Transcripts For CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20141110

President obama not in washington dc this week. And australia. Ia his First Official stop is today for the economic conference. He will meet chinese president xi jinping. On friday at bilateral meeting with the burmese president and a separate meeting with the Opposition Leader there. He is expected to deliver a major policy address. On his keep you updated trip here on the cspan networks. Awaiting action in the house, federal spending for the 2014 fiscal spending. New members begin orientation on senatey and then in the votes are expected on judicial nominations and a childcare block program. You can watch the house live here on cspan and the senate on our companion network. The secretary Veterans Administration is set to announce a Major Overhaul to make it easier for millions of patients to seek care. The department is going to aim to simplify the process of getting into the system, streamlining any streamlining nine different structures. Thatecretary acknowledged employees must be cleared out. The v. A. Could see a major hirings re. Needs the higher 28,000 health care workers. The people who oppose should take a look at the itv header. That is the magic that makes the internet to work. There is something called a type of service flag. Those designed to be on the internet from the beginning. They not only kept that, they included another field to do another form of prioritization. It was never intended to be allowed. I think a little engineering knowledge goes a long way. If you talk to the way people are use in the network, they are using it to deliver their voices. Tonight at 8 00 eastern on the communicators. Cspan veterans day coverage begins Tuesday Morning at 8 30 eastern during washington journal with an interview with American Legion executive director bernard jones. We are live at 11 from Arlington National sarah cemetery for the traditional wreathlaying ceremony at the tomb of the unknown. A discussion on Veterans Mental Health issues afternoon. Here are just a few of the comments we recently received from our viewers. Watched your show on Domestic Violence and was very disappointed with what i saw and heard. I thought the guests were weak and ineffectual. Seems that the bulk of callers were a bunch of whiny men. One woman is beaten every 15 seconds in this country by a husband or partner. That is one woman every 15 seconds. This issue is swept under the rug in this country, partly because most of the perpetrators are male. The only way this will ever change is if men are willing to look at their own bad behavior theyess it headon are talkg about harry reids desk each and every one of those cells have a repeal of what they call obama care. It would be good, rather than having democrats and republicans at a time, lets democrats and republicans fight it out. Call us, email us, or you can send us a tweet. Oin the conversation like us on facebook. Or follow us on twitter. Next, a look at the Net Neutrality. The fcc is considering a plan that would allow the agency to regulate how internet flows between content providers and Service Providers. A final ruling is expected by the end of the year. At issue is whether Service Providers will give access to all content. Columbia University Professor tim wu is credited with creating the term Net Neutrality and he took part in a discussion in new york city. It is just over an hour. I am delighted to now introduce the board of trustees, jacob weisberg, who has been involved in the internet before we knew what it was since 1996. He has been a pioneer in the field and what we talked about how to take on the topic including experts and people who see Net Neutrality and their eyes glazed over and we got the perfect person. Jacob weisberg so over to you. Thank you. I want to thank the fordham system for sponsoring this event. We are going to do way better than have your eyes glaze over. Well have this interesting and lively on a very urgent issue. I want to briefly introduce the panel and then give them a chance to make Opening Statements and will mix it up and save time for questions. I will start with my old friend micah sifry and i know him going back to when he was a writer for the nation. That he works for the Democracy Forum author of a new book called the big disconnect. I agree with the premise. To my left is tim wu, you may recognize him from his recent unsuccessful yet widely Successful Campaign for Lieutenant Governor with 39 of the vote. 40 . With no background in politics. His background is slate writer. He is the author of the master switch the rise and fall of information empires. Relevant for today, he coined the term Net Neutrality and no discussion of it is complete without his perspective. And next to him, jeffrey manney. Until recently, a law professor and now he runs an organization that he founded, i will have to put my reading glasses. International center for law and economics based in portland, oregon. For the first round here, i would like each of you to be as neutral and descriptive and diagnostic and explanatory as possible. It is very important to try to have the philosophical perspective and i want to start with you, tim. Explaining where the whole issue of Net Neutrality is and where the idea comes from. Thank you to pen for having us here on an issue of importance and concern. I want to discuss why it is a give somebody historical background. I went to the fcc the other day to go to a hearing, with the chairman, there was a crowd of protesters there. People beating drums. I have to tell you when i started working on this issue in the 2000s, we would be lucky to have 10 people show up. It was an obscure academic issue. Theres a lot of reason why Net Neutrality has become an important issue. I want to describe some of the issues i think. It raises in our time questions of the power of private power in particular, and the exercise thereof. There is discussion in this country whether private power has gone too far. It puts into question the perennial issue of free speech. And the internet has been an incredible engine and some people feel it will be a threat. If there will be a slow line created, and put in place some of the issues of equality or inequality which seem so striking in American Society right now. What feels to many people like Public Infrastructure might work better for some speakers and for other speakers. Both raise questions of free speech and basic sense of equality. We do not have sidewalks for rich people and others for poor people. If you go back into the history of this issue, you date it from as far as you want and i would date it to the nationstate of the idea of Public Infrastructure. One of the things that countries have always done is provide some amount of what you can call infrastructure, essential like roads and bridges and so forth that everyone relies on. All businesses and citizens. For a very long part of human history, we were provided by government, the roman empire builder the roads. Now, that has begin to change particularly in england is spreading to the United States with a model where we would have private actors build what mightve been otherwise they consider public infrasucture. Private innkeepers or private ferry operators and some under regulation or rules they gave the public duties. This is the origins of the idea of a public or common carrier. At some level since the last 500 years, we have been struggling with exactly what the rules should be for these kinds of businesses, which are not private businesses. But somehow invest it with a public function. Its not enough to say that infrastructure, everyone thinks the New York Times or slate seem to be different. When it comes to the internet, a project originally funded by the government. Built in its initial stages by the government and taken over by private companies will stop today, dominated by the private. Its the same rules faced forever when you look in ancient times at bridges and ferries. Should these private operators of what might be described as public facilities have special duties of nondiscrimination delivery of goods or services with special pricing rules . Should they have to give it to everyone and make sure we have it . We are asking, what are the essentials of the 21stcentury . We are asking is the Broadband Internet the same as the electricity was or water. That is the basic introduction. In some ways, it is defining what citizenship is and i will leave it there. I know you wi want to respond. Could you just bring us up to speed on where we are in laymans term on this issue . The fcc has a ruling pding irrespective of the president who is charge express his opinion and public. What where are we on this issue . Ok, briefly, sort of picking up where tim left off. He started with the beginning of the nationstate as fastforward to the 2000. Yada, yada, yada. We have the internet, broadband. Telephones, Telecommunications Services have been regulated by the fcc for many years since 1934. Along comes in this new thing called broadband. Older broadband as you know of course, will we did a lot more than talk to each other. There is no longer a singlepurpose network. Something capable of doing everything at what came to be characterized as an information service. It is important. I decided i was not going to be annoying details. It is important to note under the clinton administration, the first fcc chairman made this determination that we would be better served if broadband was classified as Information Services because it is less regulated than telecommunications. After that decision was made came along challenges to it. The fcc continued on this path and continues to assert broadband was title i less regulation. As the debate on Net Neutrality started to rage on, some people started to suggest we need more regulation for the internet. When michael powell, now chairman of the federal communication under bush, decided it was accurate and from the arguments that others have had said, it was a need to treat the internet differently in different ideals that tim mentioned. He mentioned Internet Freedom, and