of this authority. i'm confident that we could administer such a provision without trampling on rights. as evidence of this i note that the irs already does not use its authority to deny the case registry because its own research shows that child-support records are not good enough predictors of taxpayer heirs. i think the problem with making better use of data sooner is that the data we need simply do not exist. it's possible that combinations of data could paint a clear portrait of the taxpayer than we have now but it would be expensive and time-consuming to create and maintain such a dataset. that cost needs to be weighed against the benefit of compliance improvement and not just in dollars but in terms of social welfare. finally, i want to quibble about one of the four themes. he asserts that the irs is in an identity crisis over its role as an administrator of social

benefit and that the irs is not service-oriented. this has not been my experience. while irs may struggle with balancing service and enforcement and struggles the lack of resources that in habits delivery, the irs devotes an enormous amount of attention to making the tax system work for everyone. irs lacks resources and in some cases skill but it does not lack empathy for the tax payer or the desire to deliver service. the irs therefore does not need aphorisms or a new mission statement as much as it needs resources. i don't want to leave with you with the wrong impression so let me go back to beginning of my remarks and say again steve is one of the voices on the earned income tax credit that i trust the most and i commend his work to everyone who's interested in maintaining and improving this important program. >> thank you very much.

john. >> thank you. i want to agree with much of what janet had said including how she just wrapped up. i've known steve for a long time and he has academic could drench old but from my perspective he has been in the trenches with organizations who try to help people file their taxes and claims for the earned income credit and other credits accurately and receive them refunds promptly and as freely as possible. some of you may know that steve has really written a lot of the history of the earned income credit which is all tied in with the irs over the past 30 years or so. he has two papers at the brookings website, the earned income credit at age 30, what do we know now and that was written

around 2006 and captured the timeframe from the enactment of the earned credit through many changes through the middle part of the 2000 then did another paper, 1010 years with the eit c movement when a number of funders sort of captured a moment when irs changed its perspective to want to help community coalitions build to help deliver the earned income credit and other benefits for free low income tax filers and also to build up the community education around the eligibility rules so that people would be able to avoid getting caught in problems with the irs compliance with the rules of the program. this had been part of the valued history of people who work in

this arena, whether they are volunteer tax protect preparers or paid tax preparers or community advocates and social service workers and workers themselves. so i think this piece that steve has just done follows in that line and has a different focus in terms of very specific around the irs but also about the design of the earned income credit and by extension, other child tax benefits. i agree with him that his conclusion that the appropriate focus is on improving the irs administration of the eit c, not searching for an alternative institution and system to take it over. i want to acknowledge his recognition that cutting the irs budget which has done

systematically over the past few years, and improving compliance that people call for, those two things are incompatible. you can't cut the budget and improve compliance at the same time. really what's underneath a lot of that frame of thought is that it inherently needs for cutting programs like the earned income credit because they continue to be out-of-control but they're out of control because the irs is starved of the resources necessary to improve compliance. i wanted to build a little bit on the main caregiver issue that janet referred to. my understanding is that the national taxpayer advocate is going to be coming forward with the recommendation to congress to move in this direction with

modifications for the american system which is different in many respects than australia and the united kingdom. one of the concerns which i think janet alluded to is whether this would begin to shift compliance concerns back to determining the shares of monetary support that different workers provide a particular child. with that we got away from a monetary support test for the earned income credit some years back which eased administration of the program and eased the opportunity for people to fall into errors and we still have a difficult problem with verifying residency of a child, particularly if they are our competing lames for the same child. i would be wary of circling back

and maybe not improving the ability to verify residency very well and adding back complexity about how many thousands of dollars did this worker provide the support of the child during this past year compared to the other person to figure out if there's going to be proportional administration of the credits to different workers. i also would note that noncustodial parents who don't live the required amount of time more than six months of the year to claim a child, they may live with them from time to time during the year, but they are not shut out of tat child tax benefits necessarily in exchange for child-support payments but custodial parents may formally waive child tax benefits such as the dependent exemption and the child tax credit to the noncustodial parent. the eit c could not be waived that way either.

there's already kind of a rough split that's possible between parents who are divorced or separated, not living together but are attempting to support the same child. i think taking that into account in comparison to what a different style system of assigning proportional eligibility for the earned income credit would create is important to take a look at those kinds of details when further proposals in this direction come forward. along these lines, there are some things that steve didn't mention that fallen to some areas that work could be done on now. for example, there have been complaints that in order for a

taxpayer to prove that they have lived with the child for more than six months of the year, the irs, when, when it audits that may require them to provide certain kinds of documents or suggest certain kind of documents and people go through trying to pull together documents that actually show that the child lived with them and it turned out to be very difficult to find a document that will effectively do that and also the taxpayer advocate as recommended for quite some time that the list of documents, the kinds of documents the irs will accept as going to prove residency the expanded including such things as third-party affidavits that most irs examiners will not accept at this point. there are some things that can be done right away that can be

implemented to help improve compliance and have an opportunity to take a look at where we stand in relationship to very widespread and systemic changes in the programs that kind of require special political moments to occur in congress and in presidential administrations so that once you open the door to taking a look at re-examining the structure of the earned income credit you want to do it in a time that it's not also perceived as an opportunity to slash and burn and get some budget savings in the process. all of these things, important to take into consideration. i wanted to note a couple quick things, in terms of regulation paid preparers, it's often

mentioned that on enrolled paid preparers are big source of the problem with errors and fraud in the earned income credit and there's often not a distinction made between h&r block and liberty and the actual larger number of individual small preparers or small offices to do an even larger chunk of the earned income credit work. as it turns out, the latter category has even higher air rate then do the chains and many of the chains have their own internal training program because they prefer to not get caught up with the irs on a compliance issue, at least least they've come around to that viewpoint but there's no requirement for minimum competency test for someone to do tax returns. it's kind of remarkable that refunds are worth a lot of money

but preparers are not required to meet any kind of a standard unlike the vita program that we heard about earlier volunteers in the community as well as the are required to take an irs sponsored certification test and they can't do returns unless they get a satisfactory grade on that test. in fact, several years ago the senate finance committee did pass providing irs the authority to regulate tax preparers. back at caught up in some political squabbling not related to that issue so i didn't go forward but there was support for it at that time in congress. i think ironically there is not support for it within the irs that stage of the game. later in irs commissioner grasped onto the importance of

being able to control earned income credit air by regulating that workforce that's preparing the return and launched a regulatory process to be able to require minimum, to to see standards and ongoing continuing education. in fact, that was in operation, there are about 80000 preparers who took the first required competency test before court challenges struck down the irs regulations and so it seemed symbolic to me that 25% of those 80000 failed the test. they are still out there folks doing these returns. they're not the only source of air and those preparers are not committing fraud. what we don't know right now because there's no competency standard that preparers have to meet so much of a problem of

prepare over claims is due to them not understanding the program versus intentionally attempting to defraud the government. so i sensed there was an opportunity at the end of last year to get this authority provided to the irs and the finance committee is looking at it again. senators hatch and côte's are leaders of that committee and have both indicated they feel this is an important direction to go so we shall see whether there's an opportunity to move in that direction going forward. lastly to wind up, steve recommends abolishing the two-year penalty that is part of the earned income credit. my view is that's going to be very hard to do in the current and political environment. congress actually intensified the penalties last year adding a

