i am really an independent but i can't stand these people saying the republicans are not making obama do his job. he goes out, same rhetoric as four years ago and is making me sick that people have fallen for it. i am a veteran and i can't get a job and i am disabled. i can work at all. >> host: we will leave it there. kevin landrigan? >> guest: barbara is right about the fact that early and obama's presidency he had democratic control and took advantage of that and got his health care reform bill through and got the stimulus package approved. certainly the republicans argue that that made the economy worse and made economy and certain. she raises an interesting point and that is what do republicans want in this nominee? there is that fierce fight in new hampshire about that. do they want a moderate who can appeal to mainstream voters and independents in the general

election or do they want a fierce conservative who will take the fight hardest to president obama in these debates? and many of those conservatives in new hampshire point to the nomination of more moderate republicans such as john mccain in 2008, bob dole in 1996 leading to a bad victories for republicans and nominations of more conservative candidates like ronald reagan in 1980 leading to strong victories for republicans. that fight is going to go on past new hampshire. as political reported yesterday, conservatives are meeting in texas next weekend to try to have a summit about whether we can coalesce around a candidate they have talked about before. can we get behind newt gingrich? can we get behind rick santorum? ron paul? that is unlikely. his foreign policy makes him unacceptable to neo conservatives here and across the country. or john huntsman for that

matter. that decision after new hampshire could have a lot to do with the kind of challenge that mitt romney will face going forward in this long primary season. >> host: you failed to mention rick perry. >> rick perry sternly did a texas two step on caucus night. sound like a candidate getting out of the race but as we see in the published reports during his morning jog yesterday, had some kind of keep tiffany and decided i am back in this race and he made the right decision. i say that for this reason. with michele bachman getting out of the race there is an opening for rick perry. is not going to happen in new hampshire. he bypassed new hampshire and is going to south carolina today. there is no conservative candidates who has an ability to raise enormous amounts of money like rick perry does. the thing about money follows

momentum. that is one of the axioms of american politics. but big money slowly follows momentum. has rick santorum has seen yesterday you got 50% more campaign contributions yesterday than he has gone in this entire campaign but almost all of it has come on line from barbara and other conservative republicans all over the country who have been woken up by his astonishing showing in iowa. is going to take up a lot of time for establishment republicans to decide rick santorum is the guy. he is the course. and rick perry knows that. he is still sitting on several million dollars in his own campaign war chest and has decided i am going to stake my claim in south carolina and try to make a surprise showing like rick santorum did in iowa and become that consensus conservative candidate. is a long shot but it is worth taking for rick perry to make. he still has those resources and people say people never stopped

running for president. they run out of money to run for president and rick perry has not run out of money so there's no reason for him to get out. >> host: the kevin landrigan has been writing about politics with the telegraph since 1988. mary is a democrat in illinois. >> caller: i will make my comments sweet and short. look at president obama's audience compared to the republican audience. president obama's audience look more diverse like america really is. comparing to republican audience. thank you and have a good day. >> host: how would you describe the diversity of new hampshire? >> guest: it is not divers all. it is the most white state in the country behind only vermont. we are getting a larger minority populations certainly, but it is

in the low single digits when it comes to african-american, hispanics. we are having a larger asian population that is moving into the cities of manchester where i am and nashville. the city on the massachusetts border, second-largest city in the state. is a very white state, but we try with this tradition to represent the entire country. issues of diversity are very important here. we are one of wooley five states in the entire country that allow same-sex couples to get married. we are the only state in the country where a sitting governor signed that bill into law. number of states have court decisions to bring that about and also had governors who were no longer in office bring that about. so that is certainly an example of diversity inclusion that new hampshire is very famous for. has a very libertarian, very

yankee live and let live do your own kind of things streak in new hampshire and that hasn't changed. i thought senator santorum during a town hall meeting in brentwood last night made a fierce defense of the republican party and its support for african american voters. he talked about the fact that the urban congressman and senator in pennsylvania that he leverage over $1 billion to historically african-american colleges. there are three in pennsylvania and tried to defend the republican party's support for african-american and minority presidents in this country. >> host: next call for kevin landrigan comes from new hampshire and that is stan -- curtis on our independent line. >> caller: good morning. i am a fairly rare thing. i may native to new hampshire and small business owner and a

veteran. i am pretty upset that mitt romney has such a lead in this state because i don't see him as being a lot different from what we have had for decades at this point. what we need is change in this country. we need less military intervention and nation-building on false premises. ron paul is being described as a dangerous person. and yet so many veterans and active duty military are supporting him. how can he be considered dangerous when he does not want to start world war iii? >> host: kevin landrigan, ron paul. >> guest: great to have a new hampshire call. ron paul has a passionate following here and a lot of it is built over this opposition to military intervention. he is really counting on a number of independents to come

vote for him on tuesday. that voted for president obama in 2008 and disappointed that we're still in afghanistan. and it appears we are going to be there for many years. what is interesting about ron paul is it is important to point out in new hampshire we have the eighth largest per-capita population of veterans in this country of 130,000 veterans. the military is very important here. we used to have an air force base here on the seacoast. but ron paul has the most campaign contributions from members of the military. he talked about that a great deal. rank-and-file members of the military feel we are being stretched too thin and getting into too many conflicts that we don't belong in and he is counting on that kind of belief system if you will to take hold on tuesday and really engineer what will be a surprisingly

strong results and second place showing in new hampshire. >> host: the new hampshire union leader has newt gingrich on the front. spotlight just new hampshire. kevin landrigan leader to have the negative newt gingrich ads started that we heard so much about? >> guest: no they haven't. we understand time has been bought by the superpack of mitt romney but so far those ads which waged all the attack ads against newt gingrich in iowa so far are all pro mitt romney positive ads. with the kind of lead that mitt romney has he doesn't have to shoot from the back of the bus back at newt gingrich like he did in iowa. where he had to cut into an enormous lead that newt gingrich had in iowa three weeks ago. he doesn't have to do that. we don't expect that kind of negative attack by the mitt romney superpack. we think he is going to present

and so far has presented a morning in america very positive agenda for change for taking back this country as mitt romney talks about during the campaign. emily 19 heard anything about newt gingrich? >> he has purchased ads here in new hampshire. he dwarfed the purchase of airtime compared to mitt romney and even compared to john huntsman. has some resources and so far newt gingrich told us yesterday at their town hall meeting i am not going to wage a negative attack at war. my hats are going to be positive message about my agenda for the future and new contract for america if i am elected. not going to be about mitt romney. what is interesting is rick santorum. i say that because most of the prime-time tv ad spots have already been blocked.

it is very difficult for rick santorum to financially take advantage of his surprise showing in iowa with a huge media in new hampshire. the time doesn't exist on the air. he has to go on to the boston market and even those -- three times as expensive as new hampshire. even those prime-time spots in boston have been taken up. so the rick santorum campaign is suspending the last 48 hours furiously trying to find the right tv slots to get their message on the air in these important closing days before tuesday. >> host: jeff on our independent line. >> caller: good morning. how are you, sir? what your failing to look at is you think the media is the only option and there are a lot of things going out over it telling the people that mitt romney is not the guy. he had problems with bush and cheney and put the country in such a bad place there is no way

barack obama or anybody can get back to what we used to have. the republicans have been standing there ground saying no for the last two years causing horrible bad taste in pretty much everybody's self. i really don't think the republicans even got a chance this time. more than likely when you get to the lower states you will find the democrats are going to rule. i really like ron paul. he speaks the truth and he says the lobbyists are a bunch of crooks. i think that is a bad thing that you can legally by washington. that is what it really is. >> host: kevin landrigan? >> guest: thank you. erasing good points. was ron paul is talking about. jon huntsman talked about closing the revolving door and the ability of lawmakers to instantly become lobbyists and

staffers who do it to a greater extent to become lobbyists as well. there is some pessimism here in new hampshire among the republican establishment about the reelection chances. as we know nationally, mitt romney is the only candidate who is running ahead of or right neck in neck with barack obama. i think frankly jeff doesn't have to worry about new hampshire. in november. if mitt romney becomes the nominee he becomes the overwhelming favorite here. barack obama will campaign hard. the work hard, be very competitive but i find it very difficult to si barack obama winning new hampshire if mitt romney is the nominee. one of the important reasons why is one of his secret weapons is being taken away from him. john lynch, very popular

democratic governor. the historic four term chief executive of new hampshire is retiring from politics and not going to be on the ballot right underneath barack obama. that was the wind underneath his sales in 2008, helped him crush john mccain here by a large margin historically in new hampshire. he doesn't have that going for him and so i think it is going to be difficult for barack obama to take a hampshire's electoral votes if mitt romney is the nominee. if he is not all bets are off. is a swing state like it has always been and it is up for grabs. >> host: 628-01844 new hampshire residents. we would love to hear from you as well. the picture on the front page is tampa bay times from tampa bay. on your screen, surely smith. patch dexter. who both work at globe manufacturing. it says on the line a tough sell. they were listening to john

hanson yesterday at globe manufacturing. by the way financial telegraph, the candidate schedules in case you are interested in seeing where the candidates are throughout the day. they have quite complex, heavy schedules and jon huntsman has a meeting with buddy roemer at his office in manchester and a concord main street roll. lots of events going on and c-span is covering several of those events. we have rick santorum and newt gingrich and we have got another event on c-span2 tonight where the folks who are supporting the candidates are talking. if you go to c-span.org you will be able to get the entire schedule of our coverage from new hampshire. long beach, calif.. grace bloggers will you are wrong with kevin landrigan of the national telegraph. >> caller: thanks for taking my

call. i just wanted to talk to you briefly about vote vitriol and hatred for the president and that put aside, even though it is a harmful thing i would like you to just address some of the talking points. sometimes the media just blows over and let it go because it is so much. one thing i want -- i will take my comments off the air. is the fact the republicans continue to say president obama gave us all this debt and trillions of dollars coming in but at the same time no one seems to be addressing the fact that when george bush was president, more defense spending and certain of things were added to the debt for it looks smaller when obama came into office, he went ahead and added everything

so everybody could see the whole picture of the data. another if thing is they keep saying the stimulus never worked. i feel that when the stimulus did come up some states even returned the money. sonja sohn -- chris christie said he didn't want to build a tunnel and it was put by the wayside and the state did other things with the money. >> host: we're going to leave it and get a comment from kevin landrigan. >> guest: thanks very much. really good point. we have seen it historically. we saw in 1984 against republican president ronald reagan. we saw it in 1996 against democratic president bill clinton. that is when the incumbent has no primary challenge and when it is a huge field on the other party's side so much of the early campaign is an addition for who can be the most vitriolic, the most negative, the most confrontational against the incumbent and that is what

we saw here for months. and it is one of the reasons why mitt romney stands in the position he stands today. as we saw from the exit polls in iowa and i think it is true here which is among those who said defeating obama was their number one priority, mitt romney got 48% of the caucus vote and it is driving the other republicans crazy. we saw newt gingrich yesterday basically explode at this motif. he essentially said i can't stand this electability argument about mitt romney when he can't even break out of his own party. when three of four republicans at the caucus that mitt romney is not acceptable to me. but you have to say that part of it is a compliment to this president. by that i mean this. barack obama is extremely good candidate. we saw it on the ground in new hampshire.

he is very deft, he is a very articulate speaker, he connect well with people in a crowd and he is a very good debater as john mccain learned in the 2008 campaign and that is why the republican priority has been to find a nominee who can debate toto with barack obama and take the fight to the incumbent president and put the white house on the defensive which is a difficult thing to do because with this difficult economy and all the struggles barack obama has this president has the enormous advantages of incumbency and he is going to deploy them to every utility as we will see and he is probably going to have a record war chest for any president or candidate for president in november with as much as $1 trillion if you count the various committees that have been raising money seriously. >> host: the most recent poll by scuffle university and channel 7, mitt romney, 43% in new

hampshire, ron paul 14%, jon huntsman 9%, newt gingrich 7%, rick santorum 6%. that is from yesterday-4 plus 4 points. florida, florence on the republican line. >> caller: i am for ron paul. sending billions of dollars to other countries, $3 billion a year for the military and there are nuclear power plants over it there. i think we should stop all that and i am for ron paul. >> host: you said earlier that ron paul has the most enthusiastic backers in new hampshire. presence does he hav organizationally? >> guest: he has pretty good organization but he made a tactical error. he had a strong showing in iowa as even mitt romney and rick santorum admitted in the caucus. over 20% close third-place finish and he goes dark.

