Afternoon. I am a senior fellow at the American Enterprise institute. We are honored today to be joined by senator tim scott from the great state of South Carolina for a conversation on his very important new book america a redemption story, choosing hope, creating unity. Before i introduce senator scott and welcome him to the stage i want to offer a little bit of context as to why the conversation is so important today. How do we take virtues and put them into actions for the communities that have not yet experienced of the American Dream as a senior fellow at aei and someone whose run public Charter Schools more than a decade, i am obsessed with the goal of upward mobility. One of the factors that drive whether a young person of any background acquires the habits of minds and skills that typically lead to success as adults in my time with thousands of Young People Working at teach for america to the white house to mtv to the Gates Foundation and now launching the network of charter high schools in the bronx, ive worked with kids from every conceivable background. Ive seen children grow up in disadvantaged situations and unfortunately sometimes recreate that disadvantage as they enter young adult hood but ive also seen many kids emerge from poverty or crime or dysfunction and lead lives of their own choosing. The question is what makes the difference. In my experience young people that thrive as adults usually have a sense of personal agency which i define as the force of their free will guided by moral discernment to learn right from wrong. Theyve usually formed Strong Families regardless of the family that they grew up in they typically have had a strong commitment thought and power to them to live by a moral code. They typically had access to Great Schools and education freedom and assuming the three foundational elements, theyve had an entrepreneurial spirit informed by the dignity and discipline of work. In my own book i propose a new framework free based on encouraging young people to end embrace four pillars, family, religion, education and entrepreneurship. A revitalization of the local mediating institutions that we know drive human flourishing. Today im pleased to announce the launch of the Free Initiative where we will seek to educate and equip a movement of local leaders who are already reinvigorating these crucial institutions that help develop agency in young people. Central to this effort as a series of gatherings aei will be hosting across the country sparked by the conference in may and old parkland texas that brought together Brilliant Minds such as bob woodson who is in the room to discuss alternative approaches to tackle the challenges facing americans of all races we will hold our first free conference in birmingham alabama this november 2nd through the fourth bringing together civic, academic, nonprofit business and faith leaders for important discussions on how to implement the lessons we have learned about upward mobility. We aim to uplift agents of agency around the country. People leading by example, combating unhelpful narratives and lighting the way towards lives rich in relationship, health and wellbeing. This is why im so excited to welcome senator tim scott to aei today to talk about the American Dream. I can think of few people whose life stories and work reinforce whats needed to move from poverty to prosperity by engaging the core components of agency. Just last week senator scott hosted the School Choice caucus to discuss ways to empower every Single Family in america with the resources to decide where, when and how they will educate their children. Overall since joining the senate in 2013, senator scotts efforts have sought to strengthen families ability, increase the footprint of safe communities, expand educational choice for students and to spark a new era of entrepreneurship in cities across South Carolina and the united states. Senator scott, id love to welcome you to the stage and look forward to our discussion. [applause] weve both gone tieless. It should be a comfortable conversation. Youve written a fantastic book, and id love to chat with you first about the title america a redemption story. This idea it sounds like we are almost unfinished. We are still in pursuit. What was the inspiration behind the title and the book itself . In my opinion most American Families are just one or two generations away from the story of redemption. We are in different parts of the journey. The chance to get a Second Chance and that sort of redemption is about having a Second Chance to start all over and ive had that happened in my life to realize its all about how your pain reveals your purpose, how your obstacles open the doors of opportunities and how tragedy leads to triumphant. Typically the bad comes first. And you say the American Dream isnt a thing of the past but a miracle of the present. Do you sense that it is further in question today than a thing of the past . In a small town what you knew then some doubt now. Some 100 years later we are doubting the goodness of our own country to become popularized. My grandfather is confident that being better was the golden the golden life than a victory you couldnt be a victim. He believed the future was better than the past and lived long enough to watch his grandson in congress because the goodness of america. The truth is we are better off today than weve ever been. We are in the right place to get it done. I can already tell there will be a few nuggets dropped. My grandfather stopped going to school in third grade because literally in South Carolina 1928 there was no need for an educated black man is what he was taught. Think about that picture and fastforward to moving into my grandparents house my grandfather was teaching me these valuable