judicial nomination at 11:15 a.m. a vote is expected at about 11:45 a.m. the chamber will take a break for party lunches as you should be on tuesday between 12:30-2:15 eastern and then it returned to work on the temporary federal spending bill known as the c.r. the first vote on the measure by which is expected tomorrow. now live to the u.s. senate here on c-span2. the chaplain: let us pray. eternal spirit, supreme source of light and love as the american people experience jitters because of an impending government shutdown, we look to you the foundation of wisdom. give our senators the wisdom to know what is right and the courage to do it.

lord, thank you for the doors you open to us, providing us with opportunities to accomplish your purposes. open for our lawmakers new and wide horizons, leading them to ever-increasing usefulness. give them the backbone to go through the doors you open, setting aside fears that intimidate and discourage, as they seek to obey your commands. we pray in your sacred name. amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to our flag.

i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington d.c., september 24, 2013. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable edward markey, a senator from the commonwealth of massachusetts of to perform the duties of the chair. signed: patrick j. leahy, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: i move to proceed to calendar number 195, which is the continuing resolution. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: the senator from nevada, mr. reid, moves to proceed to h.j. res. 59, making continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2014 and for other

purposes. mr. reid: mr. president following my remarks and those of the republican leader there will be a period of morning business until 11:15. the republicans will control the first half, the majority the second half. at 11:15 the senate will proceed to executive session to consider the nomination of todd hughes to be united states circuit judge. at 11:45 there will be a roll call vote on that confirmation. following that vote the senate will recess until 2:15 to allow for weekly caucus meetings. at 2:15 we'll resume consideration of the continuing resolution. senator mikulski will make opening remarks at that time and senator cruz will be recognized after her. mr. president, on the morning news, i hear that there is a filibuster today. i want to disabuse everyone. there will be no filibuster today. filibusters stop people from voting. and we are going to vote tomorrow. under the rules no one can stop

that. we can advance a time and do it more quickly, and we can do that at any time, and i'd be happy to make sure that we accomplish that if both sides agree that in fact that is something we should do. but we're going to vote tomorrow regardless of what anyone says or does today, unless it's a consent agreement to collapse the time. and that vote will occur sometime around noon tomorrow. so i just want to make sure that everyone understands there is no filibuster today. mr. president, for millions of american families, the road to economic recovery has been long, long and very, very hard. and now just as the economy begins to gain steam, some republicans in congress seem determined to derail four years of progress. they're obsessed with defunding health care. they're pushing us closer and closer to a government shutdown

that would tank the economy. and that's an understatement. the business community is gravely concerned about the impacts of a shutdown on the economy and middle-class americans are really upset and concerned about the threat of this. yesterday republican and democratic leaders in both houses of congress received a letter from the business round table, an association of chief executive officers that employ more than 16 million people. it's respected by democrats and republicans. the c.e.o.'s cautioned us about the economic dangers of a government shutdown, and they warned of the catastrophic effects of a first-ever default on the nation's debt, the next looming crisis republicans hope to exploit to their short term political benefit. i should say some republicans. this is what the business round table wrote yesterday -- and i quote -- "failure to fund the basic business of government and

adjust the debt limit in a fiscally responsible manner would risk the immediate and long-term health of the united states economy. even a brief government shutdown would have serious economic consequences and default, however temporary, would be calamitous.." that's what they said, mr. president. five years removed from the worst of the great recession, job creation, economic growth and other key economic indicators are not where they should be, but they're headed in the right direction. the private sector has created 7.5 million jobs in the last 42 months. jobless claims are at a five-year low and consumers feel more optimistic about the economy than they have at any point in the last five years. a government shutdown would reverse these trends and stunt future economic growth and it would panic consumers and financial institutions. and it would cost the economy more than $30 billion for every week the government remains shuttered. each week $30 billion. we know this from experience.

according to the nonpartisan congressional budget office, the shutdowns in the mid-1990's which lasted 27 days reduced g.d.p. by half a percent. mr. president, that's huge, huge amounts of damage to our economy. the u.s. chamber of commerce has joined the business round table in calling on congress to keep the government open. here's what they said -- quote -- "it is not in the best interest of the u.s. business community or the american people to risk even a brief government shutdown that might trigger disruptive consequences or raise new policy uncertainties in washington or the u.s. economy. the dire effects of a shutdown wouldn't just impact the economy. a shutdown would send half the defense department's civilian workforce home without pay and delay paychecks for many military families that already live paycheck to paycheck. although checks would go out to seniors already on social security, no new application for benefits would be processed.

putting seniors and disabled americans at risk. likewise, veterans applying for education and benefits would be forced to wait. the centers for disease control, mr. president, would stop monitoring disease outbreaks and passport applications would languish costing airlines and travel-related business millions of dollars. by a three to one margin, americans already oppose the senseless republican plan to hold -- i should say, mr. president, let me say this right. by a margin of three to one, the american -- all americans recognize the plan is senseless. some feel more strongly than others. this senseless plan to hold the government hostage to defund obamacare. mr. president, as i said here yesterday morning, cnn, cnbc in separate polling show 59 -- the

same number in both polls -- 59% of the american people support obamacare, and even a larger number of people think the government shutdown is the worst idea that ever came along. as one republican senator said, the dumbest idea he ever heard. so imagine, mr. president, their reaction, the american public, once they see the dark economic outcome of a shutdown. i've told you how they feel. but they can see in their mind's eye, they're losing their jobs, their family is losing jobs and unquestionable economic downturn. confucius, famous chinese philosopher, offered a warning a long, long time ago, mr. president, when he said -- and i quote -- "when anger rises, think of the consequences." i realize generally the republicans are still upset, mad, angry that they lost the election of 2008. i understand that.

they're still angry that they failed to stop a landmark expansion of health care to millions of americans. i understand that. they're angry they failed to regain control of the senate and they're angry president obama was overwhelmingly reelected last year. but it's time to set that anger aside. it's time to stop obsessing over old battles and think of the consequences of a government shutdown. so, mr. president, what we need to do, the presiding officer, longtime member of congress, approaching four decades of being in congress, recognizing how we've worked together over those decades, accomplishing good things for this country, we need to go back to those days, days of working together. we could start in many places. we could start by funding the government without a big hassle. we could work together to do postal reform which affects six million working americans. we could work together to do ag reform, agriculture reform,

which under the bill that we passed out of this body he, we save $23 billion. cut the deficit by $23 billion. we could work together to pass immigration reform. my republican colleagues are concerned about the debt. that reduces by $1 trillion. mr. president, the american people at least deserve this, that we work together to get things done. and i would hope that with this crisis facing us, we can put all our obsessions about health care and obama getting reelected and our still controlling the senate behind us and move on, mr. president, to do good things for our country again.

mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: about four years ago i mounted a campaign right here on the senate floor against a bill that would come to be known as obamacare. nearly every day we were in session i spoke about the dangers of this bill for individuals, for families, for businesses and the very character of our country. i predicted it would be a complete disaster and that anyone who voted for it would come to regret it because the promises that were being made about obamacare couldn't possibly be kept. and guess what happened? these predictions are all coming true. obamacare hasn't even been fully implemented yet, but we can already see the train wreck headed our way. premiums are skyrocketing, major

companies have been dropping the health care plans their employees have and like. and every week it seems there are new reports about glitches that will hurt families, compromise personal information, or expose the american people to fraud, all of which helps explain why even some of the bill's fiercest early backers are looking for an escape hatch. but there's only one escape hatch that will fully help those trapped by this law, and that's full repeal. and that's why i'm supporting the house-passed c.r.. not only does it defund this terrible law, it doesn't increase government spending by a penny, and it keeps the government from shutting down, which nobody wants. and it does something else. and this is really important. it puts the focus right where it belongs, on the democrats who voted for and continue to

support obamacare. because once we invoke cloture, mr. president, the focus will turn to our friends on the other side of the aisle, the senate democrats. the majority leader is counting on his democratic allies to amend the bill. he can only afford to lose four democrats -- just four -- if he wants to restore funding for obamacare. so if five senate democrats vote against the majority leader, obamacare will be defunded. that, mresident vote we should have. and in all likelihood will have. democrats have been hearing the same complaints about obamacare that the rest of us have. the spotlight really should be on them. this is a rare opportunity to defund the law with a simple majority. a simple majority to defund obamacare. we should have that vote. it just doesn't happen -- i just

don't happen to think filibustering a bill that defunds obamacare is the best route to defunding obamacare. all it does is shut down the government and keep obamacare funded, and none of us want that. that would be the results of filibustering. four years ago every democrat voted for this bill and had the excuse that they didn't know how it would turn out. well, they don't have that excuse now. i think we deserve to know where they stand now. four years ago every senate democrat worked to jam this bill through the senate over the loud objections of their constituents and the implementation of this law proceeds, their constituents remain just as angry about this and it's for their senators to go on record once again. we're giving them a do-over, a second chance, if you will. do they stand with the people of their states who do not want

this law to be implemented, or do they double down on this failed experiment? everybody knows where republicans stand on this issue. we may be divided on some things. we may not always agree on tactics. but on the question of repealing obamacare, we're totally united. this law should be defunded. that's what the house bill does. that's why i plan to support it. but if we're going to real estate pee -- but if we're goino repeal obamacare, we're going to need some democratic votes to do it. that's the only plan that will get us to our common goal of undoing the law. we need to unite to achieve it. this morning i would like to make a plea to our friends on the other side. join us in taking it off the books and replacing it with the kind of commonsense step-by-step reforms that lower cost and that

americans will actually embrace. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will be in a period of morning business until 11:15 a.m. with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the republicans controlling the first half. mr. durbin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: mr. president, i'm going to ask unanimous consent to speak, though the minority has the first half, and ask the

ten minutes that i speak be taken off the majority time at the end of the morning business. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. durbin: mr. president, i listened closely to the statement made by senator mcconnell of kentucky be, the republican senate leader, and i applaud him and other senators who have spoken out against the so-called filibuster that's been initiated by the senator from texas and at least one other senator. it is not technically a filibuster, as senator reid has said, but the object is to slow down the business of the senate and that it is similar to a filibuster. we are going to have that occur today when senator cruz takes the floor this afternoon to state his position that we should shut down the government, if we do not fund obamacare -- or if we fund obamacare. and that, to me, is an irresponsible position. it is irresponsible because the senators who support the house position are playing high-stakes

poker with other people's money. to shut down the government is disastrous, not only for hundreds of thousands of federal employees who do important work to keep america safe and to keep us a leading nation in the economy but also because it's at the expense of american jobs. when senator reid, the democratic leader, came to the floor and read a statement from the business round table, he was reading from the strongest business group that usually, without fail, supports republicans. that group put out a statement yesterday, the business round table, the leading business executives in our country, that to shut down the government or to fail to extend the debt ceiling is devastating to our economy. the words they used were "calamitous" and "catastrophic." why in the world would we have

the self-imposed crisis created by the threats of the house republicans on the floor of the senate today? well, they're entitled to a debate. they're entitled to state their position. that's their right as senators representing their states. but they're not entitled to damage our economy and hurt innocent people and shut down the government. that is a pe petulent position. senator mcconnell also talked about obamacare, known as the health care reform bill, one that i was proud to support. what he is basically calling for is the repeal of obamacare. what the republicans are calling for is to repeal, for example, that provision in obamacare which says that health insurance companies cannot discriminate against people with preexisting conditions. if you happen to be in a family with a child who has diabetes,

it may be impossible for you to buy health insurance under the old law. under obamacare, your family cannot be discriminated against. the republicans want to eliminate that provision of obamacare. secondly, when you defund and eliminate obamacare, you're going to change that provision which guarantees there will be no limits on your health insurance policy coverage. who knows what tomorrow's diagnosis will bring, what bills it will bring to your family. but some health insurance policy -- but some health insurance policies have a limit on what they pay. obamacare stops that from happening. the republicans want to repeal that. obamacare also says that if your young son or daughter is looking for a job and hasn't found one, they can stay on your family health insurance plan until age 26. the republicans want to repeal

that, leaving more and more young people, millions across america, without the protection of hundreds. when it comes to medicare prescription drug part-d, seniors because of the so-called doughnut hole were paying sums out of their meager savings and out of their own pocket for prescription drugs. obamacare filled that doughnut hole and gives those seniors more peace of mind when it comes to prescription drugs. the republicans want to repeal that help for our senior citizens. finally, they want to repeal the insurance exchanges. today every member of congress who uses the health insurance available to us as senators and congressmen are part of the federal employees' health benefit plan. each year, senators -- republicans and democrats -- have an opportunity under an insurance exchange to pick the plan best for their family. that privilege is something we appreciate and want to make available for everyone across america. that's what obamacare does.

