Transcripts For CSPAN Politics And Public Policy Today 20161117

This has been my Foreign Policy during my presidency. By necessity, we work with all countries, and many of them are not democracies. Some of them are democracies in the sense they have elections, but not democracies in the sense of actually permitting participation and dissent. But our trajectory as a country has been to support the efforts of those who believe in selfgovernance, who believe in those ideas that began here so many years ago. And it is not simply a matter of us being true to our values. Its not just a matter of idealism. I believe it is practical for the United States to support democracies. [applause] pres. Obama because history shows us that countries with democratic governance tend to be more just, and more stable, and more successful. Open, democratic societies can deliver more prosperity because when people are free to think for themselves and share ideas and discover and create the young people who are here, what theyre able to do through the internet and technology, thats when innovation is unleashed, when economies truly flourish. Thats when new products, and new services, and new ideas wash through an economy. In contrast to regimes that rule by coercion, democracies are rooted in consent of the governed citizens know that theres a path for peaceful change, including the moral force of nonviolence. And that brings a stability that so often can facilitate Economic Growth. The history of the past two centuries indicates that democracies are less likely to fight wars among themselves. So more democracy is good for the people of the world, but its also good for our National Security. Which is why americas closest friends are democracies like greece. Its why we stand together in nato an alliance of democracies. In recent years, weve made historic investments in nato, increased americas presence in europe, and todays nato the worlds greatest alliance is as strong and as ready as its ever been. And i am confident that just as americas commitment to the Transatlantic Alliance has endured for seven decades whether its been under a democratic or Republican Administration that commitment will continue, including our pledge and our treaty obligation to defend every ally. Our democracies show that were stronger than terrorists, and fundamentalists, and absolutists who cant tolerate difference, cant tolerate ideas that vary from their own, who try to change peoples way of life through violence and would make us betray or shrink from our values. Democracy is stronger than organizations like isil. Because our democracies are inclusive, were able to welcome people and refugees in need to our countries. And nowhere have we seen that compassion more evident than here in greece. [applause] pres. Obama the greek peoples generosity towards refugees arriving on your shores has inspired the world. That doesnt mean that you should be left on your own [applause] pres. Obama and only a truly collective response by europe and the world can ensure that these desperate people receive the support that they need. Greece cannot be expected to bear the bulk of the burden alone but the fact that your you are a democracy opens your heart to people in need in a way that might not otherwise be the case. Just as democracies are premised on the peaceful resolution of disagreements within our societies, we also believe that cooperation and dialogue is the best way to address challenges between nations. And so it is my belief that democracies are more likely to try to resolve conflicts between nations in a way that does not result in war. Thats how, with diplomacy, we were able to shut down Irans Nuclear Weapons Program without firing a shot. With diplomacy, the United States opened relations with cuba. With diplomacy, we joined greece [applause] pres. Obama with diplomacy, we joined greece and nearly 200 nations in the most ambitious agreement ever to save our planet from Climate Change. [applause] pres. Obama and speaking of Climate Change, i would point out that there is a connection between democracy and science. The premise of science is that we observe and we test our hypotheses, our ideas. We base decisions on facts, not superstition; not what our ideology tells us, but rather what we can observe. And at a time when the globe is shrinking and more and more were going to have to take collective action to deal with problems like Climate Change, the presence of a democratic debate allows the science to flourish and to shape our collective responses. Now, democracy, like all human institutions, is imperfect. It can be slow, it can be frustrating, it can be hard, it can be messy. Politicians tend to be unpopular in democracies, regardless of party, because, by definition, democracies require that you dont get 100 of what you want. It requires compromise. Winston churchill famously said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. And in a multiethnic, multiracial, multicultural society, like the United States, democracy can be especially complicated. Believe me, i know. [laughter] pres. Obama but it is better than the alternatives because it allows us to peacefully work through our differences and move closer to our ideals. It allows us to test new ideas and it allows us to correct for mistakes. Any action by a president , or any result of an election, or any legislation that has proven flawed can be corrected through the process of democracy. And throughout our history, its how we have come to see that all people are created equal even though, when we were founded, that was not the case. We could work to expand the rights that were established in our founding to African Americans, and to women, to americans with disabilities, to nativericans in americans. Why all americans now have the freedom to marry the person they love. [applause] pres. Obama its why we welcome people of all races and all religions and all backgrounds, and immigrants who strive to give their children a better life and who make our country stronger. And so here, where democracy was born, we affirm once more the rights and the ideals and the institutions upon which our way of life endures. Freedom of speech and assembly because true legitimacy can only come from the people, who must never be silenced. A free press to expose injustice and corruption and hold leaders accountable. Freedom of religion because were all equal in the eyes of god. Independent judiciaries to uphold rule of law and human rights. Separation of powers to limit the reach of any one branch of government. Free and Fair Elections because citizens must be able to choose their own leaders, even if your candidate doesnt always win. [laughter] pres. Obama we compete hard in campaigns in america and here in greece. But after the election, democracy depends on a peaceful transition of power, especially when you dont get the result you want. [applause] pres. Obama and as you may have noticed, the next american president and i could not be more different. [applause] pres. Obama we have very different points of view, but american democracy is bigger than any one person. [applause] pres. Obama thats why we have a tradition of the outgoing president welcoming the new one in as i did last week. And why, in the coming weeks, my administration will do everything we can to support the smoothest transition possible because thats how democracy has to work. [applause] pres. Obama and thats why, as hard as it can be sometimes, its important for young people, in particular, who are just now becoming involved in the lives of their countries, to understand that progress follows a winding path sometimes forward, sometimes back but as long as we retain our faith in democracy, as long as we retain our faith in the people, as long as we dont waver from those central principles that ensure a lively, open debate, then our future will be okay, because it remains the most effective form of government ever devised by man. It is true, of course, over the last several years that weve seen democracies faced with serious challenges. And i want to mention two that have an impact here in greece, haven an impact in the United States, and are having an impact around the world. The first involves the paradox of a modern, Global Economy. The same forces of globalization and technology and integration that have delivered so much progress, have created so much wealth, have also revealed deep fault lines. Around the world, integration and closer cooperation, and greater trade and commerce, and the internet all have improved the lives of billions of people lifted families from extreme poverty, cured diseases, helped people live longer, gave them more access to education and opportunity than at any time in human history. Ive often said to young people in the United States, if you had to choose a moment in history to be born, and you did not know ahead of time who you would be you didnt know whether you were going to be born into a wealthy family or a poor family, what country youd be born, whether you were going to be a man or a woman if you had to choose blindly what moment youd want to be born youd choose now. Because the world has never, collectively, been wealthier, better educated, healthier, less violent than it is today. Thats hard to imagine, given what we see in the news, but it is true. And a lot of that has to do with the developments of a integrated, Global Economy. But trends under way for decades have meant that in many countries and in many communities there have been enormous disruptions. Technology and automation mean that goods can be produced with fewer workers. It means jobs and manufacturing can move across borders where wages are lower or rights are less protected. And that means that workers and unions oftentimes have less leverage to bargain for better wages, better benefits, have more difficulty competing in the global marketplace. Hardworking families worry their kids may not be better off than they were because of this global competition. What weve also seen is that this global integration is increasing the tendencies towards inequality, both between nations and within nations, at an accelerated pace. And when we see people global elites, wealthy corporations seemingly living by a different set of rules, avoiding taxes, manipulating loopholes when the rich and the powerful appear to game the system and accumulate vast wealth while middle and workingclass families struggle to make ends meet, this feeds a profound sense of injustice and a feeling that our economies are increasingly unfair. This inequality now constitutes one of the greatest challenges to our economies and to our democracies. An inequality that was once tolerated because people didnt know how unequal things were now wont be tolerated because everybody has a cell phone and can see how unequal things are. The awareness that people have in the smallest african village, they can see how people in london or new york are living. The poorest child in any of our countries now has a sense of what other people have that they dont. So not only is there increasing inequality, but also there is greater awareness of inequality. And thats a volatile mix for our democracies. And this is why addressing inequality has been one of the key areas of focus for my economic policy. In our countries, in america and in most advanced market economies, we want people to be rewarded for their achievement. We think that people should be rewarded if they come up with a new product or a new service that is popular and helps a lot of people. But when a c. E. O. Of a company now makes more money in a single day than a typical worker does in an entire year, when its harder for workers to climb their way up the economic ladder, when they see a factory close that used to support an entire city or town, fuels the feeling that globalization only benefits those at the top. And the reaction can drag down a countrys growth and make recessions more likely. It can also lead to politics that create an unhealthy competition between countries. Rather than a winwin situation, people perceive that if youre winning, im losing, and barriers come up and walls come up. And in advanced economies, there are at times movements from both the left and the right to put a stop to integration, and to push back against technology, and to try to bring back jobs and industries that have been disappearing for decades. So this impulse to pull back from a globalized world is understandable. If people feel that theyre losing control of their future, they will push back. We have seen it here in greece. Weve seen it across europe. Weve seen it in the United States. We saw it in the vote in britain to leave the e. U. But given the nature of technology, it is my assertion that its not possible to cut ourselves off from one another. We now are living in a Global Supply chain. Our growth comes through innovation and ideas that are crossing borders all the time. The jobs of tomorrow will inevitably be different from the jobs of the past. So we cant look backwards for answers, we have to look forward. We cannot sever the connections that have enabled so much. For when competition for resources is perceived as zerosum, we put ourselves on a path to conflict both within countries and between countries. So i firmly believe that the best hope for Human Progress remains open markets combined with democracy and human rights. But i have argued that the current path of globalization demands a course correction. In the years and decades ahead, our countries have to make sure that the benefits of an integrated Global Economy are more broadly shared by more people, and that the negative impacts are squarely addressed. [applause] pres. Obama and we actually know the path to building more inclusive economies. Its just we too often dont have the political will or desire to get it done. We know we need bold policies that spur growth and support jobs. We know that we need to give workers more leverage and better wages, and that, in fact, if you give workers better wages businesses do better, too, because their customers now have money to spend. We know that we have to invest more in our people the education of our young people, the skills and training to compete in the Global Economy. We have to make sure that it is easy for young people who are eager to learn and eager to work to get the education that they need, the training that they need, without taking on huge amounts of debt. We know that we have to encourage entrepreneurship so that its easier to start a business and do business. [applause] pres. Obama we know that we have to strengthen the social compact so that the safety net that is available for people, including Quality Health care and retirement benefits, are there even if people arent working in the same job for 30 years, or 40 years, or 50 years. We have to modernize our infrastructure, which will put people back to work. We have to commit to the science and research and development that sparks new industries. In our trading relationships, we have to make sure that trade works for us, and not against us. And that means insisting on high standards in all countries to support jobs, strong protections for workers, strong protections for the environment, so that even as we freely trade, people and workers in all countries see the benefits of trade in their own lives, not just benefits for the bottom line of large, multinational corporations. These are the kinds of policies, this is the work that ive pursued throughout my time as president. Keep in mind i took office in the midst of the worst crisis since the great depression. And we pursued a recovery that has been shared now by the vast majority of americans. We put people back to work building bridges and roads. We passed tax cuts for the middle class. [applause] pres. Obama we asked the wealthiest americans to pay a little more taxes their fair share. We intervened to save our Auto Industry, but insisted that the Auto Industry become more energy efficient, produce better cars that reduce pollution. We put in place policies to help students with loans and protect consumers from fraud. We passed the strongest wall street reforms in history so that the excesses and abuses that triggered the Global Financial crisis never happen again or at least dont start on wall street. And today, our businesses have created more than 15 million new jobs. Incomes last year in america rose faster than any time since 1968. Poverty fell at the fastest rate since 1968. Inequality is being narrowed. And weve also begun to close the pay gap between men and women. We declared that health care in america is a