Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20161002

And worked on kennedys campaign. All of these people help make me the people that i am today. Youve a lot of people here at the National Book festival watching it right now. A bunch of young people here as well. What do you tell them . Their parents want to know. Thank you for being here. Stay in school get the best possible education that you can get be helpful, be optimistic and be happy. Dont get lost in the sea of despair. Here is the book. As the illustrator. Nominated a frat National Book award. This is again a book three representative lewis has written to others in graphic novel form. For longer conversation with congressman lewis. They sat down with him for three hours on her our indepth program. If you go to our website type and representative john lewis include the word book otherwise you will get all sorts of videos from the sea stand archives we sat down for three hours. You can put them together, you can put freemarket economics and your values together and your politics thats what i was so fascinated about in your book because the book is as you talk about, this emphasis of faith and ethics, economics, Public Service and the fact is as a lot of people seem to know you and your surprise victory, as a House Majority leader you are the only person of the history of the us house to be a House Majority leader and bats as you note in your book when a lot of people here about dave brat and all the media shows up but one of the things about your book is it tells you who dave brat is and im wondering if you could talk a little bit about the synthesis and overview and will go into detail on some of the things here about how there is this sight line between ethics and economics and politics. Guest thats primarily why i wrote the book. Sometimes conservative ideas go back to reagan and the founders and the primary goal was to show no, its about a 4000 year tradition and i wish everything with was a synthesis these days when you go to grad school these days and phd in economics or whatever all the incentives are highly flawed, you do some narrow little thing whereas all previous scholars of the last thousand whatever hundred years it was about synthesis, all the greatest people, socrates and the Judeo Christian tradition all the way up through enlightenment thinkers, jefferson, madison, they all took the classics. Hebrew, latin and they took math and sciences and rhetoric and the language and that was a liberal sciences education. I taught at a liberal college for 18 years, i believe theres so much in that synthesis that i wanted to show folks hey, whether i did a great job were not , it should hang together and the ethics dont match up with the economic byproduct like karl marx. He couldnt line up economic incentives with his ethics and its due to failure whereas adam smith and the enlightenment guys with jefferson and madison, those guys do lineup and mesh and i see it in the book but most of them wanted a large number of small competitors. Market ideals and madison, he wanted a large number of actions and people competing against each other and that works, both of those go together and these are not teaching enough of the kids enough of that these days i wanted to put out 200 pages, its a first edition,if i get better over time. Guest one of the things i was struck by with this is the elementary aspect of as you put it in the subhead, ethics, economics and politics and this is from page 27. I was really interested by this. You said god worked six days and rested on the seventh. That presumes private property. Youre not covered, that will presume the right to hold that maybe commented. The basis in judeochristian religious tradition that permeates Public Policy from your perspective i find to be fascinating. You set on page 27, our founding was an important part in the history of faith. Can you tell us more about why you see our founding as important in the history of faith . The one thing our founders did not see, they saw very clearly in the constitutional structure but you just got added. They could not see a day where the Judeo Christian tradition wasnt taken as a given. They were there right now, thats debatable so theres all this debate now on jeffersons wall of separation between art and state. We want that, the First Amendment is about that, the tradition of church and state and the press and etc. , no establishment of a religion but free exercise thereof so that third edition but its interesting, the left, i say the left a little in the book in terms of the soul of the American University, thats one of the books i referenced and i went to princeton seminary and we said lets make a deal. Lets move the seminole seminary across track. We found it. The puritans, 1640, same thing. We found these great traditions and said a Secular Society, we are sharing, a winwin group. We takethe school, the seminary across what youve got to teach ethics. It was assumed. It was going to be socrates, plato, aristotle in the catholic tradition. Now the left has not only taken those schools but said you can no longer teach ethics. Those theres no natural law, if you bring up tradition in a brown bag you get left out of the room. Everyone talks about separation of church and state but its interesting to see, paul riley when he looked at the first bus the multileft out his chair. That kind of separation, no law . No 10 commandments in our Secular Society . I dont think so. I show compassion and love code up about zero. Rome was the most loved society. Thats the example, cold and sterile and Brutal Society that encompasses the love at zero. You want separation of compassion and love from tradition . To the left, i know what they mean. Theydont want religious establishment but if you do the total separation we also , the left agrees with us on human rights claims and human rights are