and the republicans want to repeal it. republican senators want to keep using the insurance exchange for their families and their benefit. they don't want to extend it to other families across america. that's what repeal of obamacare would do. those are the specifics. and. a senator: mcconnell to come -- mr. durbin: and for senator mcconnell to come to the floor and challenge whether we still stand by it. this is not just about the peace of mind of people, families and businesses when it comes to health insurance. it is about our deficit. if we took the republican approach of doing nothing when it comes to the costs of health care, sadly, we are condemning ourselves to deficits sphashes the eye -- as far as the eye can see. 60% of our deficits and looming national debt relates to the increased cost of health care. if we took the republican approach of doing nothing, ultimately it would mean that

deficit -- those debts would be even larger for future generations. so obamacare is a step in the right direction. finally, mr. president, let me say, i understand what's going on now with several members of the senate republican caucus who want to take to the floor and argue that we should shut down the government, if it means funding obamacare. i think they're wrong on the merits, they're wrong politically. both "the wall street journal" and even karl rove admonished them mott to take this suicidal strategy. i think they're right. it is a strategy which is not appealing to anybody across america, except a handful of extremists. those who are independents and others believe that funding our government is a basic responsibility of the house and the senate. it is important that we accept that responsibility. standing up to make a speech on your beliefs on the floor is certainly every senator's right. but let us get on with the business of government. we should vote today on this motion to proceed instead of wasting an entire today and into

tomorrow. if we could get bipartisan consent, we could dho come to tt motion quickly. the sooner we satisfy america that we're not going to shut down government, the better it will to be for our economy to continue to grow and create jobs. i am going to ask the time i just used be taken off the majority time under morning business to follow a little later this morning. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from south dakota. mr. thune: are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are not in a quorum call. mr. thune: okay, i rise today to talk about the economy generally and the negative effect that president obama's policies are having on the economy and its health and particularly on middle-class families. and i don't think you have to look very if aer to see -- look

very far to sthe to see that im. this economy is growing is he -- the slowest recovery literally in 15 years. the recovery in terms of coming out of the recession we had years ago is slower than at any time in the past 50 years. the labor participation rate, the number of people in the workforce today, is at a lower level percentage-wise than it has been in 35 years. you have to go back to the administration of jimmy carter to find a time when the labor participation rate was at a lower level than it is today. in fact in the last year of the jobs that have been created, 60% of those jobs are part-time jobs. we're not creating full-time jobs. we're creating part-time jobs, meaning that american workers are having to work more than one job to make ends meet and are having lower take-home pay. the takehome patience the average household income is down since the president took office

by about $4,000. so you've got lower take-home pay, fewer jobs -- at least fewer full-time jobs -- a full, sluggish economy, and why is that the case? it's because the policies that the president is putting in place is making it more expensive and more difficult to create jobs. in one of those policies -- one of those policies that's having a profound impact on the economy is the president's health care law. since that bill was debated going way back many years ago in the committees in the house and senate, autumn in of my colleagues and -- a number of my colleagues and i have been racing concerns about thraisinge effecting it would have. like negative premiums is now actually the case. reductions in jobs, fewer jobs. we've got fewer jobs being created out there. the more and more businesses are saying the reasons they're not hiring people is because of the mandates, the requirements, the uncertainty associated with

obamacare. people losing access to health care that they like and were promised that they'd be able to keep. but for four years this president and his administration have looked the other way. today it seems that even the organizations that strongly supported the health care changes are coming to terms with their impact. in fact, in 2009, the cleveland clinic hosted president obama during the height of his sales pitch to the american people. that same cleveland clinic last week announced plans to cut some of its 44,000 employees because of obamacare. the cleveland clinic is the largest employer in cleveland and the second-largest employer in ohio. it is a premier hospital and medical research center that is now paying for the consequences of obamacare. mr. president, the cleveland clinic isn't the only company cutting jobs or wages in order to deal with increased costs due to obamacare. according to "investors business daily" you more than 250 employers have cut jobs or

slashed wages. that really shouldn't come as any surprise when a 2,700-page law has already yielded 20,000 pages of regulations. democrats overpromised on obamacare and now their signature piece of legislation is underdelivering. if you like your health care plan, you don't necessarily go to to keep it. just ask employees at g.e. or i.b.m. or at u.p.s. or walgreens or at home dedepot. family premiums have actually jumped by $2,500 since obamacare became law. more than three in four businesses plan to fire workers or cut hours as a result of obamacare. all of these negative effects are shaping public opinion of this law. obamacare continues to be a gut punch to middle-class families already struggling and public

opinion is at an all-time low. in a recent poll, only 12% of americans believe the democrats' significant law will have a positive effect on their families. according to a recent cnn poll, nearly 60% of americans say they oppose obamacare, which is up 17% since january. americans are opposing this law for good reasons. there was an actuary report that says health care costs are going to rise by $621 billion, and just yesterday forbes published an article, the title of the article was "obamacare will increase health spending by $7,450 by a typical family of four." by taking information from a nonpartisan actuary report published last week, forbes conclude that had obamacare will boost health spending by roughly $621 billion above amounts that would have been spent without the law. by spreading across all american families, the increase in health

spending between 2014 and 2022 will amount to $7,450 per family of four. juxtapose that, mr. president, against president obama's promise that premiums will go down by $2,500 per family. a critical component of the health care law are the exchanges scheduled to open for enrollment seven days for tpr* today. yet it appears the administration is unprepared yet again. in fact, recently the congressional research service reviewed the administration's missed deadlines during the first three years of the health care law's implementation. as of may 31, the administration has failed to meet a total of 41 out of 82, 5% -- 41 out of 82 -- 50% of the law's deadlines. it should be no surprise if these exchanges aren't ready which i find disconcerting given the amount americans will be

required to provide. personal data like social security numbers, household income, other tax return information is going to be entered into a federal data services hub. c.m.s. signed a $1.2 billion contract with a british company to sort and evaluate exchange applications containing personal financial data. according to "the new york times," the company -- and i quote -- "has little experience with the department of health and human services or the insurance marketplaces." last year congressional hearings uncovered that the same company exposed more than 120,000 federal thrift savings plan enrollees to identity theft when personal financial data, including social security numbers, were stolen from a compromised computer. this is not exactly a track record that inspires confidence. just last week the "wall street journal" reported that a pricing

glitch is affecting rollout of the exchange. this pricing glitch is producing wrong pricing information. to me, this is further evidence that obamacare is not ready for prime time. unfortunately for the american people, when it comes to obamacare the worst is yet to come. mr. president, i would argue that it is time to give the economy, the american economy, middle-class families, middle-class workers a break by permanently delaying the law for all americans. not just a select few. some of the waivers that the president gives to his favorite constituencies. but for all americans so they're not subject to the harmful impact and harmful effects of this law. mr. president, obamacare is not the only one -- is not the only of president obama's policies that is hurting the middle class. president obama's war on affordable energy is also driving up energy costs and destroying jobs. during his first presidential campaign the president promised that under his energy policies,

electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. maybe people remember that statement. but he said electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket if he were elected president. well, unlike his campaign promises to lower health care premiums and allow families to keep their health care plans, this is one plan, one promise that the president has kept. last week the administration rolled out a new energy tax that will slash jobs, restrict access to abundant domestic energy and make electricity rates skyrocket. combined with other e.p.a. regulations, the president's policies will destroy more than 500,000 jobs, cause a family of four to lose more than $1,000 in annual income and increase electricity prices by 20%. these burdens hit middle- and lower-income families the hardest. these families pay a higher percentage of their income on energy costs. forcing these families to pay an additional $1,000 in energy

costs each year reduces what they have available to buy a home, pay for their children's education or simply make ends meet each month. even union leaders expressed concern that the new energy tax is going to have a harmful impact on them and on their families. the head of the international brotherhood of electrical workers said the tax will -- and i quote -- "threaten economic growth and america's energy future." and i'd like to, mr. president, if i might, include that particular article for the record. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. thune: mr. president, the middle class has been hit hard by the obama economy. unemployment remains above 70%. middle-class incomes have fallen by over $3,000 since the president took office, and unfortunately the president's health and energy -- health care and energy policies not only destroy jobs, but hit the middle class with higher health care and higher energy costs. it is time for congress to act as a check to the president's agenda and to stop these

policies before more hardworking families are further harmed. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the republican whip. mr. cornyn: mr. president, until obamacare was passed in 2010, virtually every major piece of legislation involving domestic reforms in this country has passed with solid bipartisan support, from social security to welfare reform, from medicare to tax reform, from civil rights to no child left behind. the presidents as different across the ideological spectrum as franklin roosevelt, george w.

bush, ronald reagan and bill clinton all understood there is more to making sure that legislation succeeds than just jamming it through on a partisan-line vote. indeed, after the bill passes and it needs to be implemented, aren't you going to need that same sort of bipartisan support to see that the legislation is actually implemented and actually works for the benefit of the american people? but by contrast, during the health care debate in 2009 and 2010, president obama did not seek any kind of genuine compromise with republicans, but instead he chose to ram it through on a controversial party-line vote, which is generated nothing but division and bitterness since this legislation was first passed. four and a half years later obamacare is more unpopular than ever. one recent poll showed that 68% of american voters, including a majority of democrats, are

concerned about how the law will affect their health care coverage. medicare recipients are worried about losing access to their current doctors. middle-class families are worried about losing their existing insurance coverage. young people are worried about seeing their premiums skyrocket. and people on medicaid are worried that america's health care safety net is going to become even less effective at protecting the neediest and most vulnerable members of our society. day after day, not a day passes that we don't read stories about doctors who are dropping patients because of obamacare or employers that are ending the existing health care coverage their employees have because of obamacare, or businesses that are slashing full-time work into part-time work because of obamacare. and states that are projecting a

spike in the insurance premiums that their people will pay because of obamacare and the individual market. even "the new york times" is now acknowledging that because of obamacare, many insurers are significantly limiting the choices of doctors and hospitals available to consumers. so rather than expanded access to coverage, consumers are finding that their choices are even more limited under obamacare. the president's own department of health and human services has estimated that america already has a massive shortage of primary care doctors. indeed, just to meet current needs, we'll have to add more than 15,000. as a senior official at the american academy of family physicians told bloomberg news, the shortfall of primary care access is not an insignificant problem, and it's going to get worse. that's bad news for all

americans, and it's especially bad news for medicaid beneficiaries who already have a hard time finding providers who will accept their insurance. in my home state, 62% of primary care physicians aren't in a position to take any new medicaid patients. that's because medicaid pays them at a fraction of what private health insurance or even medicare pays. and so many doctors simply can't afford to see new medicare patients. so here you have the irony, the terrible irony of a promise of coverage but no real access to a doctor. now most physicians in texas believe that medicaid is broken and should not be used as a mechanism to expand coverage, but rather as a last resort safety net program. unfortunately dumping millions of additional americans into medicaid without fixing it, by doing so obamacare will make our

health care safety net even more fragile and even weaker. meanwhile, the president's health care law continues to discourage job creation and hamper our economic recovery. if there's one thing we need more than anything else in this country, it is a stronger economy. because greater economic growth means more jobs and more opportunity. and those people who have simply given up looking for work because the economy is growing too slowly will begin to find work again. but as of last week, more than 300 different employers had cut work hours or jobs or otherwise shifted from full-time to part-time staff because of obamacare, according to "investors daily." the administration seems to realize this, and particularly the employer minute is discouraging job creation and prompting many businesses to turn full-time jobs into

part-time jobs. it's just common sense. obamacare gives businesses a powerful financial incentive not to hire more than 49 workers. what else did we think would happen? if you hire more than 49 workers, you have to pay a penalty. but if you're underneath that cap, you don't. in early july the administration unilaterally delayed enforcement of the employer mandate recognizing this phenomenon of full-time work shifting to part-time work. on the very same day it announced that it would not be verifying taxpayer eligibility for obamacare premium support until 2015, even though the subsidies began flowing in 2014. so what this means is that people will qualify for taxpayer subsidies for their health care even though the federal government will not be verifying that information for a year. what do we expect to happen? well, i think one reasonable prediction is there will be massive fraud in the program.

of course we know that the president, again, tried to go it alone and do this unilaterally without congressional action and of course without constitutional authority. but there's one question my constituents asked me back in texas is how can the president keep ignoring the law? how can he keep issuing waivers or delaying the implementation of laws that congress has passed? my only answer to them is congress can pass the laws, but the constitution gives the president the authority, the sole authority in the executive branch, the sole authority to enforce them. and when the attorney general and the executive branch refuse to enforce the laws, their only remedy really is at the ballot box and possibly lawsuits filed by outside groups that may take many years to be resolved. it's enormously frustrating to them and they worry that our

whole constitution framework is being undermined by the administration and this white house, selectively deciding which laws it's going to enforce and which it's not. so the president is basically saying obamacare means whatever i want it to mean. he's showing contempt for the rule of law and contempt for the separation of powers and our constitutional framework. just look at the i.r.s.. america's tax collection agency is in shambles due to the scandals that we all know way too much about. well, unfortunately, this same organization is going to be the one that actually helps to implement he obamacare, and it will issue tax subsidies through the federal exchanges, even though the law makes clear that only state exchanges qualify for these subsidies. americans are concerned also about how obamacare will affect their privacy rights. after all, the health care exchanges are scheduled to open

exactly one week from today, but there hadn't been adequate time to even test the data security system. meanwhile, according to the "wall street journal," the government's software can't reliably determine how much people need to pay for coverage. not quite ready for prime time. finally, there is the issue of fraud. i meptione mentioned that a momg the obamacare subsidies start next year but the government won't actually be verifying it will until 20156789 the president is effectively inviting people to game the system without fear of consequences. mr. president, the only way to effectively stop obamacare is to dismantle it entirely. that's why i strongly support the house bill that would defund obamacare and save the american people from this public policy train wreck. my colleagues and i stand ready to work with the president on smart, patient-centered health care reforms that will actually reduce costs and improve access.

