Those of you who are here in the audience those of you who have thank you so much those ofe. You are here in the audience, those of you have joint online on cspan book. This is going to be a riveting conversation at a say that as someone who is a historian said just a couple of minutes of comets before he turned over to my friend and colleague steve moore who really will be running the show tonight. And that is a 1994 i was president of my Universities College republicans. It was more than a dream as a son of the reagan revolution, that dick armey would soon be the majority leader, that phil grams economic expertise along with leader army, police for a narrow window in american political history would be ascendant in this town. And while we have to be careful as the story is not to dwell in the past, we can as we are on the brink of a red wave, and a mean that philosophically not as a partisan this year, know that that isnt merely about party registration, one party being in charge instead of another. It is about the ideas that define us as a people, namely freedom, floor sheeting. And this town and this government is spending a hell of a lot less money than it does. So it is a great, great privilege to have dick armey, snore phil graham, one of my political mentors were ar couple of years later he was thinking about running for different office. He was in louisiana and i said senator, this is beforelo the ws read within louisiana, would you adopt us as arthur senator . He said yes, son, you just keep doing what youre doing. Here we are many years later senator good to see you welcome back to heritage without further ado its also an equally great privilege to havee steve moore back of the Heritage Foundation to welcome him here as our m distinguished fellow editor in this program over to him. [applause] writers who can really [inaudible] thank thank you, kevin ce kind introduction. Im loving this new era at heritage. Its fantastic and his leadership has been amazing. We are going to some fun today tonight and welcome to our cspan audience as well. Dick armey is a legend. Hes one of the few people in addition to phil gramm who actually came to this town try to make government smaller not bigger, so thank you a to both f you and so we have i just got this note from Newt Gingrich who was as you all know the speaker of the house and was the one with dick armey really engineered the republican revolution in 1994 such as thought if i may dick, i would love to read this comment from speaker gingrich and a truly sweet. He says dick armey was invaluable as a Creative Dynamic energetic member when we were in the minority and as a key part of the contract of america majority, an extraordinary force for good ideas and real reforms and a leaderea who helped reelet the house the house gop majority for the first time in 68 years and help nldevelop the only four balance budgets and a lifetime. Pretty amazing. His new book provides vivid and wise insight into the legislative process in the house as an institution with gratitude, Newt Gingrich. So thats really nice tribute to dick armey. This is the book. If you havent gotten this book yet its a great read. I actually think this book should be read by all people, every Political Science major in america should be reading this book called leader. It really is a great discussion of how washington really works and how things get done and dont get done in washington. We are going to kind of have some fun telling our dick armey stories. Theres probably in a this room at least 15 or 20 people who worked for you at one time or another and i say in addition to all of the great contributions you made directly to policy one of your great contributions was the incredible number of successful people who you mentors including myself. A so my little story about dick armey is that i worked for dick on the joint Economic Committee in 1993 and 1994. I remember when i was on the committee and i decided by the summer of 1994 that is going to leave the committee because i just had had it. If you were a minority member, t working for a minority member in the house you might as well not a vendor of the democrats were so arrogant at the time after 40 years of rule it was like republicans werent even there. I remember i went to dick and i said i love working for you but i just cant do this anymore. Its pulling my hair out and we are not really having much of an impact year and ill never forget, dick turned me and said steve, you cannot leave now. Remember this . You said dont leave now because we are going to take the house in november of 1994. You know, dennis, youre part of the revolution as well and i sit dick, whatever your smoking iw, want some of it. Because it seemed so incredibly, and people forget improbable it seemed that how many seats did you have to pick up, like 60 or Something Like that. It was obviously a tidal wave election and it was in no small part because Newt Gingrich and dick armey and the contract with american republicans. Theres a lesson when republicans stand for something they win. When theyre just the lesser of two evils which is most of the time they lose and so that was an incredible period and what you all did you and nude in the whole team from 1995 through 2000 its true, only four balance budgets and the last 50 years we did welfare reform, we did the Capital Gains tax cut, all of these incredible things. Dick armey was also for those of the younger people in this room you were the First Inspiration for the flat tax idea. You were one of the First Inspiration for medical savings accounts. You never with me on the term limits idea. I dont think you like that too much but anyway its just a fantastic to have you here. I wanted to turn the podium over to senator phil gramm who actually i first met in this Building Back in 198485 when dick armey, phil gramm came up with this crazy idea called, they called it the grammrudman bill. The grammrudman bill was basically automatic spending