aspirational set of goals. Content should be treated the same on internet and everybody should have access. That worked really well until it didnt. It is not entirely clear. It is not clearly that you never work. It was only absurd not to be working and we need more rules. There were court decisions. We can elaborate later. The courts continue to throw out the fccs efforts to impose stronger rules. In 2010, the rules were promulgated. In january this year, the court threw out those rules as exceeding the fcc authority to regulate the internet. Where we are today, those rules have been thrown out of revenue chairman tom weller have been thrown out and we have a new chairman tom wheeler. But consistent with the limitations that the court imposed, they try to reimpose the rules. Chairman wheeler proposed something mpr, another set of rules. Those rules were meant immediately with a massive outcry, massive opposition, the likes that never been seen before. It is opposition from the left. Not the same kind opposition to regulation that we have seen before, it was opposition that you have not gone far enough. You have to do something far more substantial in this case. The argument was you have to impose these title ii common carrier regulators, true to the internet like it is a water utility, electric utility. Now, we are waiting to see what happens. Chairman wheeler proposed the second rules that do not go that far. He suggested he would be open to the possibility of title to regulation. And we had debate and the fccs record and hours of events like this and millions of words in publications like jacob, assessing the question of whether we should treat the internet like a common carrier or something less. Maybe it can segue for you. The issue underlying regulation of internet and in this fashion whether anything ranging from the Internet Freedom up to treatment like a common carrier are what we want to talk about rather than debating the merits or demerits of the rules. I think we can do that despite we are right now is really asking the question, whether it will be regulating the internet as title 2 or something less . Before we go back into that, i want to ask about the political stakes. Open internet versus close internet and the issue of Free Expression and political expression, the week before last i was in turkey. In turkey, which is a democracy, the president got a law passed saying he could take down anything from the internet at will and immediately began to do so. The political censorship of the internet is very clear. We are taught by different bandwidth speeds, isnt a rhetoric it rhetoric . [indiscernible] theres no question we are not in turkey. Now on . The turkey example. It is worth noting that when the protests broke out about a year ago over a government proposal that will does impart bulldozed impart to the wishes of the local community, the state media and private broadcast media in turkey not cover it at all. It was only because people in turkey have access to Services Like twitter that they were able to get the news out of what was going on with people protesting in the streets. The freedom to connect through relatively open Services Like twitter is really absolutely vital to any hope of an open society. We, here in the United States, it is worth going back to maybe 20 plus years ago he for we had the internet at all, before we had social networking, before we had email, we had mainstream media. It was a much more closed system. If you wanted to be heard by the larger society, you have to get through a gatekeeper. Persuade an editor that what you had to say was valuable and the gatekeepers was not a particularly diverse group. We had a much more constrained National Conversation as a result. As we have now is absolutely a much better situation of an open media system thanks to the open internet. That said, i think this argument about Net Neutrality is part of a larger argument of merits of open versus closed systems. I think i can illustrate with a recent example. There are services on the ellen internet that are more open and services a more closed and the philosophical issue if everybody has equal access and equal opportunity to reach everybody else with her message is playing out in realtime and many other ways. Not just a question of if the owners of the pipes have to not discriminate in the content they carry. You may remember about two months ago when it was in the middle of the summer and mike brown was murdered in ferguson and there were protests in the streets almost from the beginning. If you were on twitter and glancing at what was coming through your feed, you probably saw fairly quickly there were a lot of angry and upset people and people were sharing pictures of the police in their robocop uniforms and so on. If you were on facebook, you do not see this at all in your news feed for the first few days. You saw the als ice bucket challenge. The reason so many people saw the challenge opposed to the ferguson challenge is because facebook has a different algorithm of what they put on your news feed. Facebook put what they think you will want. Not upsetting their users they want to keep their users happy and in a mood to Pay Attention to advertisers. Twitter and its algorithm is much more direct because what you have chosen to follow. The Net Neutrality of the services we rely on is absolutely vital to whether or not we have an open and robust conversation or one that is in all kinds of ways shaped and throttle and limited by private interests. I am not sure i totally agree with you. I do want to go back to this question about the internet as public utility or not. He used the metaphor of sidewalk. Water, electricity, and if bandwidth is like electricity, you pay the more you use. In practice, isnt this mainly from the point of view of the carriers, commercial issue whether they can charge more to the people we use the most of it . No. I do not think that is the issue. That is how it is framed to suggest it is issue that the government should stay away from but it is much more, less than that. It can be expressed as simply payment. If it were that hides the complexity of the issue. My position on the advocacy side, i think in our era, it has become one of the essentials and should be regarded as a public utility. It was a different story 15 years ago when we were trying to do broadband rollout. It has come to the point where you go to a new apartment or this is and you want electricity, water, and broadband. What do one for the broadband carrier is to be reliable, as cheap as possible, and for the service to give you what you want and not impose its own strange little speedups or slowdowns or whatever else. But the carriers have long wanted and i can understand the economic reason is the ability to differentiate taxes on the internet. Those who have more to pay, they like to charge the more and create a fast lane and slow lane. There is some economic justifications are those type of deals. Public interest go against it. It comes to the idea there are some businesses which are in the nature of Public Infrastructure. If you imagine the brooklyn bridge, i could say the George Washington bridge, but more politically loaded. If they were to if they were privately owned a favorite one Pizza Delivery Company over another, you could sort of immediately see how it works competition. Uber has a competitor called lyft and uber gets over and it tips competition in favor of uber. In a way that hurts the internet because it derails fair competition. I will also say when we talk about speech, the idea that rich speakers get better access to people is to some great inevitable but we should not try to facilitate is to some degree inevitable but we should not try to facilitate. You still have to be good, but it is possible for a really wellinformed thoughtful blogger to compete with the opinion page of the New York Times for fox news and that is a function. In a world of great inequality, we have enough inequality as it is, we do not need more. In have it be the only people who have money. Public utility ties in and what is a natural monopoly. Electricity and water clearly are. And there are a lot of places where you have one of them or way of accessing Broadband Internet more than one way of accessing Broadband Internet and it might be a function oa monopoly for consumers in new york. You can access through uverse or verizon. It may not be available for everybody. The question of whether tim is right and if it is a public utility and if it should be treated. To the extent that in issue may be an economic what, a problem of monopoly, if that is the fear they may be adding conduct and it does not add competition, we have laws the deal with it and they are called antitrust laws. It begs the question and apart, i am not saying it is an answer, it begs the question why we need to build an enormous new apparatus to try to achieve this think that at the root is a problem perhaps, if its a problem, of insufficient competition when we have lost the deal with it. Until the issues that tim was talking about, the implications, whether true or not, i take issue with the characterization of what the effects would be allowed prioritization and what the effects would be a forced mandated neutrality. We have nothing approaching neutrality right now. Nothing. Theres nothing neutral about the internet. What is interesting is far from that constraining from accessing, the parties that are advocating for more regulation for common carrier treatme are enormously rich. Google, facebook, Companies Like those are advocating for neutrality and that should give you a bit of pause and you shall wonder if there is a reason they are advocating for the little guy. Or whether there might be Something Else going on. One of the things we should consider going on here is prioritization is actually really, really useful and important for the startup, the unknown company that needs some way of trying to distinguish itself from the incumbent. Then, and has a massive Consumer Base and easy access to financing. The incumbent has a massive Consumer Base and easy access to financing. A