20% accuracy rate penalty that the eit c folks previously were exempt from because they had the separate two-year and ten-year penalty regime regime. now there's another penalty added on top of these that might argue for rearranging and getting rid of the two-year penalty is now we have the other penalty but low income filers can't afford to pay this 20% anyway and they're not getting a refund that they've been deemed ineligible for, they don't have resources, you can get 20% of that amount that you didn't actually get what you claimed in error. there's no place to get that and click that money. so for the purpose of the two-year penalty is a mechanism to try to prevent repeated

claims by the same people were not eligible for the credit. so if you identify them once and can categorize them as being deliberately negligent and cut them off for a two-year time. you are at least not contending with each year, each year the same people trying again and trying to circumvent the limited audit resources irs has. >> i think i've used up more than my time. i think you. it's a pleasure to discuss this paper which really pulls together a great deal of information and analysis of this multifaceted problem. reading and thinking about this paper deep in my own understanding. my comments will not be as an eit c specialist because i'm not one, but instead instead a member of the tax policy community who wants to see it function effectively. it's common to think that they have big problems and to look for someone to blame. some people believe the irs is the culprit in the sense that it should never have been asked to

administer it or in the sense of administering it poorly. some people blame the recipients and others blame preparers and some blame congress. i have a couple takeaways from the paper which builds upon the other information that i have about the program. first the problem certainly are substantial but i think as steve has pointed out they do have to be weighed against the important functions that the eit c performs. there are some reforms that can certainly address and reduce these problems that it's important to not undermine the function when were making those reforms and we need to recognize the trade-offs involved that if they are to help the people it's going to help there always be some degree of problem as there are in any other program. second takeaways that for the most part the irs is not the problem. it is the right agency to be administering it and is generally doing a reasonable job although some improvements could surely be made. third is that although fraud is committed by some recipients, most noncompliance is of a less

severe nature and due to the complex rules governing the program. those complex rules are to some extent unavoidable and to some extent reflect policy decision by congress that should be rethought. unregulated return prepared also has some responsibility. if you them engaging in or betting fraud, some of them simply not competent prepare returns and others are being held to any responsibility in terms of exercising diligence in helping their serbians fly with the rules. me offer a few further remarks on these points. i think steve's case the irs continue administering the program is quite compelling. the irs would probably be the best administrator for the program even if we were starting from scratch. steve has explained why none of the other possible administrators would be better suited or as well-suited as the irs and of course the case is

even more clear-cut when we consider the fact that the irs has been administering the program for four decades and think about the disruption that would be involved in trying to throw out what they are doing and bring in some other new administrator. it's really easy to look at the program as the irs is administering it and say here's a problem there's a problem but we don't know are the problems that would arise if anyone else was administering the program. i think it's important to realize that the trade-off and the difficulties in administering this kind of program would still be there even if somebody else was administering it in those it other administrators would not be as well-equipped to actually handle these issues. there are usually as a problem with giving the irs to many wide range tasks that are far removed from traditional taxi ministration per the problem i think is only partly that the irs would be able to do them. in many cases they could but of course as they do those other things, it will divert it from its important functions in traditional taxi ministration,

particularly given the limited resources that congress has been willing to provide the irs. out also mention the irs is not asked for any of the function it's been given. congress has dumped those responsibilities onto the irs. i think administering the eit see would be an odd place to start when trying to address the problem. the irs has two fundamental responsibilities. it asked to confirm respect recipients income and confirm their family structure. avidly dealing with income really is right up the irs alley. granted the rules do impose an unusual task on the irs that they have to be careful to make sure that certain recipients are not overstating their income, that they are not neglecting to claim certain deductions that they really should be claiming. obviously that's flipped on its side with what the irs normally does with writing about the fact

that people are understating their incomes. the irs avidly faces the challenge in addressing that issue but nobody else would be any better equipped to deal with that unusual function. now monitoring family status is something that the irs might not be as well-suited to do as verifying income but in reality, that's that's also a necessary part of tax administration. any real-world tax system has to real realize that the taxpayers are part of the family and the tax system has to deal with that. the irs is always going to be addressing that in some context. so just to briefly offer remark about the overextension of the irs, i think the real overextension lies elsewhere. some pointed to the affordable care act asked the irs to administer the individual mandate. that does take it time to verify whether they have insurance or whether the insurance meets prescribed standards. in reality, some long-standing functions of the irs are also

very far removed from taxi ministration. we have long asked the irs to evaluate the status of nonprofit organizations and to monitor their political activity which, as we recently seen given rise to considerable controversy. yes there are issues about asking the irs to do too much but i don't think it's really part of the problem. the irs is the right agency to be doing that. yes of course movements could be made how the irs administers the itc but there is no magic bullet there either. the tendency to blame recipients i think has led to some misguided measures. we just heard some discussion about section 30 2k, the two year or longer disallowance for recipients hoops claims are denied in some circumstances. i think there is widespread agreement that in its current form that measure is too punitive and really does reflect a misperception about the source of the program, perhaps a modified version would be

suitable but the current version is too punitive toward some recipients who are really trying to comply. i think the best direction is reform as the other panic suggested are simplifying the program rules and heightening the responsibilities for return preparers through regulation. i don't have the time to discuss the role of tax preparers but i think that may be the most significant point. amplifying the program rules would clearly be beneficial. none of the problem here is with the irs. i don't know of any aspect of the eit see where the irs has really made the rules more complicated than what congress has given them. i think instead the irs has tried to simplify as much as it can the rather complex rules that congress has deemed fit to write into law. i think there's going to be simplification of the rules, obviously the action needs to be taken by congress.

in this does have room where this can be done. i don't think steve mentioned here the investment income rules , they are intended to prevent asset holders with low current incomes from re- serving the eit see. it's a worthy goal goal but the flame is probably not worth the candle. it's worth a mention that when they phase out the maximum you can claim, it's based on the larger of their labor income or their adjusted gross income which of course includes investment income and other non-labor income. the program rules are ready have a significant provision to keep people with large amounts of investment income from getting benefits. the separate excessive investment roles are really another layer of complexity that's probably not necessary. the biggest challenge though, of course are the rules on family structure. what adult can claim it with respect to with which child.

i think we have seen from this discussion and other discussions that there's not going to be any perfect solution. indeed the current emphasis on where the child lives does seem like a natural place to have started. we have seen the challenges arise. i do agree with the other comments that trying to measure whose spending more dollars on the child is surely going to be more complicated. what can be done is to consolidate the family and work preferences that now exist of which there's maybe five or six into two credits. people across the ideological spectrum have offered proposals to do that. i think is part of that reform there should be a uniform definition of how the family tax benefit is assigned or divided among the parents. i actually don't think that the right way, even if you want to have the benefit shared among parents, it's probably not good to have a separate set of rules for each benefit on which parent

can get it and if they're consolidated in fact you might not be able to have separate rules anyway but instead the better thing is if you really think the benefit should be shared, you need to set out criteria by which the benefit would be partially awarded to one parent and partially to another. you have to recognize with today's complex family structures and with family structures that are not observable by the irs, no rule is going to be perfect and no rule is going to lend itself to perfect enforcement. i want to thank steve for a very useful and informative paper which i really appreciated reading and having the chance to comment on. >> thank you very much. i'm going to first ask if you have any general comments to what you heard or responses and then i have a couple questions. >> i very much appreciate the comments. to janet's point about the irs, she's absently right. the irs cares about this program and they want to do the right thing. i've had i've had years of working at the leadership level and also the folks where the front facing part of the irs and there's certainly a service commitment there.

the irs is a mass bureaucracy. if you think about the various cards, what is is it that you decide to do today, things like a mission statement really do matter, to to say what are we about here, are we about mainly enforcing and collecting results is there also this other element. i want to apologize to people that i did not reference in my remarks this mean caregiver concept that's been reference that's in the taper. this is something the national taxpayer advocate has brought up. it's done in australia in the united kingdom and need a olson has said well i go there and i asked them to define what it means and say it's the main care. obviously a cultural base concept that we don't have here. it would take something to translate it but i do think we need to move it in some direction that tries to figure how we can have rules and flexibility so people can manage this part of their lives and

still be compliant. >> a couple things i think maybe we didn't hit as explicitly as we should and i wondered if you could, just in broad terms, the percentage of over claim and the dollar amount that that represents in relation to the overall cost of the program. could you just state that so the audience can hear it? >> i don't want to get the numbers wrong but there are two different rates. one is called the over claim rate and that represents returns filed him of the attempted files on returns that are filed. the improper payment rate reflects the fact that the irs enforces its provisions so everything that's claimed doesn't necessarily get paid. there's a gap there and when we think about that overpayment, the improper payment rate i think is at 23.8% in the most recent estimate. >> and that's a dollar amount so it's about $70 billion. that's 23% of $70 billion.

