>> it's now my pleasure to introduce major garrett who will be introducing them and moderating our discussion. major is a highly sought after and respected correspondent who's been on the forefront of these challenging national issues for more than two decades. he has recently enjoyed national journals white house team in order to cover the president and the 2012 election campaign.

prior to returning to his roots as a print journalist, care it was a member of cnn's white house team and later became the chief white house or spot for the fox news channel. he has written four books, his third, the enduring revolution, how the contract with america continues to shape the nation being called one of the best nonfiction political books of our time. he has covered events such as president clinton's impeachment in 2004 -- the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, the war on terror and the war on iraq. and as a broad understanding of the issues that confront us. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming major garrett. [applause]

>> thanks, margaret, very much. tom, as i listen to your sermons about the valley of failure and what you can learn from failure and how you can rise from the ashes of failure i thought wow, tom watched a lot of my early life shots on cnn. [laughter] i will invite the governors to come up right now so we don't have this sort of overlay of formality. you can see their name tags right here in front of me. i'll have them take their seats and i will briefly introduce them and we'll get this this conversation going. one thing that i think it's probably well understood but i would just underline it so you can purchase of a to the degree want to but do you see these white cards on the tables? i'm going to start this conversation, moderate has been for good long while, but at some point i'm told the good people of the chamber will bring these cards up to me, and the cards are for your purposes, to jot down questions which then i will post to the governors.

they are on the table, avail yourself of them if you are so motivated. but let's start from my right, your left, something i learned and television. on my far right is governor -- >> i bet that's the first time you heard that. >> jack markell. he was kind of to give me a note. major, markel, rhymes with bill. thank you very much for the. what i will do with each governor to put into perspective a bit of this conversation, i want to describe for each governor the unemployment rate currently in the state and what was at the worst part of what we now commonly referred to as the great recession. so right now, according to bureau of labor statistics numbers in delaware the unemployment rate is 6.8%. that's 19th best in the country. it was that high of 8.5% january 2010. and to governor markell's left, my immediate right, david

heineman of nebraska. current unemployment 3.5%, second in the country. it was at a height of 4.9% january 2010. to my immediately, governor gary herbert of utah, current unemployment rate 6%, 11th in the country. down from high of 8.2% also january 2010. i think we're beginning to seep out of. finally, on my far left, probably the first time you've heard that, governor, governor scott walker of the state of wisconsin. current unemployment rate 6.7%, 16th best down from a height of 9.1%. that gives us a broad conversation for where the unemployment is, right is now, where it was. we'll talk to the governors about how they got there and have their economies in the states adapt. i want to start with his opening question for all of the governors. we will start to my far right and work all the way across your, which is you saw the study commuters on the commentary about the most important ideas

that have driven economic growth in all the states. so for each governor, what's been the most important driver of economic development in your state? here's a kind of variation i would like you to take seriously. what's the best idea that you encounter as governor for job innovation that was endorsed to begin with? something that was brought to you that made sense that you incorporate or you work with people and have made a huge difference. >> first, thanks for the opportunity. i also want to thank the organizers for putting the beautiful delaware mounds on the screen behind this year. [laughter] first of all, i thought the study was great and i thought, focus on energy, infrastructure, innovation, exports, reining in deficits, you know, the tax issue, i thought they were in the dirt. i thought the right areas and so me thinks we are focused on. tom, i thought your comments of innovation, spot on. i went to taiwan about a year and half ago, an entrepreneur,

she was born in taiwan. she was raised there, educated there, came to the states about 30 years ago, had a great career in the pharmaceutical industry here your went back to taiwan about 15 years ago to start a drug research design and manufacturing, very successful, and she said to me, the u.s. will always be number one innovation. but what are you going to defer jobs for all the people who don't have ph.d's? and i think this is, one of the questions of the day. and i think that many of the things that tom talked about are spot on. look, i mean, there are lots of problematic and policy things that you make a difference a note to a specific answer to your question in the second, but i think beyond the problematic and the policy is attitude. and i think attitude is as important as anything else. businesses have to feel wanted. they have more choices than they've ever had before. there are 3 billion people in

the world. we're national governors association a couple months ago, governor heineman brought in the ceo of gallup to speak to us and he said that there are 3 billion people in the world that can for jobs and there is 1.2 billion jobs available. we're in a global war for jobs which really means we're in a global war for talent. because the jobs are going to go where the talent is. and we have, you know, businesses have more choices than they've ever had before. one of the interesting things in my state, probably in many states, a lot of our constituents ask a sometimes out of frustration why our businesses sometimes decided to go jobs overseas these days. and my response is, what is an american business? we can talk about our own state of delaware, a big pharmaceutical company, north american headquarters in delaware, company is based in england. we have a steel plant that's been an important employer, longtime 400 jobs, the parent company is based in russia.

we got some direct foreign direct investment from a company that say those jobs. i think we have to recognize that businesses have lots and lots of choices, and number one, they have got to feel like you will do anything that you've got to do to make them successful. support about my job as governor is to make sure that we understand the industries in our state better than any other state does, and we got to be more committed to the success of the businesses in our state than any other state's. with all of the other programmatic pieces like those outlined in the study, later on that, you will go for. in terms are your specific question and it may be, and it's an answer more about long-term and it's a little bit different, but i would say it's something that i saw in utah when i was out there about a year, a year ago for the national governors association, we actually promoted it before then but it really came home to me. this has to do with the idea that it's absolutely absurd that we expect our come we expect

them to where to go to do business, everybody will be able to speak in english. and so, when we went to utah last year it was a joint meeting of the national governors association, and a number of chinese governors, party secretary. the governor herbert brought in a group of elementary school students who spoke to the chinese governors and party secretaries in mandarin. and apparently according to the chinese, in very good mandarin. and so, along those lines i actually talked about in my state of the state about six months before that, but we are going to open up over the next five years in our state 20 emergence schools. these will be schools within schools where students will spend half their school day learning a different like which. the reason i was able, there was some pushback, but we sold on economic develop and. we have, in delaware, cigna has 500 employees, big insurance for 5500 employees from delaware serve the ex-pat market,

insurance and emergency evacuation services for hundreds of thousands of ex-pats around the world. and they have, this unit in delaware, a similar unit in belgium. the average number of languages spoken by the people in delaware is one. the average spoken by people in belgian history. so part of my job upon the jobs of all the governors appear is to make sure that when companies are deciding where to invest their next dollar of capital, where to hide their next employ, our states are top the list. we've got to make sure that for those kinds of businesses, our folks can actually speak in other languages. that's not what has driven the job growth over the last couple of years but i think in terms of looking forward, it is one thing. it is maybe something that people are not thinking about but i think more than anything else right now it's about the attitude and businesses knowing that you will do whatever it takes to facilitate their success. >> governor? >> a lot of people around the country ask me, you must not become the truth when you say

you're a plumber a%. the fact of the met its remarkable success and we're very, very proud of it, and well, how did you do that? they can't be possible. let me share a couple things with you in the time i've been governor we focus on four issues. jobs, education, efficiency in government, and taking care of our families. and it all starts with a fundamental financial principle that is a foreign concept and the federal government. we don't spend money we don't have. we don't do it and their family budgets. we don't put on her business budget and we don't do it in state government. we modernizer economic incentive programs, passed the largest tax with package in history of the state. we controlled our spending. we balanced our budget by doing it that way, not by raising taxes. but we have invested in education and jobs, including $25 million in a new innovation campus at the university of

nebraska at lincoln. and when you do those kinds of things, you can spur your economy. efficiency in government, let me just give a couple of examples to you now go online interstate and renew your driver's license in under 10 minutes. 90% of our citizens this past year file their income taxes electronically. what does that mean? well, five, six years ago we used to hire 150, 200, people for five or six months to process paper returns. now we don't hire anyone. more efficient, more secure. people get their refunds earlier. we've seen an impact on our cash flow because the refunds are going out earlier than ever before. so if you do these kinds of things, in fact, you can move your state forward. we are the fourth largest ad economy in america. that's helped us pick us up another, a number of other industries including insurance and finance sector. a guy like warren buffett was trying to buy everything in

america these days, so virtual we seem like we own a lot of america. but we are proud of our state in terms of what we do. education. i just learned today, i mean, the mayor of denver that you will hear from is a proud graduate of the college in nebraska, hastings college. so we are glad that we can help out the state of colorado and they're headed in the right direction now. [laughter] because of that. but if you look at our hct scores and you look at state similar to us, we are over 75% of the kids take the score, every year we end up number one or two. they will try to compare ourselves in the top 10%, take the score. you put all those factors together, and i truly believe you can move your state forward. major asked what, name and id i learn from another governor or someone. well, that's an easy one in a way. early on when i was governor, i cabinet which governor, told me

about the concept of doing a reverse trade mission. so we've done two of them since i've been the governor of nebraska. we called it bringing the world to nebraska. the end result is with the chinese, japanese, german, all sorts of companies from other countries are not investing in nebraska. it's been absolutely amazing. i was told if you get 25 or 30 people there you will be lucky. both of our conferences we've had approximately 125 business and government leaders from all over the world. and particularly for our asian friends, it's all about relationships and everything. taking a picture with him is very, very important. so for an entire hour, i took a picture with every single person who is visiting our state. the university of nebraska was involved in this. a major business in our states so we can showcase our state. so we will continue to try to do that. final announcement i would make,

anybody would like to relocate to nebraska, my number is (402)471-2244. thank you. [laughter] >> governor herbert. [applause] >> we will give you the number one more time before we wrap up, i assure you. and every other governor, i will get that out too. go ahead. >> thanks to u.s. chamber of commerce for inviting us to come and share some ideas of what we think is making our state's a little more successful. i can only say amen to what's been said already by our previous speakers. and tom, certainly my colleague up here with what they say. as a look at utah's success, i am reminded of my father was raised on a farm, and because of that we always had a large garden, about an acre of garden, where we lived. we have been any more urbanized area. and growing up utah become he said kerry, if you want to have a good crop, you first have to have a good fertile soil.

it doesn't matter how good your seat or if you don't have fertile soil, the chubby less than desirable crop. i really see that as a metaphor for what we need to be doing in the states and throughout this country if we're going to have success economically. when major asked the question what's the driving factor for economic success, that's a simple answer for me. it's the private sector. it's those that have the seats, those were willing to go out as tom says and at risk for the potential of reward, but you've got to a fertile field in fact which to plant those seeds in. and you believe as much of an that if you do that if you play by the rules, if you water it, if you fertilizer, if you we did it, at the end of the day you'll have harvest time and you will grow a crop. that's what we've tried to do in utah. we have done what everybody would do in trying to create a fertile field for the business and occupant are out there.

and that means have a regulatory environment that makes some sense, that's not overly oppressive, as has been mentioned earlier in the presentation. we have gone through and done something they out to do something in washington. we've gone through and counted, maybe it's impossible to count here in washington, but we went through and counted our regulations in our state. we found that we had 1969 regulations. and within that public input from anybody and everybody who had a stake in it and found that we have over 2000 regulation but we have 368 of them that had no public purpose. they didn't protect the public, didn't level the playing field. they are simla a drag on the economy. so we didn't want any prudent person to do, and we eliminated and modified those this past legislative session. it is an attitude. it's what we're saying to the marketplace we are now under the business person but we want to make sure we have government that gets off your back and out

of your wallet. which leads me to the second part and that's our tax reform. we have cut our taxes in utah and we can only cut the taxes from 7% to 5%, but we have flattened them. our only deductibility that we have our mortgage interest deductibility, charitable giving. and a corporate and/or individual taxes are the same. so we are competitive when it comes to income tax rates. we cut taxes again this past legislative session began. when it came to unemployment insurance rate -- got some tax relief. so tax reform, regulatory reform, we also as a been mentioned i think my time, we understand the importance of energy. and so we develop a 10 year energy plan in utah that gives us a pathway for. of all kinds. all of the above. but in a free market system. you have to compete. the marketplace determines the winners and losers.

opportunities to succeed and fail in our energy in the state of utah. and consequently our energy costs in utah now or 31% below the national average. gives us in fact not only the ability to create jobs as we develop our natural resources and energy capability, but it gives us competitive advantage to the manufactures, that this is on to produce that says costs are lower in utah when it comes to energy, and why do we locate a plant in utah. last but not least, probably an area that we, major asked, what is something we have done that really didn't originate with me as an idea. there was a study done by georgetown university. i think they did for other states but we got this study, and he said that we did not, in fact, increase our education performance in the state of utah, but over time, 2020, our economy would underperform. now, utah has always valued

education. u.s. chamber of commerce is where the best value education in america, that's because low cost in high performance results out of our schools. we have 43% right now currently of our adult population that is done some post-high school certification or a degree. but that's not adequate enough and let's check is identified is a global marketplace. we are competing with the chinese. that's 1.3 billion people that want our jobs. so we need to, in fact, a just our skill levels to align up with the demands of the marketplace. we need more engineers. we need more stem, science, technology, engineering and math. so we've done is ethical in utah a 66 by 2020. that means that by the year 2020, 66% of our adult population aged 20-64 of some kind of post-high school certification or a degree. it's not how we want to do it.

it's a matter of necessity. we must do it all our economy would underperform. that's an idea that came out of an idea from georgetown. we said we will do something about it. so we put this what i think is a very ambitious goal, but something that we can and will reach over the next eight years. so with that, we've had great results as has been mentioned. our economy in utah has turned around from the 8.2 unemployment rate to 6% now. we were down to 5.7. we that more people not engaged at its tip the unemployment rate up but the good news is it's because of optimism. people think there's opportunity out there in the marketplace. sitting on the sidelines back we engaging. and our economy is growing at over two times the national average. steve forbes, "forbes" magazine named as the best state in america. economic outlook is good. these are basic principles that we all embrace in the states, it's not a zero-sum game.

