[inaudible conversations] good afternoon, everyone. I karlyn bowmanim karlyn bowmar fellow at the American Enterprise institute and i would like to welcome all of you and the cspan audience to this lecture by peter schuck. This will conclude 20162017 bradley lecture series. We are as always grateful to the lives of milwaukee Wisconsin Foundation that supported the lecture for more than a quartercentury. When peter emailed me and colleagues to say he might be able to give a lecture about his new book, one nation undecided Clear Thinking about bipartisanship that divides us we jumped at the chance for he is one of many academic. But professor of law at yale he reminded me that he was an aei visiting scholar in 79. Hes the author of why government fails so often and how it can do better, understanding the institutions and policies that shape america and the world and it collaborated with the late james q. Wilson. And finally, the moderate, cool news on hot topics. To find out copies of the new book will be available for purchase and he will sign them in this room. We invite all of you to join us for a reception after the question and answer period. One more detail. We will be taking questions from the audience online. If you would like to set it a question, enter the code aei event. Its simple, your name, question and we may choose to read it on stage. Peter will discuss the nations that divide us, poverty, integration and religious exemptions from secular Public Policies. He reminds us weve argued about these issues for so long they are well known. He will tell us what makes them hard and have the issues are almost harder by definition and explained the Clear Thinking on each one. After last weeks debacle in healthcare is more than clear that we need Clear Thinking about these issues and i can dig up no one better for the landscape of these issues. Please join me in welcoming peter. [applause] thank you very much to the staff and folks that decided to spend a beautiful afternoon inside with me. It is a brandnew book and this is in the firsisnt the first be written that aei has been gracious enough to host a book event for, so im very grateful to them for doing that. The title, one nation undecided is cumbersome but it emphasizes three conditions, first in the conditions where there are societies and i dont have to belabor the point. I dont know whether we have ever been as poor since the civil war and it is an extraordinary difficult time in our political system. The second condition is the need for Clear Thinking which is related to the first. By Clear Thinking, i mean five basic elements. First, the analysis needs to rest on a clear factual record, so the factual information on which we make our decisions or think about these issues is accurate and timely and unbiased. Second, they Clear Thinking person analyzes the relevant values and one of the aspects is they implicate a member of values and they are often conflicting values. The third element is that the analyst needs to consider likely consequences of the various policy choices that are under consideration and that that entails a very hardnosed view of globalizing whatever social there is to analyze and predict the consequences and follow them where they leave. Before its element of Clear Thinking in my view is that it identifies relevant distinctions and tradeoffs and has those clearly in mind. Taking them seriously and understanding the tradeoffs often reflect conflicting values and also conflicting ways of reading the evidence. Then the fifth element is preferred policy options which are most costeffective and implementable. I would also add and i see this in the book the process matters a lot and i refer not only to the process of formulating and adopting policy but also the process for implementing whatever measures are adopted. This is a technocratic way of thinking about the policy if you will. I do not find that a problem. By discussing the book the moral objections to this technocratic way of thinking and i reject the objection in the qanda if you like i could get into that. This is about Clear Thinking with respect to hard issues. I explain what they mean and i analyzed five of them. Whats most important is that reasonable people can and do differ with respect to them although some prefer outcomes that are more clear than others in general as i stated the book above idont care where people t on these issues as long as they have taught them through in the matter that i suggest. The major exception to that is affirmative action where the government is very clear that this is a failed policy in the very divisive policy and helps no one except the few in the affirmativeaction who were already by and large privileged within their group by not going to discuss affirmativeaction today. I asked what you would be most interested in and she suggested a focus on policy, immigration and religious exemptions to secular policies so let me begin with poverty. I should say i meant was that the manuscript before the brookings report on poverty came out, but i have access to most of the work that went into that report and i used it in my analysis. I also discuss inequality for a couple of reasons, first, to distinguish it from poverty to folks in this audience i suspect understand there are different things, one being an absolute level of deprivation and a relative concept comparing one group of people to other groups of people but in the public mind there is a lot of confusion about the distinction analyzed and explaining some of its measures and trends. Then i turned poverty itself. It involves a wide range of difficult questions. Obviously i dont need to see that it involves the terrible conditions of life for people who suffer from it, but that only makes more important the need to define it so the first issue is how to define and measure it and let me pause on that. It has been a much controverted issue from the outset of the establishment of the office of Economic Opportunity in 1964. The official policy measure which we still use today was based on the measured the Social Security administration. She recognized at the time it was a very inadequate measure of policy and very actually one of informative and most respects but since then, almost anybody that discusses the policy agrees that isnt a good measure. The question is what adjustments should be made to the