[inaudible conversations] .. >> and a debate on foreign policy, author interviews from ucla and much more.

for more information on this weekend's 48-hour television schedule, visit us online at booktv.org. >> coming up next, congressman paul ryan presents his thoughts on conservativism and the republican party in conversation with former governor and republican presidential candidate mitt romney from the union league of chicago. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you. [cheers and applause] [laughter] >> thank you. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. >> it's great to be here. it's not where we wish we were, but -- [laughter] but it's great to be here, and

it's wonderful to be with paul again. we had quite an experience, and i know a lot of you think it must be just awful running for president because you've got to go every night into a different hotel, and you get debate after debate after debate in the primaries and then in the general as well, and you have the adoring press always at your heels. [laughter] but the truth is it is a magnificent experience because you get to see the country person by person, state by state. not the people who make the news. the people who make the news are are, by and large, doing something strange or not good. [laughter] but the day we got to -- the people we got to see in day in and day out were very good, and it made me more optimistic for the future. so if you get the chance to run for president, do it. it's a great thing. [laughter] >> third time's a charm. [laughter] [cheers and applause]

>> i made a couple of good decisions in my life. one was who i married, and the other was who i chose to be my running mate, and there was no better person to be vice president than paul ryan. [applause] >> thank you. >> and if you're going to take a shot at me, you won't be a bad president yourself. so we have an interesting -- [applause] but we have some questions about a book that you have written this year, paul, and i would note that i've read it, and i hope some of you have as well so your questions can reflect that. but also i know paul pretty well, and as i read it, i recognized he actually wrote it. [laughter] most of the books you read that are written by politicians were not actually written by politicians. they were written for

politicians by professional writers. but paul wrote this book, i can tell, because it is his voice. it is written like he speaks x that makes it even more touching and personal. but i want to begin by just asking, paul, the american idea. the subtitle or maybe the main title of the book is "the american idea." bring down for us, what does it mean to you, the american idea? >> it's a way of life, and it's a way of life that has been brought to life by some critical ideas and principles that founded this country. in a nutshell, it's this idea that the condition of your birth does not determine the outcome of your life in this country. that no matter who you are or where you come from or how you got started, you can make it in this country. it's the land of opportunity. and it's a country that was built on an idea where our rights are ours naturally and that our government is designed to protect those rights so that

we can live in freedom and find opportunity and prosperity. no other system is quite like this one. no other country was created on an idea like this one. and the reason for writing the book, in a nutshell, is because a lot of people don't see it. they don't think it's there for them. they are worried that it's not going to be there for their kids or grandkids. and so if you don't like the direction the country's going, which we don't, or the policies that are in place or the governing philosophy which we think is crowding it out, displacing it, then as leaders, we should offer a different way forward. that's why i decided to do that. because the whole point of this is the american idea and maintaining that legacy of each generation securing it for the next generation like our parents did for us. [applause] >> and that is, without question, something we subscribe

to. at the same time, there are a lot of people who'd say that american idea has not worked for them or for their life. there are a lot of people in this country who are poor, a lot of people who are in the middle class who are saying it's harder and harder to make ends meet, and they look around them, and they watch tv, and they see the rich and famous doing extraordinary things they can't afford, and they ask why is it that some people are doing so much better, and i'm not doing as well as i could? how do you deal with this growing income inequality, wealth inequality and the issue of poverty? you spent some time really looking at poverty in a novel way, and your book describes that. but give us your thoughts on dealing with, if you will, the income gap, the wealth gap and the extent of poverty in this country? >> and this is something i talk a great deal about in the book. my friend bob woodson's sitting with us here tonight because for the last couple of years we've been touring around america meeting with people who are

triumphing over these difficult circumstances, who are fighting poverty eye to eye, soul to soul, person to person, and doing it very successfully. and there's some incredible stories that i tell in this book about that. now, to your bigger question, there are a couple of ways of looking at this. you can look at the status quo which is as you just described it, and a lot of people don't think that that opportunity is there for them. they're trapped in generational poverty, or they're in a situational poverty, or they're a middle income person, you know, running hard on the hamster wheel and just not getting ahead. so what kind of an agenda and what kind of principles do you need to reignite this opportunity, this upward mobility, economic role, healthy economy. and i go through all of that. but at the end of the day i would say with respect to poverty in particular, we're at the 50th anniversary in the war on poverty. we've spent trillions on this just from the federal government, and we have the highest poverty rates in a