only in western europe at about 1400 out of Judeo Christian tradition so those rights we argue in our tradition, they precede the existence of government. So do you want separation of that . Therights of this, yes, sir no . I wanted to push the thinking a little bit. We are at war right now with a tradition who has a hard time with the First Amendment and religious tradition so i wanted to push the ideas out in public and get a good debate going so thats part of what we want. Guest host i mention the catholic tradition, later in the book how you delve into the works of Saint Augustin and thomas aquinas. I find that obviously my faith informs pretty much everything i do, how i live my life. How does your faith as its clear in your book but talk about how your faith informs your Public Service and your approach to service in the us house of representatives . Guest its kind of biographical. I was born in detroit, grew up in michigan, moved to minnesota in ninth grade, thanks dad. My girl is starting ninth grade. You went to hold college in michigan, protestant tradition. Went to work at Arthur Andersen in business in detroit for a little while and went to princeton seminary. The seminary, i went down to wesley in dc and American University and there was a great liberal friend of mine bill walton who wrote economics and ethics in the same book so that was the fire. I knew i wanted to teach philosophy and theology in college and once i saw that combination of economics and ethics in a book, that was it. I went to work for the army a little bit and for the world bank for a couple of years in the philippines on Education Sector stuff and my wife and was lucky enough, we moved down to randolph Rankin College to teach economics and ethics. I ran the Business Department and the ethics Minor Program for 18 years so thats how i live it out. It is my calling, putting those two things together and keeping the conversation going so a lot of this book is old lectures. Host this is not a memoir, its a book about economics and philosophy. But you did touch on what you just mentioned here which was closing in on your phd. This is not a memoir, theres not much detail around that. Im sure the viewers would like to know a little more story there. Kathy and i consider you both friends, shes a wonderful woman. Tell us how you keep the meter and then get married. Guest a mutual friend set up a blind date so it was awkward at first, one of those things, how are you doing . We started talking and we just had values in common. Kids, family, and we said really . In dc i met a normal person . I love it up here. Im joking. We had the same judeochristian ethics outlook. Im catholic now so you see that one. I love where were going. Host married how long . Guest 21 years since Johnson College so weve been a sad household. Host drop the oldest one off at college, any tears shed . Guest it hit me way hard. Shes been home more and im up here three weeks out of the month so thats not good but it hits when you see an empty room walking by every night, its not good. Host both mom and dad, jonathan not so much. Guest hes doing all right. He is working law at richmond, hes smart going to that one. Host a lot of people are. I wanted to come back to Something Else you talk about in the book that i think is really telling because you touch on obviously our founding which is something those of us from virginia, obviously the founders so many of them and you talk about not just the horizontal separation but you mentioned senator mike lee area but also not just across the three separate branches of the federal government but vertical as well because as the states were about to be a check on executive Branch Authority and growth. Guest absolutely. Host doesnt seem to be working out in that regard. Can you talk about what youre seeing in terms of the horizontal and vertical imbalances and the problem that creates as a country and the government. Guest i will go back real quick to medicine, i went to princeton seminary. And after he was done with his undergrad he studied hebrew. This is a smart guy so the hebrew tradition, i was asking in my stump speech how long did it take human nature to fall . Three chapters. If thats the tradition that informs your thinking and youre the author of the constitution what do you do . You break the power every way you can, horizontally, vertically and the separation of federal, state and local, there are 14 enumerated power in the constitution and since then we violated that beyond comprehension. Mike has a picture in his office where in 2013 the house did about five inches bill and the executive branch did 11. If you get to the fence where we are upside down, we are and we all know that executive overreach for several years every day but we have to push things back and the easiest way to see the direct bottom line is the data. Federal programs are the ones that are installment. Medicare, Social Security are both in installments by the board of trustees reports my 18 years. Everything defense touches, in 10 years all federal revenues will go to just those entitlement programs. We wont have a dollar left for the military, education, transportation and thats not me. Thats the best data up here, its the main graph of the Budget Committee. Thats kind of evidence whereas virginia is a very wellrun state. People think we are antigovernment, were not antigovernment. If you want power at the local level, vote on it. Go buy flowers. You want to wellrun state with transportation and education, education is in the constitution of the state. An excellent education. Its in the constitution. We have to, we should do that but the fed, ive got pants on fire by saying we debated what on the Education Committee and we did, i dont know how they found it but check again you guys. But we debated. Whats on the salad bar at the local school on a federal level. Host you note