startup that is looking to make sure the incumbents customers can find the new guy. In a world where we have so much information out there, it is not enough to be better. You have to find a way to make sure that people who are your potential customers know you are better. One way is getting some form of prioritization. You can call advertising or promotion. I can tell you one thing that the likely consequence if we were to close any ability for the startup or anybody to access, it can only mean they would be spending more money on other forms of promotion and prioritization which probably means buying more ads on google. And didnt i mention that google is in favor of Net Neutrality . I would add 100 additional points but let me add one in particular because i this great quote from tim. It is useful to bring it up. He said, consider that the iver charges you the posted rate and take you where you go and that is common carrier in action. I think that is right. Title two, treating it like a common carrier is like barring uber. The problem with the overregulated the internet is locking it into a status quo. If you are going to impose regulations in ways that outlaw certain conduct we can conceive of and allow other conduct and most we can conceive of is conduct happening right now. People enshrine those forms of conduct and impede innovation, new Business Models and ways of structuring not only the internet but the very content providers, who are the beneficiaries of his Net Neutrality regime. We have to be really careful before we impose essentially mandate the Business Models of the internet of yesterday. We better be sure were not outline the Business Models of the future. There is real common ground. You both think it is working. The internet is working pretty well so far. You, tim, think its partly because companies have not been able to differentiate. They have not been able to commercially regulate the market and say the carrier. And jeffrey, you think that the risk is government. Government regulating the internet. Both of you like it pretty well the way it works right now. And the question is what is the definition of an unregulated an internet without unhealthy regulation . Usually it is government and unhealthy regulation is what it does without government. That is right. Unlike acting without regulation, the government has an obligation to defend. The carriers can do what they want, like it or not, until they run afoul of the law. The government has defended its imposition and one of the big issues at least to me, there is really as we were just discussing, no evidence anything that has ever happened. I couple of little, tiny things that we can debate of the three examples anybody can come all went. The internet works pretty well. Even if they are things that may have gone wrong, isnt enough . Is it enough evidence for a shift in regulation or is there not enough . While there might be problems down the road, the only valid course is restrict a humility and we shall wait until the problems materialized because we do not have enough evidence. Yeah, i wanted to object to this consensus that in the internet works pretty well right now. Most of us are being overcharged for service that would, we should be embarrassed by. We are paying first world prices for third world service. A kid in south korea can get to the library of Congress Website 100 times faster than a kid in the south bronx. If the kid in the south bronx can even afford to buy Broadband Service for one of the monopolists, who may not be choosing to put fast service into their neighborhood they have already paid the rich neighborhood. There are a lot of premises it got thrown past us. The idea that jacob, we might in five years see more competition or Faster Services being provided with verizon has already said they are not going to build fios any further than they already have onestop for most people, unless you want to pay exorbitant prices or moved one of the few cities that either google or a mass municipality that is putting this gigabit level of Internet Service, we are never going to catch up large chunks of the rest of the industrialized world takes for granted at a price a fraction of what we paid. Lets not likely to the internet works well now. From the consumers point of view, it does not work well at all. What i meant, we agreed it works well in terms of fostering innovation and allow them encourage and Free Expression. He makes a good point. Net neutrality is part of a broader conversation. I would side with the view that the antitrust laws have not been in adequate and we have Serious Problems and we should open the door. As time goes by, thinking of things if you have a continued trend toward more consolidation toward a few companies being in charge and over a pretty important public facility, that naturally invites. A company a monopoly that shows no sign of disappearing at all or 2 companies charge monopoly prices, as some point, you have to say, just the price you are going to charge. The case for rate regulation and also saying you need to provide access to more people in exchange for the monopoly is strong and thats what to do with cable. I am not saying i want to close the door when we have constraints. The government should never say we will allow it monopolist charge excess of the price of the costs because the internet is special. There is no reason to have that kind of will. It needs to keep prices. This is a inequality issue, the sense that while middleclass salaries are flat, the essentials keep getting more and more expensive. Internet service being one example and cell phone service. They keep going up. Some of these issues are not just tech issues and are becoming issues of what it means to be middle class in this country. We should not taken off the table. An important question is whether the carriers are going to become more like monopolies are less likely monopolies . Most people experience them now as companies that behave like monopolies. I certainly do. I am not confident, i do not know which way it will go. What do we think . Making Net Neutrality policy on the basis that people hate comcast is a bad idea. If it stays a monopoly it is not clear that comcast is a monopoly. There is at least one other competitor in about everywhere. We are talking about broadband here. It is true for cable as well. Spoken on broadband, there is at t or verizon pretty much everywhere in the country. There are other options, centurylink and other companies that are investing enormously in their networks. Why these monopolist have invested trillions of dollars and demonstrated ever improving speeds relative to the costs of content and not especially rapid increases in prices, prices have generally gone and that is not true. Prices have gone up way past inflation. Like 1800. You are talking about cable video. The point is that we are not experiencing exactly i understand that people hate comcast. Their Customer Service is terrible. We would rather pay less for whenever we want. All of these things are true but we have to be careful about translating that kind of conflict into and i want to bring it back to that neutrality into the detailed and potentially counterproductive rules we are talking about. Maybe, this was a burst of honesty on your point at what you are saying is i wanted a backdoor way to essentially nationalized this infrastructure that i believe should be offered by the government or the very minimum, regulated so heavily by the government it is indistinguishable from if the government was running it. That does not the problem the rules are intended to address. If thats a problem you see, we should talk about it differently. I do not agree with the premises here, i think it is a real problem going from those premises to title 2, carrier for the benefit of the problem or benefit of solving the supposed problems we have in the Net Neutrality debate. I do not have an idea of the amount of regulation and less to do with competition. I have been involved for 15 or more years now and i the waiting and waiting for the market entry of five or six to make a rigorous and competitive market for delivering cable and Internet Service. I am happy verizon built in some high expensive neighborhoods in google has wired 2 cities. Overall, the state of competition is poor. When you wait and wait, as opposed to sitting there is saying one day competition will come so we should not say anything because competition will be coming. We need to ask a restraining act and restrain what are you have to act on the facts. Comcast is acting like a monopoly. They have raised their price. Trillions in infrastructure and every year increasing speeds. Wouldnt take account of the government subsidies other offered in other countries, the services are not necessarily more better and cost more. It is easy to criticize what we have, but it is not at all clear what we have is worse than what others have. More relevant to the neutrality debate is, what are the costs we are bearing of this . If our service is not as good as south koreas and perhaps that is one or two countries where it is true, what are we losing and how much are we willing cost and burden are willing to there to correct this potentially very small actual costs . Net neutrality, the internet has been an economic Golden Eagles delayed goose that has laid some golden eggs. People were asking if the United States was finished as a technological power. Theres little question when look at the worlds top 10 companies, they are almost all american. Being the home of the internet, and open internet, a neutral internet has a lot to do with it. You said startups would do better on a pay to play internet. That is just a mythology. If you ask the startups themselves, they do not want to start their business negotiating with comcast or verizon for a next or payment when we have no money compared to our director competition which would be google or an established company who has a lot more money. It is clear that nonneutral incumbent, not just google in favor. When you look at companies, it is new york companies, spotify. They will not be distorted i want to pursue this point. The question of what the absent of Net Neutrality would likely look like . One example, it is not Broadband Access to the wireless carriers are verizon, offering certain content with no data charges. That comes in the form of not directly translatable. That turned out to be very appellant. You will not run of data charges if you are reading certain things. What is the kind of realistic version of what happens if the fcc does not mandate Going Forward . You get more of those things good or bad our media will look more Like Television again. Chris how do you mean . Television is free and only to the extent it is paid by advertisers. If you are someone that attracts a lot of advertising you are describing jacob, it is already existing in parts of the third world. What facebook is doing in africa and asia is saying, everybody wants facebook, we will let you bundle with your phone. If people open the phone to get on facebook, there will not be data charges. From the point of the view of the user, they are getting facebook for free but today are not logged onto the internet at all. They may actually know that. It is the height of first world humorous to say screw you, you want facebook, but you cannot have it because i know something that will be that are for you. We have a value difference. An open system is better than a closed system. An open system means no internet at a closed system is at least i get facebook, i would take a closed system. That maybe the relevant choice for many people. How do i think things would look . I do not think the walls would fall down. I think it would be a considerably different world for people starting to think of new things. Think about slate magazine started in the 1990s. You have an idea and you put i out there and you see whether it works or not. So many startups, thats how they start. They take off or they do not. You start the position you need to negotiate a deal and if you do not have a deal with verizon or comcast, it starts becoming a permission driven system. The internet become something where it is all about what the better deal as opposed to meritocratic. It looks more like cable television. The internet follows the path of cable. They have been different and the comes much more commercial. The final thing is probably the generation. Google is relatively quiet except and they know that in a nonneutral world, they have the money to pay to get access over their competitors as they could destroy any serious competitors. It locks in the incumbents. Google and amazon are qui, the real debate is over title 2, whether we have common carrier rules. Those companies are all in favor of Net Neutrality and in private conversation, probably opposed to paid privatization. There is no evidence, no reason to think those roles were not apply to them as well. Is another danger of the imposition of this massive regulatory apparatus that be careful what you wish for because you may end up hamstringing the very heart of the ecosystem. Tim, i think your vision of what the world is going to look like its too pessimistic. I do not think there is anything to suggest that it is likely to be the case in large part because we do not have any rules prohibiting private forward as a shim. Prioritization. It is not beneficial to the internet Service Providers either. We may disagree on exactly where they would fall and what amount of unfettered content is in their best interests, but it is clear an example as much of the news. Netflix and comcast are not simply at odds with each other. People pay for comcast because they can get net flicks. You have to be aware there is that synergy. It does not own sufficient content to attract people to the internet and have to make sure they are offering content. Or they can offer Great Service which they do not. You still need to the content. My point is i can see margins of which the internet Service Providers might deter or impede some content providers. In general, they have a very strong interest in people getting access because thats what people are willing to pay for broadband. Again, this vision of the small garage start up not being able to get access. Comcast does not care about him. They could care less if the small startup has is clogging its pipes. It appears about netflix, it really imposes difficult engineering problems on comcast networks. It is not made up. They really do. The small startup until they get to the size of netflix, comcast is not know they exist. You could create a scenario, a world in which some evil person comes to comcast and say i hate these people and is run by jews as lets stop them. You can constructed that is not likely how it will work out. Netflix is going to have to pay comcast and its next competitor will go through because these are forprofit companies. I do not think they are evil, but today favor with has more money. They favor who has more money. It is quite a long way there. There are a few spaces in American Society where smaller speaker to have a decent chance. I do not think comcast cares, but cares about the paste it. It is clear to me that speakers with money will get priority and you will see the speakers with less money like wikipedia, which is always struggling for money and does not run ads. The consumer space will get worse. In order to pay comcast, wikipedia will have to say we have to start writing ads. The consumer will pay in the end. Wikipedia has zero which is it is the kind of content that is not neutral. They have no good a model but people rely on it is the kind of content why would comcast let that im going to open it up for questions in a minute. Wikipedia, you said. Question for any of you. You see amazon dispute relevant here. You have a company with market power discriminating against specific content at down to the level of individual authors. They gave paul ryan a pass. It is a commercial dispute but that they now have the power to do significant harm to the type of people you are talking about. There is no Net Neutrality that applies to amazon. Is that the kind of thing you are worried about here . We need to be worrying about the new concentrations of power and if they are using their platforms in a neutral way or not. We can extend the logic that tim gave us talk about the net is a mutual platform. You talk about amazons role here and that is worrisome. Not saying we have to dissent the old publishing model and hold everything, but playing favorites in the way amazon seems to be doing is very troubling. Jeffrey, are you cool with what amazon is doing . Yeah, but i will take the devil after its role devil advocate role and point out that as you said, Net Neutrality applies only to the Internet Service provider and not to any of the other alleged gatekeepers that tim has written about. It is really worth thinking through what happens when you mandate neutrality on one part of one level of this ecosystem, but cant or dont on others. A recent dispute between youtube there are any number. Again amazon and its authors are another example. There are aggregators out there that are every bit as much a keepers. If comcast is a gatekeeper for ofartist, you can think thousands of examples like that. That brings up two points to consider. On the one hand, it means that, lawntioned bob lablows blog. If they wanted to stop it, it would be easy. It is wordpress and what is his name . Scott bail . That is not it. Arrested development whatever. That is not the point. If it is standing on its own and it is wordpress. It is not adele versus comcast. It is important to bear in mind, a lot of the independent as Small Artists as craters, their and creators and innovators, their access comes through Aggregation Services that may have problems we can discuss. They help to counteract the perceived problem of having an isp as a gatekeeper. Google versus comcast which is a much fairer fight then google versus scott baio. Many of them are notforprofit. Very few of them really matter and are successful. Wikipedia is one of a very few examples. I am not saying it is across the board and happens everywhere. Thing about the fact that dynamic exists and helps to moderate some of the perceived problems because there are very powerful entities who are thistially threatened by rapaciousness. If you tell the comcast, amazon, google, whoever has paid intermediary to you are increasing their power. You have shifted the locus of any problem from comcast to google or youtube. Or amazon. Net neutrality debate, and i am being devils advocate, lets say you are right about everything in respect to amazon are we better off if amazon has unfettered ability, no potential impediment to doing whatever it wants to do from the isp direction . I do not understand how comcast is serving a check on amazon. Comcast is acting and grabbing all kinds of random money out of the company random money out of the company and that is bad. Amazon is doing Something Else that is bad and some bad. Why is that . The problem with youtube. Have a problem with robbery and over here there is a problem with kidnapping. Dont you need to solve both of those . Let me interject just one second. I want to take a few questions. You can keep talking but let me see if there are any hints. Hans. We have about 10 minutes. If you have a question, tell us your name and one quick question. My name is melissa and i am with a Fellowship Program called sense makers and we try to make sense of information on the internet. I used to do investigative reporting for 60 minutes, dateline, all of the shows. I am finding you cannot have the same effect where you get somebody out of prison or a new vaccine on the internet. It does not happen. It is sort of like the public interest, the public good the internets most out in his own fashion very slowly compared to have everybody look at a topic. Where do you see the internet having the same effect . If i understand your question correctly, what you are saying is basically back in the good old days, a program that 60 minutes or a network news show could focus our attention on a problem and that would often lead to some fix. And today, we have a new kind of