Transcripts For CSPAN Politics Public Policy Today 20121119

Allow virtually along with the Intelligence Community to make this country safer. Host new jersey, democratic caller, good morning. Caller i have a question about the quality of the cyberspace to to the fact that there is so many outlets with apps and everything going on. These we cannot even get something simple like train procedures that will bring suspicious problems going on where i will give you an example. Like the terrorist attacks of 9 11, the pilots from the countries we were not aware of some of these people. They were trained to land a plane and not take off a plane, but not land a plane. Isnt that like an open sore right there . Host thanks. Guest i think one of the points i would make based on the color bangs comment is the need for intelligence. The caller talks about, as it relates to terrorism, people willing to fly planes but people learning to fly planes cannot land of them. That is indicative of a nefarious act. Intelligence is the key to understanding exactly what is occurring, not just what happened, but who did it, how they did it. By sharing intelligence to provide greater awareness and identified threats. Host thanks a lot for your time. Guest thanks for having me. Host we appreciate all of your calls. We will be back tomorrow and every day with washington journal. To the American Enterprise institute. The topic here, conservatives and Immigration Reform. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2012] you know, there has been a tension at the heart of the conservative Movement Approach to immigration at least as long as ive followed politics and a lot longer than that. There are two influential camps in the conservative movement who have jockeyed for control to define the right approach to immigration policy. This is a crude generalization, but i think a fair one. On the one hand, there are economic libertarians who dont mind so much the presence of large numbers of immigrants in the United States illegally. They would also welcome much more Legal Immigration as well. We call this the wall street journal wing. On the other hand our social and lawandorder conservatives who are concerned with preserving culture and the maintenance of social order. They believe that large numbers of people in the United States in violation of american law is inherently problematic. They argue that any culture needs sufficient time for new arrivals to assimilate, and that cultures can benefit from periodic pauses and immigration. There are other times, such as the Catholic Church and other religious groups, who favor what ightmight call a lgih touch approach to immigration. There is deep tension and a mission on the right on immigration, and there has been for decades now. The recent president ial election has brought the immigration issue once again to the center of american politics. Gov. Mitt romney received a small percentage of latino and asian voters, much less than george w. Bush received, it is often noted. Many said that his views on immigration and conservatisms approach to immigration generally were to blame for the gops poor showing this time around. Romney tried to appeal in some respects to all conservative factions on immigration. He repeatedly said that he was in favor of more Legal Immigration, emphasizing legal, but particularly during the primary season, he took a harder line on the question of ilLegal Immigration. What we at aei have decided to do is convene a thoughtful panel of folks to discuss this service at Immigration Reform. This the American Enterprise institute for Public Policy research, not the institute ofor figuring out how to get conservatives or republicans elected. We are interested in finding the right solutions to Public Policy problems and issues, and immigration is no different. I asked our panelists that while the temptation in the present moment will be to talk solely about immigration in the context of american politics, and that is an interesting and a proper thing to do, it is more important that we make progress in analyzing sound policy on emigration. The sound Public Policies happen to be political winners, all the better. We have seen lots of pundits and policymakers in the wake of the election offer advice such as republicans should get behind onetime amnesty or should back comprehensive Immigration Reform or need to stop building walls and start reaching out to more hispanics. Maybe these are wise steps. But almost all of the analysis in the wake of the election has been driven by concerns about political expediency, not necessarily because the person advocating the person believes it is sound policy. It is not even clear to me that many of the proposals are politics either, and that is something i suspect we will get into today. My hope is that in general we can do better. We have established a a distinguished group. We have the executive director of the Latino Partnership for conservative principles. He was the first chief of the u. S. Office of citizenship, appointed by president george w. Bush. Alfonso is responsible for developing initiatives and programs to educate immigrants about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and encourage their integration into american civic culture. Brad bailey is the founder and ceo of texas immigration solutions. To 2011, he was the order of houstonarea owner of houst onarea restaurants. His group seeks to develop conservative solutions to immigration policy but he served on the 2012 Platform Committee of the Republican Party of texas. Richard land is the president of the Southern Baptist conventions official added to address social, moral, and ethical concerns, with a particular attention to impact on American Families and their faith. He is also the editor of a National Magazine dedicated to coverage of traditional religious values, christian ethics, and cultural trends. Last but not least, my friend ramesh ponnuru, Senior Editor for National Review magazine and a columnist for bloomberg view. He has published articles in newspapers such as the new york times, the washington post, financial times. He is has been a fellow at the institute of Economic Affairs in london and a media fellow at hoovertanford universitys institution. Thank you all for joining us today. We will have our panelists talked about 10 minutes, and then ask questions as we go along. But we will leave plenty of time for questions from the audience. We will have microphones will go around later. With that, well start with alfonso. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be with you this morning. Certainly i think there has been since the election a seismic change in the Political Landscape when it comes to latinos and immigration. Im encouraged by that, i am optimistic. I think that next year we may get something done that is constructive on the issue. When you talk about immigration, it is kind of hard not to talk about the politics of it, because i believe that if we have not been able to achieve the Immigration Reform, it is in part because of the politics, not the American People. Poll after poll shows that the American People want Immigration Reform and they want to see it soon. They are for Border Security but they also want some form of legalization, a Guest Worker Program, path to citizenship. It is no surprise to me, somebody who was very involved in the election cycle, that governor romney lost the election. I think the writing was on the wall and i and many others kept saying before the election that we had a problem of immigration. After this election there will be a lot of introspection and analysis about how to get the latino vote. In the end, to me, it was the latino vote romney ended up not prevailing precisely because of the latino vote, specifically because the issue of immigration. If governor romney would have had a more constructive view on the issue from the get go, from the primaries, he would have been a very competitive candidate, and in the end he would have ended up prevailing. He did not win. Contrary to what he thinks, not because latinos voted for obamacare or entitlements. They just cdid not like him because of the things she said about emigration to remember what he said, people should selfdeport, similar to what the secretary of the state of kansas would say, one of the co authors of the arizona law, and fought with antiimmigrant groups. When he endorsed mitt romney, mitt romney went out of the way during the primary to embrace the endorsement. He said that he was a great leader in the fight against ilLegal Immigration. His idea was i dont think was necessarily governor romneys idea. I pick it was the idea of many gop establishment strategist i think it was the idea of many gop establishment strategists that you run the campaign during the primary being a restriction list, and then during the election you do what i call the old switcheroo. You soften your position. The problem with that is that it is very condescending, because latinos were listening. If after the election you say, i dont mean a model for the nation, i met a model for the states could i did not mean the entire arizona law, i just met the everify portion, i did not trust you. Latinos voted for obama because they did not trust romney on the immigration question, they did not like the rhetoric. There was no reason for this, because like i say, the majority of the American People want to see Immigration Reform. This is something very important, and it shows why politics has to do with immigration policy. I think the antiimmigration lobby has been very effective in creating the perception that the conservative base is anti immigrants. That is just not true. Poll after poll shows, study after study shows, that the majority of conservatives believe in Border Security but also believe in Immigration Reform. Before the primary season we had we commissioned a study to study immigration views of likely republican primary voters. Your tea partyers, people committed to the conservative movement. As long as you have Border Security there, the support legalization, a path to citizenship, a Guest Worker Program. Included a bad word amnesty, and when we included boris security with amnesty, 52 of them supported that idea. Numbers usa, the center for immigration studies, and in 2006 they got very involved with the political process. They influenced small groups of republicans to hijack this issue and articulate a very antiimmigrant restriction is to usec, which in 2006 as a wedge issue. Republicans lost the house and senate. The Republican Party has been perceived as a restrictionist party, even though our president s and president ial candidates have been pro immigration. Ronald reagan was solidly for Immigration Reform. If you go to youtube and Google Reagan mondale debate, uc Ronald Reagan not making the case for immigration, but for amnesty, using that