>> coming up next, paul ryan discusses his book, "the way forward: renewing the american idea." >> thank you. thank you. [applause] [cheers] [applause] [cheers] [applause] thank you. >> it is great to be here. it is not where we wish that we were, but it is 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 awful that you have to go to

a different hotel every night and go to debate after debate in the primaries and then you have the adoring press always at your heels. and yet the truth is that it is a magnificent experience because you get to see the country person by person and state-by-state and not just the people that make the news. and we learned about with these wonderful people and their life stories. it was very touching. ..

[applause] we have some questions about a book that you have written this year, paul. i would note that i have 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 recognize 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 by professional writers. paul wrote this book i can tell because it's his voice. it's written like he speaks and 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 it down for us, what does it mean for you, the american idea? >> it's a way of life and it's a way of life that has been brought to light by some critical ideas and principles that come to this country. in a nutshell is this idea that the condition of your birth does not determine the outcome of your life's 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. it's a country that was built on an idea where our rights are ours natural and their government is trying to protect those rights that we can live in freedom. 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 fair for them. they are worried that it's not going to be there for their kids or their grandkids. and so if you don't like the direction the country is going, which we don't, or the policies that are in place which we think is crowding out an and displacig it then as leaders we should offer a way forward and that's why he decided to do that. the whole point of this is the american idea in maintaining that legacy of each generation securing it so the next generation will be better for us. [applause] >> that is without question something we subscribe to. at the same time there are a lot of people who would 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 afford it and they ask why is it that some people are stealing so much better and i'm not doing as well as i could? how do you deal with this growing income inequality, wealth inequality in the issue of poverty? he spent some time looking at poverty in a novel way. your book describes that would give us your thoughts on dealing with if you will be income gap, the wealth gap and the extent of poverty in this country. >> this is something i've thought a great deal about in the book. my bob -- my friend bob sitting with us here over the last couple of years we have been touring around america meeting with people who are triumphing over difficult circumstances they were fighting property iti person to person and doing it very successfully. there are incredible stories i tell in this book about that.

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 opportunity is there for them. they are trapped in generational poverty or they are in a situational poverty or a middle income person 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 and economic growth for a healthy economy? i go through all of that but at the end of the day i would say looking at poverty in particular we were at the 50th anniversary in the war on poverty. we spend trillions on this. we have a hires to poverty in a generation. i think you could easily argue that success in this war on poverty has been measured based on input. how much money are we spending and how many programs are we

creating, not on results, not outcomes. how many people are actually getting out of poverty? how many people are actually getting from where they are and where they want to be in life? i think that requires a systematic review and overhaul of our approach to fighting poverty and it means the government needs to be respectful of civil society and of our communities that those who are actually doing a good job of fighting poverty in the federal government needs to play a more significant role in mining the flight line instead of the front lines bring in somebody with the federal government displaces all those great things that are actually happening that can bring people together and stop isolating people and get them out of poverty. in so many ways the inadvertent casualty on the war on poverty it is told the american taxpayer this is government's job. just pay your taxes and we will take care of it. it doesn't work like that. everybody needs to get involved. people with faith, people with money, with time, with love,

with whatever and reintegrate and put people back together in our society. there's a whole series of reforms that i've called for. i'm not telling people i have it all figured out. believe me this is a humbling thing to do to look into an research this but i wanted to get the conversation started because of all we do is measure by some input and talk about the status quo then we will never actually have the conversation on the reforms to break the cycle of poverty and manage it and solve it. it also means a really strong healthy growing economy. the policies in place today based upon the philosophy of governing that is triumphing in government today is holding people back. it's hurting economic growth. it looks at the economic as a fixed static thing and it's the governments job to redistribute it. remove the barrier so people can blossom and flourish and really have a strong growing economy. [applause]

i won't go through the whole book tonight but basically what i try to do is articulate the 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 are going down the wrong path but the good news in this story and i tell the stories in the amazing heroic americans around the country who have done incredible things. the seeds are there. the combat is here. we just have to get a few basic things right. i have every bit of confidence we can turn things around and get ourselves in our country back on the right track. [applause] >> for those that read the book those that read the book he recognized that paul contrasts two cities, detroit and

