>> to side with the parents in the school battle began to explore the underpendings of what was called government's arrogant empire leading us to herbert crowley and the progressive movement of the early 21st ench ri. crowly is the pro point of central policy, but he also argued for its professionalization for the turning over of public policy to

the cree credential experts as well, and the reason for that is in the complex and inter connected circumstances of the 21st century, the promises of american life could no longer be filled by the amateur working of the american. it demanded our national life be turned over to knowledgeable experts in the sciences of society that enabled us to manage the growing webs of interdependence, those social engineers would be devoted heart and soul to a grand vision of national purpose or national community, a vision that was all too likely to elude ordinary citizens trapped as they were in shabby local communities still clinging to parochial moral and religious myths. by the early 90s, we had seen the result of the crowley

vision. once proud self-reliant citizens were turned into passive, helpless clients dependent on social services, lavishly funded, but poorly designed and ineffectively delivered. if this helped fuel the congressional elections of 1994, how much more is it true that the congressional next elections of 2010? we seed the fiercely proud don't tread on me against the empire of professional elites whose credentials qualify them to remake our help, energy, and financial systems. once again, the elites dismiss resistance to those sweeping plans of remanents religious cock trines provide -- doctrines providing against the complexities of interconnectedness and the tone

deaf arrogance feeds the pop pew louse fires. if we declared war against herbert crowely in 1995 he won at least that round. how will things be different this time? well, if the professional service state was becoming too expensive in the mid 90s, it most certainly is too expensive in 2010, and cutbacks that were unimaginable then are going to be unavoidable today. if schools and charters seem unresponsive to the education bureaucracy in the 90s, consider how far we've come since then. waiting for superman promote charters and blame teachers for the problems of public education. the new promise was one of the first conservative projects to suggest that herbert crowely's ewe toppian intellectual vision

might be more a source of our problems than fdr's more practical new deal for instance. since then, i think it's become clearer to us how much of our politics, how much of our daily politics spins out of the tension between progressive nationalist's vision of a rain of experts, and the democratic decentrallist vision of the framework of the american constitution. such arguments were once of interest only to a handful of intujt chiewls -- intellectuals, but now they are on our news networks and brochures are in the pockets of our nation's tea party's rallies. it is to be beaten in this next p round. in the summer of 1994, lamar alexander traveled across the country spending time with dozens of neighborhood leaders

addressing our social ills. they reflected common sense and traditional moral and spiritual principles of the american people rather than the elitist doctrines of the professionals expertise. in the book, we know what to do, mr. alexander described his visits to pastor henry's school for low income school in savannah, and the shelter for the fragile homeless in dallas, and the job training program, the qinton learning center in east l.a.. looking to street level problem solvers, solvers for wisdom, rather than elites was the tea party before tea party was cool. [laughter] if things are to be different in 2010, our new congressional

servicers have to follow that example and turn again todd wisdom and experience of our grass roots leaders, but they have to show a steadiness of purpose that failed them in 1994 once they had their own hands on the national power. as we seek ways to roll back government, the problems they sought to address are not going away. alternatives are going to have to be found and are going to look again at the more effective, less expensive decentralized solutions that as bob woodson argued for 30 years appear in profusion across network's neighborhoods. this is perhaps, another version of the step-by-step approach you were describing. for conservatives, the next successful journey to the white house will begin on a tour like lamar's seeking out grass roots leaders sweeping aside the failed solutions of the

progressive's empyre so that local wisdom can flourish. >> thank you, bill. >> thank you, kate. i like being on such a fair and balanced panel. [laughter] i liked la mar's sorry about tennessee thinking you might have been named after a highway. i suppose that would mean you would have been named after an earmark. [laughter] no, i'm sure, of course, the highway was not an earmark, just a highway renamed at minimal cost of the taxpayers out of a pool of money that would have been spent anyway. [laughter] right? [laughter] if you're the governor, it's not an earmark. it's just executive discretion. [laughter] i'll just, i think it's it is

