Happening every single day. And more often than not, its the woman who will choose to leave the workforce to care for that family member. When they do, they will earn less income. They will miss out on raises and promotions, and they lose out on retirement benefits. It can also hurt businesses. Today lack of paid family medical leave keeps some of our most highly skilled, best trained, hardest workers out of he work force. And give working parents a fair shot. The family and medical leave act we have today basically provides for unpaid leave. Job protected leave for Serious Health events. But only about half of our work force qualifies for about unpaid leave. Cant afford to take the time off. Supported by both the employee and the employer, contributions of a small amount in their wages. Its basically an earned benefit that would make paid leave to every working american, no matter how big the company is that you work for, a big business or a small business, whether youre part time or whether youre full time. The cost is about the cost of a cup of coffee a week. When a young parent needs to care for a newborn, it shouldnt come down to outdated policies that lets her boss decide how much time she can take off, how much time it will take her to et back on her feet. Let me give you one real life example to show why we can support this. For those who desperately want to reduce the roles of those on government assistance, this is a really great way to do it. Above the poverty line. When she got pregnant, she had no Health Care Benefits from her employer so she enrolled in medicaid. When she was about to have her baby, she knew she cannot afford the hospital bills so she had to quit her job. Because she was able to be on medicaid, that covered her hospital expenses. Because her employer gave her no vacation or sick days and no paid leave, she was not able to have her time with her infant at home so she had to quit her job. She enrolled in food stamps. This is a woman who was working fulltime basically on the edge of poverty and could not provide for her kids. If she had paid family medical leave in that job she couldve stayed at her job, had the time she needed, and had the benefits that wouldve protected her and er family. We also have to work on things as simple as raising the minimum age. When we are talking about lowwage workers, most people do not understand not only the prevalence of minimumwage workers but also how hardhit they are. Did you know that out of all our minimumwage earners, 64 of them are women . If youre working 40 hours a week on minimum wage, you earning you earning 15,000 a ear. We are saying as a country that has always said we reward work and if you work hard you will make it to the middle class, that is not true. F you are working 40 hours a week and on minimum wage, you are basically earning over 200 a week. Imagine what it is like to live with that here in d. C. I have an example for you. She works at union station. He has been working as a janitor for 20 years there. She never had a sick day or vacation day. She has no benefits. To work at the same job for 20 years and still be earning 8. 75 an hour with no benefits does not sound right. She is about to retire. She does not know how she will because earning so little, she was able to save very little. Hardworking people like her are not looking for a handout. They want to work hard every day and provide for their family and have some hope that they too can be able to see the American Dream. Under the bill we are working on in the senate it would give her a raise to get 10. 10 an hour. She is one step closer to getting out of poverty and moving into the middle class. Raising the minimum wage would help 33 million americans, 17 million women, many women with children just like her. Millions of mothers immediately would be able to do more to support their families and put that money right back into the economy. Raising the minimum wage is also good for business. An increase would raise our gdp over the course of three years but also those increase earnings which means increased spending on household goods, food, clothing. Ith that added activity to our economy, we can create up to 40,000 new jobs. The next issue that i feel very passionate about that i think would make a big difference for working moms is understanding the need for affordable childcare. More women are going back to work sooner after having a child creating a much greater demand or affordable childcare. The cost of childcare is about 6,700 a year. Just about the same amount an average family spends on groceries. If you cannot afford childcare as many middleclass families cannot, and you dont have a family option, the choice you are left with is to leave your job and stay at home. If you just think about the numbers again lets say the average for an infant is about 10,000 a year. You are a minimumwage earner. How will you afford childcare . Kindergarten does not start until five so you have no option before that. Imagine what you do as a single mom. 17 million of those minimumwage earners are women. Ou look for informal care. You look for your mother or the lady down the street or someone in your building. What happens if your care giver is sick . You miss work. You will probably get fired. You lose out on every bit of Economic Opportunity you have because there is no affordable daycare option. Just as important we need universal prek. We should focus on the fact that when children have a chance to have Early Childhood education, they are able to reach their potential. High quality, Early Learning leads