problem which is we have an oversupply of information, if anything the internet has made it too easy for us to speak. This is actually a topic i take up in my new book. What do we do about this . How do we refocus . Yes . [indiscernible] thereally would say are many reasons why in the it seemsates at least, our political and governmental system is dysfunctional. Problems do not get solved. Blame gets pointed back and forth. I would just suggest that part of the problem is our attention wanders too quickly now. We go from crisis to crisis and the system they used to then respond is immediately on to Something Else. The internet is causing a societal attention deficit disorder. We all feel it personally and our need to check for the latest email, latest tweet instead of sticking on things. I think this may be something we can grow ourselves out of as we learn to better filter the media we are being surrounded with now. That is an open question. I am hopeful we can do that. I think youre absolutely right. It is a problem today. Other questions . If not, we can continue the argument we are having. Yes . Hi. I am a plant. I am from panamerican center. Last week, my internet stopped working and i have time warner. We have not talked about the merger. That is the underlying question. Was, time warner had actually stopped my service in order so that i could upgrade. They said, you qualify and i am guessing, excuse me if other people have time warner maybe this happened to them. They were offering me a better at 50 megabits per second and i had 20. And the way they got my attention to offer that was to shut off my service. I do not think that was an isolated example. From over the phone, that was a policy. Not only is that not an isolated example. Precisely the same thing happened to me. It is unbelievable. That is a monopoly. If are going to start telling horror stories, we are going to be here. That is part of leaving things as they are. I believe the merger should be blocked. I think we have a problem with unresponsive, overly concentrated power in the cable sector. I think the merger would make it worse. Thes not only some of Net Neutrality things have been implicated. Price is the thing that bothers me. The average bill for time warner since 1992 is between 12 and 20. It has grown to the average time warner bill is over 105. It has grown outlandishly. The average comcast bill is 155 per customer. Per month . Per month. If comcast exceeds getting the money out of new yorkers that he got out of everyone else, 1. 6 billion a year, Cable Companies are making enough money as it is. I think the merger should be stopped. Comcast is not said anything as to what would be in the public interest. Everything they say are these vapid, empty statements. We will provide nextgeneration service. When they try to back it up, they are just competitors for Internet Services. I think the merger there is nothing about the merger i have read that makes it in the public interest. The burden when people looked at this problem of over concentration, they felt we should not allow these kind of mergers that are not in the public interest. Comcast has yet to be the burden of proof. Yet to meet the burden of proof. The merger should be stopped. They dont bear burden of proof in an antitrust matter. At the fcc in new york. Ok, fine. Not as a matter of antitrust. You have had an enormous amount of economics since 2010 that have developed since then. We have learned that among other things concentration , does not translate into monopoly power effects. This merger it would replace time warner with comcast in new york. No you actually have to make out as an economic matter, you have , to make out a case why monopolist with another, what you are likely to have competitive outcomes that are relevant to the merger. A fact of the matter is, there are not any. You mention they exist, and they exist in different markets, with different products. Im pretty sure comcast would ay our service is better. We give you something more. We charge you more for it. They have to do a quality adjustment to the data you are throwing around. I do think you can say that they will simply replace the exact same internet that was costing you 105 with something for 155. They might. But i do not think there is any reason to think they will. Last question right here. Hopefully it will give you each a chance for a brief last word. High, my name is bruce rosen. I am a lay person. I do not see where there is an antitrust system working in this country or globally where we have the concept of too big to fail. With hyper banks and other institutions i wish you would enlighten me with where this is actually working, because that is why we have this huge concentration of wealth and whole countries being run out. Wrung out. I dont think that whatever the standards are undergirding too big to fail apply to comcast. There may be issues in the financial markets, and i suspect that if you want to look for blame there, i would not look at the antitrust economics or even the antitrust enforcement agencies, but i would look alike higher up the chain to the white house and federal reserve. There are a lot of people with a lot of interest in treating those banks very differently than perhaps the antitrust authorities would. I dont know that they would have found it to be some actual economic basis for breaking up a banks, but i can guarantee you that there were a lot of political reasons why they didnt. This is not an antitrust problem. All right, i think being revealed in this panel and a lot of the debates that are going on in Society Today are on the divide the more fundamental level as to whether business as usual, the system we have had in antitrust in antitelecom regulation, where we had something to do place regulation. We are not really worried about monopoly. We have had weak, flaccid enforcement ever since the reagan administration. Everything has been great. We should continue that. Maybe i am exaggerating. Youre sort of saying, we have a good system. Things are working well. Like mee are people think that there is time for change. We have a serious problem with inequality in this country exacerbated by the failure of the government to take serious action in antitrust, to restrain cable monopolies, and stop mergers like time warnercomcast, and to start thinking about what our the daytoday costs that americans are facing. How is this economy working for normal middleclass people . I think our existing system has done some good things, has created some wealth, but has failed the middle class. Therefore, we need to reexamine from the bottom up rings like how we regulate the largest carriers and how we enforce antitrust law. I have very strong feelings about that and it is a difference of opinion on this panel. Seconds for a last word. Or you could just agree with him. I do agree with him. Let me just see that the internet has gone from being a lucky accident to the network that connects all the networks. It is the functional equivalent of the dialtone of the 21st century. Right now there is a kid sitting on the stoop of a Public Library branch somewhere in upper manhattan who cannot afford Internet Access at home and is sitting there because they are getting free wifi. People cannot even apply for jobs today if they dont have a way of getting online. When people go to public libraries, the first major use in the library, when somebody signs up to use the computer, is to figure out how to put in their resume and apply for a job. This is essential to our economic lifeblood. The idea that we should take a blase hands off, let the big boys handle it approach is not one that we can afford. This was not billed as a debate. This was a very good one. I want to thank you all for participating. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] coming up live later today on cspan, health and Human Services secretarys Sylvia Burwell will be at the center for american progress, talking about the upcoming open enrollment for the Health Insurance marketplace. We will have her remarks at 1 00 eastern here on cspan. And president obama is in asia and will be in australia this week. His First Official stop today, in beijing, where he will be attending the economic conference. Andnnounced today the u. S. China will start granting visas to each others citizens of valid for up to a decade. A meeting with china from president and then on to burma for a meeting with burmas president and a meeting with the Opposition Leader there. Then wrapping up with a visit to he g 20 Leaders Summit where is expected to deliver a major policy address. We will keep you updated on cspan networks. The house and senate returning eastern. At 2 00 the house scheduled to debate two bills including updating the president ial records act, which would allow current and former president s to restrict access to records for their time in the white house. Newly elected house members will begin their orientation thursday. In the senate, votes expected on judicial nominations and childcare block grants. Senate republicans have also scheduled a vote for majority leader thursday. You can watch the house live on cspan and the senate live on our companion network cspan2. And the secretary for veterans affairs, robert mcdonald, expected to announce Major Overhauls to make it easier for veterans to receive care by creating one entry point into the system online. The v. A. Could see major hiring. Secretary mcdonnell says he needs about 20,000 more health care workers, even as he recommends disciplinary action for about 1000 administrators and other staff over major problems at the v. A. Commucators, the a professor at the university of Pennsylvania Law School and the director for technology, innovation, and competition. They should take a look at for header, which is the guts. Something called bead type of service flag. That is Different Service classes. Latency, drink kinds of prioritization. That was part of the inner from the beginning. People say that was an old archetype. When we redesign the internet, they not only took that field, but they put in another field to do another form