>> in the realm of social policy, the programs programs that we run to help people who are poor are smaller than that. so it's not income sequential. so the question i wanted a little dialogue on is the family structure situation. so if the error is about claimants who say they have the child in the house more than six months of the year but didn't, is that right? is that basically what it is or is it some other way? i guess to some people the rule that you are a beneficiary if you have the child in your resident more than six months of the year doesn't sound that complicated. :

from an enforcement perspective when you try to say prove it, how do you do that? how do you establish you lived here, you lived there without getting into what you can in enforcement action, number of nights here, number of nights there by where and where does that go on the pill for the majority of the night? >> it just occurred to me, silly question but does a family were a, report on what child lives in three different places, grandmother, mother and father not eligible to get the eitc adults because most people are eligible and our rules. parents get a preference.

>> but if no one lived with the chocolate and half a year, that's right, no one is eligible to claim the child. >> that would lead to i can see a problem. that when i can see having a significant problem. >> sometimes this is where mention the temporary absence rules where if someone is sick or has to leave to take a job or is incarcerated for a short period of time, a time to live away from the child may be considered a temporary absence and they're still considered living with th with a child eveh technically and physically the child is living with another person for that period of time. sometimes that bridges this gap so you don't have 12 months split three ways, more than six months a rifle. -- a rifle. often this raises its head in two different ways. one is if two or three of these

individuals each decide to claim the same child, then irs will try to do what is the appropriate person. and on sort of the other side sometimes just come to an agreement and say of course mama out to claim the child even though, did not even get to the point of she didn't really live with the child for six months. if it happens irs elects to audit that person then she may be in a difficult position trying to prove that she met the six-month rule. if she does respond to the audit notice, even if she met the six-month rule she's going to get in problems. spent discussing these issues for a few minutes high price the inherent trade-offs involved. you can imagine rigid rules that could be written down the without a things like the temporary absence provision and so on but it is clearly lead to wrong result in some cases.

that would be unjust if those results occurred but as john mentioned he also inviting people to work around the rules, do-it-yourself remedies don't get the credit to where it ought to be. rather than starts off with a some concept and may well be simpler than some other alternative but its all sorts of wrinkles arise as you try to implement it. >> the other thing is there's a real continuum in terms of what kinds of errors occur. we invite care to fully about some errors versus others big it's hard for irs to navigate that. there's not a consensus on what causes errors i wish we should do about it. there are some errors that are clearly unintentional where parents are sharing custody and they can't quite figure out who met over half the you test. there are others that are clearly intentional and are probably a whole bunch of errors in between. it's not really clear how we should think about those. i think trying out some of those

types of situation is another helpful thing that steve does in his paper. >> come from the world of the benefit administrator world, cash welfare, snap, medicare or i was from, the process by which benefits are awarded or determined that's what is eligible involved in some places a lot of use of me which michael big data. there are automated matches against data sources which have to do with someone's employment or income. other sources of residence which the welfare agency or welfare agencies do now in the united states, prior to determine eligibility, and they do it on every case. the case comes in, we send the file to a certain location. if there is a hit we might discover something that needs to be discussed. it occurs to me in what i've understood about the irs processing is that there's very little of that automated

matching against large data sources on each and every one of the filing irs tax returns. am i right about that? >> not entirely. all returns claiming that eitc go through some odd detection filters that involve matching things like social security data, the federal case registered child orders and so forth. some are used to deny the credit in what's called math error processing. if you have a name, ssn mismatch. other pieces are used to detect returns for dissemination. some of those are selected prior to the refund being paid so in that case they work very much like a traditional benefits determination program. the issue is iran's own soa resources so it only does a few hundred thousand which is a lot of those cases. and then in some cases because it doesn't want told refunds too

long it into auditing the people after the fact. every return goes through data matching, but then they skimmed the top ones that appear to be most problematic to actually. of course, they also do things that steve talked about what alexa and what they call soft notices. cases where there's a duplicate claim. the irs hates to audit of because one of the claims will be right and one will be wrong and it will be hard to figure out which one is which and who only recover half the money in any case. what do often do is send a soft notice. please make sure your eligible and don't do it again. there's a range of enforcement strategies to do with a range of probable errors but every return undergo some sort of scrutiny. >> uncle has one more question because that is interesting to me. the first past the post aspect of the refund is part of the irs process.

i think the claimant files the return early in the tai chi right away, lanes child can put rice also said another, name, everything in the form. the refund gets paid because it looks fine, everything is great. sub school in another return comes in, different parent, but same child, same. will that be caught? >> irs will not deny that summarily because it doesn't note that the second person was right or wrong for a dozen of which one of those claims is correct so it will not deny a claim indicates that a duplicate without an examination. i think this points to something out of the other agencies use their data but irs generally would not be not unless it's pretty darn sure and usually that means conducting an audit that the claim is incorrect. it is statutorily prohibited from denying claims just because all these new digital pieces of data suggest it might not be a

right person. >> in that case they already paid the refund. the refund is already out the door for the child. >> right. they may go back and audit that person but they will not deny the claim for the second person because, there's no indication that second claim is incorrect. >> okay. that's it for my question. the only other one, i guess one more. that has to do with, and we didn't discuss it, so maybe steve or doctor, you might want to, but the timing requirements on paint the refund. they are pretty stringent, aren't they? from the time the returns are received. >> irs has 45 days from the live of receiving to return or the due date to start paying interest. it's not that it can't hold the returned later and work those cases. it's just it is loath to do so

both because it interest expense but also because people are waiting for those refunds and end of the cultural aspect patient we will have our refunds deliver to us, tyler. i will say slowing down the refund, so a down payment of the refund does help in the case where you have more definitive data to match. so slow you down so we can match the deputies make sense but yugoslavia just so you can audit more taxpayers without having some sort of automatic process to use, all it does is shift the resource cost of auditing taxpayers from one point in time to another point in time. slowing things down doesn't help us much as you might think although in the case of places like where we'll be getting the deputy david souter, that will help. >> this is a very good, lively discussion. does anybody else want to comment but we will open up to questions from the audience. ioc writer in the blue shirt, right there. >> western force the.

i was what you could -- soccer i was wondering if you would address former irs commissioner larry gibbs proposal to have hhs do the initial screening for eligibility? i don't know if you're aware of this proposal in march of this year in tax code magazine speak with i'm not particularly familiar with the. the challenge with any of those is how it is hhs better situate to know some of this information. if there's an assumption is a significant overlap and people who are coming getting the eitc are getting something else in hhs administrative program already gives that's one thing. given window that's generally not the case i think it's difficult. ellen a reference to the affordable care act and there is this division of responsibility under the afford will correct about what hhs is doing and what irs is doing in trying to play to each other strengths. it's not as if there cannot be a role for that cooperation i

don't know the depth of that. >> i would see hhs at the federal level is likely not to have the data on individuals. because all these programs are run at the state level. the data on individual is not forwarded. federal building to do that match would be hard. on the other hand, this overlap question is one worth pursuing. my perception is that there is more overlap than some studies have shown between s.n.a.p. and the eitc. that was the experience we saw in new york city. >> the urban institute did a paper, commission but irs, a look at the overlap and they found there was not that much overlap. very little overlap between canada and eitc. also less overlap than you think between s.n.a.p. families and irs families. while there was a lot of overlap between, though some overlap, not enough between the eligibility criteria for irs to be able to use snap their to

definitively rule somewhat and for some out. if they don't come if the data i could have to definitively rule summit in or out during processing and there's just an indication of who irs should audit, it's not helping irs above and got what they are already doing. >> dvd medicaid or not? >> no. they just looked at s.n.a.p. and tanf. >> tanf is a teeny, teeny program. okay. next question. in the brown shirt. wait for the microphone. that you. is it brown? >> green. >> i apologize. >> my son suffers from color deprivation. there was talk about voluntary compliance, and let's make the assumption volunteered compliance is steeped in perceived fairness. the fact somebody pays complex

