it is complicated. it probably won't happen. you happen, they delayed it until 2016. at least a couple years ago. at least a year and a half. but we have the aws-3 auction which is underway. the only thing we know is it produced higher bidding than anticipated. >> host: were you surprised by the numbers? >> guest: i wasn't tremendously surprised but i think the numbers say two things about what was contrary as conventional wisdom. one was the need for and therefore the demand for spectrum parties claimed wasn't as great. we heard that often. we heard people say there is no spectrum crisis. i think the value of what is being done in that auction

suggests there is a need and demand for spectrum. and the other piece of conventional wisdom i think it is interesting to think about is the implications and we heard a a lot about concern spectrum being more valuable than others. it has to do with lower frequency spectrum and obviously there are circumstances where that is true. but in terms of the value of the spectrum at least superficially, this auction would suggest this higher frequency spectrum is gaining much higher bids than the last time the fcc auctioned offed lower frequency spectrum which doesn't prove there are not benefit benefits to lower frequency spectrum but shows you should not write off the broadbands. >> host: is there enough competition in the mobile telephone world?

>> guest: i think it is very hard to say anything other than it is tremendously competitive. this is a market where you typically consumers have four providers they can chose from. many have five providers. and it is very easy to switch carriers/service providers. there is constant upheaval in terms of changes in the products in terms of handsets and tablets and plans that are available. you know this is increasing the bucket of data that are being sold. i look at that saying it is hard for an objective person to question how competitive that market is. >> host: hank hultquist, vice president of at&t.

thank you. >> guest: thank you, peter. >> host: and the "the communicators" is in location in las vegas for the ces international consumer show. largest trade show in the world. if you are interested in seeing more of the program go to cspan.org/ cspan.org/communicate. >> on the next washington journal, new jersey congressman, a member of the budget and ways and means committee talks about the president $4 trillion budget request. iowa representative will discuss his membership in the freedom formed caucus and his role in immigration reform and his legislative priorities.

and bloomberg business week staff writer talks about maternity leave in the u.s. in comparison to systems in other countries. as always we will take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter as well. washington journal live at 7 a.m. eastern on c-span. the political landscape change would the is 114th congress with now there being 108 women in congress and the first african-american woman in the house and first woman veteran in the house.

now, thom tillis speaks at the bipartisan center in washington, d.c. for its agenda setter series. senator tillis talks about goals, congressional agenda, and lessons learned from working unstateun in state government. this is about 45 minutes. good afternoon everyone. welcome to the bipartisan policy center. i am bill hoagland the senior vice president here. it is a pleasure to kick off the new agenda setters series. for those of you who may not be

familiar with the bipartisan center we were established in 2007 by four former majority leaders of the united states senator. bob dole howard bake senator tom dash and george mitchell. just on a personal note i had the pleasure and honor of working with all of the those over my career in the united states senate as a staffer. we are launching this series at the beginning of the new 114th congress. our goal is to explore timely issues in policy making and politic politics throughout 2015. each event highlights people in decision making roles and some like today who might have been just put in the role and come forward to solve critical issues that challenge the country and world. we are pleased to have senator

thom tillis with us for this inaugural event. you have his bio. elected in november. he is the junior senator from north carolina. he is being joined by my boss jason grumet the president of the bipartisan center. please join me in welcoming ten senior tillis and jason to begin the discussion. jason? >> thank you, bill. welcome to the beginning of the agenda setting series. couldn't be happier to start the series with you, senator. i am confidant you will be one of the most influential members of the class of 2014. i think we have an opportunity to talk about your policy and your ideas and commitments that you bring to this work. there is a lot of discussion today about opportunity and the challenges of opportunity in the country. i think there is no body who i am aware of who has been elected

in the last cycle who embodies the possibilities of the country more than you. i am not sure most people know this but senator tillis graduated and immediately went to work in a warehouse to earn the resources to get a college education. put himself through college and while doing that he worked at a number of esteemed institutions. in his mid-30s he was an ex executive at price waterhouse coopers and ibm. so i think the spirit of hard work creating opportunity in this country is certainly something you can speak of not just in theory but through experience certainly. the senator's public service career followed the same deliberate path. starting out at the pta. >> eight years ago. >> then joined the north carolina board of commissioners. 2006 house of representatives

in north carolina. he was chosen to be the speaker of the north carolina house and served from 2011-2014. there is a passion for public service and an ambition the country needs. we welcome you to the bipartisan policy center. i want to spend about 20 minutes asking questions and then we will turn it over to the audience. i think i would like to get started with an issue you spoke about in the campaign and that is what you were hoping to get into. the obstructionism in washington that i think it standing in the way of public interest. how would you turn this place around? >> i guess i can look back to what i did as speaker of the house. in 2007 i ran against the two-time republican incumbent in 2006 when was the award getter

of all of the conservative organizations in the state. but he wasn't very effective and that is why i decided to run against him. it wasn't people getting ribbons but people getting results. going into the legislature, i spent a lot of time in my freshman year -- it is great being a freshman and irrelevant because you can spend time finding your way around. that is what i am doing now. trying to build relationships that i think will be helpful on both sides of the aisle. i mentioned before starting that i spent most of my time reaching out to members of the democratic caucus. and meeting with them one-on-one. i have met with seven or eight of them. i do the research to know where they are on policy issues. i had a great breakfast with a member this week.

i said i read your background and i am convinced on 80% of the issues we are in disagreement but there were some things i thought could provide a bases of working together. i started having those conversations and building those relationships and recognizing upfront and don't mince words when you will have different objectives. i think i am trying to get back and forth to the capital without getting lost. i am doing that better with a month passing. but understanding the process and finding ways to help my leadership that is committed to regular order and getting the senate functioning again. take a look at the number of votes we have had over the past month if you doubt that. i think it is good from both sides. even among members of the minority they are just glad to get out and vote. even if the amendments are defeated. they get the opportunity to put

them forth and have the discussion and it is healthy. i just want to be a part of the group that is coming in and getting the senate to move and function again. because it will never go as quickly as i would like to go and quickly as i did in the house. >> i think you made a number of important points. the one i want to drill down during the issue of the keystone xl pipeline, no matter what anybody thinks of the importance of that issue, you had the opportunity to coming in three role call votes and i want to see if you can build on what that means in terms of the chemistry. you are on the floor voting and there was harsh exchanges but how important was it to build this relationship?