to strong cognitive, intellectual, emotional development. Key skills that every child in america needs. Any Childhood Development expert would tell you the first five years of a childs life is a window we have to give the most essential skills for success. For millions of families struggling, this is a chance they will never get. Through no fault of their own and no other reason, their families were born into a life of less opportunity. The block you live on should not determine the success of the life you will have. That is why we need to make these investments today to bring affordable prek to every child n america. This will give every child the chances to make sure their hard work takes them where they want to go. Every dollar you invest in Early Childhood education generates up to 11 in economic benefit throughout the life of the child. It is important for the overall Economy Today when children have access to prek, it means more working mothers can stay in the workforce and stay on a path to advance their careers. That is good for the whole economy. Critics will say that because of our deficit we cannot afford this. I agree we have to do more to get our deficit under control but every budget that we write is about choices. They are about our riorities. They are about who we fight for. We are competing with countries and markets in every corner of the world and we cannot afford to lose this. When we close our doors to Early Childhood education, we risk a future engineer, scientist, or doctor that could make the next breakthrough. It is the best thing we can do to propel kids out of poverty. We should invest in our children. The last piece of my proposal is the most obvious. Equal pay for equal work. The promise was made 50 years ago which continues to be broken every single day in this country. Today, women make up more than half of the American Population and nearly half of our workforce. Women are outearning men and are a growing share of the primary household earners, but still to this day, men are outearning women. On average a woman earns . 77 on every dollar a man earns and even less for women of color. African american women earn . 69 on the dollar, latinos earn . 68 on the dollar. How can they get ahead if they are shortchanged . If you want to have a growing economy, simply pay women fairly for the work they are doing. It is that simple. It is a huge economic ngine. If you pay a dollar for dollar, you can raise the gdp by 4 . You can raise the gdp by 4 . Economy, simply pay women fairly for the work they are doing. It is that simple. It is a huge economic engine. If you pay a dollar for dollar, you can raise the gdp by 4 . A dream that makes our country the and will of opportunity. A dream that says it doesnt matter from where you start, hard work pays off, you can get to the American Dream and earn your future. Thank you. [applause] can everybody hear me all right . Senator, thank you so much. That was quite an exhilarating challenge to all of us. If i could summarize your agenda for american opportunity, it has five planks. Paid leave, raise the minimum wage, affordable childcare, universal prek, and equal pay for equal work. They are all really important issues. I want to try to relate them back to what we will be discussing all day. You mentioned the war on poverty and the fact we are celebrating an anniversary and everybody is talking about that. One of the academics that is here today from columbia university. Her colleagues have recently done a study which you may or may not have seen. I found it is very interesting. Although many people on the right have said that the war on poverty, poverty won, it did not work. Their study shows that the war on poverty reduced poverty appropriately measured by 10 or 11 . There is another message coming out of that study and out of this discussion we are having now. We did pretty well creating a safety net for people at the autumn who were not doing very well. We did not do as good of a job at changing the labor market to achieve middleclass status through their own efforts at omic becoming selfsufficient. There are some elements that speak to that. Some that are just catching people and helping them when hey are down like Unemployment Insurance is part of the safety net. Prek programs are part of helping people climb the adder. There was this study of the Head Start Program that said it was not having the kinds of effects that we earlier thought that it ould have. When you think about i am talking about longterm now. When you think longterm, some of us worry and think tank land, hat do you think we need to do to improve longterm opportunities for people to be selfsufficient . It is not an argument against helping them if we are if they are down on their luck. The most important change we need to make is recognizing the change of the face of the workforce. Most of our workforce policies of were set in place in the 1950s, 60s, 70s. If a block had 10 homes on it, seven of the husbands would he going to work and the wife would stay home. Now five have two parents working. Three have a single mom working. Nly to have a parent staying home with the child. If you create a work waste that has enough flexibility to accommodate families, you will constantly be undervaluing the underperformance of your workers. Women are typically the primary caregivers for both caregivers children and aging parents. You need a more familyfriendly workforce holocene. That means equal pay for equal work. Make sure that they are not getting shortchanged for every month. You do not have women off ramping every