i believe if every state does what we are doing, what you will hear today, we will all have what i call the rising tide of economic expansion, which raises all boats on the part. i do believe the states are the ones that will lead. thank you. >> governor walker. >> i should note, i think the timing of nebraska getting down to 3.9% unemployment coincide with when the cornhuskers went into the big ten's i think that was a key reason for that. [laughter] spent you want to tell them what happened speak was the first game -- i didn't say who won the game but i was smiling at the end of the game. we hope you're just as great a host this year, hopefully not with the same reaction. but i also want to echo to begin with what both the other said. i think attitude is very much a part of the. i remember a year and half ago in january 2011, every time you come into the state of

wisconsin, one of our major highways, there's a big sign in the shape of the state of wisconsin this has state welcomes you. historically under the sign is a shingle with the name of the governor. when i came in last year, i replaced the shingle with a new single and all of it was open for business. and it very much was your point about attitude, not only for those coming in, although increasingly those come across the border from south from illinois i think it's a state finally open for business. but for those businesses more important within the state, i wanted to send a clear message not only symbolically by then followed up with the action. so in addition to attitude i would take certain stability. i will give you a couple examples. most of us, other than a handful that were blessed with some tremendous natural resources, most of us last year had not only economic challenges to face a fiscal challenges as well. in our case it was about $3.6 billion budget deficit, one of the biggest in the country in our state history, it was one of

the biggest deficits we ever have. so we sought to balance it without raising taxes, without massive layoffs, without cutting things like medicaid. i put more money into medicaid any governor in wisconsin history. battle to protect needy families, children and seniors but because i knew in many cases in the past when medicaid have been cut, it became a hidden tax on employers. just got passed on to everybody else who pays for health insurance so we did it without all those options that we saw from some of our neighbors. and say we put in place long-term structure reform to help is not only balance our state budget that helped everyone of our local governments balanced budgets not just for today but for years to come. what i said in the capital as we try to think more about the next generation than just about the next election. i think that's what people elect us to do. fixing or at least it wasn't our fiscal house also been tied into

stability, and certainly on our economic challenge as well. we knew that for example, three years in which we could rein in costs and make it easier for employers, so we lower the overall -- first time in 12 years property taxes went down, we saw an overall reduction. we did for example, 100% exemption of capital gains in our state if you make an investment in wisconsin company, all sorts of things that were tied into growth and prosperity we did that lowering the tax burden to we use the regulatory burden, borrowed things in terms of looking at antiquated and out of touch and out of date regulations. we are doing even more in the future. we capped it off so that were not even more burdensome once added to the future. we did major reforms when it came to frivolous and out of control lawsuits because we knew each of those things were adding cause, stood in a way of us adding more jobs and the private sector in the state of wisconsin at the other three things we did what about providing stability as a good partner. like most is in the country we are time and time again from employers, almost to a

frustration with hear people say i got jobs, i just don't have enough skilled workers to fill them. for any of us appear, you just want to country against the wall when you hear that because you think i've got people, whether 3.9, or six, 6.7 like our case, we still would like to be closer to three or 4%. and so when you hear about jobs that are opening, it's incredibly frustrated so we've tried to take a series of actions of things to help connect people who are looking for work with the skills they need, machinists, fabricators, i skilled welders and others in advanced manufacturing or quit taken action to to be a better partner. taking aggressive action when it came to cost effective and reliable source of power. and we certainly restored my case before i came in, state government had taken up a billion plus out of the state transportation fund and put it elsewhere. we start to restore the because we want to rebuild our bridges and our roads and our freight

rail and our ports and airports because we knew if we do that we can complete -- we can compete globally. i think that was tied into enhancing a transportation system. for us besides the numbers that major mentioned in terms of the unemployment rate going down, and our case below 7% since 2008, particularly saw a change in attitude. two years ago when i ran, our state did a survey and 10% of our employers that we're in the right drinking. too much ago that same survey came out, 94% of our employers that fashion i'm still scratching my head wondering what still up with the other 6% because i want to know what was bothering them. but it is about attitude. it's about providing that certainty, not just putting a shingle that says you are open for business but improving it and pretty in a way that says that are private sector employers are the ones who will drive the development and future. we are proud of the fact we used to be, we are not proud of the fact we used to be. we used to be in the bottom 10

on nearly every ranking we came to the best states to do business in the year before i was in office 41, to be for 43. this year we are up. we are in the top 20. it's about not only changing the attitude, it's about changing the partnership and sang government can either be a barrier or it can be a partner in economic development. we choose to be a partner. spent of the best idea that wasn't your? >> i forgot about that. this program called georgia wins, we adopted a similar thing called wisconsin wins this past year that ties into that disconnect in terms of job skills. one of the bigger bears we also heard from particularly small business was unemployment, unemployment compensation was a barrier to employment, as crazy as that suspect people come in and say that's a lot easier to collect unemployment. will you sign off that i sought to get a job? because for a lot of people the

concern that if they went to a job that required some training to get into that, if they didn't come that didn't work out, they wouldn't have to go back on unemployment. so we -- we created a bridge of about six weeks where you can stay on unemployment and you still get assistance, but you can go get the job skills you need, particularly in advanced manufacturing. and not risk losing your unemployment into the timeframe is up. ..

>> is the fiscal cliff, does this element of uncertainty with tax policy and all the things that are due to expire at the end of this year actually create tension, anxiety and a drag on economic development in your states, or is this something that, like washington tends to do, obsesses about but may not have as much consequence as washington tells itself it does? governor? >> well, i think one difference, of course, is that in our states, all four of us, in fact, 49 of the 50, we're required to have a balanced budget. so, a, that's a fundamental difference. b, it was gary that talked about the element of providing certainty. i think that's a big part of what we have to do is make sure that the employers in our state, the businesses in our state know exactly what they can expect with respect to regulatory policy, with respect to tax policy, with respect to continued improvement in schools. i mean, it's really all the issues that we talked about earlier. and i think generally, i mean, uncertainty, absolutely

discourages business investment whether it's at a national level, whether it's at a state level. so i think, you know, one of the things we absolutely have to do is to provide that level of certainty not just in one area, but across a whole, a whole range of areas. >> and does that -- i'll go to governor walker. do you agree, a, there's uncertainty and, b, do you think it intensifies the closer we get to this termination date for many of the tax provisions in the code, december 31st? and for that reason would you, since you're here in washington and there are those down the street who may be listening, urge congress to get on the stick sooner? >> well, a couple different parts in that. jack's right, i think any of us have spent time in business talk uncertainty, not just government uncertainty, uncertainty in europe, uncertainty around the world plays an impact to any major decision out there. i would tell you in our state june's a big month in terms of settling uncertainty. last tuesday, june 5th, without a doubt gave people a clear

answer of what was going to happen in wisconsin in terms of our recall length. i mentioned that survey where 94% thought we were head inside the right direction. a similar survey had 80% of our employers saying they were going to add jobs in 2012, but the biggest single thing that kept them from doing it was the recall election in our state. for us on a local level, i visited every day two or three employers, heard anecdotes of what we hear across the state who said we're ready to administer jobs. we like where you're headed, and we know it's going to continue. on the national level, the other big thing i hear from employers wasn't just about my recall election, it was about the other big thing the nation's going to be looking at, and that's what's the supreme court going to do when it comes to the affordable care act. the uncertainty for or against, anywhere in between -- obviously probably more against the mandate -- but just in general the uncertainty of not knowing what was coming next whether it's through the supreme court, whether it's through the fall

elections, anything that can be done to provide greater certainty for our employers in wisconsin and across america, i think, will definitely have an impact. major, on the last part be, yeah. i think not only with the issue, i think in many ways here in washington they look too narrowly. they don't get the big picture. thirty years ago unemployment was 10.8%. when president reagan's economic recovery act fully went into effect and had its true impact following that in '83 on, it brought about the largest economic peacetime boom be in american -- boom in american history. that was after he slashed the marginal tax rate by 25%, put more money back in the hands of american entrepreneurs. i think they're thinking too small if they're just looking at extension. i think the only way you improve not only the economy, but the fiscal mess we're in is through growth. if you want to promote growth, you've got to put more money back in the hands of the people who make it happen. the manufacturers,be the entrepreneurs, the consumers of

america. the less money that's in washington, the more that's out in the country the better off we'll be. >> governor herbert? >> well, the the answer to your question, major, is absolutely, yes. uncertainty does impact the marketplace. you'll hear from the entrepreneurses and the business people out there is we can play by the rules if we know what the rules are. it's the uncertainty that causes them to withdraw. see, "forbes" indicated maybe up to $2 trillion of venture capital sitting on the sidelines because of uncertainty, not know what the rules are of the game out there, and we're going to sit back and play it close to the vest until we, in fact, get some certainty and know what the rules are so we can decide how to invest our monies with the risk/reward that comes of the free enterprise system. i'll just give you an example. scott has just mentioned about the patient protection affordable care act. we have a lot of medical device companies in the state of utah. and we have to support those devices not only -- we export

them not only in america, but around the world. our business has grown this past year by 41%. we've embraced the nature of global marketplace. well, in the patient protection affordable care act there is a medical device tax that's embedded in the program that, in fact, says we will tax you on your revenue. not your profit, but on the rev revenue from those devices. that's going to stifle development and research. it's going to cause companies like med car or life -- medical or life sciences or companies in utah to say we need to go outside of america to do our research and development and manufacture our medical devices. that's a part that ought to be repealed. regardless of what happens with the affordable care act, that part needs to be repealed. that's stifling innovation and the ability for us to produce product here in the united states of america.

so it's caused a lot of uncertainty and angst in my state because of just that thing. we could replicate that many times over, so the uncertainty, clearly, is stifling economic expansion. go>> go ahead, governor. >> there's absolutely no question the uncertainty of taxes, regulation and health care has had a significant impact on businesses all across america. there's a reason we have more cash sitting in corporations than ever before, it's because of this uncertainty. and the best thing the president and the congress could do right now -- i don't expect this to happen because normally they can't make any decision -- but they could stand up tomorrow and say at the end of this year we're not going to raise taxes on any american and, secondly, we're going to put a two-year moratorium on all regulations. think what that would do to the business sector of our economy. quarterback and i are respectively -- jack and i are respectively the chair and vice chair of the nga this year. just a couple weeks ago we were

up at "the washington post" doing an editorial meeting, and i said what most governors would like out of the federal government is for them to make a decision, the tough decisions that we make every day realizing you can't please everyone. but make a decision. when are we going to get a budget that moves towards a balanced budget from the federal government? when are we as governors going to know the funding, the various programs that we depend on? it's very difficult to do it when it's a continuing resolution for every couple of months. and then, of course, the health care program, new federal health care program, the biggest thing that disturbs me as the governor of nebraska, we've got our budget in balance, and that particular program, the affordable care act, is a $500-$600 million unfunded mandate. i think that's very unfair. we do our job right in the state, and the federal government sends me a bill for 500, $600 million. there are things they could do

just like all four of us do every single day. >> governor markell, do you want to weigh in on the affordable care act? >> i think there's probably nobody in the room who thought the status quo was acceptable. i mean, i heard from small businesses throughout the state of, throughout our state every single day. they couldn't afford the increases. people couldn't, you know, young people were, you know, who weren't on their parents' plan and who were unemployed were having difficulty getting access. so we're moving ahead, we're planning, you know, the exchange. we'll see what happens with the lawsuit. but, i mean, if it's, if it doesn't, you know, if the supreme court rules against it, it's not like we can just go back to the way it was because the way it was was miserable for employers and small businesses throughout the country. so my view is that we don't really have a health care system in this country anymore. we've got more of a sick care system because most providers

and hospitals and the like are getting paid based on how many procedures they do. and i think we've got to do a much -- i don't know another industry where there's so much of a disconnect between what we feel in our own pocket when we get a service and what that service actually costs. i mean, for most of us who have some kind of insurance, if a doctor tells us to get a test, we'll go get a test and have no idea what it costs because it's really not touching us. and i'm very interested in what governor patrick is doing in massachusetts. he's looking to try to get away from the fee-for-service model. and one of the things, i don't know how it is in these states, my guess is it's not too different, but in our state if you think about all the people who have some kind of health coverage, taxpayers pick up the costs for 40% of them. when you add together medicaid, state employees, retirees and the like, taxpayers pick up the cost for 40% of the people in our state who have some kind of health costs. and we have got to do a better job in delaware for sure of

leveraging our roles, the major procurer of health care. so i think regardless of happen with the affordable care act, a lot of work to do in the states. >> and i want to pick up on your point, governor, because under this umbrella question of uncertainty, let me just ask all four of you quickly if -- we don't know what the supreme court's going to do, but if they do overturn some or all of the law, does that create more uncertainty for your residents and your businesses or less? governor? we'll go -- markell all the way down. >> i think there's plenty of uncertainty, and i think the health care issue is the single most complicated public policy challenge we have. i think it's more than education or transportation and the like. and i think this idea of sort of dealing with the costs and making sure we're doing a better job of, um, paying providers to keep us well rather than doing procedures when we're sick is something -- there is a lot of uncertainty about how we're going to get there, but if we

don't get there, i don't see how what we have is sustainable. >> governor heineman? >> i talk to most people, and i certainly agree myself. i hope the court rules it unconstitutional, but i will tell you either rule it unconstitutional or rule it constitutional because anything in between will create more uncertainty, more complexity, hard to deal with. the second issue i would make on the whole health care is i think the debate initially was focused on the wrong issue. we focused on access, we should have been focused on cost. i know in my state we're trying to focus on wellness and prevention, electronic medical system. jack and i both served as state treasurers. i could walk down the hall of my old office in ten seconds make a financial transaction to beijing, china, because we've got a common financial, technological platform. but if i was sitting in beijing and i needed my medical records within 24 hours, i'd die before they got there. so we do need this electronic system. patients have got to drive that,

got to give the authorization, but we've seen in my state focusing on wellness and prevention can help drive down costs. >> governor herbert? >> i think the vast majority of utah would appreciate a reset, you know? push the reset button and start over. we have been -- >> even with the uncertainty necessary? >> yes. because going back to square one is a better place than where we're at now. and, frankly, the biggest mistake, i think, that happened was this was a 2500-page bill with nobody even today knows all that's inside, what the meaning of the law is. we're still getting uncertainty as we ask questions of the department of health as we're trying to get medicaid reform and things we're working on which is an equal irritation, and i think bipartisan budget buster for all of us in the states. i believe that it should be state driven. i understand the need to have health care reform, and in utah we've tried to find ways to, in fact, improve health care.

and we have probably the lowest cost health care with the highest quality in the nation. so whatever we're doing, it seems to be working pretty well in utah. but nobody even asks us, what's your opinion? what do you think you can contribute to the debate? the governors were shut out of this discussion. so i would like to push the reset button, let the states as laboratories of innovation find ways. what i have as a demographic in utah which is a very young population, my median age is 29.2 years of age. you go to golf sandoval -- governor sandoval in nevada, it's just the opposite. his demographics and needs are different than mine. we've created an exchange way before it was ever thought about with the affordable care act, we have an exchange in utah that's all privately driven. it introduces defined contributions opposed to defined benefit, we have companies out there competing for their customers. it's not perfect, but it is a way.