>> i think it is enormously important. if you are in the minority and you know you will have an opportunity to have things heard you will be more likely to check your partisan tendency in the interest of moving them further along. i think the sense i am getting from the members i met with on the or side of the aisle is they are optimistic about having real work done and they can have a meaningful roll in. i talked to senator whitehouse franken and all of them genuinely believe they may be able to get more down under leader mcconnell than senator harry reid over the last couple years. i believe it is true. there is a lot of things we do here. you can try to make it partisan but you can probably get the

policy to get it done. maybe not as much as i want done or the minority but progress. >> touch on a couple issues where you think there is potential to build momentum with your colleagues and the administration? >> i think if you go down my bias is toward regulatory reform, we talk about tax reform and a number of other things we want to do but if we go back and examine some of the problems we have with regulatory overreach and expose some of these areas whether it is epa or labor or any number of areas in a very focused way then you can sit sit down and say the regulations may have made sense in a vacuum but couldn't nathaniel philbrick context of how they affected business. let's clarify regulations we

know will help businesses expand. if we can do that and start having a more positive sustainable impact on economic activity it makes a lot of other things we will have to do that will have bases in the ideas to have people disagree it makes it less likely we will go there because the economy is thriving more. if you look at the issue of sequestration, i think most people realize it was probably a bad idea. when we first implemented we thought it wasn't going to happen. >> it was designed to be a bad thing. >> we thought it would be so bad it would not occur. now it is commonplace. i have not looked at the president's budget. i don't know if his path forward is the one we will embrace but a number of people think we have

to do a better job with budgeting and the sequestration is something we should join together and get rid of and join the task of responsible budgeting. >> you are a aaa senator. agriculture, armed services and this committee. you were speaking about armed service. let's go there. how do you think the republicans are going to reconcile the defense to safety and the budget. the sequester is the tip of that but broadly how do you see that playing out through armed services? >> i think it may make for an interesting next in terms of the strategy going forward. i think you will see people at the extremes of the spectrum be opposed to things that senator

wright are eosinssenccentric and the people opposing it might be on the extremes of the caucus. we have to be realistic about numbers. if we had a veto or a super majority then obviously we would do things differently. at the end of the day, we have to look at what it takes to send the legislation to the president's desk that can withstand the veto but also the policies the american people want to see. we are looking to get 60-plus votes. to do that i think we will have to be very patient in our approach. i think that we have so much pent up demand on the part of the people that voted for us a very excited base of people back home that are calling me about a thousand times a week already,

to try to figure out how to prioritize things. we are early in the process and worried about the foreign policy and the iranian talks. i don't know how those things fit together and how they will create coalitions or create significant differences between the two conferences. >> tough issue on defense budget. north carolina very significant presence for the military and i believe there is a hearing tomorrow in the armed services looking at the issue of military pay and pensions. it has been said by some our military is a pension-benefit health care company that occasionally fights a war. and the current trend are such that we will have to address those personal issues which obviously people feel very passionate about based on the great appreciation we have for

our veterans and folks in the active service. you see room on that? how do you see engaging that? >> i think you have to go back to the bigger issue of overall spending. we had a panel of generals and one admiral last week. we talked about sequestration and the need to appeal it and i said i believe we need to do that because as a partner of price waterhouse i would never go into and read the organization and my question to the general who said that sequestration was producing a devastating impact on our armed services said let's separate sequestration from the

fundamental policy. did you believe the department of defense and armed services are operating at a level of efficiency? the question -- the answer is no. so the question is how do we talk about things that require more spending or better use of funds? we have to be more systematic to the approach of understanding pension or weapon system or regardless of the category are we spending it best to its highest use. i don't think that question has been asked whether it is acquisition or precurement reform. things that businesses have done forever. those are the things we need to start looking at to create the currency to address legit issues where we see them or other areas of government. i don't think we have done that on a systematic bases. we operate in 12 month cycles.

i think we have to be more sophis sophis sophis sophis sophisticated. >> we agree with that view. >> i didn't read the background so i am happy to hear that. >> on agriculture or judiciary, do you have anything you want on the there? >> the agriculture is poised to grow and an $80 billion industry. it is poised to grow if we promote trade or continue to promote and fund research so we get more productivity out of the agriculture sector. again i hate to sound like a broken record but regulatory reform is first and foremost one of the things we need to deal

with. if you go out and talk to these farmers, they will give you a litany of non-senseical regulations that really do not provide the value, commence with the farmers and we have to get trade right and expand opportunities for agriculture and exports. our farmers are prepared to do it. some are making headway. a lot don't realize how successful successful north carolina is as an exporter of sweet potatoes. we have 120% increase in sweet potato increase to the uk. and europe is opening up as a market. we need to figure out how to help them provide access to more markets and how do we eliminate the regulations that literally make no sense. it is not just environmental

regulations. it is workplace regulations and immigration policy coming into the mix. there is just a number of areas we need to short live, identify the burdensome regulations and systematically remove them. on judiciary, it has an enormous oversight. we had the first conformation hearing last week. it provides an important oversight function. we are trying to sort out how i will personally use that as a vehicle for certain things that need to be looked at. >> and just about anything you can boil is a sure thing in the uk. i think you have other options there. agriculture and judiciary -- >> in the south it is anything you can fry. >> challenging issue that congress has been working on is immigration. you mentioned it and judiciary

and agriculture have a lot to do there. the debate was moving in a good direction and then it unravelled and i think we are years back with the angry rhetoric. do you see anything that can bring the debate back together? >> i think the problem is at least from a far, when senators or members of congress try to get together on immigration reform, they let it go beyond a scope i think keeps enough people on board, i personal believe we should focus first on border security. and the reason i believe that is that if we can come up with a creditable way to reduce the growth of the illegal present population, first we establish creditability with the american people and more importantly we stabilize the problem we then need to go back and systematically address. and i think when we go about

doing that it will put people out of their comfort zone on both side of the aisle. but we have to be realistic about immigration reform that doesn't embrace either of the extreme points of view out there right now. i think you do it in a fashion -- the biggest problem is people are thinking one single legislative matter will solve the illegal immigration problem in the country. but that has been a -- there is a very long well documented bipartisan history of failure when they tried to do that. now i think we need to do it in a systematic way. start with sealing the border and look at the illegally present population and determine how you come to a closure on it. it is not going to be done in a bill or a year. but i think you could map out a strategy and then start explaining to the american people, my supporters and detractors exactly how you

would go about doing it. first and foremost you take a a lot of the issue out by sealing the border. i don't think it is necessarily true, the conventional thought about sealing just the southern border, i think the relationships with mexico and southern border. 80% of the people coming across the border are not from mexico. that should give you a sense or more creative thinking about how you go about sealing it and then you build on the creditability to address the population that is here. >> i will ask one more question so you can think about how you might jump in in a minute. and that was reflected on your campaign. which was remarkable. not only your success, but you know and i don't know if everyone else does but the most expensive senate campaign in history. $120 million. there is a lot riding on you.

you are a heavily invested person. >> two thirds was riding on the other part. >> fair point. of the overall resources, i think about 90 of the 120 million came from third party sources. recognizing the supreme court's views on money and speech and the limitations therein any thoughts? any thoughts on how -- assuming you will do this again in six years how you can improve upon the system? >> you know i think that the third party money is a reality. i think there is something to be said for some level of increase transparency and disclosure. i know it gets people nervous on both sides. i was having this discussion with senator whitehouse last week actually during the votes.

in a strange way i think it is one of the -- the fact the 80

we really have shy audiences at the bbc. we have a couple of mics running around. let us know who you are.