cuts if we couldnt get the deficit down and all of buwashington had heart palpitations over this but it was one of the few times that we actually cut spending under that Graham Rudman bill and hes been a crusade for small government as well and also hails from the great state of texas to give a nice warm welcome to senator phm of texas. [applause] thank you, steve. Nobody told me i was going to say anything. I will say a few things. President reagan once put his arm around me and said, i want you to look me in the eye. He said, cap weinberger tells me that your grammrudman is more dangerous than the soviet menace. Will you assure me that thats not the case . And i said yes, mr. President , ill assure you thats not the case. Well, dick and i were destined to become friends because we were both from texas, we were both economists and we both came to washington because we won Less Government and more freedom. A theres not a lot of people who come to government with the idea of having less of the very institution they come to be part of. The thing i always found was very interesting and i never lost my sort of all of it, and that was that dick always had this view that hee was like y in the soviet union that had become a leader of the central committee, and was one of the people actually running the soviet union. So that when we got together it was sort of like i was there as his american handler and he was telling me what we were actually doing inside the belly of the beast. And id never ceased to find that fascinating. I serve in washington for quarter of a century, and i dealt with a lot of people. But i can say without any fear of contradiction that of all the people that i ever served with, dick armey was less interested, dick armey was less interested in getting credit for things he did than anybody i have ever dealt with in washington. As far as i could tell, his aspiration, other than saving america, was owning a ford s. 150 king ranch version. [applause] and he got it. And dicks story is a story that reassures me about america. Dick was from north dakota. I dont have any idea where it is. I went to north dakota campaigning once and i had to plug in the car to keep the tires from freezing. But he came from candu north dakota and he became the first republican, first republican majority leader in 40 years. And he was an indispensable leader in changing america and implementing the final stones on the reagan revolution. And then he retired and went back to being just a plain citizen. To me, that is a reassuring story about america. I once had a guy in china asked me, where did you come from . You know, we try to look at leadership in america, and we just cant figure out where you came from. And i tried to explain to him that in america the greatness of our country is that leaders just come from nowhere. People are always saying where are the reagans and where are that dick armey is now that we need them . Will, i never despair because i know they are out there. They are waiting to be discovered. They are waiting for the right moment. The only thing well, let me just say. The contract with america. Dick armey wrote the contract of america. He gave it the name contract with america. I was the chairman of the Republican Senatorial committee. We tried to copy it by having our seven more and 94. We won more than seven seats by the way. Now, im not taking anything away from Newt Gingrich. He grabbed it. He ran with it. He made it famous. He deserves all the credit he gets, but dick armey was the founder of the contract with america. [applause] i dont want to overstate my welcome but let me say a couple more things. From the beginning of the republic we had wasted money because of an inability to close government facilities, especially military bases. And so what dick did in a new and totally original idea of his own creation was he came up with the idea of a commission and then a straight up or down vote in congress to approve the closing of military bases so thatat it allowed a congressmanr senator to go to the military base that the bulldozer was point out to knock down the gate and lie down on the ground telling his staff now just at the last moment, rushed in and drag me out and ill be begging to die but pull me out, and then it will be gone. And a thats exactly what happened. We closed a lot of military bases that should have never been built to begin with and were being operated just draining the blood out of american defense. Dick was very instrumental in welfare reform. The most successful reform of a Government Program in American History. Why we dont take that Reform Program and apply it to every Entitlement Program in the federal government, i dont understand. [applause] the average household in the bottom 20 of American Income earners gets over 45,000 a year in benefits from the federal government. T is there any wonder that you cant get people to work . And we were able to implement a program in ann area that was the most difficult areas where youve got an unmarried woman with children, a situation where senator warren with it as asa possible for her to work. Well, guess what. We reform the program we set time limits and within four years 50 ofe the people that have been on the program were working. Its amazing what incentives do. So im very happy to be here today two, one, give credit where not enough credit has been given, partly because he lacked the skill to blow his own horn. And great privilege those years working y with you, one of the highlights of my career was getting together with the dick to get his spine report, that he was actually running the system that came to washington to dramatically reform. So dick, congratulations. [applause] thank you, senator. Those were terrific comments. Just one thing about the contract with america. I remember dick, talking to you after the republicans won the congress and i kind was apologetic i said, dick, i didnt pay all that much attention to the contract