generation. and i think you could easily argue that success in this war on poverty has been measured based on inputs, how much money are we spending, how many programs are we creating. not on results. not on outcomes. how many people are actually getting out of poverty? how many people are finding that american dream? how many people are actually getting from where they are to where they want to be in life? and i think that requires a system mat tick review and overhaul of our approach to fighting poverty, and it means the government needs to be respectful of our civil society, of our communities, of those who are actually doing a good job of fighting poverty, and the federal government needs to play a more significant role in mining the supply lines, not the front lines. in so many ways, the government displaces all those great things that can really bring people together and get them out of poverty. in so many ways the inadvertent

casualty war on poverty, it is told this is government's job. just pay your taxes, we'll take care of it. that's not true. it doesn't work like that. everybody needs to get involved. people with faith, people without faith, with money, with time, with love, with whatever. reintegrate and bring people back together in our society. there's a whole series of reforms that i've called for. of i'm not one of these people who thinks i've got it all figured out. believe me, this is a very humbling thing to do, to look into and research this. but i want to get this conversation started. because if all we do is talk about status quo and measure by inputs, we will never have the kinds of conversation and reforms to actually break this poverty. and it also means a really strong, glowing, healthy economy -- growing, healthy economy. and the policy of today is holding people back, it's hurting economic growth. it looks at the economic pie of

life as some fixed, static thing and it's the government's job to redistribute it, when our goal ought to be to are remove the barriers so people can blossom and flourish and really have a strong, growing economy. and so -- [applause] i won't go through the whole book tonight -- [laughter] but, basically, what i try to do is articulate core principles and policies that flow from that to reignite this american idea because i really do feel it's under duress. i feel like we're going in the wrong path. but the good news in this story -- and i tell these stories of these amazing, heroic americans from all parts of this country that have done incredible things -- the seeds are there. the comeback is there. we can have this comeback in this country. we just have to get a few, basic things right. and i have every bit of confidence we can turn things around and get ourself and our country back on the right track.

[applause] >> paul, you, for those that have read the book, you recognize paul contrasts two cities, detroit and janesville. i would have expected detroit and chicago to be a more natural comparison. [laughter] i grew up in detroit and big red wigs -- a couple detroiters here. [applause] red wigs fan. you're a blackhawks -- >> blackhawks. >> oh, yeah. great rivality. great fun. those were terrific times. and they were competitive in some respects, detroit and chicago. and i'm talking about in the 1950s and the 1960s. and yet chicago, look what it's become, look at the city and the hub that it is of activity and industry and innovation and technology. and detroit has suffered. and you describe in some detail what's happened to detroit. and you can contrast chicago and

detroit, but janesville, where you grew up, which continues to go through tough times. you compare them. what happened to detroit? why has it gone through what it's gone through? and how, how does that contrast with janesville or chicago or other places in america that went through tough times but found a way out? >> so it's a complicated story, and it's one that the comparisons aren't easy. but i think the story of detroit is a cautionary tale for the country. because if you go back and look and do a physical autopsy on detroit and see the failures that have occurred, it's because of poor leadership and bad government, it's because of taxing and borrowing and spending and passing the buck on to the point where they actually went bankrupt, where they couldn't afford the police force, they couldn't afford the fire department can. where the kids and the schools are getting the worst scores in the country. so it's a cautionary tale of what i would call a philosophy of governing that if we lay that

out throughout our country or in our federal government, we'll have a similar ending. and the other side of the detroit story is the comeback that we hope is coming and the seeds that have been planting of the cornerstone school of what dan gilbert is doing there, what pulte homes are doing, what citizens and civil soaz are taking matters into their own hands to regenerate their community. it's a tale of what america could become if we go the right direction, but also what detroit can be if we apply the right ideas and principles. and growing up in janesville, we live on the same block we grew up on. i come from a big extended family. my cousins are here -- >> there's always a ryan in the room. [laughter] >> these are the only three illinois ryans i'm related to. [laughter] [applause] i wish i was related to pat ryan, but --