time there is a family emergency. That woman never has a chance to give back to the economy. Fortier percent of our workforce in new york state is women. You are chained shortchanging an economic engine im not giving those opportunities. You need that flexibility. Something as simple as universal prek and affordable day care, that is good for every child that she has. She will need that kind of support where she will not be in the work voice fulltime. Those are both engines that are eing entirely untapped for our workforce. It is a huge problem. It has been an enormous ransformation, the fact that it has been an enormous ransformation, the fact that women have moved into the workforce. Now 40 of the primary breadwinners. Hannah rosen wrote a book called the end of men. One of the reasons we have so many Single Parents is because the men can no longer make enough money to get married and support a family. Is that also a concern . Arguing for womens rights to climb the ladder and do better, what do we do about the men . They are still being paid a dollar on the dollar. They are being paid fairly for their work. We want work is policies for families. There may want to be men who want to be primary caregivers during their may be men that want flexibility if there mother or father is dying. If you have familyfriendly policies that both parents will be able to take advantage and be able to be there when needs arise. For all of those singleparent families, they need that flexibility. They will help more women than men because it is more often than not the woman who has to sideline her career for family. There are many men in the same situation. Lets open this up for the audience to ask a couple of questions here. Please state your name and your affiliation if you would. Right here. Right. My name is edna. I am with the World Organization for childhood education. I want to point out that Robert Samuels column in the post. I want to caution you not to make a dichotomy between child care and early education. I dont think you were. Uite often, people do. They see one as quite different than the other. All programs from children six weeks to six years are educational. Children are learning all the time. They do not start when they go to school. Universal prek is different than affordable day care. It is a different mechanism. My children were in daycare. I know the Early Childhood education they received was remendous. That day care was 10,000 a year. Affordability is a huge problem. There are too many moms that could not use the daycare available to federal workers because they could not afford it. I saw the Early Childhood education built right in. From infant care right onto prek. Affordability is as important as niversality. One more question since we are running out of time. Everybody knows you. I usually have a really loud voice. As you know, i am very sympathetic to this agenda you put forward. I am curious why this has not taken hold more within the emocratic arty or maybe it ill. Some of the proposals are obviously consensus proposals like the minimum wage. The package speaks to a lot of different aspects of what we are talking about. Will we see more action, not just from women members but party wide . I think so. As women and mothers we have particular sensitivity to these issues because we see it everyday. I see what benefit my children get from daycare. I know that i could have done my job well without the flexibility that was given for hague family medical leave for both of my children. When i speak to these issues, i speak very passionately about them. I know what opportunity is being missed for those who do not have them. I can speak from the heart and also from real life. That is one reason i think these issues are coming to the floor now. I think the democratic and Republican Party will be able to wrap hold of these issues as a generational issue. What do we need to do to actually make a middle class that can thrive . That can inspire both democrat and republicans. The president gave a very significant speech where he mentioned a couple of ideas just a few months ago. We had Speaker Pelosi do a very good press event with members of the house on this issue. I think these issues will continue to be talked about. I will do everything i can to make sure that i talk about them a lot. That is a good idea. That will have a real Economic Impact that will make a difference. We really wish you well on this agenda. Please join me in thanking the senator. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] today, well be taking you live to House Financial Services subcommittee. Well be taking a look at the qualified mortgage. Live coverage at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan 3. And later members of president obamas Intelligence Review Group will testify about their recommendations to change government surveillance programs. That hearing will be live at 2 30 p. M. Eastern, also on cspan 3. As the president first stated in march and reemphasized tuesday night, the goal of the United States and afghanistan and pakistan is to disrupt, dismantle and defeatal kide and to prevent its returns to both countries. The International Military effort to stabilize afghanistan is necessary to achieve the overarching goal. Robert gates served two president s from 20062011 and c. I. A. Director in the early 1990s. Friday at 6 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan 2 a live book tv event. Secretary gates talks about his managements of the wars of iraq and afghanistan and his relationship with the white house and congress. And