it may not be the way, but it is a way. and states if we all were out there doing that, we would learn from each other from our successes, from our failures, and we would, in fact, have health care reform that would actually get a positive result. unfortunately, in my view the patient protection affordable care act has divided the nation in a way that's just significant and stunning, and we need to push the reset button and bring it back and start over. >> governor walker? >> well, i think there's no doubt whatsoever that if the affordable care act was thrown out, it would provide greater stability and certainty for our employers. i hear it all the time with small business, big business, family farms, others out there. but one thing in particular, jack, that you said that i think is exactly right, even if that were to happen, we can't go back to the way things were before. i think there is no doubt that one of the first things i signed into law, small thing -- not the silver bullet for everything, but small step in the right

direction -- was repeal of our state tax. that's one option. it's not the only option. but, to me, anything that allows consumers of health care -- me, my family, everybody else out there, consumers of health care to have more skin in the game is better off, and the more we make things transparent, the more we engage consumers in it so they're making decisions not just about health care costs, but about their health and wellness, the bft -- the better off we are. if you reach in your pocket and pull out your iphone or blackberry, you probably know more about that plan for your cell phone than you know about your health plan. i know i have to have unlimited texting, or i'd be in the poorhouse, right? [laughter] but yet ask most people what a procedure costs for a health care plan, they can't tell you that. that's out of whack. health care is much more important than whether you have roaming charges, texting -- well, again, if you've got teenagers, it may be equally as

important. [laughter] and i think about in health care already, granted, not everything's elective. you can't shop around when you're having a heart attack, but most of us don't have emergency situations, most of us have elective procedures. so one of the best examples in health care right now is, you know, years ago corrective eye surgery cost a couple grand per eye. today it's a whole lot less than that. now, it's not $50, and if somebody gives you a coupon in the phonebook for two for $25 because you want quality as well, but you balance the two out. good people involved in medicine who knew if they lowered the cost, made it affordable not just for those with wealth, but for those in the middle class who could save up for it, they found out it was more be cost effective to get more consumers using that, that was something where the market helped drive that, but quality was still a key component of that. i think there's got to be better ways for us to do that that are market driven where the government can play a role maybe engaging and enforcing greater

transparency so as consumers we really know. and, again, jack, one of the things you said as well, i think as governors we can play one other direct role, and that is when we look at medicaid and other programs we provide -- and that's where in many ways many of our employers across the country could help us out. i was just at quad graphics in wisconsin the other day, one of the things they take great pride in is the fact that their quad med is a model not only for their company, but for a lot of other companies who are trying to adopt that where wellness is a factor. as governors, we could learn a lot that would help us better engage in wellness, not just covering health care costs. >> governor walker, i'm going to let you catch your breath. i want to talk about incidentally tort reform. i've been in washington since 1990. that issue rises and falls on the congressional radar screen with some regularity but never gets very far. golf markell and governor walker, you've both done this in recent times. what's been your experience with it, what lessons have you

learned from it and how valuable relative to other things you've done has it been in building economic growth or -- >> it's encouraging. >> yes. >> tort reform specifically? >> yes. >> i follow my lead very much from the visits i pay to delaware businesses. and i've probably visited 750 since i became governor three-and-a-half years ago. i try to visit them every week. and when i visit, i ask one question which is what can we do to facilitate your success. because that's the only thing that matters these days. in this economic climate, if a governor's not, you know, asking that question and then acting on it, then we're probably not doing what we need to do. and so what they talk to me about, they talk to me about making sure they've got access to great schools, you know, a really good work force, reasonable taxes and decent cost of doing business. they want a terrific quality of life because they're going to be able to attract better talent, communities with strong linkages between institutions of higher ed and local companies, and they want a really responsive

government which deals with some of the dirt issues. i don't know that a single one has brought up tort reform. so i think, you know, sometime -- and maybe in other states it's a bigger issue. but in our state it is not something that has come up. and, of course, these visits are to democrats, republicans, independents, i could care less, you know, who the business leader is, and i could care less where a good idea comes from. but those issues i just mentioned particularly around work force and making sure that there are workers who were skilledded too the jobs needed today and in the future, you know, that's numbers one, two and three, and i've heard virtually nothing about tort reform in my state. >> governor walker, i'm guessing you had a different experience in wisconsin. >> actually, i don't hear as much now because our special session last year on jobs involved, amongst other things, lowering the tax burden, easing the regulatory burden, a number of things that were bottled up for about eight or ten years when it came to controlling out of control lawsuits. so i don't hear as much about it now because we've corrected

that. but i hear a couple things. number one is you hear all the time is work force. i've got jobs, i just don't have enough skilled workers to fill them. it's incredibly frustrating. it's something i keep saying in our state, if we get that, we can lead the country and the world in plugging people in to improving our economy. good example, i was at a company the other day on the northwest side of milwaukee. small company, literally does the buckets for caterpillar, two of the world's largest mining companies based in wisconsin, they make the buckets if the front of those mining pieces of equipment. they've got two shifts of about 30. the employer there said he could add a third shift, and he probably could add on a whole otheraway -- other wave as well, but he doesn't have a guarantee of skilled welders to fill those positions. that's one of those things where, like you said, it makes you want to bang your head against the wall and figure out how do we connect that? we know we've got people who

have the work ethic, the willingness to work. so i hear that by far the most. i hear about stability which is why we did so many of the things we did to get our fiscal house in order. and in general it's not just about tort, it's about the cost of doing business in our state. so it's the tax burden, the burden of complying with regulations and the burden of frivolous and out of control lawsuits. we tried to tackle each of those three to lower the tax burden, but what they say is it took a lot -- you know, particularly for small business. i hear from small manufacturers who say they have a staff just focused on sales instead of the stack of paperwork and all of the risk management things we have to do to deal with all the legal liability issues out there. we get that when we're down, if we could focus on sales and production and things that put people to work. >> governor heineman, any comments? >> what i'd say on tort reform, we're maybe the unusual state. it doesn't appear to be an issue because we did major tort reform 20 years ago. we solved this issue a long time

ago, and what i hear most every day is the tax and regulatory burden climate. and one of the things you cite in your enterprising state report is the recent tax foundation study that ranked the states among existing firms and new firms. among existing firms, we were ninth best in the country in terms of that tax and regulatory environment, and for new firms nebraska was ranked number one in the country. so i've really tried to focus lower taxes, less regulation. i hear that every day from my businesseses. >> did that move on tort reform 20 years ago change the business climate in any perceptible way? did people identify that as a new reason to move to nebraska? or did it have an effect at all really? >> it had a big effect. basically, we don't allow trial lawyers in nebraska. [laughter] no, and in all seriousness we put down a great tort reform environment 20 years ago, and we stayed away from these frivolous lawsuits by and large, and some of the other lawsuits that you've seen. so there's no question it made a

huge difference in the medical arena in particular. >> governor herbert? >> well, similar to what dave said, historically utah's been a pretty good environment that's not been excessive as far as the legal profession taking advantage of the issues, but it's a growing concern in utah. we have doctors who are saying i'm now practicing preventive medicine. not that they're trying to help people prevent cataclysmic health problems, but to try to prevent themselves from being sued. so rather than just do one or two tests, they're doing 10 and 15 tests to make sure they prevent themselves against somebody coming back and saying you are somehow negligent because you didn't, in fact, have this test. so i've asked the lieutenant governor to, in fact, go out and do a study and review in utah to see if we need some tort reform to make sure we have an environment that's fair for the attorneys and for those who'll have claims and yet still not inhibit the practice of common sense, good medicine.

one of the areas that we're looking at, for example s what we call the i'm sorry law. we have doctors that cannot say i'm sorry because that's prima facie evidence that they did something wrong. so we're going to take a look at that and take a look at tort reform and see where this task force leads us. but it hasn't been a big problem, but it seems to be a growing concern for our medical doctors. >> yeah, governor. >> just one other quick thing. gary reminded me of something on that both on medicine and on manufacturing. on the medical side, we passed some part of that in part of our overall package so it really enhances the quality of care so that medical professionals aren't afraid to try and get together and not only the i'm sorry, but to actually have pure assessments to try to improve the overall quality of care provided. what we particularly find was some of the changes we made in the past in terms of improving medical malpractice cases was it wasn't just a cost or job factor, it was access to quality health care in our impoverished

and rural areas. that one of our biggest draws in terms of attracting people into some of the rural parts of our state was the fact that they felt comfortable practicing in the state because we now have a fully-funded patient compensation fund and because of the fact that there are reasonable, responsible standards when it comes to medical malpractice cases. that was an issue where it wasn't just about jobs, it was about the access of quality of care. the other part on manufacturing, again, it's hard to believe it was only a year, some days it seems like it's been about ten years since i was first sworn in as governor, a lot's happened. you asked, major, what have you noticed. well, before our changes last year, we had examples where one of those cases "the wall street journal" talked about where they went back 25 years and said because of lead paint that anybody who had made paint at that time in the state of wisconsin was now liable for that. and i think that's just one of those common sense checks where people looked at that and said,

are you crazy? that just doesn't make any sense. well, those were the sort of tort reform or excessive lawsuit reform changes we've made. we've now moved on enough from that, enough has happened since then that employers don't talk about it because they're not upset about it. but it certainly was a value because before it was major stop sign particularly for business coming into wisconsin to say, wow, that's something we're very concerned about. that's gone now, and we've moved on so quickly from that we sometimes forget about what we had before. >> right. i don't want to try to read the mind of those in the audience, but some of you might be saying to yourself, does major know there's a presidential campaign going on? i've tried to hermetically seal at least this portion of the discussion from the campaign, and i'm not going to ask the guests to discuss issues in the campaign, but there's a conversation going on between the republican nominee, mitt romney, and president obama about state employees and local employees, how valuable they are, what's the vitality of that employment, what does it mean economically?

governor walker you are going to, because you are a very prominent newsmaker on this, bat cleanup. but i want to talk to all the governors because not only do you deal with this issue in your state, but you talk to other governors. i wrote on my column today that according to researchers who have really dug into the issue of unfunded pension liability at the state level, the projected or estimated unfunded liabilities at the state level and the local level for this country ranges from a optimistic $4.4 trillion to a pessimistic $7.1 trillion. and that to finance without any changes at all in current benefit or promised benefit structures at the state and local level would require a household tax increase of $1300 for the next 30 years. that's to provide no services to build nothing, to do nothing other than cover the understood pension benefit promises made at

the city and state level across the country. and the point of my column was if we're going to talk about this issue, the vitality of state and local workers, their role in the economy, we better get our arms around these unfunded liabilities, what do they mean, what do they tell us. so for each of you, and i want to start with you, governor heineman, how big of an issue is it for you in nebraska, and as you talk to other governors, how big an issue for them, and is this one of these ticking time bombs beneath our entire national economy that we better reconcile ourselves to and start focusing on sooner rather than later? >> fortunately in nebraska, this is one of these issues we've been on top of all along. you look at the actuarial studies, we're in great shape. now, i think nationally it is, clearly, a critical issue. now, the reason i can say we've stayed on top of it, every time we've come into a situation where there's been an unfunded liability, we basically o go to the employees and say you're

going to increase your contribution rates to cover about half of that, and we'll cover half of it as an employer. so we have never allowed ourselves to allow that liability to grow, and i think a lot of states and pensions have always looked the other way particularly in difficult economic times. we def never did that. and so we're in much better shape. i know nationally there's no question it's a problem. >> how about at the municipal level in nebraska? >> at the municipal level there's no question our largest city, in omaha, they have a serious problem. and the reason they do is the previous mayors have looked the other way and said, oh, we'll fund that at a later date, and it keeps growing and growing, and now it'll probably be the number one issue in the mayor's race next may. >> governor herbert? >> well, again, like david said, we've already addressed pension reform in the state of utah here starting three years ago, and we have now dual track. we didn't want the new people in the system bankrupting the old system. so we've made it actuarially sound, and we're on the right

path going in the right direction. so that aspect is taken care of. um, again, part of our solution, too, was to go with the defined contribution rather than a defined benefit where you can at least predict the contribution. and not have to worry about what tomorrow will bring and particularly under circumstances you have no control over. that's not fair to the taxpayers. so part of our pension reform which we've done and taken care of is involved with the defined contribution. i'd also just like to say too, though, that, you know, we reject the notion when it comes to efficiency in government that -- and government is labor intensive -- that you cannot, in fact, make cuts and still improve services. i have, for example, in the state of utah 22,256 state employees. but you have to go back to the year 2000 to find a smaller number than that. at the same time, it's about the second fastest-growing state in

the america right now. i've got an additional 600,000 more people that call utah home. we've been able to, in fact, do more with less. we've found new ways of doing things, new technology, new processes. just like you do in the private sector, in the business world. you have to run to keep up. government hasn't done that. you know, an ounce of prevention's worth a pound of cure. we dig this hole, and now we have this big mountain to climb out of. we shouldn't have dug the hole in the first place. but i believe that, frankly, you have to -- it's been mentioned -- make the tough decisions, and that's pension reform at the local level, the state level, you've got to do it. you can't put it off because it's not going to get any easier. >> do you have issues at the municipal levels in utah? >> i don't know all the issues at the local municipalities, but i think they're all pretty much following the state lead. i don't know of any problems we face. salt lake city might have some, provo, but i think by and large we're in pretty good shape.

>> governor markell? >> so my first day in office back in 2009 the first thing we did was we launched our government performance review where we asked a number of loan executives from delaware companies to work with about five dozen state employees to focus on places where we could become more efficient given the budget challenges that we faced. and we are down now by over a thousand positions in state government. we've gone all the way back to governor dupont in the '70s, and we're the first administration in that time to reduce employment. with respect to the pension piece, and by the way, of course, the challenge is the irony of government is exactly at the moment in time when revenues are down that the demand for services can increase. and so our state employees are doing more with less. it's been a very difficult time for them, but they have, they've really stepped up. with respect to the pension piece, we've got what's one of the best funded pension plans in the country. because, you know, the states

that tend to get themselves in trouble do one of two things. either they borrow against the pension to pay for operating expenses which is a disaster, or they don't make the necessary contributions each year. and, you know, these pensions are, basically, based on how much the employees pay, how much the state puts in and what kind of investment returns are generated. it's not really that complicated. so if you borrow against it or don't make the necessary contribution, you can have a big problem. now given that, even with that, we decided to take on the issue of pension and health reform for state employees last year. and the fact that we have a well funded pension plan in a sense made it a bit more challenging because our employees said we've got a 96, 98% funded pension plan, why do we have to make any changes? what we did is we actually brought the leadership of the public employee and public education unions into my office, we did a powerpoint for them, we showed how much we were spending, how rapidly it had prison season and why it was not sustainable. and at the end of this

presentation, i said to them i'm not interested in a debate about whether or not there's a problem to be resolved. the math is very clear there is a problem. we've got to save $100 million over five years, and if you would like to have a seat at the table, we invite you to be at the table. and to their credit, they said we want to be at the table, and they actually brought their act actuaries with them, and we worked with them for a couple months. my administration, the leadership of the unions and a democrat and republican from each of the house and senate. and after two months i signed into legislation changes to the pension and health care plan that will save $130 million over five years and $480 million over 15 years. and i think, you know, it is unfortunate when -- and, you know, you sort of brought this up in the context of the federal level -- i mean, the idea that we don't need teachers and that we don't need police officers and the like is absurd. because, i mean, we don't have good teachers, we don't have good law enforcement, we're not going to have any other jobs, you know, out there in the first

place. so i think this kind of, you know, approach, nobody liked having to make these changes. you know, when we brought them to the table and sort of laid it out for them, we were able to get to where we wanted to be. >> governor walker, you initiated those reforms when you looked at your funding rate at 96% of liability, right? >> it's about 96%. >> okay. the only reason i'm focusing, folks, on that statistic because in my column i describe what the unfunded liability is and do ratio for the 126 largest state and municipal pension funds in this country. it's 74 president. he niche -- 74%. he initiated reforms at 96%, and he said we're not going to wait any longer. it's unsustainable at 96%, and right now the 126 largest pension plans in this country is 74%. which is slightly better than two years ago at the depth of the market crash, it was 69%. but in 2001 it was 95%. that's what's happened -- i'm a

little obsessed with this issue because i've been writing about it all week. [laughter] it seems interesting to me at 96% you consider that both from a fiduciary point of view and a long-term governing point of view unsustainable. >> the issue was not that 96% was too low. the issue for me was how much it takes from are the taxpayers to stay funded at that level was too high. and because, you know, the fact is the taxpayers were putting in 90 million, $900 million a year -- $100 million a year to keep that level of funding. and it was growing quickly. we took it back 10, 11 years, and we showed how quickly it was growing. and the problem maybe, you know, dave doesn't have this with unemployment where he is, but i'm guessing the problem that most of us face around the country is that medicaid spending is increasing so significantly and health care spending generally is increasing so significantly, it's squeezing out all the other investments we want to make. and even though governor walker

said that, you know, he had put more money into medicaid than other golfs had -- governors had, it's not something we particularly want to do. most of us would rather make those investments in education or infrastructure, other things that are going to create jobs. and so the challenge was taking up a bigger and bigger portion of the taxpayer pie. and by the way, in our case i do think the situation in europe helped me sell it because, i mean, this has become, you know, even last year what's going on in greece and elsewhere was becoming a bigger and bigger issue. and, of course, we don't want to end up in that situation. >> okay, golf walker, i promised you'd bat cleanup. >> no, that's fine. >> swing away. >> and jack was wise in doing it at that point. you look where it was from a more of a liberal standpoint if we don't do this, there won't be money to handle the social problems and things you were talking about, so you can come

at it from two different angles. maybe you want to save money for social programs, but the reality is these benefits are like a virus that eat more and more of your budget, and if you don't deal with it, it's going to eat your budget. and i saw it firsthand as a local official. we're proud in the same way, our pension system is essentially fully funded for state employees, and it's at various levels depending on local municipalities. but when i talk to folks, for example, from illinois, i don't just talk about the tax burden, i talk about the fact that illinois -- and it didn't just happen overnight, it happened over a long time -- i think they're, what, 43% funded? pew center, i think, has them ranked as the lowest although places like california give them a run for their money. that's almost, that's almost a hole you can't crawl out of. so that's why the time for reform isn't when you're in a hole that deep, it's long before you get there to try and adjust that.

