congress, a voice on the bench or to representation in any public office. Weve done this before. This is what i said. This is not something where you prop up democracy like a statue and it just sits there. There are moments you have democracy and the corporations, special interests, big powers over well it and take what they can from it. Basically everyone else is left behind. Thats what the public sees right now. Its time for us to do again what we saw culminate in the Teddy Roosevelt presidency. Its going to take a big movement to make that happen. All right. So thanks everyone for your questions. Thank you so much to our speaker. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, guys. Great questions. Were going to take a fiveminute recess before our next speaker, Michael Steele will be up on stage. Five minutes and then back in this space