lessons about being better or being better. It would have been so easy for him to be better all his life, but he believed in a time that it would be completely understandable why you wouldnt believe in the future of this country but he knew the sacrifices that had gone before him made his challenging plight less challenging that the abundance in his heart and love he had for my grandmother, that combination formed a new salvation for a generation. And because of that i was blessed with this inheritance of positivity, this concept the dignity of work. If you have an abundance of love and to see the land of opportunity expanding in your direction, run towards it. They may not be having that realization. Education is the closest thing to magic that we have and at the heart of that magic just like so much of life, its opportunity and at the height of that opportunity its choice. The truth is the most affluent people in the country that choose middleclass, uppermiddleclass choose the neighborhood. Whether you are in Rural America or the inner city of the one thing you dont have his choice. We can change that overnight by simply saying theres a backpack but you go to a Failing School why not give the child and the parent the choice of where to send their kid. 68 of democrats, 70 of africanamericans, 72, 74 hispanics agree that a school sl choice is a path forward thats good news for both sides of the aisle. A modernday miracle. I opened a New High School in the bronx where of all the students that started ninth grade in 2015. Meaning they started ninth grade and dropped out along the way. That reality still exists. How do we get more kids to be able to have that first run to get on the ladder of success . We have to look at the solutions that already work we have examples around the country of the education options available that are successful. Success academy is an example. They are consistently in the top five of the state and it was more fascinating that 83 of the kids in the school or africanamerican or hispanic was an average Household Income of under 30,000 for single parent households and yet they scored above average. It was the main Street Academy they wanted to prove that poor kids and communities can learn just like everybody else for about ten or 15 more than the average student in Charleston County and able to give the kids within two years the top 20 nationwide so there is a model that works and we need to follow that model. It works out really well. What is the rationale for the people that know that those models exist and yet continue to fight to preserve the status quo . I dont know. [laughter] let me give you a more indepth answer. I think there is a theory that in order to save them all, you have to wait until you have a solution for them all. You will wait until you can put the whole fire out. That seems ridiculous. But currently the Public Education seems to be more interested in adults then they are kids. Labor unions and bureaucrats have a powerful impact on the child is going to experience. Thats a problem. I run schools in new york and there is a cap on the ability to order so in that district its primarily because of that force. How do we mobilize more attention and action so central to your book because you talk about how it was a central part of your movement upward and yet the forces are so powerful. Ive often said we should be the party of parents. The fact of the matter is when i gave the statistics earlier what it reinforces it doesnt matter which side of the aisle youre on, the one thing there is a Silver Lining in the pandemic and its hard to see the one thing is learning a loss, being out of the classroom exposed to the weakness within the Public Education system for all kids, so much so that parents reengage at a high level and demand participation. They demand collaboration and cooperation. Thats good news for all of our kids and the more time we spend understanding whats happened the more we should focus our attention on making sure the policies in place help us bridge the gap because of the pandemic and we focus on what actually works around the country. One of the things i love so much about your philosophy is that youre looking for innovations that break the mold focused on what will help people. So talk about these opportunities because that is almost a parallel to School Choice and educational freedom. How do we attract more of these kind of initiatives . One thing i know is competition. I love competition. You run for office the truth is what is the best environment to improve outcomes and reduce cost. In america we call that the free market system. It works in education and i designed a program that provided more incentives for those that had resources to look in areas that need the resources without gentrifying those areas and because of the tax deferral we saw more investments go back into the poor zip codes the end weve seen in my lifetime. Since 2019, opportunity zones saul 29 billion invested into the critically challenged financial areas of the country and also helped lead us to the lowest level of poverty. How does that help the creation of Small Businesses for example . One of the things you do the more incentives you have to drive down the cost of the more likely you are to drive up the neighborhoods and the guy whose life was changed by having an entrepreneur when i was 15yearsold starting my own business i was able to understand the path and then it becomes momentum. The more Small Businesses you have the lower the unemployment will be. The fewer Small Businesses, the higher the unemployment and the higher the rate and lower the Graduation Rate is so there is a correlation that flows through the communities and its one of the reasons i love the education and entrepreneur pieces