love my, is a lot less in tax versus the common worker. you know the story. could become at this from a different angle and asked if tax reform and increased the minimum wage would mitigate the eitc program on the irs? meaning they would be less people in it it was a good perception of fairness in income taxation. and also look, there's a reason why somebody is making $7.50 an hour should be able to pay their bills. unfortunately, they can't. if we raise the minimum wage, we might medicaid that way, too. just a question. >> certainly the case in history of the credit, the eitc policy of minimum wage policy are interrelated. some people see what as an alternative to the other. some people see them as complements. the reality begin, at a higher minimum wage people are still going to be eligible for the

eitc the eligibility goes up and incomes go partly because we face the credit outcry to to make sure work you more is still worthwhile. i don't see them as clear-cut alternatives but kind of a joint parts of what would have policy spent economists have long been skeptical of the minimum wage as an anti-poppy program for a couple of reasons. first, it's not as all well targeted. how to target the eitc better but minimum wage law that benefits wide range of workers, some of whom are supporting themselves or their families. others of whom may be teenagers from high income families working summer jobs. obviously, some of the benefits of the minimum wage are going to people that you probably would not include an anti-poppy program. there's also the reality that minimum wage has the potential to cause unemployment, a potential surely would materialize to some significant extent as you cannot push and in

which a pyre and i. the effects are more modest at today's minimum wage levels than it would be at higher levels if you think that increasing by large amount you would have to address that issue. most economists instead of paying let's try to use the men wage as a substitute for the eitc so instead let strategy is the eitc as a substitute for the minimum wage. even if the minimum wage cause only a modest amount of unemployment it would seem to be dominated by the earned income tax credit which does not cause any unemployment which instead helps draw people into the workforce and help them develop skills that really can improve their long-term prospects in life. >> just quibble a little bit and see the administration supports increasing the men wage and also increased to the eitc for workers without children who are the ones that are the lowest income and receiving the least benefit from the eitc. in some cases those are the same people who would be claiming a credit erroneously.

i think he raises very interesting point and one we should maybe, it's hard to imagine what it would look like but think about if we are releasing some of the pressure of economic pressure on defense by increasing the minimum wage, maybe there will be less temptation to claim a credit to which they are not entitled. >> we haven't discussed today what janet just mentioned about proposals to increase the eitc for childless workers but i think that's a start initiative. is interesting to see if this on support across the ideological spectrum. president obama and speaker ryan says this is a group that needs more assistance. hopefully the concerns that exist about noncompliant in the eitc will not prevent that type of initiative from being adopted. as we've seen much of it on compliance arises from the struggle to determine who should cling each child. that shouldn't undermine support for proposal that's going to

those who are childless and you currently are receiving very little a. one of the bandages if we can reduce the reality and the perception on compliance, it should increase support for the eitc and make it easier to adopt expansions in areas where it is needed, where the childless workers would be the primary. >> i was going to go last question that i want steve to address it, and all the panels to address it. this is a popular discussion of increasing it for childless adults who get no more a think max out about $800, $500 come whatever. in new york state it was $800. and, of course, for the households with children it can be quite more generous. do the panelists believe that could happen that increasing the eitc for childless adults without changes to reassure people with regard to their rate? >> i think the point has been a

literature. is most likely in and of itself to reduce air. because of this rough justice concept of we talk about that as the childless worker credit but it's not really childless workers by large. it's people who did not have a qualified child according to the eitc rules. but they have a child and may be connected to that child, if they get into these situations where i want to make an i know what my reality is and i want to make the system would be as i want, i know what this post is that i want to make the system work. i think there is the potential for that having a beneficial effect indirectly. >> i am very poor political prognosticators on which is a hope congress would pass both our proposal to expand the credit for workers without a qualified child and also asked for proposals to expand math their authority to provide regulation of state prepares to a small proposal that's been in the budget for longtime. i would hope congress would do

both. we have proposals that would enable it to do so. >> i think it's worth remembering that the proposal, proposals to expand the childless worker credit, so-called childless, also broadens the age range. right now is 25-64 can qualify for the very small credit. the proposals would reduce the age in both cases to 21, and some proposals would go up to 65 or 66, depending on the proposal are it would broaden the range of workers who could qualify so people who are now not eligible, not racing the qualifying child, biggies you're on the the earned income credit when they file a tax return. they would have some skin in the game. from the perspective there's less incentive for them or their preparer to say, well, maybe we

could get you to claim for this child one way or the other and play cello fast and loose with the rules so that you come away with something in the refund rather than zeroed out. spent i'm also not a political forecaster but a bipartisan support we've seen to my mind suggests the possibility could be adopted on it so far as part of a broader tax budget. i hate you think you have to adopt a package of eitc compliance measures, weighted figures to convince people that are working and maybe never be able to satisfy exaggerated expectations of how this program could function before you could consider a reform like this. the compliance measures and expansion for the so-called childless workers could be adopted as part of a single package simultaneously. >> let's pursue steve, with you or anyone who knows, the so-called childless worker comment.

what percentage of the childless workers who might benefit from an increase would indeed not be noncustodial parents, would be individuals without children speak what i do know a good data source of that. i don't know if anyone else here testing estimates. -- has seen estimates. angela, do you want to contribute to this discussion? >> i just know the proposal from the obama administration estimated 10-20% of childless worker credit recipients had a noncustodial child. >> so it's no more than 20%, 80% would be the childless individual without a child at all. is that right or wrong? >> i can't recall what the estimates were at the time. i would say it is a really sympathetic group, as alan

pointed out, is included in the proposal, and that is workers aged 19 and 24 who cannot qualify now for the credit. so that's the group we think is really important in terms of increasing their attachment to the labor force and helping them when they're probably at the lowest point of the earnings capability and really struggling to make ends meet speed i would just say even for those workers who are truly childless i think it makes sense to increase the eitc for the relative to where it is now. it clear to provide additional support for people who would have very low living standards and it is any different for them to enter and remain in the labor force. you would not expect the want to give the same amount of that to a childless adult as you would to a family but, of course, were very, very far on the type of situation. simply because the existing benefit for this group is so small. there has to be some room to expand it. >> we are going to have one last question. we will go to the fellow indie

blue blazer right there. maybe we can get to because we've got a bunch of questions. >> ideas going on the idyllic supposing we would come to find expanding, sorry, the eitc for the childless workers, i guess like to what extent might i guess medicaid some of the trade-offs of a separate, clearly separating out the earned income support of the eitc from the new child allowance and i guess as alan was speaking about perhaps consolidating the child credit and the earned income is separate credits. and also do any of the other

child tax credit or dependent exemptions provide any ideas about how you might better look at the ways of determining what parents should qualify to receive the credit over to the also have the same problem? >> despite efforts to try to make more uniform these child definitions under the different provisions where there's an extension of child tax credit or all of these, there are still differences. john alluded to some that are support test applicable to some that is not the eitc and i can be a difficult test for anyone to try to comply with figure out how to comply with that. again i did a reference to did this idea of separating the worker credit and the child credit. jan is right about cost. we wrote a paper that said if you told people harmless, this

is astronomically expensive to do this. there is the challenge that it's against the purpose and we should combine these to simplify into supporting them out. i think there's lots of different policy currents at work because you could deal with a childless worker by saying we'll just have a worker could. anyone who works gets that. it's a reference to whether to have a child in the house or not so just defined a way that part of it. the are lots of trade-offs in that. >> i'm going to have one last question, if this is a little bit of theatrics of the panelists, i hope it does is priced anyone but it is an important topic. and that is, i want to make a point we have strayed from a little bit, and it is that the eitc is the most effective program at reducing poverty. it's a very great effective. it brings income into poor gums and raises their total resource above the poverty line.

that's its purpose and it succeeds at the purpose of. however, if a little unclear sometimes the extent to which it is doing that and i wanted to ask about the sharing of data, and this is really controversial, sharing the day with census bureau officials so that we can really see the effective eitc into households who are responded to an census bureau surveys. is a little far afield but i just wonder whether, it is an evidence-based policy commissi commission, just started, the sharing of data is one of these topics. i just wonder whether there's any discussion that they better show the effectiveness of its anti-poverty impact? >> i'm enough of a data geek. i love anytime we ca can share t i've also learned overtime.gov the data firewalls we have with the irs and with census and how

important those are. i'm kind of on the other end of my nose based on being able to address that anymore. >> i think taxpayers have an expectation of the text it will be kept private and went to really raise respected because it is on the thing supports voluntary compliance. i would be concerned a special interest area with the idea we will be sharing the day with other agencies. census does have better data we have about families, structure with her multiple household living together but don't have better data on income and the people are claiming that the iran's. i think that's an area where it's probably not worth the risk of data sharing. we can't have a pretty good idea just than the administrative data about or just on the census data about on how well the eitc is mitigating poverty. certainly there are other areas in terms of determining program effectiveness where sharing data might be worse than worth the risk to tax compliance. we do have a culture that your

tax data are your tax data, and you are required to provide it so we're going to safeguard it and use it for tax purposes or for research that is really tax oriented. >> okay. we have had a great discussion i want to thank all of you for being here and thank our panelists. i hope you'll give everyone a round of applause. thank you very much, everyone. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] ..

speakers today include elizabeth warren and cory booker, michelle obama and bernie sanders. the theme for today is united together. cspan's live coverage of the convention gets underway at 3:00 p.m. eastern with the preprogram and the speaking program at the convention is live at four. watch and cspan, listen on the c-span radio app and get video on demand at cspan.org.

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>> next a millennial reporter in philadelphia covering the convention discuss how reporting on presidential candidates has changed. speakers including the washington post jenna johnson and national public radio scott d cho outline the impact the internet and social media has have on how journalists cover the convention. >> i'm david thornburg, president and ceo of the committee of 70. we are delighted you can be here for what promised to be an energizing and insightful evening. i want to introduce great friends and great leader in philadelphia who is president of the young involved philadelphia group who is partnered with us to say a few words. come on up. >> thank you david. young involved philadelphia is committed to promoting active citizenship and emerging leaders in philadelphia's young

population. we are very proud to partner with committee of 70 as we do what we often do and that is make, per provide the context and connection so young people can make sense of the news and turn it into action and positive change in the city. thank you again david. >> how about a round of applause for neck, i'm just going to say a few words to set up this evening's conversation and then i'll turn it over to my pal chris. some of you, if you're a student of the game know that in 1972 probably still one of the classic book some political reporting was written about the presidential campaign called boys on the bus. i read that a few years after 1972 and it describes this pack journalism of the time i was

dominated by bigfoot journalist. back in the day people like dan rather or johnny apple or morley safer, people who dominated the field and here we are fast forward 2016 in this presidential election and things have changed in my view and in the view of a lot of people quite significantly. rather than one or two or several small pack of bigfoot journalist we have a lot of feet running very hard feeding a very active stream of news, all the different ways in which we produce and consume news in significant and significantly, the pack of journalists covering the election has gotten younger and more diverse. in light of that and as we kickoff the dnc week in philadelphia, we thought it would be great to gather some of those younger journalists to

give us an inside peek at what covering a campaign, and particularly this most bizarre campaign is like in the year 2016. that's the content for the evening and i look forward to a great conversation that i know will be guided with great humor and energy and wisdom because my friend, civic engagement consultant will be leading the conversation. as. >> thank you. it's great to see you. let me introduce the panel. before i do that, i will remind you that you have cards at your seat if you want to pass questions along for us to ask for the and we will try to fit those in but we have a lot of ground to cover. we have for people who have been working very hard as david said to cover the election so far. at the far end from me in seek miller is a political reporter

for time and was formally a white house reporter for buzzfeed. we have dan from cnn as a political producer. jenna johnson works for the washington post and has been there since 2007 and covered the maryland legislation. next to me is someone whose voice is very familiar if you listen to public radio, scott of npr and former harrisburg correspondent for the pennsylvania public network. let's welcome them all. [applause] tonight we want to talk a little time talking about these reporters about what it's like to be on the campaign trail but also what they've learned. several of you were in cleveland. let's start with the question, will start with you, impressions

from those interesting four days of my hometown. >> they were very interesting. so the tone of donald trump's campaign, up until now has been pretty heavy. in his eyes america is completely on the wrong track and something needs to happen right away for the country is going to cease to be. we were wondering if that tone was going to continue are not into the general election in the convention showed us that it is. he gave a speech thursday night that was 76 minutes long and laid out in pretty heavy detail everything that he sees that's wrong with country. i think we are going to see a very different tone here in philly this week. that was my big take away that that's the tone that he has set for the general election and

this is an election where there are two very different choices and as i'm sure you're going to be listening through this presentation, two very different campaigns to cover. our experiences are so vastly different. >> you were there, i was there as well and for me the most notable of the convention didn't happen at the convention. it happen the next morning, friday morning when donald trump had a press conference, it was a thank you event for people who work on his campaign and supporters who put on the convention. it was thank you so much this was the greatest convention ever , great ratings and everything but instead you got a rehashing of the primary process and the reiteration of the charges against ted cruz and his

father somehow being involved with the kennedy assassination, all that came back and the day after the guy claimed the nomination in cleveland so we write a lot about the difference in tone. the other story we write about a lot is the two donald trump's, the very scripted one that we saw in the 76 minute speech and the off-the-cuff guy who is probably more familiar to everyone else on television. that guy is back in woody pivot or not. donald trump is who he is. that was the biggest take away from cleveland is that there's no, there's going to be days where he's off the teleprompter and days when he's fighting off conspiracy theory but he's who the guy is. >> see your covering technical data and campaign finance aspects for npr. what you doing in cleveland?

were you thinking what others are saying? >> that's the focus i was doing for the first half of this campaign. it's changed as the campaign has gone on. when you have one that's not embracing data analytics it makes it tough to make that affirmative. that's kind of the general focus. >> that would be the trump campaign. >> yes, that would be the trump campaign. the clinton campaign has hundreds of people digging into this stuff. the mpr has taken his own approach to the camp and. we have a couple people on the bus with clinton all the time and another covering the trump campaign but the rest of us are covering the campaign through the lens of taking one angle of another. we have another covering demographics and i cover the tech angle and we have some looking at pop culture. for all covering the day-to-day stuff as well. i've generally seen everything that happened in cleveland and summit up each day. - did you get to the bottom of why the video cap flickering? >> summit he said look like a

great episode of charlie rose. i think the one other point that they didn't mention about cleveland was just how smooth everything was. there was a lot of trepidation going into cleveland about violence and things that weren't organized but the total number of arrests was maybe 30 people so, especially after a very tense summer so far, that was a nice sign of cleveland. >> let me ask you a question, a question, and we apologize for the name of this event but the girls and boys on the bus sort of hits on relative youth. this is either the first or second presidential campaign for everyone on the panel. could you talk a little bit, and i think we'll start with dan, about how having sort of a fresh

take on campaigns might have been a benefit for you guys during a campaign a campaign which has exploded the conventional wisdom repeatedly. were there moments out in the trail with a just is and where you said i wish i had no not before or i wish them but he had told me about that. >> i was lucky enough to start covering hillary clinton two and half years ago so long before she was a candidate she was on the speaking to her. i got to know a lot of her people are aides who folded into the campaign pretty early on. i've been doing this for two and half years but there are times were i think i wish i would've known this before, i wish wish i would've known this from l.a. or 2012. i do think there's a benefit, i think it's probably more on the trump campaign or your covering such a unique candidate and campaign that you're not bringing ideas in the things were from the mitt romney campaign. you're seeing it through a fresh