in here in this point, you said the vertical component is federalism and governments to the state and local level where it was intended to be. Even if someof the implications are a few conservatives may not like and i thought that was an interesting point. The case. Guest thats right. If the people vote, the key is we are supposed to be democratic republic. That doesnt mean you get to win every debate, it means you have a fair process. If the folks vote more flowers and you are a fiscal hawk, you lose. Then you move with your feet area. Host hold them accountable. Guest theres still freedom, theres a large number of options. Host people want to point out the federal government is the creation of the state. The states are not a creation of the federal government and its remarkable to me how few people realize that area i thought your point about the federalist checks and balances, its overlooked a lot of the time because we are concerned about the sampling of the separation of powers between legislative and judicial branches and the separate branch abuse there is powerfully evident when it comes to overwriting properly the prerogatives of the state. We see so many cases in this regard obviously for virginians , how important it is for a power plant and the epa overviews and overreach there, its been devastating for west virginia. 23 states have said weve got to stop them, were not among them that i sure hope the legislative branch at the federal level upholds the state prerogative when it comes to that executive Branch Overreach and put a stop to it. Guest it is important to note how this is come about. People think its the executive branch doing a power grab, in some respects its our own fault. Toby weighed on the judicial side, theres hot button issues out there and politicians dont want to vote. They are tough votes, you take two or three tough votes you might get kicked out so we arranged to save the judiciary, now we are doing the same thing with the executive, giving them all sorts of power. We tell the executive branch of the government youre going to make the law, implement it, determine what the plan is and you given in law the federal government tremendous power and now like you say, power transfers in virginia is learning what that looks like. Theyre having a hard time staying afloat so we need to retain article on Area Congress shall make all law. Host . Talk about fouts, is that one of the reasons you raced on a proponent of term limits and are you term limiting yourself . You are. Guest i turned myself 12 years. I got a couple offers, and i just looked, leadership, and if you got your eye on becoming a leadership chairman, theres nothing wrong with that. Seniority and wisdom goes along with that but the money is so dominant. We just had at the president ial level, on the republican side and democratic side 80 percent of outside votes going president ial and we put in all the income is again roughly in congress so it is an amazing power of the purse in winning elections. On top of the money part, people are finding themselves out to be chairman of a committee. People want to do that but if you vote in lockstep with leadership in order to get that flat, just start looking, bothsides do this. Youre not doing whats best for the country all the time. Host its also consistent with the founders, with citizen legislature. As you know, i ran for the senate. It was then that i would serve no longer than two terms. I think its important that that be the mindset and that be the mentality. Speaking of the founders, do you have a favorite founder and who is it and why . Guest probably madison because of the secretary and i love his constitution, that kind of thing but washington is interesting to me because he stands out. Theres all these guys in jefferson if you are in virginia is big and there are plenty, we are blessed with this history in virginia but washington, the more i read on him hes the one guy that everybody liked. You walked into a room and hes the man. Everybody revered him. They just deferred automatically so you dont quite get to see my wife but you just want to see whats look on the guys face, who is this guy that all these great men who have egos turned to him and say this is it. Host thats mine. I live on one of his old farms. In mount vernon and ill tell you a story, i was over on a business trip in london and i was talking to a british historian and i mentioned to him, we were talking about the founding and i said many of us including me believe theres a divine inspiration and Divine Providence in the founding of america and we look at these founders and i told him about living near mount vernon and a funny point, he said its possible the British Empire could have defeated George Washington George Washington, thomas jefferson, james madison, benjamin franklin, john adams, the whole lot of them no way. Its really remarkable. Guest it is remarkable. Host youre talking here again, this underpinning of the moral case for Free Enterprise that we make in this which i think is missing often from conservative commentary. And from the republican side. I believe like you do that Economic Growth and opportunity, upward mobility and as our Republican Party says, Free Enterprise system sets the fire of human needs and economic justice. You make that point impressively in the book on this page 198, freedom and earnings. The next graph shows the incomes of the people and the bottom, 10 percent of earners in four Different Countries from the least market oriented to the most free market oriented, more fare better under capitalism, always. History, data is solid. Those that dont have the book, go out and buy the book, american underdog. This chart is definitive proof of that. And one of the things we also talk about here, we mention work. We understand theres not just economic value and labor, asa phd you know thats the case that