privilege not for the few, but a right for everybody. Today our uninsured rate is at the lowest levels on record. And weve done all this while doubling our production of clean energy, lowering our Carbon Pollution faster than any advanced nation. So weve proven that you can grow the economy and reduce the Carbon Emissions that cause Climate Change at the same time. [applause] pres. Obama now, i say all this not because weve solved every problem. Our work is far from complete. There are still too many people in america who are worried about their futures. Still too many people who are working at wages that dont get them above the poverty line. Still too many young people who dont see opportunity. But the policies i describe point the direction for where we need to go in building inclusive economies. And thats how democracies can deliver the prosperity and hope that our people need. And when people have opportunity and they feel confidence the future, they are less likely to turn on each other and theyre less likely to appeal to some of the darker forces that exist in all our societies those that can tear us apart. Here in greece, youre undergoing similar transformations. The first step has been to build a foundation that allows you to return to robust Economic Growth. And we dont need to recount all the causes of the economic crisis here in greece. If were honest, we can acknowledge that it was a mix of both internal and external forces area forces. The Greek Economy and the level of debt had become unsustainable, and in this Global Economy, investment and jobs flow to countries where governments are efficient, not bloated, where the rules are clear. To stay competitive, to attract investment that creates jobs, greece had to start a reform process. Of course, the world, i dont think, fully appreciates the extraordinary pain these reforms have involved, or the tremendous sacrifices that you, the greek people, have made. Ive been aware of it, and ive been proud of all that my administration has done to try to support greece in these efforts. [applause] pres. Obama and part of the purpose of my visit is to highlight for the world the important steps that have been taken here in greece. Today, the budget is back in surplus. Parliament passed reforms to make the economy more competitive. Yes, there is still much more work to do. I want to commend Prime Minister tsipras for the very difficult reforms his government is pursuing to put the economy on a firmer footing. Now, as greece works to attract more investment, and to prevent old imbalances from reemerging, and to put your economy on a stronger foundation, youll continue to have the full support of the United States. At the same time, i will continue to urge creditors to take the steps needed to put greece on a path towards sustained economic recovery. [applause] pres. Obama as greece continues to implement reforms, the i. M. F. Has said that debt relief will be crucial to get greece back to growth. They are right. It is important because if reforms here are going to be sustained, people need to see hope, and they need to see progress. And the young people who are in attendance here today and all across the country need to know there is a future there is an education and jobs that are worthy of your incredible potential. You dont have to travel overseas, you can put roots right here in your home, in greece, and succeed. [applause] and im confident that if you stay the course, as hard as it has been, greece will see brighter days. Because, in this magnificent hall and center this symbol of the Greek Culture and resilience were reminded that just as your strength and resolve have allowed you to overcome great odds throughout your history, nothing can break the spirit of the greek people. You will overcome this period of challenge just as you have other challenges in the past. So economics is something that will be central to preserving our democracies. When our economies dont work, our democracies become distorted and, in some cases, break down. But this brings me to another pressing challenge that our democracies face how do we ensure that our diverse, multicultural, multiracial, multireligious world and our diverse nations uphold both the rights of individuals and a fundamental civic adherence to a common creed that binds us together. Democracy is simplest where everybody thinks alike, looks alike, eats the same food, worships the same god. Democracy becomes more difficult when there are people coming from a variety of backgrounds and trying to live together. In our globalized world, with the migration of people and the Rapid Movement of ideas and cultures and traditions, we see increasingly this blend of forces mixing together in ways that often enrich our societies but also cause tensions. In the information age, the unprecedented exchange of information can always accentuate differences, or seem to threaten cherished ways of life. It used to be that you might not know how people in another part of your country, or in the cities versus the countryside, were living. Now Everybody Knows how everybody is living, and everybody can feel threatened sometimes if people dont do things exactly the way they do things. And they start asking themselves questions about their own identity. And it can create a volatile politics. Faced with this new reality where cultures clash, its inevitable that some will seek a comfort in nationalism or tribe or ethnicity or sect. In countries that are held together by borders that were drawn by colonial powers, including many countries in the middle east and in africa, it can be tempting to fall back on perceived safety of enclaves and tribal divisions. In a world of widening inequality, theres a growing suspicion or even disdain for elites and institutions that seem remote from the daily lives of ordinary people. What an irony it is, at a time when we can reach out to people in the most remote corners of the planet, so many citizens feel disconnected from their own governments. So, just as we have to have an inclusive economic strategy, we have to have an inclusive political and cultural strategy. In all of our capitals, we have to keep making government more open, more efficient, more effective in responding to the daily needs to citizens. Governing institutions, whether in athens, brussels, london, washington, have to be responsive to the concerns of citizens. People have to know that theyre being heard. Here in europe, even with todays challenges, i believe that by virtue of the progress it has delivered over the decades the stability it has provided, the security its reinforced that european integration and the European Union remains one of the great political and economic achievements of human history. [applause] pres. Obama and today more than ever, the world needs a europe that is strong and prosperous and democratic. But i think all institutions in europe have to ask themselves how can we make sure that people within individual countries feel as if their voices are still being heard, that their identities are being affirmed, that the decisions that are being made that will have a critical impact on their lives are not so remote that they have no ability to impact them . We have to make clear that governments exist to serve the interest of citizens, and not the other way around. And so this is why, as president of the United States, ive pursued initiatives like the open Government Partnership that promotes transparency and accountability so that ordinary people know more about the decisions that affect their lives. Thats why both at home and around the world, we have taken steps to fight corruption that can rot a society from within. As authoritarian governments work to close space that citizens depend upon to organize and have their voices heard, weve begun the work of empowering Civil Society to defend Democratic Values and promote solutions to the problems within our communities. And as so many people around the world sometimes are tempted by cynicism and not being involved because they think that politicians and government dont care about them, weve created networks for Young Leaders and invested in young entrepreneurs, because we believe that the hope and renewal of our societies begins with the voices of youth. [applause] pres. Obama in closing, our globalized world is passing through a time of profound change. Yes, there is uncertainty and there is unease, and none of us can know the future. History does not move in a straight line. Civil rights in america did not move in a straight line. Democracy in greece did not move in a straight line. The evolution of a unified europe certainly has not moved in a straight line. And progress is never a guarantee. Progress has to be earned by every generation. But i believe history gives us hope. 25 centuries after athens first pointed the way, 250 years after the beginning of the Great American journey, my faith and my confidence, my certainty in our democratic ideals and universal values remain undiminished. I believe more strongly than ever that dr. King was right when he said that, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. [applause] pres. Obama but it bends towards justice not because it is inevitable, but because we bend it towards justice, not because there are not going to be barriers to achieving justice, but because there will be people, generation after generation, who have the vision and the courage and the will to bend the arc of our lives in the direction of a better future. In the United States, and in every place i have visited these last eight years, i have met citizens, especially young people, who have chosen hope over fear, who believe that they can shape their own destiny, who refuse to accept the world as it is and are determined to remake it as it should be. They have inspired me. In every corner of the world, i have met people who, in their daily lives, demonstrate that despite differences of race or religion or creed or color, we have the capacity to see each other in ourselves. Like the woman here in greece who said of the refugees arriving on these shores, we live under the same son. We fall in love under the same moon. We are all human we have to help these people. Women like that give me hope. [applause] pres. Obama in all of our communities, in all of our countries, i still believe theres more of what greeks call philotimo [applause] pres. Obama love and respect and kindness for family and community and country, and a sense that were all in this together, with obligations to each other. Philotimo i see it every day and that gives me hope. [applause] because in the end, it is up to us. Its not somebody elses job, its not somebody elses responsibility, but its the citizens of our countries and citizens of the world to bend that arc of history towards justice. And thats what democracy allows us to do. Thats why the most Important Office in any country is not president or Prime Minister. The most important title is citizen. [applause] pres. Obama and in all of our nations, it will always be our citizens who decide the kind of countries we will be, the ideals that we will reach for, and the values that will define us. In this great, imperfect, but necessary system of selfgovernment, power and progress will always come from the demos from we, the people. And im confident that as long as we are true to that system of selfgovernment, that our futures will be bright. Thank you very much. [applause] pres. Obama zito i ellas. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [applause] topresident obama travels germany next for meetings with Angela Merkel and other leaders. It is his sixth and final visit to the country as president. On friday, the president heads to peru for the apex economic summit before returning to the u. S. This weekend on American History tv on cspan3, saturday night at 8 00 eastern on lectures on history. The only difference between a nazi mob hot hunting down jews in Central Europe and unamerican mob burning African American men in mississippi is that one is encouraged by the National Government and one is just tolerated. World war ii and its effect on civil rights. Then at 10 00, a 1958 film on the black panthers, founded 50 years ago. Is very apparent that the are there for the security of the Business Owners in the community, and also to see that the status quo is kept intact good intact. R. Kelly just dean snow on his findings all excavating the revolutionary war battlefield of saratoga in new york. What on earth was a little lady doing out there . Was at the time she tied died about five feet tall, at least 60 years old, and she was a battle casualty at saratoga. What is going on here . At six clark eastern on american artifacts 6 00 eastern on american artifacts. Your second training flight, they give you more weaned and little bit bigger engine and he would literally hop up and down the field. When you are ready for the big day, you would talk your instructor, who talked to on the ground, would catch on the shoulder and tell you good luck. You would get in your air and make your first solo flight all by yourself. A pilot takes us on a tour of the Military Aviation Museum in virginia, home to one of the largest private collections of world war i and world war ii aircraft, to learn about the advances in military Aviation Technology during those wars. For more on the schedule, go to cspan. Org. The new congress meets in january. Several leadership roles are being decided beforehand. Today, republicans reelected senator Mitch Mcconnell as the majority leader, while democrats chose senator Charles Schumer to replace retiring senator harry reid as minority leader. For more about the leadership elections we spoke to the congressional reporter. Jordain carney of the hill newspaper covers the senate and has been following the leadership races today on capitol hill. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me on. A changing of the guard today with senator Chuck Schumer easily winning the leadership post. What other surprises were there . Going into todays election, there was still an open question on whether there would be a fight between senator murray and senator durbin for the number two spot. There is still a question on who will head up the Democrat Senate campaign wing. That was one position they did not announce today. Everyone was watching this heading into this meeting. What were the goals of senator schumer . What was he trying to accomplish in setting up his new team . We heard talk before the meeting that he would expand the Leadership Team and bring all the factions of the caucus into leadership. Especially coming out of an election where you have a lot of questions about the future of the Democratic Party and which way it goes. How they appeal to voters. Obviously, 2020. Coming out of this meeting, we saw him trying to pull from the more conservative, moderate side. Bernie sanders came up in the leadership here in just trying to pull everyone together. And a new title for Elizabeth Warren of massachusetts. He elevated them, but they were already in leadership. He moved them up to vicechairman, moved up sanders, moved up mansion senator manchin, senator tammy baldwin, into leadership, to broaden the team. And a new position for senator Bernie Sanders, who remains an independent. He caucuses with the democrats. What was he looking for . You heard chatter going into this meeting with Bernie Sanders. What a challenge durbin, what he challenge schumer . He was quiet on what he wanted for leadership. He said he would not challenge schumer, which would have been an uphill climb, he said he would not challenge. He is going to be working on outreach. They really thought that was a natural fit for him, given his president ial days and his ability to reach and tap into the Younger Voters from a liberal wing of the party and excite the base. Let me ask you about changes in two key committees. Senator Dianne Feinstein will be the ranking democrat on the Senate Judiciary committee and Patrick Leahy will move over as the Ranking Member for the Senate Appropriations committee. But with regards to senator feinstein, there will be at least one Supreme Court appointee front and center next year. Where does this put her . That puts her at the very forefront of the upcoming Supreme Court fights. They have to fill the vacancy created by Justice Scalias death. Essentially, two or three more justices, depending on what happens. That puts her at the center of that fight, with her being the Ranking Member on the judiciary, acting as a check for a lot of as a check. You have heard a lot of democrats talking about a justice that