stimulating and the comments of the panelists so far have been stimulating. i do want to say i very much agree with the appeal of the grade to overrule the regulation banning, the bush era vote of the lightbulb after the defunding of np rrk, which i have a personal interest in, the juan william's act. you can just move step by step to slightly bigger issues. let me say about the step by step question that lamar laid out compellingly which i basically agree, but only now offer a qualification, and this is also in line with the question that was asked lamar skillfully deflected to the panel. it seems to me conservatives do both step by step in a kind of

comprehensiveness, but it's different from liberal comprehensiveness, and this is an abstract formulation, but it would be this. the fatal can see the claim as they called it of progressivism is that it's central planning basically, but the alternative to that is not no thinking about the broad, about the arrangement of constitutions or about the arrangment of institutions to have a free and well-ordered, well-functioning society. it is thinking about what i call the constitutional liberty, so conservative comprehensiveness, and chris touched on this, talked about arranging inventives, institutions, how to arrange structures so as to allow people to freely pursue

happiness and be entrepreneurial and to allow states and localities to experiment and reflect the wishes of the people and to allow self-government to flourish and do all the things warned against in the kind of gnatty state against what the liberals of tyranny. it's a very different kind of comprehensive thinking than the attempt to plan everything from washington. i do think what is really needed, but i think is happening actually is a rebirth of a kind of serious thinking about institutions, incentives, structures in the spirit actually of the federalist of many people who fought about this over the last few centuries so that one could have a well-functioning and a free and spirited and successful free society and successful self-government. i think the tea parties are on

to that when they talk about the constitution. what is the constitution? it's a kind of comprehensive account of how government should work and the left makes fun of the tea party people for being simple minded about the constitution, but the notion of constitutionalism is the right kind, the restoration of constitution is the right kind of comprehensiveness to the agenda opposed to the liberal progressive welfare state of comprehensiveness. what that means is it's sequential. if you're in opposition or trying to stop something, a bad big change from happening over the nature that we had a lot of over the last couple yearings, it's perfectly reasonable to have a step-by-step change when there's no crisis and the problem can go on for a year without tax codes and such issues, and a semiopposition,

the situation for the next two years with the conservative controlling one one-half of the government and it's mostly struggling with the president, it would be foolish -- there's no need or purpose for conservatives to do too much, spend a huge amount of effort in implementing what i consider to be comprehensive con conservative reforms. it's important to articulate them, but speaking about the current tax rate for two years is a better solution and practically speaking repealing bad regulations of the sort that chris mentioned bigger ones that the epa is involved in is a reasonable tactical thing for the economy to do opposed to entirely reforming the framework or getting rid of the fcc or such things and not creating new entitlements and chipping away at current ones is a good thing to do for the next two years

opposed to fundamental paul ryan reform of the entitlement structure. practically speaking, not printing more money is a good thing to push the fed to do, though personally, you know, two or three, or four years from now, there needs to be a monetary policy not that i'm an expert on that because i think the current system is fundamentally fraud. i think step by step can proceed a certain kind of comprehensive rethinking of policies and of structures, monetary policy, entitlements, tax policy, taxes is the most obvious idea. i think this is happening. i'm not saying anything fancy or speculative when the conservatives will spend the next few weeks insisting on current tax rates, and they may spend the next coming session of congress doing minor things to improve some incentives for job creation and for growth, but

fundamentally in 2012, i predict the presidential can date will run on a pretty big comprehensive conservative tax reform. i don't think that violates conservatives to have a tax reform. there's going to be a tax reform. you have to think comprehensively if that's the right word or from the code as a whole about what it encourages or what judgments it embodies, how it compares with the tax votes of other nations and the relationship of federal and state, all the big questions that come at the sort of more, you know, the regime level or at least at the big public policy level let's say opposed to the step-by-step improvement situation level. one should never minimize the importance of the step by step, and most politics most of the time is and should be in a dente regime like ours step by step because things are not crisis