word. Republicans are proimmigration but they have been afraid of the past six years of the anti Immigration Law me. Immigration lobby. Now i think this election cycle has dramatically changed that. I can at least number half a dozen radio and tv talk shows that have already said, you know what, my position has evolved, now time for Immigration Reform. Now i am for Immigration Reform. That is good, because it will give cover for republicans who have avoided this issue and want to deal with this issue to actually do it. Immigration and being for Immigration Reform is the conservative position. Restrictionism part of the nationalist protectionist paradigm t. If we are the party of the family and a freemarket, the gop is, we should not in any way have a restrictionist position. If we are for the family, i dont see why we should be calling for supporting hundreds of thousands of families and in this country operating hundreds of thousands of families in this country. Many have been here for decades. Why should we believe that government should tell American Companies that cannot find Foreign Workers, that cannot find American Workers, that they should not be able to bring in Foreign Workers in an effective, timely fashion . That goes against the basic principles of the free market. We can reclaim this issue and frame it in conservative terms. As i said, we are the party of the family and we are the party of the market. What exactly this is going to look like, i dont know. I started after i got back to the seagoing around the senate and house, and i can sense that there is a great environment to actually do something. The question is, it is it going to be comprehensive . I doubt it. Today what we know as comprehensive reform in 2006 and 2007 is not necessarily what the administration is talking about. The president talking about comprehensive reform. But i wonder if that comprehensive reform includes a Guest Worker Program. At the end, that is the key to resolving this issue. The unions, which the president is loyal to, dont want to see a Guest Worker Program, because they dont want to see more Foreign Workers enter the country. They want to ensure that labor markets, the labor supply, remain small. The Guest Worker Program is key, because to grow our economy, we need to add to Growth Industries that need the foreign work force. The last reform we have under the reagan years lacked a workable Guest Worker Program. That was amnesty could be gave amnesty to 3 million individuals. But at the time, the market had already absorbed those 3 million individuals. What happened . Immigrants kept coming in to do jobs that americans did not want or where there were not americans of working age to do them. We need a mechanism to facilitate the illegal flow of the Foreign Workers that america facilitate the legal flow of the ford workers that america needs. In the end, it is an issue of Big Government, government saying that we will have these Guest Worker Programs that are highly regulated, and in some areas, some types of jobs, we will cap with ridiculous quotas that dont meet the needs of the market. What we need is a demandbased desk Worker Program that allows companies who cannot find American Workers to bring before workers that they need, as many as they need. We should not be consent in a sluggish economy like we have right now, because if you have an economy that is not growing, you will not bring as many workers. If you have a booming economy, you will bring more workers. Let the market work. In the end, that is the only way we can fix this problem. In terms of legalization, i dont know exactly how what im seeing from my meetings in congress, this will be done in a piecemeal basis rather than a comprehensive basis. I dont know if we will get for those who have been here for many years or even for the young un is this documented immigrants i dont know if we will get to a path to citizenship for them. But we can probably get to the alternative dream act, the idea suggested by senator marco rubio. In the end it will depend on the willingness from republicans, but also from the president , to actually sit down and negotiate. It is not only are republicans to we have heard this in l is not only republicans. We have heard this a lot, that republicans dont want Immigration Reform. Nothing happened on Immigration Reform because the president didnt lead. He did not engage republicans. This time around, you need the president of the United States to do what george bush did in 2007, said his cabinet members to congress and negotiate with the opposition leadership if that does that happen. If that does not happen, we have a problem. Im optimistic. In the end, the biggest challenge or controversy will be whether we get a path to citizenship or not. Thank you. Thank you, alfonso. Brad . Thank you for having this. Im not a Public Policy die, i am not a washington insider. I am a Restaurant Owner from houston, texas. I can tell you my lifelong experience on this but the brief political side of it. Back in september of last year, every day in the restaurant we break bread with our staff, waiters and waitresses, kitchen staff, it took about showing up on time, putting the right amount of food on the table. Running a restaurant is kind of like babysitting so that is our moment to hit those points. After that, my longtime employee who has been with us over 10 years, he came to us wanting to talk about something. Over 10 years ago, he came to work for our familys restaurant because his previous employer would not give them off on sunday to go to church with his family. Very important part to note. It was not the job, the work conditions, the pay. He wanted to go to church with his family. It turns out he was one of the greatest employees we have ever had. I have worked shoulder to shoulder with him for 10 years. He pulls me aside and says, brad, i have a question for you. I know you and your family are very conservative. I want to know how you can support republicans when republicans hate hispanics. I start going for my stump speech of prolife, profamily, religious freedom. He just kind of not his head and moseys of nods his head and moseys off. When gov. Perry was literally attacked not just by one, but several people on the stage, pardon the pun, but houston, weve got a problem. If that need to ask my politically active for friends, what do we do it led me to ask my politically active for friends, what we do . One said, you are a business owner, you need to talk about it. Little did i know how involved i would get. I have never been to a convention. I voted republican my whole life. My dogs name is w. [laughter] poor guy has a 32 approval rating, but i still love him. I was on the republican subcommittee that really started talking about this problem. I know is when everyone came in we would get testimony from all kinds of people. People came in and they just physically cannot stand each other. They had been fighting on this issue for 10 years. We had Tea Party Group there. The probebusiness route there. Hispanic leaders were there. Religious conservatives there. It looked a lot like this panel. There really did not like each other. They really did not like each other. You have 30 seconds, blah blah blah. Finally, lets just suspend the rules and Start Talking about it. We all agree on this panel that our immigration system is broken. In texas we have 12 miles of border with mexico that is just broken. I yield my time and said how do we fix it . As we started doing that, everyone started putting down their arms, started putting out the weapons, and started talking about solutions. Complaining about the problem, which the 2010 Republican Party platform in texas looked like, a lot of complaints this is wrong, this is wrong. We all know i. T. Is wrong. How do we fix it . I believe that in texas we fix things. We did that with tort reform, are balanced budget amendment. Our legislature meets once every two years, which washington could probably learn from. We fix our Energy Policy. We fix problems, we dont complain about them. Everybody started coming around thats right, we need to start doing that. We had a onepager about how to address the immigration problem. One page. We went to the floor of the convention, and i will tell you about the texas convention. The largest gathering of conservatives in the nation break 8000 delegates at this convention. We started walking onto the floor, and all of a sudden i see no amnesty stickers, and i thought we would have a nice little debate. Wrong. Little did i note that it was on. They called us every name in the book. We had religious conservatives testify for us. We had this the reputed dr. Phil session therapeutic doctor full session in the subcommittee. Five times they attacked our platform. Specifically our onepager. It opened a lot of peoples eyes the conservatives really do understand this problem. I believe the vocal minority and has hijacked this issue and they got us all fighting and they have done that on purpose, to make of that nothing happens make sure nothing happens. We want to get this fixed. It is harming our economy in texas. The federal government has failed, both sides have failed on this. When we came out of there, the media comes running into the convention. The front page of the dallas morning news, or fort worth startelegram, gop shifts on immigration. It was amazing to see that we were going to come in here and label them antihispanic, anti anything, and it was a total different route. Some friends of mine said that we need to take this to the national level. We went to the National Platform in camp and started talking about it. We got a National Guest worker endorsement of the National Convention platform, which was great. Election day hits, and on wednesday by phone starts getting blown up again, that it is time to, that we need to Start Talking more about this. I believe that freemarket solutions are part of this spirit i believe in strong Border Security. Antiimmigration groups try to label us open borders, big business, wants cheap labor. If we could find black Border Security forces and iraq fund blacwater Security Forces in iraq, we need to do that. In texas, i have been down firsthand to see the devastating effect it has on property owners, on everything. We need to look at every option available. It is in our National Security to do so. I am not for broken borders in any way, shape, or form. I can tell you how broken e verify is. I am all for an employment verification system. We need an employment verification system. But everify makes the United States Postal Service look efficient. It is a governmentrun Software Program. I dont think i need to say anything more than that. It is a governmentrun Software Program that needs to be modernized. Nine out of 10 businesses have a credit card terminal. You can get one on your iphone, eikenbeven. It tells you accepted, decline