he is not campaigning until friday. that is certainly not the m o for candidate wants to carry the big momentum from ohio in to -- from iowa into new hampshire. he has a number of volunteers. strong support in the college campus in jerome, plymouth, which makes -- by the way for an interesting triangle in new hampshire. they don't carry enormous amounts of votes in those three college towns be on their own community but they have a lot of influence in the suburbs directly around them. i expect ron paul to do very well in that part of the state and to form the basis for is showing on tuesday night. it could be a surprise. it would be a surprise if he is a second place finisher here. there is not the kind of level of isolationism and time to pull up the drawbridge and totally

end u.s. involvement overseas that we sought in 96 that pat buchanan tapped into with his very pro u.s. a message. if you remember his famous line was grab your pitchforks. the was talking about storming the castle and talking about not just getting out of these foreign conflicts that getting all this foreign investment back into this country and to reignite the economy of this country. there is a lot of -- there is a lot of emphasis on that here which is bringing back investment. i talked about the economy doing well but it is important to note fat per capita there have been more jobs lost to china in new hampshire than in any other state in this country. why is that? we are a high-tech manufacturing state. we have a very enormous percentage of people who use the internet and have used it as previous callers have said, facebook, footer end the web

itself to get information about presidential politics. china has the very low wages they are able to attract companies that are very high tech, very high knowledge base industries and have stolen a lot of those jobs from new hampshire. that has been very harmful to this economy in this tough recession. >> host: kevin landrigan is in our studio. the center of manchester, new hampshire. looks like there is some snow behind you. is there? >> guest: yes. we are going to get flurries for the next couple days. forecasters are telling us there are not any major storms predicted between now and tuesday which is great news for the turn out. we had primaries with big snowstorms and people show up here. it is a duty to vote in new hampshire. they take it seriously no matter who they are voting for and they will do that. no matter what the weather is.

i assure you. >> host: michael and horribly brazil colorado. >> caller: first of all i would like to say you have a beautiful state. my sister lives in a little village outside of king. i don't know if you're familiar with that area on the other side. lovely place. the fact of the matter is avoidable emotion, republicans made a point to block president obama every step of the way. mitch mcconnell publicly said my number one job is to dc obama. kindest and a political but to say that publicly and acted out has to be embarrassing to john boehner not to deliver his caucus. back to one quick comment karl rove said and he was absolutely right. he said the tea party is going to ruin the republican party. they don't believe in compromise. you would have thought they would have read history and look at newt gingrich in 1994-'95

when he at that time would have been considered something like tea party wanting to block and close down the government but cooler heads prevailed and the late henry hyde and senator dole basically real him in and said you can't do this because if he shut down the government lot of government contractors plea for the private sector people were going to lose a lot of money and he pulled in his horns a little bit. final point i will make is this. i can see in the debate where someone is going to ask a question in the presidential debate, the country is tired of gridlock. what can you do to prove that you can work with the other side of the aisle? i wonder how any republican nominee is going to be able to address that in this environment of tea party obstructionism? >> host: kevin landrigan? >> guest: thanks for the call. i am a graduate with a journalism degree from keene state college stalin of the neighboring town.

a lovely quintessential new hampshire community. as we have talked about before independents make up the largest bloc of voters in new hampshire. by a significant margin. they have been growing in numbers in the last three presidential election cycles. 40% now. we hear from independents the same message. washington isn't working. the two parties can't get together. why can't we have bipartisan cooperation? i think jon huntsman is the one candidate trying to tap into that reservoir of feeling. when he talks about the trust deficit. when he essentially says the american people have lost trust with leaders of both parties in washington and i am someone who can go there and work with both parties in washington and get things done. his own cd points that out. he has been an ambassador for ronald reagan and for barack obama.

the current democratic president. so he has worked with both parties and he is trying to tap into that belief that not cynicism but skepticism about the future that washington is always going to remain a divisive, volatile, unproductive place without someone who can stop the food fight and get people working together to get america back to work again. >> host: penny is in concord where kevin landrigan is based for his newspaper. original the national telegraph. go-ahead. >> caller: this gentleman is looking at new hampshire's job with rose, glasses. i am a retired senior and i raised my daughter in king. i lived there for 26 years. it is a beautiful town. i now live in concord, new hampshire and i live right up here three doors down from our state house.

any given day, i can look out and see homeless people walking up and down our street. they are living down here. not too far from where i live. it is so bad up here that we have put a food pantry in our elderly housing and people are coming all of the time. it is so bad here that concord housing has put cameras downstairs because there are so many homeless and people are letting them in. because they have nowhere else to go. >> host: mr. landrigan? >> guest: thanks for the call. there isn't any question as i talked about before, the numbers look rosy, the economy is not. i am a resident of concord and work at the state house a few blocks from where penny lives and she is right. i go to work every day and icy outside the concord public

library dozens of people, homeless people, people without jobs looking for a warm place to go and work and many of them to use their cell phones or other computers to try and get jobs. concorde is also the place where when we close the state school for the disabled community which was a horrible warehouse and probably one of the signature achievements to mental health than new hampshire had when it close that facility in the 1980s, ft non institutionalized population migrated to concord, the capital city where the most services from the state exist. and she is absolutely right. we have people living in tents along the merrimack river who are homeless. we have people who are downtown and outside the coffeeshops and regular retail merchants in the capital city begging for any

food. people on the street, street musicians playing music asking for coins. it is a real frustration even for the french administration. i say that for this reason. because of the federal regulations when your unemployment rate drops to a certain level as ours has dropped to not historically low levels but much lower than the national average the department of homeland security had to lay off a third of its employees. the employment commissioner, former democratic state legislator, good policy advocate was very unhappy. as penny knows a bunch of people are not on the statistics have exhausted their benefits and can't find a job. there are many homeless people who have never been on the unemployment rolls who are looking for work or looking for warm place to stay, soup kitchens are crowded. some of them overcrowded

throughout the state. so there is this underground economy. it does not look like the numbers look, which are rosy. the underground economy is very ugly and very tragic. host: kevin landrigan has been our guest from our studio in manchester, new hampshire. the washington journal will be live all week and all weekend leading up to >> the first in the night primary contest will be held on tuesday. the national republican city committee hears from gop candidate supporters, that's live at 7 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> this evening on our companion network, c-span, a new hampshire campaign event with former speaker newt bing rich. he holds a town hall meeting with the tea party. see it live starting at 7 p.m.

eastern on c-span. >> next, more from manchester mayor ted gatsas, he talks about how the city prepares for the influx of people for the primary and the financial impact on local businesses. >> we are back in city hall downtown manchester in the original city hall with the mayor, ted gatsas, a republican. um, why should new hampshire hold the first primary in the nation? >> well, i think this is the only place that people can come to that it might be little known and make a big jump into the national limelight and be elected president. i look back to jimmy carter when he came here. nobody really knew who he was, they -- he went to roby's store, and it was a little country store that was out and had penny candy, be he went in and walked up to mr. roby and said, i'm jimmy carter. and mr. roby said, jimmy who? and that was the news blast

across the entire country, and that's what really brought him to the forefront. so you can come to new hampshire with very little funds. it's not about the media. it's about, as i said, people wanting to meet you. they want to ask you the question maybe once or twice to make sure you give them the same answer. so i can tell you that as you campaign, you will see people standing on street corners with people's signs and waving. and that's a tradition here in new hampshire. i've done it for 14, 13 elections on almost every night before an election and weeks into, before that election and just waving at people as they go by and go to work and go home at night. is so it's really, truly retail politics. >> we are in the aptly-named primary room in city hall. um, there's some question coming out of the iowa caucuses on whether or not retail politics matters anymore. why does it matter in new hampshire? >> it matters in new hampshire because, as i said, you know, there are a lot of issues out

there. there isn't one burning issue, everybody has a different idea, but i can tell you right now the burning issue across the country is jobs. they want to make sure somebody's coming here and talking to them how they're going to either retain the job they have or create new jobs for people. because it's really something that as you look people in the eye and tell them we're moving forward, they're going to say how much can you guarantee that i'm not losing my job? it truly is about retail politics. you know, getting up on the airwaves and advertising is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't give you an opportunity to meet the people and really talk to them one-on-one, and that's what it's all about. >> what's it like to be a voter in new hampshire watching television these days, how many ads are you seeing? >> until the last week or so it hasn't been bad because a lot of my friends that own companies here in manchester are up on the airwaves, and when the political ads jump on the airwaves, the prices go up. about a week ago they told me prices were stagnant, so you could tell a lot of people

weren't buying air time before iowa. >> and that'll increase as we head toward january 10th. >> i think that it's all full right now. >> describe the new hampshire voter. i guess specifically the manchester voter. >> well, you know, there's great diversity many this community, as i was saying before. mitt romney was at central high school yesterday, 2400 students, 80 different languages being spoken at that school, so there's great diversity. so when they say new hampshire's not diverse, that's a great example of it. we have people coming in from all countries that settle right here in manchester. we need to find a way, again, as i said yesterday as i was introducing the golf, you know, i asked the current administration about waiving test scores for children that have come from foreign countries and have been in this country for a short time, and i've never heard anything back from them, and governor romney has told me that's something he will do when he becomes president. >> and you've endorsed governor romney. >> i have. >> but let's go back to the

manchester voter. you called the community a resettlement community. why is that? why are people coming here? >> we have a resettlement community for refugees, the federal government resettles about 60,000 refugees from war-torn countries. we have about 2-300 people resettled here on a regular basis for the last 10 or 15 years, so we have a great diversity in this community. and they're people you need to get to. they may not be the tech-savvy people today, people that are trying to run campaigns over the internet, and that's a wonderful thing and facebook and everything else, but you still need to get to the people that don't have that ability to get them to the polls and vote. >> who can vote in the state of new hampshire? >> you know, you can vote in a primary on the democratic side, and you can vote in the primary on the republican side, and the independents have an opportunity to pull a ballot and go vote on either side, and as they come out after they've voted, they can go in and reclaim their independence. >> real quickly, you were at the

mccain event yesterday when the senate, former gop presidential nominee endorsed mitt romney. tell us behind the scenes before you went on stage what happened. >> well, there's an awful lot of excitement, and senator mccain came in, and certainly he ran into his colleague from the senate first, and certainly i was behind her, and he noticed me, and he said, oh, you're here? and i enforced senator mccain last year right in front of city hall right after iowa, so he was kind of hoping i was going to bring the same l luck to the romney campaign. so i look forward to the race and, certainly, mitt romney being the next president of the united states. >> mayor ted gatsas, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> c-span's road to the white house continues from new hampshire. for coverage of tuesday's primary. live every morning, "washington journal" talks with political guests taking your phone calls. throughout the day, live coverage of campaign events as candidates talk to new hampshire voters and see the latest videos of the candidates and read what

they're saying from the campaign trail at c-span.org/campaign 2012. every weekend on american history tv the people and events that tell american story. saturday at 8 eastern from lectures in history, university of new hampshire professor andrew smith on the significance of the new hampshire primary. at 10, confederate daughters' thousand victoria ott on president lincoln. and sunday at 3 from oral histories, lou cannon on the post's coverage of vietnam, watergate and president nixon's resignation. american history tv this weekend on c-span3. >> wisconsin governor scott walker was in washington today as the featured speaker at the american enterprise institute's discussion on budget reforms. last march governor walker signed legislation aimed at balancing the state's budget. in today's discussion he addressed the real campaign against him and why wisconsin's

model could help other states address their fiscal health. this is 90 minutes. >> good morning, everyone. thank you for joining us today at the american enterprise institute. my name is nick schultz, i'm the dewitt wallace fellow here at aei, and i'm also the editor of aei american editor.com. we're honored to have wisconsin governor scott walker with us. over the last year, wisconsin has emerged as a crucial battleground in the fight over the future of the free enterprise system. specifically, the battle over the role played by and the privileges enjoyed by public employee unions. let me give you a brief bit on governor walker's background. scott walker began his political career in wisconsin in the state assembly in 1993 where he earned a reputation as a fiscal hawk and a reformer. after a stint as will maw key

county executive, he ran on a platform of eliminating the state's budget deficit, creating jobs and cutting taxes. this week marked -- i think it's this week marks the first anniversary of scott walker's inauguration, and what a year it has been. [laughter] in march of 2011, governor walker signed what is now nationally famous legislation that reformed public employee collective bargaining as well as other reforms with an eye toward putting wisconsin on a solid fiscal path. public employee unions fought bitterly and unsuccessfully to block these reforms. now they are spearheading an effort to recall governor walker. but that's not all he did in 2011. the milwaukee journal sentinel which, i should note, opposed governor walker's collective bargaining reforms and criticized him for it, recently wrote, quote: the governor did balance the budget, he did reduce the structural deficit significantly, he did put a lid on property tax increases, he

did give schools and municipalities more control over their budgets than they've had in years, and his efforts at economic development and a revamped commerce department look promising, so that's a lot of accomplishments in a single year. the conversation today with governor walker is designed to shed light over what's happened over the past year and what's happening now, but also what it might mean for other states who face similar issues and for the country as a whole. joining governor walker is my colleague, andrew biggs, and prior to joining he was the principle deputy commissioner of the social security administration. over the last few years, andrew has been doing an extraordinary amount of research on public employee compensation, benefits and pensions and reviewing many of the what can only, i think, be described as unsustainable practices and trends at work in states across the country. so, gentlemen, thank you for being here. governor, thank you.