and one should be aware of lots of big changes because they have unanticipated consequences that was pointed out years ago, but it's disruptive to a stannel and reasonable -- stable reasonable order who doesn't want huge reforms every few years. on the other hand, when one hits certain watershed moments which we're hitting them in a lot of areas whether it's debt and deficits or the structure of the regulatory system or in certain areas of the financial structure, one does need to have a sort of bigger framework for one's reform, and as i say, if one thinks of that reform as more of reforming the rules of the road, a constitutional structural form, that's the kind of reforms conservatives should favor, they are reforms at the best lay the groundwork for incremental step by step changes

that increase liberty that will tell people what to do that create stable structures that are friendly to people exercising their liberty, both economic liberty and other forms of personal liberty. that's true in foreign policy. the fact is after 9/11, we did a lot of step by step things, in fact, a lot of them quite reasonably. we did some other things and aired or not said of not doing enough comprehensive long term thinking about what the threat is and what our structures need to be, and the problem with the real war on terror is not that we've done too much big thinking and the incredible pressure we're under dealing with actual threats, there's a lot of concrete things done without stepping back and thinking is the -- how about the whole structure of the u.s. government, are the agencies properly arranged?

are the military and company ten sigh make -- competency make sense? it's understandable to put that off, but in foreign policy the basic principle combining step-by-step sensible reforms, either one can't do more or doesn't need to do more or if one is under such pressure that one doesn't have the time to do more with longer term constitutional level almost, more comprehensive reforms is a, that's a manageable task. i think that's what conservatives need to do over the next few years. the tea party activists get this distinctively. they want obamacare repealed and tax rates kept the same and want various foolish things stopped, but they also understand over the longer term, but over the medium term, we need to have more fundamental reforms in the modern welfare state because we

are going off a cliff for various reasons and all the problems and disabilities and deficiencies of the welfare state have come to a head in a few years and it's evident that fundamental reform is needed. i think they can be for both fundamental reform and step-by-step reform. >> thank you, bill. >> the problem of comprehensive reform. let's talk about education. 15 years ago when we were editing this book, the outgoing 103rd congress just passed and president clinton eagerly signed the goals 2000 act and the schools act which was the umpteenth renewal. let's acknowledge both of those measures radical as they seemed at the time were logical outgrowths of a mostly bipartisan reform efforts dating back to a nation at risk in 1983 and at the summit where

president bush, sr., and the congress set ltd on goals. they owed a little more than to bushes lama's plan in 1991 intended to give traction to those national goals. it all seemed to make sense at the time or so i thought, but i also notice at the time and wrote in the book that these developments further what we call the cult of governmentalism and they did violate the principle of subsidiary. they send tepidded to draw to -- they tended to draw to washington the need for school reform, a need recognized by just about everyone, but invested 10th amendment style in the states. it may seem like history today, but it wasn't all that long ago in geological terms at least that governors such as, of all people, lamar al alexander, bill

clinton sent waves crashing on the beaches of their own state. after the 1994 election, two changes occurred on the front, neither turned out well. from the right, mostly republicans, new house members, came a clamber to stop the world. we want to get off. that was to abolish the department of education. the intent was to roll back washington's involvement in education and return to control to districts and parents. the impulse was understandable, but it was symbolic and 5 little hollow. as i noted at the time is what matters is not the name over the door of the federal agency, but what goes on inside it by way of spending and regulating and things like that without abolishing the education department would in effect create the department of hew which might not be a bad thing, but it doesn't return state control of the education.

the other development after 1994 was the move led by democrats and resisted by republicans, but hold on a minute, and we'll come back to that, the move to tighten the screws of the new legislation and invest greater authority in washington, for it was evident by the mid-90s that many states were not doing a good job of developing standards or holding their schools accountable. in the 1994 legislation, it didn't require them to do any of those things, though it set the stage for the federal government to monitor and evaluate and prod them when many states lagged on these fronts as early of 1997, my own institute was reporting on the crummy standards states used for their schools, the cult of governmentalism kicked in big time. the unexpected political development that followed was this impulse was followed by the 2000 election and soon there after george w. bush and other leaders gave us no child left

behind. he believed what worked in texas would work for the country and that enough leverage from washington would cause this to happen. some members agreed with him and others let him try. it didn't work, however. nine years later, a big challenge in the 112th congress is to set matters right once again. mclb did us a bit of good by making the performance of the schools in the country transz parent flagging the gaps that plague us achieving some efficiency in giving kids alternatives to bad schools. there's some gains in math entirely in the early grades. nothing changed by way of high school graduation or 12th grade achievement or in reading. you're well aware of the overriding problem not much different today, only worse than