there is Human Dignity to work. A market economy that has Dynamic Growth allows people to fulfill the dignity of work. But this data, why dont more people understand it and where is this being enamored by socialism . Guest unfortunately the political divide, i grew up with liberals and the liberal, the root word of liberal is liberty. Adam smith is a Classical Liberal and so is adam smith but the lines of gotten confused. Its not just income, i ran thousands of regressions on all indicators, all the things liberals want. Guess where you have the cleanest environment . Capitalism. Guess where you have the most women in government capitalism. Guess where you have the highest paid rate for women, capitalism. Most Political Rights . Then you talk about the dignity of work and one of my favorite scholars is feature, she gets a six volume set and shes chicago train but i think shes done phd, phd in economics out of chicago and literature, well read. Just incredible person. And her book says the cause of modern Economic Growth darted about 1700s. Until 1700, every person on the planet made 1000 a year per capita income and in 1700, you get a hockey stick. Boom, mass Economic Growth. She takes on 20 nobel laureate. My favorite guys, capital, human capital, industrial revolution, trade, etc. They are all causal, she doesnt deny it but she says the primal thought is that 1700, thats the first time in history moral language change so that we started calling a businesswoman morally good and if you think that through, my tradition hasnt beenperfect on it. Abraham, moses, jesus, gandhi, confucius, any tradition. Aristotle, augustine. Ohana, etc. Nowhere in that line is someone saying capitalism or free market is morally good. Its something you put up with but we changed the lingo and the problematic thing is that thesis is reversing so right now you ask, what are we teaching our kids in school . Are we teaching kids that business and capitalism is morally good or are we saying its kind of corrupt . Its business, wall street is nasty. Unfortunately there are a few bad apples but the predominance of people in america are just basically good. Every Small Business person wants to give their employees health care. When i knock thousands of doors, thats one thing ive learned. Teaching economics, i shouldnt have knocked on more doors enough. People are basically good, they want to help their employees. We got to reverse that moral language and teach kids that work isnt just work, not just a skill, its a calling. Youd better be happy and passionate about what you do every waking hour of your life or otherwise you will have a miserable life. We say this is good for you. And by the way, its good politics because telling kids the truth and you are pumping them up on business. The left is a little clip critical, especially in higher end of this but i think we got a winning team here. Host obviously a College Professor and you joy that, its clear from thebook. You enjoy being a teacher. That absolutely comes through here. We do encourage today your students to get involved in politics . Guest i do but in their i kind of, its my idols. Plato and the republic and augustine, they basically both gave the same counsel. They said do math until youre 30 and then philosophy until you are 50 and then politics at 50 when you are near death. In ancient greece that would have been the mortality age. So youre done withwine women and song and youve instilled wisdom in yourself, take care of the appetites. Make sure youre done with that. So get in politics, do internships on capitol hill, get involved. So you learn but then go into a vocation first. Going to teaching two. The same thing, always major in your passion. Id say make sure you do what you love. But minor in accounting, that wasa joke. Minor in science or accounting or web design or something you can make a dollar just in case. Follow your passion and that usually is good counsel. Ive had people come to me later and say im glad i did that, i need a backup plan. Host its great advice and thats something i always say. I know a lot of successful people, an external evaluation of success who are not happy. I dont know any have people people who are not successful. Do what makes you happy and you will be successful at it. But if your goal is the success part, you may find yourself not very happy absolutely. All the incentives from the video generation, they put too much on the glitter. But these kids, they are doing better. They like their parents more so theres a lot of good signs. Host a lot of them came up and we talked about the economy and kind of the lost generation here in terms of what theyve dealt with in the economy and you make an interesting point, the economic dead end, chapter 12 , you said a couple things i want to come back to. First you note, even as those keeping track of nothing but the dow jones numbers and the slight uptick in jobs numbers tell themselves everything is back to normal and just fine, among most citizens there is an uneasiness that hints of a deeper problem. Then a few pages later, this is a chapter called the invisible recovery. Their calling our current problems a soundbite of increasing Regulation Without growing governmentGreat Recession, its actually dangerously optimistic, calling it a Great Recession is optimistic. This diagnosis our Current Situation as a typical cyclical downturn, implying all we need to do to get out of it is weight. Thats bad news if weve broken the fundamental drivers of the economy which you clearly think we have. A couple things, one is weve been told that this kind of flat recovery is the new normal. And that we just have to accept that growth rate between one and two percent, were never going to see four percent, five percent again and your point is that this is because some of the fundamentals ofour economy are broken. Kick off for the viewers some of