[laughter] but don't we all, right? janesville was one of those communities where john and i grew up that is there for people when they fall down. the rotarians, the lions' club, the catholic churches, the lutherans, all the social groups in the civil society. we had a pretty hard knock in our family, and my mom and my grandma and i went through some difficult challenges and times. but for janesville, our community -- and not just our friends and relatives, but people we didn't even know -- who came together and really helped make a difference. and then getting involved in that community and seeing what it does to support people. when we lost our general motors plant, we only lived two hours outside the loop here. it was a huge punch to the stomach. hundreds of millions of dollars of payroll into a town of $60,000 -- excuse me, into a town of 60,000 people. a lot of my buddies from high

school, a lot of the people john graduated with worked there, thought like their parents they'd have the same job and career for their spite of life which made a good living, develop. and to see the kind of havoc it wreaked on our town, but to see the city come together -- and we still have a ways to go. but to see the healing and to see how people help each other, it gives me a perfect story of that middle space between ourselves and our government which is where we live our lives, what we commonly call civil society which is what alexis de tocqueville wrote so brilliantly about, this great, unique fabric of american life that we need to sustain and revitalize if we're going to get this country back on its track. people ask me why i believe what i believe. it's because of where i come from, because of my family, because of my community. >> you call that social capital, as i recall. >> right. >> what's the state of america's social capital in your view, and what does it take to, if you

will, regenerate the kind of social capital that de tocqueville thought was so unique about this country? >> that's where i do does the -- i do discuss the downside of progressive liberalism. what it does is it seeks to fix every problem with a large, centralized government solution which ends up displacing and crowding out the social capital. i quote people who've been reading and tracking social capital for a long time. bowling alone is a fantastic book that bob putnam wrote, a harvard economist, who's written about social capital. the quick story is it's. >> rinking. we are not -- it's shrinking. we're not engaged in our communities anymore, we're bowling alone. and this is something that has to be revitalized with economic growth, with bottom-up economic growth that provides job, growth and opportunity everywhere, but it also has to be revitalize with the a new attitude where

people have to understand that they himselfs have to get -- they themselves have to get involved. and government has to respect its limits so that can mature and occur. and that, to me, is how you revitalize social capital. don't crowd it out, don't discourage it, don't overwhelm people, empower. and that, to me, is the critical secret sauce of american life, of the american idea that has to be revitalized by each and every one of us in our communities, and the government has to respect its hims and focus on what it's supposed to do and do it well so we can maximize economic growth and increase our social capital. [applause] >> now, let me turn to a topic that i know is not one that you spend a lot of time thinking about, and that is the national balance sheet and income statement. [laughter] you know, a lot of people looked at bowles-simpson and the work that was done by this commission as they laid out a plan, and you

were part of that effort, they laid out a plan to try and rein in the excess in washington. and i don't know that anybody agreed with it 100%, what came out of the commission. you agreed with parts and not with others. and, of course, it didn't deal with entitlements which was an important part, in my view, that should have been part of that discussion. but none the less, it was, i think in the view of a lot of people, a wonderful starting point for the president to say, look, this is a bipartisan b commission, it has taken apart the federal budget, it has looked forward and forecast what's going to happen given demographic and financial trends in this country. and it laid out a pathway to get back to, if you will, stability such that we don't have to worry about a future where we mighting not be able to count on social security, medicare, medicaid, a military that was second to none in the world. and yet the president didn't pick it up, didn't touch it. and, i mean, you were there. thatwhat happened?

