>> i was to thank you for coming today. i was almost detained. i had a phone call from david koch. that lasted 20 minutes. i was finally able to break lose to be here with you today. i do want to correct one thing, bob. i was not third in the republican primary. i was second. >> oh good. >> yeah, that's a story that is often told. i worked hard to be second. not that it means a darn thing. when you come in second place, there's no prize. or third or fourth.

one the realities of politics. i think all of you have a copy, at least i hope you do, of the book "simple government." 12 things we really need from washington, and the trillion that we don't. i hope that you have a chance to read it. i hope you'll stay up and read all 228 pages. i hope you give a cursory review of it. it many ways i'm being asked the question not once, not ten times, but 100 times, are you going to run for president? no matter how i say it, there's 100 ways people report it. i'll try to say it's very much an option that i'm considering. i'm seriously and genuinely contemplating it. but i'm also wanting to make sure that people understand where i stand, what i believe, and what i think america's priorities ought to be. part of the reason for writing the book was to let people have a clear insight so they will

know on the front end. before i run and before they commit. and part of the purpose in the book was to say here i stand. martin luther was the one who nailed 95 thesis on the door in wittenberg. i'm not sure this is such significance. it isn't, of course, but it is to me an important document, a statement of conviction. and i think if one reads the book, you will find there are some things that i say that are not necessarily politically correct. i don't always follow the company line of the gop. there are some maybe more unorthodox points of view that you'll find. and i think you'll find an extraordinary level of canter in which i talk about things like social security and medicare. i want today to find of give a summary of some of the maybe salient points that i think are most critical in understanding

what's in this book, why i wrote it, and then, of course, i'll be happy to answer your questions. i've always say in politics, we call that q & a, that stands in your mind for questions and answers, if you are at the podium, it stands for questions and avoidance. i want to avoid something that will be a career killer. the concept of the book, and even the title, is that while the issues that we face in this country are extraordinary complex, often the answers to dealing with them, they aren't easy, but they are simple. and it's necessary to back away and look not through a micro, but a macro lens at some of the problems and ask ourselves is there a common sense principal that we could apply that would make sense out of the some of the challenges and the issues that we face. so in each of the chapters, what i've done is sort of created a

subtitle, for example, the first chapter when i talk about the most important form of government is a father/mother and children, and the reason that i say that is because the first level of government to which any of us are subjected is not the government of the city, state, or federal government, it's the government of our own family. that's where we are governed first. and the fact is, it is that form of government that serves as the foundation for all of the other forms of government. i try to make, and i believe that i do make the case that this is not just a social issue as often has been described. sometimes there are people who want to create this to me artificial conflict between the designated social issues and the economic ones. the first chapter of the book, i believe, will make it very clear that there is a direct correlation between the fabric of our culture and the relationship of its families and

the economy of a country. i want to begin before i even get into some of the figures by saying that i make it clear, this is not an attack on president obama. i believe we here a lot of talk about about civility. on any given day, you'll find politics that use any rhetoric possible. regarding going to the streets. but i find that in the midst of that, it is important that we can somehow separate a person's policies from the person. i find it unnecessary, useless, and frankly a bit unnecessary to get into all sorts of debates over president obama's religion, or the authenticity of his birth. i know for some people, it is an obsession, it is not with me. i'll be honest, i said this many times, i'll say it to you.

if there was any question about the authenticity of the birth certificate, the opposition researcher in the hillary clinton campaign would have found that and used it. we can save ourselves a lot of time. we has personally articulated not once, but numerous times of his christian faith. i take him at his word. i have no reason not to. for us to continue to dwell on that to me is missing the point. i have no disagreement with president obama as a human being. in fact, i'll go so far to say one the things i respect is the role model that he has served as a husband and a father. i think he's been an exempli husband and role model. how can i argue and not recognize in his own personal lifestyle he's given us an

excellent example of a person that has his priorities straight in marking out time for his wife and raising his daughters in a disciplinary environment in which he recognizes he the parent is responsible for the atmosphere they are raised. i commend him and salute him. for a child growing up in the deepest, one that saw the evils of segregation and the horrors of racism, it did, in fact, give me cause to celebrate. that in my own life time, i saw an american elected to the presidency. i could have wished it to be a republican. and i can wish now that we've been there, done that, we'll elect a republican next year. but i genuinely felt a sense of great satisfaction in seeing in my life that moment come. i do not celebrate his policies, and i make it very clear why. but this is not an attack on