measure and the first is whether to include non cash transfers and needless to say, food stamps and Health Care Entitlements and the earned income tax credit and child welfare, tax credits and so forth are important additions to aftertax income. Second is the earned income tax credit which is important for working families and makes a big difference in the level of poverty that they and end of her. They were arguing for the earned income tax credit. It also can make a difference in the result of the calculation. It doesnt take any account of reasonable differences. Since the 1964. It doesnt take account of workers who received unemployment insurance. It is on the Self Reporting of income and other elements of the calculation by the individuals of the question. The research has been done about whether those figures were Self Reporting more consistent with the actual disbursement of government agencies. There is an adjustment with a different appropriate measure on the goods and services. They had done a lot of work on measuring the consumption changes over time in the right direction. So in the standard of living that poor people have is much better than it was in 1964. Needless to say that i would trade places with people that are in this condition, but an objective analysis of how many there are, what the trends are e and what the prospects are needs to be based on this kind of study. If you look at housing, food, cars, appliances, healthcare, crimhealth care,crime and even e plight of people who are denominated for the official calculations is much better than it ever has been. Then there are subgroups of americans whose poverty is especially concerning to us and the Child Poverty rate is about 20 as i mentioned before if you enter this adjustment is back to about 15 which is still a really appalling figure in the country as wealthy as ours. The elderly poverty rate is 9. 8 without the adjustment and its 2. 6 with. So it is almost a quarter of what it would be under the official measure. And then, the very interesting complication is immigrants because they have an enormous increase in their wellbeing and income measure anyway by reason of their coming to the United States and yet many of them aiming for someone might question whether we should think of them in the same way that we think of americans who are poor. As one analyst put it, its simply absorbed in large populations of the third world and didnt expect that could affect the poverty rate. But coupled with the realization that they actually have benefited enormously from coming to the United States comes of it as a complication. Another feature of the policy analysis has to do with the intergenerational mobility on what the u. S. Used to be a world leader in itself very much in the countries and very troubling statistic that i discuss in the book is that 40 of those born to fathers who are in the lowest percentile of income remain in the lowest quintile of income. So often the case is fascinating if you are born to a father who was very poor, theres a very good chance that not overwhelming, but a good chance that you will be poor as well. Much of the discussion of poverty relates to blacks and i discuss why thats the case and why mucthenwhy much of the discn be very misleading. It is slightly lower than that of native americans but the more important point is 75 of blacks are not poor so the images that we form our unfortunately quite inaccurate though it is the case that too many are born into poverty will end up in poverty. The most important conclusion that i think analysts have come to hi in trying to determine wht the trend is is that today the gap is even greater than the racial gap that is to say this is the most unfortunate deplorabldeplorable conditions t predictor is being born to unmarried mothers and absent fathers. That is the single best predictor. It is not race or where you live. It is birth. There has been some good reason into poverty picture the rate declined sharply since 1991 with a gap in High School Completion closing not enough but running at 5 . Rates have stabilized though as we know at a higher level much too high for the wellbeing of children and crime has dropped in all communities over the last 28 years or so. Let me explain the measures of the adjustments and the patterns of poverty i will turn to the causes of poverty. And there are many of course. The main cause as it has been emphasized by brookings is under employment and unemployment by the working age family heads. What causes this under employment and unemployment . I go through a number of causes in some detail. First i would say that its bad luck. How we defined it as is a quesn that reasonable people can differ about that some of it is misfortune by any standards. Many poor people are poor because a Health Problem that they could not really anticipa anticipate. Some are poor often because of divorces. Their standard of living declines Something Like 25 in the first year after divorce where mens standard of living increases by about 10 in the first year after divorce. Kind of a shocking comparison to me. 72 of beef i will move on to the family and Community Breakdown which i consider the most important single cause of the under and unemployment by working age nondisabled family heads. 72 of black babies born out of wedlock today that is triple the rate that it was when Daniel Patrick moynihan famously decried the chaos and crisis of black families and the great of babies born out of wedlock is now higher than when he conducted his analysis so its an extraordinarily devastating and its a development that we dont seem to know much about solving. Its not for want of study and effort. It is a really hard problem. The third cause of poverty is the socalled disappearing jobs. And here again i have a lot to say on the analysis and some of the responses to the concerns. Very interesting finding and what shocked me is how low of a percentage of unemployed men cite as the reason for their unemployment lack of jobs. Some of these people are disabled but when i come to discussion of disability i will have more to say about that. The fourth possible cause is educational deficits. But here its important to emphasize that they often forget which is we are blaming poor schools and we really ought to realize that in fact, the deficits that exist in childrens opportunities and achievement