1993. the american kids are not learning enough and the results of the tests are out on tuesday. they're going to underscore this and we are falling behind the rest of the world because we are flat and other places are getting better. the problem first identified in 1983 is unsolved in 2010. no child left behind has not solved it and neither will tightening the screws further. we had two decades of screw tightening and it's just taken control of the schools further away from the people who run them and lowered curriculum to reading and math and failed to deliver decent alternatives, failed to turn around broken schools and encouraged states to set low standards so kids appear to be proficient and states meet standards without actually meeting them. it needs to be said that barak obama have tried to ease this problem using the instruments available to them mainly federal funding and regulation.

their blueprint has a lot of merit and their race to the top was an earnest and partly successful attempt to induce states to make worthy changes without forcing states to do so. the heavy lifting lies ahead. they grappled with mclb itself. the blueprint has gone nowhere and lamar says while there is a consensus about failings, there's no agreement on how to fix it. one problem, and this comes to the question of comprehensiveness first is step-by-step is they had about thousand pages containing dozens and dozens of programs you never heard of, most which have nothing to do about education reform, but need to be agreed about before a reauthorization could be pushed forward. meanwhile, a pincher movement is

evident between those who would tighten the screws tighter, and those who want uncle sam to butt out and let the schools run with no interference from washington. both of those views are crazy. tightening the screws do not work, but uncle sam leaving the field is a function for greedy unions and state education departments to take charge once again. neither is a strategy for boosting educational achievement in the united states. is there a way out? a sensible middle ground? thru's one to be -- there is one to be described. it is a step-by-step approach actually. it is what lamar talked about is to instead of having a reauthorization to identify the major problems we face and see if we could solve just them, and make things better a -- and i think this could be done

where most of the money is and where most the problems arise. i think it involves doing five things. briefly, first, largely embrace the administration's blueprint to abandon federal oversight of accountability to the fat majority of american schools. kill adequately yearly progress and hand the ball back to states to design accountability systems for their schools, but two, at the same time, extend greater transparaphernaliaty of school -- transparency to school results. there's a worthy organic progress underway in the country now embraced on paper by 45 states to share common standards and develop common assessments without any federal involvement. something never done before in this country. this has great promise in the direction of transparency, and congress can reasonably expect the states if they make the performance of their schools transparent maybe as the

national benchmark as an assessment of that. third, instead of requiring teacher evaluation systems, have an incentive program. fourth, consolidate dollars as much as possible in the flexible funding streams. put it out to the title i formula, it might cut down administrative costs too and help strap states and district to a time without anymore federal bailouts, and last, experiment with state performance contracts, something proposed a couple years ago by which states negotiate broad waivers with the secretary of education to do things very differently. that's all. that's all that we need to do to start, but that's plenty. it republics the principles of subsidiary and respects governmentalism and escapes, i think the political penceer i

mentioned a minute ago and might do good for our kids in the international competitiveness. thank you. >> thank you, chester. [applause] thank you all too. maybe let me kick off this discussion beginning with senator alexander's remarks. you include, senator, a promising agenda. when you raise the question comparing this moment based on reelection results last month with what happened 15 years ago, you remind us that like then, we are looking for an intellectual context for the latest antiwashington surge. i think bill reminded us unlike 1994, i think the tea party at least about vieses have to some