in a few weeks, look for bonnie morris. Shell take your questions and comments, live on indepth, february 2 at noon eastern. And online for the rest of january, join our book tv book club discussion, on the liberty amendments. Go to book tv. Org and click on book club to enter the chat. The chair of the House Budget Committee paul ryan was also at the Brookings Institution social mobility summit. He spoke about the war on poverty started by president johnson and why he believes it failed this is 30 minutes. Weve had a long day of discussions, started this morning with senator joe brand, and now weve been talking about poverty and opportunity and mobility in the United States, quite fascinating and great people here. And in our relentless attempt to be nonpart son or bipartisan we begin the day with a democrat and end the day with paul ryan of the budget committee. Heres something that might surprise you. Knowledge counts for a lot in congress. Paul ryans career illustrates this claim. First hes a former congressional staffer, and we all know theyre necessarily brilliant. And second, upon arriving in congress, he looked around and asked himself what makes this place run . The answer, of course, is money. And the budget is a source of all money, so he decided hes going to learn more about the federal budget than anybody else. And within an hour or two, he knew more about the budget than anybody up on the hill. And, of course, most senior positions on the hill are based on merit and logic. So it was natural that he would become the head of the budget committee. Heres another thing that might surprise you, before he was interested in the budget, he was very interested in issues having to deal with poverty and opportunity. Recently hes been doing Amazing Things which is spending a lot of time in inner cities and other poor communities, meeting with people who run programs for the poor. This is not exactly on the top of list of most republican members of congress, so quite an amazing thing. What policies they are driving him to. So chairman ryan. [applause] thanks so much. I saw her in the hallway, she and i and ron had a great talk. Im a big fan of what they do in their work. I used to come to brookings and correct these jokes about coming out of the cocoon of the conservative think tank area. But this is like my fifth time in this very room, i think. I dont think i can crack those jokes anymore. I feel comfortable coming over here these days. Dont hold that against me. I even made it through your report on social mobility, the whole thing. It came out six years ago. I read it last week. But im grateful you invited me here, very pleased to see this conversation occurring. Now ron and bell, they ask me to talk about two things. Behind every opportunity is somebody who takes a chance. You mentor a child. You advise a student, you hire somebody. Normally strangers, they form a bond. They Work Together to create value, to spread knowledge, to help each other. And government, when used wisely can increase that trust. Take one example, interstate highway system. Thats something we all could agree on. Of course they could build the interstate highway system because that would encourage the commerce. And it did for a simple reason. It got people to interact. Where theres collaboration, theres Economic Growth. So, to me, when it comes to judging a particular policy reform, ive got a really simple test. Does it bring people together or does it pull them apart. Does it it crease trust and collaboration, or does it stifle them . Government is a very powerful tool. Too powerful you might say. Just as it can build and encourage, it can frustrate and deter. You know, as a conservative, i look at Ronald Reagan and look at his insights. One of his great insights is taxes dont just takes money out of peoples pockets, it can end up taking people out of the work force. They discourage people from hiring that extra worker. So just as government can increase opportunity, government can destroy it as well. And perhaps there is no better example of governments ability to disappoint, to miss the mark, than l. B. J. s war on poverty. This month marks the 50th anniversary of that war. And for years, have pointed to the money they have spent and he programs they have created. 50 of our fellow citizens, one out of seven people. The highest rate in a eneration. Poverty is not just some form of deprivation, it is a form of isolation. If theres anything ive been learning, its that. What do we know about the poor . Ron would say three things. Less likely to have graduated from high school. Less likely to work full time and less likely to get married before they had kids. Theyre cut off from three crucial sources of support. Education, work, and family. Government isnt soly responsible for these trends, but in other ways, government is deepening the divide. Over the past 50 years, it has built up a hodgepodge of programs in a furious attempt to replace these missing links. And because these programs are so disorganized and dysfunctional, they pull families closer to government and away from society in so many ways. Our goal should be to reintegrate the poor into our communities, but washington is walling them up as if theyre in some massive quarantine. They are not fulfilling their potential, and we, we are all missing out. We have to remember that poverty is not some rare disease from which the rest of us are all immune. It is but the worst strain of a widespread disease, otherwise nown as economic security. This cannot be some box checked on new contract with america. This