but we refuse to help him salvage a law that has proven to be so unaffordable, unworkable and so completely at odds with what the american people were told the law would do when this bill was passed. mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. barrasso: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, this morning on coming in i found the morning's copy of "politico" with the headline, "obamacare: one blow after another." with a picture of a pill bottle there and it says "promises versus reality." i'm going to read a little bit of the way this article begins. it says, "the obamacare that consumers will finally be able to sign up for next week is a long way from the health plan president obama first pitched to the nation. millions -- millions of low-income americans won't

receive coverage. many workers an at small busines won't get a choice of insurance plans right away. large employers won't need to provide insurance for another day -- for another year. far more states than expected won't run their own insurance marketplaces, and a growing number of workers won't get to keep their employer-provided coverage." so what's the president going to do about it? he made all the pitches. he made all the promises, and the american people found out it is not true. so today president obama is going to turn one more time to his so-called secretary of explaining stuff to try to sell his health care law. the president and former president bill clinton will be holding a pep rally to try to convince people to sign up for health insurance and the new

exchanges that open one week from today. this health care law was supposed to be the signature achievement of the obama presidency. why does the president need to call for backup to explain it? it was supposed to be overwhelmingly popular by law. why does the obama administration need reinforcements to sell it? maybe because there are new polls out every day showing that the new law is more unpopular than ever. in an nbc poll, only 31% of people said that the president's health care law was a good idea. cnn found that 57% opposed most or all of the proposals in the law. washington democrats have been spinning that are hardest, but the american people know that the health care law is unaffordable, it is unworkable, and it is very, very unpopular. now, the last time bill clinton took to the stage to sell the health care law was about three weeks ago.

here was "the washington post" headline on that speech. it said, "clinton on the stun for healt -- on the stump for hh care law. obama has dispatched ex-president for support as crucial stage nears." bill clinton repeated a lot of the same old broken promises about p what the law will dovment he also gave the sold, old tired excuses for why it will fall short. he said, "there might be some glitches, there might be some unanticipated issues, but there were simple issues to all of these." what bill clinton didn't do, what he didn't do was honestly and seriously talk about the real problems with the obama health care law. he never spoke directly to the american people who will be hurt by the law. so when bill clinton took t trao the stage today, i hope he will speak to those folks.

he should speak to those who have had their work hours cut because of the law. it is happening all across the country. towns, counties, school districts have had to cut back hours of our workers. they need to keep more employees in a part-time status to reduce the burden burdens and expensese health care law enforcement they're limiting the hours they can pay bus drivers, substitute teachers and other middle-class workers. more than 250 different employers across the country have had to take steps to reduce the burden of the president's health care law. president obama owes part-time workers an explanation, and he owes them an apology. and if he won't do it, bill clinton should. the last time he spoke, president clinton failed to mention the economic consequences of the law. the obama administration did the same thing. he said there was only anecdotal evidence. the heads of three major labor

unions happen to disagree. they sent out a letter to democrats in congress that warned about the damage that the health care law is doing to their care and to their paychecks. they wrote that the health care law -- quote -- "will shatter -- will shatter -- not only our hard-earned health benefits but destroy the foundation of the 40-hour workweek that the the backbone of the american middle class." even the president's strongest supporters are being hurt by his health care law. they're getting hit in their pa- in their paychecks and they're getting hit hampletd i i believe that president obama owes union members an explanation and if he won't do it, bill clinton should. those union leaders are also upset that a lot of their generous health care plans that they have had will have to be cut because of the law. they said that -- quote -- "unintended consequences of the health care law are severe and that perverse incentives are

already creating nightmare have en that i remembe--nightmare sc" one company after another has had to make changes to their insurance plans under the obama health care law. president obama owes those middle-class workers an explanation, and he owes them an apology. and if he won't do it today, bill clinton should. the next group that president cline continue should talk to are the spouses who are losing their insurance coverage. the university of virginia recent a ons nod plans to drop spousal coverage for some of its imleesms the school said it was the president's health care law and it would add $7.3 million to the cost of its health plan in 2014. in a recent memo to employees, the shipping company u.p.s. said that it also plans to exclude 15,000 spouses from its insurance plan. the company of course cited the health care law as the top

reason for this switch. it said the increased expenses the government mandates have made it too difficult to keep offering the benefit. so just like the university of virginia, if a worker's husband or wife can get insurance from their other employer, then u.p.s. won't be covering them. president obama owes those spouses an explanation, and if he won't do it, bill clinton should. you know, finally, i hope that president cline it unwill be honest and speak -- i hope that president clinton will be honest and speak directly to young people, young people who will see their insurance premiums skyrocket. the health care law needs healthy young people to sign up for these exchanges in record numbers or the whole thing will collapse. that's what's at stake for the obama administration. so they're spending millions of dollars in advertising to convince young healthy people to buy expensive washington-approved insurance. "the los angeles times" ran a

headline over the weekend. "hollywood plays key role for health law. white house counsel on the entitlement industry to promote its plan, especially to young people." hollywood celebrities and bill clinton trying to convince young people to sign up. many of those young people will be paying more, and they're buying corchl tha coverage thaty not need and really may not be right for them. but they have to do it. they have to do it to help subsidize insurance for older individuals. and at the same time these young people can't find a job, they can't get full-time work. why? well, a lot because of the perverse incentives of the health care law. president obama owes those young people an explanation and an apology. and if he won't do it, bill clinton should. the american people deserve more than sound bites and talking points and excuses. they deserve better than what they've gotten under this terrible health care law.

a few months ago the white house saw that its employer mandate was a bad idea. so they delayed the mandate for a year. the republicans think that all americans deserve a delay. there are real problems with this health care larks mr. president. there are a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of unintended consequences and a lot of ways that the law can do more harm than good for middle-class americans. we should delay the law permanently and work out a better replacement that actually reformes health care the right -- reforms health care the rye way. the american people wanted health care reform. they wanted refor reform. the american people know that the obama health care law didn't give them what they asked for. president obama failed to keep his promises and he's failed at changing the public's opinion. so now he's going to be bill clinton's warmup act in a

last-ditch sales job. well, what former president clinton should do is talk to the american people who president obama has ignored. and you only have to look at yesterday's "new york times," front page, "lower premiums to come at cost of fewer choices. impact of health care law: in new plans, insurance often leave out many providers." the president said, like what you have, you can keep it. you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. even the california plan that the president touts, when you take a look at what is offered there in the insurance exchanges, the program, the network -- the new network for thousands and thousands of people, tens of thousands of doctors across the state, does not include the five medical centers of the university of california or the cedar-sinai medical center nearly beverly hills.

there are fewer in new hampshire, excluding ten of the state's 26 hospitals from health plans that it will sell through the insurance exchange. so, mr. president, as i prepare to yield the floor, i think it is time for the president to admit that the health care law is terribly flawed, promise after promise has been broken, and it is time for democrats and republicans to work together to give the american public the care that they need and deserve. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. mr. sanders: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. sanders: i just want to make a few points this morning and say what i think is on many americans' minds. there is a reason why the favorability rating of congress is at 10% or less, and that is because the middle class of this curntion thcountry, the vast maf

our people, are hurting. their worried about the kind of future our kids will have. and they look at washington and they ask, what is going on? our republican friends in the house on 42 separate occasions attempted to defund obamacare, and on 42 separate occasions, they failed. there was a presidential election in which this issue of whether we expand health care to another 20 million americans, whether we end the obscenity of preexisting conditions where people who have had serious health problems are denied health care, whether we end that, whether we make sure i had cans 26 years of age or younger are on their parents' health insurance plan, whether they do more for disease prevention, et cetera, that was debated heavily

in the presidential election. and guess what? the republican candidate who wanted to defund obamacare lost that election. and now, quite incredibly, what the republicans are saying is, yeah, we failed 42 times, we lost the presidential election, but now we are prepared to shut down the entire united states government unless we end this legislation. it's not going to happen. they're not going to end obamacare. surely we need to improve it. i myself believe we need a medicare-for-all single-payer program and let's discuss how we can improve the program, how we can join the rest of the industrialized world in guaranteeing health care to all people as a right of citizenship, how we end the absurdity of in this country spending twice as much per person on health care as do the people of any other country. my republican friends really have nothing to offer on this

issue. 48 million americans have no health insurance. what are their ideas? they don't exist. but the point here is that no matter what your view may be about obamacare, it is i incredibly irresponsible and reckless and makes it country look incredibly foolish to the rest of the world that they are prepared to shut down the government unless they get their way on this issue. but most impl over america, while people are struggling, they're seeing this absurd debate about republican efforts to shut down the government unless they defund medicare. and people are saying what about us? while you have this silly political fight, what are you doing to improve our lives? what are you doing to address the fundamental economic realities in this country?

and that is that the middle class of this great country is disappearing. poverty is now -- more people are now living in poverty than at any time in history -- 46.5 million. and the gap between the very, very wealthy and everybody else is growing wider. so we have this unbelievable economic situation, while the vast majority of americans have seen a decline in their standard of living, people on top are doing phenomenally well. mr. president, there was just a report came out last week from the census bureau. quite incredible, that tells us that in terms of median family income, that family right in the middle of american society now is earning less income than they did 24 years ago. despite all of the increases in productivity, despite all the new technology, that family in

the middle is earning less income than 24 years ago. typical middle class family, by more than $5,000 since 1999 after adjusting for inflation. $5,000. average male worker earns $283 less last year than he did 44 years ago. average female workers earns $1,700 less last year than she did in 2007. meanwhile, people on top do incredibly well. between 2009 and 2012, 95% of all new income went to the top 1%. and we now have by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth. so where we are is that we have

a middle class that is disappearing, poverty very, very high, people on top doing phenomenally well. 48 million americans without any health insurance. and the republican solution to this plan is to bring down the government unless they can defund obamacare. mr. president, i think it is important for the american people to understand -- and it is not discussed here on the floor of the senate or in the media, what the long-term plan of the republican party is. is it simply to defund obamacare? no, it is not. is it simply to shut down the government? no, it is not. it is important to understand what this right-wing extremist ideology is all about and to have a serious discussion as to whether or not the american people want to go forward in that direction, which is a lot more than just defunding

obamacare or shutting down the government. mr. president, the texas republican party every year publishes a platform. and what's interesting about it is not just that texas is a very large state, conservative state, but the ideas that emanate from texas often become mainstream in the republican party a few years later. so i think it's important to understand what long-term republican party wants to do. let me just tell you some of the planks, some of the positions that were in the republican party platform in 2012 so that we understand that what is being discussed today -- some cuts in social security, voucherization of medicare, massive cuts in food stamps, that's not the end game. that's the beginning of the

game. this is from the 2012 texas republican party platform. and let me quote. i'm quoting. "we support an immediate and orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts and gradually phasing out the social security tax." end of quote. what that means, and i give them credit for being upfront and straightforward about the issue, that is ending social security. that's it. social security has been the most effective and successful federal program in modern american history, taking tens and tense of millions of seniors -- tens and tens of millions of seniors out of poverty and basically what the texas republican party is saying, we don't want to just cut social security -- many people want to do that -- we want to end it. and if you are old, what happens

to you when you're 75 years of age and you have no income coming in? it's not their worry. furthermore, i quote, and i want every veteran -- i speak as chairman of the veterans' committee. i want every veteran in america to understand long-term, not today, long-term goals, from 2012 texas party platform. quote -- "we support the privatization of veterans health care." end of quote. in other words, we have six million veterans today who are receiving good-quality health care at the v.a.. i myself think we should expand the program, at least a million veterans out there are not getting -- are uninsured right now who could utilize v.a. health care. i myself think that the eligibility requirements are too stringent. we should bring more people into the system. but our republican friends in texas -- and again, this is becoming mainstream -- they want to end veterans' health care.

next point -- and i quote -- "we support abolishing all federal agencies whose activities are not specifically enumerated in the constitution, including the department of education and energy." end of quote. well, the vast majority of people in the scientific community who study global warming thinks that global warming is a crisis today that's only going to get worse. and the only way we deal with that issue is having a concrete policy. they want to abolish the department of education. millions of young people all over this country cannot afford the cost of college today. low-income kids, middle-class kids are struggling educationally all over this country. they want to abolish the department of education. furthermore -- and i quote -- "we oppose mandatory kindergarten." end of quote. one of the great crises in this country today is the child-care

crisis, crisis of early childhood education, working families in vermont and all over this country having a hard time getting affordable child care. they want to -- quote -- "we oppose mandatory kindergarten." end of quote. quote -- "we believe the environmental protection agency should be abolished." end of quote. not cut. abolished. so we can go back to the days when companies could throw their garbage into our rivers and our streams, pollute the air, make kids sick, and get away with it with impunity because there is nobody there saying it is against the law. nobody can enforce the law. they want to abolish the environmental protection agency and endanger the health and well-being of kids and americans all over this country. furthermore -- and i quote -- "we recommend repeal of the 16th amendment of the u.s. constitution with the goal of abolishing the i.r.s. and replacing it with a national

sales tax collected by the states." end of quote. what does that mean? it means the ending of any form of progressive taxation. as i pointed out earlier, the wealthiest people in this country are doing phenomenally well. the middle class is disappearing. what that means is you end the ability to ask the wealthiest people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes. you put the tax burden on the middle class and working families, which is what they want to do. lower taxes for the rich, raise it for the middle class and working families. quote unquote -- "we favor abolishing the capital gains tax and estate tax.." the estate tax applies to the very, very richest people in this country. why not abolish it and put the burden of taxation on working families? here's one i think many americans don't fully appreciate where they're coming from. mr. president, i hope very much that this congress will begin to

address the huge crisis facing tens of millions of workers who are today working for starvation wages. the bottom line is that one of the reasons that poverty in america is increasing is people can't make it on $7.25, $8, $9 an hour. we have got to raise the minimum wage. it is now $7.25 nationally. got to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. now there can be an honest debate about how much higher the minimum wage should go. i understand it. i think that california has recently raised it to $10 an hour. the state of washington has it higher. my own state of vermont has it higher than $7.25. we can have that debate. but this is what everybody in america should understand. in terms of the debate with my republican colleagues, that debate will not be how high we raise the minimum wage above $7.25, this is what the texas republican party platform in 2010 says -- quote -- "we believe the minimum wage should

be appealed." let me repeat it.. "we believe the minimum wage law should be repealed." end of quote. and it turns out that more and more of my colleagues here in the senate have beenup front about that. now what does that mean in the real world? what it means in those areas of our country where unemployment is extremely high and you're going to have a lot of competition for jobs, what employers will say is you want to work? tell you what, we're going to give you $3.50 an hour. and if you don't want that, that's all right, i've got that person over there who is prepared to take that job, because i've got a line of people out there are who are unemployed, who are prepared to work for any wage. and we no longeing going to have a floor -- and we no longer are going to have a floor on wages in america. that is what the texas republican party believes. that is what more and more of my colleagues believe.

