Transcripts For CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20140109 : c

you have several publican candidates of their. paul ryan, rand paul, all pushing different things. what do you think the areas you would focus on? you have the short-term and long-term issues. they are both important. i really believe there are great opportunities to drive this in the shortrd term. the energy revolution, which we all see and appreciate. the question that this administration has become very aggressive and i congratulate them on the trade side which will create a good deal of economic growth and opportunity. the reality that we are finally facing up to the fact that there are many job opportunities if -- we can get the government to help make it happen. energy, trade, the whole question of investment and where it's going. i think we are going in the right direction. we will seening is three speeches this weekend what i said on question of opportunity or inequality is because the white house has chosen, it appears to us, to make this their approach over the next year. i think the real problem, if there is an equality is the recession was over in 2009 and we've been sitting on our heels since then because the view across the street is that more government programs are going to create more jobs. more freedom for the job creators is going to create more jobs. that means dealing with some of in clearlyion issues dealing with the issues of capital markets and how we can get capital into the hands of the people who created jobs using the energy situation to big-forward capitalizing time on the questions of what an immigration policy would do, on and on. that's it. dothe long run, if we don't something about the nation's education policy, if we don't do something about our job training think we have a real problem. core standard says three things. say, here's the deal. if you want to go to college, here's what you have to do. if you want to go to community college and learn a skill, this is what you have to do. i'm telling you right now that we are leaving 30% of the people in a position where they just don't qualify for any of it. , that iseeps going denying people opportunity. it is creating an equality, and that is something this country ought to do something about. by the way, it all takes money. we need to deal with entitlements because it will eat up all the money. >> marry with washington trade daily. it was clear from your speech that trade is very important for the chamber this year. i was wondering what you think the likelihood is in if you are getting signals from the white house that the president is willing to expend the type of political capital necessary to get through congress. trade promotion authority will pass. it will be introduced sometime in the near future. it will take a while to do it and there will be a debate. for one thing, it puts the congress and the game. why all this trade? 95% of the people we went to sell something to don't live in this country. next. is suchu believe there a thing as a retirement crisis yak though if so, what should the federal government and the private sector do? >> the first retirement crisis is that the entitlement programs as they now exist will bankrupt this country if we don't do something about it. and i believe there are going to be so many people are retiring it will create lots of new industries -- that's good -- but we're going to have to look at and whatcations adjustments, not taking these things away, that will make it palatable for those who are retiring and were those who have to pay. this is the first time that we are basically calling on the young to pay for the old and we need to think our way through that. next. >> national journal. you mentioned your support for energy exports broadly. as the chamber supporting the and the ban on export of crude oil? that, to what extent will the lobbying and advocacy focus for this year? >> of the conditions on the export of crude oil were put in during the oil crisis when cars were lined up to get to gas stations. rememberd enough to that -- maybe he isn't. another need to take look at those restrictions. obviously we want to use the .nergy at home first we don't restrict people from exporting airplanes we make for exporting food products we produce or exporting technology. looknk it's important to at energy as the next great american revolution that has the potential to help us on national oil, energy independence, to do so in a way that has extraordinary environmental benefits. i think you will see us negotiating and working our way through that ring this year. i want to lift the ban. i was going to get it done in a reasonable sequence. i think everyone would be the. it will not happen overnight but it will happen. >> rich eidson, fox business network. should think congress extend the extended unemployment benefits? when you say you want to play the primaries, how much do you want to play in when you say pro-business, do you mean anti- tea party? let me start with the first one. i think congress will extend. i think they will look for some ways to pay for some of it. even the president's chief -- the head of the council of economic advisers believed that the extended use of unemployment, the kind of unemployment insurance we talk about, does not help to create jobs. pass ands that it will they will find a way to keep this going for a while. you cannot talk out of both sides of your mouth. we will keep it going until we start to create jobs. we should not be putting that in for a long time. you want to say something about that? >> quickly. on the issue of inequality, unemployment insurance, minimum seeing a more disparate to distribution but it's not as bad as what many of the statistics show. if you use the right statistics, you see a much less onerous shift. there's something that has to be done but you have to use the right numbers if you're going to affect the right cause. secondly, you can do short-term redistributions to affect after the fact and if you are going to do that then things like the earned income tax credit are the best way to go, not minimum wage. extending unemployment insurance is not likely to help in a long- term sense at all. virtually everyone who studied theas come back to education, training, skills, providing the opportunity for people to get on the bandwagon, advance, move up. when you get into the distribution issue, unemployment insurance, minimum wage. you have to find the problem properly and decide whether you will do short term, fixes, the kind of symptomatic relief, or whether you will try to fix the problem and curate. we focused on trying to cure the problem and in order to do that, it is really education training and human capital. we havehe unemployment right now, we could probably in thee point 5 million manufacturing business up we could get the people with the skills. we have get them. now, your questions about the involved in will be the election. we will be involved in the primaries. whatever they happen to be. for the fundamental reason that the people who run have a chance of winning therefore we should get the very best candidate representing both parties for the purpose of ending up that the best result. probably now have a good half a dozen places that we are open seats and in primaries where people are trying to challenge particularly votingrving and smart people and we will be there in both the house and the senate. now, you asked about the tea party. if you are resting a minute, wait out. i have a very clear view about this. when the tea party first came out with who they were and what they believed, they talked about names that the chamber very much supports. they talked about sensible tax policy. reasonable about control the federal cost. , thetalked about trade opportunity create jobs and all of that stuff was pretty good. then we had a lot of people that came along with the different views and they tried to hitch their wagons to the tea party engine and those were the people who wanted not to pay the federal debt, shut down the , take more radical approaches to trying to get where we really all want to get. i think they are well- intentioned people except when they get to washington and they will not do what we believe you need to do so what -- why should be help them get here? as attackinge up the tea party because i'm not. brian with bloomberg news. can you say specifically what elections you will be focusing on? will tea party candidate to be among those that you just mentioned? >> the first answer is no. stay tuned. news when you see it. remember, i just segmented between the original -- i'm not trying to be difficult. this is a place i have to be very careful. i know a whole lot of tea party people and a lot of them are running, i will support them, but the question is whom are we talking about when we absolutely get their? what do they want to do? announceo go in and they're going to run for the house and the senate, and my , my -- i'm hyperbola rising idea is to burn down the town and we are not interested in them. people who believe in the enterprise system and believe in the things we were just talking about will be very likely to get our support. if we havenement, someone that is a 95% voter with the chamber, we will certainly support them over a challenger. >> following up on that point, are you also entertaining supporting challengers to incumbents who have not been supportive of the tea party versus just challenging those who have been supportive of the tea party? >> take the tea party out of that question. will we support people who challenge people we just think vote wrong and have not been helpful? sounds like a good idea. do it.you committing to >> sounds like a good idea. gym with ap. >> good to see you. >> happy new year. regarding the upcoming debt ceiling debate, you said the nation could not default on its debts but you also said there is a demand to address entitlements. do you see dealing with entitlements as a prerequisite or do you see it moving on a separate track? and i have a follow-up. good question. we will have a debate on the debt. we did a little research. round numbers, and the last over 50 dealsad where they had to go out and fix the debt. more than half of those, it came a debate among the house and senate and the administration. than half up in more of those deals where they made some accommodations on spending, taxing, other issues. even the president voted against the debt ceiling increase about something he felt very strongly about when he was a senator, the iraq war, i think. you have to start out and there's going to be a discussion on this issue. em the implications of spending, budgeting, expanding the economy, all of that as a part of what we are going to do about the debt. i do not believe we will default on the debt. i do not believe we will close the government. i believe we move forward on this deal and find an amicable way to get it done. >> entitlement reform is a difficult thing to accomplish. do you think they can actually reach some kind of agreement? >> i will tell you where i am on entitlement reform. they may at a few dollars in net to say they