goes to the very, very heart of the american experiment itself. A little humility in washington might start. Today im talking about ways to improve our efforts. Here are two key ideas, simplity and standards. I think they would help with one big problem that we call the poverty trap. You see, the central planners arent very good at planning at all. Washington tackles problems in a half hazard back a mole approach and poverty is no exception. It is just the nature of the beast. So, before Lyndon Johnson even became president , we had medicaid head start and job corps among others. Soon after he left office, washington kept adding to the alphabet soup. He list goes on. The government created different programs to solve different problems at different times, there is little to no correlation among them. Because these programs are means tested, meaning families become ineligible to him as they make more money, poor families effectively face very high arginal tax rates. If a single mom living in colorados income jumps, she wont keep the rest of it. Instead, shell lose most of it to higher tax cuts. If shes enrolled in programs like food stamps and others, it will be as high as 55 . If shes enrolled in other programs, like Housing Assistance and well fair, the rate will reach above 80 . In other words, you go to work, and youll keep less than 20 cents of every extra dollar you arn. She is trying to get ahead and her government is holding her back. This has to be addressed. The good news is, theres a better way to do this. Policy makers are working on a solution to this problem all around, simplity. N 2012, britain produced a farreaching form called the universal credit. The government is now putting this idea into practice. They are going through a rough patch. No two ways about that. Maybe you discussed that here today. But the basic concept is sound. We should learn from this xperience. On the other hand, the universal credit tapers off gradually. Weve got some experience for this ourselves. We have the earned income tax redit. Like a universal credit, it gives families more flexibility. It helps them take ownership of their lives. Now, theres certainly room for improvement. Just last week, my friend senator marko rubio proposed workers get it once a month instead of once a year so its easier for them to plan ahead. That makes a lot of sense. Whatever form of assistance takes place, we have to encourage work. In other words, there should be standards. Its not a novel concept. In 1996, congress began to require people on welfare to work. And welfare roles, they dropped dramatically. Child poverty, fell by double digits. The problem is, it has not provided this principal far enough. What works is work. We need to change the way we think about work. It is not a penalty. It is a shortest, surest rout back into society. If youre working, youre meeting people. Youre learning new skills, contributing to society. That is the best way to get a raise or even get a better job. We want people back in the workforce so they can share their talents and their skills with the rest of us. We are losing out just as much as we are. In short, federal assistance should not be a way station. It ought to be an onramp. Weve got a lot more work to do. We have to tackle a whole host of issues. Theyre already doing a lot of his hard work. All i would say to the critics who are criticizing new ideas and perhaps new thinking in a more effective war on poverty is we want to hear their ideas too. Good intentions are not enough. Oncern for the poor . Concern for the poor does not demand a commitment to the status quo. It demands commitment to results. We should measure our success but how many people we help get off of welfare. Later this year, i plan on saying a whole lot more about this subject. But before i that, i need to hear more from the real experts, the families themselves. If theres one thing ive learned after 15 yeerings in congress, it is that washington does not have all the answers. In fact, sometimes they are right under our noses and right out of communities not in this city. My mom used to always tell me, son, you have two ears and one mouth. Use them in that proportion. Somewhere in congress i lost sight of that a time or two, but i think all of us who care so deeply about this issue, not as a niche, but as part of a growing experience, we have to ead that advice. Those lesser over on capitol hill, we need all hands on deck. We need to enlist these poverty fighters, the people who never come to washington. We need to enlist these Community Leaders and these working families in the real war on poverty. There is only one way to beat poverty, and that is face to face. For too long, too many people have watched this effort from a distance. You know, its like this. They said it themselves, im working hard, im paying my taxes, government will take care of this. And in so many ways, the government has reenforced this view. Its not going to cut it anymore. We need everybody to get in this game. We need everybody to get involved person to person, community to community, face to face. And the truth is, when youre helping people in need, youre helping yourself. So, if we reintegrate the poor in our communities, we will reinvigorate the country overall. With countries growing families will have a healthy growing economy. We will all benefit from the Economic Growth at its best. Collaboration does not just build a growing economy, it builds character. It makes us better people. It will make us a better country. So ron and bell, i want to thank you for your invitation. I enjoy the conversation were about to have. I look forward to it. I think it is vital that we make every single citizen, every single one of them a full participant in the american experiment. And if we have a vibrant battle of ideas on how best to achieve these outcomes we will get there and make this moment what it is. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. [applause] thank you, some interesting remarks. I bet a lot of people in the audience are reflecting on them and thinking about the questions i could ask you. A lot of what you say has a ring of what in the old days used to be called compassion and conservativism. Are you a compassionate conservative . I dont like that term or the premise of it, because it presumes that conservatives have been selfish and not compassionate. So im not a big fan of the term. I believe that conservativism as i understand it, otherwise probably known as classical liberalism is the most compassionate form of government because it respects the dignity of the individual. Its goal and attempt is to help the most people have the best life and to reach their potential. We have to fight for better ideas to make sure we realize the american experience. What is that to me . The condition of your birth does not determine the outcome of your life. I was raised, growing up in a small town, Irish Catholic family, from immigrants that came over from the potato famine, thats the american idea i understood. My big fear, you, bell, everybody around here has documented this so well. Stuart over at heritage, were starting to lose sight of that. Were losing not only mobility, we understand that. But, whole generations of americans dont know what this is. And when you explain it or tell it to them, they dont think its for them. Thats a problem. And i do believe that conservativism is the best answer for this. Otherwise i wouldnt be who i am. I bet i know the answer to this question, but it will get a laugh anyway. I think it expresses what many on the left think about compassion conservativism. Tony blare said the only difference between compassion nate controversyism and conservative, under passionate conservativism, they tell you theyre not going to help you, but they are sorry they arent. But this does show the left makes jokes about this sort of thing. I realize you dont like the term, but many things you discuss i think are part and parcel to what most people think of what are local, working face to face, helping people in the place where they live, listening to them and so forth. All these, so what do you say to people left saying thats not going to cut it . Well, if those who are advocates for the status quo, or advocate for the status of where we are right now, say do more of this, that doesnt cut it. For those who say it could be worse, thats hardly an effective answer. So what do we mean when we say conservativism or why we have better ideas . I truly believe we have made the mistake in this war on poverty, that we have displaced community. That we have crowded out and pushed aside what many of us call civil society. And we have told people in this country that is no longer their responsibility to help care for others. That is not saying this is just a convenient excuse for cutting a program or stopping the federal governments role and just saying its up to people locally. No, im not trying to say that. What im trying to say is i think the left made the mistake in thinking this was all about material deprivation and what we ended up doing, we isolated people in our communities, and we put up walls separating people from integrating with each other. We need to tear down those walls, we need to look at how these programs are actually doing harm, trapping people in poverty and how we can refocus on an agenda of upper mobility, getting people back into life. Now, i always hesitate to say this, because as a person in government, it sounds preachy, but you cannot ignore the culture. Look, youve written all the stuff about marriage, about a break down of family, these things cannot be ignored. But it is not somebody in washington who will solve that. That is our culture, our community, our media, our churches, everything. But as conservatives, working in government to make a difference, we can remove a lot of barers that are harming our culture. We can move a lot of barers that are slowing down income mobility. At are harming that is what a pro active positive solution would look like. Republicans are intent on making governments smaller. This means they cut programs. Many people see you as a hero because youve been a leader in this movement and tried to balance the budget and cut programs and we have indeed cut programs. Is that a necessary part of your ar on poverty, of your attempt to help more people . It has nothing to do with a line on a spread sheet or what the number ought to be. It has everything to do with is this working or not. Working meaning are people getting on with their lives and hitting their potential . Are people having the best chance to make the most of their life in this country or society . And i do believe that freedom, free enterprise, brought forth by keeping government limited is the way to go. Is the way to maximize that. Now, that doesnt mean that we believe in no government. What that means is, we believe in a government that is effective. We believe in a government that looks to its role and does that very effectively. And we are not doing that. Were biting off more than we can chair, crowding out civil society, presuming we can replace these missing links in society that just