>> great to be with you. >> um, maybe it would be useful to just take a little bit of time and tell us what the context was when you came into office, um, and go into some detail about the reforms that you proposed and were, ultimately, able to advance. and why you decided to, to do this. >> sure. well, i'll start with that. it's interesting when you think about it, a year ago nearly every governor in america faced a budget deficit. governors republican, governors democrat, independent, you name it. nearly every one of us faced a deficit, and in my mind there's really five different ways you can balance a budget using all or a combination of those different ideas. one is you can raise taxes. my neighbors to the south in many illinois have shown at least how they attempted to do that. they raised taxes on individuals 67%, thaw raised them on businesses 46%. six months later they still had a big budget problem. um, so that doesn't necessarily work very well particularly in these tough economic times.

another option is you can lay off thousands of public employees which is what they're talking about in illinois now, which is what connecticut talked about this year, other states, but i looked at that option and thought, well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. i don't want any massive numbers of layoffs in my state be they in the public or private sector. third option is cut core services like medicaid. in our state a lot of people would be surprised, i actually added $1.2 billion to my medicaid program in wisconsin, one of the large increases in the country. because i saw the growing needs of seniors, needy families and children in my state although i did put in reforms so that it wasn't a permanent entitlement but a safety net. that was one of the largest per capita additions for any state. and the fourth option is using accounting gimmicks, it was part of the reason why we had such a large deficit to begin with. in fact, we went back and

restored some of those -- we stopped the raid on the patient compensation fund and repaid the state of minnesota for the tax reciprocity delays that were made, put money back in the transportation fund from the past because we knew that was not a good long-term strategy. so if you look at those first four options, none of those, in my opinion, were very good options. instead we picked the fifth option, long-term structural reform. i like to say we picked an option that thought more about the next generation than it did about the next election. i've got two sons, matt and alex a junior and senior in high school, and i wanted to make sure the state i passed on to them was even greater than the one i inherited in the past. not every state's like this, but in wisconsin's case the biggest single portion of our budget is overwhelmingly the government. having known if you just passed

on a cut to local governments, that would force either higher property taxes which i didn't want, or devastating cuts there as well. so the only way to offset that to give local governments and state government the tool was reform one of biggest portions of our budgets which is compensation. and so what we did was eliminate collective bargaining for both state and local government employees for everything except base salary. and at that we capped the cpi so that if times were tough, like now, we shared in the sacrifice. if times were good, our public employees got the benefit just as the rest of the taxpayers, showed our respect to the taxpayers of wisconsin. in doing so, we empowered local and state government to ask for a match to our pension contribution which nearly everybody in america does for their retirement. and to make a very modest contribution for our health insurance premium. in our case it's 12.6%. the average taxpayer, middle class taxpayer in my state pays

about 20-25% outside of government. so we did all those things, but more importantly we allowed our local governments, particularly our school districts, to bid out their health insurance which has saved tens of millions of dollars. in the past school districts in particular had to buy their health insurance from a company owned by the teachers' union. by opening that process up through our reforms, school districts have saved millions and millions of dollars just by changing where they bought their health insurance from. we were able to rein in abuses of things like overtime and other excesses out there by no longer having opportunities where, in our case, some of our state employees could literally call in sick on their shift and then come back and work the next shift on overtime. or bus drivers in places like madison that made $150,000 or more because of overtime. those things have all changed, and now the power is back in the hands of local officials and, ultimately, of the taxpayers of our state. so that's, ultimately, what we did.

seems pretty reasonable when you hear us talk about it. probably the biggest reason, though, why i think i'm a target is in addition to all that we allowed the nearly 300 public servants that we have in our state -- and i really mean that. throughout all this despite what the others have said, i've repeatedly talked about my respect for the men and women who have dedicated their life to public service, both my kids go to public schools, so i love that tradition as well. but when we allow them to do was, ultimately, to choose. they have the right to choose now in wisconsin. they can choose whether or not they want to be a part of a public employee union or not, and no longer can their dues be forcibly taken from their payroll. and i think in the end that's really what all the focus from out here in washington in terms of the national unions were focused on defeating me in recall, it really comes down to is i took away the gravy train, the free money they had before and gave that right back to the workers to make that decision. not something that was mandatory.

and that's really what the focus is. >> thanks. i want to come back -- >> not that i have an opinion on any that. >> understandable one. [laughter] i want to come back and talk some of the specifics, but i want to bring andrew in here for just a second. andrew, maybe you can talk about some of your research and some of the broader trends that are going on after you've looked not just as wisconsin, but other states too. >> sure. thankses very much. and thanks very much, governor, for coming today. since i come at things a bit with a background of social security and sort of federal programs, in a way i see this as, you know, trying to fix state and local budgets without looking at public sector employee compensation, like trying to fix the federal government without talking about entitlements. it's very, very difficult to do. i've done a lot of work looking at different states, but what strikes me about wisconsin in one sense is sort of how unremarkable it is in the sense that it is not an illinois, it's not a california, it's not a

rhode island. so it's not a, you know, a case where you have sort of egregious problems or overpayment or overcompensation of public employees. at the same time, though, i spent a little time before today's event just running a few numbers to show how compensation for an employee in wisconsin could compare to what a private sector work they are might get. wisconsin state and local employees receive salaries that are a little bit below what public -- private sector workers with similar education and experience would get. maybe 5% lower than that. where the difference comes in is in benefits in terms of pension benefits, in terms of the health care benefits where you just mentioned that they pay less towards them. at the local level, retiree health benefits can often be very generous. i went to the annual financial report for the wisconsin retirement system, and i looked, and they have statistics in there. it shows a wisconsin state

employee retiring today after a full career of 30 years which is, i guess, considered a full career in public service would receive a pension of around $32,000 a year from the wisconsin retirement system plus around $13,000 per year from social security. so that's about a $45,000-a-year retirement income based on an average final earnings around $54,000. so that's a very solid what we call replacement rate of final earnings. a private sector worker would receive the same social security, obviously, but if they had a typical l 401(k) plan, they'd only maybe get $8,000 per year in guaranteed benefits out of that. so you'd have a typical private sector worker with the same salary would end up with a retirement income maybe around $21,000 if they wanted to get the same kind of guaranteed, stable retirement income that employees in the wisconsin retirement system get. so you're getting the same contributions to the system. one of the reforms that you made

was requiring all public employees actually contribute to the pension system. even after that, though, the actual benefits the public employees tend to get are more generous than what people in the private sector could get. so there is a comparability issue that is very tough to get at because the benefits are very difficult to figure out. salaries are easy to look at, benefits are tough to figure out. an additional benefit that many public employees get is retiree health benefits. and this is a big difference, i think, between state and local governments in wisconsin where the state level retiree health benefits are really not all that generous compared to a place like california or ohio. at the local level, though, some of the benefits can be extremely generous. the milwaukee teachers' retirement system, the retiree health coverage you get after you've retired, i believe, is one of the most generous in the country. it's worth, according to their accounting report, the equivalent of getting an extra

17% of pay each year. that's something that a private sector worker, essentially, almost never gets these days. so it's these hidden benefits that we really have to account for even if salaries are a little bit lower. i'm confident that the benefits more than make up that difference. what that tells you is there's an issue of fairness. if you want public sector employees to be compensated comparably to private sector workers, you want to account for how much experience and education they have. you want ts tos be roughly comparable between the public sector employees who are getting paid the compensation and the taxpayers who are providing that. in a lot of cases, that's gotten a little bit out of whack. one of the points that i think has come up in terms of collective bargaining, you have a background in local government, and this disparity between the benefits, the retiree benefits at the state and local levels and really kind of interesting, and i think part of it comes that, essentially,

the bargaining power, i say bargaining experience of local governments relative to large public sector unions is difficult. that state government is bigger even in many states they have difficulty bargaining effectively. local government has a really hard time because the public sector employee unions are large, they're very well organize od, a school district might go at this every couple of years, they're not as well prepared. so i think giving them some more tools to negotiate effectively could help bring these things back in line and give a more, a more stable and i think a more fair level of compensation, something that is going to keep the budget sustainable and allow for expenditures on things other than employee costs. you know, if you think about what my, you know, schools are being squeezed in terms of materials and things like that, part of it is because compensation costs are rising. but i think you want to have just a greater comparability between public and private sector compensation, and i think

the collective bargaining rules in particular give tools -- though you don't know exactly what the outcome's going to be, but it allows a process that can produce that over time. >> you know, the interesting thing with that just a couple thoughts, one, on your analysis of private and public sector, one of the interesting points i made all along, and i prefaced it today, and i'll say it again now. i've said throughout this process my respect for people who go into public service, and i've said it since last year, i'll say it again, and i understand that people run for different reasons and it's, you know, 99 out of 100 times it's not necessarily because of the benefits or other components out there. but there is a disparity. but what we did really wasn't even about trying to address that, even between the public and the private sector. what we did was really about addressing the long-term budget issue. not just the short term, but looking out to the future of both the state and particularly local governments. my experience for eight years as a county executive was that if i

tried to come in and i came in after there was a big pension scandal and tried to fix that, i would try to look at making modest adjustments to employ payroll contributions. not to the benefits themselves, but to the contributions they made into the retirement system or things like health care. in fact, even one year we went throughout an option of saying instead of that, let's do for four months one week a month, let's do a 35-hour workweek all in an attempt to avoid layoffs both to protect people's jobs and at the same time to protect the services that those jobs, ultimately, provide to the public. in nearly every instance, our largest unions when i was at the county said forget it. we'd rather have the four or five hundred people laid off because they're, you know, essentially their message was you'll be gone in a couple years, our employees will come back from layoff, and we won't have given up anything in terms of our benefits. and what we did was not take benefits away, it was to make realistic opportunities for

contributions to be made to pay for those. and the irony is in wisconsin's case now we're matching our pension contribution. our pension for state employees is 100% funded. we're not proposing in any way taking benefits away from people. yet in illinois where they proudly proclaimed in springfield they weren't going to make those reforms, they have a pension system that's about half funded, and they've actually got the speaker, a democrat down there, in the past has been talking about reducing the pension benefit it for retirees. if you don't make the structural changes on the front end, you're faced with those horrible decisions on the tail end. and by doing this, we got ahead of the curve, so we're better off, certainly our bond rating's positive, moody's called it positive, but it's also about protecting not only the taxpayer, but ultimately those individuals who spend their life in public service and have a certain expectation that there'll be some benefit there. in states that don't make these changes, that's going to be a

problem. one other interesting thing is, you know, just to put this in comparison with the public versus the private sector, i've got a younger brother, and when this debate was happening last year, he pointed out to me -- think about this. he and his wife and family are a typical middle class family. my brother's a banquet manager as a local hotel, his wife works at the department store, they've got two daughters, my nieces. he said to me shaking his head, he's like i pay more than $800 a month for my health insurance premium and the little bit i can set aside to 401(k). you're asking for a fraction of that, and people are upset about it. to me, that was just the disconnect that a lot of time folks have who haven't worked outside of government. that what we ask for is not, is not radical, it's actually still pretty generous compared to where most people are outside of government. it is a reasonable expectation to make sure that we can pay for

the benefits we ultimately offer. >> i did a quick calculation where i showed that to match the pension benefit that a full career wisconsin state employee would get and to get a guaranteed benefit in retirement if they do, a private sector worker with the same salary as a 401(k) would have to invest close to a third of their salary. one of the things you focus on, defined benefit pensions it's based on a formula in the background, and that formula's pretty generous. i mean, there's almost nobody today who can put a third of their income into a 401(k), so there's really a disparity there. you know, we need to do more to boost retirement savings for private sector workers, no question about that, but i think getting that comparability doctor does make sense. these things are just very, very difficult on people because, you know, around the country particularly when we look at pensions where the contributions to state pensions, local

pensions has gone up because the assets have dropped. and that's a cost borne by budgets and taxpayers. so i think it make sense to try to, you know, smooth that out going forward. so it's going to be a tricky situation but, certainly, wisconsin is in a much better situation than a place like illinois or rhode island where things are really pretty dire. >> what's been the effect now that the reforms are in place, what's been the effect across the state or at the local level, um, on budgets and -- are you seeing the dynamic effects that you anticipated? can you give us some -- >> well, it's tremendous. in fact, we did early on throughout this process a web site in my official office, results.w i.gov where we have a map of stories from every different county, from all the different jurisdictions about school districts that passed budgets where the property tax levy didn't go up and where they pointed out that because of reforms they were able to -- i mean, the great example they took a $400,000 deficit and turned it into about a

million-and-a-half dollar surplus. they used that to hire more teachers, lower classroom size and ultimately set about $300,000 aside for merit pay. we've seen, actually, one of the great examples i get a kick out of is the mayor of milwaukee, tom barrett, ran against me for governor. in march when we were debating this, he said what we were proposing would devastate the city of milwaukee. on august 8th the comptroller report today the city council that our reforms will save net, net savings for the city of milwaukee is somewhere between $11-17 million. of course, he was asked by a reporter if he thought it was to the detriment to have city back then, doesn't the governor deserve some credit, his response was that's a false question. i don't know how false that is -- [laughter] >> so he hasn't called to thank you yet. >> exactly. it's pretty simply the facts. i mean, i think the facts are clear. i'm a great believer in the truth.