length. that set i think it's important that you cover past candidate campaigns that you know people in all of these people continue to be in politics and continue to work for ended its, especially with the clinton. there's a decade of people who have worked for her for over 30 years. that's something i had to work with and eventually get over. coming with a fresh set of eyes would be a positive thing. >> yes, so i had covered to governor races and i covered scott walker's presidential candidacy for about two months, so by the time i came. [inaudible] the thing is there was nothing that could prepare anyone, even the most seasoned campaign reporter or the seasoned

campaign reporter for covering donald trump because they did everything totally different. early on, i started covering him in september, even just figuring out where he might be, this was before he had secret service protection. that didn't kick in until november. so he would kind of just decide to stop in south carolina on his way down to florida and tell the staff to rally some people up. >> we never had that problem on the clinton campaign. they have a staff where i know where she's going to be in a week. they announce she's doing amount multi state bus to her after the d&c so that was never an issue. >> one thing that really prepared me for this was when i was covering politics, i covered the maryland governor's race and

in the state of maryland which is a very blue state they have to democrats for everyone registered republican and larry hogan is the governor and he's a republican. we were stunned on election night. it took people off guard. it really surprised people because all of the polling had shown that the democrat was going to win the race and i had been out there and talking to people and feeling a lot of momentum but it's hard to gauge the momentum at a parade if it should outweigh a poll and things like that so i tried to come to races with the very open-minded. i think a lot is happening in america right now, i think voters, a lot is happening with voters right now and anything can happen. when i started covering donald trump in september, i didn't think he was.to be the nominee,

but the more time i spent out on the trail and the more people i talk to, i knew he had a very good shot of doing it in the fall. >> stay with that and see, those of you who have covered trump, what's your sense from the voters of what it is that's clicking for them because it's very easy for us to make negative assumptions that aren't fair. >> a lot of it is just the general frustration in the country and there's a lot of causes for it. one of the metaphors i explained to people is basically, if you look at the fundraising arm of both parties, and maybe this explains a bit of the bernie sanders rise, you can email an e-mail are 17 a day that says donate money and we will change this or kill that were passed this other thing, go to war, not go to war, we will do great things and they'll be sunshine and rainbows and unicorns. tomorrow if you click this button your donation goes to our bank account.

this has been going on for years in politics and fundraising is nothing new but it's gotten a little more personal. for the last four years or eight years republicans have raised roughly $6 billion toward all their political causes if you go up and down the roster and for that money they got essentially nothing. they won the house, they didn't repeal obamacare or do undo executive orders are all these other things that they been promised. a lot of these donors felt they had been exploited and they are right in that exertion. they were asked pointed by the quote unquote establishment. these were folks who had been just tapped into, they were the people that they felt they were making an investment in money and time as volunteers and so

for at least some people, that was the factor in the other one would be a lot of people are feeling the economic recovery. there's a lot of data out there and a lot of stories and studies but people are feeling it and then also there's the social demographic concerns and those are just that people are set in certain ways and haven't found a way or don't want to or are afraid to adapting. all of these things taken together give you donald trump and give you a little bit of that bernie sanders wave of the democratic party. >> was there a moment when you were talking to a trump voter and something clicked and you set i get what's going on here? there is actually a moment early on in late september i went to the oklahoma state fair in oklahoma city to a big rally. >> to they have fried butter there. >> what? >> fried butter?

or is that the iowa fair. >> i'm sure they did, but as someone with family living in iowa, it was certainly not the iowa state fair. there were thousands and thousands of people there and it was one of my first big rally. on stage was alive bald eagle and a member of duck dynasty and a lip-synch or and i was like everyone's here for the show, this is is a big show in town tonight and it's free and people are already at the fair and that's why the crowds here. then i ran around and i talked to a dozen people and every single person i talked to one of wanted donald trump to be president. they're tired of politicians. they're tired of people being

politically correct. they're tired of paying taxes and feeling like they're not getting anything out of it. they're tired of their small town, especially in oklahoma, oil towns drying up. i had this moment where i realized these big crowds aren't just there for the show, there's definitely people at every rally who just want to check it out. >> just like hillary clinton. i don't think everybody there was there to see her claim. >> that was a big moment for me. >> i think if you look at the big tea party waives in 2010 in 2014 and you look at the way challengers would take out incumbents for compromising on ask or why or working with democrats once in a while, you wouldn't think that the guy who was a democrat who donated to hillary clinton and had hillary clinton at his wedding and was pro-abortion for most of his life would benefit from it but it seems like as much of this have is gone on its much less

about ideological. he and the anger and frustration and feeling like this country is moving on without me, whether it's the economy doing better in the places i don't live or whether it's being told by the media and the supreme court that i have to be okay with same-sex marriage and there's a lot of people who are still not at that point. it's a mix of social issues and the stagnation of the economy and i think that line that donald trump had that i will be her voice, i think that boils down to a lot of how his supporters feel about him. this guy, whether i don't believe what he says or whether he changes his mind, i feel like he will advocate for me and i like that. >> when we were standing around before we came out here tonight and all of you had a sandwich or something to drink and the other hand was your phone and you are all in a constant stance of the political campaign reporter modern times, can you talk a bit about the role, the huge role social media is playing in this campaign and talk maybe about

moments when it's been well used for moments when it's been disastrously used. >> i think the most interesting thing to me is that donald trump's campaign is not been run in a traditional way. the way that twitter drives his campaign messaging and the way he's been able to use twitter to basically program how we cover the news, when he tweeted about the milani a trump thing, that would've been wednesday morning, i, i saw the tweak, i looked up and the tweet was on cnn 30 seconds later. just the way that he's able to drive the conversation with sitting there with a phone and a tweet is really impressive and not something you've ever seen before. >> is hillary struggling a bit in that area?

>> no, she doesn't respond as quickly as donald trump. i don't know anybody who responds as quickly as he does but it's different she has a full team of staffers who decides on a tweet that she's going to send and it goes through some approval processes and if it has a -- h at the end it means it's from her and she has to prove it. that's not my understanding of how donald trump works. he dictates it to one aide and that a dozen. >> if it's during the workday he shouts out to a young woman working in his office and they type it out. if it's after hours. >> is it like a command. >> and this is how he explained it a few weeks ago. i think there are more checks in place now. if it's after hours, it's him self. those one am tweets, he was was the one who's writing those. >> i don't think they're being overwhelmed by it but you're absolutely right that donald trump's campaign programs the way we cover news via twitter. hillary clinton uses statements

and other ways more often. the way that we get our news is almost all by twitter and a few other sources, for tim kaine when the whole bp process was happening, i set my alarm i went to bed at one am and set an alarm at three am and five am to make sure nothing broke overnight. that's an extreme. i don't do that every night. >> you will. >> or i would not be here. >> that's an extreme but that's how connected, that's a departure from the boys on the bus. there are passages in the book that describe how reporters filed their daily stories and how tv reporters filed their reports and that has changed dramatically in the last eight years, less day drinking now.