those fundamentals we need to get right. Guest the biggest one is the one that i just said, its the pathogen for business. People feel beat down so adding the education back, the entrepreneurial period. The work ethic, the capping tradition is the same thing. Weve got to get that back. Only the regulatory overhang is tremendous. Its 2 trillion out of an 18 trillion economy and talk to any Small Business person starting with obamacare. You can disagree on healthcare but now the results are in is that premiums are going up conservatively, being fair, 15 to 20 percent, the deductibles are 2 to 5000 for the poor and all the economic studies lately show the average family has 400 on hand. You put that together, its devastating. The average family knows i cant make it through another downturn. The fundamentals in the economy, we are growing at one percent and thats with the deficit this year, 550 billion. The fed has 4 trillion on its balance sheet. Thats not money to the bank fault and it can be can become money if loans ever go out. If you are growing at one percent, its a huge stimulus. I get in debates with fed guys and whatever were like, come on. If you raise Interest Rates to present what would happen to this economy . It would crash. Markets would get incinerated. Last month is the recent thing, just at the debates, over a quarter point generated. Two percent would be normal. Host four percent is what you call a sugar high. Guest the classic solo Economic Growth of no health, the number one is always capital accumulation. Capital, not financial but machinery. Whos willing to put millions into a physical capital base right now, a plant with the youre going to make on the next 10 year window . Nobody. Host it has in effect, all this uncertainty. You dont know what the next regulation is going to be. It hinders any investors ability to make a bet. Guest thats it. If youre not making a positive bet, if everyone is looking to cross the sea or where can i park my thing to get two or three percent, thats not the entrepreneurial spirit we need. Let. Host let me talk about something in terms of these economics. You make a point in here on page 49 and you made it through out this book and you said washington should not be in the business of picking winners and losers of our economy in the private sector. The best way to ensure a vibrant economy is to allow innovators to thrivebased on consumer demand for products and services , not on the powerful friends they have in washington. This gets to, i talked about this president , president obama over the past eight years, its who moved our economy away from an economy where based on the premise that what you know is more important than who you know, its one where who you know is more important than what you know. This effect, what were seeing is the decisions of 100 million americans every day in the private marketplace on healthcare choices you just talked about, energydecisions. Internet, you name it. They are being supplanted by the decisions of 100 political appointees in this city. And that has a dampening effect i think and i call it the influence economy read but you are right about this proportion of the incentives and people being rewarded more for just the better targeted tax credit than they are for building a better mousetrap but talk a little more about this in the book. Guest thats what you are seeing, the American People have figured it out, the new media where you go on the web and for good or bad, its a little coarsening of the language. I havent gone to stem, i try not to get negative but the educational upside is huge so people are figuring out whats going on right now. On the republican side you have 80 percent of voters going for outsider candidates, trump and cruz and rubio and all the outsiders and on the left its 50 percent of the vote, unheard of to see that much energy because people have seen the small guys get left behind in the dust and if you dont have a lawyer, lobbyists, etc. , the big ones do. They can get through the regulatory take, they dont like it but back in the 50s or whatever, General Motors and the common sense saying, as General Motors goes, so the nation goes. All of our ceos, we had aetna, the ceo, i dont know him but he gets 11 out of 15 exchanges and still have to say complementary things about the exchanges so that shows you, somebody is scared of the federal government. When you are losing 200 million per quarter and you back out of 11 to 15 you still say the exchanges are okay. Holy moly. Just the pressure on the biggies even, you can imagine what the small guy is undergoing. That small farmer in my district and got to see every bass on or put a huge rainwater runoff tank on the restaurant for 200,000, 200,000. Thats four years through the university. Host is an onslaught of regulation. That all of a sudden helps your Drainage Ditch so its negative navigable water. Guest the freemarket people, thats the hardest thing to teach is that you can trust prices but thats what our country is built on that we allow prices to dictate. Walmart, how do they know how to put batteries on the table . Because prices, every time they scan on thats what we purchase so that information those shooting to the supplier and they say make 10 more, more car tiresand diapers. Thats amazing. No central planner knows that. The day you start picking winners and losers like the smart guys up here, that adds a little error but it can stop the country going forward, thats the main reason i wanted to run for office was convey that logic. Host you touch on this in the book and you point out the private sector business folks are subject to corruption. People commit crimes all the time and yet theres this notion that that person in that position, and a Government Entity enterprise making this decision are somehow immune from any of this area and is the view of the left that ive always