one here and one here. >> good afternoon, patrick wilson. it's good to see you senator. one of the questions the president just got today and i will pitch it to you because i think it's timely and that is what we do about tax reform? this was an issue you talked about on the campaign and given what you said about the regulatory burden on american business certainly having u.s. business burdened by the highest tax -- corporate tax rate in the world i wonder what you think the prospects are for trying to take care of that in this congress? >> i think the challenge we have here are two different perspectives between them on tax reform between the president and the current congress and the leadership of the congress. we did tax reform in north carolina. not in our first term but in our second term. we simplified it. we went from 44 in our tax

burden to 16. a lot of that was through simplification but it was also through a half a billion dollars in spending cuts so they could actually with tax reform not only changing the way the tax code works most people assume it's going to be a reduction in the tax rate. it sounds more as much focused on how to derive more revenue from an economy that i think needs to have more money moving to the private sector. that's why you feel strongly we need to work more in policies that can improve economic activity so you can make tax reform and the easier thing to deal with. it's never going to be simple because i will tell you as i told everybody in north carolina everybody is for tax reform. everybody's for broadening the base. everybody is for lowering the rate except for everyone wanting that one exception is righteous

for the sector they happen to represent it's very challenging. it's almost impossible to do without bipartisan support or supermajorities were both parties in charge at both ends of the street. so i think tax reform to me think sweeping tax reform this year, i've not had a discussion with leadership but it seems unlikely to me because of the challenges and because the president is coming in with a different perspective on the raises revenue and that's not one that i happen to support. i don't believe that -- we have a debt that we have to deal with so reducing revenues even if you were to reduce spending you've got to come up with a credible way to start retiring the debt. even if you were just spending it raises a question about how much of that would translate into a reduced tax burden. we have to spend a lot of time looking back and figure out if

we have similar philosophies in both the house and the senate and the then sufficient support from the minority caucus to get it through. the other problem you have is a political one. tax reform to me is something that has to be implemented at least a year before an election. the reason for that when we did tax reform we had a six, seven and 7.75 personal income tax system in north carolina. we simplified it and brought it down to 5.75. we also lowered the sales tax by 10 or 20% if you look at the base. we knew if we implemented that and going into an election year and people were not going to believe you actually had a reduced tax burden and you would have basically been exposing yourself to a political cycle.

we implemented it last year so this past april people saw the benefits. they saw that the withholding was lowered for their refund checks were larger. you can't implement something in january of this year or july of next year and i think go to a cycle where the american people would see the benefits so you got to work on timing as well. >> another question in the back. the mic is being run to you hence the word leg runner. >> hi i am joanne from the center for -- you are also on the special senate committee on aging and i wanted to have you comment on that. doubling the number one of the most predictable challenges for

the country. north carolina has had some interesting experiments with primary care and pharmacy and on the other hand dependence on families is becoming really pretty thin as families are smaller and more dispersed. so what do you see as the priorities for your service on the special committee on aging? >> i'm excited to be on the committee and i'm particularly excited to follow the lead of senator collins has the chair. i have not spent a lot of time talking. we had our organizational meeting last week the fastest committee meeting i was ever in. we voted on the budget and got back to the boat and literally lasted 10 minutes. there are a lot of things that we need to work on that i i think and then the curve and provide more resources. i for one have a personal

interest in alzheimer's and dementia. because i have personally experienced it and also i went back and took some courses on it to become a better caregiver for my grandmother who was diagnosed with alzheimer's at a relatively young age. but investing in research and some of the things that are making the costs of providing support to elders higher than it necessarily has to be a something i'm very interested in learning more about and finding how aging ways into that. i think when you get into the discussion of entitlement reform and a number of other things i've had people come up to me and i have a lady come up to me in western north carolina. she said i couldn't support you because you are going to end medicare. i said i will be honest with you, talk to my mom about it and she said i couldn't do it. [laughter] i think a part of what we have to do is recognized the promises

that have been made up there but it goes back to to certain extends the discussion on pension reform and a number of other things. how do you do things in a way that fulfills the promise you have made and gives the next generation of people enough time to deal with the new more sustainable model? i think the most recent people people -- though i am 54 so i would probably be part of the group that may have to look at medicare and social security a little bit differently than let's say people who are four or five years away from possibly qualifying for one program or another. i think we have to look at that so if we can reduce the fear among the seniors population generally there are people out there in part because a lot of the third-party money being spent to honestly think it's going to be taken away. i think we have to go in tackle that and there are obviously

another other committees that would fall under their jurisdiction. i think entitlement reform is something we have to get serious about. i'm afraid that they are promises that have been made that we can't keep. it's causing a lot of concern among seniors who view it as critical to their lives. i look forward to working on it and seeing how aging weighs in on it the committee i guess. >> we have time for a couple of questions. >> thank you. rhaman buehler from the madison coalition. i believe he may be unique and correct me if i'm wrong, you may be the only former speaker of the house who was just elected to the senate and that gives you a unique perspective and i wonder what you think of the idea that sometimes bipartisan cooperation is easier to achieve among speakers and senate presidents of different states

than it is among members of the house and senate in washington. and he talked about problem of regulatory reform, widespread concern around the country. 2-1 voters don't like what they see. what do you think of the idea that in the same way that states states.the congress to propose the bill of rights to limit federal power that states could do what by state legislative chambers have artegon which is to urge congress to propose a constitutional amendment called the regulation freedom amendment to require congress to approve major federal regulations instead of having them dictated by bureaucrats in washington. >> i think there may be something to that. if you think what's happening now we are trying to disallow regulations. it's very consistent with what we did in north carolina for me came in 2011. our first pass of regulatory

reform was to require a business case for the regulations so that the cost whether it be taxpayer costs are costs to industry to be commensurate with the benefit whether his workplace safety or environmental improvements whatever it may be in the many cases there will be a think about what argument for it. the business case has to be developed and there has to be a consultation with the legislature in north carolina. it's consistent with exactly what you're talking about and i think until that could potentially be put into place at the federal level you can kind of use that as a way to go back to fair thinking members and say let's talk about how these regulations are affecting your state, your constituents were no great gain and use that as a way to build bipartisan support to least repeal some of the regulations that have simply

gone too far. it's worked in north carolina. i don't believe it's any coincidence over the last four years in north carolina's economic activity is outpacing virtually every other state in the southeast. i don't think it's any coincidence that north carolina for the first time in 10 years is ahead of south carolina on an appointment i think it was through some of the systematic approach we have used for responsible regulatory reform. and incidentally it's not always pulling it all back. it's doing it in a reasonable fashion. north carolina's upper state in the nation to tackle coal as sure issues and putting forth a regulatory framework to do that. we have gotten all the stakeholders together environmental organizations and utilities and i think we got it right. we balance the regulations. there were a lot of people who are concerned because we had the coal ash bill in the dan river that was just overreach. i refuse to allow that to happen

happen. we want to use the same framework that we tell the regulators in north carolina that they have to follow for us to attenuate the policy to solve the problem is not just all of a sudden run based primarily on emotions and maybe the pressure we were getting from certain special interest groups. they got a good policy and i believe that return policy is one that will be ultimately adopted by other states. >> another question right here. >> senator was curious about your views on transparency. my name is denise and i represent the -- we asked documents and the government said no and so we went to foia and you told us to foia them. the question we have because we are scratching our head going this doesn't make any sense especially for the cost being put on us paying for these documents, what can be done to

improve the situation regarding transparency of documents for the business industry? >> i think we have to do a lot of we also have to be mindful that there are people out there who abuse these requests as well. and so you have got to balance balance -- it's very difficult to do. after i became speaker we had transparency -- we have document requests for just a non-believable number of areas that we had little or nothing to do with so they seemed like they were a part of a chess game that was being played versus a legitimate request for transparency. i think we need to figure out what sort of oversight or maybe even independent review of requests to try and get to what the motives are and that somebody wants the documents

given give them to them but there may be a cause with them. my concern is a lot of times legitimate request that may be very revealing and very important to the american people get clogged up in the other one's going to the cycle. i don't have an answer for it but i do think it's a problem and i do think sometimes even congress can't get the documents that they want. i was just watching c-span watching a house member complaining about documents that congressional panel has requested that they can't get. i feel the pain of people wanting to get information that they feel is really important they can get. >> time for a final question i never hear. >> my name is michelle and i'm a trained adviser with the british embassy so we appreciate your sweet potatoes in the u.k.. >> buy more. >> when you're talking about