-- activists have provided that. they are serious about returning washington to its limits, and i think that's extremely promising. what better intellectual context for what we would all like to see happen, and it's internal more of a battle cry, rallying cry than smaller steps it seems to me. it's such an organizing worthy principle. i wholly agree with chris, and in fact, i propose beginning a list, another revolution betrayed if the ban on ire con december lent lightbulbs is not repealed. i have one i might add is modifying reforming student loan programs a very generous loan forgiveness to students going to

public service. that is how dramatically i think we have to reorient how we feel about things. what's with the glorification of the public sector? that would be one of my test, and i i have a test for the politicians. just yesterday they passed the child nutrition bill. this is washington, d.c. dictating what vending machines in grammar schools contain. now, how the same people who talk about the importance of returning washington to its constitutional limits think they ought to be dictating what vending machines carry, you know, the premise that federal politicians care more about the well-being of children than state or local officials do is stunning. in any event, my testament is if you're a politician preoccupied

with what a 4th grader is eating for lunch, don't run for federal office. stay home and preoccupy with your home. it's not washington's concern, so when we talk about cutting back spending and discretionary caps, it's the argument going to be these are all extremely worthy programs and wholly legitimate for washington to be running when we just don't have the money to pay for them, or are we going to gradually and incrementally articulate the new proposition? we're not spending money on this because it's not washington's concern, and we can be rebuilding trust in the federal government if they constrain themselves to their fund fundamental responsibilities like maybe they do a better job with respect to the responsibilities. the question i'll quickly pose to the panel and maybe they have

an example is i wholly agree when there is a problem to solve, incremental steps make more sense. obviously, the government is not good. i agree with senator alexander and there's a conservative on the side of republicans with a natural existence too, but other in fact national problems with no appropriate federal solution because i think that's what the new congress really ought to grapple with. there's no federal solution even though it's an acknowledged national problem and begin returning washington to its proper limits. can you identify for me national problems that don't have a federal solution because it's out of washington's system? >> sure. safe schools. ensuring children's safety in

schools cannot be mandated or managed from washington. the only useful thing washington might do is require honest reporting of unsafe schools, but they can't be made safer unless you. to start -- unless you want to start deploying troops in them. >> is that because washington would not do it very well, or it's not a responsibility of washington? >> well, both. i mean, i'm sure you could justify under the general welfare clause if you were looking to, but it's not appropriate responsibility of washington, and it couldn't be done in 100,000 schools. >> the title of our overall gathering is so crucial. less of washington, and more of ourselves. the federal school lunch and breakfast program and in washington, d.c., dinner program, are close to be sacred cows with broad bipartisan

support. if we give more of ourselves, my question is what poor excuse for a parent can't wrestle up a banana? how do these children qualify for breakfast unless there's a widespread problem of child neglect. if they can't pull together a baa banana, we have problems way bigger -- that problem can't be solved with a school breakfast because we have parents who are just criminally negligent with respect to raising children, and yet, that's the kind of program that has huge bipartisan support with very little thought about why we're now feeding children. talk about fundamental parental responsibility. in what sense can we ask more of ourselves piece to go with this less government? i'm, do you have an answer? >> a twist on your various

comments on regulating food consumption is obesity. i would say that obesity is a substantial national problem. >> uh-huh. >> that the federal government should have nothing to do with, and i can imagine various little local initiatives of how we're objecting to, but it's largely a cultural problem. >> and yet, there's a lot of talk about all sorts of federal, some sorts of federal response, to the, you know, the very real problem of obesity. >> well, i think that's why -- i think that's where the more from ourselves comes from. i mean, there are any number of smaller groups in america who are dealing with these problems in an adequate fashion, and the debate is so skewed and parred because all you hear -- there are only two sides. either you are for, you know,

fighting these problems or against fighting these problems. i think, you know, we need to articulate a solution which is, you know, along these lines, these are problems worth fighting, and here are a dozen terrific examples around the country of folks who are fighting these problems in a successful fashion without massive government legislation or without massive government regulation. this was what lamar, i mean, who -- lamar was looking at homeless centers and training centers in east l.a. for people who were nonenglish speaking originally and yet being trained and getting good jobs at the time. i mean, the whole point of senator alexander's, you know, we know what to do is that we do have those answers, and they are nonfederal answers, but we need to become much more adept at the national level of sort of