if you repeat the truth over and over and over again no matter how many attack ads, no matter how many distortions are out there, sooner or later i believe people gravitate towards or the truth. for us in wisconsin, there were two key benchmarks that, i think, defined the truth of our state. one was september 1st when my two sons, matt and alex, and every other kid went back to school. across the state families saw their schools were the same or better. they saw in many cases the reforms not only didn't cause damage, they actually empowered local school districts not only to make good financial decisions that allowed them to balance their budget or hire more teachers, but also the reforms -- remember this -- aren't just about financing. by freeing up work rules and other changes, now schools and local governments and state government can hire and fire based on merit and performance. that means we can put the best and the brightest in our

classrooms and in government positions all across the state. i was doing a q&a up in northern wisconsin a couple weeks back, and at the end one of the superintendents of one of the smaller school districts got up and asked me -- or made a statement really more than a question, talked about how the reforms had saved them money, it was good to keep their staff in place. and he said something almost as an after thought as he went to sit down. i heard it, made him stand up again and repeat it. the best part about it isn't just the finances, the best part is i get to go back to my office and spend my time worrying about curriculum and not just about grievances. and he said, for us, that's the great quest. it changed the dynamic in our state. a year and a half ago when my predecessor was the government and even with total democrat control, they cut hundreds of millions of dollars for public education in our state, the difference was they just didn't give the schools any way to respond to that. milwaukee, it was interesting. there was a situation where a young woman was named the outstanding new teacher of the

year by the english teachers' council in wisconsin. a week later because of these cuts, she was laid off. well, why is that? well, because the old collect i bargaining -- collective bargaining contracts last-in, first-out. named one of the best teachers in wisconsin, was one of the first ones laid off. well, that's changed now. that process has changed. other than a handful of school districts that ran out to put in contracts before our reforms went effect, for everybody else it's wide open. in iowa we saw with mitch daniels when he did it for state employees, the state got better. and a couple weeks ago when we got our property tax bills and for the first time in six years the average school tax levy went down in wisconsin. property taxes are better for most people in wisconsin, the reforms are working. >> one of the points i've seen you make is, you've argued this publicly, that the reforms will

be better for public employees, will be better for teachers. now, you have been in politics a long time to know that it's very difficult to convince somebody that you know their best interests better than they do themselves. so you make these arguments to teachers, and you have some good examples. but they're still opposed to it, they still don't like the reforms. how do you breakthrough that? how do you convince them that, no, it actually is in your best interest? >> again, keep pushing it over and over again. in the spring i've got a reading initiative that i just announced yesterday with our superintendent of public construction, by i like to read at elementary schools and then meet with teachers afterwards. and you can imagine the wide spectrum of people who absolutely hate you to people who are open-minded and somewhere in between. and, you know, i pointed out that the -- if you look at other states around the country where they didn't do the reforms that we did, they had to cut back on aids to schools and higher education, other things, and that forced layoffs. some other places there's a lot

less public employees. we were able to avoid that. people that have layoffs were those who ran through contracts before our reforms went into effect. in total 1200 more net new hires in wisconsin than there were layoffs all statewide, and like i said, the layoffs themselves are concentrated in the districts that didn't take advantage and instead put contracts through. long term, you know, one of the great things was in august about a month out teachers in our state come back getting our classrooms ready, and it was amazing to me how many teachers came up to me and said, boy, i'm really excited about what you did, and now everybody here is because they want to be here. they're pumped, they're enthused. our school has to work directly with my principal, i don't have to worry about grievances, i can talk directly to our superintendent or to our principal or to others. i just think there's a whole different dynamic in place, and so long-term we're going to be able to reward the best and the

brightest. we're going to be able to keep those great teachers in the classroom. we're, ultimately, going to be able to assist and set up not only statewide, but each of our school districts that rewards not only with dollars, but rewards in other ways the competency they have. i think the biggest winner in that are students. because students win because, you know, most people i know -- my wife and i, a couple of our closest friends are elementary school teachers, went into teaching for all the right reasons. they lo kids, they want to -- love kids, they want to inspire kids and most till want to do that. but along the way too many got tied up in the bureaucracy, the collective bargaining, even education itself. what we did, ultimately, allowed us to prove that and empowers teachers to do what they got into the profession for the first place. >> one of the things that's a little frustrating about how wisconsin is portrayed, it's

portrayed as your administration on the one hand and the opinions of others. but there are other stakeholders involved and interested parties. there's been positive feedback, say, from bond ratings agencies. what's been the feedback from other stakeholders? say the business community or -- >> well, you look at our reforms with collective bargaining as well as with the other things we did, we passed tax relief, major tort reform, regulatory reform, repealed the state tax, did all sorts of things to create a better business climate. in 2010, the last year my predecessor was in office, the statewide chamber does a survey each year, and they asked employees whether they thought wisconsin was head inside the right direction. in 201010% of our -- in 2010 10% thought it was. a couple weeks ago they did that same survey, that number's now

up to 34%. 94%. now, we want, we understand that confidence in the marketplace is key to economic growth and, ultimately, job creation. and so we need to do more of that but for the three years prior to my taking office, we'd 150,000 jobs in the private sector n. the first 11 months of last year, our numbers lag by a month, we'd seen just over 16,000 net new jobs. so we have a long ways to go, there's a lot more that needs to happen in the future, but i think that's a tremendous turn around from having lost 150,000 jobs and certainly a turn around in terms of the feelings not even within the state, but even nationally. msnbc, "forbes", small business survival index which annually puts a ranking from 1-50. two years we were ranked 43, a year ago we were ranked 41. after taking office about six months in after our reforms started to take effect, we went from 41 up to 24.

that was a jump of 17 spots, the fastest increase of any state in the country. i think all because people realize not only have we created a better business climate, but when you tackle the structural and fiscal problems not just with a band-aid or one-time aid, you can do structural reforms, you make it a better state to invest in not just for big investors, but for small business owners. who are thinking about adding five or six or seven new employees but are worried to death about what the future may hold, everything you can do to provide security helps them. you're going to see growth in 2012 in wisconsin because of that stability. >> andrew, do you see that when you look at different states? obviously, we're hearing about it in wisconsin, but what is the effect when states have pursued reforms as opposed to those that haven't? >> i mean, one of the interesting things is you have got, you know, the states are the laboratories of democracy, and we have a lot of different

things happening in states across the country. it's interesting to see how things are playing out. you have, say ncra governor brown who hardly seen in -- where instead of having a state-run, defined-benefit traditional pension they would have a mix of social security, 401(k) and a smaller plan. you have changes going on in rhode island, even in new york where i'm from. governor cuomo has proposed some changes. it's just interesting to see how this has played out. a place like illinois which is in pretty dire straits is really having trouble getting on top of this, and i think there are real advantages to doing it. one point that i thought of during your comments earlier in terms of changes is from sort of the economist or theoretical standpoint on this. the test of whether these cuts were too large or, you know, the increased contributions to pensions or health care were too big would be if workers, state

employees are quitting or if you're unable to hire people. is the state or lock governments, to your knowledge, are they still able to attract employees? >> particularly with the economy, we're at 7.3% unemployment, it's down in 7.6 a year ago. better than 10% in illinois and better than the national average. we have waiver requirements, but that was in large part driven by some of the scare tactics of the public employee unions who try today claim that we're going to take benefits away. i still get that today, i get inquiries all the time, people who think we're taking away pensions. we're not. we're making it payroll match contribution. match that. but it is interesting not only the employment side, illinois' a great example because those other states -- and it's why i think i'm going to be under such tremendous pressure in the coming days in this recall election -- it's not just republicans or even conservatives. you mention cuomo in new york,

you think about dew value patrick -- deval patrick in massachusetts. health insurance for local governments. you think about rahm emanuel and what he's doing to the city of chicago, trying the tackle some of those challenges. who would have thought a year ago when occupy chicago protesters came in, they'd mention my name and rahm emanuel's in the same breath. [laughter] if you're in an executive position f you're honest, if you look at the facts -- now, from a republican or democrat orifice call standpoint, the savings we might look at a different way. liberals may want to put it in the hands of more government spending, but i think there's increasingly, at least among executives, understanding that you don't have that option either way if you don't tackle the virus which is legacy costs growing out of control. illinois is a prime example of

just status wise, and california to a certain extent. i mean, think about it. illinois has a pension system that's only about half funded. they have a bond rating that, you know, their fiscal agents earlier this year, essentially, advised bond buyers not buy their bonds and raised the question. what is the lowest? california at the bottom when it comes to bond ratings. and in fact, i mentioned that in chief executive magazine. we went up 17 spots in that. illinois in the last five years because they've failed this challenge has dropped three spots. "the wall street journal" editorial, i know, earlier this year/last year called it a death spiral. if it wasn't for chicago being one of the, you know, 12 or 13 megacities in the world, the failure to act on things in springfield would be devastating. for all those tax increases they did earlier this year and thumped their chest at us in wisconsin, they didn't need to

do what we did, now they're back carving companies like sears and caterpillars because those companies are threatening to leave because of the failure to take on that burden. so they push more of that off to other tax taxpayers in the state. me, i think tackling the reform even though it's tough -- and, certainly, i didn't seek the national attention. i just looked at this like a small business owner would. i saw a problem, i saw a solution based on eight years of local government, and i went up to fix it. and it would have been nice probably to spend more time talking about the details in january. in february, building a better foundation for that if i'd talked about the tens of millions of dollars that are wasted by school districts not being able to bid out their health insurance or the excesses -- not successes -- in overtime that state and local governments have. i'm talking about that now, but, you know, from my point i just said, hey, i was elected to fix things. i spent eight months in a job

interview. i can develop the fiscal and economic challenges my state faced, and once i got elected, which is essentially hired, i said i'm not going to wait. you can't wait a year or six months, you've got to tackle it right away. we may be one of the first, we're certainly not going to be one of the last, and it's going to be a lot of democratic executives who recognize you're honest with the public, you've got to fix it. >> i want to talk to you about the recall just a minute, but i do want to mention one thing that struck me in doing some reading before this event. um, you're presented sometimes as, you know, breaking the union, union buster. but one position i think is interesting to a lot of people i think who are looking at this is this question to think about collective bargaining. and i want to read you a couple quotes i came across. quote, meticulous attention should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public

itself and to the government. the process of collective bargaining as usually understood cannot be transplanted into the public service, and i was surprised that was franklin roosevelt saying say that in 19. how should the sort of fair-minded citizen think about collective bargaining? they're talked about as collective bargaining rights, so it sounds like you're taking a right away which most fair-minded people would say there's something wrong with that. how should the average citizen be thinking about collective bargaining? >> well, on that latter point, i think from the national unions that poured millions of dollars early in february and march of last year were largely successful to portray it as such. collective bargain anything the public sector is not a right. it is an expensive entitlement. not only fdr, mayor laguardia and others have pointed it out. last february i remember the president when i was still -- i figured i couldn't safely travel to washington when i was asking

14 state senators to do their job. chris christie called me because the annual luncheon the president has with all the governors, the president took a shot at and i saying we were attacking public employees. so that night i had a 5:00 press conference live so i could talk unfiltered with the people of my state. and i got asked about that. i remember, you know, kind of -- i was drawn into public service by president reagan, so i honor the office even if i don't always agree with the person in it. so asked me about the president's comment. and i said, well, i'm sure president of the united states knows that federal employees do not have collective bargaining for wages and benefits. i'm sure he must know that. i'm sure the president of the united states knows that federal employees on average pay 28% of their health insurance premiums which is about double what i'm asking from state and local employees in wisconsin. or the reality is, um, you know, what it was. it was a political push to try and claim a right which is not

inherently there. and so what we did is say the taxpayers should be paramount. i respect the hard working people in my state, i respect them at the local jurisdictions as well. if they elect people on their city councils councils and theie offices, those individuals should be able to make those decisions. quite unlike the private sector, we're in a let psychiatry mate case where if there was a union/labor arrangement, there's ability the union can strike, the employer can move. there's all sorts of different options that you don't have in the private sector. i said the private sector union's largely in wisconsin are my partners in economic development. they've been great allies for us. i mean, my predecessor put a

raid on the transportation fund. we restored that, and people like the operating engineers and others who build in my state love what they're doing. we stopped the raid. we stopped shifting funds. we used funds for what they were meant to be for, and people in the private sector largely benefit. the other interesting thing but kind of an aside off that, you know, this mantra not only about the right, but about the middle class. let's be clear. who pays for the expansion of government? who historically in this country and state by state pays for the excessive expanse of government? it is fundamentally the middle class taxpayers in our states and in our country. what we did is fundamentally about standing up and respecting those middle class taxpayers and say once and for all we're going to let you be the ones we think about first and not about some union leader in washington and not about some union leader in madison. instead, we're going to make decisions that, ultimately, protect them. that's why most taxpayers who

got their property tax bills in wisconsin were pleased particularly in these tough economic times to see their tax bills either go down or be under control this year. it's why we made decisions that, ultimately, we're about protecting them. and that's what government is. the other thing we're doing is because of the reforms that go beyond fiscal policy, we can now make hiring and firing decisions on merit, we can pay on performance, we can change up work rules to really empower and engage our employees, not only are we saving money, but, you know, a lot of times as conservatives we get the, i think, falsely charged with just being focused on cutting. and some conservatives just do that. my view is we should manage our budgets and then in the areas where government belongs, we should demand better services. and so our reforms not only helped us balance the budget and do that long-term, the other benefit i believe, and i think mitch has done a good job of this in indiana, is we get to empower good employees to make