so, mr. president, the point that i am making this morning is that the fight we are having right now over shutting down the government, the debate that i am sure will ensue shortly after about whether or not we raised debt ceiling and whether or not for the first time in the history of the united states we don't pay our bills, causing not only a national financial crisis but an international financial crisis, all of these issues are related to something that is much, much larger. and that is the transformation of american society in a radically different way than it is today. and what my republican colleagues, almost without exception, want to do now is take us back into the 1920's where working people had

virtually no protection at all on the job, no minimum wage, no job safety protection, where social security didn't exist, where medicare didn't exist, so that if you are old and you got sick, well, your future was not very bright. if you're poor and you got sick, you had nothing. they want to take us back to a time when a handful of corporations and wealthy people controlled the economic and political life of this nation. i do not believe that is where the american people want to go. i believe that the american people want us to start focusing on issues of relevance to them, and that is the understanding that we need to create millions of decent-paying jobs by, among other approaches, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. the need to create jobs by making this country more energy

efficient so we can lower fuel bills and cut back on greenhouse gas emissions. what the american people want us to do is focus on the crisis of low wages in this country, to raise the minimum wage. they want us to make college education more affordable. they want us to end these horrendous loopholes that enable major multinational corporations in some cases to pay nothing in federal taxes. so, mr. president, i think the time is long overdue for this congress to start representing the working families of this country, the middle class of this country, and not simply wealthy campaign contributors. and with that, mr. president, i would yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the 1230r from arizona. flake i ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. the senate will consider the following no many knee, which the clerk will report. the clerk: the judiciary, todd m. hughes of the district of columbia to be united states circuit judge for the federal circuit. the presiding officer: under the previous order, there will be 30 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form. mr. flake: i ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. flake: mr. president, as we debate legislation to keep the government running, we should not be debating a budget number that is higher than what the budget control act asks for. frankly, this a statement that shouldn't have to be said here on the senate floor. why would we even begin to consider a budget number that is some $20 billion higher than the

budget control act? have we somehow become flush with cash? i don't think so. have we decided to run the country the way -- have we decided that the way to run the country is to increase spending for a few month months only to e the sequester kick in in january? who are we kidding? we're not kidding 340s -- we're not kidding most americans. once again we find ourselves on the brink of a showdown and a shutdown. it is the same old story that amid the back-and-forth between the two sides of the aisle, americans don't see congress getting serious about spending. we fail to pass even one of the 12 spending bills to responsibly fund the government for the fiscal year that starts in just a few days. had we taken up these bills in regular order, members would have had the opportunity to review and consider our spending

priorities. that's what people expect us to do here. instead, we've procrastinated and put off the hard decisions like a bufnlg of teenagers putting beneficiary like a bunch of teenagers putting off the pain of a term paper. but this has more serious consequences. the senate could have voted on these bills setting spending priorities while abiding by the $967 billion cap for the next year, but instead we chose to go through the motions of preparing spending bills as if no spending limit existed with the knowledge that these bills would never see the light of day. now, as we quickly approach the 1st of october, we're faced with either passing the continuing resolution with a price tag of $986 billion, $19 billion more than the law allows, or risk a government shutdown. the senate should, at the very least, take up a spending resolution that respects the realities we face, one i that

weres the budget control act, one that funds government at the $967 billion level for next year. if we pass a bill above the limit set by law, we will simply cause another round of sequester cuts in january p. i'm all for responsible sequester replaced in legislation that brings down our national debt but we cannot and weaken the law of the land, the budget control act that has locked in real and meaningful cuts in spending. as such, i hope that the majority leader allows us to have a vote on a fiscally responsible continuing resolution. the majority leader has made clear that his intention to amend the continuing resolution to address his concerns, a fair process would include affording other members the same opportunity. any process that yields a take it or leave it approach to

funding the government while ignoring spending caps that are the law of the land is, quite simply, irresponsible. mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president, i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. leahy: mr. president? the presiding officer: the

senator from vermont. mr. leahy: mr. president, i ask consent the call of the quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. leahy: mr. president, i have eight unanimous consent requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders. i ask unanimous consent the requests be agreed to and the requests be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. leahy: mr. president, what is the parliamentary situation? the presiding officer: the senate is currently considering the hughes nomination. mr. leahy: we're voting on the nomination of todd hughes to fill a judicial vacancy to the united states court of appeals for the federal circuit, an extremely important court but also an important milestone. if confirmed, mr. hughes will be the first openly gay judge to serve on a federal appellate court in our nation's history. i'm proud the senate has finally taken an historic step to break

down another barrier and increase diversity on our federal bench. i ask the full text of my statement be placed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. leahy: let me speak about another important matter. i remember that bill murray movie "groundhog day. " a wonderful movie, farcical, but nowhere near as farcical as the groundhog day we have once again in congress where we find ourselves in a funding crisis manufactured by a small partisan faction who say they're doing it for the good of the country as they watch people's pension funds and their savings for their kids college, everything else go south because of the concern of everything the markets to investors have wondering if the congress can

get their act together and actually do what we were elected to do. this small group, small group of ideologues, continue to turn their backs to reality and insist the "my way or the highway" ultimatum for the rest of the country. what that does is produce a bipartisan solution for the funding bill and leads us to the brink of a government shutdown. you know, mr. president, i love my grandchildren. they range from 5 to 15. i've watched them grow up. i see them on the playground when they are one, two, three and four years old. they sometimes have little squabbles, but they work it out. this is a playground that would be a terrible ask scam -- example to children in a

schoolyard. this crisis again artificial and its effects on the american people as we anticipate a shutdown are just as real as they are avoidable. the american people are weary of this brinksmanship, manufactured crisis one after another. it is as harmful to our american economy still tentatively gaining footing after the great recession. some could come here and posture in this body or the other body about how they'll shut down the government if they don't have their way because they figured it out better than everybody else. they'll get their two or three minutes on television, and they'll be very happy they did. people who see their businesses closing, they see their stocks go down, see their savings dry up, see their jobs closed off just so somebody can get on

television; they're not thrilled about this, especially when it's all totally unnecessary. this is preventing even a temporary spending bill from making it to the president's desk, is the affordable care act. unfortunately ever since its enactment many republicans in congress have been determined to derail the law and prevent its implementation. they don't come up with a better idea. they say it's all or nothing. they don't come up and say what are we going to do to help pay for your kids' insurance when they're in college? what are we going to do to help your family if they have a preexisting condition? no, we're just going to say no to everything. well, instead of doing the people's business, like enacting routine budget measures before the end of the fiscal year, the house has voted more than 40 times this year alone to defund

this landmark law, the affordable care act. they have no interest in fixing problems or making it better. only in blowing it up. they don't come up with one single idea how they might make it better. they don't come up with anything that they propose. here's our idea that can be better. no. let's get rid of it all. they actually -- that was the -- i am reminded that was the position of their candidate for president a year ago. if he got elected president, he would do away with it. what did the american people n.s.a. i recall how that -- say? i recall how that election came out. the legislation passed by the house last year is not the only one. they refused to bring a farm bill that garnered enough bipartisan votes to pass. as the chair of our committee did here in the senate where we had a bipartisan bill.

house leaders took the unprecedented step earlier this year splitting food assistance for the other essential programs supported by the farm bill, even though we passed a farm bill to save $25 billion to $35 -- $30 billion. the house voted on a separate title which moves us further away from enacting a farm bill pw-fs -- before the programs expire september 30. this latest maneuver means even more uncertainty for farmers. instead of standing with the millions of americans who are still struggling to put food on the table, house members who never have to go hungry except by choice because of the huge salaries they make, it is regrettable house republicans -rp -- are turning to slashing essential nutritional help for

americans. it is the key part of enacting a strong farm bill for this country. it is a reality recognized by the bipartisan senate-passed farm bill. house cut snap benefits by levels ten times as high as a bipartisan senate bill, twice as high as the house original bill. these cuts would mean that each year an average of three million people would be kicked off food assistance, even those working and making as little as $2,500 per year. what's worse, the bill will mean hundreds of thousands of children will lose access to school meals. ask any teacher -- ask any teacher whether in hawaii, vermont or any other state, ask any teacher does a hungry child learn? of course not. these school meals are an investment in our future. they are an investment in our

children. they are an investment in having people learn, who can continue the economy of the united states in the future. so what do we say? we're not going to feed them. we're not going to feed them. in a country that spends billions of dollars just to get rid of excess food, spends billions of dollars on needless diet programs, but we can't feed children in school. it's shameful. it's mean-spirited. it's shortsighted. and it hurts america. it hurts america. if that were not enough, the house republicans also served a bill with benefits every three years, plenty of time for americans to find a job that pays enough to feed a family. get real. get real. have they seen what's happened to the economy in this country? have they seen what's happened as we try to drag ourselves back from the horrible recession that they put us into a few years

ago? unfortunately, there is only one job for every three unemployed workers, simply telling out-of-work americans to get a job is easier said than done. somebody ought to ask them why don't they do their jobs? times of high unemployment are the very reasons we have food assistance, very reason the food programs were always carried by republicans and democrats working together to help americans get back on their feet. and despite the heated rhetoric, our food stamp program is working as intended. i was fortunate to come here when you'd have two men is entirely different in philosophy, both with nominees of their party to run for president. one george mcgovern, the other bob dole worked together to feed the hungry people in this country, especially the food lunch program.

the congressional budget office forecast the snap costs will fall over the next several years as the economy improves. you get people back to work and those costs come down. you have children educated, they will create jobs. so we have bumper sticker politics appealing to our worst instincts. it's childish, it's irresponsible. i might say it's immoral. the house-passed c.r. and the house so-called farm bill only worsens the gridlock that crippled the senate since our return from the august recess. we were elected not to grandstand, but to legislate. let's legislate around here and stop running to the cameras, give a little sound bites, "i'm stand up for america as i do everything to kill the american economy." you know, we were not elected to make government less efficient, even unable to make the most basic decision the american people elect us to make.

the american people want our problems solved now with fair solutions. it's with the give-and-take of our representative government. mr. president, i appreciate the fact that people of my state, republicans and democrats together, have given me the honor of serving here and have become the longest-serving senator from our state and also the longest-serving senator in this body today. i've seen republicans and democrats work together on these problems. i've seen people in the past do that. i know it can be done. but not when a tiny minority says we're the only ones that know what to do, and we will make the decision. no. we have good men and women in the house and the senate in both parties. let's stop th the bumper-sticker politics. let's get back to work and do things the way they should be

done. i've not given up hope, starting with a spending measure we'll consider this week and send back to the house, without the hyper partisan bumper-sticker riders. there's still time to shot america-- to showthe american py we were sent here. this is the great nation. this is a wonderful nation. it becomes that way when people are willing to work together. i ask my full remarks be made part of the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. leahy: mr. president, i don't see anybody -- i'll yield back all the time. the presiding officer: without objection. the question is on the hughes nomination. mr. leahy: i ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll.

vote:

vote:

vote:

vote: the presiding officer: anyone wishing to vote or wishing to change their vote? if not, the ayes are 98 and the nays zero, and the nomination is agreed to. under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid on the table. the president will be immediately notified of the senate's actions, and the senate will resume legislative. under the previous order, the senate stands in recess until senate stands in recess until

>> so that wraps up the judicial nomination of todd hughes to be a u.s. circuit court judge. you may have just heard the vote affirming the judge's nomination was 98-0. members now takeing a break to attend their weekly party caucus lunches. we expect more work on the temporary federal spending bill known as a continuing resolution or cr when they return at 2:15 p.m. eastern. some news on that front. earlier today reid l h -- senate majority leader reid would not allow fill bustier for the test vote tomorrow. here is how "politico." it is quote all over in the senate except for the theatrics. senate majority leader harry reid made it clear. republicans will not be able to perform a talking filibuster to delay indefinitely the spending bill the senate is considering

this week. senate minority leader mitch mcconnell put the icing on the case. he wouldn't back an effort to block the bill from receiveing a final up-or-down vote. quote, i want to make sure everyone understands there is no filibuster today. that is mitch mcconnell. senator reid said we'll continue to follow that story and, we'll bring you updates as warranted. elsewhere on the hill, "the hill" reporting that majority leader reid will likely accept the government funding levels passed by house republicans last week. that could pave the way for a bipartisan agreement to avert a government shutdown and give republicans some political cover if they drop their obamacare defunding demands much. that's from "the hill." taking a look at some congressional tweets on issue. washington democratic senator patty murray says a cnbc poll women firmly oppose defunding obamacare under any circumstances maybe because they have the most to lose.

north carolina republican congressman richard husband writes -- >> now some programing information for you. , join us thursday for live coverage after long-term economic outlook from cbo director doug doug elmendorf. starting 10:00 a.m. eastern live on our companion network, c-span3.

>> some pollsters are looking to virginia's gubernatorial race to continue studying population and demographic shifts to america's suburbs and how this will affect future elections in america. american university hosted the discussion monday in washington, d.c. the 2012 presidential election results spotlighted how demographics played a role in president obama's win over gop nominee mitt romney. elizabeth williamson, a reporter with the "wall street journal" who covered the 2012 race was among several polling experts participating in today's panel. this is just under 90 minutes. >> my name's john kornaki. i'm assistant director of the washington institute for public affairs research. we're one of the sponsoring groups here today. the washington institute for public affairs research is

really the, it's the gateway between the research faculty and the outside world. we help fund projects, research projects. we help the faculty work on their ideas and we like to share the fruits of those ideas with the public at large. i guess this would be an example of just what that is. we're delighted, by the way, john gould is the director of that program. he's my boss and he is here today. i wanted to recognize him. i also have the pleasure of having this cosponsorship of the center for congressional and presidential studies which many of you have heard of directed by jim thurber and one of my panelists, an ton yo think nonknock did, yoshinaka. overall the best way to describe what we're doing today. this is a big public briefing in this fine room. is really about the school of public affairs. both of our units are here. you the students are from here, at least most of you, many

faculty members are from the school. this is first in the series of what we think will be entertaining and enlightening discussions for your discussions and involvement in the research we do here and there is really no one more important than can tell you about the story than the person who encouraged this from the get-go. when i met the new dean, she's been here a year-and-a-half now, she continues to talk about how proud she is of the high impact research that's done at this school. so there's really no one bettory introduce this session than the dean of the school of public affairs, scholar in her own right, barbara ramzak. barbara. [applause] >> thank you, john. i want to start out by complimenting john gould and john kornacki and the work of the group as well as the sponsorship of the center for

congressional and presidential studies. jim thurber's group brings a great deal of knowledge and ex-per tease to this. and ypar has been busy trying to create these briefings for us. now these briefings are very important to the school of public affairs. they're important because they are an opportunity for us to bring experts from d.c. to campus for our students but it is also a chance for us to showcase our faculty and the research that's being done on campus about important pressing issues of the day. and we're going to be talking about fragmentation of political discourse. we're going to be talking about shifting suburbs and where the voting emphasis tends to be these days. all of this is important for us to understand current politics. the current politics have become, just need to look at the morning's newspapers, increasingly fragmented and we

as a country are facing important issues that are growing to have serious economic impact. we have, we're facing just this, in the next few weeks we're facing important challenges over whether the government is going to continue to be operating after october 1st. we're facing an issue of, a crisis about whether we will have approval for extending the debt ceiling. both of those can affect significantly the perception of how effective the united states is, how effective our federal government is, what kind of health we have as a political community. the underlying dynamics of those kind of contentious debates are going to be explained to us today. it's rooted in our politics. now, we're going to find out what that is. we're going to find out what we can do about it. it is really related to some very complicated shifting demographics, some complicated economics and some geographic shifts that we're having. i ask you to join me please in,

welcoming the panel and and welcoming our distinguished guests and also welcoming the c-span viewers out there. thank you. [applause] >> good to talk to you again, barbara. in many ways this is the fruits of the work that you and the faculty have done this past year in kind of identifying key directions for the school to move into. we're delighted to bring this panel to you. let me briefly introduced the panelists. you have before you two of the best pollsters around from the best organizations around. mike bloomfield from the mellman group. how would we put that? left-leaning political organization. >> democrat. >> a democrat. i was being kinder. or, more softer. mike, we're delighted you could be here representing the mehlman group.

we have on the other side, bill mcintough, works for the other side, mcintuff, who work with the data from the republican data we have today. with them is elizabeth williamson who happens to be a cowriter at "the wall street journal" with our project director who will share what she has been doing. i was remember someone looking allowed den county and taking her lens to louden county. joining them, anantoine yoshinaka in the school of public affairs. antoine is doing work on congressional redistricting among other things and will look at insight into the data that filedded. one of the first faculty members i met when i first came to campus, gentleman to my immediate left, a rather unusual member of the faculty since he is not a social science.

almost all the scholars in school of public affairs are social scientists. usually political scientist. some economists and there are a few lawyers there too. dante is journalist, active journalist and an inventor too. the thing that makes dante kind of unique he has the head or the brain of a social scientist but he has the heart of a journalist. a few years ago -- >> good at math. >> and he is good at math. for a journalist, unusual, right? he played around with numbers. a few years ago he invented something you may be familiar with, called patchwork nation. and instead of looking at states, he began to look at counties as the units that are most interesting, perhaps, the most fundamental in understanding the way the country is moving, not just politically, but in a whole realm of things. we're delighted that, that dante has evolved that project into something we now call the new american communities project based right here at the school

of public affairs at american university. in talking to dante about this early on, many of us thought, wow, there's some interesting stuff in here. we should get into it. we should share it. hence the development of this panel and the development of what dante chini, journalist, with the, journalist, and social sign scientist will now tell us about the american communities project. daunte. [applause] >> thank you, john, thank you, dean. thank y'all for coming today. it might have been hard to get up after finding out the redskins are 0-3 but life goes on and so we're all here. what i want to do quickly is offer a brief overview of what the acp is, the american communities project and how it works, what we can do with it, and i want to swing and talk about the suburbs. the acp was really born out of

my frustration with red and blue america. i think red and blue america are fine for understanding score keeping. you have to keep score. we essentially have a two teams in america. we have a red team and blue team. we have to fill maps to see who wins. the problem with those maps is that, there you go, is that they become shorthand definitions for the country and i think they miss the point. so you have the 2004 kerry-bush map on the left and what is devolved into or what it did devolve into for a lot of people in the united states. i think that again, we have to have a way of keeping score. but that map misses a lot of nuance. i think it was completed by somebody in the united states of canada. it misses red parts of new york and misses blue parts of texas. it also misses difference between blue and red faces. there is difference between democratic community and college town that is democratic

community. there is difference between rural nebraska and exurban minneapolis. those places are really different and this does that a huge disservice. we talk about politics in this country we talk about demographics. i like talking about dim graphics too, talking about men, women, african-americans, hispanics. people on the stage do very good work about this data and i write about this data often. i like it. my problem with it has always been it takes these people and disassociates them from place too much so that this woman who is 20 something lives in new york and likes to go to a lot of clubs i like to go to looks the same as this woman who lives really in rural kansas and has four kids and lives a very different kind of life. so in response to these kind of two different ways of looking at america, solely demographic system and a system that is based really just on big units of geography and whether they're democratic or republican we came up with this the american communities project.

and what we did is we basically took scores of, scores of demographic data sets and weed at them across every county in the country and use ad clustering technique to identify different kind of community america. if you look at this map some are very regional. you see some, you see some along the south. you see the southeast. you see along the southwest. you see a big chunk around utah. you see the purple areas through this. a lot of evangelicals in there. some are really not so much about regions as they are a about really urban suburban culture and metropolitan culture and you see those places pop up around you see pink and orange around die voight, chicago, minneapolis, a bit in denver and along the east coast. these places this is really different kind of place in america that's not about a region so much but about a mind-set. that's what we're going to talk about a little bit today. when you take this map and you

look at it just in terms of the sheer data, this is what the numbers look like. 15 different types of communities in america. and these are the number of counties for each and population for each. what we're going to do today, i will try to use this laser pointer, i've never done this before. it should be fun. we'll talk about these excerpts. we'll talk about the big cities, the suburbs around them and the urban suburbs. the way to think of these places, the big cities are buy and large the counties with 50 largest cities in america. urban suburbs are densely populated suburban areas, sit immediately next to the big cities. some are scattered but mostly next to those big cities. middle suburbs are based primarily in the rust belt and midwest they are fundamentally different. they're whiter. less slightly educated and older. the exurbs most of us know what the exurb is right? it is next ring out after looking at an urban area.

so what does this tell us? so what, right? what does this all mean? what this means is, it give you a different way of looking at all sorts of data, any data that is geotagged where you know the person came from. this includes census data, unemployment data, anything about culture. so polling data what people watch, what people read. you can use this to filter the numbers and look at it in a different way. what we'll do is look at what it means for the 2012 election because i think it is particularly instructive in looking at results from 2012. if we can do that. here we go. okay. these are the 2012 exit polls. this is what happened, you know, there's a massive exit poll taken the night of the election. they break them down. when they break them down this is what it looks like. this is what it looked like for 2012 anyway. barack obama wins huge in urban areas. mitt romney wins huge in urban areas and romney ekes out a win in the suburbs. i think the problem with this break down is that the united states is much more complicated

just having cities, suburbs and rural areas. i think you miss a lot when you look at this way and when you use the american communities project, the the acp to break dn the data. it looks like this. obama westerns huge in the big cities, obviously. romney wins huge in the exurb areas. metropolitan america. exurb ban areas he wins huge. middle suburbs romney eakss out a victory. what is tell something urban suburbs. this is really suburban america. depending on your definition but the way we define it. when you define it this way, a 16-point win is pretty big win. it is more telling when you look what happened since 2000. hope you can see these. this on the top you're looking at big cities. these are the vote in the urban bushes. blue line is obviously democratic candidate, red line is republican candidate. middle -- middle suburbs and

exurbs. george w. bush lost the popular vote by a less than 1%age point. he won the exurb an areas by 17% points. mitt romney still won the exurbs by 11 percentage points. only did 1%age point worse than george w. bush in 2000. the big change what happened in big cities. particularly urban bushes, urban suburbs are very interesting to me because what happened is al gore did win the urban suburbs by 11 percentage points in 2,000 but barack obama won them by 16 percentage points in 2012. that is rear with people unhappy with the economic direction of the country, unhappy with the direction of the country as a whole. this suggesting something is going on. by the way, the urban suburbs obama beat romney by about five million votes in those places which is what he won the election by. look, there are all sorts of

other things going on in different kinds of communities around the country but that gap is very significant. so, what's going on in these places? why are the suburbs different or how are they different? i think they're different than we imagine them and they have become more different over the past 10 years or so. this is just looking at, really income and poverty in america using these four types and the thing that's interesting to me about these numbers you can see the urban suburbs are the wealthiest. they hold the most wealthy people. more incomes, 200,000 and above than any other type, any other type. definitely any of these four types but you see the number right behind them are these big city areas. they're the ex-usuals are very close to big cities. ex-usuals are very close. big cities and urban suburbs are not as far as apart in that area as you might think they are. i think a lot of people might assume the suburbs are more like the ex-usuals in this way. in terms of big wealth and some ways big earners they're more like the cities.

other thing interesting to me is. poverty. big cities have obviously highest poverty among these four types. we know what urban poverty is like. see it in washington, d.c. see it in a a lot of cities. the thing that is interesting, the urban suburbs, they are five points back or 17% versus 12% but they're higher than the exurbs. the urban suburbs are places where you have poverty and you have high wealth at the same time. the other thing that's interesting to me about them when you look at median household income the urban suburbs are the wealthiest. that means barack obama out of all the types i look at in, in the american communities project, urban suburbs, they are not just the wealthiest of these four types, they're the wealthiest in the country. using this breakdown, barack obama won wealthiest or highest median income counties in the country by 16 percentage points. i think that is kind of counterintuitive for a lot of people. i think it suggests there is something different going on in these places than we thought.

one thing going on really quickly is demographic shifts. so when you look at these numbers here, what you will see is that the white population, these are numbers from 2000 to 2011, the white population in the urban suburbs has dropped by four percentage points and it's dropped everywhere but the interesting thing in the bushes, the urban buschs it is now -- burbs it is, there is 9 percentage point divide in terms of percentage of white population in big city counts and urban burbs. there is only nine percentage point difference. that is because the big cities through gentryification, big city counties have grown whiter in some ways. then the other thing that is very interesting is the hispanic population. the hispanic population for urban burbs has risen t risen everywhere. in 2000 the urban burb hispanic population was roughly equal to the u.s. number.

12.5 nationally. of the twelve .7 in the urban burbs. it was pretty close. in last 10 years the urban burbs accelerated and seven points higher than the national average. the urban burb haves have groin particularly more hispanic. when i look at bill's numbers and you always see there is big hispanic divide. you see it in any set of polling date that that is democratic, they lean democratic. i wanted to talk about one more shift an turn it over to antoine. i like, consumer culture i think is undervalued as a measure of what's going on in the country. we work with experion. i have access to all of experion's data, experion consumer services. they have basically 10,000 surveys in the field. every mon they're coming in. they ask people everything from political preference to the soap they buy to the coffee they

drink and with that data they actually create indexes. they tell you places that overrepresent for liberals and underrepresent for conservatives or vice versa. so when you look at starbucks, the average, if you were, you know an average store you get equal amounts of liberals and conservatives it would be 100 for each. starbucks overindexes heavily for liberals. 140 versus conservative index of 91. when you look at the starbucks in these communities, obviously they're the most in the big cities, surprise, but there are far more in the urban suburbs. i actually broke this out. i didn't have room on the slide. i broke it out by per 100,000 population as well and there is nice stair effect. in big cities it is about 5.5 starbucks for every 100,000 people and 4.4 starbucks for every 4.100 you thousand people and exurbs it is 3.4 for everyone 100,000 people.

increase in number of stores from 2008 to 2013. they urban bp s have seen much more growth of starbucks. what does it mean? consumer culture we make fun of it is not really culture i guess but it is, it really defines what a places about. these places when you look at kind of stores that are in them, the kind of retail experiences that people have, which really ultimately shape their view of reality, they're trending more and more democratic. i think the long run what all these numbers mean over time, when you add everything up, these places are shifting democratic and it's becoming, it will become increasingly a problem for republicans if they can't reach these people. they need to find a way to reach these people. the populations are growing as antoine will talk about in a second. they're shifting democratic. republicans need to find a way basically to reach them again. the line used to be between the cities that were democratic and ex-urbs that were republican and

suburbs were battleground of the think what happened last 12 years suburbs shifted increasingly democratic. over the long term i think that is real problem for the gop. with that i will turn it over to antoine. thanks. [applause] >> nye name is antoine yoshinaka. i'm the token professor on the panel today. i will keep my comments brief, relatively brief. before i get into the i want to touch upon three very big themes i will talk about today. first one is, obviously this country has been growing quite a bit lately. but the growth is not equal everywhere.

there are areas that are growing out of at much faster rate than others. what i want to show you today is that the areas that are providing the most growth in this country are areas where actually democrats are doing increasingly well and conversely. where democrats are doing not so well in the last 10 years are areas that are not growing very fast, and, are not or some of them are not growing at all, so, for the republicans in the room i think that is something that you really want to, to understand, to see where the demographic shifts are occurring and where the political shifts are occurring. number two, building on what dante said, i think it is important to understand this category known as suburbs really masked some very important things between exurbs and on other hand, urban suburbs. that is the number two point. to show you some date that to suggest that this bifurcation between urban suburbs and the rest is recent phenomenon. we're talking about the last 10 years or some so the data i'm going to show you today and discuss will speak so those three things. so first of all, this is the first graph, looks at the

breakdown by county types, right? so there are 15 county types where barack obama in 2012 did better than al gore. you see at the bottom there, these are the big cities. this is where obviously al gore won the big cities by about 20 points. obama won the big cities by 30 points, right? he did considerably better in the big cities. he did better also in the college towns, hispanic centers and on the other hand, he did poorly relative to gore in, sort of evangelical areas of the country, sort of the working-class areas of the country. now, this graph, looking at this first graph, what we don't know is how much growth these various areas have sustained over the last decade or so. so you see here on right, those are areas that provide the most growth in this country.

that's about 60% of the growth in the last 10-years. a little more than 60%. comes from big cities, urban suburbs and exurbs. if you look, those are three areas that where barack obama did considerably better than al gore, especially the big cities, again by about 10 percentage points and urban suburbs by six percentage points. also, let's note, he actually did better than al gore did in exurbs. he still lost them by quite a big margin. . . of

>> if we're talking about small numbers, ultimately, much of the growth is not coming from those areas. so lds enclaves, obviously, mitt romney being mormon, evangelical hubs, sure, barack obama lost these and did rather poorly in those, but this is not where the country is growing. the three areas on the right, the big cities, the suburbs, the exurbs, those areas together represent about 175 million americans in those three areas alone whereas evangelical hubs are about 12 million, working class countries about, i think, 8 million or so, so those three red dots are about 25 million

americans living in those, those three blue dots upper right have about 175 million americans living in them. so let's look at what has happened. we picked one issue. there are, obviously, many issues that are important in the electorate in any given election, but we'll stick to this one which is global warming. so every election there's usually a question on survey, in surveys that asks voters if they think that global warming is, in this case, a very serious problem, somewhat serious problem, there's also the not so very serious problem or not a problem at all. so if we combine these very serious and somewhat serious problems, you can see a clear divide between folks who live in the big cities and the urban suburbs where about 70% think that global warming is either a very serious or a somewhat serious problem. and then you move on move on toe middle suburbs and the exyouurbs

where it's somewhere around 55% of americans who think it's a problem. that's about a 15-point gap. if you go back seven years ago in 2006, on the left there the same question about global warming. and you see the breakdown between the four categories not so much of a divide anymore. right? so even just seven years ago folks who lived in the big cities, the suburbs, the middle suburbs, they all thought global warming was a problem at about a 75% rate. and then you fast forward to 2012, and that divide is clearly present between, on the one hand, big cities and urban suburbs and middle suburbs and exurbs. and those are the trends that we think are partly explaining why, you know, urban suburbs are really areas where democrats are doing increasingly better, and

they're resembling cities more and more. for those of you familiar with the d.c. area, we're talking about montgomery county. that would be an example. how people live in montgomery county ideologically and in terms of partisanship are probably much more like folks who live in d.c. rather than folks who live sort of further out in, outside of the d.c. area. so before i turn the microphone over, i just wanted to leave you with two questions that we -- that this raises, i think, that this research raises that, you know, we don't have an answer yet. one is that we don't know yet whether this is an obama effect or a party effect. so in 2014 and in 2016 once barack obama is off the ballot, will these trends continue, or will they revert back to a pre-obama era? that's, obviously, something we can't answer right now. and the second one is if it's true that urban suburbs are

changing, i think the natural question that emerges from that is whether it's changing because new people are moving in and bringing with them a different set of ideological preferences and issue preferences, etc., or are those shifts occurring because people who have live inside those areas for a while are changing their minds, right? they're looking at the political landscape, they're looking at politics at the national level in congress, and they're changing their mind when it comes to issues such as global warming, when it comes to issues such as gay marriage and abortion. so i'll leave you those questions and turn the microphone over to elizabeth. >> oh, i, you know, suggest that maybe we sort of throw it open -- >> yeah, i was going to say the same thing. we're going to let the panel take a look, and, elizabeth, you could start this if you wish to, to take a look at what your reactions are to this and

anybody else on the panel to kind of take a look at it. i'll start with you, elizabeth, because we talked about louden account and what's changing. -- county and what's changing. yesterday i went out to the rural parts of louden county, a place called bluemont. it used to be pretty much cattle and truck farms and horse country and pickup trucks and small towns, etc. large places. the bluemont arts festival was there, and i was in -- when looking at the parking lot, there were far more beemers than pickups. now, obviously, a lot of the people that were there came from the eastern part of louden county, like yours truly. but it was, to me, a symbol of what is happening there and what has happened in the past ten years. that's your kickoff. >> okay. yeah. louden county and i'm not sure how many folks in the room are from the d.c. region or if

you're from elsewhere in the united states, but louden county is the wealthiest county, according to the last census, in the nation. the d.c. area has eight of the ten richest counties in the country, and louden is at the top of that heap. so what you're seeing is a place that used to be just this green expansion of rural americana turning into some of these urban suburbs that dante and antoine are describing. it's really interesting to see how this plays out on the ground, because in cities like leesburg which is the capital of louden, you have -- it's a colonial town. it grew up, i think, in 1768. it was founded. and it first started to to sprawl out into, like, mcmansions and big box stores and malls and big shopping centers, office parks.

and now what's happening is that that whole landscape is changing because there's just a glide path of brains and money coming down 267 from the city and also from the dulles technology corridor can, -- corridor, and those people want to live in louden. but their characteristics are a lot different than the people who were living there when this whole process got underway about 15 years ago. and that's they're younger, they're more highly educated, they don't just come from d.c. or suburbs in the d.c. region, they come from all over the nation because they're drawn by the government function, government contracting, the think tanks, the research center, the universities. so what they want is not a picket fence and a quarter or a third of an acre lot anymore what they really want is to live over retail. they want to walk to transit. they want to live the way they

lived in the college center they came from or in the urban city they came from. so as these guys are describing, it's changed the politics too. they tend to be more democratic voters. louden was an entirely republican bastion 15 years ago. so you see dual pressures. you see the demographic pressure and the political changes that a that creates, and you see the influx of a totally demographically-different type of individual and the pressure that that places on the tax base with, on development, on the retail mix, on housing. and that is a really fascinating phenomenon that is absolutely not exclusive to louden. it happens all over the region. and that is what's driving this sort of slow shift that's happening in the urban suburbs, the fastest-growing communities in the country. >> bill, michael?

yeah. push the mic over. >> well, here's the, a little perspective. hi, bill mcintuff, thanks to american university. i've worked with jim and a lot of different folks and just terrific programs. in 2004 george bush carried 98 of the 100 fastest-growing counties. and so after the 2004 election, the debate was about the substantial problem facing the democratic party because in the fastest-growing parts of the country, i mean, 98 out of 100, sort of beyond margin of error. and, of course, we've had the great recession since then, and those recessions have changed the counties, and that's something dante and his partners have done a lot of work on. but it's a cautionary tale, and it's a cautionary tale and over my long career i keep being asked different times to look at

long-term kind of party change, meaning whether or not there's alignment. and i've been asked to do this different times in my career, and every time there's this predicted realignment i keep saying the following: one, there are too many independents in american parties and that those z are conflicting views that kind of restrict long-term realignment. but this work is very important. and, of course, the other thing about data, and this is what's so powerful about the data set being created, is you can test data with a hypothesis. one thing i'm very curious about is for example -- and this is why the exit polls are such a powerful database -- it'd be very possible inside the exit poll to look at whites and just whites in these kind of urban counties. and my speculation would be the white vote did not shift that much, and that what's happening in these urban counties is, to answer the two questions that

were posed, is that we're watching what is the most important story in this country pretty chi which is the growth of -- politically which is the growth of the latino population as a voting percent. and what you're seeing here on the chart is that the urban counties tip below 70% white. and when in today's political terms when you drop below 70, white republicans lose. and it speaks to republicans, in my mind, either have to be competitive with the latino vote, or they tart getting this kind of -- they start getting this kind of pressure happening in other counties. and so my own thesis is this is less of a shift of the white vote and more of a shift in the changing demographics meaning the growth of the latino population. and among the reasons that's important is the latino population is sort of like where african-americans were kind of pre-obama and 20 years ago which is you have a lot of places where the latino population is

like 25% of all population, it's 21% of adults because they have so many kids, and of the 21%% of adults, it's is 18% of registered voters and then 16% of turnout. but those kids are going to rapidly age into voters, and when they do, they'll start voting at the same or higher rates, and then what with other going to see is the latino percent's going to start mirroring instantly the percent of rebelling dispraition in 10 or 12 years the percent of the population. and when that happens a as a political party, republicans can't lose 3 to 1 or there's no votes left, because the republican vote in this election, republicans won the republican vote by the highest margin since '88 and still lost by four points. so, you know, i think what you're watching here is a database that provides real power to look at and answer those kind of questions, and it's a very powerful tool. last quick point is it's a tool that can be very hard to use in

polling because these sizes are pretty low for a national survey. and it compels us to use a lot of merged data and big data to be able to actually apply this to real quick or analytical terms to a poll. [inaudible conversations] >> okay. just want to make a couple of points, a little bit of what bill said. first is what we see in the data, and there are two things we're looking at -- at least as i see as the challenges going forward, i'm speaking as a democrat but also looking at political demography -- is this sort of a battle of change in hearts and minds. and the other thing is just from a practical political perspective, doing what i do and bill does, trying to at the base level just trying to elect candidates. what does this data tell us or

how -- what are we seeing as the challenge looking at it? so as it is we've heard over and over, and i won't recite all the statistics, but, obviously, these suburbs are growing in a way that's good for democrats. increase in minority percentage there followed by, probably connected to, increase in policy. at the same time, the question as we look at the battle more hearts and minds, the idea of what the issue shift is, we wonder -- and, again, antoine raised this question -- is this just because democrats are moving from urban areas and making this more democratic, or is there really something happening there? and i would pose and i hope is the case that there is. the climate change difference is what has become a big split senate society right -- in the society right now, democrats

saying we've got to trust in science and that climate change is one good bellwether of that. you could mention evolution, a lot of other things, but i think climate change is something where we are still in the middle. even in the suburbs it is not a high priority issue, i would admit that even though a lot of people are agreeing with the need to act. they don't put it at the top of their agenda. gay marriage has moved even quicker, and it's moved across the country. but here the suburbs were a leading indicator. so my hope, as i said, and the question here is democrats have an edge in the suburbs, or is there actually more fertile ground for us to go out and actually change minds that aren't necessarily -- as bill said, independents even in the suburbs, but are they more open to the arguments? the other bastion i want to raise speaking as someone who does try to elect candidates figuring out how we can use this data, in my case, to elect democrat, and one of the things

that's interesting about politics compared to this very detailed view is despite all you hear about all the different types of communications, there's still two basic ways we communicate, and campaigns are all about communications. first message, figure out what to say. i won't get into that now, but the next is how do we get that message out? how do we communicate with people, and we always have limited resources. even the obama campaign at some point had limited resources, so they're trying to do it as efficiently as possible. what is the first bay we look at this? -- way we look at this? media markets. if you just look around, i don't know how well you know the d.c. media market, but we're talking about down to prince william county, alexandria, up north to pg county, montgomery and many, many counties that are very different. and when we're spending our dollars, we are saying, okay, how can we go to that entire broad swath? now, cable and other things give with us some more opportunities to go a little more granularly, but still it is a different way

of looking at things. it's almost the opposite of what we'd like to do, give us the individual hit. now that's the other trend in communication is microtargetting or mod be eling, and there we're really doing something that cuts across all these counties. we're not saying we want to look at montgomery county or orange county in california or whatever county it is, what we're saying is we are modeling a voter file or microtargetting off our own poll data. and if there's five people in a rural county who fit our model who we need to persuade, we will have mail go to them. it's a good thing mail still works, believe it or not. we just have a lot more communications, and especially now where we can do e-mail and internet so people are getting web apps depending on where they live, we can make sure it's down to the zip code. so there are other ways to commune candidate that sort of put us on a little bit in some way beyond this. and i say not beyond this better, meaning just that we're dealing in something different tan just counties.