janesville. i would expect detroit or chicago to be a more natural comparison. i grew up in detroit and have been dashed red wings fan, a couple of detroit fans here. a great robbery and great fun. those were terrific times and they were competitive in some respects. detroit and chicago and i'm talking about the 1960s in and the 1950s and yet chicago look what it's become. the city and to help an activity and industry innovation and technology. detroit has suffered. you describe in some detail what has happened in detroit. the contrast chicago and detroit and janesville where you grew up which also went through tough times and continues to go through tough times. you compare them. what happened in detroit? why has it gone through what it's gone through and how does

that contrast with janesville or chicago or other places in america that went through tough times but found a way out of? >> it's a complicated story and it's one that the comparisons aren't easy but i think the story in detroit is a cautionary tale for the country. if you go back and look into a fiscal autopsy on detroit and see the failures that have occurred is because of poor leadership and bad government. it's because of taxing and borrowing and passing the buck on to the point where they went bankrupt where they can afford the police force. they couldn't afford the fire department. the kids in the schools are getting the worst in the country. it's a cautionary tale up i would call and philosophy of governing that if we play that out around federal government we will have a similar entity. the other side of the detroit story is the comeback that we hope is coming. and the seeds that had been planted and what dan gilbert is

doing and what citizens and civil society are taking matters into their own hands to regenerate their community and the reforms that are happening. it's a tale of what america could become if we go in the wrong direction but also what detroit would be if we apply the right ideas and principles. growing up in janesville we live on the same block i grew up on. i come from an irish catholic family and my cousins are here. >> there's always a ryan. >> is always arriving. these are the only three ryans i am related to. [laughter] [applause] >> janesville was one of the communities where john and i grew up. the rotarians, the lions clubs,

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 difficult challenges in times but for janesville our community and not just their friends and relatives but friends we didn't even know who came together and really helps make a difference in and getting involved in that community and seeing what it does to support people. when we lost our general motors plant it was a huge punch in the stomach. hundreds of millions of dollars of payroll into a town of 60,000 people. a lot of my buddies from high school, a lot of the people that work there. they have the same job and career for their entire life and made a good living gone. to see the economic havoc that it reeks in our town but to see

the city come together and pull people out. we still have a ways to go to d.c. the healing and you see how people help each other. it's a perfect story of the middle space between ourselves and our government where we live our lives. what we commonly call civil society which alexis de tocqueville wrote so brilliantly about which is this great unique fabric of american life that we need to sustain and revitalize if we are going to get this country back on track. people ask me why i believe what i believe comets because of where i come from. it's because of my family. >> you call that social capital. what's the state of america's social capital and what does it take to if you will just regenerate the social capital that de tocqueville thought was so unique about this country? >> that's where he do discuss the downside of liberal progressivism which i believe is a principle of governing with no and.

what it does is it seeks to fix every problem with a large centralized government solution which ends up crowding out civil society and social capital. i quote people who have been reading and tracking social capital for a long time. a fantastic that bob putnam wrote a harvard economist who has written about social capital. we are not spending our lives together as much anymore and we are not engaged in our communi community. this is something that has to be revitalized and it has to be revitalized with economic growth and bottom-up economic growth that provides jobs and growth and opportunity everywhere but it also has to be revitalized for people have to understand that they themselves have to get involved. government has to respect its limits so that immature and occurred. that to me is how you revitalize social capital. don't get in the way. don't crowded out and don't

discourage it. don't overpower or overwhelm people. 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 limits and focus on what it's supposed to be doing and do it well so we can increase our social capital. [applause] >> let me turn to a topic that i know is one that you spent a lot of time thinking about which is the national balance income statement. [laughter] a lot of people looked at bowles-simpson in 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 to reign in the excess in washington. i don't know that anybody could meet with 100% of what came out of the commission.