president obama the person. even though you will see sharp elbows at the policies that he has put forth, specifically many of the economic policies. the most basic form of government, being a family, there's some things that i think we as a culture need to fully grasp. one is that if we don't have strong families, the government is going to end up with extraordinary cost as a result. for example, there are some figures that should get our attention, simple things like the family that does not have a frequent dinner together around their own table. children growing up in that atmosphere are two times more likely to use tobacco and marijuana and one and a half times more likely to use alcohol and make cs or lower in school. i'm not saying the government together have everybody must eat dinner with their families five

nights a week. in fact, i don't want the government telling us what, when, or how often to eat and gather around the table. i'd like americans to realize there's common sense. it needs to be applies. it has to start with them. when there is not a sense that government raise the families, the taxpayer end up with an extraordinary consequence. and so to those who both on the left and the right, who believe that there is nothing to be gained from a discussion of the importance and the privacy of that basic family unit, i ask them to wake up and smell the dinner table. because the fact is there are some direct costs that result from the brokenness of our most fundamental form of government. we know in this country we have a $300,000 a year dad deficit. this is the amount of money that the government spends to pick up the pieces from dads who are

absent and don't support and leave it up to the taxpayers. that's real money. even in washington terms, $300 billion is year is a significant amount of money. we also know that 2/3 of the children in america who live in poverty would not live in poverty if the mothers of those children were married to the fathers of those children. my wife was raised by a single mom who successfully raised five of her kids and one stepchild. and is a remarkable woman. and there are extraordinary success stories that all of us could tell in people in single-parent homes have been able to overcome the odds. it doesn't change the odds. the odds are that children that do not have the stability of a family and a mother and a father presence and where the parents, at least one of whom is employed and where those parents have a

high school education, means that child has a significantly higher likelihood of living most of his or her life in poverty than the child who grows up with the parents have achieved a high school education, remained married for partners for life, and stay gainfully employed. that's probably david koch calling again. tell him i've already talked to him today. no more. [laughter] daniel patrick monahan back in 165 lamented the fact that 25% of the african-american births in the country were out of wedlock births. nobody could ever say that daniel patrick monahan was a raving right winger. but he was a thoughtful man. he was looking at this objectively. at the time as a young staffer in the department of labor, what he saw starlet would him and gave him cause. he wrote about it and warned the consequences of a growing level

of out of wedlock birth. saying that 25% was shocking. how shocked would he be to find out 75% of african-american births are out of wedlock. across the board among all demographic groups, 47% of all american births are out of wedlock. forget one position. this is a concern. because there are economic consequences for those children. i'd like to think that people on the right are just as interested in eliminating poverty as people on the left. but the reality of eliminating poverty coming down to simply putting more money in a government program does not address the root issue which is that mothers and fathers are the most important form of a government. i also want to mention that i think we sometimes forget the

origin of our government is one that we forget that government was intended to be as local as possible and as limited as possible. one need only to read the writings of jefferson, james madison, john adams, to see that it was never intended that we would have a massive federal government, but what has happened since 2009 even states and cities get more of their revenue from the federal government than they get from any other source. this would be a shock to thomas jefferson, james madison, and to our founders. who never conceived that the federal government would be so big that it would not just be as big as, but incredibly much bigger than the collective states and cities that originally the federal government was to serve. but that's where we've come. and so my title in this federal view is that the further that you drift from shore the more

likely that you are to be lost at sea. the premise is to me a common sense simple principal. that if i govern my own family, i can do that because i know my children. my wife and i have three children. we are all grown. we have a 30-year-old son, 28-year-old daughter, two of those children are married. and for some reason, and i don't think it was intended, we ended up once the kids got grown and moved away, we ended up with three dogs. we will three kids, now we have three dogs. the kids think they the dogs have replaced them. they belief we treat the dogs better than them. i simply tell them that the dogs behave better than they ever did. but this much i know. i know my own children. i know their personalities. when they were growing up, i don't think it was any person in america who could have raised him better.