of america because he never thought he would win. And you said, toasted, if people thought we would win they never wouldve signed the contract with america. That was a great, great period and its been a faq all remember your first 100 hours . What was it the first 100 hours, you did i mean you passed more good legislation then probably the previous 25 years in the first 100 hours so its an amazing revolution. We have by the way i see a lot of new people come in. What id love if any, all of you in this room who at some point in your c career worked for dick armey, could you please stand up . Thats amazing. [applause] thank you all for being here. Ill say it again, dick legacy is really the amazing people he has mentored over the years. I want to call on kevin cramer. Where are you . That you are. We have another person, secondmost person from come most famous k person from north dakota here, kevin cramer is a senator from the state of north dakota and he is also i believe you are, youom are also from cao x what are the odds that two of the most famous people in washington would come from cando, north dakota . Senator, thank you so much. [applause] neither dick nor i are the most famous person from cando. Peter davidson can attest that dave osborne one of dicks classmate allpro running back for the vikings is from cando. Hes from cando. He and dick are classmates. Well, this is s such an honor. Steve, thanks for including me to be able to participate my teen years in congress this is a highlight, it is. It really is, dick. I mean it. For the handful of you who have read the whole book, susan and i know, im sure she proofread it many times but a read the whole book. I mightve been the first person in america to read the whole book. I was texting dick as as a rg on the airplane going im laughing so are the people next to me are concerned. But just to give you a little context if you didnt read the book, my daddy and dick armey lived across the alley from one another in cando and in the book dick tells a story about Richard Kramer the elder richard, theres a number of richards and references but was passed with teaching the younger richard how to climb poles when dick joined the Rural Electrical cooperative as line for a summer job. Now i love the fact that dick had to go to union shop and work for coop. That was the last time he did either of those things. But more importantly than that even, charley armey, dicks brother who along with phil gramm really are the two stars of the book. They get more ink than anybody else combined and so Charlie Armey dicks older brother and my daddy were best man at each others m wedding. Theyer both married well, dade married state married their entire life. Dick didnt butim this part in e book. He put the part of a climbing poles. My dad, dick tells bickham gave him his first one of his first economics lessons. Dick and dad after work one day dick said lets go down to was it gord is our downtown and have a drink . Maybe he didnt. [laughing] but Richard Kramer said dick, you know that for the price of a drink at the bar downtown we could go to the liquor store and get a sixpack. My dad, retired lineman, and dick wrote the book on price theory, literally wrote the book on price three. The best book dick is ever written, his memoirs, their spectacular. I encourage anyone listening or watching to read it. And we celebrate that for sure. Because not only as steve says that only is it a great documentation of the a stroke moment, it is a great documentation, significant historical moment but it has countless blessings to all of us on how to govern, and better yet how to behave. Really. The two go hand in hand. I told you i laughed so hard at some points the people weree concerned about me sitting on the plane. Im going to give you a couple of the lessons i learned. First of all, one of the parts i really left the hardest is when the wise, the faculty wives accosted you, dick, because he as a professor had written this piece that the newspaper picked up that proved that stayathome wives were overpaid. Well, maybe not exact but something that. Something likehan that. In fact, they were paid both fos their consumption as well as for their productivity. Hes doing all this wonky stuff but heres what reminded me of the reminded of shortly after dick went to congress his alma mater where he got his master degree the universe of north dakota at the time known as the fighting sioux, it was hostile in the news, but which by the scarcity after that happen dick called me and said can you went over to grand forks and giveue me a fighting sioux hockey jersey before they are all gone . They were smart enough to print whole bunch. But anyway, but at that event where he received the coveted pseudoword, the mc was the president of the Alumni Association and the state republican majority leader of the state legislator. Hidick gets up and gives this wonderful speech starting out about how important the University System is because i natalie teaches the children but teaches their childrens children. Thats pretty important. Thats with the good news ended and he pivoted to the problem with the University System of course that is faculty governance. He gives thiss orientation on faculty governance how bad that is and how it of many the University System and he gets all done and get this wonderful ovation from all of wealthy donors and girl gets up and says just one quickju announcement. The Dessert Reception in honor of congressman armey is going to be hosted by the faculty has been canceled due to a recent lack of interest. [laughing] one other thing about north dakota, dicks the love at home state of his family still lives there, i was there a week or two ago and so some of them but his preference for free markets, senator graham, really supersedes the prairie populism of north dakota. Although i think today he would to have much better chance butca he did come and campaign for me in the 90s when as a young Party Cha