agriculture you mention the need to expand exports are wanted to ask your views on trade legislation starting with the trade authority to negotiate and the transpacific partnership great. >> i think tpa scenario where we may end up having an opportunity to work on a bipartisan basis. he probably got more positive reaction from from our side of the aisle than his own. i think it's critically important. i think tp is critically important. i think trade agreements we are working out with europe are critically important particularly for agriculture. the world likes american products. they think it's one of the safest food sources that they can have access to and i think we need to build on that. north carolina has a tremendous opportunity to grow its agriculture sector to $120 billion if we were able to

have more access and lower-cost access to the markets. and i would support it and i would support the tpa. >> i want to thank all of you for joining us. i think you certainly have a sense that we have a new senator in this town who is both eloquent and substantive. usually you get one or the other but it's wonderful to have it in a single passage. >> and i share one little thing. [inaudible question] to share this just to get an idea about where my bias is when it comes regulatory reform. the states back to, i was in the minority still so i was the minority whip. this would have been around 2010 and i was having a discussion because i really do believe you can get regulations to a point where you preserve the environment and you keep the workplace safe and you can do all that. he wants to. i hope there is no republican or democrat here who has run for office to destroy the environment or make sure their

children can't drink clean water. i was having this discussion with someone and we were at a starbucks in my district. we were tricking -- talking about certain regulations where i felt maybe you should allow businesses to opt out and let an industry or business opt out as long as they indicate through proper disclosure and advertising through employment literature or whatever else. there is this level of regulation that maybe they are on the books but maybe you can make a market-based decision as to whether or not they should apply to it. she said i can't believe that. she said opting out and at that time we are sitting back at a table near the restrooms. one of the employees came out and said for example don't you believe that this regulation that requires this gentleman to wash his hands before he serves your food is important? >> said as a matter of fact i think it's one i can illustrate

an appointed i said i don't have any problem a any problem at starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post assigned to us as we don't require our employees to wash their hands after using the restroom. the market will take care of that. so it's one example but then let them decide. that's probably one where every business that did that would go out of business but i think it's good to illustrate the point that that's the sort of mentality we need to have to reduce the regulatory burden on this country. one of the most regulated nations in the history of the planet and i think that we go about it in a commonsense way that solves a lot of problems and these big problems that we are talking about are eminently more easy to solve. >> i'm not sure i'm going to shake your hand. [laughter] i want to all express our appreciation to senator tillis for joining us today. thank you.

[applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

the corporation for enterprise development hosted an event friday that the earned income tax credit for the eitc. democratic senator sherrod brown of ohio spoke about his support a tax credit and similar federal efforts to provide economic relief to low income americans. a panel of researchers and tax service providers then discuss the impact of the ie -- eitc for those who qualify. this is an hour and 45 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> good morning.

good morning. good morning everyone. first of all happy -- awareness day. new research and political prospects with an income tax credit and voluntary tax assistance. my name is lauren pescatore. we are nonpartisan indications campaign led by a that hatch group to promote crests -- tax credits like the eitc. we have worked with cfpb for a long cfpb for a long time and we are thrilled to be partnering with them today to bring this event event. this year marked the 40th anniversary of the eitc enactment by congress in 1975. the eitc is regarded as one of the nation's most powerful antipoverty programs at one of five eligible workers does not claim the credit. we brought you here today to not only discuss the importance but also vital world volunteer income tax assistance plays in ensuring that every eligible worker is able to receive the credit. in the folders provided for you

will find resources from cfpb the center of budgen ourselves and i would encourage you to visit our web site www.tax credits for working working families.org to view recent interviews with their keynote speaker professor kathryn edin and her latest book. without further ado i'd like to introduce a dear friend of the hatcher group and present of the corporation for enterprise development andrea levere. [applause] >> thank you line. it's such a pleasure for us to be cohosting this event with tax credits for working families. i am presence of cfpb and it's my coming-out day because i came back from the major injury. it is my theme that this is a day about hope and with the eitc has brought to families is the core mission that it's not just about income but it's also about

assets and our whole philosophy is that we want to help people build their future by being able to invest in long-term assets that help them live the american dream. i am especially grateful to my dear friend lisa adams who introduced us to cathy edin and her insight will -- insightful book. those who read it can see that it is as much about how this works as heartwrenching stories about how people make their lives work under incredibly difficult and challenging circumstances. all of us here are dedicated to public policies that will make it easier for people to be the productive lurching people we all want them to be. we are thrilled to be hosting this event because the eitc on the volunteer income tax assistance program fits so well

with our mission. last year cfed formally took on a portfolio of work to advance policy programs that specifically aimed to provide low and moderate taxpayers with new tax time opportunities and i'm happy to recognize the new taxpayer opportunity network which brings together organizations and individuals who provide tax assistance to low-income communities. this work builds on our experience with the assets and opportunities network which is a national network that brings movement oriented advocates practitioners policymakers and others to expand the reach and impact of asset building strategies to every community in the united states. and so i am greatly pleased to introduce senator brown who has

been such a champion of the eitc and fido. david come you may think we picked them just because he's from ohio but that wouldn't be the truth. even more importantly he has been a tireless advocate for expanding tax time opportunities for low and moderate-income americans particularly as director of research development and public affairs for the neighborhood housing services of greater cleveland. the other great thing about david is he's one of the few people in america who make me look shy. so david, welcome. [applause] >> following andrea levere is never an easy opportunity with the energy she brings up thank you andrea and to lauren for starting our morning was so much energy on the point. such a great pleasure for me to

today's surfers keynote speaker senator sherrod brown today. senator brown hails from our great state of ohio and he is always proud of it. my parents were overjoyed that i'm introducing a state senator and my graduate school friends and policy wonks are more excited about professor edin so it's all about perspectives. there are so many different facets to asset building through the eitc and i can touch him on policy that's not to be part of the panel and this conversation this morning to emphasize the growing importance of delivery systems for the itc and the professor edin's book she touches on this issue. if families are paying upward of $500 to receive tax assistance and additional dollars to get their refunds put on debit cards they are losing their earned income and they are being gouged gouged. tax preparer smuts be regulated and they should be required to provide good-faith estimates before and not after their tax returns. i'm excited today working with my colleagues we ever released a

report that calls for such measures including a fee disclosure box similar to what's been going on with credit cards and prepaid debit cards and we have that white paper right outside. more on point to talk about perspectives senator brown is a longtime supporter and innovative thinker around the earned income tax credit. his bills includes the permit expansion of ada coverage and a long phaseout for credit. senator brown understands the working families need these dollars for economic development in achieving and growing assets could senator brown's newest bill we are excited about is on target for dancing dollars to help working families pay bills to save and achieve assets throughout the year and not just attacks time. it functions as a method to help families not use payday loans

i'm doubly excited in another's offices as well. here a couple of things you might not have known about senator brown and the eitc. he ran a free tax preparation site out of a scoring county office outside of cleveland. there wasn't an active fight a site so we up his office to one. for the past two years of senate has worked with us to increase funding for tax preparation by three times the amount funded through the irs to ensure working families would pay $0 attacks time to secure their eitc. again thank you all for being here and thank you senator for coming to speak. thank you for your dedicated staff who is working on the eitc. there is time after the senator speaks for five minutes for questions and answers so please prepare those. senator thank you. >> david thank you and thank all of you.