>> tragic tragic change. >> i think what twitter does is it completely programs the way we do our jobs. not only because of donald trump up because our colleagues are breaking news and reporting news on twitter that we all have to know about. >> is it fair to say that the other thing about trump's use of twitter is he also was using that to get feedback and understand which messages were sticking rather than waiting on polls, he was getting instant feedback. >> jen i would be better at this but it seems like he synthesizes what's out in in the news and what's being talked about and then kind of takes that in and puts it out on twitter. that's how we programs. he knows what were already talking about and therefore he comments on the story that's already the big story of the day. that almost guarantees that that tweet gets attention. >> he moves with the news so quickly. >> sometimes to a detriment. >> yes that's true, but the perfect example was right before the south carolina primary, word got out that the pope had said something about donald trump and there was an embargo on what the pope had said and before the

pope words were even reported, donald trump got up at a small town hall and gave a statement criticizing the pope. >> and i had no idea what he was talking about. so were all on our phones trying to figure out what he was responding to and within minutes, an ap story pops up that had it in their and people are split on if that works for him or not. >> i can tell you the clinton campaign is more than happy to have donald trump dominate the media. i don't think there's any concern in brooklyn that they wish they could break in more often because their opinion is that more often than not he's making things worse for himself. >> i can bring some contacts from 2012.

twitter has been around for a while, this is not a cycle in which, 2012 is the first election where donald trump is embracing the platform but the complaint you hear from the mitt romney campaign was how dare he tweet that out. they hated twitter and it drove them crazy. >> this is criticizing mitt romney because they had done something similar or something else, a lot of it came, it hit the prime in 2012. a lot of of people early on, it had subsided a little bit. still this home for the political conversation but it's

less an outreach tool to people. the way that donald trump has mastered it, it's not controlling the insiders, it's the people writing a couple cars back in the motorcade or at their desk, twitter is still this insider tool. it's not a tool for the masses. it's where you want to talk to people like us and donald trump has use that like nobody else has. >> i would also add that reporters go to these rallies and they sit through donald trump speech and they pick out what they think is the headline of that speech. that's been happening for decades. nowadays, thousands of of people will be watching his rally online and i've seen a couple

times where he'll say something and lots of times it's something he's said several times before and it's not new to the trail reporters but it will take on a life of its own on twitter and will become a headline. it's like i wrote that last week but it's news now. >> yes, that's how how i've seen it really. >> that's something i've tried to keep in mind about the campaign. things that are old news to us, things that we've thought about for months and months, the vast amount americans are not checking in that often. all of this is old hat to us but it's new to everybody else. the majority of america is not coming to these rallies and not following donald trump on twitter. i try to think about that context when i'm writing the to take a step back and frame in a way that this has been happening

for months now. before we move away from the topic of twitter, i neglected to say the top #, boys and girls in the bus if you care to tweet any of the panels of wisdom. going to ask you an unfair question, but as you sit here is the only representative of tv news that i have to ask this question two. the latest count i could find googling this afternoon of the free media that tv has given donald trump is 2.8 billion compared to one point to billion for hillary clinton. i don't have any control over all that but your political producer for cnn, is that how'd trump dominates things on the news cycle?

are you talking about what to do? >> i am not in that meeting because i'm on the road. there were time where i was at my house for 90 days. i don't go to these daily meetings. donald trump drives a lot of attention. you can look at that and say he's gotten some free media compared to hillary clinton. there's a reason people are interested in him. i don't like it's our place at times to say this is wrong but they shouldn't be interested. i think we report the news of what's important but there's interest in what he is saying, that's how i feel being an independent. i do feel there are questions

that should be asked and have been asking i guarantee they're asking it cnn but i don't think it's on reporters and us to judge what people are interested in. a lot of people are interested in donald trump. >> in defense of my tv colleagues, a problem with a lot of this is that donald trump gets a lot of free media. that doesn't mean it's good media. the amount of airtime that is devoted to donald trump calling john mccain a loser because he got captured as a personal of war and that is not a hero, that was in the media coverage for date. >> he's running against somebody who's opened regularly to the

media. >> i'm not sure we want to be saying you can't talk to reporters because you talk to reporters way more than your opponent. what he does is somewhat commendable where hillary clinton hasn't done any official press conferences since december 4 in fort dodge iowa. she has not done an informal gaggle where cameras come out to her but i think tomorrow it will be 50 days. i think there's certainly something to that. when hillary clinton does a few interviews a week, donald trump is calling up his beat reporters and doing extensive reports.

he does interviews more often. i think there's a big reason for getting more attention. is it that he's just more acceptable to media? i don't think the campaign really minds. not all press, donald trump clearly disagrees with this but not all press is good press. >> what is the conversation like with the media people in terms of trying to get information and access? >> in terms of information, it's fine. she has not done a press conference in so long and that is certainly a frustration inside the press corps when it times that had led to relationships with their spokespeople with complaints and

i think they get it to an extent it's been 50 days and we been complaining for a long time. the thing that i've learned is what works to get her to respond as public pressure. >> everyone should tweet now. >> how that contributes to trust and honesty questions about her, i think that compelled them to have her be more assessable. >> trump is sometimes very much available to the trump on his terms -- to the media on his term. can you talk about what that's like with. >> sometimes it's within minutes of him taking the stage and you know he's mad about something. he will say, look at those cameras back there.

those of the most dishonest people in the world. he likes to yell at the main camera focused just on him that's kind of the main feed. he will yell at them for not scanning the crowd. >> they're not allowed to. he knows this. >> so every network doesn't have to have a camera at the event, these five networks pool one camera to shoot the event so everybody has the same footage. that camera is basically required to stay on whoever is speaking. he was complaining that they don't pan out and show the crowd. >> right. since the beginning of his campaign this has been his rallying cries. the media is not very like right

now. the washington post has been banned from getting credentials to cover donald trump events. were still covering him. a lot of trump supporters will tweet at me and say why are you tweeting about this rally, you're not allowed to. that's not how how it works. it's a hassle. hasn't stopped our reporting. in some ways it's made it richer. i get to rally several hours early while my fellow reporters are taking a nap or working out or going golfing. >> i wait in line. i chat with people in line with me and i listen to what people are talking about. most the time i get in, one time

i waited in line for four hours in 97-degree heat and did not get in. sometimes it will start pouring rain and you just have to stay in altogether under the umbrella and i go in and sit in the stands and i'm able to hear what people are shouting out. you can feel when people are laughing or stomping their feet or things like that. in that way, it's been an experience that has helped our reporting. >> i want to circle back to something you alluded to earlier, the the role of big data.

people thought this was going to be the way a presidential campaign. can you talk a little bit more about the clinton and the trump approach on that? >> the clinton campaign is basically taking every lesson of the obama campaign and applied it to the clinton campaign. many of the campaign staffers who are doing this work for hillary clinton did that for brock obama in 2008 or 2012. it's 12. it's a whole range of things, i think one of the more interesting things i saw was their digital, get out and vote push before each primary. they have an ongoing text conversation with people who sign up and it's interesting to see that evolve. they try to make it sound like a real conversation.

what exactly are you planning? morning or afternoon. are you going to take a bus? tell us what you are going to do >> there so many things that we prayed trump on a curb for. like he didn't go off script on his nomination acceptance. that's remarkable. after campaign finance came out and showed trump with less many than most house campaigns you saw a push to do fundraising. the report shows that were and they went from 2 million on hand

up to 44 million. a lot of the voter targeting and voter lists are being used with like this isn't happening at all >> they have, as of last month, she had 100 organizers in ohio. donald trump had less than 100 nationwide. >> and he have you seen for donald trump? it's a trick question. he hasn't run any at all. >> there have been surveys of people who have said they think they've seen trump ads.

>> it's all that premedia. he's on tv all the time. >> he also has a lot of ads in videos on social media but they're putting very little money into it. >> you've all been working very hard and grinding out a lot of stories the last several months. is there one story that you want everybody to google it or read it because you shouldn't miss that reporting. is there another story some of the reporter had done that you felt i wish i done that one.