why did nothing happen from that extraordinary effort which got so much, you know, fanfare and enthusiasm as it was begun and as it was released and then just nothing? what happened? >> so as we put it together, alice rivlin and i teamed up to have an amendment to bowles-simpson to do medicare and medicaid reform because that's the bigst driver of our debt -- biggest driver of our entitlements. and alice rivlin is a democrat, and we put this rivlin-ryan plan together as an amendment which had that occurred, i would have been very -- you know, i would have thought this is a pretty complete package. it was rejected by the elected democrats on the commission. i was also worried about the deep cuts in defense that was in it. so the way i looked at bowles-simpson was there's a lot of good work here, and so i'm going to add rivlin-ryan, what i would do differently, and i'm

going to introduce that and pass it through the house of representatives the next year, which i did four years in a row. we've actually passed the budget and paid down the debt -- [applause] >> before you go on, i just want to underscore something that paul just said. that is that the house passes important legislation. the republicans are not the party of no. the house has been passing legislation. your road map has been passed, and it deals with entitlement reforms and getting our country on a stable fiscal footing. and yet it doesn't get picked up by the senate and it's, of course, not picked up by the white house. so the idea that ours is the party of no is simply wrong. ours is a party which is passing legislation, putting that legislation forward to the senate. harry reid doesn't take it up. and if people want to actually see action in this country and dealing with problems from education to health care to immigration to our fiscal needs,

tax reform -- if people want to see those things happen, they're going to have to vote for republican senates and, ultimately, a republican president as well. [applause] >> so i have enormous respect for bowles and simpson, they're great guys. and the thinking at the time was here are the numerical bicep. marks that finish benchmarks that you have to pass. i didn't like some parts of what they did, and i thought it was missing a lot, so i -- we put our own together and passed it and exceeded those benchmarks. we had assumed the president would do the same, that if he didn't like bowles-simpson, he would put his own plan out there meeting these benchmarks to stabilize our fiscal situation, and he chose not to do that either. bowles-simpson was set up by his executive order, so we really did expect him -- once we decided not toport it, the house

republicans, and go do our thing, we thought he would have triangulated like bill clinton did for the sake of 2012 and surround it and support it. instead he jetty softened it, demagogued what we were doing and did not offer a credible fiscal alternative. and meanwhile, we still had the same fiscal program -- problem looming over it. why is that? you'll have to ask him -- [laughter] but my personal theory is ideology. i write about this in the book at the particular moment where it was clear what decision was being made, and i just think it was more of an ideological interest that was in the front and center of his mind versus something that was more moderate or moderate-seeming. and i just believe at that moment when he decided not to do bowles-simpson, to demagogue republicans and not to offer a credible alternative, that that was just really what this administration was about. so that's when i concluded we're going to need a new president to

fix this mess. >> you might describe -- [applause] i agree. [laughter] [applause] you might describe what, how it was unveiled to you. your experience. >> yeah. >> in -- >> i had a front row seat to it. >> i think it's a personal story which is interesting, and you had to make a decision about whether or not to remain. >> yeah. so the three house republicans were myself, jeb hensarling and dave camp, who were on bowles-simpson, and the white house invited us to to a budget speech that the president was going the give x. all the media was coming up to us a day or two beforehand thinking i hear he's going to do social security reform, the olive branch to you guys, i hear he's going to something to reach out to you guys. we were sort of conditioned to think maybe on the fiscallish shies he's going to move to the middle. and we thought for sure when we got there, we saw bowles and simpson and everybody else from

the commission, that he was going to embrace bowles-simpson, and we kind of figured that was going to happen. we had that front seat, and he was sitting between -- closer to that beam, that column and myself, 20 feet away, giving a speech, basically calling for another round of $400 billion in defense cuts on top of what they had already done which was a budget-driven strategy not a strategy-driven budget for defense which i thought was rather odd. but then he just pursued to absolutely demagogue the work that we had been doing. nothing about bowles-simpson. and it became very clear to me that the demagoguery that was coming out of his speech was aimed at just doubling down and going hard left, hit the fence, raise taxes, go after republicans. and that's when i realized this is not a compromiser. this is not somebody who's going to move to the middle. and we got a text from one of our colleagues watching it on tv saying you guys should get up and leave right now. we looked at it, we discussed it, and we decided out of