begins well before they start in school. There will be more to say about that including the analysis of the problem. So i talk about bad luck, educational deficits. A fifth one is isolation and here they have a lot more to teach us. Many of you may be familiar with the famous at work sociologist has written about the strength of weak ties by which he means a greater opportunities available to people that have a Large Network instead of a Strong Network so it is a kind of paradox but its easily explained and Orlando Patterson has written about the myth of the hood and just to summarize quickly what the sociologists have reported is that black networks are both smaller and denser and have the smallest percentage of kens been then any other group and is also very littltheres alsovery little abe especially for black women so that isolation that limits the context is very severe. The six possible cause is discrimination and here i distinguish between or among three different types of discrimination one is intentional and second is unintentional and third is statistics. Lawyers in the audience will certainly be very much aware of those in the distinction that is reflected in the doctrine under title vii of the act. One complication is that it is prohibited against people on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender and so forth but not on the basis of poverty so it is not a protected classification which means it cant be attacked within normal to the extent it is based on poverty it cant be attacked in the normal fashion that civil rights law in place. A second cause of poverty is bad choices. Here one can be easily accused of blaming the victim. But there are a range of choices that we can reasonably characterized as bad some of them are antisocial behaviors and some of them are just shortsighted behaviors so let me just read one description of this phenomenon. Most bad choices or simply shortsighted and the second possibility common examples include dropping out of high school, gambling, ignoring school work, excessive borrowing and spending, domestic violence, parenting children one cannot afford. The substantiation is within one might think. 62 of prisoners in the United States are violent or sex offenders. The states are by and large primarily for fiscal reasons trying to empty minor offenders but tha thats welcomed policy l only have a marginal effect on the number of people. A widespread entrenched pattern of despair or selfdestructive conduct. I discuss that a bit i dont want to see more about that unless you want to raise it in the qanda. Then i discuss a Current Program with the focus on the low income people and communities and its not that we spend much money or have much in recent years on the programs in 2008 we spent 261 billion at the federal level that was in 2008 and only seven years later we spent 848 billion on these programs. Going through the programs i dont want to be labored becauss because theres other things to discuss, but a earned income tax credit, snap, the earned income tax credits, Social Security, medicare, medicaid its all important and largely successful programs so they have large amounts of fraud, waste and abuse and we dont seem to be able to reduce those measures were those amounts vary significantly if at all. Some of the programs raise concern is in medicaid and Social Security disabilities. I discuss the evidence on that. Another Important Program is titled fun with respect to education. Brookings did a report on the effectiveness year and a half ago and was quite critical of the effectiveness of the program on a variety of grounds some of which are difficult to rectify a think. Head start, small program. Both health and Human Services and the Brookings Institution reported a rapid stays out of the benefits from head start by the third grade or even sooner sometimes during the summer. A Nobel Prize Winner in economics in chicago is more optimistic about the longterm effects of head start. When you talk about the effects 30 years later theres so many intervening conditions that its hard to be really confident in that kind of analysis. But if he says i that theres probably a lot of truth to it. Job Training Programs the assessments show no effectiveness. The job court today costs us about 1. 8 billion a year and every study that has been done which i am aware of shows no effective as whatsoever. Social Security Disability and others have studied this and have shown that it contains serious hazards in reducing work incentives. Disability insurance recipients and the ratio of workers to disability recipients has declined from 1341 to 161. Some would say it is close to 111 so that is a Shocking Development that we need to take very seriously. Housing the National Bureau of Economic Research an and confide of analysis and 2015 with respect to the effect on poor people at stanford theyve done important work showing the number of years in better neighborhoods does affect the outcome. So that is encouraging and has policy implications. I then talk about policy reforms. The first possibility is to encourage macroeconomic growth thabut we dont know how to do t without International Trade and currency effects. If we did that would be probably the simplest way to do it but micro economists are famed for the inaccuracy of their predictions. Second is redistribution directly and here we have the example of although we dont have evidence yet on how it is working but the universal basic income plan that was adopted in finland has also been proposed by very prominent conservatives and charles murray. The design of the programs of course matters a lot. The political prospects for this was analyzed by a senior fellow at brookings and it seems most americans have more support programs that prevent people from going hungry, living into private housing or going untreated with only a small butl minority are cached inegalitarians providing money to those without cash. We vote refundable tax credits to pay for health care than we do a low incomes. Besides with the health credits maybe it is childs play next to administering large transfers of cash and i had the experience to support this assessment. Third possibility is supplements and there are a way of doing this. The tax credit does it already. It is widespread bipartisan support for increasing the earned income tax credit and extending it to