maybe the Democratic Caucus would not support. Senate republicans also a leadership vote today. A familiar face, Mitch Mcconnell returning as the Senate Republican leader, nominated by senator marco rubio, who will begin a second term in january. Why is senator rubio making the nomination . That is a pretty good question. We were talking to staff. They mentioned he was really involved in that learner senate fight in that Florida Senate fight. He led the charge to getting rubio to change his mind and come back to the senate. As im sure people remember, it added momentum earlier this year to getting republicans on the track where they could keep the Senate Majority. Senator rubio is very much a part of that. Mcconnell was very much involved in that race. An incoming senator from indiana seconded that. Mitch mcconnell was very involved in the Indiana Senate race them is that was a nice symbolic gesture with these two guys that he helped get and keep seats good he helped keep in the senate. No significant changes in the republican Leadership Team except for Senator Cory Gardner of colorado. What is his new role . He is in charge of the Senate Campaign strategy for republicans heading into 2018. They are facing what looks like a favorable map. They are defending roughly eight seats, but have dozens of democrats up for election in red states that could favor republicans in a midterm, and some more purple states that donald trump won in this last white house election. He will be their point person to figure out how they can move all that to their advantage going towards 2018 and a Favorable Senate map. Democrats holding off and filling that position on the democratic side of the aisle until early next year, correct . They are having some difficulties finding someone to fill that position. They were talking to senator durbin earlier, and he said it was partly because 2018 is a very difficult map for them. Theres also not a wide swath of people even in a good year who are lining up and champing at the bit to have the dncc. Head up the dnc see dncc. More online. Thank you for your time. When the 115th congress meets in january, there will be several new faces that get sworn in and we spoke with some of the newest members during a recent visit to capitol hill. We are congressman elect scott taylor from virginias second district. A republican. How is orientation going for you . Rep. Elect taylor it is going farewell. They want you to be successful. I have been quite impressed by it. A former navy seal in a district that has a big naval presence, for those that dont know about the second district. Tell us about it very about it. Rep. Elect taylor we have eight Major Military installations. We cover every single service. We have more veterans and military than any congressional district, so it is an honor for me to be there. A district that has been hit by cuts under sequestration. How to that effect your district . Rep. Elect taylor it affected us for sure. People have been furloughed, laid off. It hurts our National Security. On a bigger level, my district has been on reprieve for a year. Im up here trying to make sure that we do something about that, making sure we protect our National Security and my area. How do you make that argument, and is Republican Leadership willing to listen . Rep. Elect taylor i think theyre willing to listen. Howink they understand important our National Security and our military are moving forward. You have to make the argument that you can thread the needle between fiscal hawks as well as military hawks. I think we can do that. What lessons you take from being a navy seal to now being a member of congress . Rep. Elect taylor i have had the pleasure of serving with some of the greatest people i will ever know, which will be loyalty honor and working with italy team, but also having the desk with an elite team, but also being able to deal with chaos with clarity. I will remain calm and make decisions, and that is a direct election of my training. What it does about the president elects and the role he will be taking on as commanderinchief . Rep. Elect taylor hes a practical guide. I think youll see a lot of things change here. He basically articulated what a lot of people in the nation were feeling. I have high hopes. I am competent he will bring people together and get things done. Im looking forward to working with him eerie you defeated seven term congressman in the primary. How do you feel for those who did not follow that race and how did you defeat a commerce man who has been here and has many connections . Rep. Elect taylor hats off to him with his service. I wish nothing but the best of him and his family. We got a message out to the people. A lot of people know me in that area. We worked really hard and people had confidence in my background and what i wanted to do moving forward. They stood with me. That is a decision of the administration, i think he is a confident and capable guy for sure. I wish in the best. If he finds himself in that role, im looking forward to working with him. Having about Committee Assignments . Rep. Elect taylor rep. Elect taylor logical assignments for my background and education would be house armed services, foreign affairs, but that is plan b. Plan a is to shoot for appropriations, because virginia will be without an appropriate or for the first time in 200 years. I think it is important virginia has been appropriated. An appropriator. Appropriations the one that is always at the top of everyones list . Rep. Elect taylor it is hard for a freshman to get that. I think we have a good case. A lot of committees authorized what is going on, but the appropriators actually move the money around. That is where money comes from and gets moved around. It is sought after and hard to get. What are some other examples of hard to get committees . Rep. Elect Taylor Energy and commerce is one as well. Both of those are a committees. Were still working really hard to make sure we get on appropriations. Thank you for your time. Congressman elect Vicente Gonzalez from texas. The 15th district. Where is it in texas . Rep. Elect gonzalez it begins on the Mexican Border from mcallen to northeast of san antonio, an eight county district. A district that if President Donald Trump builds a wall, it would be very much impacted by that effort. Can you talk about the border issues in the 15th district and what the state of the barrier between mexico and the United States is right now . Rep. Elect gonzalez a wall wont work. If it did, i would be for it. We have done a good job securing our borders, particularly in texas. We have state troopers throughout our border region. Security is much more controlled than people imagine. Obviously, we need to continue to improve it and make it better. Obviously, a border wall sounds good in campaign rhetoric. In terms of reality, i would invite donald trump to come down and see things for himself. I think you might he might have a different point of view. As a democrat, what advice are you giving to the democratic leadership in congress, specifically on immigration and Border Security issues, especially now that democrats are in the minority in both chambers . Rep. Elect gonzalez we need to find Common Ground with the other side. We have to work to make america better and move our region forward. We have an immigration policy that does not work. The policy that is in place now has divided families. We have parents and children living in other countries, husbands and wives. It is broken families. It is not who we are as a country, not who we are as a region. That is something we need to continue to work on. What did you do before running for congress . Rep. Elect gonzalez ive been practicing law for almost two decades in texas. Any immigration cases you worked on . Rep. Elect gonzalez my cases ended up having immigration issues, because a lot of the people who i represented had immigration issues, even though i was representing them on civil cases. There was always a time we could not get a hold of one of the family members because of the immigration policy that was in place. Many times i would have to travel across the border to get documents signed because folks who have legal actions or are beneficiaries of something in the United States could not come across and sign a simple document. These are folks who were not interested in moving here, they just needed to take care of business very business. What is that process like traveling across the border for you in your hometown . Rep. Elect gonzalez traveling across the border has been a tradition for hundreds of years in texas. We do a lot of commerce, they are our largest trading partner. They are a very important part of our community. I will say this it has become more dangerous, and we need to work on that. We need to engage the government of mexico and the government of the state across our border to make it safer than it has been before. Seven years ago and prior, it was a lot safer than it is today, i will concede that. In terms of security in south texas, we are one of the safest communities in the state. I feel very comfortable there. I think people who come and visit say the same thing. Have you thought about your Committee Assignments in congress . Rep. Elect gonzalez we start at the top. We are asking for appropriations. My predecessor was on financial services. He will leave a void after he is gone. Transportation is a big issue. Im very interested in trying to implement a fast rail from san antonio to the valley, the border area, and to monterrey, mexico. Those are some important issues. Agriculture is huge worried that is huge. These are Committee Assignments im asking for, and will hopefully be fortunate to get. Thank you so much for your time. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. The cspan cities war will explore the literary life of pittsburgh, pennsylvania. Carnegie anddrew how his spirit transformed pittsburgh. Sune talked about a burning of chemical knowledge and he started to understand things from a scientific and engineering point of view and others were going on with operations. Think, by looking at some of the materials we are looking at here, there was a love for and, through this this is ainstitution, way for the public to escape into another world. Theoe trotter explains contributions of African Americans since world war ii. Haul of this story is black people in pittsburgh and the ohio river valley becoming part of a new industrial environment that really took off after the civil war. Museum curator talks about andy warhols early life and shows his collection of wigs. These are a great insight into how selfconscious he was. I think that a lot of people have a vision of him being cool, but they came with a lot of work. Tourtch the cspan cities and on sunday afternoon on cspan, working with our cable affiliates and across the country. Journal ceostreet council held a meeting this week. Tom cotton was a speaker and he talked about the future of the Republican Party and what he thinks can be accomplished. This is 25 minutes. Good morning. Cotton, if tom firmamenterstar, the is very dry. A lifelongr was democrat. It goes to show you the shift you have seen in places like arkansas. About donald talk trump and his influence on the party. Before that, it struck me as i was thinking about this panel just how much the Republican Party has changed itself over the past 10 years, prior to donald trump even coming on the scene. I have covered politics most my adult life. Moves down here more than 10 years ago. That was the party that got thrown out of the house in 2006. We had the rise of the tea party, we have had all of these primaries, we have had this culminating in your class in the senate in which the republicans took over. What are the big differences in your mind between todays Republican Party and the one just 10 years ago . We talking about the party in isolation from donald trump. Sen. Cotton we have changed a lot in the last 10 years. You can look at some of the aces in the party. 10 years ago this sunday, i reported to iraq with the airborne. There are a lot of senators in the selection this election like joni ernst or dan sullivan or cory gardner who were not involved in politics at all 10 years ago. I think a lot of us who came in to politics in the last three or four elections have learned some of the lessons of things that went wrong in the 2000. I think our party both in grassroots and in congress is more of a promarket party rather than it probusiness party. We are focused on the operation of markets in the Free Enterprise system. We so great businesses that succeed, but we recognize in a market ace system, were not there to put our thumb on the scale for this or that industry. We are there so that people who have good ideas and companies that are well run will succeed in the marketplace. A real focus, too, on the constitution and the constitutional structure of our government. Im not talking primarily on individual liberties. Im talking about the structure of our government and the need to rein in executive agencies and the need to return some structural balance between washington and the state government. I think those are a few of the big differences you have seen over the last few years. Irrespective of Donald Trumps victory in the selection your. Do you figure more ideas based party . I remember you canvassed 100 republicans, about 99 of them did not know anything about Health Care Policy for instance. Sen. Cotton when youre the party out of power, all you have is the power of ideas. You can i get up, you cant award contracts. They start to say that over the last eight years in the Obama Administration, our ideas have one. If you look at the results from 2010 and 2014, and now 2016, you also have a lot of new, young thinkers coming into the party who are looking to move the on some of the stale dog was dogmas. Realizing that Ronald Reagan was a great leader, uninspiring leader, held an inspiring leader, but if you are like today, he would say the problems of 1980 are not the problem of 2016. Sen. Cotton you have defined what the new generation in congress looks like. Now we have done trump, who does not look like that in many ways. I know you have spent a lot of time out with voters on the ground. Do you think donald trump is changing the Republican Party, or is he a response to change to voters . Is the conservative movement on the ground changing . Sen. Cotton he is both. Most successful president ial candidates are both. They sometimes see things that are true that too many politicians, elites in culture and business, but also president ial candidates who succeed, they take their parties in Different Directions as well. It is a little bit of both. Some of the things donald trump has seen is that down in places like arkansas arts and the places i campaigned in the last month. Indiana, wisconsin, iowa, pennsylvania. There are a lot of people that feel illserved by washington, d. C. I feel illserved by the policies that have been implemented under the Obama Administration, or some of the policies that you had bipartisan but in my opinion wrong consensus on like immigration. Donald trump was speaking to their practical concerns. It is not surprising donald trump what into economically distressed areas in places like pennsylvania and ohio and wisconsin and said im going to bring jobs back to you. Hillary clinton did not go there. If she did go there, she would say im going to bring you more obamacare and mass immigration. Its not surprising what the result of that election were. You said you were not surprised at all by the vote total. Sen. Cotton my wifes family is spread of the upper midwest and minnesota and wisconsin and iowa, so i got to know a lot of folks there and i campaigned there. All three of the states recently. I was not surprised to see the trend of those states moving in our direction, and part because i feel they feel somewhat estranged from some of the elite consensus that they see in our various capitals. Our Business Capital in new york, Cultural Capital in los angeles, little capital in washington. They can Like Washington policies have not been benefiting them. They wanted a leader who actually spoke to those practical concerns, not one who spoke to airy abstractions. What does that mean at the end, especially for the people in this audience and some of the big issues they care about . Im sure donald trump is giving them a bit of a heartburn. These are things you have been sending a lot of time on in the senate. Take trade. What are we going to see, and how does the senate work with donald trump on this issue given what he has said pulling out of nafta and abandoning in general what has long been an american protrade agenda . Sen. Cotton i will leave the details of trade policy to donald trump very i will say that sometimes, the expressions in the media of his opposition to trade are overstated. To my knowledge, donald trump has never said he is opposed to trade. If its a lot of our trade deals have been bad for the u. S. If you compare some of the promises that were made and the last 1525 years about these trade deals i would also point out that the promises that were made under these trade deals about Economic Impacts that it would have in the United States in terms of jobs created or Economic Growth simply did not pan out. You can debate why that happened, but that fact is if you are listening to politicians who are selling those deals and look at the results, there is a mismatch between rhetoric and results. You dont deny to have been generally good . Sen. Cotton that happens sometimes. I try not to oversell. That is why so many people are disappointed with politicians in washington. They consistently do overpromise and under deliver. I would say in the day after british citizens voted to leave the European Union, donald trump was in scotland where he has a golf course. He was salivating the socalled brexit vote. He said we need to have a soap told we need to having a trade deal with u. K. It does me is not opposed to trade deals, he wants better trade deals. Is going to have the opportunity to get better trade deals, whether it is we go to renegotiating deals like nafta. When the trade that when we passed trade promotion authority, it was for six years. That was in no small part because we wanted a new republican president to have the authority to negotiate deals for the United States. Shortly after the brexit vote, in keeping with what donald trump it said that we would give Great Britain the terms of all trade agreements that we had with the European Union. I thought that was frankly appalling that so many european leaders from the continent and barack obama had implicitly or explicitly and the citizens of Great Britain with punishment if they voted to leave the European Union. Im not a british citizen, i never expressed an opinion on it and that is their choice, their sovereign people. We should not be threatening our closest ally in europe for making that kind of decision. That said, i would expect and i would hope any agreement we have with a country that has an economy that is 18 or one exercise bars would benefit arts would benefit us. Because of the size of our economy and the security guarantees we provide around the world, it is a little disappointing to a lot of people that are trade deals often do not match the record behind them. Is a suggestion being that may be going forward, what you will see in american trade policy other donald trump and under a Republican Congress is one in which you have a country by country trade deal, at a distinction between developed countries and developing countries . Sen. Cotton bilateral deals are easier to negotiate than multilateral once ones. You can consummate them quickly. I think donald trump will pursue some of those. If he pursues multilateral deals like the Transpacific Partnership, which the Obama Administration has admitted as written will not pass. There are a lot of issues that he should revisit like the treatment of biologics, or the treatment of intellectual property. When you look at the terms of trade deals, they are traditionally focused primarily on things like reducing tariffs and reducing quotas, or maybe internal subsidies. Increasingly, trade deals not just hours come up around the world have focused more on what they call regulatory harmonization, which normal americans would call laws. They like me to make those laws. They do not elect bureaucrats in brussels or the wto to make them. That was one of the big issues that drove the vote in Great Britain. It was immigration and it was surrendering authority over their daytoday lives to brussels. When you talk about reducing tariffs on goods, that is one thing. When brussels is dictating the size of olive oil decanters that can be on a restaurant table in london, that is another thing. Why should a people surrender those kind of decisions to an unelected authority outside of their own boundaries . You said that what you took out Donald Trumps comments on brexit was that he is not opposed to trade. What about this idea of slapping tariffs on companies that move to other countries . Sen. Cotton i will let him speak about specific details. He spoke about them throw the campaign in very ways. I think the best thing we can do for those companies that are looking to move jobs overseas is to make america a more attractive place for those jobs. To reduce our taxes, because our business is now pay higher taxes than any other country in the industrialized world. When youre in industrial giant like General Electric, it is true if youre one of the businesses in arkansas that is taxed in her rate that make up two quarters of our businesses two thirds of our businesses. Not just strict relations that he did change, like the fiduciary advisory role or the overtime role, but the ways these agencies rate right regulations to begin with so little democratic accountability from congress. That is the way we focus on both keeping jobs here in the u. S. And increasingly bringing jobs back into the united dates. The United States. I would take a second to bring up our audience poll. If it comes. Nope. Well, i can tell you what it says. In two years time, will the gop look more like the party of paul ryan or the party of donald trump . How would you answer . Sen. Cotton i will a pine afterwards opine afterwards. Another thing you looked at in the senate is immigration. That is another potential area in which republicans in congress and donald trump may have different views. What do you think are the views in which you agree, disagree, and more importantly, do you think so much attention has been focused on some of the big items that he says he will pursue . One of the prospects for a copperheads it what are the prospects for a comprehensive Immigration Reform . Sen. Cotton that is washington code word for math mass emigration. I hope that we will address this very early in a sweeping fashion, because our immigration system has badly needed change for a long time. This really was the signature issue for donald trump in the primary and in the general election. This is where he most differentiated himself from other republicans who were on that stage with him. This is an area where he saw things that were right and true and so many other republicans tested. For years, for decades going back to 1986, there has been a bipartisan in washington that all Immigration Reform should look like what i just described. Or what the 1986 bill look like, which is amnesty for immigrants here today, followed by enforcement lately enforcement later. You get the embassy immediately, you dont get the enforcement, because Congress Loses the will for it and the bureaucracy slow roles it. You get the increases of Legal Immigration, which is why you have seen stagnant wages in so many fields purcell long. For so long. Build a wall or a fence or some kind of physical barrier, not drones and sensors and other things that are shiny and politics like to talk about. Get serious about enforcing Immigration Law and all the other ways as well, like having a functioning, with workable employment verification system for american businesses. Having a system to track these is visas, because about a third Illegal Immigrants came here legally with a visa. Those are the table stakes. The big focus needs to come on Legal Immigration. Our Legal Immigration system sickly does not serve the interest of american workers. We let into this country about one million green cold does green card holders everything will year. Weve done that about 50 years going back to 1965. Of that million, only 140,000 of them are admitted because of their job or their skills or economic background. 14 . In that 40 of people like lawyers. I dont think media preferences ai dont think media preferences to lawyers coming into the United States. You could immediately refocused regard admissions on spouses, minor children, because we are profamily. We went to see Nuclear Families reunited. He does 140,000 minus the lawyers keep those 140,000 minus the lawyers. Keep a refugee Problem Program that can be fully vested. You could cut green card admissions down to 500,000 overnight. You have a whole group of guestworker programs that have several Million People working on them. Many of them in unskilled and low skilled jobs. There is no sign that we have a shortage of that kind in the United States. If you look at research in the census data, in almost every sector and in every job, the job is held by majority of usborn workers. That means, contrary to popular opinion, there are no jobs that u. S. Workers will not do. There are no jobs that u. S. Workers will not do. To me, that is an elitist and snobbish viewpoint. Furthermore, in those jobs they have not had pay raises. The hospitality industry, the construction industry. They have not had pay raises in many years. I am not an econ phd. I think when there is a shortage of something, the price is supposed to increase. We have needs. If you live in rural canada, like rural arkansas, you find a lot of doctors who come from overseas because we have needs that evidence shows we need to meet with highly skilled emigration immigration. Doctors, nobel prize winners, engineers and we have high skilled or ultrahigh skilled needs. We need to poke is our immigration system on those needs and skills, not on the policies we have in place. There is the answer up there. Sen. Cotton that is wrong. It will be the party of donald trump in two years. The president leads his party. In 2000, the party was not the party of denny hastert, it was the party of george bush. Hi, im ceo trusted media brands, former Readers Digest association. One question is about your translation best transition from a democratic family to a republican in knowing that you came from a democratic background pattern im a republican, how do you think this country will Work Together better on behalf of the people . Sen. Cotton to be clear, my father was a democrat and i was a black sheep in the family. I was a republican. I was 15 years old when bill clinton was elected president. I couldnt believe my governor was about to be president. I thought i couldnt believe what my governors doing as president. My parents dont tell me how they vote, but i suspect my father, for instance, may have voted for outdoor in 1988, the clintons for the 90s, and john kerry in 2004. He was a vietnam veteran. He always favored veterans who ran for office. Eight years ago, arkansas had virtually no elected republicans. We had one member of congress that had held a seat for about 50 years. All seven states state offices were democratic. Two thirds of the state house and state senate are were democratic as well. At the end of the obama air, all six members of congress are republican, all seven statewide officeholders are republican, three quarters of both the state house and state than it are republican. It is the result of the obama air and the policies of the obama air that we did work for places like argan. , or places like michigan and wisconsin and minnesota and iowa and ohio and pennsylvania and you have a lot of barack obama voters in 2008 who became donald trump voters in those areas. Maybe a third of the counties i read that voted for barack obama went for donald trump this time around. That is because they did not deliver on the promises they made in 2008. Thank you senator for your service. In your vision of this new Republican Party, i would like to hear a little more about if it is going to be an inclusive vision, which is the vision of where that when he First Century is going to be. The victors of the toy for century will be inclusive societies and could you elaborate a bit . Sen. Cotton absolutely great you are the same thing from donald trump on election night, you heard it in the speeches he was making in the last month or two of the campaign. I understand some of his rhetoric was hardedged through the campaign, but he consistently campaigned on they do present for all americans, and being there president as americans. The Democratic Party has been practicing identity politics for many years. They appealed to the sector of the polity on that issue and micro targets is the term we use. Donald trump did with the republicans have done best when we have succeeded as we did with george w. Bush and Ronald Reagan is appeal to voters as americans. Not based on their race or ethnicity or the class, but appeal to them as american. That is why think donald trump did better with hispanic voters in arizona that mitt romney did. It is because he was not appealing to them as hispanic americans, he was appealing to them as american. They are people who have been hurt the same way midwest voters have been hurt. I was pleased to see donald trump grew our share of the hispanic and africanamerican vote. I hope we continue to grow that. The way we will continue to vote that to grow that is to appeal to all americans. We are never going to out identity politics the Democratic Party, nor should we try. I dont think that is a healthy thing and a large, multicultural, multiethnic democracy. Not just in the United States, but in some of our allies around the world who said that you struggle with those tensions as well. Sen. Cotton to your from a part of the country that blue dog democrats were from. Your thoughts now with senator harry reid gone and the ability for republicans particularly moderate republicans to reach across the aisle to more moderate democrats. When you think the thoughts are that with the margin in the house and senate . Sen. Cotton im happy harry reid is gone. Also, im looking forward to working with Chuck Schumer. Chuck and i have worked together on legislation before, like the 9 11 First Responder bill. I was one of the first main republicans to sponsor that bill. I thought it was the right thing to do. Some of the concerns of my more conservative colleagues were misplaced on it. Ive talked to chuck since the election about working together. Joe manchin is the son is the senior democrat on the subcommittee that i chair. We are eager to Work Together. We have a lot of democrats who are up in states that democrat that donald trump one won. I suspect they would like to work with us as well. They represent states like missouri that is pretty similar to arkansas. They have similar concerns of the people i serve. Were looking forward i hope to moving some legislation that is long overdue that addresses some of these colleges we have had for a long time, with barack obama, but especially harry reid, has been frozen in congress. They give her much. Thank you very much. [applause] senator it was that war and spoke at that same event, sharing her thoughts on the election and the future of the Democratic Party. She also talked about Financial Regulation under the 2010. 