respect for the office of the presidency that we wouldn't do that. even though it was really over the pale. and so we got up and promptly left afterwards. and then did a press conference. [laughter] >> i see we're almost out of time with me asking questions. let me ask one more here and then let you ask one or two if you'd like, and that is i happen to think the president hasn't been successful. [laughter] [applause] that is apparently the understatement of the evening. [laughter] and i'll put aside foreign policy for a moment where his -- [laughter] where his failures have been most glaring recently. but domestically. there was an article this week in the wall street journal by phil graham, former united states senator, who calculated what america would be like if the recovery were like the over postwar recoveries. and he calculates that there'd

be approximately 14 million more americans working, and the per capita income in this country would be $6,000 higher. a pretty dramatic difference between the president's record and that which he campaigned on. the president said he'd bring america together. we'd be unified. we'd be a postpartisan presidency with reaching out across the aisle and so forth. and these things have not, have not succeeded, again. and i wonder why, from your perspective. i have my own views, of course, but from your perspective, why has the president failed to unite us, failed to work across the aisle, failed to get this economy going on the kind of time frame -- it's going to come back. the private sector will fight its way through almost anything and find a way. that's what our innovators and people do. but it's taken a long time. and i wonder from your perspective why has it been so unsuccessful, why has it taken

so long for people to get jobs, to get higher incomes and for there to be the kind of unity that the president campaigned on? >> so that calculation was this is the worst postwar recovery we've had, and if it were just at the average of the prior ten recoveries from recession since world war ii, it would have had those metrics. there's one point that i think is very important to may make, i try to make it in the book. it's not just this president, as if we get another president, whoever it is, it's all going to be better. it's the philosophy of governing, and it's the policies pursued by this administration. but for government, i believe we would have had those kinds of recoveries. and so if you take a look at just the enormous amount of uncertainty that is plaguing businesses the hyperregulatory state that's occurring, you know, one of our great cheeses up in wisconsin has been canceled for production because of fear of these new fda regulation, and that hits us pretty personally at home in wisconsin. [laughter]

>> you cheeseheads are really concerned, yeah. [laughter] >> tax up certainty, higher taxes. the federal reserve is out there, you know, priming the pump which has produced, which has savaged savers in this country. and the money's not getting to small businesses. credit is slow for small businesses. dodd-frank makes big banks bigger and small banks fewer. >> yeah. >> you have obamacare that is putting an incredible amount of uncertainty with that looming employer mandate managing out there -- happening out there. even cbo tells us the equivalent of two and a half million people won't work because of the disincentives to work of obamacare. so you have taxes, you have regulations, you have the fact that the debt is $17 trillion and growing and no reduction in sight coming, and i think you have a political modus operandi which momentum seek the bridge -- which doesn't seek to bridge differences, but seeks to basically polarize and intimidate and divide people

based upon what divides them and prey on the emotions of fear, envy and anxiety. versus an aspirational political system that speaks to people with ideas that unifies people based on aspirations, hope and opportunity. ronald reagan did it very well in 1980. this can be done again. but i do believe it's the philosophy of governing that's employed, and in a third obama term which would be clinton or warren or whoever would keep these things going. and it's this philosophy and the policies that flow from it that basically believes we need to delegate our money, power and decision making to unelected bureaucracies to run our lives effectively, to micromanage society, to micromanage the economy. it doesn't work. the whole idea of this country is self-government under the rule of law, and is we're not seeing self-government, and we're not seeing an equal application of the rule of law, and the private sector is shrinking as a result of it or isn't meeting its potential as a

result of it. [applause] you and i have had fantastic questions over the last few years on a lot of issues, but one issue that we have discussed quite a bit is foreign policy. we see things very similarly in the world for our defense program and just the state of things now. so i have two questions i want to ask you. first, give us an assessment of not just the obama foreign policy, but of america's foreign policy. tell us what you think where we are and what we ought to be doing differently. >> big topics, and i know you have questions from the audience, so i'm not going to take much time on this. but we've had a foreign policy as a nation, frankly, since truman who after the second world war said, look, we've gotten dragged into awful things as a world and as a nation.