i'm glad you you are back or did i don't know what the injury is that you look great. congratulations and dr. edin thank you for your contributions to this debate and to all of you chye-ching huang who has been important talking to the white house educating them and helping our office another so thank you for your terrific work. this is my real voice. i talk this way. i don't smoke and i'm not sick, just talk this way. this is a true story i'm about to tell you. my wife and i were at an event in a room about the size but no tables or chairs and people were crammed together. three or four of us were speaking for a couple minutes took the stage and began to talk. the guy standing next to my wife she had never seen before but he turned to her and said i hate that guys voice. she said really? he said it's like fingernails on a blackboard.

i can't stand to listen to that guy. she's the kind kind of like his voice. she said do you know what i really like? he leans in and she says i really like it when he wakes me up in the middle of the night and says i love you baby. [laughter] that's a true story. [applause] my wife is a very good writer. she has the best facebook ever. her name is connie shultz of check it out could you elaborate more things than i just told you. david is such a gem to northeast ohio. he has testified a number of times two subcommittees that i have chaired that deal with financial issues. he is now a neighborhood housing services in cleveland and has been a terrific advocate for people who frankly don't have a voice no matter what it sounds like.

he is so valuable to northeast ohio and you can tell your parents that and your academic friends can tell the mac too. about a year ago this month on a cold snowy cleveland they want to martin luther king day breakfast and administer there isn't something we although and we all know this is true but he probably said it better than at least i presented. he said your life expectancy is connected to your zip code. like your life expectancy is connected to your zip zip code. whether you grow up in appalachia ohio or in east cleveland to poor inner-city suburb if you will weather you grow up in shaker heights or whether you grow up in an affluent suburb or where work you grew up your life expectancy clearly is determined in many ways quality of health care where they have a good education and social support that you have from the neighborhood organizations and all that. obviously it shouldn't be that way in a country that's rich.

my state embarrassingly is 48th in the country in the mortality. its 50th or black infant mortality. we are not a poor state that we are a state that is under best in public health and underinvested in early childhood education and underinvested in the safety net that really does give people an opportunity. so many low income people in her state pay for it every day. it's an economic, moral and a political issue. a recent poll found that 63% of americans believe the u.s. economic system favors the wealthy so well over half of americans think the system think their government works more for wall street than it does for main street and works better for the elite and the wealthy in this country than it does for people who have little opportunity. when workers wages stagnate when they struggle to provide for their families we have a

moral problem. the people who work hard and take responsibility and do the best they can but when they believe the economy is rigged against them we have a political problem. when the next generation of workers retires with little savings, little or no savings and no defined pension benefit anymore we have an economic problem. that's why the eitc and the child tax credit are so very important. you know its history. it's close to 40 years old now. expanded by every single president and most importantly of course it rewards work. the eitc expansion of the 90s led more than half a million single mothers to move from cash welfare assistance to work doubled the results of welfare reform which i opposed when i was in the house and welfare reform clearly didn't do

anything close to what it was heralded to do. we know whatever to do the earned income tax credit did much more. lifted more children above the poverty line than any other government program. in 2012 london -- alone more than 20 million american households almost a million people in my state benefited from the eitc. you know these numbers. it's important to emphasize an important we tell stories around these numbers. we can stand up in front of people and talk until we are blue in the face about public policy that we need to tell stories and issue no tell stories about who this affects any effect on them. want -- alicia duran told me last year she lives paycheck to paycheck but getting the eitc every march or april is the one time that he or she can pay off her bills. rosalie of toledo works as a manager in a fast food

restaurant for $9.35 an hour. she is the manager manager of arrest him and manager of arrest him and she's making $9.35 an hour. her family struggles to pay bills. eitc has saved her life since she found out about it through her local center. thousands of stories like this have lifted people out of poverty and made a huge difference in their lives. the state of the union address i thought perhaps president obama's best one-two weeks weeks ago he'd laid out plans to reform the tax code by making eitc nctc perman and expanding credit for middle-class families to save for retirement pay for retirement. the work in this town we live in this town and you hang around these buildings what you hear about tax reform is almost always we have got to lower the corporate tax rate. that is how the debate is done but that's -- we can't let the debate begin that way. a president i thought for the

first time emphatically in the state of the union began to change that debate that we are not going to have corporate tax reform until and unless we expand the eitc and we make the expansion's permit. they make the expansions for ctc and eitc permanent otherwise we don't attract support for any tax reform. think the president no tax breaks for corporations without tax breaks for working families. it's something we should be able to agree on pier we know in the past that the eitc nctc minimum wage is my first speech for a minimum-wage bill signed by president bush. it was a bipartisan bill for a speech in january 2007. the presiding officer was barack obama and i stood up and when you stand up in the senate to address the chair and my first words in january 20002 him were

mr. president i think you like the sound of it. [laughter] is a true story but probably not entirely true. one of my guests with jacob -- jason jacobs, growth is a middle-class working class kid. got a degree to teach at loyola university. he hasn't been able to find a job as a teacher and he's now working as a paraprofessional in a school district east of hamilton county where cincinnati is. he made only $16,000 last year and because he doesn't have children he will miss out on critical tax credits that could put more of his money in his pocket or my legislation david mentioned the working families tax relief act would triple the size of the eitc for workers without children and expand access to young workers. what they permanent enhancement of eitc that will expire in 2017

2017 expanding the child was eitc in our legislation that president obama proposed in the state of the numeral lift more than a happen people out of poverty and reduce poverty for an additional 10 million people. for jason who is ineligible for every 1 dollar eitc the credit under my plan would be $600 for him so in a sense he is taxed further into poverty because he gets no help from the earned income tax credit. we know what this means. we know what earned income tax credit greenspan putting money in families pockets. similar to children's health insurance program. i'm introducing that legislation in the next week or so. that has been bipartisan for 20 years. in my state is 130,000 children benefit from the chip program

and what that means is not just giving parents the peace of mind of knowing their children have insurance, not just eitc nctc giving apparent peace of mind that they can do a few things for their children that they couldn't do. it also means better performance in schools. it means they miss fewer school days and when they are at school they're less likely to be sick and may be less likely to be hungry because they have a little bit more money and their parents have more money in their pocket. if we care about not just these families in these neighborhoods that we raise children that would have higher test scores higher graduation rates higher college attendance rates and more people getting ged send more people going to college and finishing college. it means higher salaries and we enable the cache for the 44% of households that have less than three months worth of savings almost half of the people as

country of less than three months of savings whatever age they are and if they are in their 50's we know what that means for their retirement. half of the people more or less half the people in this country on social security depend on social security for more than half of their income. if we ever going to build wealth in this country and get people and young children a chance in older people a chance for earning a more secure retirement eitc nctc are so important. but if we fail that if we fail to renew it 50 million americans could lose their eitc. in so many ways that's the worst kind of class warfare aimed at working families. people that dress like men have good titles and get good salaries and good government paid pensions and health care don't rise to the occasion and make permanent the eitc nctc and

on expand the programs and the children's health insurance plan don't raise the minimum wage things that have been bipartisan this country for most of the last 30 years. minimum wage has a third less buying power than it did in 1968. think about what that means. it's not mostly teenagers. it's mostly people that support themselves and their families. only talk about lowering the corporate tax rate is the worst kind of class warfare. these people need help but poverty and not being taxed into it. david talked about payday lending. there are more payday lending stores in the united states today than there are combined with donaldson starbucks. more payday lending stores and combined mcdonald's and starbucks. in upper income neighborhoods there a starbucks and mcdonald's and if you look at