diverting the conversation into those alternatives, you know, let's talk about some of those local answers to the problems which come in immense diversity. they're not legislated in one comprehensive bill. they take an inmy gnat variety of forms, but they all address the problem in a successful way, and one of the things we're enthused about senator alexander's campaign for the presidency many years ago is because this is where he started. this is where his politics was grounded. it was grounded in maryville, his announcement for the presidency and which pointed to local wisdom as a solution. i don't hear a lot of that from today's national politicians, and i do hope we see more of that as we -- >> well, i'm to the kate's

notion of we can't force good things and there's some things the federal government shouldn't do and for various reasons which are some pure constitutional power reasons or the moral hazard of the federal government stepping in to do them or you don't know what would happen loablgly -- locally until of the federal government steps out. i don't think that should be a precondition for moving against some of the stake of things the federal government should do, and i would -- my only slight qualification that i disagree or not, by wouldn't reject the pure economic and fiscal arguments either. it's a practical manner. people don't know. it's hard to make the case against certain programs until they start bankrupting the country or inefficient or manifestly counterproductive in the effects.

people are more practice call than intumght chiewls would like to be or think tanks want them to be and they want to see if something is or is not working. the deficit and god knows how many trillion dollars of debt and a lot of federal programs that are not working, but it is good for conservatives to be able to say that this is a prima facie evidence and plus there's other distortions in terms of swallowing the federal government, taking away some citizen's actions and the like. the tea party itself, let's remember, what was the tea party? the tea party ultimately resulted two and a half years later resulted in the very great declaration of principle in the declaration of independence, a war fought for principles and a constitution that embodied a new structure of republican government. on the other hand, the proximate cause of the tea party and the

reason they threw the tea in the water was partly fiscal and self-government that the brits should not tax the colonists and it was part of a series -- well, i don't remember the history in great detail, but there was oppressive taxes or what they call that actually, i think they were called at the time by the colonists the oppressive taxes, and it was a practical, sort of rebellion against heavy-handed government that was burdening colonists in a way they didn't want to be burdened. i think the trick is turning let's say the fiscal complaint into a constitutional complaint. >> yeah. >> i think some of that is happening. i'm heartened to the driveway of which a lot -- of which a lot of the new candidates are saying we can't have this deficit. it's insane. we're going to go drupt or the system is going to break down, but also by the sense that

that's an indicator of something else went wrong, and when you think of what went wrong, you go backwards historically and intellectually and you think structurally about what's wrong with the whole modern welfare state. federalism we talked about before the panel, lama, and the panelists discussing, that i think for years there was various ways of sorting out the perverse kind of federalism we now have which i think, i'm not going to talk -- there's other areas, but you know, there's more big government than checking big government because of the matching grants and spending the money coming to you and creating a state structure that lobbies at the state structure compare at the federal level and whatever the political scientists call it is really somewhat now pernicious and the

reagan flow and the early reagan administration the sorting out of certain functions and giving functions cleanly to the state and the federal government perhaps taking some of the other functions cleanly, you know, medicaid is an obvious case to be done, maybe swapped for something. what i think would be a healthy development fiscally necessary today, but also a healthy development for self-government, it would have the federal government having a clear sense of its responsibilities and state governments would be clear and could compete in doing a better job to help poor people with access to health care. we learned from the competitions and this would be a much better solution, so i think moving from the immediate crisis of oh, my god, medicaid is corrupting the governments to a sorting out of speedometers in a way that's -- responsibilities that's healthier for our economy and politics is what conservatives have to think through. >> no, i don't think we disagree

at all. the fiscal crisis makes that opportunity. when you make the point that i think is right there's an obligation or opportunity over the next two years for the new majority in the house, larger majority in the senate to articulate rather than implement, i think it's really important that they be articulating this return to constitutional limits argument that i think certainly the most active parts of the, of the republican base, but i think it resinates with others too given the distrust of washington, how low regard washington is held in. the self-governing people reminding us about the tea party, self-governing people should not have their lightbulbs taken away from them; right? [laughter] people, the government is supposedly subserve i can't to us, and it sure doesn't feel that way, and then now, they

already took our toilets, now our lightbulbs. they are going for our shower heads -- [laughter] as a good conservative i say get them out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. [laughter] we're ready to take questions from the audience. we have time for a few. if you have someone to direct it to, let me know. there's a question up here in the front. yes, i saw that. oh, at the very end? excuse me, hold the microphone as close as you can, please. >> i'd like to ask a question about the mad hatters tea party that you are describing which takes place in the high levels of leadership in washington.