and for that to not happen this the future again and again and again, we have to adopt a series of policies. and dean acheson as secretary of state wrote a book called "present at the creation," which has been the basis of america's foreign policy ever since. and that book basically says a few things were fundamental. one is that we would be involved in the world. that doesn't just mean with gun, that means with diplomacy, with our economy. we would promote our values and our ideals, that's the second point that american principles of freedom and free enterprise, that these things should be promoted around the world. and the combination of being involved in the world, promoting our values and then linking our arms with our allies, being strong and having a strong military, those three things, being involved, promoting our values and being strong and doing so with our allies, that's been the foundation of our foreign policy. the president campaigned and has adopted a very different foreign policy. hillary clinton said something

interesting the other day, as you know, which she was very critical of the president's foreign policy and basically said he doesn't have one. and i used to say that during the campaign. but truth is, he does have a foreign policy -- [laughter] and it's very different than that that truman and every president since truman has followed. and his foreign policy is one based on the view that everybody has the same interest and all wants the same things. and i don't believe that. i believe some people want to dominate and oppress other people and want to take over other nations. i believe there are some people that are fundamentally evil, and we've seep some of them on tv this week. so, one, that premise was wrong, in my view. number two he looked at vladimir putin and others and said, oh, let's have a are e set. by the way, hillary clinton tries to distance herself from the president. that would work better were she not his secretary of state for four years. [cheers and applause] but, and she was the one with

the picture of herself and the russian foreign minister with a big red button, reset. big smile. i mean, can you imagine such a thing? did they not understand that people have very different objectives? vladimir putin's objective may well be, as george schultz said the other day, to rebuild the russian empire. this is, those mistakes combined with some other tactical mistakes. in syria, for instance, to draw a red line and then say, gosh, i guess i can't, i can't react without getting congress ea approval. -- approval. but right now he's willing to act in iraq without congress' approval. nonetheless, couldn't do it then and then steps back altogether. that sent a message to russia and others in the world that's been extraordinarily unfortunate for america. so we've seep an explosion of -- seen an explosion of very bad things because the rest of the world has calculated what's happening. one more element of our foreign policy and that is a dramatic reduction in our military capability. >> that's right. >> and it's, the quadrennial

review that was recently completed and then reported on by a commission including president clinton's department of defense secretary, just take a gander at that and see what's happening to our navy and our air force and our army. and what's happening to our nuclear capability. and that's saying to these other nations, guess what? hey, america's not here and we're down there. we can compete, we can build -- china's investing enormously in a military including a deepwater navy. russia is investing in their military capabilities. and so, and there are other nations as well that are expanding their military might and ambitions. i happen to think that the president's policies, this going out with a personal charm offensive and believing that people all want the same thing, we can all get along. and by the way, there may be a multipolar world militarily is the way to go. who else besides us? if it's a multipolar military

world, are the others russia and china? is that what we want to the see? i believe in having an american economy, an american diplomacy, an american military so strong that no one in the world would ever think of testing us and that's -- [applause] so as a good republican, i'm proud to say i'd like to return to the principles of harry truman. >> yeah. [laughter] >> i'd like to once again say that we will be involved in the world. it's important to be involved in the world, to keep bad things from happening. we had intelligence telling us that isis was being formed, that it might come into iraq and attack a city there. what did we do, what did the president do? is watched. and as it spread across iraq, now it's very difficult to pull it out. it's important to pull it out. this kind of group having a base throughout the levant would be a terrible conclusion for the

world and for us. so i return to the idea of being involved in the world and not pulling back and saying, oh, we hope bad things won't happen to us. that's like, you know, paying the cannibal to eat you last, as churchill said. [laughter] >> yeah. >> we have to be involved and help shape things. we're the leader of the free world. and then, number two, we're going to be involved in the world, promote our values, flee enterprise, human rights, human dignity, and then finally we are going to be strong. we're going to have a military that's strong, and we're going to link arms with our allies. we're going the stand with israel. we're not going to waffle about who's our friend and who's not. >> that's right. [applause] i think, i think you have to see that for america's security, for our safety, for our confidence that our children will live in freedom and have prosperity. we have to have that as our foreign policy. foreign policy and domestic policy are inexor my linked.