the whole country think of the concentration of payday lenders and moderate and low income neighborhoods. so what happens in for so many people like the woman rose and mention from toledo ohio. she depends on eitc. in february march or april she depends on the check to pay down her bills just to catch up. what if in october rose has some unforeseen problem that costs money which for people always are more likely to have enter car breaks down and she can go to work because her car breaks down. she has to go to payday lender because she hasn't gotten her eitc refund. she has to go to payday lender and the average payday lender the average person goes seven times. you get the first payday loan

and you can't pay it all back so you go again and again and end up paying 200 or 300% or more and some have testified up to 500% interest. once you are in a downward spiral you have to borrow money against your eitc to stay alive because your cars more likely to break down. 20 years ago when i lived in columbus i tutored the young man about my age who had dropped out of high school. he wanted to learn to read so he could get a better job. he worked works in a hospital and he wanted to be able to read out loud from the bible at his church. one out of four times we would meet because i had young children and i was a single parent. on sunday nights i couldn't leave the house because they were small. he would come to my house and one out of four nights we would do it every sunday night, his

car would break down and he just couldn't get there. my car didn't break down. i had a good job and decent income and i had a car that was three years old. he had a car that was 12 years old or whatever it was. the cost that obviously not preaching to you. it costs money to the poor. that's the reason for this. i am hopeful that we have a real shot because i hope we get bipartisan support as we have in the past on the eitc nctc to allow a 500-dollar early advance advance, not paying interest on it. it cost the government very little money to do a pity if your car breaks down in october you can get a 500-dollar dance. when you get your refund its $500 less of course but of course but i can keep people out of that downward cycle of getting a payday loan and what all that means. so i will close with this. as you navigate around here tell your stories. tell the story we are all in

the business. pro--- pope francis said a few months ago he exhorted his parish priest to smell like a flock and you get the biblical connotations of that. we do public policy and the scent town and we are supposed to understand the lives of a broad section of people. we don't do that well enough. lincoln when he was present his advisers want him to to stay in the house and preserve the union. he said i had to get my public opinion. it's important to listen to people and hear the stories of jason and hear the stories that we then pass on to policymakers and others. i will close with this. john lewis who a number of us including senator scott and tim and i are on the finance

committee. we have had primary discussions. tim and i are going to summit to mark the 50th anniversary that i was able to take my young daughters they are back in 1998, the first time we did a congressional trip. six of us from a house of representatives went in john was among them but john tells the story when he spoke at emory university. i want to read the words that he said because they are way better than i would say otherwise. he tells he said when i was a kid i saw the signs, john was born in 1940 to the stories would have been in the 40s and 50's britain is and 50's britain is although scientists at white men, men white women, women, white waiting room waiting room. i came home and asked my parents why? they would say that's the way it is john don't get in the way and don't get in trouble. in 1957 at the age of 17 i met

rosa parks. in 1958 at the age of 18 night that bart luther king, jr.. these individuals inspired me to get in the way and get in trouble. so i encourage you he's exhorting his graduates find a way to getting good necessary trouble. as you tell your stories and tell stories of people that you fight for think about getting an good trouble and necessary trouble and encouraging your friends to do the same. thanks. [applause] >> do we have time for questions? >> another thing about telling stories you don't have to take questions.

>> i am an actual figo volunteer tax attorney. [applause] i have been in briefings with conservative theorists that actually say that eitc is a better solution to helping with the minimum wage and we can debate the minimum wage another time. i will say by personal experience my in-laws were -- and people use the issue of eitc fraud. they had eight kids. they filed and gunned eitc refund on a debit card and i'm hearing from in-laws and countless in the district. how do we cut down on eitc fraud on a debit card fraud and generally if it can cut down on

those things on the amazingly abuse program we can provide more eitc to people. >> thank you for raising that issue about the opponents to eitc expansion will use a 23 or 25% fraud number. that number is misleading in part because unlike tax returns for higher income people there really is a challenge to an audit from an eitc beneficiary then there might be to someone whose income is much higher number one so the 23% number would be dramatically reduced maybe as much as 50% if the process of appeal were to play out because in many cases it's the government's mistake that the eitc filer.

number two sometimes the eitc credit, the eitc check the goes to the beneficiary to the taxpayer to the earner he earned this, she earned this is actually an underpayment. that is part of that 23%. it's important keep that in mind and also important -- i headache comp conversation with a senator who will remain nameless for this conversation and he brought the 23%. i said well we obviously should audit these returns and clean that up. i said you know that if you put more into eitc enforcement democrats aren't going to support eitc enforcement but not corporate tax and income tax enforcement.

you guys want to keep cutting irs funding so we do fewer audits. let's play it straight and play this honest and do it in a way that's fair but we don't seem to back away from other federal tax policies because there is some fraud. in most cases the fraud is only a few dollars. there's not that much money at stake for a taxpayer compared to real fraud or real missed payment or underpayment or overpayment among higher income people. i appreciate your comments. i think we need to deal with this. we need to answer that question better than i just did with facts and figures but that's simply not a reason in my mind not to do that. thank you for being inside a work or volunteer. thanks everyone. [applause] >> thank you so much senator brown. that was great. we appreciate your fight for

lhota moderate income workers. it's my honor to introduce professor edin is the bloomberg professor. she insisted that i call her café café which is uncomfortable but i will. kathy and her co-authors provide a clear picture of a complex financial lives of americans in this country. it's a phenomenal book. i encourage each and every one and every wanted one of you to get a copy of it. it's moving and insightful and is quite prescriptive which is important for this crowd. they are great proposals for reform that we can talk about today so please join me in welcoming kathy says she can tell us all about it. [applause] >> i look like one person but i'm actually five people. lisa adams is the best literary agent of the nation. if not she's the best for academics who want to write things people want to read.

also my co-authors sera laura and jan brewer my graduate students three graduations, three academic jobs three marriages and they are now people and scholars in their own right. imagine a cast of five up here as i speak. i'm going to start with a story about my former dean at the kennedy school and good friend david ellwood. many of you note during the 1980s he gave us the first evidence that most welfare recipients a ftc were not long-term but rather short-term recipients and he went around the country trying to defend welfare and soon found it was the worst job in america. he got hate mail and he was vilified on the oprah winfrey show. there's a fight that was caught on camera and recipients of the program refused to defend it. all of this led him to a critical insight that any effort

to help the poor that would have any real long-term viability have to be fully in line with american values especially the privacy of work and independence of the individual. based on this insight he came to washington with an idea. it was held by lots of folks but under david ellwood's inspirational leadership the modern eitc was born. you might want to think of this is the first thing from adolescence to adulthood. the world changed for poor people. now how i come into the story is in the early 90s i was traveling around the country interviewing hundreds of low-income mothers most welfare recipients and workers about how they pay their bills.

