Kind of the easy and exciting part because theyre easy to mark. Then on a daytoday basis, you need to create systems and infrastructure that allow to be incorporated and allows you to be able to run the country. Those are the pieces, in terms of breaking them down, thats where the sbresing part of the discussion takes place. Thank you. Weve come to the end of our time together and i have been enriched by the comments here and i hope we can continue to have this discussion. I would encourage anyone here to reach out to a panelist. Just to ifis in general or engage with us on twitter or any other medium and wed be happy to discuss Youth Engagement with you. So, just in closing, id like to offer many thanks so jackson lees office, without whose support, this event would not have been possible. Id like to thank the panelists for agreeing to be a part of this discussion. Thank you. And finally, id like to thank everyone in the room for taking time out of that you are but di schedules to attend. Your comments contributed to a lively discussion here and hopefully, it will be fruitful in the future for all of us in our work in Youth Engagement, whether here in the u. S. , abroad, policy or prak tigs ner side. Thanks very much and have a wonderful day. Vermont center and 2016 president ial candidate Bernie Sanders was in New Hampshire over the weekend including a stop at a ton hall meeting in seabrook. More than 600 people from three states attended. You can watch his comments tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. The popes visit to the u. S. Cspan has live coverage from washington, d. C. , the first stop on the popes tour tuesday afternoon beginning at 3 45, were live with the president and mrs. Obama to greet the pontiff. Wednesday morning on cspan, cspan radio and cspan. Org, the welcoming ceremony as the obamas officially welcome him to the white house. Live coverage begins at 8 45 eastern later, the mass and can nonization. Thursday morning at 8 30, cspans coverage begins from capitol hill becoming the first uppontiff to address a joint meeting of congress. Friday morning at 10 00, live coverage from new york as the pope speaks to the United NationsGeneral Assembly and at 11 30, the pontiff will hold a multireligious service at the 9 11 museum and world trade center. Follow cspans coverage of the popes historic trip to the u. S. Live on tv or online at cspan. Org. Awl campaign long, cspan takes you on the road to the white house. Unfiltered access to the candidates, at town hall me meetings, news conference, rallies and speeches. Comments by twitter, facebook and phone and every campaign we cover is available on our website at cspan. Org. Representatives from wisconsin and michigan talked about new right to work laws. And how theyve been implemented in their states. The Heritage Foundation hosted the discussion which focused on this is an hour. A hot topic of debate recently has been right to work laws. These laws that require rather or prevent workers from being required to pay union dues. This is something wisconsin recently passed a few years earlier, michigan, my home state, surprising many. Very historic. And theres a lot of controversy over what these do, so weve published new research out today analyzing the fact of right to work laws on wages and to discuss, we have chris, whos a state senator in the wisconsin legislature. As was the author of the wisconsin right to work law. Vincent, the director of labor policy for the Mackinaw Center in michigan. We will be discussing the effect of right to work on wages. Ill be presenting this research, theb then the senator and will be discussing how right to work has affected the two most recent states who have enacted it. You can see weve got up here some poll from the Gallup Organization and this is fairly consistent with their historical polling. You can go back to the 1950s and find numbers similar to this. Americans believe in Free Association. Whether or not you support the National Rifle association, local kiwanis, americans believe if you want to join, youve got that right, but you shouldnt be forced to join. Youd be hard pressed to find many nra members even in the nra is hard at work defending their rights. Most americans agree with this principle. Many, many union advocates and supporters do not. This has had effects on public policy. Despite the fact almost three quarters of americans believe dues ought to be voluntary, but ought not be fired for deciding to run for a union. Only about half the country has this. And the natural question would be why is that . A democracy, reflect the feel fooelings of the public, through their elected representatives. Why is it that they are not going along with what their constituents are supporting. In missouri, fwhooirng to be voting in a few weeks whether or not the override the law. New mexico, across the country, were seeing ledge islator, some like senator, i have voted for right to work, but others say this is a bad idea and the core argument is that basically, right to work laws lower wages. This is a figure put out by the Economic Policy institute. It is a left wing think tank. Most dont realize its a union backed think tank. Richard trumka is the chair of the board of directors. They have nine other Union President s on their board of directors, but the Economic Policy institute has put out a number of of studies showing that in states where intensity dropped the most, wage growth was slowest and studies like this, theyre quick to acknowledge a points, you cant just say wages are different in right to work states. Youve got different demographic make ups, different educational make ups, especially different costs of living, so you cant make this apples to oranges comparison. This is evidence thats been submitted before congress. Theyve submitted it before basically this study. Before state legislature testimony. I know the senator heard similar numbers when he was being asked to vote right to work in wisconsin and what they basically show is you can more or less interpret these numbers if you can see them as percentage point changes. 