better decisions. that's, ultimately, good for the public. and just as all of you do in the private sector, we demand -- i always say there's a false choice in government between either raising taxes or cutting services. no one would accept that in the private sector. you wouldn't double the price of your product or cut your quality in half or people would run to your competitor. and yet for generations that's been acceptable in government. it's no longer acceptable in wisconsin. >> one of the things we're interested in is the extent to which, um, what's going on in wisconsin, the reforms may be a model for other states. one of the things that's extraordinary about wisconsin history is that maybe more than any other state it has a tradition of being ahead of the curve in all sorts of reforms, be they progressive or conservative. you have the whole wisconsin idea, folks like bob he follow let but then reformers like tommy thompson on welfare, paul ryan, obviously, your friend. what from this process, how --

and you mentioned you talked to chris christie and mitch daniels, people like that. from what you've learned from the battles and also the successes that you've had, how applicable is this to other states and to the situations you're facing as you talk to other governors -- >> yeah. well, first on the history, a year ago on january 3rd when i took the oath of office, i did it in front of the state's constitution. the reason i did, i moved it, was because i wanted to invoke the part of the constitution that's never been altered, never been amended. it's the frugality clause. it talks about spending, and it talks about how moderation and frugality in spending leads to freedom and prosperity for our people. that came from more than 163 years ago. and over our time in our state, and i think it's a similar tradition to our founders more than 200 years ago here in this country, was that their sense of a limited government, certainly a government that put the power back in the hands of the states,

but in turn, the states ultimately in the hands of the people, it was about a limited government, one that shouldn't be exchancive. and so our tradition -- expansive. yeah, we've had like a lot of midwestern states, we've had folks who have advanced the clause from the right, to the left and everywhere in between. certainly more of late with tommy thompson. i think in our regard, we didn't look to do this -- i didn't set out my mind and say, oh, i want to chart out a way to lead the country. i just fix the problem, make your state great again. but i think other states could do that. we took a page out of what mitch daniels did in 2005 in indiana when he, through an executive order -- a lot easier than a statutory change -- but an executive order was able to change collective bargaining, you know, and turn his state, his employees, his government got more efficient, more e factive -- effective. i think that's paid off over

time. we looked at what other governors did. and, you know, chris was out here before me talking about this, but it was really this year, to his credit, with a legislature that was controlled by democrats where he was able to convince enough folks in both parties that this had to be done. i think other states can and should do that. because if they don't, um, again, whether you're a liberal or conservative, there's going to be less and less resources left either to give back to the people from whence it came or to spend on programs out there. i think it can be done elsewhere. but i think that is precisely why you're going to see the tens of millions of dollars coming in from outside of the state into wisconsin, because there are some interests here in washington that don't want it to happen. and they don't want it to happen again just in republican areas, but whether it's lincoln chafee up in rhode island, whether it's some of the others we mentioned or others down the way, they want people to think twice about that because they want people to

think of -- [inaudible] [audio difficulty] whether it's now or a few years down the road, it's going to happen. >> that tees us up nicely. we're going to open up questions to the audience in just a little bit, but i do want to ask you about the recall and what's going on there. i think audience would like to know how it got off the ground and where you see it going and just your take on it generally. >> well, it started officially on november 15th, although it was talked about. the democrats and the union supporting them, talked about it. november 15th. they kicked off the recall efforts. they have 60 days by wisconsin law to collect 540,208 signatures. for a while, a few weeks ago, they were talking about collecting a million. i don't know that they'll get to that. but i assume they'll get well over the 540,000. in our state that is equivalent to 25% of the votes cast for governor. i say equivalent because you

don't actually have to be a voter to sign the recall petition. all you have to be is eligible to work which means 18 years of age or older, not a felon, on paper and lived in the state for at least 28 days. so not an extremely high standard. [laughter] it is what it is, i mean -- and the burden to insure that people -- [inaudible] and that they're legal resident falls, ultimately, on the incumbent's side to challenge. if there are examples of multiple signatures and things of that nature, challenge that. but in the end, i would imagine they'll probably get that. and in all likelihood after the review, it will probably force an election sometime i imagine now early in june. in august it becomes a new election. unlike some states where it's up or down on the incouple went, it enforces a new election. so a minority of people under the law can -- i think for most

voters in our state, even those who aren't particularly political, most folks are tired of all the elections. collectively, by all groups and candidates in the summer on the state senate recall elections. put that in perspective, $13 million with governor over 18 months. they spent more than $400 million in the summer on those senate recall elections. i think most people are just tired of the attack ads. our ads have all been positive testimonies from people, teachers, school board members, small business owners talking about how the reforms are working for them, their families and their communities. and we'll continue with that. people ask me who my opponent's going to be. the person doesn't matter. it will be the big government union boss n washington who will pour limitless amounts of money into our state and will try and influence the vote. we're going to have to be ready to get the truth out.

not just about what we've done, but about the future. not just the past. but we're going to lay out a stark contrast. do we want to go back to the days of record job losses, double-digit tax increases and huge deficits, or do we want to move the state forward? i think we've taken our state forward, i think we can move aggressively forward even more so as a state, but we've got to get past this recall. >> if i could ask, are there any reforms on public employee compensation and collective bargaining that were passed in ohio last year and then they were sort of repealed through a referendum, are there any lessons you take from the failure of the reforms in ohio, do you think that you have lessons you'd carry into the recall elections? >> the biggest difference in wisconsin and as much as we work with the recall law, in ohio's

case when they've got enough signatures to get on the ballot as a referendum question, the law in ohio says the law no longer -- [inaudible] [audio difficulty] so in ohio's case the voters never got to see the benefits of those reforms. and ohio had a vote last march. i think it would be much more difficult to win because all people would have heard was the doom and gloom, they would have heard the scare stories, the attacks. in my case we had those two benchmarks, september 1st and the second week of december, those two things alone are a tremendous counter to any attack ads because people say, hey, the kids went back to schools, and the school's in good shape. my school actually added teachers. that sounds pretty good. and then they say i got my property tax bill, i actually have one of my biggest hits on twitter and facebook in the past few weeks has been people responding to me how many of you saw your property tax going down

or at least stay the same, and people responding to that. .. is there anything after going through this he would do that i? at night you could push for the reform because they had to report structure of reforms. but what have you learned from the bruising nature of how this is unfolding quite >> clearly we will say that groundwork early. i mean that not just me speaking

about it. he would have run an aggressive ad campaign because that the biggest mistake i made. i just see this as a fix-it. you're elected to fix things, go and do it. bad idea to national the national money coming in attacking us early on and the facts and truth out there. again, i said it before, but if people had not have attempted to the dollar schools district by being forced to buy health insurance from a sole provider, if they saw the ninth of dollars wasted on the abuses of overtime, it's the same local officials like myself across the state you are trying to do innovative things, not just balance the budget to make their government were better, people came out of the blue. why 13 things i hear.

they say the more i look at it and make some sense, but i really am so frustrated because i think you could've done a better job explaining it up front. and i say in retrospect, hindsight is 2020. for here she, i would say have an effective communication plan. build your case early upfront can make the case for whether reform is needed and not just do it, that repeat it. once we got engaged, we got to speed on communication. you've got to find ways to talk directly to your constituents. not just her press conferences. we at townhall meetings of listening sessions in runback lunches and other things like that. it's also very engaging. for all the talk you often see and not the attacks in the sonata protesters, for a repair tester i get there's fire six

people that quietly come out to you for this new section or to her fat drear small business to come up and slip you a note and tell you to persevere and their families praying for you. me and my family, people give you the thumbs up. they are people who aren't holding a sign that they don't have enough time left on their vacation scheduled to take up work for a couple weeks at a time, but they are just as passionate. they're just not angry about it. instead they pass that word is slow. that's the other thing i tell. if you're going to do that, don't go halfway. people say could you have done this? in the end i nail if we had gone half way, you would've fixed the problem for a year or two when it would've only gotten bigger a couple years down the road. to me that would've been completely accept the ball. i don't thin on the same, but i'm not afraid of losing because if you do something for the

right reasons -- i say in this town, paul rudd must point out there's two kinds of people. they're not liberal conservatives, particularly in this town. people get elected either to do something great or to do something great. if you try to mentor them to be the latter. run for office because you want to do something great. we try to fix the problem in a way that made sure they weren't just fixing it with a band-aid. we're fixing it for the next generation -- not to get too nostalgic here, as i do governors association i love history and as a kid i used to think of our founders as superheroes. i mean, they were supernatural. there's the rising sun in the chair of the washington

saddening. remember these are ordinary people. we just did something extraordinary. and dispatches it to political kurds in their case, it took even more than that. franklin said we don't hang together, working separately. and for more than 200 years of this major country great in times of crisis whether it's economic, fiscal, spiritual or whatever is mainly for theaters, men and women of courage in this country with the smallness willing to stand in a car about children and grandchildren that they thought about their own political futures. not just in wisconsin, but across the country. state-by-state, circling washington my hope is as we have discussions there'll be more people willing to think about the next generation more than the next election. >> we want to open it up to folks in the audience for questions. just a couple of ground rules.

they've got microphones that will be going around, so please wait for the microphone. identify yourself and please make your question in the form of a question. we would appreciate that. >> max rosenthal from the "huffington post." you talk about the national money that came in over the process anything critical opinions and sources -- many sources from out of state, but obviously you see fundraising today and a significant chunk of your money, almost half this come from sources outside of wisconsin. why are you comfortable with picking up money and not the other side and are you concerned about how little play in the upcoming election? spin that the simple reason to suspect groups and of course the recall in the first place. the people around the country are helping us at the grassroots level by trying to match the amazing levels of money coming in from washington and throughout the country. so i think it's a legitimate question. for me i wouldn't be racing up

and it ran out of work for these recalls cannot relate to children by the national union. just as clear come come here right in terms of total dollars. but all of my contributions in this last report, we had nearly 47,000 donors, 79% for people giving $50 or less. so even money coming in from outside of wisconsin in many cases is coming from people giving us 10 to 15, $20 saying we want to help you counter money coming from washington. >> legitimate question, but we're just counting the excessive amounts coming from outside of wisconsin. >> hi, governor walker. andrew ackerman with dow jones. as the state show the lost private sector jobs each month since june, including almost 12,000 in november, does that suggest that your reforms aren't

working when the rest of the countries are adding jobs quite >> a survey just mention where rubin enough to 94% to say with confidence that in the right direction. in the same release, one of the things they talked about when they asked a random question, kind of an open-ended question about feelings people had about the future, one of the things they identified as concern employers had about the recalls. they like or turns into a third in the right direction and concerns somehow that that got my status on how the recall gets near the synergies for success. the sooner we get past that, more -- the groundwork has been made. we still have a net increase in jobs since the beginning of 2011. but i think anything that's in certainty is one of those factors and will continue to be a factor for us. >> just another quick question. when you're talking about fairness of taxpayers concerning the reforms and pensions, one of the things i've never quite understood is why emergency

responders were excluded from the pension reforms that they had the most expensive pensions. >> great question. i was one of the things on ohio when they did it, which politically was on the reasons they went down, too. we didn't have a political consideration because were not the referendum process on that. it was simply practical. i had in january and february when he looked to dispatch them other options were, we wanted to make sure. there'll be work shortages anywhere the state or federal. we have plans that covers the state and mental health facilities 24/7 operations. 72 counties. i didn't have a way to cover all this jurisdiction's. to be work shortages monks fighting police officers in the state of wisconsin. i would imagine the vast

majority wouldn't consider in one jurisdiction did that in someone's life is at risk because of that. i thought i had ever higher responsibility. the madison and the teachers in the madison school district wiped off the job for three days unless parents kind of out the cold, not that didn't cause any website should be at risk and a lot of parents have said they didn't have provisions for childcare. and after a couple days, teachers like that because parents were acting very negatively politically to that frustration. but in that case, it was an inconvenience. in the case of public safety can affect someone's life could be in danger because as i was too high the risk and that's what we did. simple practical consideration, but a very legitimate question. >> tom curry of the nbc

politics.com. governor condi said earlier you expect tremendous job growth in wisconsin. if the times and prosperity returned to the state, what's the likelihood that the legislature or perhaps you will be the future governor, what is the likelihood that the reforms that you would not did can collect his bargaining will be rescinded? because after all, it was the recession that created the situation he faced when he came into office. >> will remember, we didn't do this -- the reason must need to balance the budget. of the five choices i gave at the beginning, the structural reforms are the best of all the states and other governors had picked. but if we were to reason that, we would have a devastating impact on local governments. i mean, you'd be hard pressed to find many local officials who would be out there you can write out arguing to rescind the collective bargaining. why? because they benefit.