i wrote a book with laura lane called making ends meet describing this incredible struggle that both those who were on welfare but especially those who are trying to hold down a job had you just making the basic bills and all the shortfalls causing problems for families. imagine my surprise when in 2007 i returned to the field to talk with poor people about their budgets most centrally for workers who are receiving the modern eitc. what i found was so fundamentally different than than what i've i had seen in the early 90s. as it turned out this made in america program, we invented this policy prescription right here in this country, was not making people feel stigmatized and shamed the way welfare head. when you collect welfare and the old days and this is still true,

it was almost as if you had to trade your citizenship card. you had to cross the road from being a citizen to be an outcast in order to collect that benefit benefit. in east boston were where some of this research was done there was an old dickensian visage of a welfare office with words over the door, overseers of the public welfare with wire mesh covering the windows. imagine the experience of walking through those doors compared to the experience of walking through the friendly doors of an h&r block to claim their benefits like every other taxpayer. so in short what i learned is that while welfare our traditional way of aiding the poor lead to separation what the eitc seem to be doing for people was making them feel a sense of incorporation.

the very famous slogan of that year that h&r block was using i thought people was repeated again and again in interviews as people described incorporating experience a feeling that the government was rewarding them for doing the right thing and going out and working and perhaps the most profound thing that was different about the interviews we were conducting in the late 2000's as opposed to the early 1990s was a sense of hope hope for upward mobility hope for upward mobility. this is almost absent from the narratives of the folks in the early 1990s. this big lump sum attacks time six seven, almost $8000, 40% of your income. the sense of hope on this, this attachment of the eitc to work, the sense that you are getting

something he you deserve like you have earned like every other taxpayer turns out to shape how people spend money. you might think if you give a poor person six or $7000 attacks time they will blow it. everybody will be going on a fantasy vacation. instead we found remarkably responsible financial behavior. what we did as they followed 110 tax filers from the moment they receive their refund to six months later when usually the eitc was fully allocated. we found that 25% went to debt. some of that debt was improved during the year as senator brown alluded to because in actuality usually can't make that on wages alone. another half of that debt was for long-term debt that people wanted to clean up on so they could move ahead and acquire more assets, most centrally a home.

another 25% less than 25% was spent in training consumption paying those bills that you can't usually paver mountebank ahead particularly for car insurance and rent so is to create a personal safety net for the hard times as so often, and the work interruptions like a mouth -- almost be counted on. 40% went to mobility purposes so those of you in the asset field can cheer about 17% of that of the total was for savings and the rest was generally for durable goods often cars stand-alone freezers that allowed you to live more cheaply and allowed greater access to greater labor markets and higher education. and then there was just a little bit extra, about 10% to invest in your kids. ..

indeed you cannot even find the best seafood restaurant in america in massachusetts because massachusetts has know red lobster chains. the entire family hopped in the car and went to connecticut and that $64 $64 spent on that meal was the best part of that mother's meal.

so 10 percent goes to support people's identity as parents. there are shortcomings of relying so much upon the tax code. it is not acting as the safety net. we used to cover 60 percent. now it is about 25 percent. a growing proportion of american households are forced to survive on less than $2 per person per day. we need a vigorous temporary safety net when the eit c is not enough. we also need to expand work opportunity. it is almost impossible to find full-time work and have found in fieldwork that work can be healing in and of

itself provide a sense of incorporation which is so vitally important as long as it has enough. in conclusion in doing this work you can have stories of your own the critical insight was that everyone longs to contribute. part of the reason people felt proud to claim this credit is that it was like a badge of honor that they were members of they're communities, citizens, taxpayers playing by the rules, making a contribution over and over again. they felt like real americans. thank you for coming. [applause]

>> thank you so much for speaking and pushing the field forward with your research. i am happy to invite the moderator of our field to join us. fundamentally a storyteller. he has told stories through his work of people in poverty and fighting poverty he did the same when he had a weekly column with the nation. he has been described as one of the most consistent voices in poverty and i would add to that consistently thoughtful and on. we are excited to have him. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> thank you so much for that kind introduction. i have the pleasure of moderating this distinguished panel. i will introduce each of them to you. seated right next to me is lori and who works with the national institute of health national human genome research institute. along the line of the importance of telling stories along the numbers she we will take care of that. you met the distinguished bloomberg professor in the department of sociology at

john hopkins university. cannot say enough about the book that you and your co-authors have recently published. seated at the next table senior tax policy analyst. welcome. and at the end of the table is barb montague honey current board member of the committee tax aid. let's get right to it. i will start with lori. a little background information. you face the prospect of

being a single mother without a high school diploma, but you graduated high school on time went on to earn a a ba in public health at the university of maryland college park and went on to earn a masters in public administration with honors, i believe. the university the university of baltimore, all while working full-time and raising her daughter. last year not only did you get married but you are a candidate for delegate to the maryland general assembly at the same time. came up a little a little short and we are rooting for you. you have quite a story. but you said that family and various government programs were essential to your success including your experience with the eit c. could you talk about how

that helps you and your daughter? >> i think the senator touched on it a lot. you know, that time waiting. you incur a lot of unnecessary or excessive expenses, whether it is your car breaking down or you have this opportunity to have extra money at a time when it puts you in a more comfortable feeling being in poverty and low income a sense of stress. you are not sure of what to expect day-to-day. it gets you back on track. a cushion to help along the way. >> how would you see that

impact your daughter in particular? >> well, she well, she got to take advantage of after school activities. i was able to put her in ballet classes. being a single parent, you want to overcompensate. being able to do those extra things it really made her feel like she was no different from anyone else were missing out on anything. >> and in terms of obtaining the eit c doctor kathryn edin and senator brown both mentioned. can you talk about what that did for you and your family. >> going to those sites and having the people volunteer time it is a reassuring feeling. you do not have the stigma

of someone looking down at you. in an environment where people are ready to help you , and it is a comforting feeling to no that those services are available for people in need. i learned because i joined the montgomery community action agency because i wanted to advocate for people who were in my position and speak to the issues that we will affect them and knowing firsthand on the planning side and knowing how much of a benefit this would be to people and being able to contribute to the services provided. >> i promise i will get to the rest of the panel. >> you have experience. tell about that.

>> i went to a private tax preparer that i found in the yellow pages. i feel like i was taken advantage of. i was not sure about what deductions i should have, whether i should itemize or take the blanket deduction and not be aware of what your options are, your rights are. i am in need of money and will do whatever i can. i i did not get what i was supposed to get on my return luckily we have the trusted sites that are available so that people are not taken advantage of. >> thank you. doctor kathryn edin, the experience of laurie-anne sayles and her experience with the eitc is this consistent with your experience?

>> people love the symbolic act of filing their taxes with other taxpayers whether it is at a website or not. but it is meaningful. the temptation to get whatever it is called now. we cannot do a rapid refund, but h&r block has found a way around that. it is real the thing that i really heard laurie-anne sayles say was, the relief of parental stress the ways in which the eitc can help your child feel like an ordinary american kid are very consistent, and it is not like the ballet lessons is an extravagant parental

expenditure but the symbolism of those expenditures is powerful both powerful, both for a parent and child. what we want is for all people to feel a part of america and participate. what we heard in the field was, this program and the way we administer this program has those benefits. >> along those lines -- i could be wrong about this -- but wasn't they're research about eitc beneficiaries or participants, i should say say, be more likely to vote, for example. did i read that? >> when you deliver benefits to people in a way that respects they're dignity and treats them as citizens they are more likely to vote. there they're are all kinds of spillover effects above

and beyond the health effects that have been documented, documented, for example. researchers ought to get out their and vote for citizen benefits. >> thank you. and chye-ching huang, their have been research into the long-term benefits particularly as they relate to children. >> research just keeps coming. it is showing that the eitc definitely the case for children and families. for example, these links between increased eitc and improved paternal and infant health. and then on to schooling their is research that shows