felt the profit motive is inherently evil and the political motive is somehow inherently good. That is the mindset but you talk about that in this book and kind of expose the fallacy of that which i think is healthy. Guest that goes back to the madisonian logic and adam smith, the last thing you want is a concentration of power anywhere. When youve got a 4 trillion budget, out of an 18 trillion economy, that is a concentration of power and the executive branch now has disproportionate control over that 4 trillion budget. I wish we were in regular order right now because im on the Budget Committee that would mean the budget would go from committee to the floor for a vote by peoples representatives area without a budget process thats such a mess, five or six people are going to determine the budget for the United States in the next month. So i tried to call out the red flags on that and tell people to go to cbo and educate yourself on budget numbers because its a big deal. Host huge deal and another thing you talk about in terms of the Budget Committee that i thought was interesting, you talk more about the debt and the deficit in the few pages in this book and we will hear on the nightly news. Guest its amazing. Host you talk about not only the economic aspect of it but the moral aspect as well. I remember in past debates and discussions about the future of the country, a huge debate over, and i worked on the hill, we used debate that we got to a balanced budget for the first time in four years and it seems to have fallen off the radar somewhere and yet the deficit just double. 18 trillion, 19 trillion area and yet it doesnt get much attention, why is that . Guest both sides get overcommitted so youve got a bunch of good bills, they are called economic goods. Not economic bats. Everything is good. You want more education, more roads, more this or that. As i said before, unfunded liability is a promise to pay a medicaid, Social Security is 100 trillion so in 10 years, all revenues will be used only for mandatory spending, not a dollar for military and this kind of thing so wheres the ethics . The ethics are everybody does lobbying appear on behalf of all these goods is forgetting one group of people called the kids. The kids, when medicaid and medicare and Social Security are insolvent in 14 years, seniors under Social Security will get a 20 percent clip in 14 years. Thats in the law right now. Medicare is not far behind. The kids will get way more than 20 percent clip so that the ethics. I taught those. Thats one of the reasons i went into this. I said im sticking up for you guys. I want to go to the hill and i go to the press, im one of the few people that died in the middle of the press and i get tortured because its my calling and i want to do that. If i go out every day and say heres those numbers, they say here comes brad again, we know what hes going to say but it is a moral calling to show whats going to happen in the law. You have to run a bill through the house and senate, vote for a veto, we cant do it on the Budget Committee and most people dont even know the basic facts and you say why and thewhy is because if you yell too loud they say, what are you going to do about it . I get constituents, they say what then day, you have done anything . I say im one guy, im out there doing everything i can. Im trying to influence folks, i got balanced Budget Amendment bills in, its a heavy lift talking with democrats , one of the biggest fallacies is that theres this war between the right and left personally. We all get along personally. I debate my good catholic friends in the morning and we debate religion, power, everything and these guys are the democrats, their friendly, good people. They didnt get to that level by doing jabs and putting people down. We get along great. Its the press that thinks theres this big rightwing leftwing divide and its not true. The true power is right in the middle. Webers guiding that 4 trillion area thats not being led by the right and left. Go do a quick scan and you will see whos controlling for trillion. Host ive always felt the media tends to, they really extol the virtues of those who are in the middle doing that kind of thing but everybody plays a role in the process. But they tend to diminish the importance of those who are like you and on the left who are making the argument for either side and i used to say you cant split the difference. Its the difference letters who get all the glory to a certain extent and those who are defining the difference playing a very Important Role in the public political process are marginalized or dehumanized mostly. Guest i appreciate it, you take a little thump but theres a few keywords youve got to learn how to govern and compromise and unified. I talked to fifth grade classes all the time and if you got 550 billion deficit to kids, do we increase that number or decrease it . When the fifthgraders get it, were talking about compromise and unify, im willing to compromise with anybody but its got to be in the same direction. If you have one percent Economic Growth im willing to compromise as long as the one percent goes up. Any policy that willincrease Economic Growth, you will see me at the table. Host thats one of the things, we increase Economic Growth about the deficit, that would do more than anything to bring down the debt and reduce deficits , Economic Growth. Guest absolutely. Host theres this false sense of security because of the relatively lowand Unemployment Rate. I know its a poor Economic Indicator but theres lot underneath that for example as you know in the commonwealth you saw we now have a 1. 5 billion revenue shortfall. We got a 3. 