first they were of me. and i knew them. and i knew when they were going to cry, and i knew when they were going to laugh. i knew when they were getting angry, and i knew when i was getting through to them. my middle son required more firmness, my daughter i could look at her in a certain way, she was a youngest, and could melt her just by my look the disapproval. all of that is to say that the closer that you are to the people being governed the better that you are able to govern because you know them. government at the neighborhood of the community level is usually more effective for the simple reason that you are governing people you know, you like, accountable to, and responsible for. i often tell people when they introduce myself, i'm on the school board. you have the hardest job in politics, people see you at the grocery store, they know where

you live, and people can find you at the little league game and chew you out. i'm accessible as a governor, but i can get away. you are on the school board, they have your home number. it's the toughest job in american politics. that's a good thing. the more that government gets disconnected, the less likely it is to get it right. the people that are making the decisions don't know those people. i'm not sure that any person living 100 or 1,000 miles would better raise my children than me. now the application of that is that we have made a huge mistake. let me be very clear, and i do so in the books whether it's a democratic or republican administration, both parties have made, i think, the unconstitutional, and unconscionable mistake of moving government further and further from the local community and closer and closer to the city. and in doing so, we've created not only a monstrous-size

government, but we have created one that is very unlikely the one that our founders envisioned. james madison and the federalist papers, on page 29 of the book, talks from the federalist papers as to why that the power is not defined for the federal after the states. not just that they were, but he explains why. what we've come up with now is a formula in which the federal government by it's own nature is able to get larger and larger but the grants of federal money to states and cities for the programs. often just enough to get them hooked on something. but the long term money is left to the states and cities. i remember when i was governor of the big program to put 100,000 cops. it sounded wonderful. made for a wonderful news conference in washington. we're going to help crime. the first three years it was funded. in year four, if the cities and the states don't have the money,

the governors and mayors get to lay off the cops. the headlines never read federal funds dry up, mayor makes city unsafe. governors cutback the police budget. so what we find out is that the whole idea of federal money is kind of like the free sample of heroin that the drug dealers give away. the ultimate affect is that you get hooked. and the next thing you know the monkey is on your back for the rest of your life. we are seeing governors turn down federal money and many people are throwing up their hands and saying what's wrong with these guys. what do you mean they don't want money for a high-speed rail. what do you mean they don't want to expand the medicaid program? they are smart enough to understand the money is only good for two or three or four years, if it's not on their watch, some governor is going to curse them for having taken money they can't sustain once the federal funds dry up.

that's why more decisions need to be brought back to the local community. when i was vice president of the national governors association, mark warner, who was chairman with i, worked on getting all of the states and governors on the medicare form waivers go to the congress, go to the senate, ask them to approve these changes that would save the federal government money and give the governors more flexibility. 50 governors in america, 49 signed on were every democrat and republican expect one, rod blagojevich, he now wishes he had. he was the only one that didn't. all the other governors signed on. we thought this ought to be a slam dunk. we are presenting something that saves the federal government money. it's not a political issue. it's not partisan. mark warner and i, one democrat, one republican, we come up and go to the senate house and

commerce committee. this ought to be simple. here we can save you several billion. all we ask of you, let us govern our own medicare programs a little more. not completely, just a little more. it was the biggest fight. mark and i would look at each other and shake our heads and say what's wrong with these guys. they wanted to fight fights that we weren't having. it taught me an important lesson. the further that you row the boat from the shore, the more likely you are to be lost at sea. and i am convinced that we have a lot of folks in this city that are lost at sea. justice brandice in 1932, i quote him. he spoke as states being the laboratory for experiments in government. this is really the idea that our founders had. the states would be where the power was distributed.

they would have the opportunities to try things. sometimes bowl things. sometimes those things wouldn't work. when they didn't work, then not all of the states would make the mistake of attempting them. at least that would have been one thing that would have tried and put aside. maybe we try something else. if it did work, all of the other states would adopt it. think about the last year with obamacare. i reference one the prime examples rather than road testing, in two states. tennessee and massachusetts, and it has not worked, it has proven to to not be an affective way to lower cost and increase accessibility, and limit of amount of time that people wait to get health care. no one looked at the programs. they decided even though two states had put it in the laboratory and it didn't work well, let's put all 50 states under the program so that everybody can fail equality.