of course it didn't deal with entitlements which is an important part that should have been part of the discussion but nonetheless it was i think in a few of a lot of people a wonderful starting point for the president to say look this is a bipartisan commission. it is taken apart the federal budget and forecast what's going to happen given demographic trends and financial trends in this country and laid out a pathway to get back to stability so we don't have to worry about a future where we might not be able to count on social security and might not be able to, medicare and medicaid, might not be able to count on the military which was second to none in the world. the president didn't pick it up. didn't touch it and you were there. what happened? why did nothing come from that extraordinary effort which got so much fanfare and enthusiasm as it was begun and is it was released and then just nothing. what happened? >> as we put things together

alice rivlin and i teamed up to have an amendment to bowles-simpson to medicare and medicaid reform which is the biggest driver of our debt. alice rivlin is a democrat who was president clinton's budget director. we put this rivlin ryan plan together which had that occurred i would have been, i would have thought this is a pretty good thing. it was rejected by the elected democrats. i was also worried about the dash so there's a lot of good work here. i'm going to take the good work here and i'm going to add rivlin ryan what i would do differently on defense and taxes and i'm going to introduce that and pass it through the house of representatives which i did the next year. i did it for years in a row. we have past four years in a row budget plans to balance the budget. [applause] >> before you go on, before you

go on i want to underscore something. that is that the house passes important legislation. the republicans are not a party of no. the house has been passing legislation. your roadmap has been passed and it deals with entitlement reforms and getting our country on a stable fiscal footing and if it doesn't get picked up by the senate and of course is not picked up by the white house. so the idea that ours is a party of no is simply wrong. ours is a party which is packing legislation putting that legislation forward in the senate. harry reid doesn't pick it up and the people want to see action in this country and dealing with problems from education to health care to immigration to our physical needs, cash -- tax reform if people want to see those things happen they will have to vote for republican senators and a republican president as well. [applause]

>> i have an enormous enormous respect for bowles and simpson, they're great guys. the thinking at the time was you have to pass any budget plan to stabilize the fiscal problem. i did my part of what they did and i thought it was missing a lot so we put our own together and passed it and exceeded those benchmarks. we had assumed the president would do the same if he didn't like bowles-simpson he would put his own plan out their meeting these benchmarks to stabilize our fiscal situation. he chose not to do that either. bowles-simpson was set up by executive order and so we have really did expect him once we decided not to support it, the house republicans and do our thing, we thought he would have triangulated like bill clinton did for the sake of 2012 and surrounded it and support. instead he jettisoned it and demagogue what we are doing and

did not offer a credible fiscal opportunity that met anywhere close to the benchmarks of bowles-simpson and meanwhile we have the same fiscal problems looming over us. you'll have to ask them but my theory of this ideology. i write about this in the book and it's a moment where it was clear that the decision being made and i just think it was more of an ideological interest that was front and center in his mind versus something that was more moderate or moderate seeming. i just believed at that moment when he decided not to do bowles-simpson and demagogue republicans and not to offer a credible alternative that was really what this administration was about. that is when i concluded we are going to need in the president. >> you might describe that. i agree. [applause] you might describe how it was unveiled to you. your experience.

>> i had a front row seat. >> a personal story, i had to make a decision about whether or not to remain. >> the chairman of ways & means and who were on bowles-simpson. they want to do a budget speech that the budget was going to get banned all weekend i'm thinking i hear he's going to do social security reform and i hear he's going to do something to reach out to you guys so we were conditioned into thinking oh he went pretty far left on these other issues that may be on the fiscal issues he's going to move the metal and triangulated and we thought for sure when they got there we saw bowles and simpson and everyone from the commission that he was going to embrace bowles-simpson. the kind of figured that was going to happen. we have the front seat and he was sitting between closer to 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 for the budget but for defense. then he ensued to demagogue the work we have been doing, nothing about bowles-simpson and 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, raised taxes in going after republicans. that's when i realized this is not a compromise. this is not someone who's going to move to the metal. we got a text from one of our colleagues in washington and is said to you guys are going to have to leave right now. we discussed it and we said out of respect for the office of the presidency we wouldn't do that even though it was really over the pale. we got up improperly left afterwards and did a press conference. >> i i see we are almost out of

time but let me ask you one more here and then you can ask one or two if you would like. that is i happen to think the president hasn't been as successful at -- [applause] that is apparently the understatement of the evening. and i will put aside foreign policy for a moment where his failures have been the most glaring recently. but domestically there was an article in "businessweek" and "the wall street journal" about the former united states senator as you know who calculated what america would be like in the recovery or the other post-war recoveries. he calculates approximately 14 million more americans working and the per-capita income in this country would be $6000 higher. a pretty dramatic difference between the president's record and that which he campaigned on.