are doing it. entitlement reform will not yet done in a serious way for a couple of years yet. up to this.wn we have to go and have a conversation with the american people. we don't want to scare them. we want to explain the reality, but it means to them and their children and find a way to do it . energy is part of that. the one thing i say is sometime between now and when we make a deal, someone will have to make a decision. aire going to use the energy or not? with we are not, then you have a problem. i don't inc. in this next deal we will have a great debate about entitlements. there may be a little fix their but when you look at the total numbers, it will be very small. thank you. cq.aty o'donnell, do you think tax reform is possible? would you ever support as what some say is the only option or do you think it punishes small business owners? lastat happened with the tax deal at the end of 2012, we came up with an agreement to go forward. llc got really hurt. i don't think anyone is in the mood to do that again, would you think? >> they call for comprehensive reform. can i answer your first question? >> of the answer is no. >> jud palma with politico. you said you are confident that it would pass this year. i'm just wondering if you are at teaconcerned that some of party conservative republicans may be inclined to vote against because they would want to deny president obama victory. would you see that as a big impediment to its passage? should it fail? are you worried but have a chilling effect on these trade agreements that the administration is trying to include? >> the last part was exactly right. do not have it at some point, the people we are negotiating with are not going to agree to a deal with the understanding of how congress will participate. i have been astounded to hear my colleagues say there are a whole lot of people in that category coming out very much in support. they send it up? today, tomorrow, next week him and then how long we discuss it, it will take a little while but we will get it. the votes are there. we will get it done. i'm doing this one here. go ahead. >> what's the point in being up here if i cannot? >> business times. >> many foreign countries come here to seek u.s. investment. now the time is coming where you want to show that it is a protected investment destination. now they're going to collect and our leaders back in asia where they are frustrating about investing in america. can you talk about this and why america is still, despite samenal debts, the investment. thank you. like the question basically is why america the saved investment -- the safe investment place it is. i've talked to people around the world bonnet. any day open the paper and turn through it, there are a lot of problems all around the world. if you want to put your money would probably want to put it someplace where it is safe, where it can be profitable, where it can be did and i think america meets that point. >> you have strong growth, a stable currency, your investment is going to retain, if it's good , and it will not lose in returning to the home currency. you have a situation with a strong court system and we protect property rights. we protect the right to earn a legitimate profit. that makes the u.s. the primary destination for capital in the world today. see why he should have run the fed? where are we going? ok. i would get to you if you speak up. >> financial times foreign and direct investment. my question is a little different. i know there is a lot of promotion both here and abroad and i'm wondering if you can tell me what the appetite u.s. companies have four for an expansion in them not just talking about the big but midsize and such. >> marty might have a word on this. 95% of the people we want to sell something to, as i said, don't live in the united states. inre's a lot about the type small, medium-sized, and large, -- countries and companies to sell abroad. therefore, that includes some investment abroad because in a you tolaces, it behooves make those plans. think the appetite a strong there. there was one issue where they are getting much more select. if you sit down at a board meeting and use it down and a senior that meeting or use it down with two arbors and a small company and say we have this much to invest in this product or this service to sell, where be going to do it? draw a line down the middle of the page and it looks like places we ought to think about and all those on the right side, let's not go there, let's not go there because they may take our and nottual capital treat us well. let's not go there because our currency won't be safe, whatever it happens to be. i believe we have the same fortement and even more trade and investment around the world than much more selective basis. >> we have always understood the value of selling abroad and feeding the markets abroad. we are finding that it's a more daunting task. it's more complicated, complex. many of them have done it in the past. had a programs here for years, trade routes. they try to help them with the trade issue so they become more involved in one of the areas in our tax reform principle is clearly that we have to have international competitiveness and this is in order to foster more of that because it creates income flow,home, and it creates more stable corporations and it makes for stronger economic growth in general. we espouse it. we tried to help those that are out doing it get to it in a bigger way. >> john reichart, cq. i wonder how you would like to see medicare changed to ease burdens on the young. >> that is something we have been talking a great deal about. we have been talking to a lot of people about it and i think there are three or four issues. first of all, medicare costs are unbelievable for a lot of reasons and we have defined ways to provide the services that medicare provides with three or four changes. you are probably going to have to do something a little more with the co-pay. you are going to have to look very carefully. we have a great program that helps us on the pharmaceuticals, which is a huge issue. how will you do that and? it's really about cost and reallyy systems and it's about intelligent use by the medicare for this offense of the system. say thisy, i hate to because it's always the argument and how you fix government spending. they say to get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse. there is a whole series of things to work on their. then the real thing to look at is medicaid. that's growing faster than others. i will take the last question. over against the wall, there are a lot of really smart people that know about trade, energy, medicare, medicaid, health care, legal reform. they know it all. i told them to come down here and they've learned something from you. if you want to ask them what our views are, they are a lot smarter. who don'tire people know it better than marty and i. the last question is -- andy sullivan, reuters. you mentioned education reform. i would like to hear more about what specifically you think needs to happen. the state of local governments need to spend more? do when he could make it easier for charter schools to open up? should there be vouchers to allow public school students to attend private school? what should happen? >> we paint our k-12 schools with the same brush when we talk about it. there are a lot of k-12 schools kidsis country where our get grade educations, tremendous educations. and they come out and go to good colleges or they come out and go into craft or service industries or they come out and they just go get a job that they can read, write, calculate and know something about the world. they have a great education. -- what are myon going to do about that 30%, or whatever the number is, that are that blackantage equal opportunity because of those schools. it's sort of like anything else we do. it's like running your business. it is leadership, quality people, a clear set of object is, a way of measuring what we are doing. we spend more money and education than we ever did and most anyone ever did in may need to spend it smartly. charter schools bring something to the party. some sense of standards, the core standards don't tell you how you have to teach people. they need to what come out of your school learning. it's there, the how is there, whether it is the republican ,ducation department, democrats although the union issues are a little different. what we have to do is pretty clear. ont i want people to focus is this is not a black-and-white deal. we have a lot of really good ones. why don't we see what they are doing and it brings you a lot of social issues. we're very interested in working on that and we think if we can get everyone first mad and then concerned on a specific note and not on the whole system, we can begin to make rod gress. thank you very much for your patience. thanks for coming. we appreciate your coverage during the year. those people over there would be very happy to talk to you but if you really want to know what's going on in the set, ask marty. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] -- [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> on the next "washington journal, the planned withdrawal of u.s. troops from afghanistan. homeland on the security community. in his perspective on partisanship in washington. announcing this week you will not seek reelection in november. also your phone calls and tweets on robert gates new book and new jersey governor chris christie. washington journal each morning on c-span. >> can any woman be adequately prepared for the duties of first lady? clacks yes. [laughter] clacks the wife of the governor or if you are the wife of the vice president or if you are mother-in-law of the first lady and you watched her. >> i think you can. i think it's a golden opportunity to do something. i think lady bird is the one who said it. it's a not are trinity to do something good. if it by chance helps her husband, are better. >> the world health organization estimates that more than 1.6 million people worldwide are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. many live in countries where the disease carries stigma and shame. by sharing the lessons that we've learned, americans can empower more women to detect breast cancer early which today is the closest thing we have to a year. trulyyou know, chicago is a nation of neighborhoods. it is a a city where walking a few blocks constituent in an entirely different world. cut through a park and you go from english to --, puerto rican to polish across a few streets and you go from the story comes and manicured lawns to abandoned buildings and parks rate corners. the opportunity available to a child growing up in one neighborhood in the city might be vastly different than a child growing up just five blocks away. that difference can shape their lives and their life aspects from the moment they are born. >> monday, the original series, first ladies, influence and image returns with the five most recent from nancy reagan friend michelle obama. on c-span andive c-span 3, c-span radio and c- span.org. next, armor vermont governor howard dean about