>> about this time last month we wrote a story that touched on a few points of how the clinton and trump operation viewed the campaign wildly differently from mechanics to the state of the electorate, which which we will see the contrast in the next couple of days to how they view governing. all about is a great asymmetry between the two campaign so we wrote a story called mismatch 2016 and i went up about this time last month on time.com. feel free to check that out. >> refresh the page a few times that's one of the ones that i'm proud of. i would say the new york times piece a couple weeks ago on trump's foreign-policy that maggie and david singer had done was the first time he had pushed

hard and in-depth honest few policy proposals. that's also an example where it for all mostly political folks. [inaudible] one of the best people in that field and put the pressure on donald trump and was able to run with it as well. i think it was one of the best interviews of the campaign. >> early on i wrote a story about hillary clinton's feet and the man who shaped her feet which was her youth minister who ministered to her in park ridge illinois and then was very much in touch with her throughout her four years at wellesley. she went into wellesley as a goldwater girl. her father was a republican, she was a republican and she

volunteered for the goldwater campaign. she credits this minister with opening her eyes, he took her to a martin luther king speech and introduced her to the idea of day laborers and really changed her world view and they corresponded in letters throughout her four years. he introduced her to a lot about politics that kind of shape the way of who she is today. and the message that she is today. then she left wellesley giving that famous graduation speech and went on to be in life magazine and what she's doing now. it was about that and that was probably two years ago. his name is don jones and that is definitely the piece i'm most proud of. >> i think maggie story in the interview in the new york times's grace. ruby kramer at buzzfeed wrote a great story about who hillary clinton is and who she's been for the last 30 years. she got an interview with her and as someone who knows her well, it took her a long time time to write and it showed because it was very well done

and smart. she had been on the trail talking about loving kindness and how that's a weird thing to run for president on and she looked into where that came from and incorporated everything from her faith to her upbringing to who she is and actually got there. >> so shameless plug, i wrote a story in january about trump town, the towns the towns were donald trump goes and holds his rallies and the story came about because i was traveling to these beaten-down industrial towns where the hotels were not great and we were in arenas that were falling apart and you just kind of sensed that you are in different places than political rallies usually are held so i looked at the census data of all

the places were donald trump is going in almost every single one of them the median income was far below the national average. the rate of college degrees was lower, home ownership rates were lower. a lot of them had strong pockets of minorities where you have racial tension but yet the rallies would be all white and i based the story in lowell, massachusetts a former river and industrial town and talk to the people about why they were there and kind of drilled into why he was going to these places. then as far as recommendation, transcripts the media gets hit for not asking donald trump hard questions but there have been

some really great interviews done with him. the david singer and maggie interviews, they've done two different series of them on form policy that have been really strong, though at washington post editorial board sat down with him for more than an hour and peppered him with question after question. some of the sunday morning shows when he gets on meet the press, especially when he's doing them in person or when he sat down with jake and talked about why he went after this judge for having mexican heritage and covering donald trump it's been difficult to pin him down on where he really stands on a lot of issues and he can kind of dance around so i always really admire reporters who are able to ask him question after question after question and get a solid

answer. >> like every high profile jerk from the world of sports in the '90s isn't backing donald trump. there are just a lot of people and we were like you should do a story on that. so we looked into it and it was a really fun radio story because what i ended up doing was displacing donald trump's stump speeches and in the n america kinda likes jerks. were kind of attracted to jerks. outspoken people who are really good at what they do but will also throw an elbow and go outside and we end up calling it something like why aerobic

gallery are endorsing donald trump. i got an email from a friend and they said that's a word for a full. >> we are on c-span. >> i didn't say it. i said a whole. i got the thumbs up from the c-span person. but anyway we were digging through exit polls and demographics and looking at all of these changes and we did an interactive story on if the 2016 map looks like 2012 based on how each has changed based on who has moved in and out, this is what the final result would look like and it lets you toggle back and forth and okay of 3% more white people show up or more african-american people show up, how would that change. given how much this year has

changed and focused on him a graphics and racial tension, i think that's a valuable tool. >> this question allows us to pivot to the event in philadelphia and expectations for the democratic convention. the question is, how do you think the rhetoric will change now that she has chosen tim kaine as a running mate. issue no longer being pushed left by bernie sanders? >> i think there are certain number of sanders supporter who are upset about the campaign. i think tim kaine offers her a few positives. i think you will see this on the bus tour. he opens her up more to white males, especially especially white working-class working-class people in general. the clinton campaign hopes that it appeals to them. he's also, and this has been very well-publicized, he is fluent in spanish and he opens her up to a number of

spanish-speaking interviews. i don't think she will stop being pushed the left because i think bernie sanders are the wing of the party that yields a lot of power as you can see in part. think that will continue. i think elizabeth warren will continue that push as well even though she has endorsed hillary clinton. i don't will change that dramatically because i think she will get called out if it does. >> for those of you who are staying in philadelphia, what else are you looking for? what will you be watching for? obviously the contrast and tone. after the doom and gloom of last week, coming and watching the

campaign announcement on saturday it was sort of a very different more positive tone, times don't last, hard people do and there will be lot of that more uplifting message. i think the question is that what voters are looking for? there's a reason why donald trump is saying those things. he is seeing it resonate with his own supporters and the question is, where are most people at. you look at right track wrong track that doesn't that they all agree with the same rate track would be but they seem to be betting on very different

visions. i think they'll be interesting to see play out here. >> i think hillary clinton, two or three weeks ago tried to address the trust issues that she has with voters and admitting that she has some ability to talk about it more than she has in the past. i think they will talk a lot about why they should be president and why they should trust her. i think you'll see a lot more speakers talk about her as a person. >> ultimately it didn't get a lot of that.

>> we got scott bail. >> we did. >> your last question about will she be pushed to the left? they feel they don't have to. they think the country is at the left, but the majority of the country is already there and she doesn't have to pivot to the middle to win over more voters. i think it does to a degree but i think that's something not used at this point. how much of that was theater and how much did you feel people sincerely believed? >> that she had committed a crime that deserve that treatment question. >> there was a lattice sincere frustration and anger. i was about as high as you could

go in the rafters because that's really but the media people but it was almost like before it started you had that permits up the wedding band and everybody dancing and having fun. the room really felt the hissing and the booing, you could feel the tension. it was a very intense arena. i can't over emphasize hillary clinton out across america. >> it's what united the rnc. donald trump and ted cruz disagree on a lot but they do agree that hillary clinton shouldn't be president.

>> scott walker tried to derail some of trump and when he dropped out of the race he encouraged others to drop out in hopes of derailing trump back then. he got up and gave a speech to let everyone in the chat chant that america deserves better. >> he train people. >> they worked really hard on that chance. >> that's the rally cry for people who can't rally around donald trump but don't want hillary clinton. >> if tim kaine was the nomination for president, what would republicans be united around. >> he has not been around as much and doesn't have the decade-long stories. the only way either of these companies become president is running against the other one. in a way they are made for each

other. donald trump doesn't exist without hillary clinton and hillary clinton probably wouldn't be in this race. >> in a nightmare on elm street sort of way. >> if you look at most of the polls they show 15 - 20% of the electorates is undecided. who are these people? what are they undecided about? have you met some of them but mark. >> i think they're undecided about whether or not they're going to vote. i think there are a lot of people out there, this is when i'm in the airport are talking to the drivers, uber drivers.

>> there's a lot of people who but maybe they for obama but there's something that they do not like about hillary clinton. i think for those people are they going to hit the point they hate one enough to show up in both the other? >> jumping into that over, under gary johnson percentage of the vote. >> eight. that's pretty big. >> i'm going to be fascinated to see if he gets into the presidential debate because of polling and showing him above the threshold. i don't he will finish the race with that threshold which i think is 15. >> i don't think he gets that high. i think he might get that high am polling which would raise question for the pollsters. i think i probably agree that he gets around six or 7%. >> one of my postconvention

stories i'd love to spend a good amount of time with gary johnson and cover that for a little bit. >> did you see him with samantha? >> that was unforgettable. >> i don't know that i would go rock climbing with him. >> before hillary clinton, i pitched a story that we were going to climb a mountain and this was when he was running the pot company, getting high with, gary johnson was going to be the headline. >> on that fabulous know we will wrap it up. thank you very much. : i don't know what we did the last time the democrats came in

1948, but this is the kind of programming i think we feel is really important. not just to engage folks in the story but to engage in the story behind the story. this is the first of a tripleheader of events we are doing this week. you can find out more looking at our website, and to our journalist friends, i hope you have a family start in philadelphia. if have a chance to breathe or was that the the cheesecake. thanks to all of you for being here. thanks again for our panel. and let's have a fabulous week here in philadelphia. [applause] [inaudible