the president said he bring america together. we be unified. sleep the post-partisan type presidency reaching out across the aisle and so forth. these things have not succeeded again. and i wonder why. from your perspective, i have my own views of course that from your perspective wide as the president failed to unite us, failed to work across the aisle, fail to get this economy going on a timeframe. the private sector will fight his way almost anything and find a way. that's what our innovators and people do but it has taken a long time. i wonder from your perspective why has it been so unsuccessful? why has it taken so long for people to get jobs, for people to get better incomes and further to be the unity the president campaigned on? >> that calculation was it's the worst post-war recovery we have had and if her were just the average five or 10 recovery

session since world war ii that would have those metrics. there's one point i think is very important to make and i try to make this in the book. it's not just this president as if we get another person whoever it is i would be better. the philosophy of governing and the policy by this administration. but for government i believe he we would have had those kinds of recoveries and so if you take a look at the enormous amount of uncertainty with the hyperregulatory state is occurring, one of our great -- in wisconsin has been canceled for production this year because of fear of these new fda regulations. that gets pretty personally at home. [laughter] >> you are very concerned. >> higher taxes, the federal reserve is out there priming the pump which has produced favors in this country.

dodd-frank makes big banks viewer. you have obamacare that is putting an incredible amount of uncertainty with the looming employer mandate hanging out there so people are getting hired and even cbo tells us the equivalent of 2.5 million people won't work because of the disincentives to work of obamacare. so you have taxes, you have regulations. you have a debt of $17 trillion growing and no reduction in site coming and i think you have a political modus operandi which doesn't seek to bridge differences that seeks to sort of basically polarized and intimidate and divide people based upon what divides them and pray on the emotions of fear and anxiety versus an aspirational political system that speaks to people with ideas that unifies people based on aspirations and based on hope and opportunity.

ronald reagan did it very well in 1980. this can be done again but i do believe that the philosophy of governing that's employed. and the third obama term would keep these things going. it's this philosophy in the policies that flow from it which basically believes that we need to delegate our power, our money and power and decision-making to unelected bureaucracies to run our lives, to micromanage society and micromanage the economy. it doesn't work. the whole idea of this country is self-government under the rule of law. we are now seeing self-government and we are announcing an equal application of the rule of law and the private sector is shrinking as a result of it. it's not meeting its potential as a result. [applause] >> you and i have had fantastic questions over the last few years on a lot of issues but one

issue that we didn't discuss that we have discussed quite a bit is foreign-policy. we have seen things very similarly in the world for her defense program and the state of things now. i have two questions i want to ask you. first give us an assessment of not just the obama foreign-policy but america's foreign policies. tell us what you think where we are and what we ought to be doing differently. >> big topics in the note you have questions from the audience so i'm not going to take much time on this, but we have had a foreign-policy of the nation frankly since truman who after the second world war said look we have gotten dragged into awful things as the world and as a nation and for that cannot happen in the future again and again and again we have to adopt a series of policies. dean dean acheson as secretary of state wrote a book called present at the creation. the creation of foreign-policy which has been the basis of america's foreign policy ever

since. that book basically says a few things that were fundamental. one is that we would be involved in the world. that doesn't mean just with guns but with diplomacy, with our economy. we would promote our values and our ideals and the second american principles of freedom and free enterprise, these things would be promoted around the world. the combination of being involved in the world, promoting our values and linking our arms with our allies, being strong and having a strong military, those three things, being involved, voting our values and being strong in doing so with our allies has been the foundation of our foreign policy. the president campaigned and has adopted a different foreign-policy. hillary clinton says something interesting the other day which as you know was critical of the presence of foreign-policy basically said he doesn't have one. i used to say that during the campaign but the truth as he does have a foreign-policy and it's very different than that of

truman and every president since truman. his foreign-policy is one based on the view that everybody has the same interest and all want the same thing. i don't believe that. i believe some people want to dominate and oppress other people. they want to take over other nations. i believe there are some people that are fundamentally evil and we have seen some of them on tv this week. one, that premise was wrong and my point. he looked at vladimir putin and others and said let's have a reset. hillary clinton tries to distance herself on the foreign-policy of the president. that would have worked better if she were not the secretary of state for four years. [applause] and she was the one with a picture with herself and the russian foreign minister with a big red button reset. can you imagine such a thing? did they not understand that people have very different objectives? vladimir putin's's objective