i'd like to ask you one, if you think the entire culture in america has radically changed within the last ten years that would support the concept of the federal government giving breakfast to children, the topic that we're starting, does it reflect a complete transformation of traditional american values in the era of ralph weldon emerson who is teaching people to be self-reliant? >> no, if i understand correctly, i don't think there's any fundamental shift in the typical belief of self-reliance and responsibility. i think we've had this sort of creeping taking charge of more

and more aspects of our lives and in a very destructive way, i think, of substituting government for what really belongs to parents, the responsibility of parents. you know, government just taking over more and more, prerogatives, and responsibilities from where it should rest with respect to children. i don't think that reflects a major change on the part of the american public though. just the kind of creeping big government we have. >> can you hear okay? it seems to me some confusion about creating programs versus dismantling programs. when you create a big comprehensive program, you're sailing into the unknown.

when you dismantle one, you go back to status quo what you know either worked or it didn't. i think there's some danger in doing small things because people are looking for significant change, and if it's not delivered in a couple years, perhaps if they feel nothing's been done, just like to hear thoughts about that. >> well, i take the point to a degree, but i also warn big government programs going for 30 or 70 years, there's settled expectations and investments that one has to be respectful of. i got involved in the education reform business when i came here to work for bill bennet in 1985 and got to know lamar for that matter, i became to resent school choice and how breaking up monopoly, the power of the unions and administrators and introducing bill competition is to the poorest students who were getting a bad deal in america,

and then, you know, we actually see the public school and think more intelligently and as a grownup, look, people have a lot working hard and save money to buy a house and a place with a good public school system. it's not fair to have contempt for them to say wait a second, this is way it's been set up for a long time. i went through a lot of effort to make sure my kids got a good education. it's nice for a think-tank here in washington saying it would be nice if there's statewide school choice which i was for at one point, but there's something silly about that and that's similar with social security or medicare. conservatives are too glib sometimes to assume these programs are just anyone who libs them is somehow selfish or a pair site of the -- parasite of the state. these programs have been around a long time and lived lives

around expectations of them and the dismantling of them is complicated. i don't think the defunding of npr would complicate it. can -- i can make jokes, but i won't here. [laughter] when you look at paul ryan or others thinking through how to reform health care, they don't simply -- they do try to think seriously, okay, how do we get from the current system the way people get health care which after all is pretty good in a lot of ways in america and a lot of diseases are cured that didn't used to be cured and how do we get from here to there with reforms without rolling back the clock and do away with things that have -- of course, to be also be fair rolling back the clock is not always a good idea because things were not great in 1935 or

in 1965 perhaps even. >> and that is why the obamacare debate is so critical because its deployment is a 10-year program. once it's deployed, people's expectations will be fundamentally changed, and the possibility of getting to a much better system is going to be severely compromised. i think that's why people focus on obamacare as one thing to think about comprehensively as lamar alexander noted is so important. >> one thing i think, and bill, you point too quite sensibly, and that is there's certain programs like social security and medicare that, you know, conservatives spent a lot of time in am mu in addition attacks over the years without success, and for the reason you suggest which is, you know, the american people have come to think of those as programs in

which they have personal accounts. now, we all understand that that's a myth and all that stuff, but that doesn't change the fact that the man in the street thinks that, you know, it is his or her money in social security and medicare and so forth, and i think that's one of the interesting developments that began in 1994 with this focus on the new problems of american life partly at the suggestion of the president of hudson. he made a suggestion that this would be a good target. you know, it's that -- it's that comprehensive intellectual vision that we know what to do, and that this is a program that can be imposed on people who are otherwise foolish and benigned. that suddenly became the target of wrath, i think, from the 90s on, and certainly was the target of wrath in 2010. not so much the new deal or not