of prioritization services. If you look at the Engineering Design and suggest this was never intended, prioritization was never intended to be allowed, i say a little engineering knowledge goes a long way. If you look at the way people are using the network, they are using it to deliver we have all been frustrated. The true completely ipbased lt, the only way to make all quality work. Tonight on the communicators on cspan2. Cspan veterans day coverage begin use begins during the washington journal. Minute 10 00, the annual uso gala with joint chief of staff martin dempsey. Then the wreathlaying ceremony at the tomb of the a nose. Then a discussion of Veterans Mental Health issues and later, selections from the white house ceremonies. Or the cspan cities tour takes book tv and American History tv on the road. This weekend we partner with tartar communications for a visit to madison, wisconsin. Service. A glorious this service for the country. Citizen. Comes to every tois an unending struggle keep government representative. He is probably the most important political figure in wisconsin history, and one of the most important in the history of the 20th century. He was a reforming governor. He defined what progressivism is. He is one of the first to use the term progressivism to stop the 10th of five. He was a United States senate. He was recognized by his peers as one of the five greatest senators and American History. He was an opponent of world war i, stood his ground, advocating for free speech. Above all, he was about the people. After the civil war, america changed radically from a nation of Small Farmers and small producers and small manufacturers, and by the late 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, we had concentrations of wealth. We had gwing inequality. And we had concern about the influence of money in government. Spent the later part of the 1890s giving speeches all over wisconsin. If you wanted a speaker for your club or your group, he would give the speech. He went to county fairs. He went to every kind of event you could imagine and built a reputation for himself. He was ready to run for governor, advocating on behalf of the people. And he had two issues. One, the direct primary. No more selecting candidates in convention. ,wo, stop the interests specifically the railroads. Watch all of our events from sdison saturday on cspan2 onk tv and saturday at 2 00 cspan3s American History tv. The chair of the Republican National committee, reince priebus, says the operations and fundraising that helped the gop take over congress should continue as they look ahead to 2016 and the president ial elections. He was a guest this morning at the Christian Science monitor Breakfast Series in washington, d. C. He says he has not decided whether to run for another term as chair of the rnc. The breakfast ran about an hour. Okay, folks. Here we go. Our guest this morning is reince priebus, chairman of the Republican National committee. His last visit with the group was in march of this year. We thank him for coming back. Our guest has had a lifelong interest in politics. According to a profile he wrote for the times, mr. Priebus was the selfappointed Campaign Manager for Ronald Reagans president ial bid at the Elementary School in wisconsin. Jeff will have to tell us yeah. [laughter] its true it is true. It was a great profile anyway, jeff. Our guest went on to earn his masters degree from the university of wisconsin, whitewater. He moved twarmer climes, moving to miami. He ran unsuccessfully for the wisconsin senate. In 2007, he was the youngest person ever to hold the job. In 2009, he became general counsel of the Republican National committee. And in january of 2011, became rnc chair. He was reelected in january of 2013. The chairman and his wife have two young children. Thus endeth the biography portion of the program. Please no live blogging. In short, no filing of any kind while the breakfast is under way, to give us time to actually listen to what our guest says. Theres no embargo when the session ends. To help you resist that relentless selfie urge, we will email several pictures as soon as the breakfast ends. If youd like to ask a question, please send me a subtle nonthreatening signal. I will happily call on one and all in the time available. One more than one more thing. We strive to operate in a strictly nonpartisan faction, so weve invited mr. Priebuss counterpart to have breakfast with us, and hope shell accept soon. Well move to questions from around the table. Thanks again for doing this, sir. I want to get to your questions quickly. I just have a few comments to make before we open it up. Number 1, tuesdays election was a big night. It was a wave election. And we didnt squeak by. We won by large margins. Inhink when i was here march, i said it was going to be a tsunami. And obviously some people thought that that was kind of irresponsible or overly excited type of comment to make. But the wave we didnt think was inevitable. As recently as last week, democrats were predicting they would hold the senate. I think we have a handout going around with some of those quotes for everybody. After tuesday, democrats are changing their tune. Now theyre telling you that the wave was so big that even the best ground game couldnt overcome it. Thats not analysis. Thats really just a lame excuse. All of you know it. The reason theyre playing up the wave is that they dont want to admit that republicans actually beat them at their own game. So number 2, if we had not been laserfocused on turning out lowpropensity voters in states like iowa and colorado, we would have not been victorious. The ground game mattered. Our unprecedented investment in data mattered. Ill admit that the democrats ground game was bigger and more expensive. Ours was smarter, targeted, more efficient. And ultimately, more effective. We made important gains across demographic groups, because we believed that Voter Engagement works. Lets talk about hispanic outreach. Look at georgia. David purdue won 42 of the hispanic vote. Nathan diehl had 47 . Africanamerican voters, look at john kasich in ohio. 26 of the black vote. Asianamericans, exit polls showed that republicans won 49 of the asian vote. In 2012, it was 26 . And when it comes to female voters, a few things. First, see how cory gardner handled the baseless attacks from mark udall. Second, Mitch Mcconnell beat Allison Grimes among women voters. Greg abbott in texas beat wendy davis among women voters as well. Finally, the takeaway. I think its that republicans were given an opportunity to lead at every level, local, state and federal. In the senate, we had a decisive win across the board. Harry reids refusal to allow votes in the senate in order to protect incumbents back fired and actually it ensured their defeat. In the senate, it was a night of important firsts for the Republican Party. Joni ernst becomes the first female combat veteran in the senate and the first woman in congress from iowa. Tom cotton will be the youngest member of the senate. Shelly capital will be the first woman elected to the senate from west virginia. Tim scott becomes the first africanamerican elected to both the house and senate. In the house, with ehave a majority we have a majority bigger than most of us have seen in our life times. Were proud to see will herd in texas. The governors races across america affirmed the leadership of conservative republicans across the country. And in the bluest of blue states, they rejected the democrats. In maryland, in massachusetts and in illinois. Even the president s home state, where he campaigned vigorously, elected a republican. I think that kind of tells you how big this victory was. It wasnt just a rejection of barack obama and everyone connected to barack obama. It was also the acceptance of conservative Republican Leadership across the board in these states. Republicans now control more state legislative chambers, 69 out of 99, and hold on to more legislative seats than at any point in the history of our nation. Not only is that important for putting in place the right policies at the state level, it also means that were going to have a much deeper bench for future congressional and senate races. Ultimately, this was all a direct rejection of the obama agenda. But as you all know, president obama said very clearly, and he went out of his way and i think what is also perturbed by the strategy adopted be i democrats across the board, when he declared continuously that his policies were on the ballot. And the voters were, in response, very clear as well, that they want nothing to do with the policies of barack obama, and when Hillary Clinton and bill clinton tried to come in for the last 60 days to be the face of the democrat party, that didnt do anything to move the dial either. These were the president s candidates and they were also the clintons candidates. And they lost. Remember, the clintons were campaigning hard. They couldnt save their candidates, even in blue states. I think in arkansas, tom cotton was declared the winner at about 8 01 by the associated press. But after wednesdays press conference, im not sure that the president got the message. He was dismissive and flip. This is in the first time the president has told us he will be bipartisan. Its hard to take him at his word when he hasnt followed through before. Sure, he said he needs to let john boehner win at a round of golf. But thats not going to be good enough. Hes missing the point. He needs to listen to the American People more and work with Speaker Boehner and senator mcconnell so he can find ways to support republican ideas, which are the ideas americans chose in this election. In closing, we won in red states, we won in blue states, and we won in purple states. And were going to build on our successes of 2014 so that we can have a successful 2016. Its still going to be an uphill battle. I think were going to have to be about perfect. But i think we can get there. And were more prepared today than we have been before as a Republican Party. Thank you for that. Im going to do one or two. Then were going to go to