groups of people who are not now eligible for it and minimum wage i think the evidence of the affect on minimueffect onminimum wage on l employment and automation is quite negative which is one of the reasons the earned income tax credit is a better way to go to increase aftertax wages and the insurance that has been proposed by a number of people but has not yet been instituted on a broad scale but thats possible. Before this human capital. Thats largely done through the Education System or job traini training. And ive already commented on that but i have more to say in the book. Fifth would be to try to strengthen families and this i believe is the most important and most difficult. Brookings scholars have analyzed what they call the success sequence through work. Children only when they are married and marriage after 21 and finish high school. Its very skeptical that visa approaches will be effective and hes a strong advocate of remedies for poverty. The six policof the six policy i discuss is to some extent work that has been done for years and years most recently the Obama Council and economic advisers which are identifying all sorts of abilities and licensing requirements that make no sense at all and other barriers of this kind. Residential mobility is another approach and section eight is the major weapon in that war. The data on the effectiveness is somewhat mixed in a major study was done in chicago that showed the outcomes of people that moved section eight were next and as i mentioned earlier, there was a recent analysis that believes that the ones that move younger and therefore spend more time in those better neighborhoods do much better. Okay i better hustle. I wont say much about that although i say a loss in the book about it its one of the areas i studied for a long time. I preface this by the political urgency of Immigration Reform. He argues as a matter of electoral strategy, democrats have to get immigration policy right and that means changing some timehonored positions on immigration. They can still be for expanded immigration and honoring its not cherishing immigrants to succeed but it does require a different language and an analysis. For one thing there will be no legalization unless and until the public becomes convinced that the border is controlled. The public needs to believe that the government is doing what it can to control the border and reducing the amount of entry to a minimum. So those of us, and i suspect many of you join me in being strong advocates of legalization need to attend to that and that is part of what henry olson was discussing. I discussed the comprehensive Immigration Reform and the number of green cards that we usually use on the categories. For now im just going to focus on three issues the first being legalization. Even trump seems to recognize the reasonable policy or prospect of legalization. The programs are hard to design. If the conditions are stringent, then the undocumented will not participate. They will take their chances and continucontinuing the shadows ae cliche happens. Theres problems in the administration particularly the bureaucracy like i and other health and Human Services. And widespread that there was fraud in the 1986 legalization with regards to agricultural legalization programs. Second is enforcement. Here there are two venues that defined the problem with the first is border enforcement and most people dont understand that more than 50 of Illegal Immigrants and heard legally. They entered and then kind of status. If its important for how the government can hope to enforce the immigration policies that it adopts. Theres issues of detention courts im not going to dwell on those now, there are better to eat sweets can use to improve enforcement. There is an important issue of employer sanctions that have been kind of a choked up until now and they could be strengthened. There are important constraints on that. Universal identification card would help enforcement and the objections seem to be quite. They are strongly expressed but heard analytically. Then i discusses integration. Trying to increase the naturalization rate especially among mexicans for cuts to subsidies of naturalization fe fees. The third issue, the last issue i will discuss very briefly, is that religious exemption from sector policies. Here the context is complex. We have the conjunction of growing religious diversity with the growing secularism. We have a right to culture which people are encouraged, i think and even incentivized to claim the violation of their rights when they feel that they are vital interests have been shortchanged. We also have a judicial methodology which is being developed as too how to arbitrate these claims between the religious freedom and choice on one hand and the secular policies on the other. The religious freedom restoration act which was adopted at the federal level in the Supreme Court held a very important case that only apply to the federal level has led to about 20 or more states adopting state references. They attempt to establish a Legal Standard by which these claims can be adjudicated and puts a strong phone on the side of religious claimants. There are two key cases that i discussed in the chapter. One is the hobby lobby case in which the riffraff was applied to exempt families, a Family Business and religious business, the same company. From the aca requirement concerning contraceptive coverage and the real question whether the court will limit hobby lobby to a narrow set of facts. It is too early to tell about that. The second case is the old burger fell case recognizing gay marriage is a constitutional right which is a huge advance in human rights and equality for lgbts the very complex situation because on one hand we have state reference which which talk about the religious minorities and we have a lot of localities in red states and vice versa. Antidiscrimination laws cover different activities in different groups, we have economic boycotts which so far have had some excellent effects on the willingness of state politicians and local politicians to adopt restrictive laws. But that can go both ways. We have a religious Tax Exemption issue which is only now beginning to arise as to whether churches can lose their Tax Exemption if they take a strong stand against gay marriage. Course we have the issue of transgender use of