made wealthy as george shultz said the other day to rebuild the russian empire. those mistakes combined with some other tactical mistakes in syria for instance, to draw, to draw a red line and then say -- i guess i can't react without getting congresses approval. right now he's willing to act in iraq without congresses approval but nonetheless he couldn't do it then and that steps back from the red line altogether. that sent a message to rush and others in the world that's extraordinarily unfortunate for america. we have seen an explosion of very bad things throughout the world because the rest of the world is calculating what's happening. one more element of our foreign-policy and that's a dramatic reduction in our military capability. the quadrennial review that was recently completed and 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 air force and our army and what's

happening to our nuclear capability. that says to these other nations, guess what? america's going to be going there. we can compete. china is building and investing enormous when the military including a deep water navy. russia's investing in their military capabilities. there are other nations as well that are expanding their military might and ambitions. i happen to think the president's policy is going out with a personal charm offensive and believing people all want the same thing. we can all get along and by the way of multipolar -- multipolar world is the way to go. who else besides us, that's a multipolar military world are the others russia and china? i mean i believe in having an american economy, and american diplomacy, an american military so strong that no one in the world would think of testing us.

[applause] so is a good republican and proud to say i'm ready to return to the principles of harry truman. i would like to once again say we will be involved in the world. it's important to be involved in the world, to keep bad things happening. we have intelligence telling us that isis might come to iraq and attack a city there. what do we do? what did the president due? watch as it spread across iraq. now it's very difficult to pull out. this kind of group having a base throughout the levant would be a terrible conclusion for the world and for ask. i returned to the idea of being involved in a world and not pulling back like ocoee oh we hope that things won't happen to us. that's like paying the cannibal to eat you last as churchill

would say. we have to be involved in where the leader leader of the free world and number two we will promote our values, for enterprise human rights and human dignity and then finally we are going to be strong. we will have a military that strong. we will link arms with their allies. we will stand with israel. they're not going to waffle about who is their friend and who is not. [applause] i think you have to see that. for american security, for our safety, for her compliments that are children who live in freedom and have prosperity. we have to have that as our foreign policy. foreign policy and the best policy are inexorably linked. you can't have a strong effective force. they have to work together and i think the president has been effective in both areas. as you might imagine i would love a second term but i've been more disappointing than i

expected. i'm hopeful we'll we will be successful in electing more good colleagues like you poll and more people will read your book and we will end up passing legislation in getting into the prison's desk and taking us in a new direction. america leads new leadership. [applause] >> are obvious goal is to build a coalition that can win the majority of the country. i have one last question before we go to the audience. it's an important one and pretty easy to answer from my perspective. if you had to decide, would you choose and select julius peppers or jared? >> that's easy, julius peppers of course. [laughter] >> there is a packers fan.

>> now we are ready for audience questions. i was given cards from 14,000 people. i don't know how that happened. there are only 450 in a room but we screen them quickly. what is the status of immigration reform in the house and is there possibility for compromise between the house and the senate? >> i don't think there is right now. i think part of the problem as the administration has decided to go outside the purview of the law in so many areas. yet we currently have a crisis on the border. three weeks ago the house passed legislation to deal with that, legislation to do with the trafficking was the need to be amended, legislation to deal with securing the border. 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 in his routine and try to

unilaterally write laws by changing immigration laws which is beyond the purview of the executive branch's power, if he does do that i think he will poison the well and make it far more difficult for us to come together. as a far fine -- fan of immigration reform and specifically what we has to if a person has been supported of immigration reform i hope he doesn't go it alone. i hope he stays within the confines and the law, fixes the border crisis right now and then maybe we can start talking. that's -- we are a long ways from that right now. >> thank you. the next question is what do we do on health care? >> well, how much time do you have? we want a system where everybody can have access to affordable health care including every person with existing conditions and we can have that without the

cost to government takeover. we can have a patient-centered system where each of us as patients are the nucleus of that system and all health care providers out there, the doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and insurance companies that are competing against each other for our business. it's called a market-based system. the reason i can see is a well if i had laser surgery. it was elected and now that surgery is half as much as a cost 14 years ago and three times as good. it's not as if these great principles of choice and competition, of quality are immune to the health care system. so i put in the book in great detail what kind of a patient-centered system we have to go through and this is for all of these programs. medicare and medicaid. we need an individual based patient-centered market-based system where we each collaborate and serve each other and the providers have an incentive to