david, jess, kyle, jill, craig, nick, sam, chuck, john, and zeke to start. So that should keep us going. Youve been very enthusiastic in your description of the results of the election. As you as a number of your fellow republicans are urging a less triumphant view. Halle barber said republicans should not take this election as some rousing endorsement. Charles krauthammer said this morning memo to the gop. You had a great night. But remember, you didnt win it; the democrats lost it. Are you still feeling the voters embrace how sweeping a mandate do you think you actually got from the results on tuesday . Well, i mean, i think when the president doubled down and claimed that his policies were on the ballot and actually went on talk radio in georgia and said, if you elect Michelle Nunn, youre actually going to be advancing my agenda and the policies that ive put forth. I mean, he about sunk Michelle Nunn with those comments. If you think about it, Michelle Nunn was back on a trajectory that brought georgia close to even in the polling. And we were seeing it too. The president came in, articulated his message, wanted the voters of georgia to know that the direction that he was bringing this country could be advanced by electing Michelle Nunn, and that race became a race that everyone was assuming was going to be a runoff to an outright win. And it wasnt even close. So about the election being quote, embracing the values of conservative republicans . You think it was more than just a rejection of him . It was embracing you . Well, if you look at wisconsin. I mean, look at that state. You have a state that accepted, maybe perhaps embrace might be a little over the top, but clearly if you look at scott walker, larry hogan, charlie baker, what is that . Is that an accident . Is that just, oh, the democrats are just lousy everywhere, everywhere on the ground they were no good . They didnt do well in maryland, they were lousy in massachusetts, they didnt have their act together . Come on. The fact is, everything that was attached to barack obama lost. And about every tough governors race in america, where republican principles, conservative principles were on the ballot, republicans won. I would call that a pretty sweeping victory. And whether its a mandate or not, thats a different topic. Now, i happen to think that its clearly a mandate or its clearly a message that the American People dont want to follow down the pathway of barack obama and his policies. Thats clear. So thats number 1. Number 2, when republican principles were put on the table, republicans won. And by the way, democrats didnt whoever said that the democrats just lost, you know, look, they put together one of the best ground games that theyve put together in a midterm. I know, because we were fighting it for the last eight months. So if anyone is going to tell you in any interview that the reason the democrats lost is because their ground game stunk, they dont know what theyre talking about. The fact is, we were just a whole lot better than weve ever been. And like ive said before, i just want to make one other thing clear. I also havent lost my mind to think that we dont have a long way to go. Like ive said a few times this past week, if you heard me, and i mean this, its sort of like when my wife was asking me how im doing on a project around the house. And i tell her, well, im about 80 done and ive got 80 to go. Thats kind of where i see us at in the party. Let me ask you one other question, and that is that there seems to be sort of a split one of the challenges for the party seems to be a split over tactics. The post and others have written about efforts by Speaker Boehner, and soon to be majority leader mcconnell to lay plans, to look not obstructionist but like you can get things done. On the other hand, senator cruz told the post that the first order of business in the new congress should be hearings on president obama, quote, looking at the abuse of power, the executive abuse, the regulatory abuse, the lawlessness that sadly has pervaded this administration. How would you assess the partys challenge in keeping a sense of unity Going Forward in terms of objective . Well, i mean, i think with 54 seats in the senate and i dont know where were going to get in the house, maybe 247, 248, 249 im not sure where its going to go. But i think the unity is pretty achievable with those kinds of numbers. But i dont think its a problem, and everyone has a different opinion on what direction the agenda in the senate and house should go, but ultimately were going to have two leaders that get along very well. I think if you look back historically, i dont know if youre going to find two leaders that are more cohesive and on the same page than Speaker Boehner and Mitch Mcconnell. And what ted cruz said, i think, is appropriate. The American People in part put i mean, in part. It wasnt the whole campaign. But the American People, i think, are sick and tired of the abuse as well. They want answers on the irs. They want answers on benghazi. And i think that they deserve to get those answers. So, yeah, i think there should be a continuation of trying to get answers to the American People. And, you know, democracy has to be transparent. I dont think it has been over the last few years. David . The republican sweep in 94 didnt bring you a republican president in 96. And youve still got a party that goes all the way from ted cruz to jeb bush. Given those divisions, how do republicans get together and find a president ial candidate that that can capture the white house in two years . It also goes from Elizabeth Warren to senator manchin in west virginia. You never know. You get to every two years, chatter whether hes going to become a republican or not. So i mean, we dont have a monopoly on diversity of sauce or something within our party. I think its a good thing, actually. I think, if you look back at our nomination process, we tend to nominate senate right candidates. But so i guess historically i dont see any evidence of our party not coalescing rather quickly around a nominee. Some people argue with me about it, but i do believe that having a month of proportionately proportionality created an artificially close election. And i think that by reorganizing our nomination process and taking it from a sixmonth sliceanddice festival down to about 60 days is smart. I think youre going to see a faster nomination process. Were not going to have a 23 debate circus. Were going to have some control. Will they all go for that . I think theyre going to go for that. I think the penalties are pretty debilitating that are in place. But were going to have enough debates where we take care of as many partners and television stations and cable stations as possible. And were going to contain the process so that we dont end up with rogue debates that provide the temptation to candidates to break our rules. You mentioned is there any doubt in your mind youre going to be running against Hillary Clinton. I sure as heck hope were running against Hillary Clinton. I think what you just saw on tuesday night is about as flat of a performance that you could have ever seen from the democrat partys brightest star. I mean, if you look at the races across the board that she was playing in, she didnt fare very well. And if your job was to unify the party, and to raise a ton of money and to get a ton of volunteers on the ground, i promise you, you would want know other opponent than Hillary Clinton to run against. Jeff . In the wake of 2012, the Republican National committee produced a 97page report. You dont like to call it an autopsy. You called it an opportunity. Do you believe that and one of the passages was, we must embrace comprehensive Immigration Reform. Do you believe that still needs to be an imperative of the party Going Forward to 2016 . And on the report as a whole, what still needs to be accomplished from that report, or should it just be shelfed . Have you solved all those issues . Let me back up. The report was written after an appointed group of people interviewed and talked to people all over the country, activists, leaders. Thousands of people. And it was written for the Republican National committee, at my request. That report was not written by me or somebody in our, you know, building. So its a report for the entire Republican Party to review, and i think that by and large it was a great report. And weve been trying to, at least as far as the Republican National committee is concerned, follow the recommendations, especially when it comes to the mechanics, the ground game, the work that a National Party needs to do in order to be a competent partner, which i dont think,n many cases, that the National Party has been over many years. And i think were getting there. As to the immigration issue, i think its pretty clear, you know comprehensive Immigration Reform has sort of become loaded language, because it means Something Different to everybody that you ask. Rand paul went to the Hispanic Chamber on march, i think, 19th of 2013 and said that we needed comprehensive Immigration Reform. As you know, Lindsey Graham said the same thing. My guess is rand pauls version of what comprehensive Immigration Reform might be a little different than Lindsey Grahams version. So i think ultimately, Immigration Reform is a subject that most people in our party agree that we need to tackle. However, what weve seen happen over the last several months is that the president has been using people as political pawns and lying to people when it comes to Immigration Reform. He promised Immigration Reform when he ran for office in 2007. He used it as a basis to do well among many voters. Ultimately, when he had a majority in the house, and a supermajority in the senate, he didnt get anything done. Now he gets up on tv and says, you know, ive been working so hard on this. And if it wasnt for these darn republicans, we would have been able to do it. But he didnt deliver. Then he threatened executive amnesty, which is in our mind a nuclear threat, to reject the basis of the separation of powers doctrine, reject article 1 and 2 as far as what lies within the power of the