2010 dodd frank act. This is 30 minutes. [applause] senator warren, thank you for making your way down here on a busy day, busy week. Unexpectedly busy, and some ways. Lets start with the unexpectedly part. We all lived through a bit of an earthquake tuesday night. A couple days after the election, you said that you gave a speech and said this. If we learn nothing else on the past two years of electioneering, we should hear the message loud and clear that the American People want washington to change. It was clear the democratic primaries, it was clear the republican primaries, it was clear in the campaign, and it was there on election day. How the democrats show that they heard that message . What did they do now . Sen. Warren i think the interesting question is going to be how the democrats show it and how will donald trump from show it . What he is doing right now is putting together a Transition Team that is full of lobbyists, and the kind of people that he actually ran against. Part of what we have to assess year is what is the mandate coming out . I think that the clearest point that comes out of this election is that the American People do not want wall street to run their government. They do not want Corporate Executives to be the ones who are calling the shots in washington. You can check your had no to that, but i think that is exactly what this election shows very shows. Three quarters of all americans do believe that the game is rigged. Democrats, republicans, and independents. They believe it is rigged in favor of the people in this room, and it is rigged against them and their families and their children. They want to see change. They want to see that connection between wall street and giant corporations and our government broken. They want thats not to happen anymore. They want a government that runs for the people. That is what i think this election is about. How do the two parties show that, show that . What is the administration do that it is not doing now . Sen. Warren it doesnt start by hiring a bunch of lobbyists to run the transition. It doesnt start by floating names of people who have run giant hedge funds to be able to the American People understand about the revolving door. The fact that it goes to the people regulating the very same industry. But, elections have consequences. The one, he gets to pick his administration. Sen. Warren he won, but he did not win on a Mitch Mcconnell, paul ryan, Healthy Giant corporations. The k street lobbyists are out there salivating, saying, this is our big chance, we will get to regulations. Look for a tax cut for those at the top. Lobbyistsat k street they be thinking but that is not the people who elected donald trump are thinking. When you look at the populist part of the trump message, one would think that there are things where, frankly, Bernie Sanders and donald trump started together and proceeded together trade, wall street, college cost, Infrastructure Spending. Is there a place on any or all of those subjects were populists in the Democratic Party or Trump Administration can come together . Keeps going this back to, what is donald trump going to do . Has now given us at least the first tangible sign of his vision of how to run a trump presidency. A big part of that are lobbyists and washington insiders. The other part of it is to bring someone who is a white supremacist into the white house to be a senior strategist. I think this will be an important part of the mix going forward. What donald trump is doing right it,is that lets face there was, during the election a , toxic stew of bigotry and attacks on americans all across this country. Donald trump started his campaign with an attack on mexicanamericans and then he rode the escalator down and he did attacks on women, he did attacks on africanamericans, he did attacks on muslims, he did attacks on immigrants, he did attacks on people with disabilities. Everybody who did not look like the people who showed up at his rallies. There were a lot of people who were attracted to that, but there were a lot of people who were not attracted to that. And yet they voted for donald , trump. There are a lot of people who did not like that part of what the campaign was about, but they said we want somebody whos going to shake it up. One of the first things donald trump has now done is he has brought steve bannon in as a senior strategist. This is a man who is a white who has white supremacist ties. That is what he does. This is a man who told his exwife that he did not want his children going to school with jews. This is a man who ran an organization who ran headlines like would you rather your children have feminism or cancer . This is a man who says, by his very presence, that this is a white house that will embrace bigotry. Here i am with the Business Leaders of america. I just want to underline something that every one of you know bigotry is bad for , business. Yourry is not what employees expect, bigotry is not what your customers expect. If that is a direction that this administration goes, that creates a real problem for everybody. What i believe about this is there is no longer the possibility on this question of someone like bannon in the administration of where donald trump goes next. Possible tok it is stand on the sidelines in the quiet about this. There are people in this room who helped lead the charge to make workplaces open and accepting places, to say were open to all customers, we want to make sure we serve all americans, that we treat people with dignity and respect. If this white house goes in a different direction, that damages every one of us. I think it calls on the Business Community for leadership, i think it calls on the democrats for leadership. I think that is the problem. It is one were going to have to deal with knowing forward here. We cant ignore this. Gerald as you suggest, there are millions of people who voted for donald trump not for those reasons. Most of those people used to be democrats. Union workers, bluecollar workers, industrial upper midwest voters. They did not vote for that butld trump, i dont think, they voted for donald trump anyway. How does your party lose them . One more point i want to make on that. Why it is that this is a moment of such urgency. People did not vote for donald trump so he could bring a white supremacist into the white house and take his advice. I think this is a moment where everybody has to speak up, and i think it is true for democrats, i think it is true for republicans, and i think it is true for the Business Community. Gerald to go back to those voters. Why are they not democrat voters . Why were they trump voters . Sen. Warren i think donald trump made a promise to shake things up. He made the argument over and over and over that the democrats were too close to wall street and too close to big business. That was the core of his economic argument. Too many insiders were calling the shots. Too many multinational corporations were running the trade deals. Too many people who had already made it big where using the tools of government to work for themselves and not to work for anyone else. I want to be clear i think Hillary Clinton ran on very much the same argument. I think donald trump made it aggressively. Do remember, at the end of the day hillary got more americans , to vote for her than donald trump did. You cant miss this about the election. When you tuned in, it was driving. Whether they drove it effectively or less effectively, it was driving the message that washington needs to work for the little guy, that washington needs to work for the families that have been left behind, that washington does not need to work for those of the top anymore. This is so important going forward, because it raises this question about what does the economic agenda look like . Gerald lets talk about that. What should the economic agenda look like in your opinion, what will it look like given that there is leaving steve bannon out of this conversation for a minute here, there is some overlap between what donald trump is going to try to do with Infrastructure Spending and what people in the senate on the democrat side would presumably like to do. Where does it come together, where is the hope for connection . Sen. Warren i think there is no mandate out there for Mitch Mcconnell and paul ryan. I think there is no mandate right now to cut regulations and say, lets just turn a bunch of wall street banks lose and see what they will do. What could go wrong, right . Lets not remember what happened in 2008 and the runup to that. I think the appetite for that among the American People is zero. I think that is exactly what we have demonstrated in this election. Gerald if Mitch Mcconnell were here he would say that they won , control of the senate and house. Sen. Warren i say to Mitch Mcconnell that Hillary Clinton got more votes than donald trump did, we took seats and the senate, and we took seats in the house. He has fewer senators on the republican side van he had republican side that he had before the selection, and paul ryan has pure house numbers on the republican side that he did before this election. What im saying is that whether people were voting for Hillary Clinton or whether they were voting for donald trump, they werent voting for Mitch Mcconnell and paul ryans deregulatory mix of let giant corporations do whatever they want to do. Gerald lets talk about that regulatory agenda. Two big issues that you have been identified with very strongly. What is the dodd frank legislation. What is the future of that legislation . I think we have an audience question. Maybe not. We will skip that then. Ae question is, will there be run on dodd frank heres the question. What happens to dodd frank now . Is there some modification does , it get eliminated, or does it live on unchanged . Im curious what the audience thinks, im more curious at the moment what you think. Sen. Warren are they voting before i talk . Ok. I dont think this will take long. Sen. Warren i think there is some consultation going on. Gerald this system is clearly rigged. [laughter] sen. Warren you guys think your punching those buttons. There we go. One in 10, complete elimination, and nobody thinks there will be no change. Gerald your answer . Sen. Warren what i hope happens . Gerald what you hope happens and what you think happens. Sen. Warren what i hope happens is that we have some modification. I think that dr. Frank was not that doddfrank was not tough enough. And donald trump said gerald i think they had a different modification in mind. Sen. Warren this is the risk you run when you open up to modify it. Where does it go . Donald trump said that he supported glasssteagall. We have a really good bipartisan glasssteagall bill. John mccain and i are cosponsors on this. Angus king, mary cantwell, it is a well thought out glasssteagall that says were going to separate banking. It makes it safer. Were going to make boring banking more boring. If you want to take risks, you cant get access to the guaranteed accounts that we have over in the traditional banking system. We have to separate them. It is good for small banks, but for small businesses. It has a lot about the regulation of the nonbank Financial Institutions. It is about fighting the next war, where many of the risks lie with nonbank financial , institutions. The guy who was just elected president of the United States gave that one a two thumbs up. In fact, as i recall, it is in the republican platform that this is an official Party Position to adopt doddfrank. If you want to ask me about modification, that is the place i would start. Gerald what is your expectation . Sen. Warren hm. The expectation is that theres going to be a lot of back and forth about this. A lot of republicans have dug in on the notion that we have to back, or eviscerate parts of it. Limits enough that there is no effective regulation. I think its going to be a battle that is going to be fought hard. I think it is going to be one where it will be interesting to see where donald trump goes. It will also be one you think you cant get American People engaged in his Economic Issues . I think you can. I think the fact that i have people stop me in the Grocery Store to say, go glasssteagall. Sounds crazy, but it is true. People get some of these basic economic points and they understand them as markers for the underlying question about who are you running the system for . Is the system here just to help a handful of giant banks who rolled over American Families in the early 2000s, who traded in these terrible mortgage products that ultimately blew up our economies . That cost millions of people their homes, that cost millions of people their jobs, that cost millions of people their savings. The American People have not forgotten this. I think one of the Big Questions still for the American People is how could it be that nobody ever went to jail over this . We had a savings and loan crisis and hundreds of people ended up going to jail over the savings and loan crisis. The idea was that he just couldnt have been running the bank when the books showed this one day and this on the next day without something wrong. That is ultimately lots and lots of folks. Up dodd frank, we are not going to doddfrank saying it is 2017, a new day, nothing has ever happened before. Were going to open it up with the memory of what happened and how people took how a handful of people took down this economy. Then, the part we are going to remember is what happened in the next eight years as they got bailed out by the american taxpayers, got richer than ever, and left American Families behind. That will be the context for reopening dodd frank. Gerald one of the things that did happen in the aftermath of that was the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Does it survive . Is it going to die in the next six months . Sen. Warren who you think you are fighting for out there . Lets be clear about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It has forced the largest Financial Institutions in this country to return 11 billion directly to people they have cheated. It has now handled more than a million complaints. It is out there doing its job. It is leveling the Playing Field. It is transparent. You can look up which banks have a lot of complaints against them and which banks dont. Where the problems are if they are on Student Loans or credit cards or if they are on payday loans. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is doing the peoples business. It has its own fan club out there. It has the people it is working for. You try to take the legs out from underneath the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, i think that is not only a problem for donald trump and the republicans, i think it will be something the American People will say enough. We did not elect a government that will increase the profits for giant companies so that they can turn around and step on us. Cfpb shows the government can work for the people because it is working for the people. Gerald this gets into the question of what next for the Republican Party. We need to come together. As a leader, how are you going to make this happen . This is in the context of what now for the Democratic Party . Sen. Warren i think what coming together means is that we use this government to work for the people. We do the things that work for the people. Let me put it this way you look at this election and say we are a very divided people. There are issues we are deeply divided on. I understand that. Things where half of america feels one way and half of america feels another. Those are not Economic Issues. On these core Economic Issues, how we build a strong middle class going forward, we have a lot of consensus in this country. Let me see how many i can remind everyone of. Refinancing Student Loans and bringing down the cost of college. This is something that is deeply supported across america. Democrats, republicans, independents. Raise the minimum wage. Equal pay for equal work. Paid family and medical leave. Expand Social Security. And, rein in wall street. Those are core economic principles that somewhere between twothirds, up to three quarters of americans say that is what they would be behind. That is what is helpful to their family. That is how we build a strong and robust economy moving forward. I will fight for that every single day. I will be blunt. I dont care who gets credit for it. What i care is that those are the kind of changes we make in this country. We need debtfree college in this country. We need it for the families who are struggling to educate their kids, but we needed for our economy. Has anyone looked at the numbers on this with Student Loan Debt . We have 1. 