create. that's the system we need to replace obama gear which will collapse under its own weight in my opinion. [applause] >> thank you. >> i'm sorry you can't seem to more clearly. i apologize. how did the two of you manage to maintain your sanity with all the terrible things that were said about you during the campaign? >> met, do you want to go first? [laughter] >> more terrible things were said about me than him. i actually got some good advice when i was running for governor in massachusetts. the political strategists that i hired said he had a couple of rules. one of them was this. but i was not allowed to read the paper as it related to my campaign. i have course could read about other things but no articles about the campaign at all. he said he can watch tv because we will win on tv and i said well i want to read these articles. he said no because you will have some 22-year-old person who

doesn't like you and write an article and you will find yourself subconsciously referencing it or refuting it in your comments all day long and you will be offensive. it was great advice. i did not see of awful stuff that was said about me. in the presidential campaign we were working all hours. it was early in the morning event after event after event and late at night. a lot of fund-raising and a lot of rallies. it's just exhilarating. i should tell you you might think at the end of the day you can't go to sleep at the end of the day. you have so much energy. you will be in a crowd of 20,000 people cheering and cheering. this is important and it's great and at the end of the day reading the bible i was ready to go to sleep. it's a marvelous experience particularly if you don't spend a lot of time worrying about the attacks that come your way. i think it's harder on your

family but frankly you are in it because you care about this country desperately care about america. if you're worried about what people say you shouldn't get in the race. paul? >> have thick skin to don't have them permeable skin. stay the same person you are. 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. >> how about your family's? how did they handle it? >> everyone treated them well. the media campaign treated them well and they were off limits. my wife also learned as well. they are strong women and very smart intelligent strong women who understood the stake to the country so they were able to see it there as well. >> this is interesting. you think of for your coat is in it is necessary to get out of

college and for the debt to be paid off? >> no and it depends. it's not necessary. job-training reform and skills training is essential. i go into great detail on how that might happen to bridge this gap. we don't have to emphasize as much as we have. we have to make a cool again that it's okay to get a welding degree and get high-value skills that can give you a good likelihood and college tuition inflation. if we just keep feeding the beast with more and more federal spending in one pocket and out the other you will see tuition inflation. we need to flatten us. i would say accreditation reform is necessary. and we have real competition against the brick and ivy. we all went to one of those but let's look at the fact that we are in a new innovative society and let's have more competition silly person who may be not able

to go to college can do it on line and they can get their course from m.i.t. their theology from notre dame and engineering and allow them to bundle them and put them together and allow new and innovative things to happen and take down the barriers to entry that are already directed against these innovative ideas that are out there to allow people to excel in immigration and education and flatten the cost. we need more competition. we need less their ears and that to me is one of the ways we can 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 and what can i can expect and i want these health care workers in these educators competing against each other

based on outcomes and values. do i get a good job and i get a good salary? make them compete and right now they are not. [applause] b1 more question. after this probably the most important thing these two fine gentlemen are going to do is participate in a cold water plunge. [laughter] i can't wait to see that. >> i am the plunge ent is the plunger. >> you have argued in plunge. >> my daughter dumped a bucket of ice water on my head. >> on a regular basis, write right? okay last question. you think most states where the supplies are raised by and parents that the marriage act is

legal in illinois? >> if there's a child that is adopted that is in the home of loving parents then that's a child that is no longer an orphan. [applause] >> i can't thank you enough. good questions. not a bad question coming from you to him. many thanks to all of you for coming today. just one request and that is that you clear this aisle because the two of them have to get to a press conference and rather quickly. if you could help clear the aisle and let them get through it would be much appreciated.

[applause] >> thank you. [applause] [applause] >> how do you acquire a book? >> there are a million ways to do it. one which is not often talked

about is you really come up with an idea and you try to find the perfect writer, the person who passion for the idea matches yours and that's one way you can make a book happen. another way is you make sure to talk to agents as much as possible and see what kind of topics they are and to stick the new raise your hand and hope they will send you a good proposal. sometimes you cultivate authors you adore and the plant ideas with them and you hope that over time they come up with a project that they want to spend five or 10 years with and make a great thing happened. >> have ever read a newspaper article or magazine article