facilities. Those are relatively retractable facility but locker rooms is more complicated. I have argued in cases that a lot of flexibility is needed in different communities to grapple with these problems. Its a relatively new conflict. We havent quite figured out how we feel about it in any sophisticated way. We need more information about what the true tradeoffs are in these situations. I offer some principles for resolving these issues. The first thing to be said is that dignity, the claim of offense to dignity is not a very helpful criterion for resolving these issues. Let me read quickly. In many instances both sides can claim with equal force the decision against them to morally stigmatize them. Grant that exemptions from baking samesex wedding cakes tell samesex what about denying the bakers claims . While that tell them that the least central to their idea is bigoted. Exemptions and conforming abortions to women who have had them causing prolife doctors must brand ideas of womens equality. On serious issues any issue any side might feel stigmatized by rival actions or policies. So, having the spirit of having claims of dignity as a way of climbing these results i move on to choice and the more choice we can afford people the less the conflicts are going to fester. But the choice strategy often begs questions of coercion. And of harm. So, in the School Prayer settings are football, prayers at Football Games theres question as to whether young people feel coerced when these cases are made and whether they are harmed if they have to or choose to remain silent during them. A third approach is the distinction between conduct and status. A compelling want to act against ones conscious is different than having to accept another status. I think that can resolve some of these disputes. Another approach is one for constitutional lawyers and embodied in the statute which is the least restrictive alternative. Whatever restrictions there are on religious exercises in pursuit of secular policies, those restrictions are as unrestricted as they can be while still accomplishing the secular objective. Another approach which i think is very important, it is a centralized accommodation were both sides have reasonable and deep disagreements concerning but liberty and dignity and equal respect required. There is no principled way to resolve them. Another is adopted from the law from those who study. An example is theres a case which the Supreme Court has sent back hoping for a formal resolution. In which the government nearly required religious groups to file a form to get an exemption. Some complain that that is a burden on their exercise and religious freedom. I would consider that id minimus a burden that we ought to be able to impose on people to further social solidarity. Another approach is one advanced by law professor who would allow and encourage businesses to publicly state their moral objections to a particular practice such as gay marriage without incurring a hostile environment. He argues this would encourage both separation of people in different feelings and approaches to these issues and dialogue between them. Finally, most obviously but also most difficult to put together his compromise. The case that i suggested this to be a jet Supreme Court has looked at the case in hopes of negotiating compromise and expanded civil rights protection for lgbts while protecting religious objectors allowing state officials who would otherwise have to perform certain services, ceremonies rather, and so forth. So, in closing i have a few parting points. I think my analysis of hard issues teaches us that reasonable people care deeply about the Public Interest as they understand it, can i do disagree about how to define an approach to resolve them. Three important implications follow. First, elements of Clear Thinking can be applied to any hard issue not just once but i have focused on in the book. Second, if advocates of one or another position can acknowledge the empirical it in a normative complexities that make such issues hard, they may come to see their opponents arguments is least plausible and worthy of respect. That may elevate the debate enough to encourage search for Common Ground. Finally, even when this open minded analysis cannot resolve hard issues, it can narrow the age of disagreement which can facilitate compromise. The only alternative seems to be some form of coercion that threatens the perceived legitimacy of victors and leaves of the defeated bench will determine to undermine them in their policies. My question is, does this sound familiar . To me it does. Thank you very much for listening. [applause] [inaudible] peter, thank you for those thoughtful material. Now it is time to turn to your questions and if you could identify yourself and wait for microphone, we have people with microphones on both sides. We will start with questions from the front. Please wait for the microphone. Im joe, visiting scholar at aei and a longterm friend of our speaker. Peter, you have written in the past about american exceptionalism. Is there something you think that is unique about heart problems to the United States . Do we have more vexing, more common, something unique about the way we approach the . Are we more or less likely to engage in Clear Thinking about them and are they more retractable here than they are elsewhere, and if so, why . I think we are exceptional in this respect. By exceptional i mean as a matter of degree. We are more polarized on these issues than other liberal democracies. There are some incidences which i alluded to. One is that we live in what has been called properly a rights culture. In which peoples whose interests are being threatened and tend to claim those interests not merely as interest, but its rights. We have a jurisprudence to write people to meet those claims the court sometimes succumb to the temptation to recognize strongly felt and substantial interest is rights. So that is one thing. The nature of our jurisprudence, the constitutional structure in which we operate is encouraged. We also have an adversarial system which the sociologist, bob kagan has written a very good book about adversarial justice in which he explained so many disputes which would in other countries not be adjudicated in the courts come to court. A lot of reasons for this. For one thing, our Attorney Fees are contingency fee