3 trillion in outstanding Student Loan Debt right now. Studies coming out of the fed, the department of treasury, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, do you know what they show . They show that young people are not buying homes at the rate we expected them to. Theyre not moving out of mom and dads house. They are not starting small businesses. We are watching depressed entrepreneurship among this age cohort, and what is the number one reason behind that . The number one reason are these Student Loans. We are saddling our kids with debt. That means they cannot get a start in this economy. We are telling them they are 100 yards behind the starting line by the time they get out of college. It is becoming one more element of how you divide the rich from everyone else. Do you realize that today, 70 of people who graduate from a Public University have to borrow money to make it through . What is happening is when i was a kid, my dad was a janitor. My mom worked a minimum wage job at sears. And yet, how did i go to college . I went to college because they because i went to a commuter college that cost 50 a semester. That was my chance. That was my debtfree college. That is how he got to be a Public School teacher and from there, how i ended up going to a public law school, and from there becoming a law professor, and from there becoming a United States senator. It was an america of opportunity. If we do not invest in opportunity, it is not only bad for families and bad for democracy, it is bad for all of us. That is the kind of change we need to make. Gerald one more question from the audience. Right in the back. Senator, where are you on the sharing economy . What about benefits for workers for uber . Sen. Warren we have had what is in effect a contract with our workers. I use contract in the big meaning of the word a big social , contract with our workers for generations. Part of it was about what you got paid your employer and what your employer provided. It. Of it was the rest of you had Social Security as the backup so when you retire, you would not have to be in poverty. And we have Unemployment Insurance for when you got laid out. It was all built around a model that does not exist anymore. It was around the model of the singleemployer you had very long time. Now we are moving to people putting together multiple, im not sure that the word employer is right anymore. Multiple income streams in different ways. What that means is we need to rewrite the contract. We have to rewrite it and we have to rewrite i believe, the , public parts as well as the private part. We cannot keep dumping all of the obligations and things we want to see us do, build a social safety net on the private , side. We will have to have a lot more creativity. I will give you a specific example so it doesnt sound totally generic. Independent contractors. The independent contractor laws were written for a different america. The notion that uber drivers cannot come together and bargain collectively to figure out what the working terms and conditions are going to be is crazy. Because what that does is it forces them into an economic circumstance that does not exist anymore. It hammers them in. Hammers them into a place that leaves them weekend and unable to get together and negotiate something that will work for all of them. Here is my last pitch because i know we got to go. I have been with people who have run successful businesses. I applaud that. But for, i assume, almost everybody in this room, it is really on the premise that Everybody Needs at least a little chance to succeed. Some are going to do better some , are going to work harder and some are going to catch a break. But we build opportunity for everyone and that we keep running our systems in ways that those who work hard who play by , the rules, are really going to have a chance to build a future. And right now, america is not heading in that direction. And the government has not been a government that has helped move it as far in that direction as it should. And i think this is the true challenge in the 21st century. It is a challenge for all of you and for the Democratic Party and a challenge for all of america. Gerald if there was any doubt that this would be an interesting time in washington, you have dispelled that for us. Thank you. Rep. Warren thank you. [applause] sen. Warren thanks very much. More now from the wall street journal ceo council with house ways and Means Committee chair kevin brady, who spoke about the economy, trade policy and the future of the health care law. This is 30 minutes. Representative brady from the great street of the great nation of texas, the great state of houston. [laughter] paul let me start, is it fair to say that your talked two priorities for next year is tax reform and replacing the Affordable Care act . Rep. Brady it is. This new president is making Economic Growth the pillar of his presidency and both of those play a key role. Paul ok, we will take those in order, starting with tax reform. Are you willing there has been discussion about how to proceed. This has not been done comprehensively since 1986. Are you willing to separate Corporate Tax reform from individual tax reform, like do Corporate Tax reform first and then move onto individual . Rep. Brady i would advise against that. We have two overall goals in tax reform. By the way House Republicans , have developed the first consensus program tax plan in more than 30 years. We unveiled in june. Goals for overarching a tax code not designed just to take money from you, but a tax code built and designed to build growth and jobs and to leapfrog america from dead last among the global competitors, into the lead pack, and keep us theyre going forward. So those two drivers of growth and leapfrogging into the lead is how we drove all of our decisionmaking today. But we are continuing the process because we are serious about growing wages and simplifying the code, so that we can redesign the irs. All of that together is critical for the maximum growth. Paul so, you want to combine them . Rep. Brady i think we should. Paul donald trump has proposed a Corporate Tax rate of 15 and your proposal is 20 . Can you get to 15 if the president elect says we need to get there, i promised the American People that. And do you have to get there for the sake of american competitiveness with the rest of the world moving down their rates . Rep. Brady i think we can find Common Ground. But i do not think that the rate is enough. The design of where we are at today also cost us jobs and growth. For example, we want to go full unlimited expensing on business and investment, software technology, and we want to redesign how we tax. We are not taxing worldwide in the business rate, for bringing those profits. We want the businesses to bring who want the business rate to bring those earnings back to america to be zero. And we want to level the Playing Field to make sure that American Products and new technology can compete here and abroad, so i think that the rate is one of four critical parts. Paul but the tax system is crucial. You are looking at 8. 75 . 3 for the hard stuff, 8 of the capital side. Paul that would be an 8. 75 tax on anything they have earned overseas, right . Rep. Brady it is payable over a number of years, but allows us to transition to a permanent repatriation which is what we , want. Paul there are a lot of folks in washington that say that the deal to be cut is to take the money that you will get from repatriation shove it into , Infrastructure Spending. What do you think of that trade . Rep. Brady there is interest there and it has been there for some time. In the blueprint, we put it back into a lower rate in a more competitive design on how we tax businesses. That is where the house blueprint is heading. I know that people want to have that discussion and at some point we probably will club but we put it back into that growth for taxes packets. Paul so you will not have any money going to infrastructure . Your bill will be strictly putting it into getting the lowest rate you can . Rep. Brady yes. Back into the rates. Paul lets deal with something that people in the audience may have companies that operate this way. If you go to the corporate rate of 15 or 20 and you have a 25 pass through rate, which is as low as you can go, you are creating a dichotomy in the code and there are people who will say, how do you justify giving General Electric 15 , but the Hardware Store owner gets 25 . Rep. Brady i think we need to lower those rates equally. Paul that would be your goal . Rep. Brady yes. We lower than 43 for all structures in the blueprint. It is not exactly apples to apples in a way that they are taxed. We want to lower them equally and we should continue that principle and whatever the corporate rate is, we should be moving down the pass through as well. Paul but you do not propose the equal doesnt it create a problem for you is will is the fact that people may decide, if i am not getting i could change is i end up having to pay a higher rate. Rep. Brady i think we avoid that, because the rate are comparable and the passthrough for corporations excuse me so, they are not exactly taxed apples to apples, because of the payroll tax and all of that. So by keeping a very close to each other, we avoid that. And shifting for the sake of the structure. Paul the Tax Foundation says that your plan loses 2. 4 trillion over 10 years on a static revenue basis, 200 million on a dynamic basis, taking in the growth facts. Are you prepared to add to the debt of the United States to pass tax reform . Rep. Brady we have designed the blueprint to break even within the budget, considering the Economic Growth we think it is the right approach. Paul dynamically scored. Rep. Brady look, were going to lose revenue in the early years and we will make it back in the next five years and we will work on that and it is the right approach. From day one, we said, we will not leave growth on the table. If it cost a dime or so on the tax, we want a tax code built for growth. Paul how will the freedom react . Rep. Brady we recovered fairly quickly in the 10 year window and also i think that anybody recognizes, if we want to continue these deficits, except the slow growth economy. Our kids will have the deficits continue. We need to restrain on spending, like in business, restrain spending and grow the revenue. That is where the tax reform is so critical longterm to getting our financial house in order. Paul you will move it right out of the box of . Rep. Brady soon as we can. We unveiled the timetable in june, the morning after europe or britain voted to leave the European Union. So that press conference, including my family so, nobody saw that press conference, including my family. So we want the feedback. We will be listening and improving for the rest of the year, working with the Trump Administration. We want to test drive the blue prepared our point is, do not take one provision out of it and test drive it like it is an old car like we are ready today. We are proposing a new car, it has different features and it drives much faster. So to test drive this blueprint, we will have feedback. And we also have a transition from the old clunker to the new tax cut, so it is important to have that feedback as well. Paul moving on to health care. That is also in your portfolio. Do you endorse the universal tax credit, the refundable tax credit for anybody with health care for who wants to buy it on the individual market . Rep. Brady i do. It is maybe the most of the parts of ensuring every america has the freedom to buy health care that they need and take it with them throughout their lifetime, because House Republicans, without bringing in new taxes, we must unlock the current tax break that you get at work to carry that Health Care Plan with you from job to job. We would argue, if the Health Care Plan, the Health Care Backpack works for you into your retirement years and having the freedom to get help you have now at work, to take with you, that is critical. Paul as you approach the aca repeal, you want to the repeal it, i assume it order the key elements i assume. What are the key elements, you would open up insurance across state lines . Rep. Brady repeal the mandate and literally, there are 159 federal agencies essentially between you and your doctor. It is a jabber for why this thing cannot just simply be tweaked. You have to start over. And i also think it is important to retain some of the items that actually way think have strong public support, letting kids stay on the Health Care Plan until 26 years old. Preexisting illnesses, a lifetime cap. Because if you got a disease early in life, you will bust through those early. Paul so did away have the problem of preexisting conditions before, finding hard to actually write those, isnt that close to what the president proposed . Rep. Brady we take a different approach. The president tried, unsuccessfully, to force everybody into insurance that they did not want and cannot afford. Today, we have a situation where the insurers are not coming back to the market, the premiums are not coming down and the networks, you will not have a broad range of hospitals and doctors. We believe the challenge is to get the incentives right and have a simple and clear incentive where americans understand that after they leave their parents healthcare, and to keep minimal coverage at least through their lives, when they do get cancer or a horrible action occurs, that they can get affordable coverage without and the republican plan would get the incentives right for americans to want to be covered with care that is tailored for them. Paul well your goal be to create an individual marketplace that will allow the Seamless Movement from employersponsored care, equalizes the tax treatment between employers and individuals . Rep. Brady it is important to keep employersponsored health care. Paul you do not want to people into the individual market . Rep. Brady no. But we want them to be able to take it with them for those that are not working for a company that offers that health care, we need to be of what to get people to freedom to pick a plan that is right for them to take it with them throughout her lifetime. We think that is the most streamlined and conservative approach. Paul is medicaid going back to the states . Rep. Brady it has to. Paul why . Rep. Brady the cost is unsustainable. When i was in the texas legislator, this was part of the budget. It is now 30 and growing. So when president obama essentially said, the solution to the big problem is to make the problem bigger, do more medicaid for more people at a higher cost, the exasperated he exasperated the problem. So now republicans have taken a different approach and we decided it was not enough to replace that, we need to fix and create 21st Century Health care reform. In a bigger way. Some medicaid, giving states the flexibility to design it further states we think is critical. Paul would there be a payment per beneficiary . Rep. Brady we will give the option. There is strengths for both of them and depending on the size of the state, you might want to one or the other. Paul we spoke with it democratic governor of rhode island and she said it might work, but i need enough money. Because they have a small state and a big growing population on medicaid. Rep. Brady i think having the second option, which is per capita, it goes with the population and it may be more flexible for the governor. Paul what about medicare . Donald trump did not talk about it during the campaign, so that, is it on the table for the support plan that your caucus has supported . Rep. Brady it has to be in a better way, we lay out steps to save medicare for the longterm, which is, it is not the 800 pound gorilla in the budget, it is the 800,000 pound gorilla. It will not save it by cutting benefits. Paul you are already doing tax reform and replacing the aca, so if you put medicare on the table, that is a political heavy political lift. Rep. Brady the trick is not the do all the in the afternoon. [laughter] rep. Brady there is what is different. Because of the leadership of paul ryan and our leadership in the house, they are pushing us in an agenda to put forward these issues and we have them in place and ready to be acted upon. We want to know from the president what the priorities are, but as we are looking at right now we are writing the legislative language for the major reforms, because you cannot talk about health care if you do not also talk about medicaid and a solution to save medicare. Paul have you spoken to the president elect and his team about that . Rep. Brady the answer is no. They have been focused rightly on tax reform and Health Care Issues and it has only been a week. So we will have the opportunity. Paul we will talk about trade bid the president elect proposed putting tariffs on american and the goods from American Companies if they move operations overseas, if they try to sell them back into the United States. He mentioned ford motor quite a bit. Do you support that kind of a policy on Companies Back overseas that go overseas . Rep. Brady if the president wants to grow the economy and he sincerely does, you need to get the tax code right and you need to balance relation, but we need more customers around the world. You need to get trade right as well. I think it is critically important that he gives us a chance to make the case that strictly enforcing trade agreements is incredibly important to turn one way trade in the u. S. , turning trade back to it. I would say not to withdraw from the tpp, not to withdraw from nafta take the opportunity, nafta, take the opportunity to make them better. We have given this president and in the new one tools. I hope that he will take a broader view on tariffs like that to drive up costs, i hope he takes a couple approach to all of that. Paul you mentioned tpp, that seems to be dead. Would you concede that . Rep. Brady i would