7 percent unemployment. How can that be . Under it as you know is that we arent just like the country we had a declining laborforce participation. We are at a 10 year low in virginia and people on the workforce, that contributes to a low Unemployment Rate. Weve got a lot of people working 28 hours, a lot of people because of obamacare and the mandate for 30 hours and their counted as employed toward the Unemployment Rate and weve been trading out highpaying jobs for lower paying jobs. Theres the dignity in all work and i use that but thats one of the reasons the revenues are down. So people are going to say were going to have to raise taxes to close that gap. Thats the exact wrong approach. We dont need more working virginians paying higher taxes, we need more virginians working. It seems to me thats the same thing at the federal level, theres this sense that the Unemployment Rate is down, the administration is always touting that just like in richmond but the fundamentals to your point and we talked about earlier are not sound. Guest i thought the piece you wrote last week, youre right on the money. Right on the commonwealth and where we stand and the evidence that all this, racial tensions are at an alltime high but we dont get that in the economy coming along. You get that when you are at one percent growth and theres animus because people are competing against each other for jobs. If youre humming along at three or four percent growth you dont see people getting on each others case so the slow growth economy is causing that and we havent educated the people when you talk about Labor Force Participation rate, thats right on the money. That our kids are competing against the rest of the world. The chinese, indians and the chinese, they are working hard. I have indian friends here that are phenomenal at work ethic. So were competing globally now. You cant make decisions in isolation but you asked for thecommonwealth of virginia to do minimum wage at 15, competitors across the ocean are laughing at us. You dont have productivity but youre going to raise the wage rate. There laughing, getting a chuckle out of it and we have to put our productivity levels up. Over the last 200 people years, people know the wages are the same thing as productivity. Raise your productivity, wages go up. Host are they still trying . I thought there was a widening gap. Guest in the short run you get a little blitz but over the long run thats what weve got to focus on. Host this point you made, i mentioned to you that ive been reading in addition to this book, hillbilly elegy , he had in the National Review was talking very much about what he talked about in terms of Race Relations in the us. The economic dynamic. But if you get a chance, that is a great book. It talks a lot about apalachicola, virginia as well. We talked about a couple other things while we got time. The book writing process. So this is a very thoughtful book. And ive written a book. My College Roommate 30 years ago said read a book, right on. [laughter] i did and i found the process to be therapeutic in some ways and enjoyable. I would try to carve out sometimes like a weekend or something because i would have to get in the rhythm and rights some people get up at 5 am and write books , they work out or after they get off the table. How did you as a member of the us house when you are home always having meetings with constituents, obviously a family man as well, how did you find the time . What do we have here, 200 something . Guest a lot of it was already written, im an academic for 14 years. One on western civilization, you see a 4000 year thing and then i had a philosophical reader on logical positivism. If you are sleepy at night, go through that. It will ask you what is knowledge today. That was heavy hitting, that was socrates and plato open up the question what is knowledge and how do you know what you know . Weve had a 2000 year search for that and no one found it. They broke this thing open wide open, Bertrand Russell and some of these worldclass thoughts and nothing replaced it. The left is kind of what got me to putthese ideas, the left doesnt have a coherent philosophy that can name and i got in all sorts of hot water for saying that. Because he owns this tradition or whatever. I want to give itto you for free. I dont own any. That crackup is knowledge. When you cant do fine, we dont have any systematic theologians right now internationally, nationally, etc. After Martin Luther king, gandhi, kennedy, that. , theres been very little systematic thinking. I wrote a book on that and i had western zip up, economic notes from my lectures over the years and i had a few books in here, Alastair Mcintyre wrote a brief history of ethics, people who have read that will see a lot of that embedded in this book. Neil ferguson, the oxford historian on the six pillars that midwestern city unique, you will find a lot of that in there so i had a good friend whos helping me write and im not jefferson so i have all these big ideas, i got together and he helped with it together. Theres things you look back and you go i forgot to put that in. The hardest part was you have a ton of knowledge that you want to pump in the 200 pages. Host thats not everybodys problem. Guest thats the way i did it and i would take big chunks. Im not a 5 am, get up and write a few pages. I have a few days in a row or you can burrow in and start cranking stuff and get out the computer and carve it together. Host thats great. I wanted to go back to one more thing in terms of your teaching, you mentioned here, you didnt mention i think by name but at, i think it was in your graduate school, three teachers who were mentors who really had an impact on you. Can you share with us who those are . Guest i had of hope college in holland michigan, i went right on Lake Michigan and i had a world religion, i wont name him and a philosophy professor and my preacher in a Dutch Reformed Church who is a scottish reform presbyterian kind of preacher but just, he had Reinhold Bieber and calvin in hishead, coming and going , just this systematic repetition