system leads to more entrepreneurial wiring than in other countries where the decision pays the fees. There are many reasons for this. I think we are much more difficult society to govern than we were in the past. Thats a number of reasons. We are far better educated than we were and we no longer admire those who were previously in authority and quite the same way we did before. That is true in connection with religious authority and Institutional Authority and elsewhere. And of course Political Authority as well. We are much more unruly people than we were. In that respect we are less unruly than some other respects as we have been. Im larry, my question might not be also on that ipad there. You have spoken about poverty and theres an old saying in this town that says show me your budget and i will tell you your values. What values does mr. Trumps proposed budget, especially as it relates to the poor tell us about our values . That is an easy question i think. Perhaps all sound partisan. I call myself a moderate. I am really not a partisan at all. But i think trump has proved his incompetence to be present in any number of ways. I think this budget reflects the fact that i dont think he gives a damn about poor people. He is making some hard choices as is always made and budgets to emphasize expenditures he considers much more important. I think that is very clear. In a way its too easy. Because putting trump aside and i would love to put him aside as a never trump person, i think the issues that i have outlined surrounding poverty are really hard ones. The lack of effectiveness, not all but many of our poverty programs demonstrate that even those who have a strong commitment to eradicating poverty have not been terribly successful. The ea tc is a very good program and Social Security has eliminated elder property. We have made some real advances. I think it is a copout to display my toll on trump and his minions. Those of us who have a deep commitment to eliminating the poverty have to come up with a better solution. Virtually what you have is to cash out all or many of the programs that now purport to help the poor. Test them out and write a check to people. Eliminate all of the bureaucracy that is now in place to draw these very fine distinctions and make these very difficult decisions. But as emphasized in the passage i read, that is very unlikely to happen. It is not clear to me now be an altogether good thing. I think one has to worry about work incentives and i dont think its a case that just because we have a low Unemployment Rate today everybody who could be employed is employed. That is certainly not the case. We have a historically low Labor Force Participation rate which is, in some ways inexplicable. One answer is that people but that cant begin to explain what we are observing in the Labor Force Participation. The way in which we define unemployment and underemployment also obscures a lot of americans who could work and are not working and we do not really know why. You anticipated the very first question from our online audience about what your opinion about the universal basic income. We can move on. Theres a question of the front. Please identify yourself. My name is todd. From the district of columbia. I want to ask if you feel the conclusion you have come to our dramatically different from any of your peers . What is your competitive advantage from this book . Secondly, do you believe our twoparty system which you refer to as adversarial justice as we see it manifesting itself these days is the best system to achieve the ideals that you have described . The first question is fairly easy and the second is almost impossible. In a recent period of time the advantages that basically i have made a lot of social science and all of these areas because i care a lot about understanding the facts of the situation. I am a clear thinker and i have a genuine commitment to helping more people to think clearly about these issues. Certainly not the only person in the country or in washington, d. C. Summer sitting in the audience, but others as well. So got to the trouble of telling a very complex set of stories about Public Policies that i think other people could have written but the habit. [laughter] the second question with the political system. Its enormously complicated question. I think we have an admirable political system. It does have its disadvantages. The election of trump in my view has caused me to rethink some of the confidence that ive had in the political system. I also think that this is probably pollyanna for my part. But our system has an enormous amount of resilience and we will respond to this challenge in a positive way. Of course i do not know how long that will take. I think it will happen and is beginning to happen. Theres some reason, the longterm trajectory of the United States, despairs much as anyone in the United States about the shortterm one. The politicians can screw things up, a lot. And often do. Our system depends to an enormous extent compared with other societies on the private sector. The Nonprofit Sector and private activity. Although the government can screw things up reall pretty ba, can screw things up as much as can happen in other countries were 65 of the gdp runs through the government. A question in the middle. My name is carl, peter, your discussion of poverty you mention i think about nine different approaches which have varying degrees of effectiveness in terms of producing results. And that is what the data shows. However when policymakers consider how to allocate resources among those nine, their decisions frequently represent their values as opposed to a pragmatic decision about what works. Have you considered allowing the states to be laboratories for experimentation and rewarding those states that have more Effective Solutions . For example, by decreasing the tax rate of individuals who live in states which have demonstrated more progress in terms of reducing poverty . I have given this a lot of thought. This is not a novel suggestion. To some extent we have tried to do that. The no child left behind was an example of that. It ran into problems because, among other things and according to the folks on the ground, with educational policy the feds tended to over regular situations that lead to debt outcomes. I cannot really assess that claim. The idea that states as laboratories as Justice Brandeis called them is absolutely crucial. One of the things that i argue for an another box is more controlled experiments. Which our federal system actually facilitates because theres so much diversity. Welfare reform in 1996 which i consider big success, although not a complete success was created after experimentation by states. A lot suggested that a better approach could be adopted. I ran into trouble with the Great Recession and even during the recession of the early 2000s, but the data that i have seen much of which comes from bookings there is a guy with ai better off today and Child Poverty declined very much in favor of that approach so it has to be rigorous. That i wanted to talk to you about citizenship now that there is a first president suggesting the same are your views subject to change 99. 