that high eitc links to better performance. and now their is research that shows that their is a boost in college enrollment. that is because of the program. it makes it more affordable. one step further starting to see -- starting to see research children who grow up with increased benefits through eitc are more likely to work more and learn more. all the way through we see impacts. going back these impacts can't happen if people don't claim the credit they are owed. >> and that is exactly where i was going, but that research is pretty astounding. barbara i want to bring you

in here. can you tell me kind of look at the supply and demand and to the extent you are comfortable. >> i have to warn you all i am not rational about the importance of what it is that we do. my husband warned me not to get too emotional but they're are numbers, data research, and then their are people. for 25 years i have been helping these people. of. the research and data reflects what i have been seeing for 25 years. there is not enough of supply of people. the number the number of people that the combined committee tax aid, various

counties and jurisdictions have there own counties that they have run. aarp has they're own program, program, but you put those programs together and you don't have enough people to be able to do a return for every person who is entitled to claim credit which means you have people going to preparers who charge them too much money, or worse;; the upside of electronic filing and turbotax and programs like that is it can make it easier and faster and so forth. forth. the downside is that anyone with enough money to buy a copy of turbotax can go out and say hey say hey, i can do your tax return for you. people who don't know anything and people who will deliberately create fraudulent returns that the

taxpayer he or herself does not even know about. a volunteer with our program this year has been in the irs enforcement division prosecuting criminal fraud and one of the significant things he is doing is prosecuting cases against preparers who basically prepare parallel returns. so as far as the taxpayer knows they are filing the return and getting the refund they are due and then their is a return file that is fake with a much bigger refund. and that goes goes into the preparers account. as far as the client goes -- as far as the client knows they are doing the right thing. again, as the senator mentioned, there is not a lot of funding and so forth. the demand is huge. the supply is narrow. congress needs to take a

better look at how to both find the preparation effort and also i will throw in here quickly and then stopped talking, that the irs tried to create rules to regulate preparers who can do it require them to go through training, get a certification which of course, was knocked down. full disclosure i also worked worked at the irs for four years. since the irs has been told they don't have the power to regulate preparers congress has to do it. my clients come in after being taken advantage of by these people and zero refunds that they were not entitled to but did not no they were not entitled to and

keep paying off that debt. again, i am not rational about it but their does need to be some degree of regulation so that you can go to the committee and say to these people do not have your return done unless someone can show you they have the certification. >> i would love to pick up on that. >> please do. [applause] >> part of the conversation we had earlier. the data does back up your feeling. vita the highest accuracy which is partially because vita volunteers have to go through certification.

in contrast unenrolled preparers who don't have to go through certification have the highest error rates this regulation is important >> if i am hearing correctly it does not sound like right now their is a lot of political will in terms of expanding the supply and number of vita sites. >> the funding for low income tax at best it is stagnant. my organization applies for grants every year in order to fund operations and their is just not enough to fund the sites. you can find a legal clinic that can help taxpayers once they have gotten into trouble but if you find the people who are doing the returns, then they are right

in the number of times a taxpayer gets into trouble we will be less. but the funding i don't have the numbers. at best it is stagnant and has not kept up with demand. >> thank you. and you. and i want to stay with the politics for a while. senator brown mentioned eitc expended under bipartisan presidents, both parties sort of a feel-good story. i think we have a little bit of a potential a potential storm on the horizon. chye-ching huang, if you can tell us about the fdic expansion set to expire in 2016 and why we need to pay attention to that. >> unless policymakers act at the end of 2173 key provisions of the eitc will expire which means millions of families will face a loss

of some or all of there credit and push more than 16 million people, working families into poverty. this is a big deal. again, going back to the story what that means if you think about a single mother with two children working full-time at minimum wage earning $14,500 she would face a loss of her entire child credit losing 1,000 $725. that that is an important amount to people who are struggling to get by. making those critical provisions permanent a critical priority for this congress. news in the house that their is an effort to make some expiring tax breaks permanent, including tax breaks for corporations.

without getting into the merits of those they think that if anything gets made permanent these credits for working families must go with them. >> does anyone have anything to add to that? >> that number, 14,500, they must 500 they must think how can anyone live on that. meticulous analysis of family budgets, you we will not be surprised to here that they cannot. in this country we think if you work and play by the rules you ought to be able to live. no one is living high off the hard on the eitc. they are barely scraping by. responsible economic behavior but all of us would applaud the fact that almost $1 in five is put away and

saved which is quite amazing it is easy to lose sight of how tough family economic situations are and how unstable the labor market is. and the value in building a personal safety net is critical. people ought to be rewarded for playing by the rules and this is how we we will make that happen in america. >> thank you. you. senator brown alluded to an effort to expand eitc. teeeleven, i wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about why that is critical. >> at the moment childless adults and noncustodial parents. under age 25 completely ineligible.

those who are eligible for a small amount. they would get a eitc of $25. in part because of eitc childless workers, low income childless workers tax the group deeper into poverty. making more eligible eligible for eitc and boosting it so that it is an amount that is salient holds strong promise of increasing employment so i think that is an important policy priority. the question about congressional interest this

has bipartisan interest. >> that is great. anyone else have anything to say? >> in terms of my clients it is hard for me to explain to my clients why they do not get anything. you don't want to encourage them to go have children but it is hard because they are working hard and even if they get the maximum credit it is less than $500 and that is on an income of five or 6,000. it is small. you can say from a policy perspective you can say you want to make sure people who have young children need more support, but that does not mean if you're childless and working hard that you yourself don't need support. i have to say when i was

right right out of law school making a small amount of money and filling out my tax return and saw this and income thing and thought that is true and then said you need to have a child and i thought i could not get it. it. i guess it is an unappreciated population. >> the rub is the hardest for noncustodial parents, many of whom we need desperately to bring into the labor market. imagine market. imagine if we could see the gain in noncustodial parents like we have for single mothers it would change the lives of millions of americans. and then noncustodial parents who are working and paying child support and they feel the unfairness of the fact they are not eligible for the tax credit quite keenly. >> and laurie-anne sayles, i wanted to ask you, too in

regard with your work to community action in montgomery if you are seeing with regard to the childless workers, noncustodial parents, if you are seeing some of they're struggles. >> we definitely are. one of our initiatives we were at the forefront of last year was asking for the earned income tax credit. we do see a disparity with people who do not have children. we in montgomery county, they match your earned income tax credit at the county level. it was increased to 60 percent, but now it is back. so montgomery county, one of the wealthiest counties they understand the extra benefit to help a family.

>> and that is a whole other issue, the county level. we have plenty of time for audience questions. in a recent interview you did with tax credits for working families there was a great quote. you said, and getting and getting to no the families research interviews it we will help you think more intelligently about policy whether you are conservative or liberal. can you talk about that? >> like many at this table when we conducted this research all of the people trained as tax preparers. can preparers. can i say that test is hard? [laughter] as it should be. it took me

quite a long time to pass it. we manned to vita sites in boston, 11 in dorchester and one in east boston if you want to know you know, how poor people think, what they're lives are like their like, there is no better way than to follow the money. it is a poignant time i think, sitting across the desk from a family or individual filing taxes. it is an intimate moment where you learn private things and it is a chance for you to build on that feeling that people so value that they are citizens and taxpayers. you can give a lot in that interaction but you we will come away with an understanding which we will transform you and help you you no