i mean, tom barrett, the gentleman who ran for governor balanced its budget on my reforms. i mean, if that doesn't make the case, i don't know it does. and so long-term, while i think some of the recall movement take the false pretense or present this as a choice between yes or no on these issues, the reality is if somebody is going to kim gained, nobody ran for -- none of the candidates ran in the recall election for state senators ran on the platform of repealing collective bargaining. a couple races they just ran on a day care. it has nothing to do with the state and everything to do with the federal government. they ran on anything but that issue. it is clear to me that people like the reforms, whether they like the process is more debatable. the local government certainly like it. the public at large he benefited

and if someone were to run an argument they would appeal it, politically that's a pretty negative outcome because people think about it. that means you've got this huge with structural government as well with massive layoffs and cutting things like medicaid and the time and that would be critical crippling. >> governor calling with atr. i'm you're not duration may be for her sworn in, there is union organizing at the swearing-in. talking about a recall in a year before you even signed a bill or even have been governor. how much of this recall is about public policy and how much of it is a foregone political conclusion? >> taking a step back from a

debate for one of the recall websites was registered november 2nd, 2010. they didn't go up with it until february. but you don't register in november 2nd because the meal tonight showed they had johnny carson would have that kind of hoped the envelope up to the sun and predict things. it wasn't because someone knew in advance this is all happening. i think a lot of these groups are looking for an opportunity. the unions in particular jumped at this chance. and so, i find it interesting because if you fundamentally think this is the case, why are they going in a recall against patrick and speaker of the legislature in massachusetts, doing similar things in another state's? well, it is because there is a political alliance there. i remember "the boston globe" wrote a column months ago where they looked at some documents and got connected in the white

house, with a kind of told folks in massachusetts to quiet down a little base they can more aggressively go after me in case they cannot make the public realize this wasn't just a republican issue. a lot of elected officials are looking at this seriously. i think it's about power. it's unfortunate for people in my state because people have to go through tens of millions of dollars worth of negative ads largely funded by groups outside of our state. i'm going on seemingly timeless selections because there's a choose election in wisconsin is a swing state that is two key house seats up in an open senate seat. so my voters in wisconsin will get much reprieve after the recall elections. i think most people mistake, no matter what they spend politically likely be tired. you have a handful of people who is about power. it pulls me about power and the fact that they don't like the fact that we gave public workers in our state of choice. for a schoolteacher in milwaukee

who pays him as $1400 on their contract is up now, he or she gets a choice whether or not they want $1400 with a decoder union dues or whether they want to keep that for their family or premium or whatever they might want to use it for. that is really what's at stake. if you give them the choice come in there so the public employees choose to keep that one and that's ultimately what this is about. for the voters i think it is simple. it is about as clear as a contrast as you can get. insert the candidate because there'll be some in handpicked by the unions and the want someone to go back to a rehab in the past, someone who will go down the same path that i believe illinois is going backwards on, where they will have record job losses in the past, massive deficits and double-digit tax increases. we saw just a few years ago. or we can go forward with a much optimistic better approach and will expand on in the future.

>> governor, john sullivan with national journal. i wanted to ask about your redefinition mood of the 20 levin recalls with incredibly divided electorate. almost nobody was in the middle of it no opinion come either with you all the way are really against you. do you see a similar divide if there is a recall election triggered this year? and second night, you've spoken about the effect of negative ads on the mood of voters in wisconsin. are you going to say that if and when every coaster or ditch her campaign will not be running any negative ads against a potential democratic opponent? >> there's two parts to that. you put this in context. in 2,002,004, wisconsin was the closest blue state. so there's nothing that happened in the last year that suddenly made wisconsin have different political views in different parts of the state. that's our tradition. we've had great debates for

demonstration. milwaukee and madison all go along with the democrats. fox valley -- that is my normally close competitive races whether it was ron johnson are others out there it's kind of a worthy, 40, 20 split. 40 is a progressively republican, 40 lanes aggressively democrats in about 20% is kind of up for grabs. that number shrank to a little bit just because there's been so much debate and discussion. i think more the facts get out -- we have really run a concentrated kim getting our side of the story out. i have more optimistic that the more that people see the benefits financially but long-term, i think you will see a shift here but i don't think

it's going to be a tremendous shift. i think you see a shift in our direction. and i think there'll be battles like in 2012 and the u.s. senate race and it would be very close competitive race because wisconsin like a lot of other midwestern states is pretty evenly balanced. in terms of the ads come away from positive ads until now. i can tell you you can find the differences. we are going to take cheap shots. i also think people want to know what the difference is. if i point out my record versus another, the unions decided to put up to run against me, we're clearly going to find the difference. i don't think that's negative. that's what voters want. but that would be her expectation. we'll talk about our vision for the future and we'll talk about how that contrast were unions are not putting money behind. >> i should stress to the public that there's actually number of private-sector unions that endorsed me in the past and not

been involved with all these recalls. >> john peel estate tax magazine. i know a lot of this recall effort of courses about legislation that was put in place, but some democrats have been critical of tax breaks for corporations to spur the economy, but then the state also reducing income tax are not something they said was kind and republicans have increased taxes on the working poor. i was wondering first what is your response to the? teaching will be an issue in the recall election that may spread out in tax issues and other parts of the economy? and since the senate is so close and impossibly shift towards democrats defending a racist though, hundreds injured ministration will fare with his policies if the democrats gain control of the senate in the future? >> a couple good questions, sir. i'm a taxpayer, i think all elections are not just about the past comes to there'll be some discussion. when you look at the earned

income tax credit, essentially what it is even human beings are so much as much money is going on so people don't pay taxes. that is just a matter of how much of a subsidy is out there. on the tax reductions, they are uptight and two jobs. how does all the bills that i've signed a law more than 90% have had bipartisan does. out of all the legislation i passed in the past year, more than 90% of them have had those from both republicans and democrats, including some of the taxes out there. why? because we didn't give tax cuts. our tax cuts are tired of the job creation. you create more jobs in wisconsin. there's incentives with your small business. if you ultimately have capital

gains, we expect about capital gains 100% injection for us small companies. why? i want people to take their earnings and dump them into companies that are in wisconsin will create more jobs. i was elected a fixed economic and fiscal crisis in our state and those are things we believe over time will have a tremendous impact and pay more people to work. two of the biggest things in the budget for direct credits, direct tax relief for manufacturing and agricultural base interest in our state. those are two largest industries. manufactured in agriculture, things that grow over time and tremendous incentives to anyone watching a manufactured in agriculture because wisconsin gives you one of the best expert in the country and it will only get better over time because the tax would post in this budget. we didn't give it out to corporations. we didn't give it out to individuals.

we targeted areas that have a direct impact on economic growth and prosperity. i think that's part of the debate. if someone wants to run and say they're going to make it harder for manufacturers and farmers to create jobs, that the debate i would love to have because i think people understand for the small businesses, we need every ability to create more jobs and move in that direction. >> you have one other part of your question. >> at the recall election than in putting the senate back in democrat-controlled, how do you see that affecting fiscal policy debate? >> again, more than 90% of the bill passed with bipartisan support that i signed into law. i still think somehow i think republicans will retain the majority though it probably slipped 17, 16. there's enough discerning democrats, including a member

who voted for almost all of our major job initiatives that would continue to work with us on the same issues. i would imagine even coming up with the next month or two we've got some issues to further create incentives for capital investment in our state, to look at reasonable opportunities. i talked to a number of democrats for each of those measures as well as republicans. those are things the long-term we could get done what the layout is that the legislature. i think it's better for us long-term and we can get things done either way. >> hi, my name is jane harman, reporter for congressional quarterly. i wanted to ask you about the health care law, which a major issue for years they been

policy. i understand you recently said you were going to put out the state exchanges until the court cases on whether the law is constitutional. i'm curious if you're thinking i'm not in the viewer can turn that the state will have problem catching up if the law is unconstitutional. secondly, if you plan to return any money for the hopeless implementation. >> on the first air took office, january 3rd, after mr. attorney general to join the federal lawsuit. i fundamentally believe the federal government should not have a role, does not clearly has a rule is defined by the constitution. and health care mandated on not only the state. i don't particularly care for state government mandating. i think those are decisions individual families and employers should be making, not dictated by the government itself. i particularly believe if you

read the 10 commandments. i think we have a very convincing case. you know, the supreme court is going to take an unprecedented amount of oral arguments in that regard. i think for any state we move forward on that without looking at what the impact will be probably sometime midyear is particularly handy stay in washington is a poor decision. i don't think long-term. certainly i oppose the mandate. we testified before that the president's mandate in wisconsin's case because majority of people to pay more for less health care. in our state that as a negative and for the mass majority of people. we are one of the highest percentage of states that cover people's insurance. read 96% of people covered.

for us to fix the problem of 4% and completely thrown upside down the system even though it made some improvements just seems like a poor decision for the vast majority of people in our state. we prefer better alternatives that the federal health care mandated case. and so for us, we are going to push both legally and politically, any and all alternatives to that. after exhausting all the gold and all political alternatives, we will re-examine that. until that time, we are still holding out hope that the power can ultimately rests in hands of people and not the federal mandate. finding that the state had followed the predecessors not in our hands to begin with, so we are just not trying that money down.

>> thanks a lot, governor. eric watson from the newspaper. i'm wondering what you're seeing is for his enthusiasm nationally in a narrative emerging at the tea party, maybe you see that getting more difficult to push through reforms? do you think your bold moves played a role in the backlash we see? >> on the latter part i don't know. all the departments decide. but i do think it is not a popular discussion to have ongoing because people like to move on from one hot topic to the next. but anyone who looks at what happens in august when her bond rating has dropped, for all of us as governors and executives at local levels, we know how incredibly important it is for us to guard her bond ratings and what that means not just to bond investors investors in general and what that says about stability in the government. for the guttural -- federal

government to have that truck is a really -- it is a warning saying we should not take lightly. we have a limited amount of time to do with that. and whether or not that is continued or not, anyone who looks at that -- i go back thinking not so much because of the hot topic of the day. when i think of my two sons matt and alex in a couple years heading to college and after that it scares the dickens out of me that they will come into a world where state-by-state, particularly in this country, when we are not just generation or even a decade away, we are years away from a major crisis. and we need to live just across the ocean to greece and others in the e.u. to see exactly what happened when you don't tackle those issues. it may not be a fun topic to talk about, but may be long-term. people like to shy away from issues and understandably brief

contention in focus. but as long as your compliment compliment -- one of the licensees to give lawmakers after he was in office is never personalize your difference is that your opponent today may be your ally tomorrow. so is honestly don't personalize disagreements on it, but really repeat over and over again talking about the great fiscal challenges we face, we have no choice but to do that. and it will be in a few years if we fall back on it. >> time for one more question. >> hi, governor. edward mcbride from the economist. asia centered about the element of the reform that cat is paid increases that cpa that you mentioned.

it strikes me that at the moment that kind of event mimicking the air. would be kind of dispiriting to know your salary would never increase in real terms over by law and that seems to me to be the effect of that. can you talk to me about the logic behind that quite >> in maine says a group that previously couldn't automatically have their whole base salaries go up as a way beyond the cpi. the state government, local governments already the past week or two have given bonuses, for example. they can put in informative incentives and can build into that. but the idea that we want to empower local governments to make those decisions -- >> wheel breakaway with a reminder you can watch all of the program later and are scheduled in online video library at c-span.org.

life maxed in nashua, new new hampshire forbears reporters. speakers include sender kelly ayotte, former national security advisor, trained at an end the former governor of louisiana. just getting underway and it is hosted this evening by the nashua republican committee and way of life here on c-span 2. >> with quite a contingent of our nashua state that the senators with us today. i think kerry lambert for state senator will be coming later. he's on the agenda at this be. but i would like to ask state reps to please stand and wave so that people can identify you. [applause] thank you all for coming. at this time i'd like to recognize their communications

chairwoman to lead us in prayer. >> thank you. let us pray. lord, we are meeting tonight to conduct matters of business important to new hampshire in the country. guide our hearts and minds in the spirit of fairness, right thought and speech. in fact your supreme wisdom upon iraq dvd so that we may reach a successful conclusion. thank you for being our source of guidance to name. we also ask in god's grace that she watch over two of our beloved former nashua state representative, john dyer entry sector benowitz who recently passed away. they will be greatly missed. amen. >> i'd like to ask representative john the bronze to please come forward and meet

us in the pledge of allegiance. a >> i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. the >> just to give you a little bit of an idea of what we have planned for tonight, we have asked each of the campaigns to be there at the candidate to attend in person or to send a representative, a surrogate to speak on their behalf. would like to give them an opportunity to tell you about why they are supporting their candidates, would also like to give you an opportunity to ask circuit and candidate peter some of the reasons why they are supporting that candidate or you might want to find out a bit more about their thought process

so it can inform yours. without more ado, i do have two items of housekeeping with regard to 30 community business. as many of you know, the city committee has a show that we have recently launched. representative carl side of the play to give us a brief description of what is coming up on next week show. so, karl. [applause] >> microphone? >> thank you, andrew. he is overnight at the cohost of people's view. it is on the public channel 96 of public tv and lawyer air -- our program a very different ends of the week so you have to look at the channel to pick up

the times. the one that is showing this week is our interview with the speaker of the house. next week we'll have an interview with one of the state senators and will have the president and the senate, not an actually the supreme court chief justice also. so we are going to try to make the program one of nature representative political figure in the area so that if you have questions you can contact us on our website. thank you. [applause] >> just to clarify, the speaker of will be here next week. so pete, senator -- to have anything you want to say about the radio show? [inaudible] >> thursdays from 10:00 to

11:00. if i am not there, we will always have kevin smith fill in. if not, sometimes been there, too. so there's usually a guest in there. but every thursday 10:00 to 11:00, and the best way to hear it unless you stand outside the station is on the internet at w. fm radio. just click on the semi. i usually can get some controversy going now and then. >> it's on this city website come in nashua.org. the people's voice with representative pete silver. now to our guests come in the actual reason you are all here, not to hear me talk. our first guest is daughter of governor jon huntsman, abby livingston and her husband, jeff. and it did earlier. there they are. if you'd like to come out.