and he can reach and had me over when i was a college kid. When youre in college you dont have your act together but all three of these folks cared for me as an individual and i saw what Christian Concern look like. I said not only am i thankful for this what the college has done for me, i want to do that with my life so i aim to be a professor based on these three and i had plenty more at american, my phd, he went and i was the guy that did economics and ethics, he was the minister to bill clinton so im bipartisan. Im friends with both sides of the aisle and i had mentors that an american got me at usaid working on economic development, world bank i worked a couple of years. A woman boss from the philippines and singapore. So i just had great people all the way along the line and it helped me grow so i want to pass it on, thats why i want to teach the end of the day, congress, you say im done teaching, its time to do it, lets put some of this in action so i gave it a run. Host was a typical day like now . You start again tonight on the day that were having this conversation and then whats it like for folks who are, i know a lot of cspan viewers know this but you get up and do what . Guest its weird because its a president ial year. We just spent a month at home which is abnormal but the normal is three weeks in a row in dc, get up early, go to the gym, work out with everybody, democrats, republicans, have a good time, watch the news and you start going to Budget Committee meetings. Weve got to kick it off again tomorrow and throughout the day meeting with constituents. Getting yourhead up on whats coming at us in terms of bills, working with your staff , then you go home for three weeks of that and go home for one week and do the politics and run for office again and meet with your constituents in your district where i have10 counties and i promised to be in every county once a month. I wasnt Clear Thinking when i made that promise, its a doozy but its been great, going around like crazy. Host we just had lines change in virginia and your lines changed somewhat, how that been in terms of what youre used to and all of a sudden losing constituents and voters, gain constituents and voters, that must be a little bit of a. Guest its okay but its just politics, i dont know how it happened. I lost hanover, i got my students for 18 years and their dispersed through the region but to lose your, you almost wonder if someone designed it intentionally. I lost state fran and picked up powhatan and amelia and i was there this past weekend twice. Running through those counties so great people and its fun, you get to meet new people but boy, its hard work. New counties get to meet new people and introduce yourself, share in ideas. When you are new, im pretty skeptical of politicians and i think my approval is 12 percent or something so youve got to say hey, heres what i believe, heres the proof. Youve almost got give proof. Heres the way i vote, heres proof of what i am saying. Host you talk about what you believe it is clear in the book. What you believe but its interesting because ive seen you on the stop and you know, you say the same thing back home you say here and anywhere else. My senses and i think we see that people are very receptive to that conversation, i think theyre hungry for it. Dont you feel that . Guest i do and it goes back to the guys who talked about, newt gingrich, the concept of america. I ran on the republican creed of virginia and its an american creed, its not really republican. Im interested in free market, people for every citizen under the law. You say that to anyone and they like it. Host provider of needs and economic justice. Guest the problem is not that people hold themselves to that promise when theyre up here. Friend marcus, they vote for everything thats not free market so i tried to do that and i getting all sorts of trouble but i always say you can predict my votes, follow adam smith in madison and you can predict every one of my votes. Go check it out and see if im fudging or not. Host heres something really important to try to get you impressed on, on november 12 in the hamptons. What is the prediction . Guest ive got to say go jackets although i got to flip a coin at the last game area he got a great relation, its a lovehate thing but its fun. The three captains came from hampstead. We all like each other and their free market. Their economic department, theyre all good folks. Host thats great. Dave, thanks. Had a great time with you, enjoyed reading the book and i encourage others to do it. Thanks for takingthe time to write it. Guest good interview. I cant believe you took notes and went beyond. Host i went through with a yellow highlighter. Guest super job. Host thanks so much. Guest you bet. Cspan, created by americas Television Companies and brought to you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. This is book tv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Heres our primetime lineup. Tonight starting at 6 45 eastern we bring you programs on the current president ial candidate. First up, david kjohnson critical talk about the making of donald trump. Followed by dick morris on his book armageddon. How trump could beat hillary. Also face the nations Don Dickerson looks back at memorable president ial campaign moments on the book tvs after Words Program at 9 pm eastern. At 10, maria r moody details the danger of being a frontline journalist and we wrap up our sunday primetime lineup 11 with Charles Murray who presents his plan to replace the welfare system in america with a universal basic income. Thatll happens tonight at cspan2s book tv. Now book tv is live with author and historian gerald horn. Hes the author of several books on race and history including his most recent paul robison, the artist as revolutionary. For the next three hours, gerald ford will be answering your questions