that's part of what we did at both the state and local level. it's why moody's called our budget when they mentioned early this year they ranked illinois down at the bottom, they ranked us as credit positive in terms of our budget because of the reforms we put in place, and as a local official i knew how important be it was again not just for the state government to empower all of our 1800-plus municipalities or 424 school districts or 72 counties to do more of the same. and interesting for your original question, i said on sunday when i was on one of the sunday morning shows talking about teachers, fire and police, what we did to help preserve those jobs, classic example going beyond just pensions. under the old system before, almost every one of our school districts had to buy their health insurance from just one company. just happened to be affiliated with our teachers' union in the state. our school districts can bid it out to anybody they want. that saved them tens of millions of dollars. that's money that goes right back into the classroom, and that's had a tremendously

positive effect. so whether it's through pensions, health insurance, whether it's through other reforms like that, money that's saved this, the more -- even though there's tough decisions required, the more you can make decisions there, the more not only can the states save money, but our local governments can save money, and that's where decisions are made about teachers, firefighters, police officers, and that's one of the things we should be doing. one of the things gary said that i think is important as well is it's not just spending more, it's spending the taxpayers' money more wisely. i always thought there was this false choice between either raising taxes or cutting core services. none of you in business say, you know, i'm going to double the price of my product, cut the quality in half. if you did, people would run to your competitor, right? and yet it happens -- oh, if you don't do this, classic example, my kids both go to public high school. you know, for years it was property taxes have to go up on my home, or my kids are going to suffer in their school, right? that's a false choice.

the example i gave of health insurance is a prime example of that. it's not more money, it's spending it more wisely, and that's where we're forced to make these tough decisions, decisions that we as governors make and, sadly, i think all too often we fail to see made here in our nation's capital. but we have to. we have to. if we want to succeed not just in the short term, you know, i grew up about 15 miles from paul ryan, so paul and i have talked for years about the problems that face this country, and i'm glad that my friend, paul, is one of the few people -- republican or democrat -- who's really tried to take on the budgetary challenges. but i think it goes even beyond just the precipice we face financially. it goes back to, i think, jack, you managed clifton speaking at the nga. he wrote a great book called "the coming jobs war." i read it three times over last fall because it's a great synopsis about the future. one of the things he points out is beyond just the pending budget crisis, it has a direct assault on free enterprise in this country. those documents down at the end of the way at the national

archive, those defined our libs and our freedoms. they were endowed by our creator, protected by those men and women in uke form. but the reason we're able to be the leader of the free world is because we're the leader when it comes to free enterprise. if we allow some other nation or some other group of nations to overtake us, if we stop being exceptional, that stops us from being the leader of the free world. so long term i get worked up because i think, man, we've got to tackle these issues. we've got to have the courage to tackle these issues because i don't know about you, but i want my kids and someday my grand parents to inherit a wisconsin and america greater than the one we inherited, and we need to make some major changes to make that happen. >> we've got about 24, 25 minutes left -- [applause] and i promise to get to audience questions. i've got a couple lined up here. but before i do that, i want to drop one in real quick. i was at a symposium on the future of medicaid a while ago, and there was a tremendous amount of conversation about,

well, hand it over to the governors and the terms of a block grant and let them innovate and decide what to do with it. and robert rector who may be familiar to some of you, very big thinker on welfare policy and social pole at large, conservative, but a big thinker on this said, what? my interpretation talking to a lot of governors, they don't want the money. they don't want the responsibility, and they don't want to take the political heat for making the decisions that would be forced upon them in the context of a block grant for medicaid. so i want to play that before the four of you. quick answer, why, why not? would you want it, and if so, why? and if not, why not? governor markell? >> i don't think a block grant's a good idea. i mean, i think there's a risk of a race to the bottom. and i also think, i mean, there's been so much discussion about medicaid and the desire for governors for more flexibility. and i have to say, and my colleagues whether or not they agree with this approach, i

mean, every time we've been with the president as governors, you know, he's said to us if you want more flexibility on medicaid, tell us what you're looking for. and i just, i mean, i think there's a lot that is uncertain about the future of health care costs, and i don't want to be, you know, i don't want to be, i don't want my taxpayers to be saddled with what i believe to be a really significant level of uncertainty. and i spoke earlier, i'm not going to repeat myself about all the things that i think we have to do including at the state level to make sure that we're, you know, good stewards of the taxpayers' money and customers' money with respect to health care and focusing more on wellness and the information, the data exchanges and the data networks and the like. um, so i think we can continue to look for flexibility and ask for flexibility and get the flexibility on medicaid, but i do have concerns with the block grant approach. >> governor heineman? >> you know, jack and i are good friends, so it's going to be one we disagree on.

call it a block grant or whatever you want to call it, we want real flexibility. and this is the one where i don't think the federal government's willing to give it to us yet. i want the flexibility regarding eligibility and benefits. what i have to do in nebraska is different than massachusetts or new york or utah or wisconsin or delaware. we have different demographics, we have different geography, we have different states. so the real flexibility that i want that so far the president isn't willing to give us is the flexibility on the eligibilities and benefits. and i don't think we're going to try to go out there and deny the people who really need it those benefits. but, again, my state's a whole lot different than certain states in the northeast. so, again, i don't try to get in the block grant argument so much as give us real flexibility, and i believe we could do a better job as governors. >> governor herbert? >> jack's my friend also. [laughter] um, i do believe in block grants, and i certainly believe in real flexibility of the

states. and i've heard president obama talk about wanting to give us more flexibility in the states, and he's got all the materials he provided for us when we visited with him here this past february. but i have the sense that it's like the henry ford idea. you can have any color you want as long as you choose black. and so i don't know we're getting real flexibility, at least to the levels that we need to do in our individual states. the one size fits all approach is not healthy. we do have different demographics. i'll just give you a couple of examples. we are trying to get waivers and work in the department of health, i first approached the department of health on going paperless on our medicaidware. and, again -- waiver. we're a high-tech state and country. going paperless rather than using regular mail service makes sense, and we do it on a voluntary basis. but as we made that request over about a ten month period of time, we kept getting rebuffed.

and finally we got a denial sent to utah by e-mail. [laughter] i mean, the irony is rich. and so we had an opportunity, and i had an opportunity to speak to president obama and said, hey, i've got an idea, what do you think? and he says, is it voluntary, gary? i said, it would be. he says, well, it seems like a good idea to me. i said, can you talk to some of your people in the department of health, because they've denied us. and eventually we were able to work with secretary sebelius and get that approved. but it goes to the question that it takes a governor to have to talk to the president of the united states to get some lower-level bureaucrat to understand this is common sense. we ought to have flexibility here to deliver services better, more efficiently, and all this time it's taken has just cost us money. so we ought to be able to block grant not only on medicaid, we're trying to get a list that's been approved by oregon,

by president clinton and that administration, we're trying to copy that. we've been turned down. we're trying to get medicaid recipients to say, look, take the same amount of money and go find your own private provider. doesn't cost any more, but you have more choice. we've been turned down on that. so there's options out there that we'd like to incorporate in utah which will allow us to do more with less. that's the watch word. i've testified before congress. i'll take 20% less transportation money. i'll build more roads, more efficiently with less money to help you balance your budget, and we'll have a better deal. we've got cities and counties coming to us trading in federal dollars say we'll give you federal dollars if you'll give us back state dollars, and we'll give you back a dollar, and you only need to give us back 80 centss. that's because of the onerous regulations that come with these monies that are ours to begin with, trying to get it back with the strings attached to it. we can do more with less of the states. block grant me money on

transportation, on education, block grant me money on medicaid. we will do more with less at the state level and save the taxpayers' dollars in the process and help the federal government balance the budget. >> governor walker, do you have anything to add to that? [laughter] >> i'll up the ante. not only is jack a friend of mine, his kids and my kids are friends, and he wrote a really great column in the "wall street journal" a couple months ago. i liked that column as well. but no surprise, i differ at least on this particular issue with jack. i do think there should be a block grant not only for this, but for a lot of other things. and i think for anyone who's concerned about it, think back to a bipartisan era in the 1990s. it started in wisconsin and in michigan, welfare reform. bill clinton signed off on it, and how did we administer it? with block grants. block grants. it wasn't the end of the world, it actually was highly successful. it was a great way back in the '90s of dealing with welfare reform and truly having a reform

that not only made a change on the national level, but on the state level as well. when it comes to medicaid, and gary was talking about frustration, we have a program called badger care, and we put 1.2 billion into medicaid, more money than any governor in wisconsin history, than just about any governor in the country. sharp contrast, again, to my neighbors to the south in illinois who are cutting almost the same amount i'm adding to medicaid. but what was interesting about it was if you made no changes to the system, it would require about 1.8 billion. we added 1.2 billion. and we put in place a series of reforms that took us about a half a year to get sign-off, and then we only got part of it signed off on. but let me tell you how, you know, how dramatic these changes were. we said under badger care which is funded by medicaid if you work at an employer who offers health insurance, we're going to ask you to get your health insurance from the employer before you go to the taxpayers. if you're in your 20s and you can get covered under a plan where your parents have coverage, we're going to ask you

to get coverage under your parents before you come to the tax payiers. and as your income grews, we're going to ask you to pay a little bit more for your premium, your co-pays and, oh, by the way, the measurement we're using is exactly the measurement that the department of health and human service uses at the federal level under the obama administration. so not exactly a radical concept. and yet it took us a half a year to get sign-off, and in that we only got part of it. the sort of things we as governors would do, democrat or republican alike, i think ultimately look out for the best vests of our -- interests of our people. i think we can do it more efficiently, more effectively, and i think when it comes to medicaid block grants, it's only the tip of the iceberg in terms of things we could do better than federal government. >> if i could -- >> sure. >> one last point. the real issue is that the real money is in eligibility and benefits. that's where the real money is. these other cost-savings ideas,

certainly maybe it takes too long to get the waivers and the like, but my concern is -- and i have, i don't think any of these guys, you know, would do this, but there would be a tendency, we have seen it, actually, in other states around the country for there to be somewhat of a race to the bottom. and if you cut off eligibility, you cut off benefits, fewer people covered, they're going to seek health care. they're going to go to the emergency room which is, of course, the most expensive place of all, and so, i mean, this could be a much longer conversation, but i just wanted to put a punctuation point on my concern. >> three to one, it's probably okay, jack. >> i've been told we're going to wrap up here, but i want you to put your lightning round answer hat on real quick because a couple of questions about europe. i want to ask each of you real quick. on a scale of 1-10, 1 thinking about europe is like watching seinfeld, i really enjoy it, it's funny, and i don't really worry about it to, 10, i want to jump out of a window because it terrifies me so much.

let's just take that as the range when you think about what's happening in europe and how it effects either your exporters in your state or the overall deaths any in your state, 1-10. governor markell? >> 7.5. >> governor heineman? >> 7 or 8. >> okay. >> 7. >> i'm the same. >> that's pretty high. one last question, it's come up in a couple of contexts. the unemployment rate for military reserves or those comes back from iraq or afghanistan a little bit higher than the nonmilitary. what are you doing in your states to deal with the veteran population or the reserves population coming back from and serving this country nobly and ably? we'll start with you, governor walker. >> yeah. we did a whole series of things. we made it the year of the veteran and focused on full employment for all of our returning veterans as well as those here. even things as simple as we have profession alliances that are often times difficult and time consuming to get. we changed the law, it was one of those great bipartisan things we were able to do together and

said if you have the equivalent training within the military of something that otherwise might take a year or half a year to get, if we can test the department of defense and see that you're equivalent -- because we're not going to lower the standards for veterans, we're just going to make it easier to get profession alliances -- we changed it and allowed them to get in. beyond that earlier the first lady, michelle obama, asked along with dr. biden asked us to do something very similar, so we just passed a change for military spouses who are getting transferred because it's often very difficult, profession alliances, we had an example given of someone where a military member moved for the third or fourth time over a couple of years, and the spouse was, i believe, a registered nurse. we changed that so that if you're capable, if you're register inside another place to get that in another state, you can immediately transfer that as a military, married to someone in the military. so a number of changes like that. job fair, all sorts of target

events. we even have an online service for placing veterans into jobs because we just think not only is it a priority, but the other thing we found for employers that hire levels of veterans, well disciplined, well prepared, have the right infrastructure. in our state we fully restored what we call the wisconsin g.i. bill for any of our veterans without cost, they can get access to our university system and our technical system, and they're a great asset. >> governor herbert? >> in utah we have a hire the vet program, public relations outreach with our business community to encourage them to look at the opportunities to hire a vet as a thank you for their service. we have college accreditation credits so that, again, the skills you learn while you're in the military, for example, i was in the military, i learned how to survey, so i would get a certification in the state now as a certified surveyor because of my military training. we also not only having with our colleges and universities to give them credit, we also are having the state give them

credit for a license. again, to help them become more employable. for college credit and our state certification. last but not least, our department of work force services has a program designed specifically to help the veterans to get hired. overall, our department is the 49th best in the nation when it comes to taking people who are unemployed to employment. the average length of time in utah for unemployment to employment is 14.4 weeks. and so partly because we've got economic opportunity and expansion so there are jobs available. that's the best thing we can do for the vet, provide them with economic opportunities and a job capability. and then we have abilities to train them, show them how to interview and make sure they're lined up with their skills to find a job in the marketplace in 14.4 weeks. that's pretty good. >> governor heineman. >> major, this is an issue i care deeply about personally. i'm a graduate of the united states military academy. i understand what these veterans are going through, so we work

very closely with the nebraska national guard on a strong employer support program. and in the last month we've work with the the u.s. chamber on their hire their heroes program. about a month ago in lincoln, nebraska, yesterday in omaha, nebraska, we had over 100 employers in both of these situations show up, 400 or so veterans and their spouses as we try to connect them with an employer to get a good job. these men and women have served our country, defended our freedoms, defended our liberties. it's a much more difficult environment when you go over to iraq, afghanistan, some of the places we've had previously, and we need to do every single thing we can for these veterans. >> governor markell, wrap up for us, please. >> is in the last question? >> yes, sir. >> so i came here directly from millford, delaware, where we celebrated the fifth anniversary of opening our veterans' home. and, essentially, the point is, you know, we have 118 veterans in delaware who call that their home.

and it's important that we take care of them, and it's also really important that we take care of those who are returning now. so the specific answer to the question many of the programs that the other governors just mentioned, plus we've just passed a tax credit for companies to hire veterans and the like. the other thing that i just want to make as a last point, when we think about our military families, in addition to what scott just talked about that the first lady and dr. biden asked many of the states to do in terms of making it easier to get licenses. the other thing i've been very involved in is something called common core standards within education. common core standards, the idea, a lot of states, governors and superintendents across the country got together to make it clear that we ought to have high, higher, fewer and clearer standards of what it is that we expect our kids to know. this is particularly important in military families because military families typically spend a year, year and a half at a base in one state and then go to another state. and too often they might be

taught prealgebra in eighth grade in this state and seventh grade in that state, and they can lose a lot as they transfer from school to school. one of the things, this idea of common core standards and so many things going on in education around the country are so exciting and so critical, but that's something very specific to military families. >> i'm duty-bound to thank a great number of people. first of all, thank you for being a sensational audience. i also want to thank the chamber and tom and margaret for giving me the opportunity to moderate this panel. sometimes you can get a little cynical, but, look, governance is real, conversations are real, decisions are made, and things change. we've got four governors here who are proof positive of that and have given their time and expertise to talk about what they're doing in their states and how they're changing and, they hope, improving the lives of their constituents. you're a fantastic audience. thank you for being here. tom, thank you for this opportunity, margaret as well, i'll hand it back to you, and give these gentlemen a round of applause, please. [applause]