[applause] >> hi, everyone. i am abby livingston and it's an honor for both of us to be at tonight. sorry my dad is in newport tonight a town hall, so we are going to fill in. we have had such a fun few weeks here in new hampshire. you grew up hearing about the primary and learning about it and we've actually been able to experiment on the ground. it's been very, very cool for my sisters and myself in nicely with the why the new hampshire primary is so important. get to know the candidates and hear their message and understand what they're all about. that is exactly what you guys there with the rest of the country looks to when you pick the winner of the new hampshire primary. so i'm just here to say a few things about my dad. i'm sure a lot of you already decided, maybe some of you

undecided. but i was reading an article recently in the economist in the title was, the fantasy candidate. it was about to the american people are looking for for the next resident. i was curious as to what the qualities they were looking for. there were four things. the first was someone i discover, preferably as a governor. i check that off. my dad was governor of utah and was reelected with 80% of the vote with republicans, independents and my democrat and democratic opponents. the second was his and his experience, which he brought you tied to the number one state for jobs and for business in the country. the third one was foreign policy and i think he probably is the top of that list of all the candidates. he's understood, studied a show for over 30 years in china is the most important relationship our country is going to have in years to come. a president who understands that is going to be very important. the fourth with someone that can unify this country. and i think my dad is the best person i can unify this country.

so beyond that come as a father he is someone that has integrity. he's honest and it's not going to pander. he's going to be honest with you. you may not agree with everything, video be squared with you until you like it is. he has some other up to my home life. had two brothers in the navy has always taught us to give back trait he feels like our generation deserves much better that that is why not here fighting for him. i just hope you'll take a look. it is john 2012.com and i'm pretty sure there's a primary in a few days. i hope you'll give him a look and see what it's all about because i promise you'll be in good hands with my dad. thank you for letting us be here tonight. [applause] >> when they say you marry about yourself, i think i must be in the dictionary somewhere i'm not one. i'm really lucky to be your tonight and thanks for having us.

i'm here as a sum of a guy who can shoot straight with you guys. if you want secrets, come find me in the back of the rim and i'll give you the real deal on the huntsman clan. a few things about his record and what message he brings to the people of new hampshire and sees as a vision for our country. for his experience coming into boston at two words for me. experience in leadership. he's a guy who is the day my mind, foreign policy experience, lived overseas for times, three times as ambassador. as recently as ambassador to china, and conceivably relationships that define the world over the next hundred years. the next piece is business experience in the real world. he helped build a family business to be a multibillion dollar business starting in the 1980s. real executive experience there over 10 years. the last piece is executive later this day. he brought the state if you touch number one state for job creation. best day for business if you ask "forbes" magazine, best day by the pew center.

this is a guy who's this is a guy who's been there done that and achieve success in every walk of life in a guy who has the experience to take our country in the direction it needs to go. the second piece ran leadership. he was a guy who bred new ideas to this day. he read difficult ideas. he was trying to create the most competitive business environment for utah to compete with other states in our nation. he brought a 10-point plan of sending a letter? all i will do my first years take out these 10 points. sure enough at the end of four years he went back to his campaign slogan for reelection with promises made, promises kept. they weren't easy things. he did the largest tax cut in state history. hadn't been done in 60 years. these are things that require bringing people together in true leadership. getting stakeholders around the table to get things done. beyond that, what's the vision he's been looking forward? that's the reason the pass. it comes down to two deficits. the first one is economic.

we all know it. we are all here living today. we have $15 trillion in debt that's going to wreck our generation unless we solve it come unless we take real steps towards reining in spending. we are not talking about super committees getting together to tackle what would've been 2.5% of spending over the next 10 years. it is to be six, 7 billion. everything needs to be on the table. we need to take a serious look for ice, for her grandkids. the second is the deficit of a different kind come to be equally corrosive, a deficit of trust. don't trust the institutions of our country was founded on. congress committee% approval rating? you've got to be kidding me. where those people hiding? i mean, unbelievable. the executive branch, no trust. no trust. crony capitalism, thinks the president campaigned on that is not delivering on. wall street, no trust. we are set up to fail us to

reform the system. no trust at all. southeast two deficits that would bring to new hampshire, he can say much better than we can, but hopefully give you insight about the guy padilla is, a guy with integrity, character and honor. those of you undecided or somebody with stickers and we can see you to rip them off at the end of this. have a great evening. thank you for letting us be here. we've got to jet off to another compliments my. god bless you and have fun this week. i think it's going to be a great primary. [applause] >> our next surrogate is someone that those of us who have been in nashua for a while will remember fondly. and it's good to see him back. our former mayor, bernie streeter. [applause] i should -- i should say he is

here representing speaker gingrich. >> thank you. i don't think so many people in the remember me fondly. [laughter] berry does, that right? and make good neighbors the sacraments are here. but i am here to represent my candidate gennady speaker gingrich. i had the opportunity to get to know the speaker back on st. patrick's day when he came to nashua to speak to the company bothers breakfast. he is a guy with no notes, completely captivated the audience. there were well over 500 people there. plus the fact that he had a very strong message about dealing with people with disabilities. that kind of convinced they've had to take another look at this guy. and i did and that's why i'm supporting him.

i'm here because two other circuits are here, once plain didn't arrive on time, the other guys in the north country. the other didn't have statute enough. i'm being facetious because they are isn't a harder worker that gingrich campaign and you know what it's done for the city. and he almost got elected himself for board of public works. the two years from now, i'm sure he'll be elected. but my candidate, hopefully yours doesn't change his positions overnight. he doesn't change his positions depending what audiences talking to her wet cd you sent. he is one of the true conservative leaders in our nation and he believes he's the best person for the job and i certainly believe that. also when you look at the candidate who can best be untrue

each president depalma, i think you need a good, strong conservative candidate. when you cannot only think on his feet. everyone will say that newt gingrich is probably the most intelligent candidate running for governor -- running for president rather. we need a candidate for governor as well, too. i think we have one. the bsa may, i think that hugo be a very strong opponent to the the -- to president depalma and his administration. he is being supported by the states largest newspaper, the union leader. i may have been running a series of op-ed pieces about what newt is all about. but let me just read what jeffrey andersen read about newt gingrich just the other day. and i quote, it's an article of faith among many republicans that mitt romney is the most

electable candidate in the gop field. but it's not clear that this association -- this association is actually true. in fact, if we design a republican opponent tailor-made to present about liking, that opponent would be uniquely possible to obama's main rhetorical thrust. another is come in making class warfare arguments uniquely unsuited to take clearing that up obama's least popular action as president. in all of these ways, newt gingrich certainly is the one that can carry this particular message. besides, there is a more engaging general election than looking at nationwide polls. i think we have seen in the last for weeks how the polls have changed dramatically. one day when candidate is up in the next day the next as that. well, newt has had his day and i think he is hoping as we all are hoping that the real people who count, use of voters next tuesday will look at the field

and decided that perhaps the best conservative candidate to be president obama is speaker gingrich. as they say, when he led the charge in 1994 to revolutionize congress, he did it because he felt strongly that the congress should be there, not to spend your money but to provide the type of leadership that our country needed. and he was criticized for that. but the good thing about newt gingrich is what you see is what you get. his conservative credentials are in order and he hasn't changed. he hasn't flip-flopped and that is why i am supporting him and that is why hope you will support him come next tuesday. thank you. klotzbach

>> thank you, mayor streeter. our next speaker is the -- was the 52nd governor of louisiana from 1998 -- 1988 to 1992. per serving as governor he was member of the u.s. house of representatives from louisiana from 1881 to 1988. he announced his presidential bid in march of 2011 and has been stressed campaign-finance reform, limiting his campaign contributions to $100 per individual. governor buddy roemer. [applause] >> thank you. i am from southern new hampshire. [laughter] what's so funny? i am proud to be here. i live temporarily, for the last four months, in manchester in a small apartment they are.

and i have gotten to know new hampshire very well and i like you a lot. he's treated me with kindness and honor. i'll always have good memories here. i ran for president for one reason. i thought america was headed into a decline. no matter how you measure it, i'll give you one statistic. there were a billion cell phones made in the world last year. 1 billion. you know how many were made in america? zero! and the president didn't say they. i've been to china many times and i know there are candidates who apologize for china and i won't mention mr. huntsman. but i offer no apologies.

i have watched them trade. i've watched them work child labor. i've watched them work workers 12 hours a week, six days, 12 hours a day, six days a week. i've seen it. i have seen a worker in fact tree with a rope around her waist with a 2-year-old child tied to it. then i asked her why. she said there was no place to put the kid and she had to work. i asked her what she was paid. she said room and board for her and her child. our president said the united states has the constitutional duty to stand up for america and its workers. has the constitutional duty. it is in the constitution and yet the last three presidents, bill clinton, george w. bush, barack obama said not a word. and took no action for us to be

competitive. i ran for president for a nation in decline but we can do better. we don't have a single problem that we can't face, not one. and i am tired of the naysayers and the guys. so i looked at this a year ago. and i said buddy, you've been out of politics 20 years. the probably be the only person running hispanic governor and congressman. that may mean something. as it turned out, i am the only one running who has been a governor and a congressman. only one. the last six years i have built a billion dollars bank. no bailout money. we didn't foreclose on a single mortgage holder. i'm a straight shooter. i am a farm boy. i came north dakota's school and i apologize for harvard. i was there at 16. my daddy had great faith in me. he said son, you can handle it.

i got my undergraduate degree in economics, my masters degree in in finance and banking. it can be done, america. i don't like american politics. i love america. i'll tell you what american politics is. money, money, money, money, money, money, money. and it's not your money. the special interests that own this country. as a banker i saw it. i saw it in health care reform. i see it in oil addiction to the middle east. i see it in a foreign policy that makes no sense. see where no one listens to the american people anymore. they laugh at the tea party, don't they? they laugh how they are. my wife and i went to the first

tea party meeting in louisiana, first one. she held the sign. notice that? and my wife is the sweetest thing. she's a nurse and a piano player. she held a sign that that action now, action now. i ran for president because i say no to special interests and i don't just talk the talk. i'm the only person running for this office who doesn't take pac money. i didn't take pac money when as governor he beat a man who is correct. i was in a state that was corrupt, just like washington d.c. louisiana had the highest unemployment rate in america, 12.8%. reagan had a governor bragged he took on a dozen in cash and wasn't illegal as long as she reported it on his income tax. i saw state infrastructure is

decaying. young people, brave people, people that come go with their feet. i saw a state that had the lowest rated on in america. we were below qualm. guam is a good place. i know it is. but you don't want your bond to be below qualm. irenic of the secretary of state and a governor who had never lost a race. i delimit and no pac money and i would spend. it can be done. i beat an incumbent democrat for congress. limits, no pac. it can be done. america has become corrupt in its capital. now i am speaking the truth to people who know the truth when you hear it. it is how is congress rated in the polls? i love all these congressmen running.

12% there were the of the vote. we have a president raised in a billion dollars to get the light did, barely two years into a four-year term. he quit doing a darn thing so he could go raise money. he signed bank reform, too big to fail is still in it. did you know that? were headed for another one. this is where he went week after he signed it. wall street, fundraiser, $35,000 a ticket and get to the coast was -- the host was? goldman sachs. look, i love america, but i am sick and tired of his politics. i was a democrat for 20 years when i became old enough to vote. i'm the only governor in american history changed parties. i became a republican and i'm proud to be a republican. but you know what i'm more proud

of? to be an american. in the next leader of this country doesn't need to build a party. he needs to build a nation, not afghanistan. america. we need to fight for fair trade. we need immigration reform and the budget reform. what a tax reform. we need big reform. we need health reform. we need all of that, but it's not going to happen, new hampshire. i don't care who you sent up there. it's not going to happen because everybody running for office has a super pot, don't they? ask them. they have a big war chest of under the table money, hidden donation and they go out and buy televisions and buy a radio and buy your vote. by god, it's not right. sometimes somebody has to stand up and say, look, take me.

i need a million people, john, at $100 each. you know it and i know it and everybody in this room knows how almost impossible it is, particularly when dave had 16 national televised debate. ..