d, tells all kind of information. Why cant we make it more efficient to get a reading . I have seen people not pass e verify and then have to stand in line at the Social Security demonstration for three days to get it corrected. That is not conservative. However we been spoonfed to say that a governmentround how have we been suspended to say that a governmentrun program is the solution . The Social Security card has not been modernized since 1936. That just blows me away right there. If we just printed de Social Security card on the same type of paper we do the u. S. Passport, with a 5 bill, it would help the process. The employer has to take his identification documents. It is cumbersome, it is troubling. Our temporary Worker Program is the biggest portion temporary worker, a guest worker, what have you. It has to be as 0 impact item. The American Worker is number one. Only if the American Worker is not available for the trouble we go for the guest worker. Only if the American Worker is not available will we go for the guest worker. As an employer, we lay someone off and they go to the Texas Workforce commission and that is where the at the unemployment benefits. Nobody knows who is unemployed more than the Texas Workforce commission. Nobody knows the job creators better than the Texas Workforce commission. If they were able to administer the Guest Worker Program instead of coming to the disney will of government, it would be a much more efficient process. We need to work with the thought of government to streamline the process and make sure that the American Worker is number one. If they are not available, then we go for the guest worker. Making sure that each guest worker has a Health Insurance and also a pilot for identification a biometric identification. Thank you. [applause] i dont know if the moderator this makes me dr. Phil. Richard, over to you. You should have High Expectations of us. All but one of us is left handed. We have to be mindful of the prejudices of righthanded people. Poll after poll shows that 70 of the American People would be more likely to support a candidate who was for comprehensive, fair, and just Immigration Reform. That included secure borders. Unfortunately, that 70 are focused more in the middle, those who are independents, than those who vote in democratic and republican primaries. Lets be honest. There are people in both parties who have a vested interest in solving this problem. For their own political advantage. Add to the detriment of the country. This issue is rending the social fabric of the nation in ways that are far easier to rend than they are to mend. It is time that people of goodwill in this country focus on a solution that begins demanded the social fabric begins to mend the social fabric instead of rending it. We need comprehensive, fair, and just Immigration Reform first and foremost because i. T. Is the right thing to do. It is consistent with american principles, it is consistent with christian principles. If you want to see a long explanation of that, i encourage you to go to the Regent University law review web site, where my colleague and i have written a long explanation of the reasons why fair, it just a combination , just a combination of Immigration Reform is the right thing to do. I dont see how we are going to secure the border until we secure the workplace. The work place is the magnet. As long as that the economic disparity that you have between south america and the United States, people are going to come here to better themselves, to better their families futures. They will find a way to come here and they will defeat any means we put up to stop it. They will get here. The only way to secure the border is to secure the workplace. I would argue that we should have a threemonth period where people have an opportunity to come forward, register, undergo a criminal background check, pay a fine for having broken the law not amnesty. Amnesty is what jimmy carter gave to the draft arcdoctors who went to canada to avoid service in vietnam. They got to come home with no penalty, no fine, no anything. They just got to come home. I would have let them come on, but i would have required them to work for two years in veterans hospitals at minimum wage taking care of those who took their place. I would say that you say to those who come forward, you have a threemonth period to come forward and minister, under grew a criminal background check, pay fine. Part of that fine would be used to give them a tamperproof identity card, preferably a thummb print. Then you give every american a new Social Security card that has some new form of identification once again, not a picture, but a thumb print. And you say to employers that if you hire anyone who does not have this at andy card or Social Security card, this id card or Social Security card, you will go to jail. That will turn off the magnet. Wages are suppressed by 12 for the poorest among us by the competition of undocumented workers. If we secure the workplace, wages for those who most need it will go up about 12 . They are being exploited by un scrupulous employers. That will cut down the flow and 90 of the border and make it possible to secure the border for those trying to come across for nefarious purposes. We can stop them at the border. We say to those who are here in undocumented said is, you are on probation, you are paying a fine. This is the most emotional issue at all of this, language. I find americans across want us to dont have to sing the National Anthem in two languages at the world series. They want the National Anthem sung in english, even if all the ballplayers are latinamerican. They have to agree that if they want to stay here permanently, they have to agree to learn, reid, write and speak english. I find among undocumented workers that they have no problem with this. They want to learn english and the date understand that to live the american dream, they have to learn to speak english is only liberals who inhabit College Campuses and education departments who have problems with making english the official language and asking people to learn to write and speak english. If you have been here 20 years, and some of them have been, and by the way, weve had two signs at the border for 20 years, when it says no trespassing, the other says help wanted. It is wrong to not enforce the law for 20 years and then retroactively say we will now enforce the law. It is like the federal government sending me a bill saying that we have not given you a speeding ticket for 20 years but we have been by entering your driving habits on the highways and we noticed that you consistently break the speed limit on the interstate, which i do as a texan. Is my right to aim my car, not drive it. [laughter] 80 Miles Per Hour in some parts of texas is the speed limit. Amen. I have to go to the bank to get a loan. I would think that i have been treated unfairly. It is not fair to not enforce the law for 20 years and then retracted the say that we are going to enforce it now. Retroactively that we are going to enforce it now. It is immoral. Once i get permanent legal status, at some point they will be able to get citizenship. Permanent legal status will get us to cut rents of Immigration Reform faster because get us to comprehensive Immigration Reform faster because it will eliminate one of the major hurdles. Then we need a Guest Worker Program. Better to have them run by the states, where you have an opportunity if you offer a job at a wage and for 30 days no one takes it, you can go to pre approved full of people pool of people who want to come here and do that job. You have to offer that job again to someone, and if the American Worker does not want it, you give it to someone else. It is in our enlightened self interest to have comrades of Immigration Reform. I would urge you to go to the council on Foreign Relations web site and see their task force report. It was cochared ired by jeb bush and mac maclarty. The country that will develop the most economically will be the one that can amassed the largest brain force. Anybody who gets a ph. D. In a hard science from an American University i dont care where they were born, we ought to stapled a green card to their diploma and encourage them to do their work here. If you want america to be the country that leads the world in research and iinnovation in the 21st century, and as an american, i want that to be the United States. This is an issue that can be solved. The American People are way ahead of where their elected representatives are. I look at the composition of this room, and there is a generation gap. I find that the older people are, the less receptive they are to Immigration Reform. The number they are, the more receptive they are to Immigration Reform the younger they are, the more receptive they are to Immigration Reform. I have a column that i encourage you to read, denied the gop the night gop lost the election. That was when governor rick perry was booed by the audience for instate tuition for the children of immigrants. Do you know how hard it is to get 5 texas legislators to agree on anything . Almost impossible. They dont agree on when the sun came up. But they agree to this because it was right for texas. This is the low hanging fruit. These young people have done nothing wrong. They have broken no law. They are here because of their parents actions. I dont believe the United States of america is a country that wants to punish children for their parents behavior. These young people want to be americans, they want to prove themselves and be contributors to our economy. It is immoral for us to put barricades in their path. Frankly, as the republican, i was ashamed of my party for their behavior that night. They ought to apologize. I can understand white hispanics would say i can understand why hispanics would say republicans dont like us. That is not true, but he would not know it from the the fear of the crowd that night. From the behavior of the crowd that night. Frankly, it is time for us to stop listening to the people with the smallest branch and the biggest mounts smallest brains and biggest mouths. [applause] next up was someone an enormous brain, ramesh ponnuru. Not as big as my mouth. A lot of the concerns about immigration policy yet been discussed here. Matters that have to do with economics and morality. What i thought i would do is talk a little bit about an initiative that tends to get underemphasized in these conversations, and that is assimilation. People mean Different Things when they use that word. What i mean in saying that our immigration and postimmigration policies ought to be oriented towards assimilation is simply that we should want newcomers to the United States to have a good shot at becoming Successful Americans who can support themselves rather than rely on taxpayers, who can and do fully participate in local, state, and