>> next, more from the u.s. chamber of commerce jobs summit with remarks by the group's president and ceo, tom donohue. after that we're live with a conference of political activists on energizing the democratic base ahead of this year's elections. then more live coverage with florida congressman alan west. he's a member of the house small business committee and congressional black caucus. he'll be hosting a forum examining policies to enhance entrepreneurship in the african-american community. and later the senate returns at 7-- 3 p.m. eastern. on the agenda, a judicial nomination for the u.s. district court for south carolina. ..

for which things like s.o.f.a., pippa mann or. but there only one element where what the u.s. does, we'll need to take account of what's happening internationally. we have to break down barriers were even exist. but also find a balance that allows innovation. >> business software alliance president and ceo robert holleyman on the industry's next step fighting online piracy and approving cybersecurity. "the communicators" at eight eastern on c-span2. >> now, more from the u.s. chamber of commerce annual job

summit. human remarks from the group's president and ceo tom donohue. he talks about the direction of the american economy and call for more regulatory certainty and they streamlined tax code. his remarks one about half an hour. >> [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. i'm toby mack, president and ceo of associated equipment distributors, a proud member of the board of the national chamber foundation. this afternoon it's my pleasure to introduce tom donohue, president and ceo of the u.s. chamber of commerce. representing the construction equity industry, for a good number of years, i worked closely with tom and shame on some our nation's most pressing priorities, particularly the rebuilding of americans our cake

and crumbling transportation infrastructure. under tom's leadership, u.s. chamber is the nation's greatest champion of free enterprise, american competitors and market capitalist. you can't miss the huge jobs banned on the face of this building as you come up the front steps. jobs, and lots of them, are what result when the chambers growth and competitiveness agenda becomes policy. that agenda focuses on expanding trade, strengthening capital markets, driving the energy revolution, reforming our regulatory and legal systems, protecting intellectual property rights, and controlling government spending. among his many accomplishments, tom has spearheaded the creation of the american free enterprise campaign. it's a visionary long-term program to defend, protect, and advance free enterprise system based on individual initiative, hard work, incentives and rewards, and personal

responsibility. tom has also transformed him into a major force in the electoral process through voter education and grassroots efforts. he knows the best way to get pro-growth policies is to elect lawmakers who will stand up for america's job creators. as the leader of an industry that remains particularly hard hit by economics sclerosis resulting from bad policy, i am proud and energized to be on the team of one of our nation's most effective advocates and leaders in the fight for growth, and for the jobs that go hand-in-hand with that growth. please join me in welcoming tom donohue. [applause] >> thank you very much, toby. good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. i always worry at my age in particular when people get up and give long introductions they begin to sound more and more like obituaries.

but i do appreciate the points that you made, toby, about the things we're trying to do on the free enterprise side, and the inferences you made about the work we have with your industry as we do with many others. i'd like to thank you, margaret, and all of your team for putting this together, to defense we merged together because they belong together. and for all of the activity that is developing itself in such a vigorous way within the foundation, to look at our nation's challenges and to find ways to move it against them and with them. we are here to talk about jobs, and given today's dismal unemployment report, some might miss -- expect a discouraging conversation. yes, we are in difficult circumstances. economic growth -- the jobless rate is chronically high and moving in the wrong direction. but if you're looking for doom and gloom from the, you won't

find it. in fact, i hope everyone leaves the summit encouraged about our prospects, and energized for the brighter days ahead. why am i optimistic? first, because we've got proof that things are working. the 2012th enterprising state study which you just saw a quick cut on, shows that the states that foster strong business environments and embrace innovation are bucking all of the national economic trends. they are growing faster, and they are adding more jobs. a little later today we'll hear from the governors from some of those states, as well as their business and civic leaders of two of the nation's thriving cities. these leaders are finding positive solutions to major challenges, and they are seeing results now. there's a lot washington can

learn from the governors and the mayors who are running the states and cities. now, here's the second piece of optimistic. business has a player. our government has tried with little success to stimulate growth and job creation, but government directed stimulus isn't a long-term strategy to achieve sustainable growth. or to produce millions of new jobs, or to raise the standard of living in our country. what we need is a comprehensive plan for growth that leverages our strengths and addresses clearly our weaknesses. the chambers america job and growth agenda does both of those, as do the plans of many of the successful governors. our plans call for greater energy developments, stronger infrastructure, investment,

expanded global trade, and aggressive innovation agenda, regulatory legal and tax reform, and reining in any creative and a constructive way debt and deficits. if we do these things we can speed up economic growth, add jobs in a hurry without raising taxes or adding to the deficit. so i would first like to pose my remarks on the issues of innovation, and if you get "the wall street journal" today, and page through which you will find a big full-page ad that we have been there on innovation. in fact, each couple of months we have one of those for one of the parts of our jobs and growth plan. the innovation system is what keeps our economy humming. our businesses competitive, and hiring our manufacturers producing our standard of living improving, and our wages and benefits high.

very simply, if we want to spur strong and sustainable recovery, america must ignite the innovation boom again and still further. we must start by developing and attaining world-class talent. because human capital is the primary driver of innovation. first, we need to develop the hometown talent. it's no secret that america's k-12 schools in many places are falling far behind our global competitors. what's most alarming is that our primary area of weakness is also the most vital to innovation, and that's science, technology, engineering and math, or s.t.e.m. it's estimated that half of the k-12 students are being taught science and math by teachers who, by necessity, or accident, are not sufficient in those

skills. so we need to reform our k-12 education system, embrace technology driven learning, and innovative teaching technologies. and we got to stop america's schools with the best teachers who are rewarded based on performance. we also need to strongly emphasize s.t.e.m. studies at every level of education. let's encourage our young people to pursue these exciting subjects and rewarding careers. if we don't, our workers will have -- won't have the education or training that they need to join an ever-changing and highly demand work market, particularly on the skills site. study showed that with a few short years, we will have millions of high school skills jobs, high skilled jobs with outqualified people. right now we've got maybe three

and a half million jobs that we have got people for. i believe it's twice that because if you fill the three and a half million you would get a lot of the multiples out of the, as you did in your state. studies show that when they few short years, we've got to put these people to work to keep these innovative industries in our country, or we're going to have a great acceleration in people moving elsewhere to follow their technological dreams. in addition to developing more homegrown talent, we could also fill the skills gap by competing in the global race for talent. and that brings me to the second major way that we build a competitive workforce. we must attract the world's best and brightest and put them to work in our economy. global talent has already drawn to american universities. we have the best science engineering and technical

colleges on the planet. more than half of the graduates and ph.d students studying in high-tech disciplines at u.s. universities are foreign-born. the trouble is that after we educate them, at our american institutions, then we send them home because they don't have a u.s. visa. what we should be doing is stapling agreeing card and the visa to their diplomas. let's get smart. let's adopt these are reform to make it easier for high skilled immigrants and foreign graduates of u.s. institutions to invest their talent and their personal ambition in our knowledge economy. if we don't, we will send innovation to our competitors at the expense of our own economic growth, our own job creation, and our own global

competitiveness. the bottom line is that a globally competitive workforce is going to require a rational immigration policy, one that harnesses the energy and innovation of enterprising foreigners. if we fail to do this, to welcome this talent to our country, then the work will follow this talent to their country. let me say further that ideas and talent are only part of the equation. thomas edison, an american who knew a thing or two about innovation said, aviation without an execution is a hallucination. inventors and entrepreneurs need access to capital, to help breathe life into their ideas and bring them to the market. many startups rely on seed capital from where do you get it waxed family members. wealthy individuals, local

banks, credit unions, and even credit cards to help people get off the ground. recently, there's a lot of excitement, and a little bit of controversy, over the facebook ipo. the important thing to remember about that compaq countless other examples, is what made impossible to begin with was someone was willing to take a risk on a fledgling product or an idea, and to put up funding and to give it a chance to flourish and grow. today, facebook has 3500 employees, and it is valued at $70 billion. i told my kids, just think about it. anyway, that was largely because of an angel investor who saw some potential. large established firms also routinely turned to americans vast pool of capital so they can

invest in new products or services, and satisfy market demand. by the way, so does states and the federal government. jayme done, he was out there for a grilling today, made the point that brought a lot of the members of the senate to a more reflective set of questions that it was our bank and only our bank, and he named three very significant states that came and showed up and helped you when you're in real trouble with your pension, don't forget it. the capital, this capital investment creates a virtuous cycle, ideas that are transformed into products or services generate revenue that is often poured back into research, development and discovery, leading to even more innovation, more jobs and more growth. this is the process that yields cutting edge industrial techniques, and more efficient business operations.

so it's critical that we keep our markets open and efficient, and provide investors with predictable rules of the road so they can take appropriate and thoughtful risks. any measure that strangled capital formation, or choke off the flow of financing must be revised or repealed. and i think some of dodd-frank meets that standard of review. that's why the chambers capital market center is working with congress to address that question. even more importantly, working to breathe life back into our capital markets until they can, so they're flush with capital and able to fulfill these fundamental missions. fueling innovation, spurring growth, and creating jobs and prosperity for americans. a competitive business environment is just as essential to innovation as well

functioning markets. in the enterprise state study, we have fresh evidence of how states are fostering economic growth in jobs through their innovation. what do successful states have in common? tax and revelatory climate that allows companies to continuously innovate, unshackle by needless delays, and burdensome costs. and states that maintain a good legal reform environment can also expect hundreds of millions of dollars or more in economic activity, and tens of thousands of new jobs, according to our study. the right policies also attract manufacturers. innovation gravitates to manufacturing centers, and manufacturers are some of the strongest drivers of new innovation. but when the federal government and the tax and regulatory policies are excessive, it

breeds uncertainty, slows investment, depresses new technology, tries manufacturing overseas, and puts business at a competitive disadvantage. take taxes. you take them and you keep them, but take taxes, for example. no one would hold up america's thinking tax code as a model of efficiency or clarity, or an engine of economic growth. our tax code must be restructured so that it is simple and clear so that it spurs growth, and encourages investment, and efficiently generates revenues to reduce the deficits and, indeed, our national priority. we must enact comprehensive tax reform that broadens the base, lowers all business rates, and reduces the burdens of compliance.

this reform should reduce the corporate tax rate, the highest in the world, and drive innovation by prominently extending the r&d tax credit. we must also do away with specific tax provision that target innovators, like thing that's on the table right now, the 20 billion-dollar tax on medical devices that will take effect next year under obamacare. is excise tax would squelch innovation and medical technology industry, and which is so vital to all of these new development that are keeping us alive so long and so helpfully, and by the way, it would threaten 43,000 industry jobs that would disadvantage as business, and drive some companies and their jobs overseas. if you can't do it here, you better do it somewhere else. innovation depends on a

rational, efficient and globally competitive tax system. and currently, that's not what we've got. in addition to the uncompetitive tax code, an explosion of regulation inhibits entrepreneurship and innovation. a heavy regulatory burden prevents companies and startups from being fast and nimble in a competitive environment. compliance costs time and resources from business expansion or exploration and uncertainty -- and certainly restricts capital needed for experimentation. we need a smarty -- a smarter regulatory system that preserves economic freedom and flexibility while removing unnecessary burdens and keeping things in life. when entrepreneurs and innovators passionate innovators want from government is simple, common sense. and that makes clear roles based

on sound science and proven benefits. and if they can't get that here, as i said before, they will find it somewhere else. we can see in the states that people are going to the states that offer them that opportunity. systematic overregulation come in punitive taxation drive entrepreneurs overseas and straight into the economies of our competitors. wants to of capital is also true of innovators. they will go where they are welcomed, where they are safe, and stand a good chance of being rewarded for their efforts. a strong business environment you can see is essential. while it's critical, that the government stop pushing policies that stifle innovation, the government does play a useful role in basic research. we see it in health care.

we see it in national defense. we see it in a host of places that we applaud. the public sector has traditionally supported these basic researchers, and it should continue to do so. the equation has worked pretty well for our system, and so as lawmakers face tough and necessary decisions about spending, they've got to keep an eye on the traditional role of driving basic research. we can't fix our entitlement problems in this country by trying to take it in nickel and dimes out of essential programs. we can fix the entitlement issue without denying anyone their fundamental coverage by making some sensible changes. and until we do this, all of the things i'm talking about here will be all the more difficult to rationalize and fund.

while we are talking about positive things, there is, let's not forget that maintaining our investment in physical infrastructure is essential. and right now, as toby indicated, we are in trouble. we are in trouble on roads and bridges. we are in trouble in energy, infrastructure, energy production, power generation, in the issues of moving the power a round. we have sat on our hands. we're doing better on airports now, but we have done it for so many reasons. we have done it because we don't have the money. we have done it because neither party is willing to step up and do this, but there are a lot of ways to do it with public-private partnership, and with user fees that the users of these systems will provide. and we urge the government to get off the dime and seize this opportunity. put people back to work, improve

our infrastructure, grow our productivity, and put this behind us instead of as an obstacle to our global growth. i want to say a word attachment i'm almost finished. by the way, i thought this is a rather long speech, but the more i'm getting a, the more i am excited about getting it, so just hang on. [applause] at the same time with got to invest in technology infrastructure that is vital to a wave of innovation. the u.s. internet traffic is growing rapidly. we have all seen that, to support services to drive digital innovation. we've got to continue to invest in this. and right now the u.n., the u.n. has brought people together from all over the world to make the next rules of the internet. they want to own it. i've got news for you. we invented it. it's ours to drive for the benefit of this country, and we've got to make sure that what is done at the u.n. doesn't

affect that negative. i meant to say it doesn't screw it up. and we are very much on top of that. and the digital economy and the commercial activity that comes from that holds great potential for us going forward. so, i think it's very important that we look at the critical element to innovation. and without it, innovation won't exist. there are really two. one is reward. if you don't reward people and let inventors and risktakers be rewarded, then they will go somewhere else. and the second, and i'll say a word about this in a minute, the second is the willingness to take a risk and to feel. innovators must be allowed to take these risks, and they should have the opportunity to be rewarded. first, inventors must know that the fruits of their labor will be strongly protected why the law, without assurance of

business incentive, innovation will decline. one detriment is the slow and inefficient u.s. patent process. we are making some progress, but we are far behind where we need to be. through last year's passage of the reform legislation, we got some good progress, but we still need to through -- we still need work to the logjams of patents that are lining up the street. that creates all kinds of problems as people go in and try to do copy patents and try and get a piece of what everybody is doing but it's a real complicated issue. we also need to crack down, and i use those words strongly, on ip theft, piracy, rogue websites. we need to fully fund, because we get back thousands of times over the enforcement of ip protection, and we need to do it now. economic incentives are equally

important. in innovative ideas there's little hope of reaching consumers and bettering our lives if we can't create economic value. if success is punished, if it is demonized, that is, being done maybe even today on television, or stolen, america will lose its talent from its capital, its ideas, and its jobs to our economic competitors. and you know what's just as vital as success, is failure. it's our greatest teacher. after all, go find a private investors and the private equity firms, and they will most likely invest in somebody who's had a failure and u.s. come away from that failure much smarter than they were before they had it. we must never abandoned the idea that it is okay to take a risk and it's okay to fail. we must never reject the notion that it's okay to make a