it's that kind of insanity that i believe we have to speak to. and by the way, speaking of insanity, every one of the attorney generals in the united states, every last one of them complained to the office of the controller of the currency, and the fact that we were headed for serious consequences and dire consequences if we continue to follow the policies without stepping in with different levels of regulation on making loans to people who could not afford to take those loans. again, bipartisan all attorney generals in all 50 states filed the complaint. this wasn't democrats versus republicans. this is state versus the feds. are you nuts? basically, they didn't say they were, but their actions said, yes, we are crazy. and the result has been an economic meltdown now that has cost all of us dramatic impact

whether it's in our retirement accounts or in the value of our homes. and for that, we ought to be outraged. and angry. and demand a new level of accountability. by the way, one the things that i want to mention, i won't get to cover the entire book before i take the questions, because i know you have some. but i want to just say that part of this book was written last summer in june, july, and august, put to bed in october, and november. and nobody was talking about pub tick employee unions and their impact. if you look at page 35 of the book, i feel somewhat validated, because i talk about the coming meltdown that we're going to see as a result of the public employee unions. and in fact fact that public employee unions versus the private sector, the wages are 30% higher among public sector, and the benefit packages in health and retirement are 70%

better in the corresponding private sector. i pointed out, and i've been a governor. it became obvious if you look at simply the long-term calculations here, it's unsustainable. in the same way the govern looks at the medicaid, and sees the cost going up, looks at the state employee, every governor runs the largest health plan. in my state, it would require all of the employees of walmart and tyson fords, the two largest in arkansas combined and still wouldn't equal the number of state employees. because in most states, the state employee body is the largest group of employees. if you are they unionized, they are more expensive in pay and benefits that has grown, and i call it a per saidic relationship with the states.

i feel value -- validated. because you could see it comes. now it's every newscast and front page of the newspaper, in wisconsin, indiana, ohio, and probably coming soon to a theater near you, there is a growing sense of urgency about how are we going to fund these costs? and again, i'm going to tell you that while some will try to pit this as republicans attempt to bust unions, this is a factor that jerry brown is dealing with in california and andrew cuomo, and either one of them are right wing republicans and i doubt they watch fox news. they should. i doubt they do. i want to mention one other thing. we spent what we don't have, you can't borrow what you pay back. you understand that in your family. if you are in real serious financial trouble in your family, the first thing you do

is say we're going to have to stop spending. i'm never met a father, mother, husband, wife that said i lost my job. i don't know what we're going to do. we're broke. we have no savings. you know what we need to do? let's go to disneyworld. we don't spend money. we figure out what to sell. when i ran for office and i knew i didn't have enough money to live on, i cashed in the insurance policy, annuities, we sold off things. my point is that you don't just go out and recklessly spend if you don't have it. the last thing you do if you can't pay it back, i'd like to borrow several million. how do you plan to pay it back? i don't know. i actually don't plan to. i tell rather ridiculous stories of what i'd love to do. to be able to go and build a $

$100 million home in the hamptons, and hire servants. why don't i do that? because no bank would loan me the money. there's no way to pay it back. yet we had a whole series of times in this country where the government encouraged people to take out loans they couldn't pay back. why? because the government set the example. they have been borrowing money. for our first time, we owe more money than the total combined gross domestic product in a year. this ought to be shocking to us. the fact is that we know have the gross domestic product, all of the things that we make, manufacture, and put together is less than what we owe. when you do that in your family, and your assets -- i'm getting the questions signal; right? okay. either that you are making a pass at me. i'm not sure which it was. i'm going to assume it's about the questions. [laughter] >> but when that happens in your

family, you are under water. that's what we say. the last thing that you need to do is pour more water on yourself. i hope you'll take a good look at book. i try to cover terrorism to border security, and all things in between. but most importantly, i just want to say that this is an attempt on my part to say here i stand. here's what i believe. and the question that you probably want to ask is are you going to run? the question is that i have for america is do you think this message resonates with you? if it does, that gives me a whole lot more encouragement to go put myself through the sawage grinder of a campaign. >> for more information, visit mikehuckabee.com.

: