done as close to this at the same time it is a very long book and all of the detail for someone who wants to relive bin technicolor it with many hours will retell the story. >> as a presidential scholar he said it was not an easy read because it is painful. it reminds us of those periods better enough when you write a book you have an audience that you don't know

watergate will have a smattering of knowledge not at the level of woodward woodward, those are the people i try and the reason i didn't do transcripts because i find those difficult to read i have 23 volumes of 3-inch notebooks that is almost 4 billion words it is a huge. >> 39 years after refer site on the national stage on television you have returned to i am sure in the minds of many people to applause and others. [laughter] thank you so much. >> guest: thank you bob.

>> dr. carson, i think the best way to start is to go into you. you have a very inspirational story. >> i grew up in detroit a couple of years in boston boston, another came from a large role family in tennessee and she and my father moved to detroit, he

was a factory worker and then she discovered he was the bigamist then he had the responsibility of the only a third grade education to raise us alone. myself and my brother. we were not particularly good students to put it mildly. i was the dummy. >> host: a neurosurgeon now? [laughter] that is what i want to get to how to make it to that to win everybody used to tease me to call me names. any success i have had i have to contribute to god and my mother. she is always seeking wisdom and came up with the idea is to open your eyes and look around you and she knew the holmes that she cleaned people did not watch tv. and elephants. [laughter] and they read a lot of books. she looked at where we lived

and where they lived and it clicked in her mind if i could just get them to start reading it she impose that on us. >> host: what was your favorite television? >> guest: i loved everything. i could tell you what was on every station but she restricted us two or three programs per week and with all that spare time we had to read two books apiece and submit a written book report but we did not know she could not read that. >> host: when did you find out? >> leader in high school then she got her ged the senior i graduated from high school. by making us reid which i hated something happened base to admire the smart kids.

they are the same age i am. but then all this said in the teacher would ask a question. it got me excited. . . i would get boxes of rocks and pretty soon i could identify new rock.

>> host: sounds like you are scientist and it relies it. >> guest: didn't realize it. >> host: may be that sparked your interest in science. >> guest: one day the science teacher held up a big black shiny rock and asked if anyone knew what this was an nobody raised their hand. i raised my hand and i couldn't believe it. this is going to be hilarious. >> host: were you known as a jokester? >> guest: they didn't think i would know the answer. i said it's abyssinian and they didn't know whether they should be laughing or impressed in banning the teacher said that's right. i explained how it was formed and they were just shocked that i was more shocked than anybody. down to me at that moment i wasn't stupid and the teacher invited me -. >> host: what great is this? >> guest: fifth grade in the teacher invited me to go to the lab and start a rock collections are taking care of animals. i started looking through the

microscope discovering the whole world of protozoa. >> host: there's always one or two teachers that took that extra interest. you will never forget that. how long ago was this? >> guest: that was more than 50 years ago. the interesting thing is i went back to that school and this was several years ago with good morning america and they wanted to trace my roots. he was still there. balding and potbellied that he was still there. i wanted to show them the animals because he had a red squirrel and a tarantula and crayfish, all these things. he said we had to get rid of these things along time ago. >> host: do you have a relationship with your father? >> guest: not a strong relationship. i see them periodically. the last time i saw him was the day i got married 39 years ago. >> host: the second famine in

that do have a relationship with them as brothers and sisters? >> guest: no. >> host: do you ever forget? >> guest: absolutely but i look at the big picture. my mother tried to make up for all that and my father was involved with drugs, alcohol, women. nothing wrong with women but you can't have more than one. that's the problem. that probably would have been the best influence on me so in retrospect even though i was devastated as a kid because i was praying for him to come back now i realize perhaps it would have been the best thing for me. >> host: detroit today what would you do? >> guest: well first of all the same thing i would be doing to fix almost anyplace. bring back some fiscal responsibility, fiscal common sense. a lot of people blame the unions for what happened to detroit but i actually don't.

unions do what unions do and they would gladly strangled they does to get the olden egg. >> host: they are representing their members. >> guest: but the executives, now they have a one-year, five-year, 10 year, 15 year plan and they understood all this. they note they kept conceding to the union that eventually there would be a problem that they kept doing it anyway because they knew they would have the golden parachute and be long gone. >> host: then it would be somebody else's problem. he blamed the executives as much? >> guest: is the same thing i see around the country keep the. we keep letting it be somebody else's problem. >> host: you know you have gotten this far of enthusiasm among conservatives. have you been surprised that it has come from conservatives? do you assume you were a conservative when he did this because i get the impression you

aren't always a conservative in your life. >> guest: obviously like most young people in a place like detroit when i went off to college i was radical. >> host: where did you go to school? >> guest: m.i.t. yale. >> host: what is a radical at yale? various degrees. if you told me radical at berkeley, you know. >> guest: there was the black panther rally and all this kind of stuff but it's just the way it was at that time during our history and radicalism was very much accepted among young people at that point. i consider myself really more of a logical person that i am a conservative or liberal or anything. i'm not all that fond of labels but i think most of our problems are easily solvable if we could

just throw away the labels. i have indicated in the book i would love a situation where party designation is not on the ballot. you'd have to actually know who that person is. >> host: there've been a lot of mayors races but that is the case and it's not surprising to me guess who's getting stuff done the stays? mayors. they don't have the baggage that comes with the political parties right now and some of the city so it's interesting. so you go to yale and went to decide i'm going to do doctor? >> guest: i actually decided that when i was eight years old. i used to love the mission stories in church and they had missionary doctors who seemed like the most noble people on the face of the earth, bringing mental physical and spiritual history to people and they said that's what i want to do but when i turned 13 having grown up in dire poverty i decided to want to be rich so i decided i want to be a psychiatrist.

on television they drove jaguars and lived in the big fancy mansion had these plush offices. >> host: who were the psychiatrist? >> guest: most of the tv programs when he would see a psychiatrist. >> host: they are living it. >> guest: i started reading psychology today and everybody was giving their problems and i sat down. i majored in psychology in college and i had luminary professors like on a freud and it was really pretty exciting but when i got to medical school i said everybody has special gifts and talents. i started thinking about my life than i realized i had a tremendous amount of lying in court nation. was going to see a surgeon. >> guest: that's key and the ability to think in three dimensions which is essential for a neurosurgeon because you are dealing with a nebulous mass. >> host: or eight --

>> guest: you have to keep in mind where the tracks are. if you don't have good three-dimensional skills. >> host: how did you know you have sequel? >> guest: from some of the jobs that i had done and really performed extremely well. i worked in a steel factory. >> host: what did you do in the steel factory? >> guest: crane operator. >> host: when did you do this? >> guest: right after i finished high school and you are driving these enormous beams of steel through narrow areas and dropping them into a bed of the truck. they would let me do that after one day of practice. >> host: that's a little scary. >> guest: these guys see something in me that they don't see normally. >> host: did they really see something or did they say this is the next guy of? >> guest: no this was a summer job and a lot of people that work there permanently didn't get to do it. as i thought about it i said you

would be a tremendous neurosurgeon and a lot of people thought that was strange because at that time there have been eight black neurosurgeons in the history of the world. to me i didn't think about that. i said this is what my talent is. >> host: you know i hear in surgery basically that in some ways the rotations, the one rotation where people can identify the best surgeon are the plastic surgeon rotations in some ways because as such, you have to know their precise and artistic at the same time. now we are lampoon it but is there truth to that in some ways? >> guest: i think there isn't a lot of my career was developed around narrow facial surgery with me plastic surgeons. >> host: and you are not practicing right now. do you miss at? >> guest: i miss the way it used to be. >> host: what does that mean? >> guest: there were a lot of things in the process and most

people when they chose medicine, they chose it because you had a great deal of autonomy. you could sort of figure out wow i can solve this problem and in the early days there would be a kid from bolivia or someplace who have this incredible problem and didn't have resources and i just said overrated and take every. >> host: you said we will figure it out because you wanted to solve the problem. >> guest: nobody said boo because the hospital had a big enough war chest that it was okay. once the hospitals got to the point where they could dictate how much they were going to pay and hospitals no longer had a margin and then you want to do what? for free? are you kidding me? is changing so much in their so much bureaucracy. one of my goals in life is to

try to make medicine fun again. i want doctors to get up in the morning and be excited about going to work. >> host: should doctors be getting rich? >> guest: i think dr. should be well compensated. rich is a very different thing. i know a lot of rich people and doctors. >> host: theirs are supposed to be paid more in our society. teachers or doctors? what do you say to this? >> guest: i would say it's an irrelevant question. >> host: okay. >> guest: people should be paid for what they do. recognizing that doctors spend a very long time training to be doctors. >> host: not just four years of medical school. >> guest: they go to medical school for four years internship and residency. >> host: you arguably say it's 12 years of simply postgraduate work to be a practicing neurosurgeon. >> guest: it takes a long time

and there's a lot of sacrifice. even want to do start working you are working extraordinary hours and then you've got the tort issue with neurosurgeons is particularly bad because everyone thinks this post to be perfect and they were dealing with high-risk. you know that was one of the reasons that i had a real problem with so-called health reform that doesn't include tort reform. they can again be serious. >> host: rhetorically the president talked about it. let me ask you, your christianity is throughout the book. science and faith sometimes collide. your have this highly scientific mind and you are deeply religious person and some people would say that doesn't compute. that does not compute. how does it compete with you? >> guest: first is all i would

say i'm not deeply religious but i have a very strong relationship with god. there is a difference. >> host: let me pause you there. what's the difference? >> guest: the differences really just tends to be more form and faith tends to be more substance. in the name of religion a lot of really silly stuff has been carried out. >> host: in the news right now. >> guest: exactly however people have a deep relationship with god i think have a tendency to do things in a different way. >> host: and to the science versus religion. >> guest: i actually believed that science and faith can be really quite compatible. i have had some interesting discussions with nobel laureates who say how can a person of your intelligence believe that god

created heaven and earth and all that stuff? i say how can a person of your intelligence believe that something came from nothing. explain to me exactly how that works. well you know we don't understand everything. so i will give you that there is something. just there is something and now you are going to tell me it explodes and we have a perfectly organized universe? our solar system to the point where we could predict 70 years hence when a comet is coming. the earth rotating on its axis, so that just happened, right? and they say well, if you have enough explosions over long enough period of time then eventually one of them will be the perfect explosion and that is what will happen. they said so if i blew a hurricane through a junkyard over billions of years, billions of times eventually after one they would be perfectly formed 747 ready to fly right? that's what you're saying basically basically and i said

hey you are welcome to that belief. i don't have a problem with that. it's just that requires a lot more faith than it does for me to believe. >> host: if someone asks you if you are creationists or an evolutionist? >> guest: i believe that god created the heaven and earth and i find that much easier to believe because you have to recognize that if you take somebody like charles darwin to as you probably know started out in the seminary but he got to the point where he goes off to be galapagos islands and he starts seeing stuff. he sees finches with heavy peaks and it never seemed benches like that anyplace else. he said that's evidence of evolution. it depends on how you look at it. three years before he had come here, which he did note the ti time, the only finches that survived were the ones who had beaks heavy enough to break through the seedlings to extract

the nutrition so what i actually believed what is happening is that you have the creator that has given us creatures the ability to adapt to the environment so they would have to start over. >> host: it sounds like you believe in natural selection so you believe in some part of darwinism but not the whole thing. >> guest: i may not call a darwinism but i believe in adaption. creatures with the ability to adapt to their environment and if i were the creator i would certainly teach my creatures adaptability. the bible says in the beginning god created heaven and earth period. >> host: i've heard some people say when they would have been a billion years. >> guest: but we don't know. >> host: people that have defended it, you are saying 6000 years. >> guest: i would say there's nothing that tells us how old the earth is in the bible.

it could be billions of years old but also i believe the reason god is god is because he can do stuff we can't do. if you wanted to create something that already had aged nat could do that absolutely. that's why he's god. >> host: your scientific education i feel does not conflict with your belief? >> guest: i have never had an instance where my belief in god has conflicted my ability to do neurosurgery. >> host: alec baldwin was a surgeon with a god complex and it was supposedly a stereotype. is that just an unfair hollywood view of most surgeon's? >> guest: there's no question that there are some surgeons who have fairly large egos and in

fact you don't get people -- >> host: you need to be confident. >> guest: those are not going to become surgeons. it does select for that kind of people that i know a lot of incredibly nice and caring and decent people. >> host: i guess i get why they might have a god complex because they are the only one that can solve a problem in their heads. >> guest: in their heads. >> host: this is where it comes from a little bit. >> guest: it's unfortunate. >> host: how to do preventive? is easy. you are at johns hopkins and you are the elite of the elite. how did you keep your head fro from -- >> guest: i personally remembered and still remember where i came from and i also recognize that a lot of things depend on a lot of situations.

there were a lot of important people involved in virtually everything that i have done and i make that clear to people. i tell everybody else you know, there are always other people involved. my mother if she hadn't given me what i needed i would probably be working in a factory and not that there's anything wrong with those things, we need those people that i would never realize my potential. but some of the very complex operations, you think about the first set of conjoined twins that were joined at the back of the head and the kinds of things that they have been done for them. i had to consult with the cardio thoracic surgeon who were extremely good and understood the whole concept of hypothermic arrest and sit down with them and figure out how do we worked out together and work with a plastic surgeons? how are we ever going to get this covered? a lot of people got involved in

those kinds of things. >> host: i want to get to the heart, that the parts of the book but one more question on science. what is your scientific background tell you about -- >> guest: tells me that if you look at the earth at any given point in time temperatures are either going up or they are going down over specific period of time. as you may remember, you might be too young, in the 70s there was a time where "newsweek" i don't remember which one had a big glacier, the new ice age is coming. now it's global warming. it depends on what period you look at. here's what i say about it. whether we are getting colder weather we are getting warmer we have a responsibility to take care of our environment. that's the bottom line. we don't have to sit here and argue about whether we -- we need to argue about how to

intelligently take care of it. >> host: the fact that something is change. we know that. you look at new york city and new jersey, they have bigger seawalls. you have to make public policy decisions based on what you think is coming. that's the importance of figuring this out, is it not? >> guest: it's also important not to get overly involved in paranoia about it. our epa as far as i'm concerned should be working in conjunction with their research facilities and with industry to say how can we best utilize their natural resources and at the same time respect our environment rather than saying we are not developing this. i don't think that is so wise use of our intellect and their resources. >> host: i guess i look at remember the great concern about

the hole in the ozone. there was a lot of focus on what we thought the problem was in basically the entire aerosol industry changed in the hole closed so this is a case where problem was identified, his solution was identified. industry fought it hard and low in both hold we have on. industry adapted. >> guest: i'm not saying we shouldn't do that. >> host: that's what i mean. youtube believe we should pursue some of these? >> guest: absolutely that with a stick of balance approach. as you saw from reading the book i say that in just about everything. remember when i said at the national prayer breakfast in order for an eagle to fly straight it needs two wings, a left-wing or right-wing and if you do everything a lopsided way my way or the highway you're going to crash. >> host: let me start on chapter 3 because i think it's interesting. you are this highly intellectual

person you went to the best schools and you are concerned about elitism. >> guest: well the reason i'm concerned about elitism is because there are class of people. for instance you see it in a lot of firing universities to believe that they are the beacon of light for everything. anybody who doesn't agree with them not only do they not want to hear them, they don't want you to hear them. they don't want anybody to hear them. if they have a business they want to shut it down and if they have a reputation was destroyed. where does that come from unless you just believe that you are the cat's meow? >> host: do you feel there is academic elitism? let me ask you this. when did you first say i'm into politics. i'm following this? when you do make that transition from scientists and highly

acclaimed surgeon at johns hopkins, what was the trigger? >> guest: i don't know that there was a dramatic moment. if you look back through books that i've written over the last 20 or 30 years you will see that i've been talking about these issues for decades. if you go back to book that i wrote in 1999 he will see a whole health reform program out there. i'm not johnny-come-lately on these issues but the thing that really changed me and the perception of people was the national prayer breakfast in 2013 because i just spoke my mind. i spoke about what i really saw the problem and why was concerned about it because i very much love to the nation and i don't want to see it fundamentally changed. >> host: you may have an interesting challenge in chapter 6 of the book in which

you say to somebody, and it's a concern that i have and how people consume too much of only one side and if they are conservative they follow conservatives on twitter and if they are liberal they watch one channel here one channel there. you say pretend you are a member of a different political party and give rational defense of their issues. a rational defense on going to be on the spot here, a rational defense of the president's health care plan. >> guest: that's easy to defend. everybody should have health insurance and we need to find a way to make that possible. since we know a lot and we have a lot of really bright people they can probably figure it out better than the private sector and we certainly know better than the people themselves so we are actually very benign. >> host: you are saying we

know better but let me push you more. what parts of the president's plan, is there any part of presents health care plan he would keep? >> guest: certainly lifetime limits. >> host: is very expensive surgery and you kind of understand. there is surgery for their child is a bankrupt double -- >> guest: excluding people on the basis of that, those are horrible things in a bad i talked to a high administration official before the thing was passed. i said there's good stuff in here. i agree with that and i think virtually everybody agrees. why not take those things and make them the foundation of health care reform? it will be a bipartisan effort and then let's build it together. health care something we all need. why can't we work on this together?

if you push it through one party and you have unanimous disagreement all you are going to do is create rancor and you're not going to cooperation for anything. why would he do that? he said you are probably right. this is washington and this is politics. but we take these important issues simply make them into politics and we can polarize it and a wise man once said a house divided against itself cannot stand. >> host: arguably the wise man of this country. >> guest: why do we have to keep doing this? why the right call the book "one nation"? i think our strength is in our unity. we the american people -. >> host: sounds like you would have done health insurance reform. you would have made the first goal because what you were signing that you like or the

reforms in the insurance industry. it was the next step is figuring out how to expand it and make universal access is where the collision happens. >> guest: we can get universal access because we spend twice as much per-capita as the next closest nation. it's not that we have not put inadequate resources. the thing we need to be pouring more money into a disbelief -- foolishness. how do we design it in a reasonable way and that is why i have emphasized the health savings accounts. >> host: hsa. >> guest: they have control of what they're going to spend their money in. >> host: you you have and i -- idea and hearing you say from birth to death and health savings accounts. walk me through that. how was it bunted? >> guest: is funded through a variety of different ways. people who work and funded through their employees and people who are indigent the same money we spend for medicaid goes to the health care savings plan.

you don't lose it if you don't use it. there are no limits on it so all kinds -- if you have a birthday party there a number of ways. it continues throughout your lifetime. i also give people the ability to be flexible. >> host: european countries have basically at the beginning of birth handy money. some of us for childcare at some of us for this. would you put some government in the this hsa in the beginning? >> guest: people who need government money. >> host: you would automatically start out with $5000? need-based. >> guest: yeah that if we take all the people who are needy in this country and we put money into the hsa we are still going to fall short of what we are spending now with inefficient programs. so here's the key thing. people began to be responsible.

you need to have something done you are going to think what. >> do i want to go hear? remember when the food stamp program for started. a lot of people said you can't do that because people will be responsible. there is no way they will be able to use those properly. they will go out and buy a porterhouse steak the first five days. >> host: that is wedded to limits on it. >> guest: you don't have to put limits on it. people are in themselves. i'm going to buy a hamburger and hamburger helper and they learn how to stretch it out to make a work. they would do the same thing if they had controlled of the health savings account. that's what brings the medical system into the free-market economic forum which would control price and quality. >> host: sounds like you would make an argument the an argument to hospitals or much of a problem as anybody because the hospital will charge some ridiculous amount. my father died at the lung disease. my mother would go through through the bill led by light

and she would find double things and sent to the insurance company let them know. they were charging crazy amounts of money because they know somebody is paying for it. >> guest: is because the cost they know of this may be only $2000 but if they put that cost down the insurance company will pay them $200. therefore if we put 20,000 maybe they will will pay is 3000 predates all games. it's ridiculous. >> host: this is a case where i think it sounds like the hospitals, that was a tough one to crack and they ended up working with the insurance companies and now that the hospital. >> guest: remember if you are in charge are your hsa you are not going to go to the hospital if it does that. you were going to go to the other one which is going to make this one start acting like this one. that's the way the free market works. >> host: you think the only way to truly reform health care

system is to get out of the insurance business? >> guest: you can't have all these artificial influences. >> host: you are almost advocating for no insurance. a health care savings account would replace that? >> guest: no. what i'm saying is for all your routine health care -- 80% of everything you will have to deal with can easily be paid for an hsa but you have to remember people do have major and catastrophic issues that come up. that's what your insurance is for. that is what it always should've been poor. >> host: so everything should be catastrophic. cancer policies were big in the 80s and they don't exist anymore. don't they don't sell them because they turned out to be money losers. that's what you get for the big diseases in the big problems and take the other stuff off the insurance industry completely? >> guest: correct and remember you sprain your ankle and you think you need an x-ray it's

coming out of your hsa. if you need a physical exam for a new job, hsa. birth control pills, hsa. no hobby lobby. what happens? you are not impending upon your major medical attacks the cup -- tax would cost him. >> host: lets live in the real world where we have insurance lobbies and insurance companies and hospitals him all these people who have gotten rich off of that. health care is among the fastest-growing sectors in our economy. it's considered a money-maker in our semi-private sector and i say semi, because without medicare it would be essential so how do you enact a plan in the world we live in? >> guest: keep in mind what i'm talking about, insurance is insurance in it all works basically the same way. like your homeowners insurance if you have a high deductible guess what happens to the price of that? it plummets. if you want everything taken care of guess what happens? the same thing. exactly the same.

>> host: chapter chapter 7 you use these phrases leaving our children the chapter on the debt. some of the language and abused as certainly, you talked about the politically correct police i think you called it but words do matter and it did affect folks. why not curtail some of its? >> guest: what offends people about that? >> host: depends on a point of view. there are all sorts of ways people get offended. guess what i talk about political correctness i'm talking about not being able to express how you actually feel. >> host: some african-americans would say slavery is awful. to compare the national debt to slavery is doing a disservice to slavery. >> guest: what i would say about that which i talk about in the book is the hypersensitivity thing.

a lot of things don't bother people but then somebody comes and says oh you should be offended about that. oh yeah. this is the same stuff that used to go on and on the third grade playground when a guy would come out and say hey did you hear what he said about your mama? come on, we don't have to deal with that. we have real major problems that we have to deal with. the reason i talk about enslaving our young people is because this level of debt, i don't think most people can even comprehend $17.5 trillion going onto 18 trillion. if you try to pay that at $10 million a day it would take you by a thousand years. that is an absurd amount of money. the only reason they can't sustain that is because the u.s. dollar is the reserve currency of the world. what if we were not and that's a designation that generally goes up at number one economy in the world which we have been since

the 1870s. we are going to lose it soon. >> host: do you believe that? china is en masse. >> guest: they are a mess but growing at 67%. how much are we growing? so they are going to pass us up however i don't believe they are going to become the same kind of force. look at their banking system. >> host: there were a lot of problems they are going to face? >> guest: however here's the issue. they are are you talking about in russia's started talking about it about creating a basket economy so instead of in the u.s. dollar will be hodgepodge of things. what will that do to us? it will rob us or to plead us of the ability to print money. what happens when you can't print money and you have that kind of debt that we have? stop and think about that for a moment. >> host: let me ask you about race. you talk about political

correctness and i look at the last 30 years and i think when i grew up we had more honest discussions in the 70s about race than we do today. we are actually afraid to have a conversation. something happens, somebody attacks the president and we say we are going to have a real conversation about race and then we don't. let me start first with this. do you believe that some people are against the president simply because of his race? >> guest: i am sure there are some people because of the color of their skin. i don't think there's a large number of people anymore. i do think people are very much influenced by their perceptions so for instance if somebody told you you know carson is evil, terrible guy and he's scheming all the time and then you met me, you would interpret everything i did.

if somebody on the other hand said he's a really nice guy and he loves everybody you would say okay i can see that too. if somebody is always looking for racism no matter what you say to them they are perceiving that is racist. >> host: has that been your experience? >> guest: i'm sure there has been some along the line but it really has not been a big factor for me. my mother told me something very important when i was young. if you walk into an auditorium full of racist bigoted people you don't have a problem, they have a problem. they are all going to cringe and wonder if you are going to sit next to them and you are going to sit wherever you want. that is why i've let my life. if somebody has a problem with it, enjoy. i have more important things to do. >> host: do you think race is in not back. >> guest: i don't think it has

hurt me. i don't think it has benefited me. i think it's a wash particularly in the profession that i have spent my whole life and is a neurosurgeon. i fully recognize early on in my career i come into the room and some eyebrows would kind of go up. this black guy is going to operate on me? oh wow. >> host: so you did feel a little bit of that? >> guest: i would feel a little bit but by the time i got to talking to them, and here's the problem and here's how we are going to handle it, you would see that completely melt away. >> host: you into the field i would argue in some ways is so result oriented. you entered a perfect place if you want science numbers to align. that's going to trump everything else. >> guest: without question that the wonderful thing about medicine. there was a procedure that i

started advocating which was very controversial and people were complaining and to the present of a the hospital and the dean and the department acquisition and -- association association and he wants the ama but by that time i was able to reveal the numbers. they demonstrated not a single person that died and there was very little in the way of complication. that wouldn't work in politics. >> host: people have their own set of facts and there are half-truths on both sides in the question is everybody's grounded little bit in truth just enough to defend their position. i want to go to an economic issue. you advocate for a flat tax of 10% basically say everyone will contribute something. >> guest: i didn't say 10%. >> host: that was your example. >> guest: it needs to be proposed for -- proportional and the reason i use 10% is because

it's easy to ascertain. it needs to be whatever needs to be but it needs to be proportional. what you have to recognize is by having this very skewed system with all of these to dockable some things, there are a lot of people who make enormous amounts of money to pay very little in taxes. 10% would be a lot for them. >> host: there are so many ways for them to hide taxes. >> guest: i think that's craziness and we don't have to do that. on the other hand i believe it's insulting for people who make small amounts of money to say you poor little thing you don't have to do anything, i'm going to take of you. they i believe, it if they really stopped and thought about it would want even though they wouldn't be contributing a lot they are still carrying their weight. >> host: let me propose a counter argument on this group of folks that don't pay any

federal income tax. if they go to a casino and they buy a lottery ticket and all of the scheming that we have used preys on the poor. >> guest: it does. >> host: they are spending more money funding our schools whether it's detroit that is decided to go do casino gambling or another place they are putting tax dollars into the pockets, they are putting tax money and so there are ways of this group while they are not writing a check to the federal government they are contributing arguably more money in into gaming situation than the rich. >> host: >> guest: however gaming, that is what we are doing is gaming the system with this complex tax system. if we have something that's simple and easy to figure out first of all we are going to have a predictable amount of money that we are going to bring in. we will now we need in order to run the government. the other thing that you might have noticed, i'm not a big

proponent of gigantic government. why government. why do i say that? in 2010 and we have the statistics for for that if he took the income of everybody that made $69,000 above, 5.1 trillion, what was the federal budget? 3.5 trillion. 60% of everything the middle class and above make. does that make sense? no of course it doesn't so obviously we need to reduce it. i have proposed a very simple and fair ways to reduce it. thousands of government employees retire every year. don't replace them. you can shift people around the don't replace them. we did that for four years and brought it down to a manageable size. that doesn't fire anybody and if people are down to manageable manageable size than i can concentrate on what they are supposed to be doing. >> host: as you and i will know if something something happens they had veterans affairs at a va hospital where

something is not getting done and everybody is up in arms and then we find find out there just weren't enough people to do this or not enough people to do that. all of these things in the grand scheme of things make a lot of sense and if we note the way government and politics works and how do you prevent the politics of the way this town works which is oh my guys look at this problem with the federal government. we will have to fi fix it and everybody democrat and republican need to throw money at it. >> guest: a lot of people don't understand the fundamental problem with the va. i worked in va hospitals. wonderful people, doctors, nurses, these great people and wonderful patience. love them to death. huge amount of bureaucracy between this group and the screw. that's a problem. get rid of that stuff. honestly there are some things the veterans hospitals do very well. post-traumatic stress disorders. >> host: you think they should be specialized.

>> guest: they should go to another hospital. >> host: i want to end on a political node which is you used to c word that i don't hear conservatives use very often. that is compromise. there's a difference between compromise 50% of what you want an common ground which is the tiny 10% you both agree on. what's better in this case? you are obviously advocating for compromise. >> guest: when i talk about compromise, and talking about compromise and methods not necessarily a compromise in values and in principles. >> guest: and this was in chapter 10. >> guest: when i look at democrats and i look at republicans, except for the fringes, we all pretty much want the same things.

we have allowed ourselves to be wrapped up into this group of hyperpartisans which we really shouldn't and don't have to do. >> host: where is it come from because we are more polarized. i can show you the numbers. more people are identifying as liberals and conservatives. more people, they will describe, liberals will describe conservatives and awful names and conservatives will do the same thing. the other side thinks they don't love america. that is where we have taken it too. >> guest: leadership. it starts with leadership. a leader is somebody who can take a variety of individuals, creative vision and have everybody working together to accomplish that. a bad leader is someone who says to this group, that group is

against you. they are the bad ones. we would get everything done if it weren't for them. that is bad leadership. another aspect is multitasking. during the current administration we have had th the -- situation. during the previous administration there wasn't enough multitasking. it was focused on the war and trying to make sure that america didn't get attacked again. you have to be able to multitask. we have had a pretty long drought since we have had the kind of leadership that says america lets remember who we are. have we made mistakes? of course we have. all people have made mistakes. >> host: some examples of leadership you think has gone the right way? >> guest: well, john kennedy. this is a guy who came in, he was 44 years old. look at the stuff that was going on. the bay of pigs, the cuban

missile crisis, the civil rights movement, the economy was horrible on the planet and the russians had passed us in the space race. what did they do? t. use the bully pulpit to say within 10 years we are going to -- galvanize business industry academic everybody behind the project. they started working together. he put his brother bobby in charge of the civil rights movement. bali was very compassionate. the guy had his ear to the ground. he was very smart. he faced down the russians. in the face of world war iii, didn't blink. he defied his own party. they said we need to raise taxes. he said just the opposite, we need to lower taxes and had a tremendous ameliorating effect.

ronald reagan. but the kind of leadership he provided which actually resulted in the dissolution of the soviet union and the winning of the cold war without firing a shot. you know, bravery, statesmanship, working across the aisle. he was able to work with the democrats and kennedy was able to work with republicans. i think there is potential in one of the reasons i tend to keep speaking out is i want people on both sides to understand this. >> host: do you think hillary clinton has potential? >> guest: of course she does. >> host: what do you think of the clinton's? >> guest: i was very pleased with the fact that he was able to work with the republicans to get the budget under control.

of course you know that whole history of that. >> host: there's an argument that you can do big budget deals with one party. it may be impossible. >> guest: so that was good and as you've have probably noticed i don't spend a lot of time talking negatively about people. >> host: no you don't. >> guest: what i would rather do is spend time talking about how do we solve a problem because we have the capability. we are smart people. we are innovative people but we have to create the environment that honors hard-working honors innovation. >> host: you bring up yourself in this book after your speech at the national prayer breakfast "the wall street journal" and others said what about ben carson so i ask you why would you consider it if you did? >> guest: first of all certainly it's not my plan for

retirement after a very long and arduous career. however there are so many people every place i go. it's unbelievable the crowds that show up. i go to a book signing and people are streaming out the door. there are so many people you can't even get in and they are all saying you have got to do this. in the beginning i didn't take it that seriously but it just keeps happening. i have to ask myself, at some point do you have to put aside what you are planning and listen? >> host: you said in many ways you see this a little bit in faith and a little bit of god's plan. >> guest: i believe america despite what president obama said is a judeo-christian nation and i believe that because i

have done a lot of reading about the bombing of the nation. all you have to do is go back and read the letters. the people who say our founders were diaz had no idea what they were talking about. the evidence is quite clear that they have strong faith. i believe that it was those judeo-christian principles that led us to a much higher pinnacle than anyone had experience. >> host: you don't have a lot of fabulous things to say about the republican party. so i wonder and i've been thinking about your potential candidacy. if you ran would you be more comfortable running under a party or it sounds like you would be more comfortable not running under political party. >> guest: i wouldn't run as an independent. i don't think i would be welcome in the democratic party.

>> host: you would pick one of the two parties. there's a distrust in both sid sides -- inside both parties and part of it is this populist thing. i'm not getting a fair deal and its governments fault in the last thing i'm not getting a fair deal and is wall street's fall. you can make an argument that they are both right and that is why i have wondered if some of this boils over and people go outside the party structures? >> guest: after seeing what happened with perot. >> host: you want to reform what you want to do. >> guest: i also would like to see a situation where we deemphasize. i just don't think, i mean i think it's nice to have. >> host: that truly goes back to the founders.

that was a big argument. >> guest: we are all americans and i think we have to be doing things that work for all of this. one of the things says to me is when we take a constitution we say i'm going to enforce this part but not this part in this group gets an exemption but this one doesn't, i can even tell you how that makes me feel. >> host: let me ask about the constitution. are you strict? is sort of like and frankly we saw various court cases go this way, the letter below versus the spirit of the law. the constitution, is that the letter letter or this. when you decide whether something is constitutional? >> guest: i think it's a letter and i'll tell you i think that. first of all it's only 16 -- so it's not 2700. >> host: it's easy reading a fifth-grade documentary. >> guest: it clearly delineate the responsibilities of the executive branch and the

legislative branch and the judicial branch since all other matters have been referred to the state. so if you just knew that it could tell you a great deal about what we should and should not do. >> host: marriage you seem to be pro-civil union. at that point was the difference? >> guest: what i am pro-and wide to find clearly, i say any two adults regardless of their sexual orientation should have the right to bind themselves in some type of a legal manner so they have property rights in visitation rights or whatever. >> host: too many people that's the distinction of difference. >> guest: i think marriage is a sacred institution and it's between a man and a woman and it has been for thousands of years. my problem is if we start changing it for one group why ul