because they are essential to the human flourishing. You cant do it without both. A good economy makes all things possible. What makes a good workforce, education. Thats at least twopronged. You can have the income. My son is here. The fact of the matter is when we find ways to give kids as many options for their future whether they want to go to a twoyear Community College or Apprenticeship Program or a Fouryear College you can make six figures. I think this is a fundamental point because for so long its been the mentality pushing kids into a certain predetermined outcome of what should happen after high school. One of the things i did is look for ways to help people understand the cost as a return on the investment so Financial Literacy is a major component to understanding what do you get for the philosophy degree. First i can tell you you get a job in the business world. Its not necessarily the best decision so you figured out another path forward. If we had a Financial Literacy as a core component as it relates to college you get the 33,000 average student debt or 2 million lifetime so it is not a bad deal but is it the only way to get the two milliondollar income the answer is no so the question is what are those other avenues and are we exposing people to that. We started this Marketing Campaign around this perfect suit like a coalminer or something and they said you want this job that makes you a whitecollar guy. There is dignity and all work. Find out what you want to do and do it. Dont let someone predetermine this is the only path for success of equal stature. When you noted the work it is isfamily religion, education, entrepreneurship. Lets talk about the first two elements. You talk a lot about your grandfather who literally around the dinner table held up a newspaper and was acting as if he was reading so that you could sense that this was an important activity. What does it mean to have that within your family so its the most nucleus that develops the child. Family is misunderstood so often growing up in a singleparent household, my mother and my brother, they were in my family. We were younger we lived with my grandparents. One of the beauties of family no matter what it looks like the configuration isnt always as much as we think. Having a grandfather at the Kitchen Table every morning flipping through the paper left a profound impact on me as it relates to the importance of reading. I didnt know it then he couldnt read. He said fake it till you make it. He left such an impression on me the importance of education that one day he wanted his grandsons to grow up and become all they could ever dream of being because they were equipped with the tools necessary into the only way he could do that at the time was to fake it, but that made me hungry for more. I wanted to know what was so important that every single day just going through it page by page. Its such a wonderful example of family and the footprint if you dont find your family, you will make your own family. I often say its not about the family that youre from. Its about the family that you form, your own life. So that led to the seven years of vacation. [laughter] but if he formed his family around commerce that led him the wrong direction because what he said was there were no constraints on behavior there wasnt ambition there was greed and selfish pursuits that led them to spending a couple of years making a lot of money and then seven years making nothing. So what he would tell us, he was one of my best friends now and a pastor but what he would tell him is take connections and relationships, take it seriously. You can either have friends that drag you down or that require you to go up. Most can become your family. If we are not careful in todays america there are these tribal forces that want you to define your family by what you look like or how you vote and make sure that its as pure as possible. Its quite diverse and powerful, forwardlooking. We need more of that. I need friends who dont look like me or think like me. Other parties have inverted but the truth is i benefited from having friends who think we want to solve complex problems for the American People, who were in good conscience benefiting from that and then my congressional family, we get along really well we work in the legislation when we agree we agree 80 of the time of the other 20 we should work together. We worked on the colleges and University Funding because we think that if you have a big need and we can help fill that it makes the country better off longterm. Why wouldnt you focus on education. You mentioned a few times the importance of space in your own development. I would like for you to talk a little bit about what role you see the community playing today. Are they active enough in helping to heal these divisions you feel are hurting our country . What should we be telling the leaders in our communities . I think we are not active enough. One of the things i learned is it teaches me how to treat you and how you may treat me back. You think about charleston South Carolina and the Mother Emmanuel Church shooting where they walked in and killed nine believers and 36 hours later the family members are looking at the killer and saying we forgive you. That will change your entire community. Nine people changed the lives of 5 million almost overnight. 20,000 people together, blackandwhite on a bridge to celebrate because in the aftermath of that tragedy, people came together because they wanted to stand up and say not in my house. We were fighting over the Confederate Flag for 50 plus years and it came down in 17 days because when there is a purity of your purpose, when there is a depth of your love on display when it matters the most, nothing stops light even darkness. Thats the power of faith though. It didnt say how, it said how they should treat, not how he should have treated them. What i think we missed is the importance of exercising our faith as encompassing for ourselves not necessarily forcing others to believe what we believe. We want to impact others lets live it right. They said proselytize always. When necessary, use words. That example is so powerful and i think about you as a legislator and policymaker how do you think about the reach of the policy and legislation in the senate in 2013 there is a terrible incident in chicago where theres a young girl gunned down by a gang member who thought she was someone else and president obama at the time said no wall or set of laws can prevent every senseless act of violence in our country when a child opens fire on another child, there is a hole in that childs heart that the government cant fill so when you think of yourself as a legislator of policymaker, how do you use your position that its not always about the tactics of what law has passed and how you treat each other. I will say this because pointing to some of my legislative friends 99 of the legislation we were gone will never become law if we are lucky 99 . So the question is what is this role that weve been given by the American People by our friends back home there is an influence that is incredibly powerful and really important that would refer to the fact government isnt the answer, community is far more important than government is essential and necessary to never forget. Those kind of shootings can be avoided by what we started talking about a few minutes ago. Gang members consistently are joining a family having spoken to some members i can tell you without any question the more time we spend on building and developing communities, for better off we will be end of the more time we have elected officials in addition to legislators and we use the perch to bring people together the better off we will be. Our country is having a hopelessness epidemic. Theres a reason we have 107,000 people who died of overdoses. Out of the 35,000 the numbers might be off a little bit over 30,000 people died due to guns, the two thirds are around 62 were suicides. Of all the conversations you will hear the one we havent heard much about is suicide, the leading cause. So we have a hopelessness epidemic on our hands as well and we can bridge that through community. Family is the foundation of the community. The most important subgroup in any nation is the family. I used to be the chairman of the South CarolinaHealthy Family formation. It was so important for me to think about and talk about how families unfold. Theres a security that he will never know he has because his dad is in the house. He wont even know that its of their. I know that its a mistake. I think about that all the time particularly because i work with communities in which that is not the norm and i grew up in that community and i will tell you the difference is incredible. The mentor came in at the right time and helped to bridge the gap. It gave me direction when i needed it. One guy was a Small Business owner helped me when he gave me 40,000. I went to the bank and he said what are your assets. I have 253,000 miles. Once i had 40,000 i had an asset so they loaned me more money because i had an asset so that is a conversation unto itself but the truth is having a mentor that believed in me and watched me for several years before we made an investment but that ten years where i had a strong powerful role model who taught me lowprofile just because you can doesnt mean you should, taught me how to be faithful in all your efforts, taught me how to be disciplined when no one is watching. A force to be reckoned with and the other guy taught me creating jobs is a better thing there is a way to form a Foundation Better than the way you have. I know that we are actually short on time. Its been amazing but i want to perhaps and on how you and the book fastforward to 2070 and you envision this future thats within our grasp that we are not so divided by race or class or gender or what separates us today. What has to happen between now and the future that you lay out in the book lacks . For me it is this gut punch we are going through right now thats very instructive. I think its necessary for the more foundational issues i think the answer is we are going to go together or not at all. Its interesting and frankly helpful to go through this conversation to see how horrid it is to make up for the past discrimination that isnt working very well for us right now. We are trying to figure that out. The truth is of all of those that we are putting together whether its a centralized control or not i think all of that will burn off and what it will produce is an American Family that has more respect and appreciation for the necessity of pursuing the American Dream as one and we will break the barriers that divide us into smaller categories so that people in the same socio and economic groups see the problems the same man of the solutions the same and those working on their behalf figure out the rules of the road and win or lose based on their efforts and not thinking so much about a centralized control but the power of the individual is the greatest minority in the country i think we are getting there and thats really good news. What are the characteristics that need to forge that future . Someone has to be the purveyor of hope. We need someone who sees the country as a single unit and is willing to stake their lives and we need leaders that are sacrificial in order for us to get there. Then we need to disciplined and focused leaders who demand the best from the country because demanding from themselves first. Please join me in thanking the senator. [applause]