the u.s. political system, the budget, and the presidential elections. the 2004r president in democratic primary and has served as party chair. the washington center for internships and academic seminars hosted this event. [applause] clacks let me just give a warm welcome and thanks to governor howard dean for joining us today for our discussions and exploring bipartisan solutions seminar. we are looking at three topics in the seminar, as you know, budget, financing the american dream, immigration, energy coliseum. perhaps the most fundamental issue is the one we are about to discuss right now, financing the american dream. unless we have the resources, possibly enact policy change? we are fortunate to have an expert with us here on this issue. governor dean is a well-known, respected figure in american politics, former chair of the democratic congressional committee which he implemented the 50 state policy. he was a six term governor of vermont where he was known as a conservative democrat which ties in directly to what we discussed today and former presidential candidate in 2004. he was a practicing physician. he currently is a contributor on national television regularly, the founder of democracy for america, and serves on the board of the national democratic institute. is also a senior presidential fellow for the city of the american presidency at hofstra. it's my great leisure to introduce governor dean. [applause] >> thank you. the idea being introduced as an expert in washington is something you really want to be careful love when people talk about experts, don't believe a word of what they said. not that i would ever challenge that. study forhofstra as a .he residency we call her the general first because she taught at west point and secondly because everything runs like clockwork with everything she does and i appreciate it. i'm going to try not to talk more than half an hour at the aboutut i do want to talk politics in general first. i want to give you a 30,000 foot over there you -- overview of what's going on. this is not difficult. the problem is the will to compromise. that's where the difficult art is. what i want to talk to you about is a generational divide that's happening. to set the stage for this, if you look back at our generation, essentially your parents, if you look back at the generation we came in through the 1960's in the country changed radically in ways that you cannot imagine. unlike the relationship you had with your parents through the most part were you talk to back and forth in your shared values and even musical taste, unlike that kind of relationship we could not have got. we loved and respected our parents but they did not understand us at all. to developid set out a new country, a new culture in many ways, and we did. it was not so easily done. our parents went through the great war, world war ii. they came back having seen horrors and they had fought for their country and wanted nothing more but to settle down and live a decent life where hard work was recorded where they could simply raise kids and have a family. they were very different than we were. going on in that generation. literally. at one point, as many of you who may remember who have read unarmed history, students on kansas state were demonstrating against the war and there were demonstrations over years on college campuses partially because of the universal draft. and the national guard killed four unarmed students. really, i think, the final straw in the separation of generations. no generation is the same across the board. there were plenty of conservative kids and they certainly did not have a lot of sympathy on what was going on in college campuses but it divided our generation from our parents. the reason i talk about all of this is because it is the seeds of what you are seeing now in congress. betweenalled difference people who had a wide view of my end of which was the political spectrum, and people who did not. up in aho had grown different way, many of them in places where they fell secure, usually small towns where they knew everybody and were brought up a certain way and basically believed it was the same way they were going to bring up their children forever. cultural divide in my generation that goes back to the 60 loss. i will say one other thing. there's a lot of talk in washington about equivalency. extremes on the left and right and they cannot get together. it's nonsense. there are no extremes anywhere to speak of. i was around when there really was a left. right now there's a thought that there were people out of the be politem trying to because this is on c-span. wasew up when there really a left and they were the ones who are crazy. they were way out there using all of this rhetoric about bringing down the government. they did not know this but there was a physics graduate student that had nothing to do with war. the crazy stuff was going on and the left. i did not know there really was a lapse of this idea that the extremes on the left and right would not get together, that is just nonsense. there is a really strong difference of opinion and some people who are really locked in and that's what i want to spend a little time explaining to you but this has a happy ending. fast forward and we're are still having these battles in our generation that we had in the start of the 60s and 70s and along comes your generation. i already talked about the difference in parenting styles verywe parented you in a different way than we were parented. we're pretty frank about things we would not think about talking to our parents about. we share a lot of values, those of us in the generation, for want of a better word, characterized as progressives. it was the mainstream generation. when we left your generation, this was a set of ideas. this is a fascinating divide. we've done a lot of polling on this when i was running the democratic national committee. you are more financially conservative than the democratic, especially the more liberal. you are more libertarian. you are less apathetic with the labor movement. democratically oriented liberal people in my generation. you are also inclusive. there is a difference between what you are, inclusive, and what we are, tolerant. i was a big preponderance of the civil rights movement. many of you who read my be agassi know i had two african- american roommates which was incredibly unusual at that time and we learned a lot from each other. we are still really close to this day. if you had told us in the year that martin luther king was assassinated, rfk was assassinated, that the democratic national convention blew up with demonstrations of what we later called the police riot and we would have a black president 40 years later, we would have thought we were crazy. that's exactly what happened. it was powered by your generation. i did not know any african- americans before i went to college. i hardly knew many jews. we grew up in the silos. even though we believed in the generation of equality. every religion, every race, , you sexual orientation guys have grown where we don't have to worry about diversity. racism is never dead. you take for granted your friendships with different types of people. fact that you take advantage of those friendships and understand and have learned much more about each other than we could have imagined has rebuilt the way that you think about this country. this is the most diverse country on the face of the earth. with a rehearsed time, we have a and iultural generation actually do have some friends that are conservative and it may not be multicultural but it is a multiethnic culture and it is a mixture ordinary thing. it is the first multiethnic theher, not the first in history of united states, but the first multiethnic generation in the world because of the internet, because of the ability that you have to connect with people all over the world and be friends with all of these people of the reducede in airfare and you have traveled way more than we have but what you have done is built a worldwide multiethnic generation . it's the first one in the history of mankind. it's an extraordinary thing. not exactly the same. our values for inclusion are the same. i am actually on the right end of the spectrum. i do not believe in irresponsibility that i do believe you need to balance a budget. the governor,o be there is no right wing economics and left except for academics who don't have a lot of actual experience doing it. there's just economics. you tend to be pretty moderate fiscally. generation fought. the difference in values is not about the core values of who you are and what you believe, you in aally inherited from us grew up in a multiethnic situation for the most part and this unbelievable tool which has given more people individual power than any human invention since the printing press. you have more power because of the internet and i will talk about that in a minute area i will end up with how we will work on the budget and i want to set the stage for why we are the way we are and what's going on in washington. to bypasshe civility politics and because of the culture war of my generation and because you are a multiethnic approach theou world differently. we will fight to the death of these things, gay rights, abortion, until we are in senior housing. but you don't fight over things like that. we focus on the 20% of ainslie strongly disagree with in you focus on the 80% of wings you agree with and find common ground. i will give you an example which is extraordinary. dnc, iwas running the happen to be a christian and i know something about the bible. i went to a school where you had to go to church twice a day and twice on sundays. the chief of staff of the democratic party was a pentecostal minister. i know no one on the right will believe this but it is actually true. her father was a big civil rights act to this and he still alive. we had some discussions about religion because most evangelicals don't vote democratic and we wondered why. there is something called a red letter christians. they believe if you could but thewords that jesus said in bible in a red letter in you , it's pretty much caring about poor people, about outcasts, the parable, the samaritans. i asked why he was that we cannot talk to evangelicals. at the words of jesus, evangelicals should be democrats. we did a poll and we pulled evangelical christians through the country. this is probably 10 years ago or maybe not quite, eight years ago. we polled evangelicals and we found a few were over 55, your big issues are antiabortion, anti-gay rights. those were really big deals. if you were under 30 five and you are evangelicals, the things he cared most about were poverty, climate change, and at the time number three was dark for -- darfur. data, ift the polling you post what i call secular activists, young people, the inber one would be poverty two would be climate change. the fact of the matter is your generation has less ideological bandwidth. you don't have a right or a left. would you have is a lot of people willing to focus on types of fact like that, like evangelical christians. they're going like this and we are there to work with you on stuff that you care about if you are a secular activists, the ofm made up for a better way describing what a lot of people in your generation are like. you can find common ground and you know it. we struggle because of the polarization going all the way back to the civil rights. why did i give you this course in the history of your generation? the reason there is not compromise in washington has nothing to do with the difficult issues. it is really easy to compromise about numbers. it would be so easy if people wanted to. morehink there should be tax cuts and a rewrite of the corporate tax code. we think we need more help for homeless people. let's work this out. get as much help for homeless people as we would like. it's not very hard. numbers are numbers and there's always a middle ground. the problem is the ideology. you haveem is that upended the united states. years old,re 20 four you elected barack obama as president. don't you think that is a bit of a start or a lot of people around this country? 