say it is on hold. Paul on hold . Rep. Brady it is not enough to simply buy america, we need to sell american throughout the world. And the asiapacific region will hold half of the middle class customers on the planet by the end of the decade, so we want to be in there. If we withdraw, our economy will suffer. So, i am hopeful that the new president gives us a chance to make the case to keep what is good and fix what is perceived to be bad and there is plenty in that area to tackle with his skills. He could do very well. Paul there is a lot of discussion about the new Republican Coalition and how do you reach, how does the congress, other than by increasing growth, appeal to americans that have not been as well as those in this room . Trade is one way that the president elect has tried to do that. Do you think you have to move in some way on trade in order to satisfy that message because set up . I am talking about restrictions, terrorists, some people tariffs, some people are talking about an import license. Rep. Brady tariffs tend to punish the American Consumers for the behavior of other countries. It tends to boomerang back on the u. S. , which is what any progrowth administration does not want to do. But, there are some tools on enforcement that can drive paul what do you think he could use . Rep. Brady on the enforcement side, they could be more streamlined. America is one of about has won about 17 cases through the wto. Lets go after china for investment violations. President bush started the treaty with china and the Obama Administration continued it. I would think it would be terrific for the donald Trump Administration to finish it, because bilateral trade protections we have been fighting for for a long time if you have a problem, my advice is to go straight at it. And i think that is the way, with his negotiating background skills, donald trump could make a difference. Paul ok. Opening it up to the audience. Any questions, anybody have a question . It is better if you raise your hand and identify yourself. Paul we have one over here john. Anybody want to follow up on tpp being on hold . Thank you for your comments. My question is about health care. One thing missing with the Affordable Care act, when people have a choice, where did they go . Rep. Brady having the aca card does not make coverage. You have expensive insurance with high deductibles and a Narrow Network and that is because of the design. To the point, if you think that there are simple fixes to this, to say one of the indicators use, if you look at the number of americans in a state that are required to take aca insurance and get money to do it, how many take it out from states like new york, for example. Nearly four out of five new yorkers have figured out a way not to be covered by the aca, so a huge risk for those who think they can just fix it. The republican blueprint envisions getting the incentives right, so those americans can have an Insurance Plan that is right for them at that point in their life and they can take it with them with their situation and change the plan if there is another need that they have. And not just that plan. When you talk about the concept of Health Care Backpack, what were talking about is, what are the tools americans need in the 21st century . May Health Care Plan tailored to them and to be able to afford it and take it with them. They need control of their medical records, to give the new doctor and hospital. And easy ways to save for the daytoday expenses. We think that concept of giving americans the freedom to have those tools in a world different than it was 30 years ago, is critical. Another question over here. I am from amway corporation. Talking about the tpp, can you elaborate . Our business is mostly outside of the u. S. , about two thirds of the volume comes from the Asia Pacific Region and we do support that, working for one of our companies of that is a pretty big exporter. We are curious on how it will move forward and hearing it is dead makes us nervous. So we are interested in the overall trade policy and doing what is right in the long term. Rep. Brady republicans will continue to support the freedom to trade, to sell and compete anywhere in the world with as little interference as possible. That is one of the key principles of our party and the heart of Free Enterprise. My advice would be to take a look at the Transpacific Partnership and keep, do not withdraw, renegotiate. Keep what is good and there is plenty to level the Playing Field in a way for that region. Renegotiate, fix the problems that exist today, and lets find a way to move forward. I think with taxes and reform and with balanced regulation and access to more customers, that will grow the economy for the longterm. It has only been a week since we have had the president elect. Will that be an acceptable approach . Rep. Brady no winking and not in yet. This team is moving incredibly fast for the first seven days. We have a lot of discussions on health care and tax reform. Another question in the back. Good morning. A question around pricing of drugs and Provider Services in health care. Any thoughts . Rep. Brady anymore specific . Negotiations with drug manufacturers and talk about that during the election. Rep. Brady in a greater price controls, i think it would be a mistake. On the prices for those caught schedules. The bottom line is taking that approach ensures patients will not get the new cuttingedge technologies. They will be limited in their access. It is a very simple formula. If you want to go that approach, the v. A. Approach, we can for seniors, but just know that you wont getting the full range of medical opportunities. You will be limiting your access. I dont think we want to go that direction. At the end of the day, it is still competition. It is still much faster timetable to the marketplace. Competition in prescription medicines drives down prices. Thats the approach we opt to go. Paul weve got one more. We are approaching the end. Reporter one of the elements of your tax plan that mailer that mayor giuliani mentioned his border adjustability. You are talking about trying to apply it to an income tax system. Any further developments . Rep. Brady we are proposing to move from an income tax for businesses based on where you produce to a casual tax a stub or you consume. Casual tax based on where you consume. Heres the point. Today, an americanmade Technology Product is a disadvantage here and abroad. We propose to take taxes off American Products being exported, put them on products being imported. That has three huge impacts. One, it ensures quality price based on quality, not the tax code. Two, it allows us to signify the tax code. Simplify the tax code. It eliminates any tax incentive for companies to move jobs, research, manufacturing headquarters overseas. It creates huge incidents to bring that investment back, and thats part of our goal. Paul thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Appreciate you coming. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] now a look at cold record sure and governance. They talk about prosecuting those of Insider Trading. This is 20 minutes. [applause] good afternoon. Thank you for joining us. Given that part of your job involves prosecuting companies and occasionally ceos, what are you doing talking to a room full of ceos . Over time, i have come to love the sound of nervous laughter. [laughter] thank you. So you talk a lot about the importance of culture and companies, and that is something you consider in charging decisions. Why is that considered . People need to understand that in addition to being a chief federal Law Enforcement officer in manhattan, more than a lawyer, im sort of a ceo of my institution. I have to make decisions every day about how we allocate our resources, who we promote, what our priorities are, which are more in line of being a head of its institution rather than just being a lawyer. For my office to do well in its prime institution, to make sure that justice is done, i have to care about culture a lot. I think no ceo worth his or her salt would think otherwise. For us, it is actually required by policy to take into account things like the pervasiveness of criminal conduct at a company before you decide to charge a company. To take into account issues of recidivism, to take into account what their policies are. All of that comes up. It turns out we bring a lot of cases, and some companies have a lot of bad apples, and some have fewer, so my armchair judgment has been that there is something about the culture of some places that keeps corruption and misconduct more in check than at other places, and the differences not necessarily what people get paid. It has to do with something in the ether of the place and the culture of the place and the leadership that cares about making sure you have a culture of integrity in the place. So every company has compliance, rules, all sorts of best practices. What is the specific moral of a ceo . What does the ceo need to be telling the organization . Mr. Bhahara it is a cliche. I am sure everyone in the room will talk about town at the top. There is a reason things are cliches, because they matter. It is important to have in my line of work that complaints policy is important. You need to have a compliance department. In the same way that the country has title xviii, which is basically the criminal code, and you need them depending on your perspective, but as a country we also need a charter, the constitution, which is much shorter and sets out fundamental principles on how the country is supposed to conduct itself. I think companies should have the same mindset. You have your compliance policy, 100 pages or longer. You also need, i think, a charter for the place, so that people understand that you are not just supposed to follow these rules because the tpp or whoever cares about them, but there is a principle that has to come from the top. I am impressed when people tell me that when a new employee comes into a hedge fund or trading company, a general counsel once said does someone say to those people when they come in, particularly in the midst of a lot of the prosecutions we were bringing, does someone say, like this eeo, you should understand, separate and apart from the regulations we have, in this place we dont lie, we dont cheat, we dont steal, and if you do, you are out. We dont care what your book of business is. Those things make a difference. Ive was at a meeting where a company was pleading for leniency, and as part of the consideration, we asked the question, could you give me an example, because person after person had been indicted and convicted of the company, i said, could you give me an example of one time the ceo of a company in an email, a speech, a tall, a phone conference said, i care that people do their jobs honestly and with integrity . There was deafening silence. It tells you something. Its not a shock to me that the culture at that place was terrible. Rebecca i want to ask the audience a question before i ask you about the importance of general counsel. How worried are you about corruption within your company . Very worried . Somewhat concerned . Not at all . You just mentioned general counsels. What is the important of a company do you look for someone to be a truth to power presence . Mr. Bhahara i think it depends on the nature of the industry, the nature of the company. I think generally speaking, the general counsel is the conscience of the firm, but if they dont have any juice or respect, its not going to matter much. I will give you another story about the Company Image at a moment ago. In the indictment, we actually alleged that one of the things that went wrong was that they were planning to hire a guy who was known to be, suspected to be someone who engaged in Insider Trading at the prior firm. That was known. The general counsels office of the hedge fund opposed the hiring of the person. That was overruled. Its not shocking that shortly thereafter, that person began to engage in Insider Trading at the company and pled guilty. I think people need to have good counsel, generally speaking. I have a chief counsel in my office. It would not matter if i have one or not if i did not Pay Attention to her advice. I think the person that you and im sure this is true when you think about cfos you have at other people in positions of counseling you, not just on compliance, but on other kinds of risk, i think you want i think generally leadership involves surrounding yourselves with people who can talk to you like a peer does, and thats true especially in the general counsel. Rebecca what is your impression of the results from our paul . 30 not at all concerned. Mr. Bhahara the 9 you are very worried, if you could come see me afterwards [laughter] mr. Bhahara leave your number. Look, i dont know who the not at all people are. Its interesting you would vote not at all even if you did not think it was a problem, because often people hedge, and you cant always know. There are some companies and its great if thats what your view is that means reputational eu must be doing something correct, because it turns out to be the case that when you investigate people at certain companies, sometimes there is a lot of surprise, and sometimes there is no surprise at all. In the instances where we charged somebody where there was no surprise at all, but Galleon Group, for example, and the cases finished so i can talk about it, there was not a lot of surprised that there was a lot of bad conduct going on. There was more surprised when we arrested roger gupta, who had a different kind of reputation. I assume that people around him at the time would answer the question, what do you think is the level of corruption or misconduct, a lot of people would have said not at all and would have an wrong. Rebecca you have faced criticism overreaching on some of the Insider Trading cases, and also a sense of executing some of them in the media. Prosecuting some of them in the media. Mr. Bhahara the vast majority of Insider Trading cases we have brought have resulted in convictions, and they have ended up on appeal, including the most highprofile ones. There is a small subset of the cases where we argued that we argued changed the law and got wrong. There is now a case pending at the Supreme Court out of the california appellate court. I was at the Supreme Court arguments some weeks ago, and i will say there was conscious optimism that the Supreme Court, who is no fan of aggressive prosecution, if you think of the will say there was conscious decision from virginia, there is cautious optimism that the Supreme Court is going to correct what we think was a clear mistake of the Second Circuit on Insider Trading. Rebecca so they will actually reverse it, and what would happen to those cases . Mr. Bhahara there is cautious optimism that would happen. You never know. Rebecca the current Supreme Court . Mr. Bhahara the current Supreme Court. Im not prejudging it, im not making a prediction, and im not waging money on it, but there was clearly a deep sense of concern based on the questions that you heard from the lawyers at the arguments that it did not seem to be right or reasonable that you could be, for example, the ceo of a company and if you are not expecting any concrete financial gain in return, some financial benefit in return, you could, three days before releasing your earnings, bequeath it as a gift on your son, daughter, college roommate, knowing that they will make 20 million to 30 million in the trade. That did not strike people as being prudent. Rebecca what about trying cases in the press . Mr. Bhahara we dont do that. I think it is important in my job to talk about problems that you see. The first responsibility is to make sure that anybody you charge gets a fair trial. I have never spoken anywhere outside of the four corners of the complaint or the indictment. But when you have a state of problems, for example, if you have a gang problem in newburgh, new york, which we have had, i talk about it. When you have a prescription pill problem that is killing more people than traffic accidents and guns these days, and more people are oding for prescription pills and dying down from cocaine and heroin combined, then you talk about that problem. When you have a simply men and senators in new york going to assemblymen and prisoners in new york going to jail it is also the job to raise Public Awareness when you have a problem. Thats what i do. I talk about it. Presumably i get invited to speak to prestigious groups like this and wall street traders, but also doctors and business