so much the more popular programs in the great society, programs in which people had come to have tangible personal stakes, so i think we've learned a lot about who the real bad guy is since 1994, and it is in fact this progressive vision going back to the beginning of the 20th century much more so than fdr's new deal let's say. >> [inaudible] i want to talk to senator alexander for closing remarks. >> i would like to ask you to give the panel a hand for coming today and for their remarks. [applause] you don't know how much of a treat this is for me because not only do i admire them and their various thoughts and attitudes, i've known them forever. [laughter] i mean, chris and chester and i

were on the nixon white house staff in 1969. we were all in our 20s. they were working for pat, and me for brise, and we met in the 80s, and bill and i worked together in the 80s, and kate is younger, but she was -- we've known each other for a good long time too. that was a treat for me. if i could give them a 3 minute, not a counterargument, but i made careful notes of what was said and i have these thoughts on kate's point is are there parts of government to be exchanged? it was in 1981 and i proposed something bill mentioned is why don't you swap medicaid for elementary and secondary education. in other words, you take medicaid. get it out of my hair. i'm the governor, and i'll take all of elementary and secondary education. you get out of my hair, and the reason for that was not so much

money, although it should have been with medicaid. it was that it seemed to me that having that much responsibility for what children learn in classrooms in washington shifted the spotlight from where the spotlight ought to be. that was an example and another one the gun free zone act in 1995 that i campaigned against. if there was ever an example of washington sticking its nose into something it literally couldn't do was to make the area around schools safe which chester said, and bill, i pointed to him in speechers, and he can be sure i'll quote him more often now that lamar was tea party before tea party was cool, that will become a plaque. [laughter] i thank him for reminding me of the phrase arrogant empire that i used to use a lot, and i thank him how much really goes on in

communities. we don't do what communities do, but for some reason the way our media works, the spotlight is on the wrong place. it's not on the shelter house or the homeless shelters, and we know about, but we forget about that and chris' point is right about regulation. it's sort of overlooked as we talked about with too much of this and that. of course, i voted against the higher education act a few years ago because i stacked all of the regulations that have been prom mu mull gaited and the stack is taller than i am and the new reauthorizations of the higher education act makes it twice as tall, just that caused me to vote against it. i think the two year budget is a very good an dote to it because it means every other year

congress turns attention to repeal, oversight, and all the other things rather than appropriations. what do you do about education? do you eliminate the department of education? most of us here had about every position possible on this. [laughter] i know i have, and i think they have. i mean, i have been for swap. i've been for eliminating the department. i've been the secretary of education. [laughter] so, you know, we're real experienced in all the possible views on this, but what do you do about no child left behind? i think what you do about it today practically speaking is fix it. you pick for or five things and fix it because it might be good to repeal it, but we might spend two years making speeches about that. that's not going to happen, but we got a pretty good chance of fixing it, and that might move

us back in the direction of giving communities more say over local schools, and on bill's point about comprehensive, you made me think about -- i kris size president obama because many of his advisors were schooled at elite universities where they think they are smart because they have ideas, but so was our entire panels. that's a danger with smart people. i think in the white house everybody sits around like they were in a pleating showing how smart everybody is and we can do this and that, and of course, they don't know what's going on in all the different places, but maybe the point is, remember the think globally, act locally? of course we think comprehensively. the constitution is a comprehensive framework. if you are thinking of changing education policies, you have to comprehensive attitudes towards what you do.

if you think about going to war, you have a comprehensive attitude. i think, perhaps, it would be enormously unwise for conservatives or any policymakers not to think comprehensively about the framework of their action, but my experience in the various things i've had a chance to do over 40 years is if you want to get something done, you're much more likely to fix no child left behind than you are to abolish the department of education. your comprehensive attitude might be the latter, but if you want to end two, three, or four years with a result, it will be the form. i thank the hudson institute, and i thank you all for coming. >> thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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