mistake, whether you're an inventor, and out of the north, an investor, whoever you are. if we instead adopt an idea that you get one shot, if you fail your done, which by the way is for the way it works in japan. then we will lose more than just capital or talent or jobs. we will do something that is fundamental and special about our system. they believe that opportunities are limitless and dreams are achievable. america is and must remain a place where you can fall on your face, take yourself up, dust yourself off and try again. nations at different stages of development don't necessarily have to be as innovative as we do to flourish. emerging economies can nearly mimic the advances of global powers, and their economies will grow and their citizens will find work. but for us, innovation is

imperative. we innovate or we will decline. fostering the next era of innovation requires us to focus on everything i have discussed today. human talent, capital, low taxes, smart regulation, asic research, critical infrastructure, and yes, reward for our effort. with the government and its proper limited role, there is no reason that we can't reinvigorate this economy, create jobs for millions and millions of americans, and reassert our innovative leadership in the world. at our very core, we are a nation of dreamers and doers. fueled life free enterprise, a system that allows failure and reward success. we have a dynamic workforce. fast the duty of the world's top universities, open markets, and a culture and quality of life

that draws talent from around the world. but we are in a global race, ladies and gentlemen, and we're up against rising competitors who were growing stronger, smarter, and more aggressive. we are competing for the world's talent, for its customers and its capital. and we are competing for industrial might in the global marketplace, and intellectual strength and a knowledge-based economy. we can never afford to rest on our advantages. fortunately, that's not our nature to we are a nation board of dissatisfaction and ambition. we reject complacency, and we crave achievement and advancement. when faced with an obstacle, we surmount it. we confronted -- when confronted with a problem, we solve it. when we have indeed, we feel it. when we have an idea, we

invented. why? not simply because we are a self-reliant people, though that is certainly true. it's because we are motivated by the possible. we constantly strive to make life better, for ourselves and for bettors -- of the stake we are inspired by the thrill of discovery and the hope of reward. and that's what i am very optimistic that we will solve our job crisis, it will be fundamental, it will require the support of our states who are here today to be recognized. it would be a fundamental breach of american principles for us not to do this. our nation's exceptional character is what propelled us to prosperity in the first place. again and again i might say. and it's what will restore prosperity and leadership in the

world to this country for generations to come. and i thank you very, very much older patients. we gave this talk because a, thought to be interest in some of its parts, b, we're going to use this information to push the innovation idea all around this country, and i look forward now to moving the program forward and hearing from the real innovators, the governors of this country that has stepped up and done it right. margaret? [applause] >> we are in an incredibly important era for the future growth of the software industry and the future of american companies, for these copies to be successful, for which things like sopa, pipa matter but there is only one element where what the u.s. does will need to take

account of what's happening internationally. and we have to break down barriers were we see them exist. but also find a balance that allows innovation. >> tonight, robert holleyman on the industry's next step, fighting online piracy and including cybersecurity. "the communicators" at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span2. >> the three-day take back the american dream conference organized by the campaign for america's future it's underway today in washington, d.c. to a series of panel discussions will be held. one this morning focuses on the progressive movement and the upcoming elections. van jones, a corporate white house special adviser on green jobs is one of the panelists who will be participating in the conversation. we expect this event to begin shortly.

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> once again, waiting for the start of this take back the american dream conference, organized by the campaign for america's future. in addition to this morning's

panel live here on c-span2, you can also watch online at c-span.org. an afternoon discussion entitled an agenda to win in november and prevent a train wreck. that's between 1:45 and 3 p.m. on c-span.org. also on our other networks, on c-span we're finishing of remarks by justice ruth bader ginsburg at the american constitution society. waiting for the start of a campaign rally by mitt romney in wisconsin. and over on c-span3 this afternoon at 1:00 eastern time, senator john mccain, republican of arizona, participates in a discussion on syria at 1 p.m. eastern. 10 pacific time. again, awaiting the start of the take back the american dream conference posted by the campaign for america's future. the focus of this discussion is the progressive movement and upcoming elections. van jones, a white house, former

white house special advisor on creating jobs is one of the panelists expected to participate in the conversation. should be getting underway in a few moments. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> can we get everyone to come and sit down, we'll get started almost immediately. first, let's welcome our two other guests. come on, van. [applause] >> you all know than jones. melissa perry. my name is robert and i'm here to greet you and welcome you to do is take back the american dream summit. this will be an amazing few days. you are activists and leaders from across the country and across the progressive movement, over 1000 strong by registration. we offer a stunning lineup of

speakers and strategy sessions that await you. we will highlight the organizing that is being done to try to elect progressives who will fight for the 99%. we will share strategies on how to drive critical issues into this election, and will give our major focus and independent progressive movement we are building to try to take back the american dream. the days will be intense because the stakes are high. now, i'm old enough in an election season to know that every election, people say well, this election is the most important of our lifetime. but i think the stake these days is something more than one election. we are i suggest to you at the beginning of what will be a fierce struggle, already is, about what comes after a 30 year failed experiment of a conservative era.

an era that has left us with extreme inequality a declining middle class, rising poverty, the worst recession since the great depression, and an economy that doesn't work for working people, even when it is growing. you saw the elections in '06 and the extraordinary election in oa, as they look for someone who compels, transforms america. we saw the reaction and the frustration in 2010. the uprising of the tea party and of occupy wall street, the assault on worker rights and women's rights and the right to vote, and the mobilization to counter that. and now we see brazen billionaires, the coke brothers, the super pacs, looking to consolidate complete control at all levels of the government. in the situation we are to be perfectly clear, we are not going to allow mitt romney, a

modern-day robber barons, and their tea party allies, to take over in washington, d.c. [applause] but we can't stop there. if we're going to build a foundation for shared prosperity, we can't accept mass unemployment as the new normal. we can't accept declining wages and increasing insecurity as an inevitable. we are not signing onto a grand bargain, partisan or bipartisan or trans-partisan that uses the current crisis to savage the vulnerable and the elderly. if we are going to build a new start for this economy, to save the american dream, we have to build an independent progressive movement, one that is prepared to take on big money politics, confront the insurance interest of how that now endanger our

future, and rebuild the american dream. i want to say a few words about each of these. it's now four years since wall street excesses blew up this economy. 9 million jobs lost, the typical family lost a staggering 40% of their wealth. mostly in the declining value of homes. any recovery from that kind of collapse would have been long and difficult, but this was made even more difficult by two major factors. first, there was no healthy economy to return to. working families have been losing ground for decades it over the bush years, most americans suffer declining incomes and rising insecurity, even when the economy was growing. we were hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs and running up record trade deficits. finance was catching 40% of profits while inflating the housing bubble. we wage two wars on a national credit card.

we were in denial about global warming. there was no place to recover to, but in addition to that, many reforms faced fierce resistance. now, we all know about republican destruction. from day one they set out to pursue what mitch mcconnell, their leader in the senate, called the single most important thing we want to achieve quote and unquote. and that was ensuring that barack obama would be a one-term president. but when obama pushed even modest reforms vital to our future, financial reform on health care, on recover, on new energy, far more impressive than republican obstruction was the power of entrenched interests that mobilize legions of lobbyists to protect their privileges and their subsidies. even when democrats have majorities in both houses of congress, corporate lobby succeeded in delaying, diluting, and a some the feeding reform.

now, the economy is said to be in recovery, but is the old economy that is coming back. the top 1% captured only 93% of the income growth in 2010. that doesn't leave a lot for the rest of us. we are back to casino finance. the too big to fail banks, bigger and more concentrated for ever, than ever, and making big bets as jpmorgan just showed us in losing $3 billion on one reckless trading scheme. we are back to trade deficits over a billion and a half a day. and we face the struggle of what comes next. now, americans are only learning about mitt romney, but he's not a mystery. he is quite inevitably of, by and for the 1%. the big money decided to be safe, they better take one of their own. and his agenda is a clear

commitment to double down on the policies that got us in the hole we are in. we give millionaires an average 25% tax cut. on top of the bush tax cuts. he calls for eliminating taxes on corporate profits earned abroad, turning the entire world into an offshore tax haven. he wants to deregulate wall street and reopen the casino economy that blew up the economy. he repealed health care reform, in medicare as we know, stop medicaid, and throw about 34 million people out of health care protection. he defends subsidies to big oil, denies the threat posed by global warming. wants more money for the military and less for our schools. this guy is building a summer home with elevators for his cars and he says obama is out of touch. he paid a tax rate of about 15% on income in one year of $20 million. a lower rate than his chauffeur.

but that's the tax return he chose to show us. imagine the one that he keeps secret. no wonder he says that talking about inequality is the politics of envy that should only be done in quote, quiet rooms. are you kidding me? we are not going to lead the brazen billionaires elect this guy president. [applause] he's not offering a revenue. he's offering potions that are simply poison for the middle class and the american dream. so we are going to work to reelect the president and to take back the house. but that is not enough. we have a bigger battle for america's future. conservative columnist david brooks said that republicans are extreme because they are fearful that the welfare state is on

affordable, and now threatens our future. well, we agree. we can't go back to the old state to the old past. but they've got the victims wrong and the culprits wrong. it's not the poor who rigged the rules of pockets of billions of subsidies. it's not the elderly who blew up the economy. it's not the young who pay for the revolving door of lobbyists and officials. you want to go sustainable growth that works for working people, it's not enough to put obama in the white house or nancy pelosi in the speaker's chair. we have to take on crony capitalism. the entrenched interest, the big money, the corrupt politicians in both parties. [applause] look at the sources of our current debt. half of our deficit comes from the economic collapse that came when wall street blew up the economy.

next comes the bush tax cuts and tax loopholes that have millionaires paying lower taxes than their secretaries come and big corporations pay no taxes at all in some cases. and then the continued cost of a bloated military and the two wars. turn to the scary long-term rejections you've all seen maps of that make it look like america is going broke. these are entirely the question of soaring health care costs, and on the portal health care system deformed by powerful health insurance, hospital and drug companies, complexes at high costs so that americans pay twice per capita what other citizens in other industrial countries pay for worse health care results. to revive the american dream, we have to take on the powerful that profit from these arrangements, not the vulnerable or their victims. so this is not a question for

one president, one election, one administration. we are about to head into what they call the grand bargain. i think. right after the election we hit a fiscal train wreck, purely made by the politicians in washington. and is being used as an excuse, an excuse to cut a grand bargain. shared sacrifice is necessary we are told. it's time to put our house in order. let's do a big trade. let's trade cuts in social security and medicare for tax reform that lowers rates, closes loopholes, and gives us more revenue. this out to be known instead of the grand bargain, as the big heist. [applause] but be clear about what it means. what it means is that we accept

mass unemployment as normal. because we are going to turn to balancing budgets rather than focus on creating jobs. it means that middle-class americans and the vulnerable will get stuck with much of the bill that wall street created. and worse in some ways, it ignores largely the causes of the plight we face. the wealthy will still not pay their fair share of taxes. wall street will still be free to blow up the economy. the insurance and drughcalth ca. we will still not have our long-term budget under control. so we have to organize now to oppose the big heist and demand the real deal. and the pieces of this are simple. we need good jobs now, and good jobs first, before we turn to austerity. [applause] and we have got to focus on what drives our deficits, the big

money interests that now our deforming our government. [applause] this won't be easy. we have to build an independent capacity to elect people's champions and hold them accountable. we will talk about that in this conference. we will make big money toxic in this election, even as work to overturn citizens united and get money out of politics. [applause] nonviolent confrontations, demonstrations that expose and challenge the interest standing in the way of. [applause] this is a forbidding task come it's the great challenge of democracy, can the people in fact curb the repay just in this a big money and big power. but we have been in this situation before. at the end of the 19th century, the robber barons consolidated oligopolies and major industry, politicians were routinely bought or rented.

their unions were outlawed. but populist movement, progressive reformers, labor uprisings challenged the supremacy of that unassailable power. it took decades of struggle, but eventually that people's movement one. the extremes of inequality were reduced, the brazen corruption occurred, and what made america special, exceptional, the broad middle class was built. and now we are back to that same kind of inequality, that same kind of robber barons money politics, and once more, the test is posed. in we, can the many, overcome the power of the few clicks and what's exciting is we have seen the first stirrings in wisconsin and ohio, and occupy wall street which spread across the country like wildfire.

[applause] spin we will continue to build, serious about taking power, serious about rebuilding the country. understanding where we will suffer setbacks. fierce opposition to the modern robber baron politics. not satisfied with what is. sure, we will try to work to defeat romney in the right. we'll push to take back the house, but we will keep on building an independent movement to take back the american dream. that's are subject this week. that's our task for the years to come. we know it isn't going to be easy. we know it can be done. si, se puede eric yes, we can. [applause] now i'm delighted to introduce melissa harris-perry. she is a modern wonder woman.

she is -- doctor perry is a professor of political science at tulane university. she's the author of sister citizen, stereotypes of black women in america. she's a regular columnist for the "nation" magazine, and she's the host of her own show on msnbc that airs on saturday and sunday mornings. she's the proud mother of a young daughter, and once a month or so she gets a little sleep. it's a delight to introduce you to melissa harris-perry. [applause] ♪ >> good morning. >> good morning. >> so the start of what is going to be an ideologically diverse day for me today. i would run off the stage when i am done with my address because i am heading off to chicago

where i will join the bush family for a conversation about volunteerism in america. that will be fun. by the end of the day i will have no idea what's going on in the world, but i'm very happy to start the day with you, and particularly because what i find to be my value added within the public sphere is not as, not as an activist or an organizer per se. i am married to an activist and organizer, so it's very clear to me which one of us does real work in which one is talked about the real work that needs to be done in the world. and so that is probably not my comparative standard. i hope today to do a little bit of what i think my comparative advantage is, which is to try to understand analytically where we are and how we got here. so appreciative of the framework of think about this within a

historical context, the kind of robber baron moment. and i want to really take a much shorter historical context, really just the past decade. and rather than focusing primarily on what the elites have been up to, to think a little bit about how where we are now has been made possible via the choices that we as ordinary citizens and americans may. because we were not fully disempowered in these moments. we made many choices. so i want to start with a moment that is a timber 11, 2001. because i believe the era we are in now begins on september 11, 2001. the election of george w. bush in 2000, whatever we think about it, is an election that ultimately was the choice of the american people made, about -- that's not, okay. that's fine. that was all fine.

i've been reading the hunger games. i suddenly thought i needed to -- [laughter] >> i'm not even getting but i really was running through my head that kind of thing the capital might have been sending to us at this moment. september 11, 2001, my sincere is when we elected george w. bush or when george w. bush was handed the american presidency by the supreme court of the united states, that that decision was made in part because we understood ourselves to be in a time of peace, internationally, of domestic economic growth, and george w. bush, for whatever failings or successes he had, does seem like a guy to kind of keep the party going, right? so if you're think you're coming out of the clinton era and things are good economically and we are at peace internationally, then it does not seem that odd to make the choice of electing a

kinder, gentler, conservative. you have to go back to 2000 to remember where we were in that moment. we did not know then that just a few months into the first year of george w. bush's presidency that they would no longer be the good times, would no longer be a time of economic expansion, it would no longer be a time of relative international peace. but instead, that the new era would begin when americans finally came into where many of our trading partners, political partners and allies had been for decades, which is the age of contemporary terrorism. americans of course responded and very typically american ways to that entrée into something that many people and the rest of the world had already experienced. we began with a kind of nationalist fervor that was justified as reasonable patriotism. i like it that we must of been

having post-traumatic stress disorder because for about a year after september 11, there were african-american men walking around the city of new york with nypd hats on. that can only be explained as a ptsd response. [laughter] i know, we will just let that, let that sit for a minute. [laughter] >> but the other thing that happens in a moment i don't want to miss is that a new version of what america specifically needs emerged. ..