they have to work together. and i think the president's been ineffective in both areas, as you might imagine. i've been, i've been -- well, i wasn't expecting that i would love his second term, but i've been even more disappointed than i'd expected. and i'm hopeful that we'll be successful in electing more good colleagues like you, paul, more people will read your book and we'll end up being able to pass some legislation and get it to the president's desk and, ultimately, take a new direction. america needs real leadership. it's very much missing. [applause] >> and our obvious goal is to build a coalition that can win a majority of the country to do just that. i have one last question before we go to the audience. it's an important one, pretty easy to answer from my perspective. if you had to decide, would you choose and select julius peppers or jared allen? [laughter] >> oh, that's easy.

julius peppers, of course. [laughter] >> tough crowd here. [laughter] >> hey, there's a packer fan. >> there you go. >> a couple of blackhawks and a cubs guy. >> okay. now we're ready for the audience questions. i received cards from 14,000 people. i don't know how that happened, there are only 450 in the room, but we screamed them quickly. what is -- screamed them quickly. what is the status of immigration reform in the house? is there the possibility for compromise between the house and the senate? >> i don't think there is right now. i think part of the problem is the administration has decided to go outside the purview of the law in so many different areas. you currently have a crisis on the border. three weeks ago the house passed legislation to deal with that, legislation to deal with the trafficking law that needed to be amended, legislation to deal with problems on securing the border. we have heard nothing from the senate yet. so while we have a border crisis

right now, a humanitarian crisis that needs to be attended to, that's really first thing first. if the president goes it alone again with his phone and pen routine and tries to unilaterally write laws by changing immigration laws -- which is beyond the purview of the executive branch's power, that's the legislative branch's power to write laws -- but if he does do that, i think he'll poison the law and make it difficult for us to come together. as a fan of immigration reform, as a person who writes about it, as a person who's been supportive of immigration reform, i hope he doesn't go it alone, and i hope that he sticks within the confines of the law, confidence building. fix the border crisis right now and then maybe we can start talking, but that's not -- we're a long ways from that right now. >> thank you. the next question is, so now what do we do on health care? [laughter] >> well, how much time do you have? i'll be brief. laugh --

[laughter] we want a system where everybody can have access to affordable health care, including every person with pre-existing conditions, and we can have that system without a costly government takeover. we can have that system, which is a patient-centered system, where we, each of us as patients are the nucleus of that system, and all the health care providers out there, the doctors, the hospitals, the nursing homes, the insurance companies are competing against each other for our business. it's called a market-based system. the reason i can see you so well is i had lasik surgery 14 years ago. it was elective, and now that surgery is half as much as it cost 14 years ago and three times as good. so it's not as if these great principles of choice and competition, of quality are immune to the health care system. it's that they haven't been fully applied in the health care system. and so i put in the book in great detail what kind of a patient-centered system we ought to go to, and this is for all of

these programs, medicare, medicaid. we need a individual-based, patient-centered, market-based system where we each collaborate and serve each other, and the providers have an incentive to ip innovate, to create. that's the kind of system we need to replace obamacare which will collapse under its own weight, in my opinion. [applause] >> thank you. i'm sorry you can see me more clearly, i apologize. [laughter] how did the two of you manage to maintain your sanity with all the terrible things that were being said about you during the campaign? >> mitt, do you want to go first? is. [laughter] >> more terrible things were said about me than him. [laughter] i actually got some good advice when i was running for governor in massachusetts. the political strategist that i hired said he had a couple of rules. one of them was this: that i was not allowed to read the paper as it related to my campaign. i, of course, could read about

other things, but no articles about the campaign at all. he said you can watch tv, he said because we'll win on tv, but -- and i said, well, i want to read these articles. he said, no, because you're going to have some 23-year-old person who momentum like you write some -- doesn't like you write some article, and you'll find yourself sub conscious cannily refuting it in your comments all day long, and you're going to be off message. it was great advice. i did not see off all the awful stuff that was said about me, all right? [laughter] in the presidential campaign, we were working. paul and i were -- it was early in the morning event after event after event and late at night. a lot of fundraising, a lot of rallies. it's exhilarating. i should tell you, you might think at the end of the day you must just fall into bed. you can't to to sleep at the end of the day -- >> that's right. >> you have so much numbering. we'll have a crowd of 20,000 people cheering and cheering, and it's like, boy, this is important. at the end of the day, thank

heavens for the gideons and the bible, i could read that for a while, i was ready to go to sleep. [laughter] it's a marvelous experience particularly if you don't spend a lot of time worrying about the attacks that are coming your way. i think it's harder on your family. >> yeah. >> but, frankly, you're in it because you care about this country, desperately care about america. and if you're worried about what people say, why, you shouldn't get in the race. paul in. >> same thing. you have to have thick skin but don't have im3er78 i can't believe skin. stay the same person you are, just don't let it get to you, and if you believe in what you're doing, just go do it and don't worry about the rest. that's what i -- >> how about your families? >> they adjust to it. well, our kids were pretty young, and everyone treated them well. the media treated them well, the obama campaign -- they were off limits and that was respected. and my wife, you know, she doesn't like the criticism i get, but she also learned how to grow a thick skin as well in these things. and pote of our wives, they're -- both of our wives,

they're strong, smart, intelligent women who understood the stakes for the country. >> this is interesting, do you think that a four-year college is necessary to get out of poverty,, and is the debt worth the payoff? >> no, and it depends. it's not necessary. job training reform skills, training is essential. i go through great detail on how that ought to happen to bridge this skills gap. we don't have to emphasize it as much as we have. to make it cool again that it's okay to get a welding degree, that it's okay to go to two years and get some high value skills that can give you a good livelihood. and on college tuition inflation if we just keep feeding the beast with more and more federal spending in one pocket, out the other, you will just feed tuition inflation. we need to flatten this. we need to go to the root cause.

i would say accreditation reform is necessary so we have real competition against the brick and ivies. we all went to one of those. but let's look at the fact that we're in a new, innovative society, and let's have more competition so that a person who may be, you know, not able to go to a college but can do it online and then get their math course from mit, their theology from notre dame, their engineering from university of wisconsin, allow them to bundle and put them together, allow these kind of new, innovative things to happen and take down the barriers to entry that are already erected against these innovative ideas that are out there to allow people to excel at immigration -- at education and to flatten the costs. we need more competition, we need less barriers, and that, to me, is one of the ways we get at the root cause of college tuition along with transparency. just like health care. does this degree get me where i want to go? what is the success rate?

just like health care. give me the data on quality, on outcome so that i know before going in what i can expect, and i want these people, these health care workers and these educators competing against each other for my business based on outcomets -- outcomes, value. do can i get a good job, do can i get a good salary? make them educated, and right now they're not. [applause] >> apparently one more question because, um, after this probably the most important thing that these two fine gentlemen are going to do is participate in a cold water plunge. [laughter] so i can't wait to see that. >> i am the plungee, and he is the -- [laughter] >> but you've already been plunged. >> right, i did. my daughter dumped a bucket of

ice water on my head. >> last question. do you think the children this illinois -- and i would expand this to most states where this applies -- >> raised by gay andless beep parents are -- lesbian parents are more likely to heed productive lives -- lead productive lives? >> i don't know the illinois act, but if there is a child that is an orphan, that is adopted, that finds a home of loving parents, that's a child that is no longer homeless. [applause] >> great. >> well, i can't thank you enough. good questions. actually, not a bad question coming from you to him. i mean, there were some -- >> except for the julius peppers part, right? [laughter] >> again, many thanks to all of you for coming today. just one request and that is that you kind of clear this aisle because with, actually,

the two of them have to get to a press conference and rather quickly, so we have a -- [inaudible] here that's going to walk for them x. if you could help clear the aisle and let them get through, that'd be much appreciated. >> thank you. [applause] thank you. [inaudible conversations] [applause] >> booktv is on twitter and faction, and we want -- and facebook. and we want to hear from you. tweet us, twitter.com/booktv or post a comment on