president. Then he got pushed back on executive amnesty. Then he came back and said, well, you know what . And obviously his poll numbers were in the tank over the summer. He said, boy, i better not do this to my candidates that are running in all these states that were worried about getting killed in, so im going to pull back. Then the activists that hes trying to please get upset. So he says, now im going to threaten these guys and do it after i get elected. Do you believe that the Republican Party needs to follow up on what was mentioned in the report to have comprehensive Immigration Reform for the party to be successful . Without regard to what the president has done. So where i think hes what i think hes done is unified the country and electorate around one big principle. And that is that we need to secure the border. And he has created a situation that i think may have not existed before that episode that has galvanized the country in a place where i dont believe most people are interested in comprehensive Immigration Reform, unless theyre convinced that the border is secure. And i think it was because of the president s haphazard political game thats created an environment that will not allow the legislature to move forward, unless people can be cvinced that that border is secure. Thats where weve come. And i think it makes sense that there was a lot of talk about Immigration Reform, which i think rightfully so, were talking about Border Security first before we get to anything else. Todd . Thank you, chairman. So you mentioned wendy davis in texas. The democrats made a big todo about battleground texas. Is texas more republican now than it was before this election cycle . Is the day further away, that democrats threaten to own the white house forever because they take over texas . I dont think i think what is happening is the texas gop, and i would say the Republican National committee, took the threat of battleground texas pretty seriously. If you look at sec reports, the rnc has been investing in texas for about a year and a half on the ground with hispanic engagement operations, regional offices, and i would say that the texas gop itself is one of the best parties in hispanic engagement that there is in this country, along with great candidates like greg abbott. So i do believe that battleground texas did a lot of work down there in registering hispanic voters. And, again, i just think they woke up the party and if we dont start paying attention to recruiting volunteers and engaging hispanic voters in texas, that its possible the party could have a problem in years to come. But what i will tell you is that we dont plan on slowing down in our engagement in texas. I already know what our budget is going to be for next year in spending on the ground in texas, and its going to be because we know we have to hold and get better in texas, because while i dont think its going to be a problem in 2016, if we were to just forget about texas and think everything is going to be great there, 2020, 2024, i dont want to see us, you know, either becoming a close state or a state that ends up becoming purple. Are you going to be running for another term as rnc chair . Have you made up your mind on that . Ill probably decide the first weekend of december but im leaning to do it again. But i have the you know, that being said, now my wife is going to see this. I mean, ive got to talk to i havent really had that serious conversation at home, which is yeah. I guess its going to happen tonight. [laughter] or ill get a text. Yeah, right. The thing for me isnt that i wouldnt want to do it again. We kind of we put ourselves in a fouryear plan. I think weve got a long way to go. To be ready for 2016. So, granted, we are excited for how far we have come. I think we have to be about perfect as a National Party to in a National Coach or vote this country. I think the democrats can be good and when. We have got to be great. In order to do that, we have to have a National Party that is obsessed with the boring stuff, the mechanics in the ground game. Nobody wants to talk about these things, but i am convinced this is how we are going to win in 2016. Good candidates are really important, but i think the mechanics are more important. Ever haveesitation i is that i think it is important to get back to normal life. With a nineyearold and a fouryearold and a backyard and just simpler operations, than what it is being chairman of the rnc. Do your kids like it here question mark do your kids like it here . Do. Hey but it is pretty obvious more we go back to kenosha and they are out in the neighborhood i dont know. A better life in wisconsin, i would say. You talked about a rejection of the president s policies and that is certainly one way of looking at it. I am curious how you explain some of the stallions issues where he has the ballot talked abouthe has raising the minimum wage and gun control, have done very well. Where do you take that . Are the i think these issues that our legislators have to look at and they have to decide how they want to govern in each of these different states with different agendas and, you know, some states present unique differences than one national agenda. As far as minimum wage and marijuana is concerned, i mean, i personally do not believe artificially raising the minimum wage is going to put more money in peoples pockets, because i think eventually inflation goes up and products cost more and it is sort of a faults false hope. But as far as marijuana is concerned, i mean, i am opposed to that. I just dont think we need to be promoting things like that with kids and with High School Kids and i just am not in favor of it. Would be fairk it for republicans to say they reconsider legislators have to consider everything. As the chairman of the party, imd mechanic. I am not the guy that sits down with scott walker and says, you know, you really need to look at this issue regarding, you know, minimum wage, marijuana. This is what legislators, governors have to do in order to determine how they can best govern in their individual states. If you talk to chris christie, he is going to govern in a different way in his state than governor haslams going to govern in tennessee. Everything is different. That is what is great about democracy in the United States. Notwithstanding [indiscernible] in 2016, youre going to have. Roader math, higher turnout you will not necessarily be able to run against [indiscernible] youralked before about how day operation never ends. Have you had a chance to figure out, with the success that you had tuesday, where things go from here so that when you get compete you can theoretically against a democratic operation that might be as good as what the president fielded in 2012 . Not completely yet. It has only been a few days. But i have an idea. My guess is, we are going to have to be three times bigger than we were in 2014. I think it is going to take a massive amount of money and a huge paid program in the battleground states, starting immediately. Notll tell you, we are polling staff out of any president ial battleground state. It is just hard to do when you know how our money cycle works to not strip down to bare bones and then build back up. I think we need to have a fullblown Field Operation in in florida, ohio, and virginia. And that is an extremely that is extremely expensive to do when people are tired and caps out. But i think the nice thing about what happened on tuesday, our investors at the rnc are excited that the mechanics worked and they can see that a good, competent program on the ground is something theyre willing to invest in and again immediately in 2015. One thing on the 2016 map it appears right now to be an easier map for democrats where the swing states, they have got in the bank a lot more than you guys. You guys need certain states, ohio, florida, virginia, more of the nation is purple as opposed to solid red. Is there any candidate the changes that . Or is it that narrow a path for you guys . When you think about where we were is a National Party a few years ago, not just being 26 , 80 employees. Barack obama at the same time had 800 employees. We do not have a whole lot initially to offer. Mitt romney lost by a quarter million votes. It was not like granted, the Electoral College is pretty lopsided, but vote totals, when you are talking 100,000 or so in florida, virginia, ohio. Obviously new hampshire. But we are talking about working like dogs here to grow the electorate and turned the dial just a few little notches in order to win. I think if we work really hard and we get a candidate on the ballot people want to sit down and have a beer with, i think we can win. This. Tell you if we did not win purple states on tuesday, it would have been very difficult for me to sit here and make a case for you that if we could not win a purple state in a Good Environment with good candidates, it would have been very difficult to tell you we would win with 75 , 80 , turnout, right . I guess the point and my answer to mr. Cheneys question, it probably would be a lot different if we did not win in colorado and ohio and north carolina. That ourhe challenges data and are targeting has to continue to improve, and i think it will. And i think that our early vote has to decisively be the democrats. Doing,saw what we were we were targeting low propensity voters. We were finding the consumer characteristics of people, what they buy and dont buy, what car they drive, how many kids they have, how much money they make, taking the information that would beke voters that our voters and matching it up to the voter rolls of people who do not always vote. So finding your high probability, high probability republicans, but low propensity voters, targeting them early, and we will have to do an even better job to win in places lets go to them a walkie sentinel journal. Milwaukee sentinel journal. There are states where you have been winning midterms, dominating midterms, and losing president ials. 2014what happened in change the size or the challenge for you . Saying,s like you are you still have to be purposed to win a president ial campaign