willing to stomach as a people over and over again in our history. the patriot act was not an act of a republican president agenting alone. the patriot act was a bipartisan decision by both parties. it was not bought and paid for by corporations. it was bought and paid for by our fear. as much as we have our eyes on the citizens' united decision, we have to remember it was our collective angst, maybe not the people in this room, but our collective angst that gave permission to democrats in the house to rally behind republicans in the white house under the banner of nationalist patriotic security with the goal of both reducing our domestic

civil liberties and giving us an entrance into what is, at this moment, an ever lasting war. we made those choices. [applause] september 11th, 2001, interesting thing happens a few years later. the democrats need to run a presidential candidate, and turns out democrats are really very bad at one thing. well, actually, a couple of things, but one thing in particular, and one of the things they are very, very bad at is trying to think about what kind of democrat republicans will vote for; right? this is our, like, predictive ability thing. it's really the only reason we ended up with candidate obama is because we were in an open feet race, and we didn't know who we were running against so we got all free with our actual preferences and ended up with hillary clinton and barack obama

as the final two. we never would have made those choices with an incumbent and we would have undoubtedly picked john edwards. let's be honest. [laughter] in 2004, we chose the good, moderate candidate to get republican votes, and that was john kerry at the 2004dnc and saluted and said reporting for duty. we did not, in the fall of 2004, launch, as a democratic party, an attempt to push back against the war effort. quite the opposite. democrats decided to run a soldier under the banner, under the idea that he could do even better at the war machine. what changed that? what changed it? august 29th, 2005. august 29th, 2005 is the day that the levies failed in the city of new orleans in the aftermath of hurricane katrina.

maybe that actually that day because on that day and five subsequent days immediately after the levies failed and city flooded, we behaved just as we did in the immediate post 9/11 moment. we got scared of our racial enemies. [applause] the governor of louisiana, a democrat, the major of the city of new orleans, a black democrat, jointly decided to suspend search and rescue efforts in order to focus on law and order. until the national media recognized there were people, not people, actual women, elderly, and children starving and dying in the city's center. it was not until the images of african-american women, the elderly, and children who were dehydrating in the heat of the

new orleans august finally turned the language away from this kind of law and order language and into what the economists called the shaming of america. i don't know if you remember this, but i'm looking at the image right now and if i had myself together, i would have had a powerpoint, but it's the image of the "the economist magazine," second week of september 2005, an african-american woman on the cover in a new orleans t-shirt says "the shaming of america," and i want you to pause an ask yourself how many black women appeared on the cover of "the economist" magazine? i don't know her name, and yet there's very, very few black women who ever appeared. she may be condi -- ever, maybe, and yet the notion that there was still a collective shaming that happened in a country that fancies itself a place where women and children are first,

hurricane katrina actually shaming us into an anti-war stance, and here's how it goes. from september 11th 2001 until about september 4th i'm going to give it of 2005, we are trying to participate in the nationalist, patriotic fervor against the racial enemy that is those others over there that are activating terrorism against us right until the levees failed do we realize we allowedded our own citizens to drown, die, and dee -- dehydrate on camera, and we go, oh, if you can't get water to an american city for a week, how do you prosecute a foreign war? the democratic party feels a steal drop down its spine, and folks in new york city realize if this is how we respond to

disasters, they're screwed. for the first time, we start hearing an active anti-war message, not from the people, but the people resinating up through a left party. this, of course, is how, in 2006, democrats win back the house. they win the house in 2006 because for the first time they articulate an actual paradigm difference to the republican party for the first time in five years, and, of course, we remember the response to the anti-war message that won the mid-term elections in 2006. you guys remember what happened? the surge; right? the response to the american people saying we want out of the war is that the white house sent more soldiers into the war. it is exactly the opposite of what happens in 2010 when by taking over the house, the republican party decides that it has a mandate from the american

people to turn back what they had just done in 2008. this white house in 2006 told us we don't care what just happened in the midterms. we are running this war effort, and we let them. accept that, we know what happened then, right after that. the young guy, he was a state senator in illinois. he managed to make it into the u.s. senate really only because the republican party in illinois was in such shambles that their decisions for a candidate to run against him was allen keys. [laughter] on a wednesday, i could probably be allen keys, for almost any race. this is not to say that state senator obama is short of exceptional, but the ease in this he walked into the u.s. senate has everything to do with the failures of judy and the republican party.

thanks, judy, we appreciate that. [applause] in the immediate aftermath of hurricane katrina, the national figure that emerges is obama on one hand, hillary clinton on the other, and a sense of the american people of what we had just done and what we had been doing since 2001 was not the best of who we were, that we were capable of something else. i loved the 2008 campaign. it was great fun. it was. it was, that 2008 campaign, great fun. it was not fun because the obama for america campaign was brilliant. they were fine. it was great fun because of the freelancing that went on. remember, i'm trying to tell a story about the people. remember the freelancing? obama does an amazing thing in new hampshire. he loses, and then gives a victory speech which takes real

gumption; right? it's an amazing moment, and they were like, wow, that's hot, and then we walk away until a week later, and what happens? remixes yes, we can. when you think of why yes we can matters, it's not obama giving it, and will.i.am remixes it, and you facebooked it and then the excitement of the 2008 campaign was the way in which freelancing and technology and ordinary people decided what we had been doing since september 11th 2001, no longer the best of what we were and how the 2008 campaign might provide an opportunity for us to indicate the best of who we were, the exceptionalism we defined as what made us exceptional, the willingness to think about a black woman or a white guy,

that's cool, and the response from the right was a kind of anxiety about what that meant, a willingness to pull us back into what we had been doing for the years before so that once president obama is elected, the language is he's a secret muslim. of course he's a secret muslim because september 11th, 2001, the new racial enemy becomes the muslims. you know, of course, you can't be a secret muslim. you can be a secret christian, but not a secret muslim. christian, jesus is in your heart, and that can be secretly, but with muslim, there's practices you have to do. you can't secretly be one. you would notice him praying five times a day. [applause]

along where that an sighty around the -- anxiety around the secret outsider, there's a revival of the anti-immigrant panic. we are as much on the left to blame for failing to recognize and stem this at the moment that it occurred. do you remember the joe wilson moment? president obama's speaking, joe wilson stood up says, you lie, and the left freaks out. it's racism, black man speaking, looks like racism, but president obama, when he was speaking in that moment was talking about the health care reform bill and said when this passes, don't worry, illegals will not be allowed to partake in the health care reform that we are passing, and then joe wilson stood up and said, "you lie." so the president was, in that

moment, drawing a bright line, a boundary between citizens and non-citizens op this issue of a fundamental human right, health care reform, before -- [applause] before joe wilson stands up and says you lie. the terrain is multiple levels. yes, there's old-fashioned jim crow racism, but there's anti-immigration panic. notice this week when the president was, again, interrupted by a journalist in the rose garden, that that interruption came when he was talking about immigration. that laying on of our anxieties is about this new fear, this old fear, and mixed together with american racism, but thin, of course, there's old-fashioned american racism going on still among us as people, again, not talking about the elites, but the shoots to kill laws that took trayvon martin's life are the same shoot to kill laws that were enacted in the days

immediately following hurricane katrina, that are based in our same great fear that emerged immediately post september 11th. this kind of vilification of bodies that we assume to be criminal. lay on top of all of that, though, the war on women. a war on women that i notice was occurring for the first -- i wasn't sure it was coming, but i started seeing it when president obama nominated son ya sotomayor to the supreme court. if you can take yourself back and remember the gauntlet that she was forced to walk in the senate confirmation hearings, like just for fun, kicks and giggles this afternoon, watch the jamie dimon hearings next to the sonya sotomayor hearings.

just watch them. she was put through an elizabeth expert moment. she's the girl, the teenage girl who was forced to walk that gauntlet in little rock with the screaming, yelling faces behind her, so much like what i saw when i was watching sonya sotomayor, and then after that, you have the vilification of shirley sherrard. it's not a critique of the administration, but a critique of the naacp, an organization that i think has been doing extraordinary and exceptional work, especially recently, but who, in that moment, when shirley was first presented to the american people by andrew breitbart as a racest, the leadership of the naacp initially, came around quickly, but said she should be ashamed

of herself for her comments. now, that had to have happened because they just didn't know who she was, and, see, that's fine if you don't know who shirley was, and if you watched "eye on the prize," and anyone in the leadership of the naacp did, and it should have wrong a bell for you because she was 234 atlanta, and the willingness to see a rural black woman from georgia as inherently expendable, and then, of course, post 2010, the full assault on women through the personhood amendments, through the fight between culmen and planned parenthood and putting this on the 21st century, sorry, it's horrible, but really, you have to laugh. like, seriously? we're talking about the pill in

2012. the outlawing of abortions that never actually occur, telling sandra fluke that she has to basically defend against being a slut in order to speak to the american people like we're in egypt and has to submit to a virginity test, and, oh, by the way, the 2010 year of the g.o.p. woman is the first year that we actual lost ground in the u.s. house of representatives and senate in terms of women's representation in more than 30 years. we did that. when i say "we," i just mean the american people in the broadest sense, that our fear, our anxiety, our willingness to frame others whether they are unruly women, illegal immigrants, lazy black people, terrorist muslims, our willingness to not see ourselves in them, but to see them as the

other make possible all of these policy moment, and this is the last thing i say, and then i'll run from this billing. [laughter] there is no reason to lose hope. we are just not a perfect people. we're just not. we're kind of like an addless sent country. we sort of -- remember adolescence? my daughter is almost 11. i forgot adolescence is hard. you randomly feel bad, get afraid, and wonder about the security of childhood that you once had, and particularly for a country that was so dominant so quickly that became so wealthy in the context of such up equality, that understood itself as standing on a shining hill, we are in our adolescence, and we're making a bit of it mess of it.

that said, there is no reason to lose hope. the fear that has activated the past decade cannot be countered with more fear of what is coming. is there money in the pill system? yep. is the supreme court friendly? nope. are there folks willing to actually damage the very core of our democratic principles in order to win short term gains? uh-huh. are people going to -- yep. maybe it's coming from people who were slaves and mormons, white people mormons, black people slaves, everybody after them. mormons had to go across the american west. black folks were enslaved for a

couple centuries. i don't know. i guess struggle doesn't worry me in the sense of being struggle itself. what i do know is that my enslaved grandmother who was sold on a street corner in richmond, virginia believed in god. now, i'm not asking you to believe in god, but i'm asking you to think about this. this is 5 woman who never knew anything but slavery for herself, never knew anything but slavery for anyone she was related to, nothing expected anything but slavery for all the people she'd will related to in the future. there was no empirical evidence that any being cared about her circumstances. there was no empirical evidence that there was a loving god that had any power. i mean, if there was a loving god, he was pretty pitiful, or if he was powerful, he didn't seem to love her. i'm not asking you to believe in god or accept a supreme being,

just think about the faith that is associated with the hope that is not necessarily rooted in the empire -- empirical realities you see around you at this moment. we can be a part of something bigger than ourselves and something we cannot see at this moment, but simply requires us not to be afraid of each other because it is our fear of each other -- [applause] it's our fear of each other that makes us exceptionally easy to divide. i'll just say this. i'm going to talk to the bush's now, but it's because i'm not afraid of them. sometimes i'm angry with them, i often disagree, but i'm not afraid of any person with whom we are struggling. we can get to another place. there's no reason to lose hope. [applause] [cheers and applause]

>> melissa harris-perry. [applause] she's literally running to make that airplane. all right. we're going to leave you with one time speaker this morning. you all know van jones, i assume. [cheers and applause] he's a public schoolboy, grew up to be a garage watt of yale law school -- graduate of yale law school, and i like to tease him and tell him he rose above it. [laughter] he's the co-founder of the baker center for human rights, k0-found founder for color for change and green for all and joinedded him in launching his new venture, rebuild the american dream, an extraordinary innovative effort to restore

good jobs and economic opportunity and build the movement necessary to make that happen. he has neither amassed a great personal fortune, he's not held an elected public office, and yet "time" named him one of the world's most influential people. give it up for van jones. [cheers and applause] >> good morning. >> morning. >> melissa kind of bad. give it up for melissa harris-perry. [applause] tell you what, i love getting up when i can and seeing her on television. she just doesn't speak that way with that much clarity, that much insight, that much courage

to us, but she has to speak that way to the whole of the american people on saturdays and sundays, and i think that that is a part of what i want to talk about today, the voice that's been missing. the voice that's been missing. rodney king passed away over this weekend, and it's hard for me to imagine that it's been 20 # years since he became a household word, a household name on planet earth. just a regular brother with a lot of regular brother problems and regular brother issues, put in a situation, unfortunately, that's all too common, the only difference was it was caught on camera. we know what happened with the verdict.

we know what happened with the uprising, but we stimes don't think about what it must have been like for him to get pushed out in front of television cameras, no speech in hand, no posters, with the whole world watching, and have to speak from his true heart. a lot of things about his life that you can easily dismiss and discount him for, but in those moments, who you really are comes through, and he just said five words, and they are the same five words that i think melissa tries to bring us back around to. can we all get along? a prayer, a plea for some kind of sanity to emerge from the katrina tas trough fee unfolding all around him, for some kind of wisdom, some kind of higher purposes, to somehow be pulled

from the mess, to be pulled from the wreckage of america. can we all get along? he went on to his life, did good thing, did bad things he regretted, and he passed away, but i think his question still resounds. can we all get around? we have this ex-- extraordinary moment now as we look to november and beyond, who are we as a country in this mess, in this katrina tas catas? are we going to turn to each other on on each other? that is a great moment, the great question that the world is now looking at us to answer, and i appreciate dr. perry for pointing out it's not just about the corporations, but about us

here in this room so we have a responsibility. some people felt that four years ago, we were too emotional, made decisions too emotionally, and that we just got a little bit doped up on hopey stuff, and we just got too hopey, and we got too emotional, and we were not thinking clearly, and so we want to have a reaction against that, and now it seems that i'm watching as this moment of testing for america emerges in this year, i see the people who fought the hardest in the decade that dr. perry just talked about. now, fighting the least. i'm seeing a movement that was built up over that decade that stood up against bush, stood up against rover, stood up against cheney, stood up against

torture, stood up against war, stood up for the people suffering in katrina, who saw african-american mothers and grandmothers on rooftop rooftopd whose hearts were broken to see people drowning, see an american city drowning and stood up at the time when there was nothing in washington dc to answer the call and who insisted we go on a better way. i'm watching that movement that broke the back of carl rove's strangle hold on our congress who elected the first african-american president. i'm watching that movement that inspired the world, that shocked the world, that stunned the world, in the moment of maximum peril now, sit down. there are people in this country who are drowning on dry land. they are drowning economically on dry land.

they need a movement that is willing to stand with them. yet, and yet, there is this reluctance. we saw in wisconsin what happened when we put our min mum against -- minimum against our opponents' maximum. the people in wisconsin fought beautifully and bravely, but help was not on the way. they had to fight against 13 billionaires, not just the koch brothers, but like the koch basketball team, a whole squadron of billionaires, only one of whom lived in wisconsin. our opponents did their maximum. most of us did our minimum, and we saw what happened. there's a question now that falls upon this conference. are we going to let the tea

party govern america? is that the movement we are? can we not find some lessons from 2008 and 2010 that would let us move forward together, smarter, tougher, wiser, but more determined and more committed than innocent people whether they be the rodney kings of today like trayvon victimized by racial violence, won't have to fight alone, and that those of us across the country who are suffering economically will not be further harmed by the outcome of the two big fights in 2012. no november politically, in december economically on the budget. well, in order for us to figure out what we're going to do, we're going to have to do something i was taught to do when i was in public school. i got some education as you

mentioned. .. >> put your thinking caps on. do you guys have thinking caps in the budget in your public schools? [laughter] and we would put 'em on. [laughter] and we would think. and lo and behold, somebody would come up with the answer.