13 lower wages in right to work states. Account for demographic and individual labor market type variables like your education, your age, things like that, which we would expect younger workers tend to make less and more educated workers tend to make more. The gap falls down to 9 , then throw in the third and fourth column, two different pressures of the states living cost. The unions have made this point time and time geng, they claim wages are about 3 lower in right to work states. This, to me, has been a per swative argument. Thats why weve got a major reason why weve got about half the country hasnt passed these right to work laws. Generally, we believe in Free Association, but unions, pass right to work, fewer Union Members and the economic side effects that hurt everyone. Therefore, while we formally believe in Free Association, well say were going to force you to pay union dues. Now, that is something that i as an economist find very strange conclusion. The wii all the phers i read treats unions is labor monopoly. They try to operate as a monopoly that, gain control of the supply of labor, get everyone in and when they can do that, they can control the supply of labor driving up its price, but the higher price gets passed on to consumers, the higher wages, the others pay for it and because consumer rs paying higher prices, a, the consumers are worse off and b, theyre selling fewer goods and services, so more get pushed into the nonworking sector. The losses to the economy, you might have gains on the inside of the union, but overall trk economys worse off. The claim youre lowering average wages is disinnocent to my ears. On top of that, Union Membership has not been doing the best in recent decades. Its down consistently and so, they dont have that in labor markets where they have a monopoly. So how do you get this, the states with right to work laws, have worse wages. I and a few others have taken a look at this. This is actually, 1979 Union Membership. It seems like the states would have the largest drop in Union Membership since the 1970s or the states that had a largest drop and those are the states that had the slowest composition right. That doesnt quite fit in with the story the Economic Policy is telling. Well, it turns out nea lot lowe employment. And so, the start of simplistic story that we showed you before, actually turns out to be a lot more nuanced and less favorable to the unions than what the Economic Policy institute put out. I thought professional standards, you share your data with anyone who asks, they wouldnt share. So i couldnt replicate what they did because they werent willing to share. Well, we share your data and code, they just stopped responding to me, but i wanted to replicate, they did use broadly speaking source they made some adjustments to, so i used the same source and one of the key things youve got to take account of is living costs because you can remember from that map, pretty much the entire south is right to work. We can debate how you discuss kentucky and missouri, but the entire south is right to work and the entire northeast is not. Well, it costs a whole lot more to live in new york city or boston than it does to live in shreveport, louisiana or in nashville, tennessee. A dollar is going to buy you more in a lot of these right to work states and this chart shows it. The gray bar in the middle is basically average living costs. Weve ranked states from lowest living cost to highest. The states at the top being the highest. On the other side, you can see which are the right to work and which are not. Theres only one right to work state with living costs above. Thats virginia. All other 24 are below average living costs and conversely, as you can see, new york, california, massachusetts, hawaii, the states with above average costs, they have forced union dues and one of the findings economists have made is that wages track one for one living costs. Once you control for skills and abilities, and any sort of local amenities like weather that might cause people to want to live near you or the beach, once you account for those, wages move one for one with living costs, so, the average new yorker might have 13 higher wages r, but theyre not getting 13 more goods and service ises. Actually making the same as the average american once you account for the fact that rent in new york city is really, really, really high. So, this turns out to make a major effect on the analysis. So, what we can do here, ill summarize, i wont ask you to strain your eyes to save it. The first four columns are replicated and these numbers here, ive converted them to percentage points, so straight answers. We got close to what they did. Fairly close. Then you have a look, they didnt talk about this when they were, in their appendix, its revealed. Their cost of living accounts for three quarters of the difference in living costs. If living costs go up 10 , wages are only 7. 5 higher. Not the 10 . Theyre not fulling controlled. They talk about it saying were accounted for living costs, but the ducks they model only explains about three quarters of the difference. Now, normally when youve got differences in purchases power across time and states, what congress will do is adjust for the differences in purchasing power, then run their analysis, usually, you run the analysis on inflation dollar, rather than the same over time. I use the same models, same variables. The only thing i did dimpbly was adjusted the wages for living costs and all of a sudden, the results disappear. So, this claim that these are awful, horrible for workers, which you hear from groups like unions, you just change from doing a more accurate reflection. Now, the next two columns there, i just break it up. In the private sector, you affect wages by using the monopoly strength and power, so in the private sector, about a lower right to work states. I