than just costs. and the question is what is the value here? we need political demography. and it ends up being we do it as well in every campaign even though i said there are some limitations, and it's art of putting people into boxes they don't want to be in. and we know that the person that i think was in a rural republican county in a conservative in a tractor county like sioux county, iowa, probably doesn't like being called, you know, a right-winger or part of the tractor county vote -- jesus land. [laughter] >> i hope you don't mind -- >> i know that. some people probably are proud of it, but they don't like being called part of the tractor vote because it puts them into that group. and just like the people say in montgomery county here don't like being called the arugula/latte/volvo vote even though it may well be true. so i think this is very, very useful, because it helps us explain what's happening and

definitely is the best way that i have seen to examine what's happening. >> dante, antoine? reactions? >> well, the fist thing is -- the first thing is what bill said about the exit polls, i'm trying to get that day. i'd love -- because i was talking about trying to do this with somebody, but we need to get that, it needs to be geo-tagged. the problem is if it's broken out with the only tag is urban, suburban, rural, i don't think it's terribly use. ful if we can get it broken down the way i want it, we could see the question you're asking. because i wonder about that as well. i actually think the white vote may have moved since 2004 in particular may have moved a bit. >> yeah. they don't -- yeah, but here's what i don't get. i know that on the exit file they have the number of the precinct that collected the exit poll. >> right. >> so collecting and tagging that precinct within county would not be that hard. >> right. >> so there is, there is a geographic tag that would, that

may not be, you know, would take a conversion, but it's not that hard. and we, there's a little bit of issue about 2012 in terms of getting the ray data. apparently -- raw data. apparently, there's been some motion -- anyway, that'll get cleared up. but when it does, i think this is a very solvable problem because they know exactly where the precinct was or the data was checked. >> right. >> go ahead, elizabeth. >> you know, -- we focused on louden for a second because that is a place where this is really playing out, this change is playing out in sharp relief, but really the whole state of virginia is a really cool example of this test, right now with the governors race there. the only competitive race in the nation this year. and it's sort of, you know, a battle ground. it's a purple state. both parties want it, and they're trying to test out, you know, what, what's if play here?

why has virginia gone from conservative to leaning democrat? is it, what is it? is it the composition of the people? is it the fact that the national party versus the local interests are deviant? i talked to tom davis who was in the 11th district which includes father fax county, and that's -- fairfax county, and that's a county where this whole urbanization process is largely complete. he managed to win seven terms. he even won by, i think it was 6% in 2006 which was a democratic sweep year in congress just by focusing on local concerns. and what he was explaining to me was a rino, a republican in name only, is what you have to be to be a republican and win in these urbanized areas. you have to focus on local concerns. bill was mentioning the hispanic immigrant population which is very large in fairfax county, so

he focused on things that were of interest to his safl dohrn constituents, his korean constituents -- he backed the korea free trade agreement which he would do as a republican myway. but he really focused on throwing his congressional weight behind local projects to the point where he was pretty roundly criticized for some of the things, the earmarks and the directed spending that he did while a congressman. but what he points out is that the national party has lost its way in a state like virginia because they're focusing on divisive social issues; abortion, same-sex marriage, educational vouchers, things like that where people on the ground in counties like fairfax are saying that's not my interest. i have to drive an hour and a half to get to work every day, what are you going to do about the roads? what kind of funding are you going to free up for transit? are we going to get that silver line out in northern virginia, or are you going to block it? and that's what interesting in cucinelli, he's the republican x

the mcauliffe race is just on the silver line you can sort of see this interesting divide because you have cucinelli opposing the second fades of the silver line which would link louden with the rest of us here in washington by public trans, by subway, and you have mcauliffe backing it. why? well, maybe one reason would be because for mcauliffe, those are his peeps. they are the people who want to be on the silver line and use it to get in. and cucinelli, you know, this is something where the people who are out there and are voting reliably and consistently for the republican party are people who don't tend to want to live near public trans, and they don't tend to use it as much. >> i want to make two more quick points. >> go ahead, dante. >> something michael said and a lot of people have said this, obviously, geography, the idea of going to zip code level as a journalist, there's 50,000 of them. it gets extremely difficult to do. counties are nice, 3100 of them,

they're much better than districts to work with, and we can learn a lot from them, i think. the other point i'd make, getting down to the individual level, reaching those five people in nebraska, i would argue in most cases they don't really matter that much because that race is decided even for the presidency or a congressional district that you can turn 'em out, and you can do what you can to target them, but i don't think it's that big a deal. and to me, geography matters because it is true that when you -- if you are may cotargetting either through mail or cable broadcasting, you're going to target people that are in line with your point of view. you're trying to turn them out. the thing is what's happened is the way the country is split up, people tend more and more to live around people like them. so when you, when you -- when you're targeting, it's like i'm going to target these hundred people in montgomery county, i need them, you know? or these thousand people. they're all going to live, i think you're going to find they increasingly live near each

other. by answer always is the most liberal person in america may live in the middle of rural nebraska, i have no idea, but it doesn't really matter. because, you know, the one thing i've seen doing reporting on this project, community matters in that you live around people like you. you live around people when they're like you, you tend to talk, and you tend to see the world more through hair eyes, you tend to be more -- their eyes, you tend to be more persuaded by their arguments, and if you have money and you can afford to move someplace, you wanted the same kinds of things. oh, and really quickly one thing about what's driving things, people moving in or hearts and minds being changed, i think it's impossible to measure that, but my guess is it's a bit of both. the persuadables that stay behind fall in line with the dominant culture. >> i'm going to let -- i have a comment of after. but the people that matter the most to us, republican or democrat, blue or red r the students right here. i'd like you to queue up and

line up for questions because i know some of you have classes coming up. so all of you that have questions, please start standing up right there, and we're going to go to questions right after professor yoshinaka has a chance to make some remarks. antoine. >> yeah, thank you. very quickly, i agree with bill when you said that, you know, we have to be careful whether to characterize this as a realignment. and if you'll notice, i certainly -- i mean, i never mentioned realignment, i don't think dante did either. and part of the reason is a realignment is this interesting phenomenon where, first of all, social scientists are sort of thumbing tear nose of this concept these days. no, it's true. and one of the things is it's sort of like a recession like we'll know a year from now if we were in a recession, realignment we'll know 30 years whether this was a realignment period or not. but i want to say one thing though. be you look at the election results nationwide over the last decade, decade and a half, the margins are very, very tiny,

right? i mean, bush v. gore, obviously, was very close. even by historical standards, you know, obama's quote-unquote landslide election of 2008 was actually not such a landslide. again, if you compare to sort of historical standards. and so when we're dealing with small vote changes of 1 to 2 to 3 percentage points from one election to the next, small changes at the community level tend to be magnified. a one-point difference or a two two-point difference nationwide in big cities or in urban suburbs, etc., that's magnified especially when we're dealing with a nation that michael barone a few years ago talked about a 49-49 nation or 48-48 nation. we live in a nation that's close to being 50-50, so gaining one or two percentage points across the board can actually make a huge impact nationwide. >> let's start with a question over here. please tell us who you are. >> i'm brian. i'm an undergraduate student here. i have a question -- >> thanks, brian.

>> -- that relates to voter turn out in these urban areas, possibly could be an obama effect, but i'm wondering given a growing population, are we seeing an increase in voter turnout, or is it staying level? people are just changing the way they vote? >> you know, we haven't looked directly at turnout. i mean, i've looked at it a little bit just comparing it, just looking at the raw numbers over time, i have not compared turnout. my guess is, actually -- the one thing about turnout is it varies so much election to election, i'd be really careful of any comments i'd make on it. >> bill? >> dante was involved with an earlier system that had a fewer county breaks, and we used that extensively working with dante at nbc/"wall street journal". and one of my interests was to look at whether or not those counties helped explain any shift in what happened in 2012 in terms of composition of the electorate. so we looked at those counties as a percent of the total vote,

and it is starkly consistent between '08 and '12. so that you see, you can say, okay, obama increased turnout here, but guess what? in response of these counties, it turned out. and as we looked at that and we went out to two decimal points, you're talking about almost no change from '08-'12 in terms of composition of the electorate. so although the overall vote dropped by a few million people, the composition by county type did not, and i think that's one of the major findings to me how stable 12 was compared to '8, compared to '4 in terms of use of this kind of county-based targeting system. >> antoine? >> in looking at the data, the composition of the electorate hasn't changed that much even though if you look at different subgroups, for example, youth turnout between '04 and '08 went up by a senate margin, but the youth vote in general is quite

small relative to the entire country. so that doesn't really change the makeup of the electorate all that much. having said this, i think in recent years what you've seen is greater mobilization among racial minorities. and, again, that might be slightly an obama effect, but i think in the last election was the first election when african-american turnout was actually higher than white turnout, if i'm not mistaken. and so whether that, you know, persists into the future, we don't know. obviously, i suspect that it might not just finn that obama is not going to be on the ticket, but that's something we've certainly seen the last two elections. >> question on this side. identify yourself -- >> my name is katherine, i'm currently an assistant professor at george mason university in the school of public policy, and i wanted to congratulate you on your work. >> glad to have you here. >> i have a comment. i think both of you wished for individual data. there is the national suburban poll conducted by the national center of studies at hofstra

university every other year. they've conducted this poll about three or four times now, i'm involved in this survey, and i would be happy to talk with you after this. thanks. >> glad to have you. >> we'll talk. >> jose? >> hi. my name is jose, i'm a fourth year undergrad student in the school of international service. my question -- i have two questions. so the first one, in the data that was presented, i think it was inferring that with the increase of latin -- or hispanic people, is that really the case? i was under the influence that the latino vote because of religious beliefs that they often voted for the republican party, or is it because of, like, republican stance on immigration that, you know -- who are they voting for, is kind of question one. and then also if it's true that the democratic party really does get the minority vote point-blank, i think that's really unfortunate for the republican party. so for mr. bloom and

mr. mcintuff, you guys help people get elected what suggestions or advice could you give to the republican party to have them rebrand themselves so they can start getting young black women to vote more them? for example? >> mike's not going to offer any help, i think. [laughter] >> well, i, you know, it's unfortunate, but i don't think there's much -- i don't think there is a republican message to the african-american community. there is an historic split that occurred over time, and if you look at african-american attitudes on any number of issues about the role of government versus republicans, there's not a match. and i think at the margins there's stuff you can do, but i don't think, you know, in a political context or when you're running campaigns for a living, i think it's a very difficult vote. michael and others could correct me, my recollection is the

latino vote that romney was down to 27%, like 73-27. it is a an unsustainable margin for a party. so if the latino vote drifted the way of the african-american vote, you cannot have white -- whites have dropped two points every year as a percent of the electorate since '88, and i was talking about how the that tee know vote is going to age in very quickly in the electorate. and so some of that is, some of that can speak to immigration. but if you, but there are other splits between latinos based on country of origin, how long they've been in the country, by whether they speak spanish or not spanish, their level of acclamation be, but as a party there's this kind of fundamental, this fundamental sort of umbrella which is do you feel -- does it make you -- do you seem to be welcome in that party? and you can have a policy debate

in a a way that makes people feel welcome, and you can have a policy debate that makes people feel excluded. and to the extent people feel excluded, they don't feel like they've been particularly welcome. i did not do the work, but there was governor purdue of georgia, we tested a bunch of commercials after the 2006 cycle which was the first round of immigration to republican commercials on topic of immigration. so we looked at some stuff that was run in republican primaries, and we looked at governor perdue's stuff. and governor perdue did a commercial where he said, hey, you've got to obey the law. but if you're here illegally, this state wants to offer you a welcome -- an open hand and a welcoming hello. and here's what we can do for people who are here. and the difference between that commercial and that line versus the way it was presented by

another different republican candidate was massive in terms of how people react today that spot. reacted to that spot. and as a party i'm just saying that that has to be the challenge. and it also just means as republicans, by the way, having worked on the this, you have to have more latino candidates, you have to build up state legislative and a lot of other folks who are part of your party and culture, and you have to have candidates who learn to speak spanish. and you have to -- and the last thing is, and this is the trouble -- is we've had, we've had two cycles. but you're poor mitt romney and trying to win a republican primary, and you wake up and say, oh, let's talk to la fee knows. there's five months left. you cannot start that effort with five months left in the campaign. it has to be an ongoing part of what you do, or it's not successful. >> and i think to the point of what bill was talking about, you know, i did a lot of reporting for the before the american community for patchwork nation, i actually had communities that

represented each one of these types, and i spent time talking to people there. and there is, there is a divide, it's not just, it's not just something you're seeing at the top of the republican party. when you go to places that are much more conservative, there is, there is anxiety about immigration. i went to, i went to southern, a community in the south, or southwestern part of missouri, nixa, which is a big evangelical enclave, in fact, the assembly of god is based around there, the church, and they brought up to me -- i just said let's talk about your community, and several people brought up immigration to me. i did not raise the issue to them. and it came up, and the issue was why are those labels at the store, i don't like those labels at the store are printed in spanish as well. what's up with that, you know? and so there's kind of, there's a problem that runs deep through the party not just -- it's not something -- the establishment they're going to have to deal with down further within the ranks of the party. >> another question over here. jake. >> jake white, i'm a graduate

student at george washington university. my question was for dante. i'm interested in this starbucks theory. so thomas friedman, he presents the golden arches theory, and that's two nations that have simultaneously had mcdonald's and never engaged in a war against one another, and that suggests something about a resolve economically, the consumer is more interested in a certain service rather than pursuing conflict. so does the starbucks theory per 100,000 occupants or inhabitants, does that suggest something about political consumer preferences as well? i just wondered if you could expound upon that. >> yeah. this is an area that's of great interest to me, and i have access to all this experian data now which i'm just starting to figure out what to do with, it's massive. it's a massive catalog of stuff. to me, what's happened with the consumer preferences is -- what it's done is create communities that are more and more like,