9 i wrote a book examining the legislative we concluded persuasively that birthright citizenship though it is constitutionally permitted and that congress if it wish to have a different role so anybody who is born in the United States regardless of when i entered her whether they remain in the country or not or what have you. I think there are strong arguments against that rule. There are also some weighty arguments in favor of that rule. So accept argue that it was possible congress had the Constitutional Authority to regulate birthright citizenship in a way that have been previously denied by most people who discuss the matter. As to where i stand now, and what the Trump Administration will do on this, i have been surprised that i have not heard more about birthright citizenship from the Trump Administration. I wouldve thought this wouldve been high on their agenda. If that is high on their agenda, then for me that is a strong, though not necessarily dispositive argument and im in favor. I wrote it argument intermediate solutions that would better serve competing values on this issue. One is to give birthright citizenship to all people below the United States and educated from the United States for a certain period of time. I dont know if it be ten years old and five years of school or whatever smarter people i think that is a supportable reform. I believe in that. Won one more question i was noticing and having spent over 32 years in the federal government the wrong side of affirmative action, is wondering if you thought affirmative action was finally going to waste away and disappear . Now. No. I dont think they have any intention to her or incentive to eliminate affirmative action. It will always be arguable and to a certain extent be true that different groups are not equal in our society. So i do not think opponents will ever willingly give it up. The American Public as i have shown in the book with nondiscrimination have been against it by the clear majorities for a long time. And including most minority groups. So i think it is probably here to stay. It doesnt depend that much on law, it depends more on policies of public universities and private universities who are only indirectly affected by federal law. Before turning to the last question in the back i will remind you that the book is for sale. Hell be signing copies. For those who did not have a chance to ask your question hell be here task those. Im a Small Business owner. You mentioned earned Income Credit as an idea broad bipartisan support of fighting poverty is a better way, paul ryans plan, others had it earned Income Credit for childless adults. What you think are the obstacles that have kept that functional, working program from being expanded given the level of suppose it bipartisan support . I think theres ice political opposition of moving too far into the middle class with subsidies of that kind. That is why there is a phase out which causes a cliff, and incentive clear where if you earned another dollar youre out of the program. They tried to phase that trajectory in a gradual way. Ultimately it has to be phased out at some point. I think that is one reason. I dont know. I think the policy concern about it and there is a lot of fraud in the program. I think something 20 or 25 of the applications for earned income tax credit turned out to be improper. It is not all fraudulent. One of the problems with fraud, waste, and abuses that they are so very complicated involving so much paperwork it is easy to make a mistake. I do not know if it is fraudulent, but that is one of the reasons. Let me say one more thing about affirmative action. Im very much in favor of socioeconomic affirmative action. There are another people who has written widely on this possibility. I discussed this in the book in previous books. That is not a terribly new program to design i think they would be overlap in terms of beneficiaries of the program. But not complete overlap. Affirmative action produces numbers for ethnic group or ethnic racial groups that a socioeconomic one, a lot of poor whites would qualify for that. Please join me in thanking peter. [applause] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] book tv has a full weekend of nonfiction authors and books for you this weekend. Starting at 1 30 p. M. Today is the san antonio book festival with author talks on immigrati immigration, human fossils, and much more. For a complete schedule check out our website, booktv. Org. On afterwards, bill gertz of the Washington Times offers his thoughts on how to with the Information Technology wars. His interview by representative of new york, member of the House Select Committee on intelligence. Also this weekend, major Mary Jennings hagar remembers her tours in afghanistan with the air national guard. And her efforts to eliminate the Ground Combat exclusion policy. Former florida representative, trey rado on the inner workings of congress in his arrest on drug charges. Alyssa, former deputy chief of staff to president obama on her time in the white house. Authors, journalists, actors, politicians and other public figures read from ellie gazelles, knights. And we visit charlottesville, virginia to talk with local authors. For a complete schedule of all of the nonfiction authors and books airing this weekend, visit to booktv. Org. Let me turn to the topic at hand. For many years i have been annoyed at the various surveys undertaken that seem to be designed to show that ordinary americans do not know anything about government. The one