students, because people have some interest in prosecution, what we think the problems are, and how the good people can help solve those problems. I speak it every Business School around, and ive been doing it for a number of years, and i am proud that i got a harvard Business School, and every february i speak to the entire first year class, and i talk more broadly about ethics, integrity, and how they should think about conducting themselves to avoid problems. I say, look, im here. Its not just a scared Straight Program for whitecollar people, although its a little bit of that. And im not just directing the words to the ears of the two or three of you at harvard Business School who, statistically speaking, are likely to commit securities fraud. Its more, to direct my words to the ears of the vast majority of people, perhaps even everyone, who have integrity, who are honest, who want to do the right thing, who wants to make money, or change the world in some way in a correct way, an upstanding way, and the problem is, getting to my point that i like to make in front of groups like this, is the dead people in your organizations, other people tend to know about them. It was not a surprise when we started arresting people at as a c capital, the people in the know. It was not a surprise at the Galleon Group very at it was not a surprise what was going on at made off. If leaders of organizations can figure out a way to put the right Team Together and can develop the right culture. You can nab these problems much earlier than when the fbi gets involved. When the fbi gets involved, its generally too late. Rebecca is there a role for you in the Trump Administration . Mr. Bhahara i was going to put in for secretary of state, but some guy beat me to it. Rebecca that might be taken. But seriously, your interests, could they be aligned . Mr. Bhahara i do my job, i love my job. Its the best job ive ever had and the best job i will ever have. I serve under the president. That was true with president obama and will be true under president trump. If and when the president decides to replace me, i will ride into the sunset. We have been around since 1789. The office itself is an apolitical office. I do not get paid to serve the president. I get paid to serve the public. And when i think is best in the interest of justice, no matter who the president is. Us what we do in our office. As for the kind of work we have been doing, which is the policing of many kinds of things, including albany and wall street, it seems to me that part of the election on both sides was about whether systems are rigged. I can tell you from cases that we have brought, there is a lot that is rigged on the street and in politics. The people in my office, and an apolitical way, who work there, democrat and republican, they spent day after day doing those kinds of cases. I would like to think that the level of aggressiveness in lawn oarsmen will remain the same. When you talk about things like keeping the markets fair and keeping government honest, i dont see any i dont first see in departure from that unless i am missing something big. I do not forsee any departure from that unless i am missing something big. The way we conduct ourselves in our office has always been a political. You go after the fax and you go after the targets are, no matter how much money they have, who they are connected to, and i think we have a strong bipartisan record of going after folks who have violated their oaths of office. Apart from the financial prosecutions, one of the other things that gets a lot of attention is our public corruption prosecutions. We simultaneously charged, prosecuted, and config both and convicted both the Senate Majority leader who is a republican and the minority leader who is a democrat. We have a couple of minutes for questions. Anybody in the 9 from the chart want to speak up . Right here. Do we have to get our name and company . Yes, you do. Mr. Bhahara i know who you are. I have your last five years of tax returns. Pree, when you started, you talked about the ceo of your organization and how tone matters, but it is also metrics, what you measure. Sometimes if there are too much sales, you get activity you dont like. I too was in the treasury and i know how you measure people in government. Sometimes you are charged on how much money and finds you get, but really your job is to bring trust and confidence the capital markets, not just how much you prosecute. How do you balance that message with yourself, your people, not just going out and saying bring as many as you can, but rather putting confidence in the results . Mr. Bhahara thats a great question, and its very difficult, because we dont make wages, and you have to be careful about metrics. I talk about it all the time. I do a state of the Office Presentation and talk about things. Some of what i do there is talk about what the number of trials has been, what the level of criminal fines have been, and how many convictions we have had in particular areas. But i caution them and say, look, im putting up some of these metrics, but no metric can measure how we are doing if you are in the business of doing justice. Also, you absolutely have this problem. If you start having quotas on how we want people to perform, then people are going to game the system to give you what you want. The Police Commissioner used to talk about this all the time. If you start saying there has to be a certain number of arrests in every precinct, you are going to start manufacturing things. I dont have a great answer to that other than to talk a lot about how we care about how we do things in the office, to not have an overemphasis on numbers. What i do say is, if in one year we had 100 public corruption prosecutions and the next year we had 30 am a then youve got to look at that and see what went wrong. Or one year you had 20, the next year you had 30, look at general trends. The one thing i do like to say when people try to take away our budget is that there are some parts of government that work really well. My budget is 50 million. Depending on the year, between Asset Forfeiture and criminal penalties and losses avoided, we bring in 60 to 80 times that, better than any hedge fund i have ever heard of. One more question . I have one. Right here. I want to know if you watch billions. Mr. Bhahara that is a highly fictionalized show in many ways. But i think Paul Giamatti is a great actor. One last question for me. We have had waves of Insider Trading prosecutions in the 1990s, and recently. Are we Getting Better and Corporate Governance in general . Has a lot of our concern in shown been shown . Are we any better, or are we not . Mr. Bhahara thats a really broad question. Are we Getting Better generally . People get better at one thing, and bad people figure out how to screw it up in some other way. What i understand anecdotally that some of what our cases have done and what some of the regulatory actions have done have not necessarily eradicated bad people from places, but i think it has gotten companies to look at their fellow folks in the same industry, banks or otherwise, and say what can i do to make sure that does not happen here . How do we have better screening . How do we have better Early Warning systems to see people engaging in bad conduct . Our sense of things, based on the events i go to, people have gotten better. For example, we have this issue with Expert Networks will be started bringing in these insidertrading cases. I think peoples use of Expert Networks and what they meant has gotten better. That does not mean that other people are not figuring out ways to undermine the system and do bad things. I dont know if i can proclaim that everything is better, but i do think that a lot of folks have done a better job of trying to get on the ball. Thank you very much. Rebecca thank you. Janet yellen appears tomorrow to testify on fed policy and the potential timetable for raising interest rate. That is live at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan three. Thomasmorrow, clarence is at a dinner hosted by the federalist society, live at 9 00 p. M. Eastern here on sees. A signature feature of book tv is our coverage of look there is an festivals across the country, with nonfiction talked her talks and segments. This weekend we will be live from the 33rd annual miami book fair, one of the premier literary festivals featuring readings and discussions with authors and more than 250 authors and bookseller exhibits. Coverage begins at 10 00 a. M. Eastern here some of what you will see. Phone callsrs takes and talks about his book. Post reporters book, a New York Times editors. It gets underway at 10 30 a. M. Eastern and features dana perino with her latest book. The cofounder of the miami book kaplan, pulitzer prizewinning journalist. A National Book award finalist. Join us live from miami starting saturday at 10 00 a. M. Eastern. Though to book tv. Org for the complete weekend schedule. Coming up next, Prime Minister questions of the british house of commons. Then, a Senate Hearing on Nuclear Power in the u. S. After that, vermont senator Bernie Sanders talks about the 2016 election and the role of progressives. And later, Hillary Clinton is honored by the Childrens Defense Fund at an event last night in washington, d. C. During question time at the british house of commons, Prime Minister theresa may was asked about a leaked memo that raised questions about how the u. K. Should proceed with the exit from the European Union. The Prime Minister and several members talk about the results of the u. S. Election and future relations under a trump presidency. This is 40 minutes. Possible to serve the interests of the Palestinian People and the stability of the region. Order. Questions of the Prime Minister. Thank you, mister speaker. I am sure the whole house will join me income expressing our condolences to family and friends of 7 people who lost their lives and those injured in a tragic traffic incident. We all want to thank the rest of the operation. I have meetings with ministerial colleagues and duties in the house will the Prime Minister join me in welcoming the Unemployment Rate has fallen, and banking all those businesses that create jobs, whose funeral home was in my constituency on the street last weekend. Absolutely agree with my right honorable friend, and the constituencies are up by 88 points. It is the strength of the fundamentals of the economy. Employment rate had never been higher, the Unemployment Rate in more than a decade. Members on all sides of the house are going to welcome yesterdays news from google. Thank you, thank you, mister speaker. Cut i concur with the remark the Prime Minister made about the disaster last week, condolences to all those who lost loved ones and solidarity with emergency workers in freeing people from the wreckage. Mister speaker, it appears from press reports those expelled from their homes 40 years ago are going to suffer another injustice, and the right of return. The foreign secretary told european media that] would leave the customs union. Can you confirm if this is the case . The right honorable gentlemen, can i say there will be a written ministerial segment that will be in the house later today so everyone will see what the government is taking on that issue. On the question of the customer the union, the trading relationships, with the European Union or other parts of the world once we left the European Union. We are preparing for formal negotiations. And the formal negotiations, to ensure the best possible trading deal with the European Union. The Prime Minister, about the foreign secretarys remarks about leaving the customs union, mister speaker, the foreign secretary to come forward. And we are better informed if he did. Earlier this week, mister speaker, a leaked memo said the government the government is considerably the government is considerably short of having a plan for brexit. The common strategy is purged in part because of the decisions in the cabinet. Is this memo, as the Prime Ministers department written by illinformed consultants. And put the governments plan and common strategy for brexit before parliament . Yes, we do have a plan. Our plan is to deliver the best deal in trading. Our plan is to deliver control of movement from people from the European Union into the United States. Our plan is to go across the world and negotiate free trade agreements around the world. This government is absolutely united in its determination to deliver its determination to deliver the win of the british people and deliver brexit. The word doesnt seem to have traveled very far. I might have to say i sympathize with the Italian Government minister this week, somebody needs to tell us something, needs to be something that makes sense. Isnt the truth the government is making a chance of brexit, nobody understands what the strategy actually is. Of course those in the European Union will be negotiating. And at this stage, every detail of our negotiation. If we were to do that, if we were to do that it would be the best possible way of ensuring we got the worst results. That is why we wont do it. Talking of worst results, the foreign secretary has been helpful on this because he informed the world that brexit means brexit. We didnt know that before and beyond that we make a titanic success. Mister speaker, taking back control if that is what brexit is to mean, getting advice in the foreign secretary, taking back control clearly requires extra administration. One department estimates 40 increase to cope with its projections and overall expectations of an increase head count between 10 and 30,000 Civil Servants. If that is wrong, can the Prime Minister tell the house exactly how many extra Civil Servants will be required to conduct these negotiations . Her minister seems to know they are desperate for an answer from us. I repeat to the right honorable gentlemen we are doing what is necessary, the point of which we will start formal negotiations with the European Union. What i have done is set up the department in the European Union and my right honorable friend is doing an excellent job there. In making those preparations but i have to say from the confusion he has in relation to this it is yet another example of labor where they posture and we deliver, we are getting on with the job, he is not up to the job. Mister speaker. That was exciting. Wasnt it . Mister speaker, mister speaker, there is much noise in the chamber. I say to the honorable gentlemen, calm your self, you should seek to imitate the calm and repose of your friend who is setting an example to all those in the house, jeremy corbin. I dont wish to promote further debate on that. Mister speaker. These are the most complex set of negotiations ever undertaken by this country, the service has been cut to its lowest level since the second world war. The Prime Ministers main focus coming up with a serious plan but when the Supreme Court meets at the beginning of december if it decides to uphold the decision of the court, will you defend our in defendant judiciary against an attack . The right honorable gentlemen knows there are two cases in the prerogative powers in Northern Ireland found in favor of the government. We are appealing to the Supreme Court, we have a good argument and take that case to the Supreme Court. Government believes in the independence of the judiciary which will consider that decision. And in the basis of the argument. We also believe democracy is underpinned by the freedom of the press. Defending the independent judiciary, we all should be doing that. We have an International Development secretary opposed to doing service these days. The Health Secretary running down the National Health service. We have a chancellor with no fiscal strategy. And in difficulty defending the judiciary. We have a brexit team with no plan for brexit. As has been shown, a Prime Minister who is not prepared to answer questions on the actual brexit strategy, we need a better answer than that. Also, the right honorable gentlemen, International Development secretary delivering on the government commitment to spend 4. 7 , we have a Health Secretary delivering 10 billion pounds. And a chance to make sure we have a stable economy that creates what is necessary, but what we have gone into in the leader of the opposition incapable of leading. The Prime Minister, the Prime Minister understands we are a one nation policy or nothing. Something our political opponents consistency underestimates but the awesome statement next week, will she continue to pursue this agenda, with resources and figure she can muster