that are more and more like tear yams because of -- terrariums because of niche marketing. look, the guy on the corner opens a store to make some money, whatever. but if starbucks goes there or chick-fil-a or whole foods, my god, if you look at the data on whole foods, it's really clear what's going on, right? they trend like the index for whole foods in the index, it's 186 for liberals. and i think it's like 80 something for conservatives. so, you know, what's happened is niche marking has become very adept at saying i need to maximize my profits, i know the people that hop at my store -- shop at my store, they live there, i'm putting a store there. and other stores that cater to the same people cluster around it, and you end up creating an effect that is something like a little terrarium. look, i live in the upper northwest d.c., it's full of a certain kind of person, and i'm one of them, who want a certain kind of thing -- [laughter] and we live where we live

because that's what we want. and you know something? that's great as a consumer. it's terrific as a consumer because my consumer life so full. [laughter] but, i mean, there are all these places that are targeted to me that i live near, and that's wonderful. but what it also means, it's maybe a little different for me because my job is to try to look at the country outside of where i live, but for other people it creates blinders. this consumer culture and the niche marketing is helping to create blinders that really makes it more and more difficult to see people who don't live like you. and just quickly, this is something i'm doing a lot of work on, i think, ultimately, that becomes detrimental for the functioning of american democracy. we increasingly live in different worlds, and the consumer world that exists around us is just making it more and more problematic. >> elizabeth. >> i have a fun example from whole foods from my reporting. when i was at the "the washingtn post," i was covering the environment for a time, and i wrote about how rock fish in the

chesapeake bay had developed a disease that was killing them. now, everybody -- all the experts said we have, we have no evidence to show that this effects the quality of the fish, how edible it is, where it's fox -- whether it's toxic or whatever. the next day the governor, then-governor of maryland, bob ehrlich, republican, held a rock fish-eating lunch in the governor's mansion to show, like, yum, i love this and, you know, and the watermen were up in armies, and people were really upset. whole foods went exactly the other way. they took all the rock fish out of the store, they put up signs letting everyone know. and you could argue, you know, is this a reaction to the quality of the food, or is it a reaction to the politics of the consumer who shops at whole foods? i just thought it was such a fascinating example, because in the sort of republican swath of maryland among the watermen and the fishermen and the people in the industry, they were furious, and they just demonstrated that

they wanted to eat this fish. [laughter] and on the other side, you had whole foods and upper northwest saying, wait, we're on it, we're on it. >> we have another question here. go ahead with, sir. >> my name is ray, i'm a graduate student from spa, and one of the interesting parts of this panel for me was talking about trying to predict votership in terms of i guess both demographic variability such as the increase in the la too e know population, but you also mentioned the obama effect which i would assume represents the change on the political side of who your representative is, right? and so, but do you refer to the obama effect in trying to predict what -- i guess in terms of trying to predict what the obama effect is, do you believe that's going to go down? as in he's some aberration, or what i've seen in political news now is we see hillary starting to put her name out, on the republican side you see rubio, other candidates who might have their sort of own obama effect maybe in some sort of way, if

that makes sense. so, basically, to sum up, how do you think the obama effect on political side, the potential variability in that in terms of the democrats, republicans, how important is it? >> anybody want to start that one? michael. >> it is very hard to transfer political -- personal popularity to any other candidate. that's just a rule not about president obama, it's for anybody of either party. what his legacy vote is worth is each harder to figure out, because you're going to talk about what's going to happen over the next year or so. i mean, he was an extraordinarily strong candidate in 2008 and then won a, i think, ran a strong race, did well in 2012. a lot of that, though, as we've been hearing has been democratic party has been stronger, in those two presidential elections. and going back to bill's point, hard to say we were going to

have a realignment when in the off year between those, let's just say it goes the exact opposite direction. so there's always the case when you're looking at all the data that there is to some extent we're trying to find outliers, but in general when i looked add eight or nine random suburban counties and the vote went bill clinton was here, bush was here, talking about for democrats, and kept it here and then when obama wins, he puts it up here again. so there is a little bit offect of following the national popularity or national fortunes of the overall party, and it's hard to predict that right now. >> question on this side. >> [inaudible] >> oh, yeah, yeah. >> okay, got it. excuse us. >> i think it's an important story because, again, part of what i look at when you look at the composition of the electorate, you look at the percent the electorate represents and then the percentage of the representative vote. so we've had two cycles in a row where african-americans were

above census in terms of level of turnout. that may be and probably is a consequence of the president and might not be something we do for a white democrat. but it's the point, you know? we're talking about points matter, but it's a point. .. >> and so how do we measure

that? nbc/wall street journal, we asked you if you live in a swing state we asked you have you been contacted by a presidential race. 32%. 2004 it was considered oh, my god, it was exceptional. that was the hugest race ever. 2008 it was like 50. this year 73%. so if you are living in a swing state, three out of four people said i've been contacted personally. why? because the money went from five to 600 million, to $2 billion. my other point is we think about in terms of composition electorate, it's going to be radical change. we are $2 billion for this election. and so underlying demographic changes are what drives composition now. not the candidate and all that. with $2 billion, you get them to vote, that's a big about it. it will not stop. >> and i also think just a point

quickly on money and turn it. if you look at turnout in states that are not battleground, the turnout is low. texas is a big state. their turnout is very low. that's because they don't really consider, they don't think their votes matter and people don't spend money there. i think the turnout numbers you see in the demographics that you see, these numbers will change, if the states start to become a play because the demographic shift, there could be a there could be equipped changed with the vote looks like because the turnout changes because of ad spending, one thing. the other thing, i don't believe in realignments it. i'm glad antoine said it was good among political scientist. i don't think these numbers show that the suburbs are going for republicans. what they think they do show is a requires a change in tac tacto reach some of these places. >> we will get back to you. go ahead and ask your question. >> i'm an undergraduate student

in the school of public affairs. i just wanted to ask about how the focus on social conservatism and the republican party, it is alienating voters. i'm wondering if you think that the republican party has been shifting more libertarian, where is the shifting? and if it does shift in the future, where will those ultra conservative, socially conservative voters go? >> no is a great question. they are not the topic of the panel. some going to skip answering it because i don't think it's what the panel is dealing with her entrance of the topic. >> antoine, you have something to say to the previous question. >> just real quick. regarding turnout. that's one area, i mean, if you'rif youwere to stack every l science study on turnout, you would probably go to the moon and back a couple of times. we know quite a bit about turnout. some of the recent studies on turnouts show that it and

habitual behavior. so it's hard to get people to vote sometimes but once you get into though, especially at an early age like meaning sort of 20, that behavior then can perpetuity weight itself. if it's true obama was able to mobilize and we know it's true, on the day, mobilize college age young adults at higher rate than previous candidates. and if it's correct that turnout is habitual, then one would expect future elections still reflects some of that and some of the mobilization among populations that traditionally have not voted at such a high rate. >> just a remark on going back to virginia, which is really my jones lately. the ad spending is unbelievable because it is seen as sort of a national test of who is going to

carry the message in 2016, who has an edge. but the ads and there is remarkable for this gubernatorial race because you have mcauliffe u.s. brought in $19 million, and 12.7. and also numbers, only about one quarter of that and about a third of that is from virginians. it's all national money. it's all super pac money. and its people who see virginia as a microcosm of the united states and they're trying to see which way they can pull a race that will be decided by turnout. >> i don't like to lead the questioning that the panel can't answer. and you're right, we didn't talk about the makeups of the party, the tactics, but to delay who asked the question about where to the social conservatives go, use one we're looking at it, just as a citizen thinking about it, and it comes from the great

politician pope francis, who all of a sudden decided, and it's an all of a sudden, decided it just might be healthy for the church to begin thinking about things like social justice, poverty, the things that bring the flock together. as opposed to some of the other things that seem to be moving the flock apart. it seems to be social conservatives have a lot to share with other people in the electorate when they move away from some of the hot button issues. republicans, there may be a lesson to that. >> any other questions we have? paul, do you have one? i'm sorry, sir. >> my name is john. i'm an ex-suburban voter. >> recovering. >> in terms of geography, what about factors such as, aside from messaging, factors such as gerrymandering districts, and as dante said about life living

together, does that make it easier to, in essence, restructure voting so that you could have what happened in 2012 where mobile workers, i think voted democratic for the house, but the house is overwhelmingly republican. can that be a forward going function? and on the other side, does that also make it easier in terms of voter suppression tactics, where you can use structural factors to affect the election? i think the focus on messaging is interesting, but sometimes you get the republicans associated knowing how to play the structure, and the democrats in essence bling football on a baseball field. and leaving that open, so you end up with more voters voting for one party, yet the other party getting elected. >> well, i would say some is not

strategy. or it may be a lack of strategy but it's just the idea that democrats, unfortunately, have lost in the elections that lead up to redistricting. bad years just like we had at 2010. the same thing happened a decade before, and that gives us the districts which we don't like, and the republicans put together. and guess what they do is one of the key things, you who asked about the ide idea to reaching o the minority vote, one of the things that happened, why republicans are always reaching out naturally is because they have packed all these black voters and minority voters in general into a district where the democrats can have it when district and go off all the others. so yes yes, there is but a chann messaging, and also i mean, for them here for us it just puts us in much more outside urban areas, suburban and exit urban areas. when you look at some of these they are not like montgomery

county. when the county in atlanta in georgia or god county in georgia is not like looking at montgomery or alexandria. these are very, very different areas that i was in are both suburban. it just gets harder and harder for us to win. but because push us to have a message that is a little bit farther reaching. >> quickly, just on the difference between republican and house, just the makeups of the constituencies. we looked at this actually in the general. the 113th congress, and this is looking at hispanic votes, document in terms of immigration. the hispanic population of republican districts is about 12.5%. constituency is in the public district is about 12.5% of democrats is about 25%. if you do the numbers, that hispanic population in those republican districts near is the united states and about circa 1994. and that democratic district,

that's what america is supposed to look like, the hispanic district in about 2025. so they really are, they are representing very different constituencies right now because the way the districts are drawn. i think both sides play the game and try to get as much as they can. the republicans are in the decision to drop a district they want and have done a good job of it. >> that's an exciting contrast to the 1950s, '60s, '70s and '80s. i wrote an article after this election using that line from the baseball movie, there's no crying in redistricting. we had to generations of districts where republicans would get 48, 49% of vote and 40% of the seat. during the reagan swede, republicans essentially had 49% of vote and 44% of the district. there was about a five-point gap between the vote cast and the district. that's what happened to democrats this time because the tent -- the 2010 redistricting,

we have so many republican governors and legislatures. but in some ways this crosses parties mean with all those decades where we had democrats do the same thing. this is where incumbent members of congress can share an interest which is giving them the most partisan district possible. and as somebody who was work in redistricting for a large part of my career, the trouble is that if you go to the average member of congress and say you can have his partisan for you or you can be a good soldier for the party, they say thanks for my better partisan seat. and so we have contacted both types of district. what it also means, this is the public post a consequence, when people ask me -- we have no competitive house seats to speak of. by any historic standard. and so right now we have 26 seats where a person get elected -- when i start during the reagan year we had literally a hundred people like that. we have gone from 126 seats where you cross party.

what it means, this happens on both sides come is the average member of congress is acting rationally which is how do i not use -- lose a primary? if you court drawn seats and we can draw seats now incredibly persuasively, and court drawn seats were done by mutual political criteria and we had 50 to 200 competitive seats. the member of congress would be looking for how to survive a general election. and so it's not, this is something both parties share in terms of wanting to keep what they have, but it has had an extraordinary public policy consequence and we're getting the public policy consequence of rational acting which is don't lose the primary on both sides. because of those majority-minority states elect very, very liberal democrats, and by the way, here's my other point. when people say gee, you, your party doesn't represent this, you should look at the districts

they represent. they are very, very effective spokespeople for what they're district believes. so are the democrat members, but the democrat members, a lot are in the majority-minority seats. my former wife, she helped write the constitution and republicans and democrats, we train all these people, and so the remains were very excited the first election. they had the first year as a parliament resistant to the american delegation flew back after a year and they said hey, how's it going? they said it's great and we are really excited. we only have one question for you american experts. they said once that? are we supposed to vote for what we think is right or for what the people elected us what? the american delegation broke out laughing and said okay, that will be the next chapter of the federalist papers written in romania. good luck. but that's the point i'm saying, if it looks to you like we have

paralysis, it's because we have very effective members of congress who are, in fact, represent their districts. we have just drawn them to be very partisan. >> if i may, i mean, the statistic that shows democrats got more votes, then how seats in terms of percentage, it's often mentioned as a sign the system is unfair. i had this kind of pet peeve of mine, but that number is more or less meaningless because we don't have a national election. we have 435 individual elections. so the abrogation of votes at the local level, to say that democrats got fewer votes, or more votes into seats, part of a separate function of the fact that if you were to erase the seats, most of the lopsided seats are democratic seats. the seats that are one with literally 80 to 90%, sometimes

100% of the vote tend to be democratic seats because those tend to be urban seats where republicans don't field a candidate. you get this lopsided distribution where democrats can rack up millions and millions of votes in those districts that have no competition. in the few dishes that are competitive, some are red, some are blue. once you aggregate those and democrats get more votes but that's simply a function of the fact that a lot of the non-competitive seats happen to be democratic seats. so i would not use the national vote as an indication of sort of the national mood of the country if only because what you really have our 435 local elections. >> we are almost out of time, and before we have closing statements year, was there anybody who wanted to say something that has not had a chance? is there a final question from anyone? we started asking