>> i came here because i had pressure dollars raising about $300,000. i have contributions from all styte states. i'm the only guy because i'm the only guy who limits contribution, and the key is that's what a leader has to do. i was on national television this afternoon, and i called president obama, the biggest hypocrite i've ever seen. he talks about what he's going to do to

i mean, look, i've worked with all of these people. they are decent. they are not corrupt. it's the system that's corrupt. we got to break the system. now, send a message, new hampshire. tell the world that we know what we need to do, but it starts with the money.

final story. my dad's 89. he'll be 90 on his next birthday. my mother had her 88th birthday christmas day. they're still alive, and they live on a cotton form in north louisiana, five kids, all still alive, all live around mom and dad other than me. i'm the renegade who came to new hampshire. [laughter] i went to visit occupy wall street, and now you know i'm a tea party republican, but i went to visit occupy wall street. first candidate to do it. they are a scuffy looking group. [laughter] you know, maybe it's because i'm a granddaddy. i like listening to young people. i learn so much. the reason i went to occupy wall street and spent a day listening was because they smell just what

i smell. they smell corruption, don't they? now, their solution is incorrect. we don't need bigger government. we need better government, but i went to listen, and that's what you should know about me as a leader. i'm unafraid to listen. i listen first. i have spent 68 years getting ready to lead. i've shown it in offices i held. i've written a constitution. in louisiana, we re-wrote our constitution in 1973. i was the non-lawyer they asked to do it. i have experience in listening. i want a president that hears an america thatments to change. starts with the money. you say, well, money's not that important, buddy. do you believe that? do you believe that?

this race is decided by debates, i'm 0-for-16, and so i'm asking you -- and i wonder who makes that decision? do you know? you don't know, do you? when i reach 1%, i called, and they said, oh, you have to have 2%. when i reached 2%, i called e and they said you need a half million dollars raised in the last 90 days. they keep moving the target because i don't think they want to hear about the money in politics, money in politics. it's going to take money for me to win. my average gift is about $51 a person. i've reported every name given to me. i am free to lead, and i will take on barack obama, the likes

of which you've never seen, but something is wrong in america when a former congressman and governor can't get invited to a debate, and there were people on that stage that have never held elective office or never been governor or never been congressman or never started a company or never built a billion dollar bank, so i don't have time to listen to them anymore. i'm just listening to new hampshire. stand with me. final thought, if we take our government back, we'll have the biggest economic boom this country has ever seen. we're that close. all we need is to kick the special interests out and let the plain people in. theodore roosevelt said it 100 years ago this month. are we the party of privilege and wall street, or are we the party of plain people who build

a great nation? i ask you tonight, who are we going to be? thank you very much. [applause] >> we have time for a few questions. are there any questions about the governor? >> any easy questions. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> we have a constitution. we have no place for sharia law. i mean, a person can follow their ideal moral values and all of that business, but this country's not run like that, it's run by law, constitutional law. no place for that. [applause]

>> [inaudible] >> quickly, full disclosure. i'm a conservative. i've always battled in the congress and as governor of louisiana for full disclose sure. i'm not so much setting liments. a hundred dollars could be a thousand. that doesn't bother me. nothing under the table. i think super packs are illegal. they must be independent of the candidate. i mean, jon huntsman's father is financing the super pack. i guess they don't talk, huh? it's illegal. we ought to do away with them. number three, make packs equal to individual gifts. whatever we decide to do, right now it's $2500. if we do that for individuals, do it for packs across the board. i would not allow a lobbyist to bring a check. she could bring a good idea.

he could bring a new -- a request. i don't have any -- lobbyists have a good function in government as long as they are not hosting a fundraiser, but congress did a special committee. you remember a couple months ago was a total failure. guess when they did three days after being selected -- the lobbyist held a fundraiser for them. that's why you didn't get budget or tax reform. you don't own the country. the lobbyists do for the big corporations. i would have it illegal for a lobbyist, a registered lobbyist to bring a check. he has a decision to make. lobby or fundraiser. you can't do both. number five, i would have criminal penalties for politicians who violated, criminal penalties, and number six, 24 hours to report a gift, and now it's 120 days. this election is going to be over before you find out from

mitt romney or jon huntsman who their super pack is, who gave them money, and how much. they had a trick in the law that they both followed to -- hide that fact, and under my conditions, it's 24-48 hours. in the age of the internet, we can do that. that's the six points, all constitutional, and the government can do it now. i would make it house bill one and veto all bills that came to me until we passed a version of that. i will listen, play poker if that's what it takes, listen to the ball game, go to garden parties, full time, but we'll pass campaign reform and turn this country around. [applause] >> time for one more question.

>> [inaudible] >> pipeline's much safer. it's common sense to me. go ahead. >> [inaudible] >> yeah. >> [inaudible] >> i think that -- >> the earthquake, for example, in ohio -- [inaudible] it's a controversial issue. >> e agree with you completely, and if you get on my website, i have 17 points as why we need energy independence. i'm a natural gas guy. it's clean, it's 20% of the carbon footprint of oil. we can drill below 5,000 feet safely. fracking is not an issue.

we have enough to last us 350 years. turn the fleets first and our big trucks. natural gas cleans the scriermt, and it's american-made if i can put it like that. i would -- i think we're addicted to foreign oil, and you got to break -- you have got to -- i don't mean to pick on british petroleum or exxon, but when i was in downtown baton rouge years ago when the british fiasco happened, a guy stopped me and said, governor, did you hear about the oil spill in the gulf of mexico this morning. i said, no, you're the first to tell me. he said, can you guess which producer caused it? i said british petroleum. i didn't hesitate a second. we cleaned in louisiana, fair regulation of energy, but we have to be energy independent, natural gas. i believe we have to take back our future, and i would do it that way, but i'm a driller for

natural gas. it can be done safely. watch me do it. we do it in louisiana. [applause] >> if there's no other questions, i'll point to what the enemy's doing. president obama's five top ambassadors, germany, france, switzerland, great britain, and belgium gave an average of $725,000 each to the president's campaign. is this country for sale? the number of george bush on those was $285,000. how do we average people feel? i don't want to fuss at them. i'd rather stand up and do it

ourselves. that's what i'm asking you to do. i know it's tough to do. most of the people who have given to me have never given a dime to a president. i'm asking you to give a dime. thanks. [applause] >> thank you, governor. our next surrogate is on behalf of ron paul. we have nashua activist, greg sorvy. [applause] >> who is ron paul? who? if you know him? if you look into him, you have to vote for him.

it's that simple. who is he? in these times, ron paul is the heart, the embodiment of what it is to be fundamentally american. he's a faithful husband, doctor, veteran, true conservative, and the only constitutionalist in the race. article i section viii defines the powers of congress, the ninth and tenth amendment limit the power of the federal government, our government is out of control. ron knows this. he understands this. the biggest threat to our national security today is our nation's debt. we are the biggest debtor nation in the world. china is the biggest creditor nation in the world. now you know what's wrong with our economy. where do you think this will take us in history? not following the constitution is what got us into this mess. not listening to the founding

fathers is what got us into this mess. it's time for a new founding father. ron paul has been correct in his predictions and knows what needs to be done to turn us around. ron paul is an nonnorble man of his word, and you can put your trust in his word. look at the other candidates out. look at what they day, not what they say. look at their actions. ron paul proved himself over decades of being a man of his word. ron paul is the wise choice, the moral choice. ron paul is the righteous choice. ron paul is the only one who can save our nation. now, that's just the two minutes that i wrote down because i just was going to come here, you know, and had late notice, but let's just talk about any topic

you want to talk about. i mean, in the iowa caucus, 50% of those under the age of 30 voted for ron paul. the youth are enthralled with him. you want to talk about where this nation is going and who cares most about its future, ask any young person who they support. you know, there's so many distracting things in politics. fracking. i don't give a frack. you know, let's talk about what's important. let's talk about where we are today and where we're going in the future. let's talk about our economy, our family units, our education,

our society. the morals in society -- honor, integrity, you know, trustworthiness. can you find this in any of our politicians? ron paul's not a politician. he's a statesman. can you find anybody who does what they say? can you find anybody who predicted what's going to happen, the consequences of ail of these great ideas from these politicians? the solutions? you know, the federal reserve system is at the heart of it. it's really hard for people to understand and people gloss over when you talk about it, but it's what's led to us being the greatest debtor nation, led to our trade imbalances. you know, to talk about that, you know, when you're in debt like this, doing all these imports from wal-mart, you know, from china, and now we owe them

all this money. it's just like an individual's situation when you loaded up on credit card debt. you're going to have to work it off, and, you know, it's default or work it off, and either way, it's going to be rough times. china knows this strategically. you know, how are we going to fund these wars abroad when china's the one who gives us all of our knickknacks? you know, the taxation keeps going up. you know, buddy was talking about all the corruption and all of that and the packs, and, you know, that's the main issue. well, you know, ron paul, he has some special interests out there. a lot of them. it's called the american people. their his number one donation center, the american people. no other candidate has that. no other candidate on the top of

where they get their money is the american people. what's under that? there's google under that, you know, let's see -- got more donations from military personnel, active military personnel more than any other candidate combined including obama. you want to support our troops? support our troops. maybe you should support the candidate they support. what do our troops want? they want ron paul. we need changes in america. there's nothing radical about fixing things. you know, people on the news, they, you know, go back to -- he was a candidate who showed up here, and it's nice too hear somebody, but, you know, the

news doesn't give people time, you know, their talk, part of the corporate thing. you know with the tea party and the wall streeters have in common. we'll both fed up with the corporate special interests at the end of the day. that's what it is. we're americans together. we just want america back. we need to find somebody who is american with us. somebody who has morals in this age where it's so hard to find morals. honor, integrity. i keep going back to those because find anybody else who has that, honor, integrity, morals, consistency. who? who? who is ron paul? this tuesday, i want my america back. i want it back with all of you. i don't have one particular

group i want to benefit, and i don't want to listen to all of those other special groups who want to benefit themselves because i can see through it, military industrial complex, health industrial complex, you know. the lawyers -- just stop listening to them just turn it off, listen to your neighbors. listen to what your heart tells you is right. listen to your kids. listen to what they want for their future. this tuesday vote for ron paul. [applause] >> okay. our next speaker is again not a stranger to us here, though he

has a new title tonight. our new hampshire -- sorry, deputy majority leader, pete silva. [applause] >> funny guy, johnny, funny guy. i guess i should start with howdy; right? it's still pretty hard to be doing this. i'll give you my story, tell you why i support rick perry, why i started supporting rick perry. pam tucker who is the deputy speaker, we kind of said that we were stalking him because we were preparing before he started running, so this hat that you see keeps me on track, he signed it, came to my house, it was

august 17th, announced it on the 1, he showed on the 17th after i threatened to campaign because he was not calling me, and he showed up, and it was a great house party. we got to meet him. there were about 40 people there to ask the questions, and as everybody knows, on my radio show, i interviewed all the candidates, and some of the things that keep me motivated 1 from john and the texts that he sent me, but he said something early on in the campaign cycle. i said, john, who are you going to go with? he said, pete, there's only three things. can he beat president obama? number two, can he beat president obama? and number three, can he beat president obama? i think we feel the same way here. you have to be realistic. it's not a fantasy world.

i did the whole fantasy thing before with ross perot. that didn't work out so good. there's no perfect candidate. if you look for the perfect candidate, that person doesn't exist because they are human. you have to see who can win the beauty contest. this guy, obama, has a billion dollars to spend on negative campaigning, so what i ask all the candidates when i talked to them, every one at the end of the interview, amongst other questions, i always finished with are you really to play smash mouth for president obama? i'll tell you something. roemer has his ideas, and a lot i agree with, but i think the main thing that's killing this country is politically correctness. we can't say what we think. that's why the president is here today. he's here because of pc. anybody who went and watched the campaigns -- [applause] that's what it is. i was in salem, new hampshire three years ago when sarah palin

was giving her speech. we left there, and i said to my wife, and i said it's all over. they said what do you mean it's all over? i said it's all over because if you remember when sarah palin came on to the trail, when mccain picked her as the running mate, that's the only time he led in the polls. why? she went after reverend wright. she told the truth. the guy in the white house now is there because of pc. when i asked this guy the question, are you willing to play smash mouth with president obama? talk about the things and go after what he did, you know what he said? he leaned over to me, and he said, why just keep -- [inaudible] raised $90 million against me in texas to run a negative campaign, and i beat her by 20 points. that's what i'm talking about that's what he's willing to do. that's the first thing.

you have to campaign; right? that's the part of it. here in new hampshire, he got in late, and it's hard to get back in when you're late like that, but he is the organization to tell his ideas of what he wants to do. that leads me to the important facts to me. my real job, the hundred bucks here gets us threw june as a state rep, and then it's tight -- [laughter] july's tough, and then by christmas, we're hurting. i had to get a real job, and i've been in medical sales, so near and dear to me is tort reform. governor perry didn't talk about it, but did it in the state of texas. they have tort reform there. the other thing, we didn't quite do it, but there's going ob a republican governor, and as i told one of my republican union friends today