2050, the majority of people in this country, there will be no majority of people in this country. we will be like california. there will be no majority. white people, black people, there will be no majority. that is your generation. you are taking over. if you don't think you've taken over, you've already elected her first president. the largest turnout of young people in the history of this country and the only time in my lifetime where more young people turned out than older people over 65, the only time in the 2000 election. yes, barack obama got $.98 of that into a huge percentage of the latino vote but the big thing that nobody expected was this enormous turnout of people in your generation. that turned the page. when you turn the page, they all say human beings want change. it scared the daylights out of a lot of people. then along comes this terrible -- the president inherits it. truth is if you are 65 years old then you lose a job, you will have a hard time getting another one. when people are scared, one way they react his anger. that's a lot of what you are the worsttering to instincts, as they often do on both sides, and catering to the anger that you see on the right, a group that feels they are no longer in the position of privilege they once had data they are economically insignificant trouble because they have lost their jobs and they are terrified of losing their jobs, so one. they reacted by clinging to what they know and resisting change. that is age-old history. people have done that for as long as there's been a human race. andg comes your generation things are going to be different. one that is so interesting is that it does not matter nearly as much. washington has always been behind the times. there have been great presidents who have made huge changes. the vast majority of change does not happen that way. it starts in stump place -- someplace, silicon valley, somewhere else, selma, alabama. there are lots of places that change starts and most of it is grassroots and goes up. did notecurity, that start, franklin roosevelt did not come to the white house and say, let's do social security. started much earlier than 1929 when the stock market collapsed but in the mid-1920's in the agricultural sector but they were not able to get financing and there were all kinds of panicking and they were getting chills. a lot of what would now be conservative states like kansas, that is where social security started. people had nothing in when they cannot work anymore, they died. they had no way of supporting themselves if no one else could either. on that,in roosevelt's saw some states that had it and he said, let's do this nationally. it's not that they did not do anything but most changes start at the grassroots, start someplace else and come to washington. the problem today is because of the internet emma changes so much faster in this cumbersome political process we call democracy -- my favorite quote is by winston churchill. excepte system for all, for any other. remember that. it is alarming that vladimir and theyld get elected will give up their rights and favorites capabilities -- stability. you don't often get the dictator that you like and that's important why we should put up with the system and it drives us so crazy because as winston churchill said, it will turn out in the long run to be better than any other. i will give you an example and then i will shut up and take some questions. ago, you may remember this or you may not because you are not that old. a few years ago, bank of america decided to have a five dollar charge on their debit card once a month. because your generation does not use cash. i was appalled to go to starbucks and have him pull out a debit card for $3.99. i could not believe that people paid on debit. well, you guys don't do it. fine. whatever. graduate at roger williams university in rhode island, a working-class university and she's the first generation of her family to go. she was outraged. she was trying to find a job. she did not have any money. she had a lot of student loans and all of a sudden here comes bank of america raising her debit card and charging $60 a year just to have the privilege of using her debit card. it was a platform put together inspired by some people who knew something about this. this is where your age group decided to come take over my campaign and do whatever they want revolutionizing the country and it started something called change.org that helps you build campaigns to get whatever you think you need to get done and they have led a ton of really successful campaigns. she talks to all the people with debit hearts, 300,000 people signing up saying they will take your money out of bank of america if i don't accident gets calls from managers, the president of the bank. young lady, you just don't understand. i understand i pay $60 a year for the privilege of having your card. 28 days later, bank of america decides they will get rid of this debit card fee. our generation would run around the bright house with pickets -- the white house with pickets. we have a choice between long- haired kids and lobbyists giving us money, who do you think we will vote for? and nothing would have happened. after and this is the bonehead corporate move of whatever that year was. -- 48 hours, maybe a few weeks after the bank of america finally caves in, verizon decides that they're going to charge people to dollars extra if you pay your bill online. first of all, that's a crazy business decision because it's much cheaper to pay the bill online but they are taking advantage of the idea that is true for most people no matter your generation that if we just charge you two dollars a month, you won't get off your body and do anything about it. most of you will just say ok. butou would just say ok, not molly. she gets another petition and get thousands of people to sign up, saying they are going to switch their accounts from verizon to at&t. arise and their fee. the reason i bring this up is because you have a kind of political power we would not dream of. for us, marches and all of this business. organizing people to go up to new hampshire, which did make a difference, because jackson realized it was so much trouble he did not run again. go all you have to do is online. and not even that, it is not one like verizon and bank of america. education is being revolutionized in the inner cities, and washington has almost nothing to do with it. it is movements like teach for america and the charter schools. not all charter schools are good, but there are some. we are not talking about kids who end up in college like some of you here. we are talking about kids who could not graduate before, could becauseuate high school there was not a decent school to teach them, and nobody cared, certainly not in school, and that is being changed. that is not changed radically, and you can read about scandals, but for the most part, there are a lot more kids that have opportunities, and it has little to do with washington. it is about local stuff. a young woman, who is not so young anymore, and the woman who started teach for america was a princeton undergraduate and raised tons of money, and now it is teach were all in places like argentina and things like that. years of the hardest years of your life, like being in the peace corps, where you get deposited in a country and cannot be the language. it is really hard. and it is not fair to drop all of these untrained kids in, and i said, what do the kids get out of it? of thing thatnd you are that is changing everything. you are not demonstrating. in fact, you are a group that does not do much demonstrating. there is some of that. that was my generation, not your generation. you get things done, and increasingly, you get them done because you do not have to wait for a political process to get it done. when you want to get stuff done, you just go on the internet. a thousand or 500,000 people to agree with you. when we wanted to get started with a business, we went for venture capital. thes unbelievable revolution that is being caused, and what congress, eventually what they have to do is catch up with the revolution, and the revolution is getting farther and farther ahead of them. so how does this all end up? you do not have as big a desire to actually serve up on capitol hill or some of the organizations around here, but it is going to happen, because eventually, we are going to age out. boomers that we are, there is some finite section to this process going on in congress, and it is happening sooner than you think, and as soon as there are people of your age in congress, this is going to stop, because there is not the patients to treat people the way they treat people. there is not the patience to be on twitter and say horrible things because you disagree with somebody. you do not disagree that way, and i know that because i teach with three different universities, and we think you are sometimes too kind, glossing over some things that need to be talked about, but it is an alternative to us, so the compromises and the real bipartisanship is going to , and we change, the democratic party changes, and i forgot which republican said this, but it really was from the --esty aspect thomas aspect,. they made ah nixon, lot of heyday making the democratic party into a party of long-haired people who did not go to work and dodge the draft. today, the republicans have this problem. that is not true, but that is their caricature, because there are enough of them that talk like that, just like there are a enough on the left, and that is how we got granted, and they are branded that way now. we lost the election. we finally moved back to the center with bill clinton. this election in 2016 is important. the republicans lose -- they are already struggling. able to talkonly about libertarian economics, because you are more libertarian and fiscally conservative than the left-wing of the democratic party. but they cannot get you as long as they are talking about immigration and gay rights and abortion rights, as those are your friends. they are victimized, and you are not going to throw your friends under the bus. you are not going to do it. it is not going to happen. you are not going to do it. they know they have to stop talking about those issues. they made a deal with the devil in 1968 with the southern strategy, and there is a wing of the party that only want to talk about those issues, and it is getting smaller and smaller and smaller every day. they lose the presidential election in 2016, i think the republican party is going to retool itself and come roaring back. to compete for you. do that is to stop the rhetoric and the fire flame throwing and to actually get something done. that is what it is going to take to get your generation. remember what barack obama was talking about, he was talking about bringing people together, and i told him, don't count on that, because i have been fighting these people, and they are ruthless, and they will do whatever it takes, and he has since found out otherwise. when senior people in your party are talking about the fact that you are a muslim and born in kenya and you are president of the united states, there is something wrong, and your generation is not going to buy into that. they are not talking like that. they are trying to figure out how to retool this party and undo the bargaining in 1968 with the far right. they know in order to win, as your generation comes into power , that they have to appeal to you in that way, so the compromises will come. the compromises that are not, for the most part, there are somewhere it is difficult to figure out where to compromise on, like abortion. that is a hard one, but the rest of the stuff is not hard, and the budgets are easy. they just have to have the will to get it done. the last people who didn't were ronald reagan and tip o'neill, who figured out how to shore up social security, and they made a deal, and they both made compromises, and it worked, and it postpones the day of reckoning for a long time, so if you have the will to compromise, you have to find that, and that is what we are lacking, the will to compromise. very little change actually comes from washington. it comes from the outside. you guys are making change in your communities all of the time. work, buthem will not the things that do work will spread, and the other thing is you are setting a town for the future of politics in the united states, and that will make it easier or these guys to do their job as soon as they figure out that they have to start saying attention to what your values are and not just talking about student loans or things like that to draw you in. things is greatest that student loans matter to you, but what really matters is the tone and the possibility and hope for the future. the last thing i want to say before i close is the discussion about any quality. to the discussion about inequality not as a democrat and not as somebody who thinks, well, the poor have to get a better deal in life. i think that is true, but the reason i think it is not because of that. this is an exceptional country. it really is. hate to think about the perception that it means americans think they are better than everyone else. we are an extraordinary country, and it goes back to the doctrine that founded this country, the constitution and the declaration of independence. if you look at what happened at that time in the late 1700's, as we were being founded, what america did was raise the bar in terms of the expectations of the time about how we would treat each other as human beings and about how our government was to treat people. what was done in 1770 six and then the reframing of the constitution, which was written twice, because we did not get it right, and then the articles of confederation, what we did was to set a new philosophical standard which became the standard of the world about how human beings were to treat each other and about what our relationship with the government is. that is what makes it special. the reasontion, and this country has been so strong economically for so long is that we attract the brightest and the best and in brace to those who immigrated. why is that? because it takes a lot of learn -- nerve to leave what you know and to come to a country where you do not speak the language so your children can have a better life than you. is because of the framework in the constitution and in the declaration of independence. the wealth gap threatens that, because the core belief in america that has kept us going, which has made us an exceptional country, was if you work hard enough, you can succeed, and your success is not limited, and everyone knows that luck plays a role and so on and so forth, but the key thing we are taught is that if you work hard enough, you can be a success. years, the bottom 80% has not seen a pay increase. almost the entire adjusted for inflation growth in wages is in the top 20%. i think that is great for the top 20%. i do not begrudge anyone any money in this country, but if you say it does not matter how hard you work, you cannot get ahead, to the 80%, and it will be harder and harder to pay for your kids college education, that is a spike in the american dream. we have to fix this problem, not because of the issues with the poor and all of the things that the democrats think. this is what has given hope to all of those in the world that do not have these kinds of opportunities the last 200 some odd years. that is what is at stake. it is not a philosophy. it is an opportunity to be a beacon of hope. the mistakes that we have made, and there are many, we are still the beacon of hope for the world. human rights common issues settled in 1776 in our founding documents, if we want to do that, we have to make sure there is equal opportunity economically. exist today. we have to make sure it does. when we talk about income inequality, it is not going to be about transfer payments, even though we need that. it is not going to be about minimum wage, even though we need that. it has to be about real opportunity, and there also has to be the opportunity to fail. actuallyist, who i think wrote some really smart things, very conservative, and some of you know who he is, but what he said in capitalism, you have to be able to fail. right now, we have a system after 2008 where the banks are so big that if they screw up enormously, he cannot allow them to fail, so there is no penalty for screwing up in the capitalist system. that cannot be. that is not real capitalism. forave people accountable their actions, not just doing it with the law, and it also has to have economic penalties for the top folks, especially on wall street, who have exempted themselves from the rules of capitalism, and that is a big problem in a society which relies on equal opportunity for everybody. thanks very much. [applause] so i am happy to take questions and comments if we have them. >> good morning, governor dean. my name is ryan navarro from college, and you had mentioned the election in 2016, and i am wondering in the event you were to run for president again, what would be the top three issues on your agenda if you were elected. >> well, i am supporting hillary, so i am not running in 2016, but thank you. i think number one is income inequality. the financial situation of the country. we have too much debt. we cannot continue with this debt. it is a serious problem. i think my views on how to deal with it would be different from i have and the third is always believed you have to have a universal health care system, and i think we have made some progress towards that, but we have a lot of work to do. >> hello? there we go. from stanford university. in light of the recent budget deal, do you believe what is characterized a lot of the budget disagreement has been dissipated, or is that going to be a continuing factor in the budget discussion? the anger in congress is not dissipated because it is a relatively small group of people. that, it is not small. it is 80 members. i think the speaker has been pretty clear that he is not willing to be blackmailed or pushed around anymore, and i think that is really important, the victory with the budget deal was that we could actually have republicans and democrats talk to each other. it turns out the budget deal was not all that big a deal, but nonetheless, it was a big deal that they could agree on something. is what islem here going to happen to the far right and how much leverage they are going to be permitted to have. pelosi, she is going to have to deliver some democratic votes, if the speaker is going to be able to cut deals, and that means she is going to have to move her caucus towards the middle, because i do not think there can be enough republican votes with the tea party to assure a deal. they are on opposite ends of the spectrum. it is not because everybody is having a cool by all moment. they continue to cater to anger in a certain percentage of the people in congress, but it is that those forces have begun to be overcome by the leadership. >> thank you. my name is haley schneider from college. i appreciate your insights when you say when people are scared, they react with fear, and i am wondering, in your opinion, what can be done to address some of the fears and open up more bipartisan discussion? the only way to adjust to fear is to give people time to adjust to circumstances. they need time. theany of you know, i was first governor of the union to sign the civil liberties bill. some people thought it was a kumbaya, granola crunching situation. people were opposed to same-sex marriage, but this is marriage. but things change very rapidly, especially in your generation, which does not seem to have any problem with same-sex marriage at all. you are very liberal, and that is just a matter of getting used to it, so they -- the way you overcome fear is that people get used to a different situation, and it is not so fearful anymore. the other way is to become a better economically. important so that people can go back and worrying about their pocketbooks or how their kids are going to be in school. they need to make sure they can get to college or he and her is a different level of fear, and there are an awful lot of people regardless of where they are in the political spectrum in the last four years who are older but who had older kids at home who had legitimate fears of never being able to work again, a combination of turnover and age in the workforce when they lost their jobs, so that is basically had to overcome fear. you have to overcome fear by getting to know each other and trust each other and working with each other, and it requires an enormous amount of work, and this is a human emotion. it has nothing to do with america. look at south sudan. south sudan -- irresponsible politicians cater to fear, and responsible politicians try to keep people together, and this is again not about necessarily america. you had a new country that had thrown off the shackles of what they thought was an impressive government, and then they dissolved in fear because they had their own agendas and and theyr each other, then became fearful. the way you fight fear is you have to be committed to keeping the country together with leadership, and you have to make sure there is an opportunity to get to know each other, and you have to have an economy that does not threaten the livelihood of children, because that is what most -- is most important to everyone. >> thank you. >> first of all, thank you for being here. it emphasized the importance of the internet in revolutionizing the political process. one person can influence the world by simply posting something on the internet, like change.com. you findon is, do there are other negatives to this international change, other than it is happening faster than the political world? people are talking about slackers and people in videogames and criticizing your generation, and i find that to be vacuous. it is mostly people my age who have their own problems. are their criticisms? of course, there are. they are human beings, so they are not going to do everything right. here is one thing i did not say that i should have. when you look at a generation, you cannot brand a whole generation of 40 million people -- however you want to slice the pie -- of this way or that way, but it is the top 15% or so that makes the difference, and i am not talking about people who went to stanford or yale or someplace. because the top 20% comes from all over the place. top 20% in washington did not go to the ivy league. i did. it is still pretty much a meritocracy in this country, but 20% or whatby 10 or the number is, it is where they are taking the generation, and that is the difference. not want some we would to use as an example if you had kids, but there is going to be a lot more people doing more things, and if you look at the in the direction in which it is going, i believe it is unbelievable positive -- unbelievably positive. there are some things that should not be fixed. other.ight at each if somebody is a muslim and somebody else is a christian, they will go right at each other. on campuses, i do not think there is enough discussion about gender relationships and gender equity and sexual harassment. i think people avoid having that discussion. is enoughhink there discussion about race in your generation, but we had all of these discussions in my generation, and the reason i think you do not have those discussions, i think you need to have those discussions, but i think it is secondary to what you really need to do, which is to heal the wounds of my generation. now, what we did, the civil rights movement, how about that? every generation has their things they can be really proud of, but we also have things we can do better. i have kids just a little older for you, and i am rooting them because we are turning it over to you now. he are hoping you will do the things we did not do right, and you will fix them, and then your children will come along, and they are going to fix the things you did not do right. do i wishdo this, or there was not as much of that, and all this kind of stuff, but i think in the broad picture of where you are going, america and the world -- i will leave you from one of the kids who did tar rear square -- square, and then morsi comes in, and he hijacks the revolution, and then they get as much a hardliner as mubarak except younger and more vigorous, and i said to him, don't you get discouraged about all of this and all that you have put into this, and he said, i do, but they cannot stop us in the long run. first of all, the second generation of the muslim brotherhood weekend speed speak to. they dress like us, and we can do business with them, which is typical. and then he said this is a worldwide movement. this is not about egypt or the middle east. our generation is not going to put up with authoritarianism anymore. our generation does believe in democratic, inclusive values. thise going to work on together. if that is the credo of this generation, i think that is pretty terrific. we have a lot of work to do, of course. >> thank you so much. college, and i was wondering how you think we could strengthen the economic recovery. >> where do we start? i do think -- well, first of all, i think we are in an economic downturn, so it is not necessarily an issue of economic growth and recovery. the problem is the inequality of distribution of the fruits of recovery, so you have to figure out how to do that. you are going to be some transfer payments. obamacare is one of those, have universal health care, so there is a safety net, but the problem is, transfer payments alone do not work. this is where republicans are right. you do have to refurbish the economy and make work pay. but you also have to increase the ability for people to do not worryurship and about business regulation and that, because it is a drag. there is a package if the two sides would sit down and work together that you can come up with, which is a little of both sides. make the mostlly sense. now, with some of the bigger picture stuff, we have to do better on exports. good,rade is generally unless it in fringes on sovereignty, where, like equal rights, and an strong environmental protection. trade agreements are not a bad thing. you just have to be very, very careful with how you put them into effect. it contributes to political stability and economic stability. one of the countries that partake. this particular point, i think the deficit is a problem, but i do not think it should be brought down too drastically. of flack but a lot understood that unlike what the europeans did, which was austerity and my ring themselves in a serious problem, you prime the hell out of the pump and congress would not, and that probably saved us. but as we begin to recover, you do have to worry about the rings people objected to in the first place. their timing was just wrong, not their ideas, and then you have to ease into that slowly because a tremendousnt amount of inflation. the bottom line, this is a very long and complicated answer, but the bottom line is there is no simple solution. the solution is not to just have unfettered capitalism, he can then you get 2008 again. let capitalism work as long as it is as fair as possible. that is the lyrical debate, how do you make capitalism fair, and there has to be some resolution. there is no doubt in my mind that capitalism is not the best to have, but the problem is when it gets out of control. so you have to figure out how to make that work. not a very satisfying answer, but that is the stuff. >> thank you. netherlands and from college. years, i have always heard about america having the biggest step program have heardd, and i about helping the homeless and collecting taxes at the same time. it does not sound very good for the debt, and i have always heard that democrats like to spend money, spend money, and create problems, but yesterday, i heard grover norquist -- >> speaking of trade and problems. >> yes. [laughter] >> he called my country socialistic. that was strange to me because we do not have this big problem. >> grover norquist, it is amazing how ignorant americans are about europe. fact, the netherlands, they had a conservative government for quite some time. i do not think he knows that. >> no, he does not know much. [laughter] what is the biggest problem right now? >> both parties are a problem. you can increase your debt in two ways. spend money you don't pay for, which the democrats have done in the past. the republicans will cut taxes but won't cut programs. it is no different from a balance sheet point of view than money -- spending money you don't have. but spending it on different people, at the top of the income bracket. you have to have reasonable policy. is not true that america has the biggest debt problem in the world. our gnp.ound 65% of european countries are in general significantly higher. the ones in real trouble are over 120%. have a problem. we don't want it to get worse. it will get worse. some things will go on no matter what. it will take us time to turn the ship around. we have to do it in a long-term way, in a thoughtful way. we will have to rehab things. medicare has to be changed. not because it is a bad program. it is probably the best of all the programs we have. but the medical system is out of control. we have to deal with that. it is a huge issue. it is going to be a big problem. we do have substantial problems. one of the things barack obama has done well, although it created a stir for other countries because they are not used to it, we try not to lecture other countries as much as we used to. i think rover is a little behind aboutrve, lecturing you europe. america has its own problems. right now we should work with people as partners, which i think obama gets. the relationship between europe and the united states has changed dramatically. i spent a lot of time in europe. they used to claim, obama has forgotten us. i was tell them, that is a good thing. you are not a junior partner anymore. you can take care of your own problems, your own matters now. we should be equal partners, not the senior partner telling you what to do all the time. i think the president has changed that relationship. that is a very good thing for the united states and europe, and we are working on that aspect of dealing with other countries. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> kind of going off what you said with our generation being the movers and shakers towards change, also having help in america with resolving issues like inequality and gay rights and poverty, do you believe that the more conservative party will in the future, maybe even in the next election, sort of the shifting and re-focusing ideas to be more appealing to the younger, liberal generation? >> rate question. i think they have a problem. they made a deal with a certain group of people that is about 35% of their vote. why don't you just throw them over the side? it is much better for the country to have two strong parties instead of one that is reasonably dominant, which is where we are headed, i think. i would like to do that but you tell me where i will get that 35% of the vote. so it is not so easy to turn on a dime. the smarte, look, people in the republican party know they have to change. then you get people like todd akin or richard murdoch running for senate, who should have won, and they said outrageous things and the whole country went, is that what the republicans stand for? of course, the democrats were quickwo quick to -- too to say this is the republican party. intel the republicans are willing to cast them aside, as bill clinton cast aside the left fringe of the democratic party, they will have a struggle. they can't just change on a dime because they built a coalition. throwing off one of the partners in the coalition, essentially. the difference between europe and our systems is we build our coalitions before the elections. they build a matter because they have five or six parties. maybe we should have five or six parties. it would not be such a bad thing right now. but we don't. 1970's we had to retool. for that to happen, it is not so easy. the quickest impetus is the leadership finally says, we are tired of losing. which is why i am really hoping for a democratic victory in 2016. we are tired of losing, we will make tough decisions, ritual or message, and do some people not like it that is just too bad. we will make these changes. i think that is going on in the republican party right now. the pundits in washington say there is a civil war in the republican party. you should never believe anything written in washington. ,s bill clinton once said nobody pays any attention anyway, which is true. there is this tension in their party, and the leadership, the smart leadership, and there is plenty of smart people who want to do the right thing in the republican party, they understand they cannot be a sok by the far right you are unreasonable and appear to your generation to be so far away from anything you are remotely interested in. that is not a long-term winning strategy. they know it. they are trying to fix it. it has been a long time that they have depended on that wing of the party. with a terrific guy who was a republican, conservative republican from minnesota in the 1990's. a woman from the tea party running against a guy in texas in the primary. this guy has a 100% conservative record. the mostry time conservative rating organization has said, are you with us? he said yes. froms running against him the right. that is the problem republicans have. in a republican primary, she could win. so they have to sort this stuff out. we went through this in the 1970's and 1980's. we sorted it out and we are back in business pretty well. it is a struggle to turn around a big party in a country like the united states where there are huge demographic changes and people being left behind are looking for a way to express their fear and their anger. that is what the republican party has to deal with right now. >> thank you. >> thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> senator marco rubio said today that the federal government needs to make changes in order to make the poorest americans climb out of poverty. his remarks are next. then, a conversation with california congresswoman barbara lee on poverty and income. >> the new country of south sudan was created in 2011 after over 20 years of civil war. tomorrow morning, a senate panel will get an update on the afteruing violence there rebel forces rejected a government plan to restart peace talks. state department and usaid officials will testify before the senate foreign relations committee. live coverage at 10:15 eastern on c-span 3. later in the day, also on c-span 3, the head of the national guard bureau will be at the national press club talking about budget cuts. live coverage at 147 -- 1:00 eastern. >> the deadline for c-span student cam, dish and is approaching. answering the question, what is the most important issue congress should address this year with a five to seven minute documentary including c-span programming. there is $100,000 in total prizes, with a grand prize of $5,000. entries are due by january 20. get more info at studentcam.org. >> next, senator marco rubio talks about income, poverty, and then education. the florida republican spoke on the 50th anniversary of president lyndon johnson's war on poverty speech. from the american enterprise institute, this is 45 minutes. [applause] >> thank you for hosting this. thank you for hosting this. thank you for all of you for being here today. i am honored and privileged to have the opportunity to do this on this important day. my mother was one of seven girls whose parents often went to bed hungry at night so the children would not have to. my father had it even tougher. he lost his mother when he was about nine years old. he had to leave school and go to work at a local restaurant when he was the same age as my oldest son is now. my parents, like most people that have ever lived, were raised in a country where they were trapped by the circumstances of their birth. but just ninety miles away there was a country where, through hard work and perseverance, anyone could get ahead. and so they came here with virtually nothing. the first use in america were difficult. they worked long hours for little pay. but they kept on, and in time, their lives improved. they never became rich or famous -- they never became famous, and yet my parents live the american dream. because like most people, for them happiness wasn't about becoming wealthy. it was about finding work that paid a livable wage. it was about a happy family life, being able to retire with security, being able to give the chance -- the kids the chance to do anything they wanted. my parents' story, of two everyday people who were given the chance to work their way into a better life, is a common story here in america. it is a defining national characteristic rooted in the principle that is at the core of our nation's birth -- that every single human being has a god- given right to live freely and pursue happiness. this conviction has proven to be far more than just a line on a founding document. it has become the shared and defining value of us as a nation and a people. it has set america apart and has attracted people here from every corner of the earth. the visionaries, the ambitious, the people who refused to accept the stagnant ways of the old world, they came here. they brought their ideas and they brought their dreams, and finally, free from the restraints of the old world, they helped build the most prosperous nation in human history. we are still a country where through hard work and perseverance you can earn a better life. americansajority of today live lives much better than their parents. yet we are rightfully troubled because many of our people are still caught in what seems to be a pervasive, unending financial struggle. as athers us because people we are united by the belief that every american deserves the equal opportunity to achieve six -- success. fifty years ago today, president lyndon johnson sought to address the plight of poverty by waging a war against it. on that day, he stood before a joint session of congress and vowed, "it will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy will suffice, but we shall not rest until that war is won." his very next sentence served as a small window into his big- government vision for this war, and its future failures. he said that " "the richest nation on earth can afford to win it." and with those words, he foreshadowed the belief still held by liberals to this very day, that government spending is the central answer to healing the wounds of poverty. today, the debate on poverty is primarily focused on the growing income gap between the rich and poor. from 1979 to 2007, income for the highest-earning americans grew by more than it did for anyone else. from 1980 to 2005, over 80% of the total increase in income went to the top 1% of american s. these are startling figures and deserve our attention. but if we focus on that alone it does not give us a complete picture, a full view of the problem that is before us. yes, the cashier at a fast-food chain makes less money than the ceo of the company. but the problem we face is not simply the differences and the gap between pay between them, but rather that too many of those cashiers are stuck in the same job for years on end, unable to find one that pays better. and it is that lack of mobility, not just income inequality, that we should be focused on. for most americans, their primary asset ration is to achieve a better life. for some, that means becoming wealthy, and there is nothing wrong with that. but for most, they just want to live a happy and fulfilling life. like my parents. to earn a livable wage in a good job. to have time to spend with family and do things they enjoy. to be able to retire with security and leave their kids better off than themselves. the good news is that even in the midst of our recent economic struggles, most americans have been able to do that. posted 50% of people in the bottom fifth of in 1996 hadcale climbed into a higher income bracket less than 10 years later. many of these americans have children that have gone on to earn even more. 84% of americans have higher family incomes than their parents had when they were the same age. among all income levels, the current generation is making more and doing better than the ones that came before. the problem is that for some americans, this kind of mobility isn't happening. for example 70% of children born , into poverty will never make it to the middle class. the uncomfortable truth is that there are now a number of other countries with as much or more opportunity than ours. in fact, more people in canada go on to surpass the income of their parents than in the united states. america is still the land of opportunity for most, but it is not a land of opportunity for all. if we are to remain an exceptional nation, we must close this gap in opportunity. so why are so many poor americans trapped at the bottom? why are so many working harder than ever only to find their dreams living further away? why do so many suffer from a growing and nagging sense of insecurity, knowing that they are one bad break away from losing everything they worked so hard for? there are a number of reasons. our modern day economy has wiped out many of the low-skill jobs that once provided millions with a middle class living. those that have not been outsourced or replaced by technology pay wages that just don't keep pace with the increase in the cost of living. even some of the middle-skilled jobs, white and blue-collar jobs , have also been lost to automation or shipped overseas. in till at least a few decades ago, our economy proved sufficiently dynamic and innovative to replace old jobs with new ones. but that hasn't happened in recent years. social factors also play a major role in denying equal opportunity. the truth is, the greatest tool to lift children and families from poverty is one that decreases the probability of child poverty by 82%. but it isn't a government program. it's called marriage. fifty years ago, today, when the war on poverty was launched, 93% of children born in the united states were born to married parents. by 2010 that number had plummeted to 60%. it should not surprise us that 71% of poor families with children are not headed by a married couple. the decline of marriage and the increase in the percentage of children born out of wedlock is being driven by a complex set of cultural and societal factors, but there is an interesting impediment to marriage worth keeping in mind. a 2011 report by the pew research center found that 64% of adults with college degrees are married, while only 47% of those with a high-school education or less are. a lack of education is contributing to inequality in other ways as well. the jobs that have replaced the low and middle skill jobs of the past pay more. but they require a high level of professional, technical, or management skills. and we simply have too many people who have never acquired the education needed to attain those skills. what's worse, children from lower income families are the least likely to get an advanced education. the result is a vicious cycle of intergenerational poverty. these economic, social, cultural and educational causes of opportunity inequality are complex. and they are overlapping. and they are interrelated. by they will not be solved continuing with the same stale washington ideas. ofe decades and trillions dollars after president johnson first announced the war on big-ty, the results of the government approach are in. here is what they are. we have four million americans who have been out of work for six months or more. we have a staggering 49 million americans living below the poverty line. we have over twice that number, over 100 million people, who get the sort of food aid from federal government. meanwhile, our labor participation report -- force is that a 35-year low, and children raised in the bottom 20% of national income have a 42% chance of being stuck there for life. our current president and his liberal allies, they propose to address this. their proposal is let's spend more on failed programs and increase the minimum wage to $10.10. whatis their solution to the president has called the president has called defining issue of our time? raising the minimum wage poll may well, but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the american dream. and our current government programs at best offer only a partial solution. they help people deal with poverty, but they do not help people emerge from poverty. the only solution that will achieve meaningful and lasting results is to provide those u.s. with low-paying jobs with the real opportunity to move up the better-paying jobs. to do this, we have to focus on policies that help our economy create those jobs, policies that help people overcome the obstacles between them and those jobs. the war on poverty accomplish neither of these two things. but we can achieve these two goals. first because we have a simple -- single greatest engine of upward mobility in human history at our disposal, the american free enterprise system. real free enterprise isn't wealth accumulating in the hands of a few and leaving everyone else behind to live off the crumbs and leftovers. real free enterprise is not corporatism, where those with the power to influence government win at the expense of everyone else. real free enterprise is about a broad and growing economy that creates opportunities for everyone to get ahead. real free enterprise creates the opportunity to become wealthy. and stablethe good middle-class jobs, like the one my parents had. but instead of fostering a vibrant free enterprise economy, our federal government is a major impediment to the enterprise and ingenuity of our people. an expensive tax code, burdensome regulations, and an unsustainable national debt are suffocating our economy's ability to create enough steady and good-paying jobs. that is why poverty and inequality have only gotten worse under the current administration. instead, we need policies that make our country the easiest and best place in the world to create good-paying jobs. this means removing the uncertainty created by a dangerous and growing national debt. this means an simple and affordable tax code reforms that incentivize investment. even minute in regulations that prevent employers from expanding and prevent our energy sector from growing. but we can't stop there. allowing free enterprise to flourish alone is not enough. also have to address the complex and interrelated societal, cultural, and educational impediments that are also holding so many people back. a child born into a poor and broken family, living in a dangerous and violent neighborhood and forced to attend a dysfunctional school is, -- that child is in all likelihood going to not have the same opportunities to succeed as a child throwing up an ace able home in a safe neighborhood and in ading -- a stable home safe neighborhood and attending a good school. an unwed mother with a poor education, abandoned by the father of her children, faces significant challenges to a better life. the poverty found in rural areas has some characteristics that are very different from the poverty you find in urban areas, in inner cities. these are complex problems. our current collection of overlapping government programs ignores and sometimes even exacerbates them. instead of continuing to pour money into our existing programs, we need to reform them through innovative and highly targeted solutions. here is the problem. that is not something the federal government is capable of delivering. washington is too bureaucratic and to resistant to change. one-size-fits-all approach to policy is not conducive to solving a problem as diverse and complex as this one. therefore, what i'm proposing today is the most fundamental change to how the federal government fight already and encourages upward mobility since president johnson first conceived of the war on poverty 50 years ago today. i'm proposing that we turn over washington's antipoverty program and the trillions spent on them to the states. are antipoverty program should be replaced with a revenue- neutral flex fund. most of oureamline existing federal antipoverty funding into a single agency. each year, these flex funds would be transferred to the states so that they can design and find creative initiatives that address the factors behind inequality of opportunity. this work in the 1990's with welfare reform. in that case, congress gave the states the ability to design their own programs, and interned the states enacted policies that promoted work rather than dependence. in the years that followed, this led to a decline in poverty and welfare expenses. however, despite the success of welfare reform, washington continues to rule over the world of anti-poverty policymaking, with beltway bureaucrats picking and choosing rigid nationwide programs and forcing america's elected state legislators to watch from the sidelines. as someone who served nine years in the state house, two of them as speaker, i know how frustrating that is. it is wrong for washington to tell tallahassee what programs are right for the people of florida. but it is particularly wrong for it to say that what is right for tallahassee is the same thing that is right for topeka and sacramento and detroit and manhattan and every other town, city, and state in the country. a nation as large and diverse as the united states, with a problem as large and diverse as ofs one, should have a menu state-level policy options as .arge and diverse already, we see evidence that when states can manage the resources necessary to experiment with such programs, the results are dynamic and transformative. for example, while washington debates how and whether to fund the existing unemployment insurance programs, states are finding innovative approaches to get people into good-paying jobs . in utah, in order to continue receiving an employment benefits , the long-term unemployed were required to take online training courses that focus on skills ,eeded for modern professionals with topics spanning from resume-building two career direction to interview skills. the state track the progress of participants. here is what they found. before the courses of theyssional preparedness were at an equivalent of d+. on completion, preparedness had climbed to a b+. what began as a requirement turned into a sought-after tool. 36% of participants found the course so helpful that they voluntarily completed more training than what was required. it also helps him find a job faster, by the way. among the test group, unemployment duration was reduced by 7%. the program has been taken statewide in utah, andy 7% reduction in the duration of benefits is expected to save $60 million annually, not to mention the boost to the state economy and culture from a more engaged labor force. a similar program was attempted in mississippi. in that case, participants increased preparedness by a staggering 31%. another in kentucky found that workers and 2.2 weeks less on unemployment insurance benefits when required to take training courses. the kinds of innovations we are looking to unleash. not just with unemployment insurance, but throughout the entire web of government assistance programs. right now, these kinds of innovations are difficult, if not impossible to pursue, because washington controls the money. but i know from my time in the florida legislature that if states were given the flexibility, they would design and pursue innovative and effective ways to help those trapped in poverty. as we've seen, they could put in place programs that give those currently stuck in low-wage jobs access to a job training system. they could put in place relocation vouchers that will help the long-term unemployed move to areas with more jobs. they could remove the marriage penalties in safety net programs like medicaid. they could enact a nearly infinite number of other nimble and targeted reforms to address the needs of their people. allowing the- states greater control doesn't mean washington gets to wash its hands of the problem. there will still be a role-play for the federal government. for example, we should pursue reforms that encourage and reward work. that is why i am developing legislation to replace the earned income tax credit with a federal wage enhancement for qualifying low-wage jobs. this would allow unemployed individuals to take a job paying 18,000 dollars a year, which on its own is not enough to make ends meet, but then they receive a federal enhancement to make the job a more -- more enticing alternative to simply collecting unemployment insurance. unlike the earned income tax credit, my proposal would apply the same to singles as to married couples and families with children. it would be a preferable means of distributing benefits, since it would arrive in sync with a biweekly paycheck rather than a year-end lump-sum credit. it is a better way of supporting low-income workers than simply raising the minimum wage. and enhancement like this will have to be widely targeted so it avoids fraud or abuse, and the amount will depend on a range of factors. but we know that by supporting work over dependency, this will increase workforce participation , especially in struggling communities. that in turn will have numerous social, economic, and cultural benefits to areas hardest hit by the great recession and our recent economic challenges. alternately, however, any reform effort would be incomplete if it failed to facilitate the ultimate weight enhancer, skills -- wage enhancer, skills training for those in low-wage jobs. many people in these jobs don't have the time or money to pursue a traditional education. we can help them by bolstering and reinvigorating our nation's existing job-training system. while our workforce delivery system must be driven by states, the federal government can help shortage in many skilled labor jobs by creating more pathways toward obtaining ,hose certification credentials and by encouraging alternatives to the traditionally accredited college degree. programs, current targeted reforms such as these address the causes of opportunity and equality, not just the consequences. as a result, they will help move us closer to a day when widespread poverty is a memory.

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