that i enjoyed the most was one of the old jay leno, jaywalking encounters where people were asked to name a Supreme Court justice. A large number said judged judy. First of all, this is kind of an honest mistake, right. Judge judy and justice ginsburg, no relation, both small jewish women who went to the same high school in brooklyn. They are both graduates of James Madison high school. Why shouldnt people get them confused. At any rate, one way jen and i were chatting and one of us said, how come no one surveys the government to see what it thinks about the people, no one has ever done this. Why not survey government officials to find out if they know anything about the american people. So, that is what we did. Jen will discuss the details of the survey. Basically, we were able to get responses from about 850 government officials and members of what we call the policy community, that is think tankers, contractors, the people who has a group are involved in the regulatory and rulemaking process here in washington. So, we asked them what they thought about americans. I dont have to tell this audience, though i often find myself saying to students that everything you learned about america is wrong. Most of what you think of as the long is not written by congress and signed by the president. The constitution has this a little wrong. The presentment clause, forget it. Most of what we think of as the federal law is written by federal agencies. To a substantial extent these agencies offer a, without much guidance or direction from congress and the president. You can watch this and other programs online that booktv. Org. One of the things i loved about the l. A. Times festival of books before i was the book editor, when i was driving there and showing up first in the morning because i wanted to be first in line for stuff, is that we have these panels with four authors who are novelist or who are writing about syria, where these are people who do not get to see each other or have conversations frequently. There is a moment of conversation where these people are saying something that they are just coming up with that that very instant. It is that electric exchange of ideas that can only happen in the moment. Watcher live coverage all weekend, april 22 and 23rd on book tv on cspan2. So, the defining event in russian turkish relations is the world syria. Russia and turkey support different, russia supports the regime, supports assad, turkey is strongly supportive of sunni, arab, jihad groups fighting against the regime. So that is the starting point for answering your question. That is simple to understand. It gets more complicated however. Especially given the events of november 24, 2015. Went turkish f16s shot down a russian fighter plane. It is not clear where the russian fighter plane was when it was shot down out of the sky. But that event precipitated a huge chasm in russian turkish relations. They said it was a stab in the back in russia launched a systematic set of sanctions against travel to turkey, against the import of turkish agricultural goods, against turkish construction firms who are doing business in russia. This cut deeply into turkeys economy which was already struggling. The sanctions stayed in place for nine months. Then, rather remarkably and unpredictably, they issued a letter of apology to the family of the russian pilot and crew. He went to st. Petersburg on august 9 to meet with putin. As a result of that meeting, there is a decision taken to lift the sanctions, to move quickly to normalize relations between russia and turkey. As turkey backed away from it support to sunni arab extremists, they saw Common Ground with russia. Part of that was Common Ground against the United States. He talked about the personality to mention, the temperaments of putin and are remarkably similar. There cut out of the same cloth. They had a deep and dark falling out, but they also are transactional. In their approach to business and one another, they like to make deals. So i would also include President Trump and that character defamation. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. This weekend, cspan said cities tour and the help of our Comcast Cable partners will explore the literary scene in history of charlottesville, virginia. Today at minister and we visit the university of virginia to see their exhibit on william faulkner, the first writer in residence. We have a lot of wonderful artifacts. We have the typewriter he is issued by the university with University Property stamp on the back. We have a jacket that he wore. You can see when you look at the jacket it is torn out and ready. He like to keep his close for a long time. He left the jacket hanging in his office when he went on his last trip to oxford, mississippi when he passed away. At 2 00 p. M. Eastern will travel to Thomas Jeffersons monist monticello. You wouldve seen the beautiful classical villa. We wanted to restore the landscape of slavery. If you come up this mountain top in jeffersons time, the first thing you wouldve seen most likely would be the enslaved people. There would have been no place on this mountain top that slavery was not visible. We want to restore that, make that known to visitors who come here today. We will visit the Miller Center at the university of virginia to learn about their first year project where they challenge the president s faith on the job. Lyndon johnson said, the matter how big your majority is, you get one year before the congress stops thinking about you the president and start thinking about themselves, their own reelection. About january of your second year after you have done your first year, all members of congress are thinking about midterm elections. Theyre cautious about taking any risk to help you get your mande and your agenda through. Watch the cities tour today at noon eastern on cspan twos, book tv. Sunday afternoon at 2 00 p. M. On American History to be on cspan three. Working with our cable affiliates across the country. Good afternoon. It is my distinct honor to be the moderator for this presentation today on nuclear war survivors, resisters, andk. Current and we welcome you on behalf of the Virginia Foundation of the humanities. They are the producers of the virginia festival of books. We greatly appreciate the hardpr work that goes into to present these gatherings. This is my cell phone, a i