would argue thats a benefit. We shouldnt be raising taxes to force the avrnl american than they themselves receive. The fact youre lowering is a good thing, but private sector, theres nothing. Includes steps and commissions. Again, no effect there. They really evaluate these studies. But what about benefits of right to work . Besides the Free Association benefits. Well, what we have here is a nice Little National experiment. Kentucky as i mentioned, has a number of counties passing right to work. How as this affected their job situation . This county, warren county, was the first county in kentucky to pass it. They passed this in december of 2014. In the next three months, almost 30 different economic projects representing 3600 jobs contacted them and told them were interested in locating you now. Now that youve gotten right to work, were interested. Since then, as of may of this year, ive heard from the bowlibowl ing Green Chamber of commerce. Thats gone up to 47 Companies Representing the 5,000 potential jobs. They represent about a 10 increase in overall employment. Projects they were not eligible for, the businesses did not want to deal with that, now, thats america. The others are just one county, maybe was something the weather or water or something, so i did the same analysis we did to wages to the unemployment rates and what it shows is when you dont account for anything, unemployment rates are about a half a percentage point lower. About a percentage point lower in right to work states. They found the same things i did and didnt want to talk about it. The scary stories about wages falling, its really a lot of smoke and mirrors. You dig under the hood and theyre not fully accountable for living costs. But we do see both anecdotely and numerically, very strong evidence on job creation. On top of that, just got the Free Associational benefits. Why should i be forced to subsidize their cooperations . I think thats a pretty powerful right to work. Im going to turn it over to two speakers to talk about the experiences theyve had and after theyve gone, well take q and a from the audience. Thank you, james. Its a pleasure to be here at the heritage. Good grief, we spend a ton of time looking at the research these guys do, so thanks for doing what you do. Thanks for inviting me to a swamp in the middle of summer. I appreciate that. Went for a run last night and before i even stepped out of the door, i think i sweat through my jogging outfit. It is the right to work thing is a big deal. Its been a big deal in wisconsin for a long time and i think what i want to do is take a little bit of time to walk you through a couple of reasons you know, why right to work in wisconsin. I want to walk you through, too, what we ran into with objections because i think that plays very well into what james has been working through with his numbers. Im a cpa by trade. Spent eight years in public accounting, the last several with arthur anderson, then i bought, owned a couple of companies, i still have that. But i jumped into politics probably about actually 2009. I started running for office, was elected in 2011 with Governor Walker came in. So, as you have seen in wisconsin, weve add some interesting things going on over the last several years. So, right to work is something we looked at right away when we came in in 2010, 2011. Were looking at an overall blueprint for how do we take wisconsin, as you look at the history of your state, progressive, we brought into existen existence, the state income tax. Weve got a new crop of citizen ledge islators who said what we need to do is slowly need to take away the concept of government is the provider to government is limited and you know, thats the Heritage Foundation is at its core, thats what you guys are about. Right to work is in the recipe for that. As you know, we started out with act ten, which was essentially right to work for the public sector. We got that, i think led the charge in the United States for what states are doing now and that was a huge, huge battle for us. But we knew it had to be done. Weve done some income tax reform over the last couple of sessions, but coming up into this session, we saw right to work. Thats the elephant in the room. We have to deal with it and so, we started actually before the session even started in okay, what is our message going to be . What things are we going to encounter . We looked at a bunch of stuff that james has done and the big driver is again, back to our blueprint, over 70 of our budget really relates to dependsy on government versus the individual. So, we knew we had to take care of this issue. This is the interest iing part about what these gentleman do. What we have to do is effectively communicate that to get the message across, so we have to take the numbers and translate it into people. We dont have a ton of time and i would have loved to have stood up and gone through this because the analysis is fascinating and we ran into the same studies, but what we had to do was take this and make it real for people. So, what we did is the first issue we ran into was, we started out by saying this is about workers freedom and this is very personal to me because when i was 19 years 08d, i worked for an Electrical Contractor and i wasnt aware of right to work or unionization. It was just, you know, i took my job, went in and the guy said heres your offer, i took it with him and went to work and the first paycheck, i had these deductions, couldnt figure out, what is is this . So, i went to the payroll person and said, hey, i think theres a mistake here, they said, no, this is your union dues and i didnt know about it. I said, well, i didnt ask to be in the union and she said, well, you have two options. You can take the deduction or you can go find another job because the state law actually says that this is the way its going to be and that just as a 19yearold, a very unpolitical 19yearold, it never sat right with me. It always bothered me and so, when i came into of