cant be replaced by anything other than family. So i like at this fight we have, because i believe we will lose this century as an american century. It doesnt matter who you read, we have a dangerous demographic, a dangerous trajectory we are on in this country. The budgets part of that, the entitlement are part of that. The economy and slow Economic Growth are a big part of that. But the greatest casualty of this dangerous trajectory are the least among us, the poor who are being trapped in poverty, and so, i believe we nead to take a look at this. When we apply our principles, liberty, freedom, free enterprise, self determination, subsidiary is a term people in my place use. You can have a rich, vibrant mosiac of a society where people can really make the most of their lives, where we can get back to those days of upper mobility. Where people come to this country or are born in this country and say i can do this, i can make it, i can be who i want to be. If we measure all this stuff, how much money we,000 at it. What the spreadshed looks like, how many tax dollars you put into something, we will miss the mark. If we measure based on outcome and results, then i feel like we can make a different. So, lets assume youre right, and that the real problem is government, and too many programs, and removing too much authority and responsibility from local levels and churches, and so forth. Can you actually foresee that you could convince some of the people in this audience, and the people in the media, and voters of wisconsin and the rest of the country, especially states like new york and california, that thats true . And that government is really in the way, and that if you balance a budget or cut spending and have the kind of stuff that youre talking about, that it will be a better result . Why would i be doing this if i didnt believe that . Well, there are a lot of people i mean honestly. Some people call it a heroic act and know that you probably cant convince people but you know youre right. I dont want to say while american went to hell in a handbasket, i voted no every step of the way. I do believe that a majority of americans understand that whats going on today is not working. That society is fraying at the seams. That we had to do something different. That the status quo wasnt working. And that i think new ideas based on these ideals that were the founding principles of our country that made it so special and great in the first place, i really do believe that a majority of americans can warm to this. Can agree with this. An embrace this. Do i believe americans want able bodied people to have a better chance at a better life . Do i believe americans want a safety net that is effective . Yes. Conservatives believe that too. I think what happens in these debates is we just lump somebody into a carkt sure as in this is a liberal that cares nothing about growing government, taking power from people and blah, blah, blah. Or this is a conservative who is heartless and doesnt care or wants no government. You know what . Its probably somewhere way in the middle between these two spheres. If we actually have an adult conversation on how to restore economic mobility, a conversation about our culture which is inherently nongovernment, i think thats pretty important and i think we can make a difference. I do believe a majority of Americans Still believe in the American Dream, the american idea. And if they knew they could do something to make a difference in their communities and help advance it, they would do it. Yes i do. So, im going to end by inviting you back to brookings. And when you get ready to say exactly what your agenda is going to be, i hope you come back here and tell a big audience. I suspect well have an even bigger audience to hear the specifics. After heritage, right . No, no, before heritage. [laughter] so, thank you for joining me. My pleasure. Please join me in thanking chairman ryan. [applause] well be taking a look at the new qualified mortgage and ability to pay rule. Live coverage at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan 3. Later members of president obamas Intelligence Review Group will change about their recommendation to change government surveillance programs. It will be live on 2 30 p. M. Eastern, also on cspan 3. As the president first stated in march and reemphasized tuesday night, the goal of pakistan and afghanistan is to disrupt, dismantle and defeatal quide and its extremist allies and to prevent its returns to both countries the International Military saying its necessary to achieve its overarching goal. Robert gates served two president s as defense secretary from 2006 to 2011. And c. I. A. Director in the early 1990s. A live book tv event. Secretary gates talks about his management of the wars in iraq and afghanistan. And his relationship with the white house in congress. And in a few weeks, look for womens history for beginners author bonnie morris. Shell take your questions and comments live on indepth, february 2 at noon eastern. Online for the rest of january, join our book tv book club iscussion. Live today on crshspan minutes on in 45 washington journal good morning, tuesday, january 14, 2014. The house returns today at 10 a clock a. M. , ang the bills being debated continuing resolution that would give congress three more days to consider a spending plan and field last night. The senate will continue work on legislation for funding for long term unemployment benefits, a vote to extend us for a year is expected today. That is the topic we want to begin with viewers on washington journal