why was that? because we had a moment to go deep, and we had a public schoolteacher who cared. and i'm going to say this before i move on, maybe i was raised wrong. but in my community, in my neighborhood, in my home i was never taught about any threat to me called the public employee. we didn't call them -- [applause] we didn't call them public employees. we didn't see them as some sort of threat that needed to be turned into a political punching bag and disrespected. we didn't call them public employees. we called them teachers, we called them nurses, we called them librarians, we called them firefighters, we called them police officers, we called -- [applause] they were the backbone of our communities.

they were our everyday heroes. [applause] we were taught to look up to them. we were taught to respect them. we were taught to say, yes, ma'am and no, sir to 'em. and they never abandoned us. they never abandoned us, not one time. no matter how big the fire, no matter how heinous the crime, no matter how slow the learner, they never abandoned us, not one single time. but now it's fashionable to turn on them and abandon them. we say, no, we are a better country than that. we are not going to attack the people who have been there for us. [applause] we're going to lift them up and treat them right. [applause] but let's just be smart enough to follow the advice of ms. brown, god bless her soul. she didn't have a big budget to draw on, but she knew how to get young people to think. she said, put your thinking caps

on. let's put our thinking caps on and reason together. there's no reason -- if we were too emotional last time to learn all the right lessons, then let's not be so emotional this time that we do stupid stuff in the other direction. let's put our thinking caps on. what can we learn from 2008? what can we learn from 2010 that will let us win not just politically in november, but economically in december in 2012? what can we learn? what have we learned from 2008? we all know the happy part of it, but afterwards people went from hopey to mopey. we went from hope to heartbreak. what happened? well, we didn't know enough. we thought something that was not true. we thought that we had 100% of what we needed to govern in america. we had the house with, i think, the best speaker we've ever had,

nancy pelosi. [applause] we had the house of representatives. we had the senate with 60 votes. and we had president obama. we said, listen, we have enough now to govern. but it turned out not to be true. turned out we only had one-third of what we needed to govern. turns out you don't just need formal control of the government, but you also need two other things. you have to have a movement in the streets. and we abandoned the streets. we have to have a media establishment like they have on fox. and with us having only the government but not having people in the streets peacefully and nonviolently and not having a coordinated media strategy, we were checkmated by fired-up, fearful, right-wing funded by, as my brother said, brazen billionaires.

and we were checkmated. doesn't mean the administration didn't make big mistakes, we'll talk about those. but fundamentally we did not have what we needed to be able to govern from below even as the democrats tried to govern from above. we had a top-down capacity that was not met by a bottom-up movement. and instead the streets were filled not with people like us, but with people carrying signs saying that the president -- comparing him to hitler and people who were spitting on congress people and calling them the n-word. those people took the streets and stopped our movement. so many people sat down in 2010. what can we learn from 2010? because people, you know, the right wing was on the march. if you look at the numbers, they didn't turn out that many more people in 2010 than 2008, we just turned out a lot fewer.

we stood up in 2008 and made history. then we sat down in 2010 and helped other people make history. and people will tell you now, well, it doesn't matter what party's in the office, you know, it doesn't matter who wins these elections, these elections, i'm just so disgusted! [laughter] i'm just going to quit, i just can't take this. you hear this. i mean, not from you. maybe the person sitting next to you, but not you. [laughter] and it doesn't matter. who cares. after all, ask people in wisconsin if it matters. [applause] ask the people in ohio if it matters. ask the people who are living now with the consequences of that kind of demobilization and demoralization.

by careful now -- be careful now, careful now, careful now. you have more power and influence than you recognize. [applause] careful now. everybody in this room and most people who are watching at home are what are called opinion leaders. you may not have a lot of money, you may not have elective office, it doesn't matter. you are an opinion leader. people look to me in your social network, they look at your facebook page, your tweet, your e-mails trying to figure out what's right and what's wrong. careful now. it's a dangerous time to be reckless and irresponsible with the power that we do have. we are now in danger of demobilizing and demoralizing people at the very moment they need to be lifted up just like

dr. perry did. be careful now. see, for us to quit now, surrender now, give in to cynicism now is to disrespect the shoulders of the people that we're standing on. it's to disrespect them. [applause] this change stuff is just too hard, van. [laughter] i mean, i voted once. [laughter] and you see what happened. democracy is not an app. [laughter] it's not an app. [applause] just download it, push the button one time. the this sucks! [laughter] the people in my father's

generation knew what it meant to fight for change. they had dogs sicced on 'em fighting for change. they had fire hoses put on 'em fighting for change. they were beaten fighting for change. some of them went to jail fighting for change. some were murdered and put in the ground, martyrs, dead, gone, never to come back fighting for change. we'll quit over a really mean tweet. [laughter] did you read that terrible tweet? [laughter] and it was read to me, like, four times, i just can't stand it! so we have a quandary.

if we just support the president, just vote for the democrats, we don't get what we want. but if we don't, our points get power -- our opponents get power and decimate us. so it's a quandary. [applause] can we put our thinking caps on now, look at what they do when they get power. just in case you haven't paid attention, didn't get the memo. when they get power, they don't say, well, i think that the unions perhaps have gone a bit too far. and i think what we should do is have some reforms there. no, they decimate us. they destroy the unions. they didn't run on that. as soon as they got power, they ran on a terrible message, as soon as they got power, they did even worse. we're the only ones that sit back when we've got power and, you know, go through all we have to go through to get power, and then once we get it say, we now

have power. we will now be bipartisan. [laughter] can we compromise on something to make you happy, please? that's not what they do. they get power, they decimate us. they say right now if they get power, they're going to eliminate the epa, just wipe it out. the epa, which has probably saved more american lives in the past 30 years than even the department of defense. the epa which is keeping the poison out of our children's bodies. [applause] they say they're going to wipe it out. i hope you don't think that they're joking. so when they get power, they use it to destroy us, but if we just support the existing democrats, we still wind up disappointed. so what's the answer? what do we need to do? it's very simple. the lesson of the past decade is very clear.

if you have the wrong president, say george bush, it doesn't matter how strong your movement is. we had the best movement, i mean, the movement for peace to try to stop this country from invading iraq, your movement, was beautiful. nothing wrong with that movement. you put millions of people in the street, millions of people you put in the streets. you put more people in the streets to stop the invasion of iraq in six weeks than the entire mobilization against vietnam put in the streets in six years. you've put a magnificent movement on the streets. you have the right movement, you had the wrong president. then, arguably, you had the right president with obama. but the people in the streets were the wrong people. it was the tea party. and the tea party changed the narrative, changed the discussion, changed the envelope so much that they were able to make austerity the watch word last year when every economist

in the world said it's be the worst thing to do. so you had, arguably, the right president, but you had the wrong movement. the key to real change is to have the right president and the right movement at the same time. that's the way forward. so what that means is -- [applause] yes, we have to reelect the president, and we have to reenergize the movement, you see? that's, that is the right formula. [applause] you have to have a president willing to be moved. you can't have a bush, you can't have a romney, you can't have a koch brothers puppet. you can't have an immovable president. you have to have a president willing to be moved, but you also have to have a movement willing to do the moving. now listen. the young people have taught us something in this past year since we were here together. and if we learn their lesson, we can win in november and in december. look at these extraordinary

young people. they are blessed with not knowing that the causes they champion are 'em possible. impossible. that's their great blessing. look at the young people who decided despite the fact that this administration has deported more latinos than bush, despite the fact that there are vicious laws being put on the books in places like arizona, despite the fact that any moment they could be snatched away or their mother could be snatched away or their father could be snatched away and sent away from this country despite all of that discouragement, step forward and said i am an undocumented child, but i want to be here, i want to be respected. [applause] i'm undocumented, but i'm not afraid. i'm not afraid. look at the courage of that. [applause]

can you imagine being a child knowing no other country but this one and knowing that the only way you get to stay is to be silent, is to be quiet, is to be cynical, is to believe the worst about the country and never break breath and say who you really are, never break breath to say what's in your heart? just be quiet, just be cynical, don't believe in america, and you get to stay. but if you speak out, if you believe it's a better country, you may be sent from here never to see your friends or your family, to live in a land you don't know. look at the courage of these young people. look at their belief in who thee are as a country. and they stepped forward when it was hard, when nobody would have comed them to do -- counseled them to do it.

and moved a president, moved a nation. so now you have an example. look at these young people. can we be as wise and courageous as these young people? look at them. look at the ones who watched the hopes of a planet be destroyed by a do-nothing, obstructionist congress that still has not moved on climate change, that still has not moved toward clean energy, that's been stuck on stupid, afraid of science now for three, four years. and they look in the face of that, and they said the big folks can't move congress, the big environmentalist folk can't move congress. maybe we should just go on and do something else. they said, no. look at these young people. they said, we're not going to let them put this, jab this dirty needle of a pipeline into america. we're not going to let them take the dirtiest energy ever created and cook it up and stick it into this country.

we're going to stand up to these tar sands, we don't care if anybody comes to help us. and they broke the seal august of last year, and they on civil disobedience against this white house nobody a year ago this time was saying it's time to do civil disobedience against the white house. the young people said the future of this planet is too great. and 360.org and the native american tribes went down in the heat of august, in the heat of august -- [applause] and they sat in, and thousands were arrested, and the media tried to ignore it. but a message was sent. and through their courage the project was derailed, the fight goes on. but look at these young people. look at the young people who have transformed the discussion on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. look at their courage.

culturally, politically. look at the young people who rescued america last year coming out of that horrible august where the tea party put congress in a headlock and said if you don't do what we say, we're going to blow a hole in the american economy. we're going to destroy america's credit rating. and this whole town trembled in fear and gave in and said, okay, we'll create a supercommittee to do super damage to the american people. [laughter] and some young people and some struggling folks -- no pollsters, no lobbyists, no big grants -- went down with some sleeping bags and some tents to the scene of the crime against their future and occupied wall street and turned this country

upside down. [applause] suddenly you can talk about economic inequality. the supercommittee never met. what are those young people, those, those young people. their messaging was really not that great. [laughter] and what was their agenda? i've got an agenda. and a grant. [laughter] and 501c3 status. these young people. but they obliterated the entire idea that we were going to add damage to the image in this country and bought us a year to put our thinking caps on. so we have a responsibility now

to be as brave and as courageous and as determined as the young people who have shown that if you struggle, you can win. if you fight, you can make progress. you say, well, they haven't made enough. well, we haven't struggled enough. but there's a lesson trying to push through this catastrophe. there is some hope on the horizon if we ask for it. so we have to do three things going forward. first, we have to win in november, and brother boris has already talked about mistakes there. but part of the reason we have to win in november is because we have to also win in december. see, they, they let me in the white house for about six months -- [laughter]

and i took some notes. [laughter] i learned a couple things. and one of the things that i learned, sisters and brothers, is there's something called the lame duck session. you can win in november and lose in december because it's december when the most important budget battle of the past 20 years and of the next 20 years will take place. it is december, not just november, that progressives have to rally for. it is december that is the reason that we have to get off our hands and begin to mobilize the people, because it's december that the bush tax cuts expire, and they will either give the rich more of a break and put more pain on the people, or we're going to finally move towards some kind of justice.

it's in december that the pell grants run out, and low income kids going to college will be shut, possibly, for a generation. it's in december that every can that was kicked down the road the past two years saying we'll deal with that after the election, we'll deal with that after the election, well, after the election now has a name. it's called december. okay? and it's in december that a wrecking ball will probably come down on our heads. or we can follow the lead of the young people and stand and fight. three things we've got to do. number one, let's take advantage of the media that we already have. there's a great documentary called "haste: -- heist, who stole the american dream. we have independent media makers that can begin to checkmate the power of this right-wing media machine. number two, the fight in

december's going to be over economics. we can fight now on economic questions. the student loan struggle. on july 1st if congress going to is can act, if we don't make congress act, the interest rate on the stafford student loans is going to double from 3.4% to 6.8 taking $20 billion out of the pockets of the next generation of students, eight million students are going to have to cough up an extra $20 billion because congress is missing in action. if we want young people to be excited about our issues, we need to get excited about young people's issues and stop them from doing this to these young people. [applause] it's a fight right now. another issue that's coming up in front of this congress which is a question around home ownership, home mortgages. we've got a third of american homes are underwater right now. there's a bill in front of

congress that rebuild the dream is pushing along with others on this stage, in this room that would let homeowners refinance even if they're underwater, refinance their home. give them the tools to refinance, take advantage of these lower interest rates. it would save $10 billion a year for about 14 million households every year going forward. those are the kind of fights that we cannot relent on just because congress wants to play politics with the american people. these are real-life struggles where the american dream is on the table. so we need to continue those fights going forward. but the last thing we've got to do is this: put our thinking caps on. the other side is not playing tic tac toe. they're not playing checkers. they're not playing chess. they're playing 3d vulcan chess.

these guys are not stupid. and here's what they do to us. they'll have their congressional delegation right now on their knees signing pledges to grover norquist saying they're never going to raise taxes no matter what happens to america. that's what they'll do, they're doing it right now. they'll never -- no matter how many wars, what happens, they will never -- why? because when they go into negotiations, they say, our hands are tied. we can't give with you what you want, so you have to give us what we want. our hands are tied. and, you know, i grew up, i got an education. that's a smart move. reminds me of odysseus. he put himself in peril going past the sirens.

he said, tie me to my mast so i won't give the in to the siren call. i remember that. mr. thurman, 11th grade. odysseus said, tie my hands, tie me to the mast so i won't give in to the siren call. you see, they've been doing that for a long time. well, i think it's time for us to make just one demand, just one demand of this president, just one demand of this white house. we're not stupid. we're not going to lay down, let the tea party run america. we're going to fight. but we're going to fight in november and december, too, so you need to do something to help us. when the real fight goes down. in december. now, we know this president's a good family man. he doesn't like to use rough

language. i understand that. he doesn't like to use dirty talk. that's -- he's a good family man. but we've got a request. i call on this president to use one four-letter word when it comes to these bush tax cuts for the rich. just one four-letter word. he hasn't said any cuss words that i've heard him say in three, four years. he can do one four-letter word. we want with regard to the bush tax cuts a four-letter word from this president, a vow to veto, to veto, to veto the attempt of these republicans to give this country over! [applause] we want him to veto any bill that comes before him that will let the rich walk away with another extension. it is time for the wealthy

people in america to pay america back. they've gotten the benefits of the tax breaks, the bailouts, the bonuses, and they've left us with this fake grand bargain which is neither grand, nor a bargain for the american people. it is ham and egg justice at best. you know what ham and egg justice is? i learned that from reverend jackson. ham and egg justice. farmer says, it's time for breakfast. we're going to be fair, now, with everybody in the barnyard. he turns to the hen, he says, give me one of your little eggs. and then he turns to the pig and says give me one of two of your legs. that's ham and egg justice. that's this grand bar gain. ham and egg justice. a little tiny, tiny contribution from the rich and a devastating body blow to working class, middle class and poor people. we say, no. there's nothing grand about

that. that is not a bargain. it is time for the wealthy people in this country who we're proud of their achievement, but they didn't make it by themselves. we have created a great country in which they can do well. and it used to be when i grew up that if you did well in america, you're supposed to do well by america. we call on this president to issue a veto threat toward that end. thank you very much. [applause] >> and we got one more? okay, good. thank you very much. [laughter] [applause]