National Political deliberations, fully participate in our culture, and who see themselves and are seen by others as americans. These are things we should want and these are things we should take steps to achieve. Assimilation should not come in my view, mean the elimination of what is distinctive about immigrant cultures. The assimilation i have in mind is compatible with immigrants changing and ideally enriching the national culture. The important thing is that newcomers and nativeborn americans alike have a shared sense of belonging, consider their interests to be common interests rather than antagonistic ones, and are able to communicate with one another. And immigration policy that takes assimilation would look different in important respects both from what we currently have and from some of the proposals that we often hear about. I think pretty obviously, if assimilationism the bill, we want to make as much of our immigrant inflow to be lega ratherl than illegal. Legal rather than illegal. It also stands to reason that we should be mindful of the fact that it is easier to assimilate and immigrant population the less it is dominated by immigrants from one particular place, and it is easier the smaller that inflow is. It also stands to reason that immigrwe can successfully absorb more immigrants with the equipment for them to emigrate to the u. S. , by making sure that they and their children received effective english language instruction. We can talk a lot about what to do about Illegal Immigrants who are already here. Whether to provide them with what some people call legalization and other people call amnesty. On both sides, a lot of the arguments are moral. One side suggesting it it would erode the will to live up to and the other saying that the status quo one side suggesting that it would erode the rule of law, and the other saying that the status quo. Its the rule of law. Status quo erodes the rule of law. The answer people give depend a lot on the wording of the questions, identifying impulses strong in the public and not so much finding specific policies. The impression i have is that most people are not opposed in principle to allowing people who have been here for many years and meet certain other conditions to get legal status. But i also think that most people dont feel obligated to provide this legal status if there is a danger that providing it will yield more ilLegal Immigration in the future if, that is, it will just form part of a cycle of an ineffective and fundamentally unserious policy. It seems to be the most serious obstacle to achievement of an immigration policy, and that is what it looks it ought to have consensus behind it. The more people have confidence and enforcement at the border and, as richard said, at the workplace, the more, i suspect, they would be willing to support immilegalization, amnesty, whenever you want to call it, and that would include a lot of conservatives. What strikes me as more problematic in principle that legalization than legalization is the idea of temporary work authorization. We can all understand the impulse. You want to meet the needs of business for workers, especially for jobs that most americans are not interested in taking trade at the same time, you dont want to raise the hackles of those americans that dont want as much immigration. But i am deeply skeptical that these proposals and work. For example, debora workers who are here have children while theyre here, temporary workers who are here to have children while they are here, children would be its citizens under the constitution. What we deport the parents, or with the same considerations that view many people leave many people to view enforcement of the law as harsh lead us to flinch from enforcement in those conditions as well . All the arguments about family values not breaking up families would apply in such cases. If everify doesnt work, as i often hear from proponents of Immigration Reform, why would we expect the federal government to do a great job running background checks and enforcing time limits that that kind of policy would entail . But beyond these practical concerns, i also fear that this policy sends a message, in particular a message to hispanics, that we want to benefit from your labor but we dont want you to be full participants in American Life and we definitely dont want you to have political power. That is an antiassimilative message. It is typically conservative Immigration Reformers who are most positive about the Labor Program and the left to his most opposed to it. I am a conservative and often not in sympathy with labor, but this seems to me to be the correct ardaman. Correct argument. Its no secret that conservatives have been divided about immigration and the election brought these divisions to the fore. I want to make a couple of suggestions towards bridging the gap. For the enforcementonly folks, the most important thing i would say if that is crucial and when you say and propose that you acknowledge how reasonable and understandable is that people would break the law to come here to build better lives for themselves and their families. You dont have to believe that is the right thing to do, you dont have to believe that the government should allow it, to see this point i dont think a lot of the people on this side of the debate and see how easily their condemnation of illegal behavior can come across as personal hostility to Illegal Immigrants and even to hispanics and asians in general. It is better to stick to a critique of institutions and policies rather than people. For the folks who want comprehensive reform, i would say it takes seriously the concerns people have expressed about enforcement and sometimes unexpressed concerns about assimilation. A couple of people mentioned rick perry and the boos he got. Lets not forget that a basic principle of persuading people who do not agree with you to camara to your position, calling them are this may not be the way calling them heartless may not be the way to go about it. Family values, economic efficiency, the rule of law, National Cohesion these are all good conservative themes and they need to be respected and brought into alignment with one another. Thank you. [applause] ramesh, thank you very much. I want to go to the audience for questions and a second. I will take the moderators. If to ask a question of the Panel Moderators prerogative ask a question of the panel, and i will break the rule is set in the beginning and ask about politics for a second. I worry that in the wake of governor romney doing so poorly among hispanics that it just seems so obvious that republicans and conservatives may want to change how they approached the immigration issue. While i cannot certainly know that this is true, i always suspected that governor romney was not as deep down inside it such a hardliner on the immigration issue as he came across. I think there is a question of he had to win his partys primary, and he calculated accordingly and crafted a policy approach and rhetorical approach in keeping with that. Nothing that has happened since the election seems to have necessarily change to that fact for republicans, who need to win their Party Nomination in order to i already see alfonso shaking his head, and that is fine, but im wondering if any of you would choose to comment on that fact, that this is a reality of winning the Party Nomination. Well, i guess going back now that were going through this introspection, people said that we need to understand latinos. I think we need to begin by understanding our own conservative base. I think we saw it in the primary. I will give you one example, newt gingrich. Immigrationach to was actually pretty good. It was constructive. Remember the last debate of 2011, where he confronted Michele Bachmann and said that if you are from a famil if you are for the family, why de you want to deport so many people . We need to take a comprehensive approach to deal with this issue, and im willing to take the heat. He did not go down in the polls. He actually surged. Restrictionists like to argue that gov. Perry went down in the primary because of this position on immigration but he went down as we know because of problems in the debates. Which had to do with the medication he was taking for back surgery. He is not the most. I not the most erudite candidate, but he is more than he appeared. That will be that you can ba that will be the new campaign slogan. [laughter] everything the candidates were being fed, from karl rove down i remember how karl rove reacted when newt came out with this position on immigration, that is a minority view. It is not a minority view. If you speak out on Immigration Reform and are in favor of it, you will get this tidal wave of manufactured astroturf. It really is astroturf. It appears to be grass roots. When i came out on this, i got attacked, and we got 3000 emails in our office, all the same email, by the way, generated by this ersatz Grass Roots Organization that was attacking me because i was a member of member of the council of Foreign Relations. I was attacked for encouraging my denomination to do Immigration Reform. Then we got to our convention, which is thousands of people elected by their local churches to represent their churches from all across the country. In 2011 in phoenix we voted 80 to 20 in favor comprehensive Immigration Reform, the Southern Baptist convention, one of the most conservative evangelical denominations in the country. I think the republicans and those who want republicans to been need to understand that there are highly organized groups that have a vested interest in fomenting anti immigration feelings. The only way to defeat them is to confront them and to shame them. As far as im concerned, rick perry was being charitable when he called those who booed heartless. As historian, i would say the nativists have lost every one of these debates. From the revolutionary time until now, they lost every one of these debates. If you want to be on the losing side, just be a nativist. It is a recent trend. Our party is not always been this way. You go back to governor bush and how he went into hispanic communities, did not pander to them during election time, went in there with his broken spanish and tried to speak to them and appointed them to boards and commissions. He did that in 2000 and in 2004 and we got 44 of the vote. In texas, 49 . Of . Working shoulder to shoulder with many hispanics, i can tell you they dont like pandering either. They dont enjoy the political process. We need to be a party that learns from that. What has recently happened is exactly what dr. Land said, these groups that are highly finance stand idly funded that have infiltrated the conservative movement have all stirred up fighting and their answer and their solution is to deport. It is population control, its the environment is their god. They dont have anything in common with us. A couple of people they pay up front to be their fair hair and conservative credential the individual. But if you really start peeling back the layers, it will make you cry. Its not conservative. I believe they hijacked the party on this issue and got us fighting on this issue. National conservative authors are claiming that immigration is one of the conservative principals. Since when did this become a conservative principle . We need to use our conservative principles to address the problem and not complain. Its not just about trying to win elections. Its about trying to grow the party. When you come into the restaurant, we welcome you to be there. We want you to feel like you are an home. We need to learn from that as a party. We need to learn that the anti immigration rhetoric that has been displayed is doing more damage than it is good. Ramesh . I should practice my remarks by saying i am in complete agreement that conservatives and republicans need to do better better job of trying to appeal to non white voters. I think we should not kid ourselves about some of the obstacles. We need to start with an accurate look at some of these numbers. We should look at the fact that the claim that bush got 44 of the hispanic vote in 2004 was subsequently retracted. He got something closer to 38 . Still better than 29 . But lets use accurate numbers. Lets also not kid ourselves that hispanic voters are voters who care first and foremost and only about immigration and that once you have solved that problem you are going. To win going. It may be something that helps you have an open door to listen to the rest of your message. Im not suggesting otherwise. Ve sean most hispanics favor the president S Health Care law. They give a different answer than other conservatives about whether you want a bigger government with more services or a Smaller Government with fewer services. They want a much higher minimum wage. These are voters who disagree with conservatives on a lot of policy issues. Talk about wellfunding, there are well funded agency that can come up with ads on the other side as well. Reagan enacted an amnesty in 1986 that people at the time were willing to call an amnesty period in 1988 the republican candidates for president by 29 of the hispanic vote. I hear from people i respect that this is the magic peak, but it is not. Last, one of the problems that republicans have in this election was not just the bad showing among hispanics but a lot of white workingclass voters did not turn out to vote. If you are trying to figure out what to do about that problem as a republican, coming out for anything that can be described as an amnesty would not get the top of your list. Not to suggest that there should not be changes in the republican approach to immigration policy and outreach to different groups, but i am hearing a lot of naivete about how easy its going to be to solve these political problems. Its important note, we always look as a party of who are we and hispanic outreach. Central led ted cruz in texas, we have a hero in marco rubio leading this fight. We have Governor Martinez in the mexico. Brian sandoval in nevada, governor. These are people that are leaders in our party right now. They connect with what are believes are. They generally connect with what our beliefs are. But this immigration the issue over the last 10 years has become very real politics in our party or you dont want to talk about exports. When mitt romney got asked in the debates about immigration it was like a very awkward. He was like, what do i do with my hands . Marcogot to talk about rubio leads the charge on. He talks about immigration. That is what our party needs to talk about. It cannot be an issue that we avoid. Lets go to the audience. A couple of ground rules. We ask that you would until microphone comes around and that you state your question in the form of a question. Right here. And then there. Alex from the cato institute. Seems to be disagreement on the panel about whether a guest worker visa would be a good way to go for. Ramesh has an assimilationist point of view and brad says this is a good way as they can come in legally and weakened take some strain off the black market entry and provide businesses what they need. It seems most hispanic immigrants throughout the history of the u. S. , is a circular flow. Want to come here for five or 10 or 15 years and worked and then go back to their home country with the savings. Since we are not going to get a massive increase in green cards to make up for a number of hispanic workers coming in , aomingcant a why cant Guest Worker Program that served as a solution . I think it can. The report showed 30 of the people here on undocumented status dont want to stay here permanently. They want to come here, make money, then go home and open a garage in monterey, for the same reason a lot of our retirees are moving to mexico, because the american dollar goes a lot further in mexico right now than a dozen u. S. A lot further than it does in the u. S. If they had the cards, they could visit their families and we would have more of these people who would come here to work as a number of years and then go back to their country of origin and want to retain their ties there. 30 of the people here on undocumented status did not come here to stay here permanently and dont want to stay here permanently. That works for them. I think assimilation, if we had a Legal Immigration policy that works and gave a pathway to ilLegal Immigration for the undocumented, they would begin to assimilate at the rate that former immigrant groups have assimilated. The undocumenteds have not assimilated at the same rate because they have to stay in the shadows. Theyre subject to exploitation by unscrupulous people who prey upon them. Theyre not assimilated as quickly as previous immigrant groups have been assimilated. You used the term thats important as we begin this discussion, which is circular migration. That is why we have the problem we have. Dr. Land addressed the issue of those who want to stay. They stay here because to go back would mean leaving and then reentering illegally. So they end up here. Lets also look at the Guest Worker Program not only as a function of the needs of our economy. Its also a profamily approach. You know how many families are broken up in mexico and Central America by people who come here to work, either spouse, their children back home, and never see them. They have a commitment to send remittances, but the a nice start familys here in the United States. It is breaking up families. We cannot guarantee for every Single Person that entries the u. S. A path to citizenship. We have to adopt the concept of circular migration. You will see a lot of people, perhaps a majority, wanting to come here to work and then return to their country. But we have to make it flexible. So when theyre done with their job, they can go back to mexico and then reenter for the next season of work. I think it has to be flexible. It has to reflect the needs of the market. It is precisely the unions to make this argument that the Guest Worker Program is some sort of indentured servitude that the only way we can allow immigrants a path to citizenship. Thats ridiculous. We cannot give a path to citizenship to everyone. In terms of not increasing number of green cards, im not sure we will get to that discussion. Governor romney, a proposal made during the primary which nobody paid attention to, was doing away with quotas for the immediate relatives of permanent residents. That perhaps is an interesting approach to facilitate Legal Immigration, family. We have to consider increasing number of green cards to facilitate more legal migration and allow people to be here permanently. It also comes down to the feds not being effective in running a guest worker background check, but we also need to look at how the states handle it. We have a drivers license departments all over texas. We have the facilities and means to be able to do this. The states or its a lot better than this town works. Go home for thanksgiving and stay a week. You, pierre and it gets gridlock. It is not just it about getting cheaplabor. And it getsoem up gridlocked. We need to make sure we have this discussion and start with solutions versus the rhetoric. I think we may have just witnessed a first, which is somebody at aei holding up the dmv as a form of Efficient Government at work. I guess it really is like a like a whole other country. At least a grand duchy. Maybe folks who are skeptical of conference of reform plans are just ignorant and somehow diabolically well funded, buy i think folks who are for these sorts of reforms have to listen to themselves and think if i am saying this will all resulted in a circular to migratory flow and its all going to work out perfectly and its not and its going to be perfectly administratively feasible and we will have the political will to enforce limits on the Guest Worker Program when we have not had the political will to do so yet and our lack of saying is one of the major reasons we have for arguing for it, maybe people are just not going to quiet buy ut. Buy it. If the impetus for the temporary worker problem is theres a political problem for conservatives and republicans, that cannot possibly be the solution to it, because you will be instantly outflanked. There will be an argument the says you want folks to work hard here and you dont want them to become citizens or voters, you dont want them to have full political rights. Thats not going to be winning message. You will always look like you are stingier and warehouse style to hispanics. That argument is correct. Thats why it will have that bite. We have a question here. From George Washington university, fred. My question relates not to the cheap labor or to the highly qualified. To be holding member but rather someone that went to undergraduates here or grant school and is trying to find a place in society its always attached to your employer. You lose your freedom of movement and lose part of the freemarket labor that americans have and have taken for granted. Your health care attacked to your citizenship, scarier than that is having your permanent status in the country being attached to your lawyer. Howd you address a person thats not in the lower tier or the top tier, but just a middle class type of person which is what makes part of the American Society . As part of the naturally permanent residency process, we have two mechanisms come with his familybased immigration visa or employmentbased. Even those who come here to work, they could be petitioned as immigrants and eventually become citizens. The question is perhaps we need more immigrant visas for workers. One of the interesting things that happened in the last congress, which was not reported, because republicans are antiimmigrant, was a bill introduced by congressman schiff it chafits which passed the bill overwhelmingly. What it did was it did away with quotas for employmentbased immigrant visas and for family based its doubled them. I think theres room here, because we do need people with. Dvanced degrees if it is an employmentbased job, we need to increase that number so there are more employmentbased visas available so more can become permanent residents and eventually citizens. If i could also say, i completely agree with your question. I think that the linkage to a particular employer is the problematic part of this policy. If you want an immigration policy that meets u. S. Economic need, then maybe what you do is cut back on the use of immigration to reunite extended families and increase skilled immigration and not have it so tied to a particular employer precisely to serve the cause of the labor markets. One of the things the council on Foreign Relations task force did was we wrestled with this, was to cut back on extended families and people to nuclear families. The number just would gastronomical otherwise and opens it up for the kind of thing you are. Talking are the whole system is broken and needs to be fixed. I think we need to understand something. We are a unique country. We are the only country in the world that is a credal country. Anybody can become an american. If they are willing to pledge allegiance to the secular creed la augustid out in the declaration of independence. If i lost my mind, i probably could go through all the Legal Provisions and become a citizen of france. Thank god, that still would not make me a frenchman. Anybody can go through the Legal Provisions and, an american. The great thing about our country, i lived in england three years and i enjoyed it. But its a really boring place compared to america. The reason is everyone of our immigrant groups that have come to this country, even the ones that were brought here forcibly, jazz, our cuisine, our language, everything has been enriched by every immigrant group. They have contributed to our culture. We are not saying you should suppress that. We have columbus day parade for italianamericans. We have polish american rates. We have Cinco De Mayo and texas. Even have angloamerican events. Daughters of the revolution, a commemoration, though not much of the celebration. The emphasis has to be on the right still. The right syllable. You are hispanicamerican, italianamerican. I spoke to someone from germany who chose to become an american. I asked why. He said you have so much more freedom here. In germany there are tremendous expectations about what you are supposed to do and how you are supposed to behave, based on your family background. Here you are free. We want people who yearn from that freedom to come to the United States. They always have. We want them to continue to do so. It is what makes us americans. We have a question here. If you could ask your question and then hand over the microphone. I am a canadian working in the u. S. On an stage one visa, a process i would not wish on my worst enemy an h1 visa. How would you address the reforms for those who want to come to the u. S. To work . And i agree with his point on the emphasis being on work and to boost the economy and pay taxes in the american tradition. Would we have to only get a job if there was not one for american if there was one for american . And on boosting wages for all levels. Thank you very much. Go ahead and ask your question and then we will take both. I am a firstgeneration immigrant and a new york republican, which basically means i have to be democrats everywhere else. I want to be intent where the Republican Party is going and everything. How can the Republican Party become a big party again, how it was under Ronald Reagan . I feel the Republican Party is slowly becoming a smaller and Smaller Party and throwing people out like me or other republicans saying youre not a real republican or things like that. And the Democratic Party is going the opposite direction. They were the small party in the 1980s and late 1970s. Now they are the Inclusive Party bringing in latinos and blacks beforehand, and all these other groups. How can the Republican Party switch and start to be more inclusive . Why dont we take the first question first . Anybody want to address that . The visa, the process is broken. I would like to give an example. The entire agriculture community, growing fruits and vegetables to anything agricultural, thousands and thousands of pieces are applied for. Less than 2 of their entire work force is approved for visa. 50 foreign work force in majorleague baseball and 100 of their visas are improve d. Who does more for the economy . That shows how broken our system is there are so many jobs available. I was watching a program last night with the skilled workforce, how Skilled Labor is an issue. Having immigrants come to our country is what our country is about and how it was founded. This is a discussion we need to have and look for. Currently i have talked to many people, especially in georgia, how cumbersome is. So we need to streamline that and make it more efficient. I think the states can help a lot with that and cut the red tape. Correct the second question, it seems to me that the Republican Party is the party thats far more tolerant of dissension than the Democratic Party. I remember bob casey not being allowed to speak at the Democratic Convention because he was prolife. We have prolife and prochoice republicans. Name me a prolife democrat other than bob casey senior. We have a prolife we of pro traditional marriage republicans and we have homosexual and lesbian republicans. Name me protraditional marriage Democrat National figure. The Democratic Party has been ever since the new deal a collection of Interest Groups and ethnicities. The Republican Party has been the big tent party. I think it still is the big tent party. Where it has lost its place is it has nominated people like governor romney, who is a really nice guy and who i think wouldve been a pretty good president , but he speaks conservatism as a second language. I severely am conservative. Nobody who is really conservative has ever said i am severely conservative. It is an oxymoron. We need theres nothing wrong with the Republican Party that better candidates and better messaging would not solve. I think marco rubio would be no wonderful hispanic version of Ronald Reagan. Let me quickly, on the h1 visa, the problem with the frustration sometimes is not necessarily an order can be a problem with the processing, but it is with the caps. Right now is 66 or 65. Do we need more than 65,000 people with advanced degrees . Absolutely. So thats the problem. I dont know if its necessarily the processing. Let me defend Immigration Services for a minute, because ive served six years there. The processing of adjustment of status to green cards to permanent resident green cards, naturalization decisions are actually being processed by now fairly quickly. You can naturalize in this country in less than six months. A lot of the problems right now are the number of visas available are not enough. Let me quickly addressed the issue of the party. Part of immigration discussion and what the antiimmigrant folks of wanted to do was to scare republicans by saying that latinos would never be republican. I heard some comments made and i disagree with him, because it is a generalization that i hear many times about latinos. They say that it shows a lack of understanding about the Latino Community. They are opening businesses three times as fast as the national average. Latinos are people of faith. The majority of latinos believe in the right to life, by 66 compared to about 40 of the rest of the population. On marriage, latinos were decisive to pass proposition 8 in california, 53 of latinos voted for proposition 8 in california. We are extremely conservative. We also have to understand theres a big difference latinon the old na community of 20 or 30 years ago, the cesar chavez era, those in new york and those in the southwest since the u. S. To over parts of mexico, and then the new latino population that is 40 foreignborn, and the rest are children of immigrants, very conservative. When asked about the government they may give answers that are not extraordinary. Sometimes we get tangled. We have seen this in this election cycle. On specific issues, if we had a better understanding on where they are coming from and a better understanding of why theyre answering the questions that way. With the Latino Community i believe we lost the latino vote because of immigration. If we wouldve had a better position on immigration from the get go, from the primary, governor romney would been competitive and he wouldve been competitive in battleground states where the latino vote was decisive. Finally, we have to stop being rockefeller republicans. We are not the party of the 47 . When governor romney said what he did last week, that obama won because of gifts to latinos and other minorities, that is insulting. Latinos did not vote for obama because of obamacare. I think he is engaging obama in the same type of class warfare discussion that obama wants to have. I think we have to go back to the conservative populism of Ronald Reagan, which is to talk about the economy but Say Something else. Romney very quickly. We cannot run only on an economic message. Exactly. React before conservatives on social issues, on national issues, and on the economy. And aspirational americanism, where you are free to go as far as you want to go and to do what you want to do. You are right about hispanic community, especially, they are very entrepreneurial. When they start Small Businesses, they start like the Big Government less. Were out of time. I want to thank you all for coming today. Please join me in thanking our panelists for this terrific discussion. Thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2012] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2012] the head of the Nasdaq Stock Exchange gives his thoughts on the impact of the fiscal cliff on. Capital on these in washington to speak at the brookings institution. Our live coverage is at 1 00 eastern. Tonight we bring you live coverage as former abc news anger ted koppel talks about the future of network news. He is interviewed by a former cbs reporter. They will touch on the changes in network news caused by the digital age. That is at 8 00 eastern. [video clip] how does one adequately express his feelings about a special friend . When that friend is also a world icon, a National Hero of unimaginable proportions, and a legend whose name will live in history long after all here today have been forgotten . Fate click the down kindly on us when she chose neil to be the first adventurist to another world and to have the opportunity to look back from space at the beauty of our home. It could have been another, but it wasnt. And it wasnt for a reason. No one could have accepted the responsibility of his remarkable accomplishments with more dignity and more grace than neil armstrong. He embodied all that is good and all that is great about america. More from Memorial Service for neil armstrong, thanks sitting day on cspan at 10 00 a. M. Eastern. It just before 11 30, a behind thescenes look at life as a teenager in the white house with susan ford and linda johnson. Just after 1 00, scientists using gaming skills and gaming. To solve more problems. Florida republican senator marco rubio was in iowa over the weekend as the keynote speaker at a political fundraiser for republican Governor Terry branstad. The event marked the governor 65th birthday and took place in altoona, iowa. This is about 45 minutes. Are you ready . It is now my honor to introduce tonights great speaker senator marco rubio. [applause] senator rubio first served in the Florida House of representatives from 2000 to 2008 and was elected to the u. S. Senate in 2012. In the u. S. Senate, he serves on commerce, science and transportation, Foreign Relations, intelligence, and Small Business and entrepreneurship committee. He has the courage and tenacity to stand up to washingtons reckless spending and assaults on the Free Enterprise system. He is the type of elected officials that we need to restore fiscal discipline in this country and champion job creation. If you ask me, america can expect great things from this man in the years to come. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm iowa welcome to senator marco rubio. [applause] thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. So does think beeps like that again, i will note that means. In this mean to cut it off. Im honored to be here today. I want to thank all of you for having me and to the governor for inviting me. Far from apeople so florida care what i have to say. This is bill touching to be here. Im glad to be back in this part of the country. I was here in this part of the country earlier in my life in 1989 and 1990 i came to a small school in northwest missouri called tar heel college. Its no longer around, but its not my fault. [laughter] maybe someone is not happy the college is not around. People ask me all the time why i went there to northwest missouri. It was the only school in america that would allow me to play football. [laughter] delaware laughed. I would have been in the National Football league had it not been for my lack of size, speed, and talent. [laughter] im glad to be here for the second anniversary of your 65th birthday. Its great to be here. Lets address right up front the elephant in the room, because any time anyone makes a trip to iowa, people start speculating about what you are going to in the future and all that. I am not now and nor will i ever be extended for office of coordinator of for offensive coordinator of iowa. [laughter] i know there are rumors. But thats not so. What i thought i would do in a few minutes is share my impression in the aftermath of the election. Ive heard a lot of people a little discouraged by it. I had the privilege of travelling this country on behalf of governor mitt romney, who is an extraordinary person, extraordinary human being and i believe would benefit, president. We wish him all the best and hope he stays involved in the american political process. [applause] but were having this conversation now, for those of us who believe in limited government conservatism, which is a lot of view, is my guess, about what its all about, what the future is about for us and where we stand. I begin by saying its not about the Republican Party. This is about limited government conservatism. The Republican Party is the home of that movement, but thats whats in debate, about what it means in this new century. Lets be clear that limited government conservatism has never been decided by president ial elections. Where you can find the true meaning of limited government conservatism is in states like this where governors like yours are applying tried and true principles to the modern problems of the 21st century. As i said to suppress on the way in asking if america had a 5. 1 and promised rate, we would all be very happy as you should be with your governor and the work your Lieutenant Governor carol and legislature are doing here. A 5. 1 unemployment rate. You deserve to be congratulated for [applause] that] for those of us in federal office is how you apply the principles of limited government and Free Enterprise to the problems of the 21st century . Thats the fundamental question. Thats what we need to focus on moving forward. Lets define problem. The problem we are facing is and ive talked to a lot of people across the country and ive gathered this from talking to a lot of people in my home state of florida, you can pick up a lot of good insight in the checkout lines across restores, picking your kids up from school, and traveling across the country, as i have had the opportunity to do. Years the fundamental problem, our economy has stagnated particularly for the middle class. The fact is today workers are not making as much as they once made in jobs like that 10 or 25 years ago. I think of the jobs my parents had. My father was a bartender at events like this. My mother was a hotel maid at the cashier and a stock clerk. There were able to provide a standard of living not rich, we never had everything we wanted but everything we needed. My parents were able to provide us that standard of living with those jobs. Its very difficult to do that nowadays. Are middleclass has stopped growing. Wages in the middle class have stopped growing as well. Private Health Insurance is hard to find. Theres 45 million americans that have no Health Insurance coverage today. Health care costs are taking a bigger bite out of their monthly paychecks. This issue of our middle class been under assault and feeling threatened, this is not just an economic problem. This is a problem that goes to the core of what america is. Heres what i mean. Every country in the world has rich people. Unfortunately, every country in world has poor people. One of the things that made america exceptional is the vibrant middle class that anyone could aspire to be a part of, no matter where you started in life or where you came from, the matter what the circumstances of your works. The great promise of america is everyone would have the opportunity if they work hard, played by the rules, to go as far as their talents and work ethic would take them. This goes to the core of who we are as a people and as a nation. Its one of the few things that sets us apart from the rest of the world. When we talk about the middle class in america, we are talking about the excellence of larsen nation and as a people. Before you can solve any problem, you have to know the causes are. The domain causes of whats happening today to middleclass americans. Two main causes. A first is our economy is not growing fast enough, its not creating middleclass jobs that pay people enough money so they can have the kind of life to give their kids the kind of opportunities my parents gave me and your parents gave you. Second problem is too many of our people dont have the skills to take advantage of the jobs that are being created. Ive not had a chance to talk to the governor about this, but ive heard from others in the states that this is a state with low unemployment and jobs are being created. This struggle sometimes to fill some positions because people dont have the skills to do the jobs that are being created that to pay the middle class type wages. The economy is not going for a number of reasons. Globalization is real. This change the way the economy functions. It has moved jobs overseas. The other reality is automation is real. My wife, when we were still dating and about to get married, even in the frontier of our marriage, she was a bank teller. There are not that many bank tellers and more. You can deposit nortek by taking a picture on your phone. Is that a bad or good thing . It is what it is. Byyou can deposit your check taking a picture on your phone. On the federal level we dont have what you have on the state level, which is stable political leadership. Thats a leadership that understands your government if it spends more money than it takes in, runs into trouble. The understanding that it generates money through taxes, if taxes are too high, it discourages people from investing. If tax rates are unpredictable, it scared them away. The leadership that understands we have regulations. What the air to be breathable and water to be drinkable. If the rules are not part of a costbenefit analysis, if you are not weighing the cost of the regulation with the impact positive or negative that it will have a, you will have some pretty bad regulations. We dont have any of that. Government has contributed to the climate of poor growth. Gluck of the fiscal cliff. You look at the fiscal cliff. Congress made that. The idea that we should have an enormous tax increases at the same time as we have a dramatic cuts in spending at the same exact time that all the taxes expire, at the same moment the spending goes down in a dramatic fashion in an uncontrolled way, that was not an accident. Congress shows that. The fiscal cliff is a complete creation of a Political Branch in washington. It is an example of a dysfunctional processed that threatens our economy and millions of people across our economy. What about the uncertainty out there on what the tax regulations willoughby court, what taxes will be on what the tax regulations will be . All the uncertainty discourages people from investing their money in america, because thats how the economy grows. When someone has access to money decides to take it out of the bank and instead of buying bars of gold, they decide to use it to invest in the economy and open up a new business. People are afraid to do that in a country with a 16 trillion debt and no plan to fix it it, taxes it cannot predict, regulations it cannot plan for, and an Energy Policy that this incentivizes the growth of manufacturing and other industries. Izes. Isincentiv societal breakdown, we have significance as vital problems in america. The breakdown of the American Family has a direct impact on our economic wellbeing. I often hear people talk about social conservatives, fiscal conservative. The social and moral wellbeing of your people is directly linked to their economic well being. You cannot separate them. The fact of the matter is it is startling to see what an enormous advantage is in life when a child is raised in a stable home by two parents. Its the greatest gift my parents gave me. It was not a big house or a College Savings account. It cannot afford that. But they gave me developing. They gave me and my siblings a valuable thing. I was raised in a strong and stable home where my parents loved each other and live together and made us feel loved and encouraged to dream. Many kids dont find themselves in that circumstance. There are some heroics Single Parents out there, but they would be the first ones to tell you how difficult is. Of course it extends beyond that. Millions of children every year are born out of wedlock in that country in this country. Millions of kids growing up in dangerous neighborhoods in substandard housing with no access to health care, from a broken family where maybe their grandmother is raising them because they never met their father and the mamas working two jobs. These kids are starting out life with five strikes against them. Its going to be difficult for them to get ahead unless someone does something. These are the factors of societal breakdown and the manifest themselves in our economy. If we need to understand that. There are other issues and you are dealing with them in this state. We need a 21st century a curriculum. We have to educate our kids to have the skills to do the jobs of the 21st century. Wed do a better job at adult registration. There are plenty of people ive met in their late 20s and early 1930s and maybe they made a mistake of not going to school when they were younger and now they want to attain their lives. We have to figure out how to get them back in programs so they can acquire a skill or trade. My sister did that in her mid 30s raising her two boys by herself. She was able to go back to school and get her degree in education and a masters in special education and change her life completely. We have to do that, people. College costs are significant. Not just going to school like i did. I transferred back to the university of florida and graduated with exorbitant student debt from law school. Sallie mae kept taking 700 out of my account every month. [laughter] some months when you add up all my student loans, i spent more on that than any other expense. I knew that going into it, but we have to do something about that as well. We have too many kids graduating with enormous debt load and they dont even know it. They have no idea how much its going to cost to pay it back. And they are studying for careers that will never pay them enough money to pay it back. Now that ive given you the problems, what are the solutions . We start with a simple notion. The way to turn our economy around is not by making rich people poor. Its about making poor people richer. Thats the way to move our country forward. [applause] it starts with economic growth. What can government do but the federal level to get the economy growing again . Your governor, looked at him. How about balancing your budget and dealing with your debts so you dont have it . How about tax rates that generate the revenue government needs but that are not so high or unpredictable that people are not afraid to invest in your economy . How about the regulatory process that takes into account the cost of regulation and not just the theoretical benefits of those regulations . How about an investment in Energy Policy and not just Energy Politics . The u. S. Is the most Energy Rich Country the world with a wide portfolio of Energy Resources including resources you are pioneering here. Thats not just good for creating jobs and for the fact allows us to be independents, it allows American Manufacturing to be competitive again. We have been losing all these jobs for decades because labor costs were lower overseas. If we could Lower Energy Costs in america, all kinds of American Manufacturing is viable again. Manufacturing jobs are middle class jobs. They allow people to raise their families, to buy a house, take a vacation, their kids to college, or to get ahead in life. If we had a viable Energy Policy, we would be so much further ahead in our economic growth. After deal with health care. We do have Health Insurance problem in america. But a Big Government solution is not the answer. We need to figure a way to empower people to have access to a vibrant private market where they can buy insurance they need at a price they can afford from any company in america that will sell it to them. We need federal policies that encourage toward reform, the driving up the cost of health care across america. We need sound monetary policy. The federal reserve, its role should be to have a stable currency, not to intervene in the economy artificially, creating even more uncertainty. Theres all kinds of other things. You know agriculture is important. You realize the opportunity . Millions of people around the world are merging into the middle class. That means they buy more stuff around the world including food. Many of the countries they live in cannot produce the food they want to consume. Thats where we come in. If thats where American Manufacturing has the opportunity for an extraordinary 21st century renaissance. How about free but fair trade . We need to find more markets that buy stuff we built. Millions of people can afford to buy it now. I think we need to modernize our Legal Immigration system. This is the most generous country the world when it comes to immigrants. 1 Million People per year immigrate here illegally. No other country comes close to that figure. But the system needs to be modernized. It needs to take into account the opportunities that it creates for investors and our visa process for tourism needs to be approved. Now they have a middleclass emerging from around a country, it can mean millions of dollars in places all across the country. Im a little selfish being from florida. We have a couple places in Central Florida and one of them has a mouse, but all across the country we have opportunities for business. These are the elements. There are other things government can do and they are being pioneered at the state level. The second part of it yet to do is prepare our people. And starts with the family structure. We have to be clear with people there are consequences of societal breakdown. Our government cannot do anything to undermine those institutions of society that of always been the ones that help strengthen our families. We must rethink to ensure federal policy does not allow that rampant. We need a 21st century education system. I believe in early touted education. I believe in 21st century curriculum that teaches kids what they need to learn and succeed in the 21st century. Your Lieutenant Governor is a leader in stem education. We need more that because thats where the world is going, to a Knowledge Base economy that were struggling to compete in. We are comparing our kids to compete with children in mississippi and alabama when theyre actually competing with kids in china and india. We must raise our standard. Why have we stigmatized Vocational Education . Why have we stigmatized Career Education . There are kids who dont want to go to harvard. One depicts airplane engines. Its a good paying job that god has given them the talent to do. They want to fix airplane engines. And College Affordability i have touched upon, and Adult Education is important. All these things matter. I conclude by saying frustration is real. So many people on my side of the aisle and my party and the governors party. A lot of frustration about the outcome of the elections. I have heard people say im not getting involved anymore, i will just focus on my family and my community and leave politics to others. Others have suggested maybe the american electorate has changed, that what people want from government now is they will vote for whoever promises them more. I dont believe thats true. I cannot believe thats true. If it were, the nature of our country has changed forever. That cannot happen. I dont believe thats true. I really dont. All i think most people are like my parents. All they want is a job that pays them enough money so they can buy a house, take their kids on a trip every once in awhile, dues and think they enjoyed in life, and leave their kids better off than themselves. The problem is those jobs are not being created as fast as they once were and too many of them dont have the skills to do the jobs being created. Thats what they want. I think that is who we still are as a people. I dont think that is changed. I think what has happened is that are those that made promises to them, who have told them we have a bigger Government Programs that do this at its peak in tax one group of people so we can pay for services for the group, so they convince people maybe thats a solution to the problem. Big government does not help the people trying to make it. It hurts them. Everywhere and every time it has been tried, Big Government questioned the people trying to get ahead. The people who have made it. The millionaires and billionaires and big corporations, theres nothing wrong with those folks. They can hire the best lawyers in america and the best accountants. If they dont like the laws, they can hire the best lobbyists in washington to change the laws. Who cannot deal with it is the Small Business owner tried to start a business out of the Spare Bedroom of their home. They cannot afford to deal with the cost of compliance of Big Government. Big government creches people try to make it. Thats why practice. The world, 6000 years of recorded history, almost anyone that is ever lived, almost every person that has ever lived has been poor and disenfranchised. Why throughout the history of the world. Even in many parts of the world what we have today is rent. That is important, because if america declines, theres nothing to take our place. There is no other country, theres no other organization, theres nothing to be what we are. Theres no other country. What country will serve as an inspiration to people over the world that have been told their whole lives pin on their freedom because you cannot govern a country where people are allowed to express their opinion . We express our opinions. What hope is there for people around the world that are told you can only do the job your mother or father did, because thats your station in life . But they can look to america and see someone just like them who accomplished extraordinary things. If america decline, the part of our example, this appears, what takes its place it . The answer is nothing takes its place. Your children and grandchildren will inherit not just a diminished country. They will inherit a diminished world. Darker in heart. What is at stake is not just our country. It is the way life is on this planet. That is worth fighting for. Would ban means to me is we need to a better job of going out and convincing our fellow americans who perhaps dont see things the way we do, that Free Enterprise and limited government is the best way forward for them, but free government and limited limited government and Free Enterprise is the only system that has ever allowed people to climb out of the circumstances of their birds. Of their birds