>> host: good job -- the book is called "job creation" how it really works and why the government doesn't understand it it. the co-author is andy puzder. mr. poster you talked about it in your book. at the time we wrote it in 2009 and 2010 there was a lot of uncertainty in the economy because of actions that president obama is taking on the progressive lines as opposed to conservative economic lines which i think the business community would it preferred. with respect to energy and with

respect to regulation it was great uncertainty in the business community about where the government was going and what kind of an obstacle it would become. we try to tried to convey the message that the government would provide positive certainty so we could rise out of the recession. at that point we were still in the recession until june of 2009 2009. we were out of it technically but i don't think people for years felt that we were out of it in reality. if you want the dynamic economic growth you are expecting winding out of a recession yet to do positive things to give the vistas community some certainty that you are not going to hurt them. >> host: what are some of the measurements? >> guest: the ones we focused on the hook for tax reform, energy policy, regulatory reform and reduced government spending. this was the only trump agenda item we didn't hit was health care reform but this was 2009 and 10. we didn't know what a negative

impact it would have on economy that point. we covered spending tax reform regulatory reform and energy policy. >> host: utah about regulatory reform in the book. can you give an example of what you would like to see is a former corporate ceo? >> guest: you can take it at the state local or federal level. i was in california at the time so we could spend the entire segment talking about the problems businesses have in california's regulation. on the federal cyto be a constant influx as in the department of labor. putting in place new requirements and making it easier to unionize. they were trying to get card check through. they had regulations that were going to require attorneys to disclose the discussions they were having with their employer clients during the course of attempts to unionize.

that was called blacklisting. you have the joint employer standard where they tried to make franchisors employs other franchisees which would have destroyed it. he wouldn't have existed anymore so there were efforts to increase the $48,000 salary level below which you had to pay overtime even if you have somebody managing restaurant and got a bonus which again would wt hurt you. retail businesses in general economically. all of this was coming down the pike. you anticipated this with the progressive sector of labor and the secretary of the treasury and a progressive president that we were going to have real problems. we were going to stay those often get americans working again. our job creation isn't what the government envisions it to be. it isn't something that inevitably occurs. there isn't a financial cycle that you can just walk into and

it will go up which quite honestly is what a lot of the president's advisers thought at the time. they thought they would get a four% gdp growth. they now claim that's impossible but the white house projected 4% gdp growth thinking they were coming out of the recession cycle. with good policies you can hit those numbers but without them he can't. >> host: in your book you write the unfortunate reality is federal spending initiatives are actually intended to expand the power and influence of government rather than create jobs. >> this is really the progressive philosophy starting with president wilson and probably the only president that was more progressive than barack obama but the idea has been to expand government power is the ability to control the economy in the hands of an elite group of people political appointees the bureaucracy and academics

and top elected officials rather than having the direction of the economy driven by consumers and consumer purchasing. rahm emanuel said you don't want a crisis to google waze. every time there has been a crisis in the early 1900s for the great depression are the recession there is always this expansion of government as the solution to our problem. what it really does is prolonged those problems because the goal wasn't actually to create economic growth. the goal is to expand government and redistribute the benefits which takes more equally lower than higher but instead of raising everybody up it lowers everybody down. they view that is a more just society. if you have a more just society by generating growth as president kennedy said at high tide lifts all boats. we wanted to create a type that

would lift everybody's economic vote and make it easy for working-class kids get to the middle class and reducing income inequality by increasing everybody's income not decreasing the top and increasing the bottom. >> host: in your book "job creation" you focus on employment rather than unemployment. >> the focus should be how you get people back into jobs. what causes somebody to hire a person? if you take one of our restaurants, restaurants employ about 25 people and most people think about that way. the restaurant has 25 employees but if you go to the concentric circles around that we hire people to design the restaurant and the workers who put the restaurants together. you have the farmers and the cattlemen who attended the herds and grow the crops. the processes that take the cattle and the crops and turned into food.

the guys who drive the trucks to deliver the food to the restaurant. you have the circles of restaurants in all of those people by clothing and they go to the movies and they send their kids to school. they do all the things that help generate economic growth. so you focus on these core businesses and find a way to cause them to grow you are going to see real economic growth and all of these concentric circles overlap which is how america went from 13 backwoods colonies in the late 1700's to the nation that was almost devastated and destroyed in war where hundreds of thousands of americans died. to the largest economy of in the world and by world war i the highest and are living in world. this is because uneconomic system that provides individuals and encourages individuals not only to create economic growth in benefits but to keep the benefits of that growth to themselves which automatically benefits everybody else.

inadvertently adam smith said he benefits everybody else. it's a system that works tremendously well. we saw somebody put a cork in the hourglass of economic growth and we want to take the cork out out. >> host: what is cke and what is your role? >> guest: carl started with a hotdog cart in 1941. the quintessential example of job creation. he started with a hotdog cart and an eighth-grade education in south-central new york in 1941. by the time i met him and 1980 he had a half a million dollar business, carl's jr. pit in late 80s carl's jr. bought hardys. he got in financial trouble in the late 90s and in 2000 i was a general counsel for the company. they appointed me as ceo chief executive officer to take the company either sell it or take

it into bankruptcy. it relies quickly that would have been a mistake. we had 75 thousand people working for the company. the franchise lost their investment. i had a great team. we did fix fix it fix it. i retired april 2 and we had 3800 restaurants in 44 states in 41 countries. 20% of our restaurants are now overseas. it was a lot of fun and i'm enjoying retirement after 16 years as ceo but it was a fun 16 years. >> host: what are you doing? >> guest: i'm actually writing a book. i do either deal with the publisher to write a book. it was going to be about how i thought hillary clinton and barack obama had worked together to not have destroyed to significantly demean the free enterprise system which build such a wonderful company and created such good opportunity for everyone. with trump having been elected i

can write about how president trump but the proper support in congress in particular but with the proper support can bring back that american spirit that lifted the vision so high and again make america great again as he would say. i think we have a real potential potential. i don't think people know about woodrow wilson and what he did to the country, disrespect for the constitution. franklin roosevelt didn't want the help of the business sector during the great depression. he said in the speech they should leave us alone. and then how government expanded or maybe expanded too much. that's not to say the government doesn't have a role. it does have a role and it's a constructive role and i think government can be very meaningful. like anything it can be overdone and i think we have seen it be overdone particular of the last several years. >> host: andy puzder what did

you withdraw? >> the only reason i withdrew was because i didn't have enough votes to get confirmed. if i would have had the votes to get confirmed i would have stuck it out until the end instead of having this conversation a beautiful hotel in the beating my brains out in washington d.c. d.c.. there were such an adverse reaction to betsy devos being approved as secretary of education. chuck schumer identified me as a target that they were going to go after. the press was merciless, dishonest. some other interview we can talk about the fake news during his confirmation process but i got beat up. badly. it made some liberal republicans a little nervous. you start off losing two. you have the tube it didn't vote for vets he wouldn't vote for me no matter what i did. the longer this one on the more

the press could focus on me and distorted stories and the more nervous it made me. the press reported high hadn't filed my government ethics papers and there must be something wrong. i was the first data file. i filed january 30th. the problem was the government ethics wouldn't react to my papers. they sat on them for six or seven weeks. in the meantime the press keeps beating me up and schumer makes me the target. some republicans got nervous and i didn't want the president to suffer something on the senate floor that had my name attached to it. >> host: you were or are portrayed as being antiunion. is that a fair moniker? >> guest: i'm actually supportive of select the bargaining. if you look back in the early

1900s unions had great victory with respect to child labor, eight hour workday. eventually workers compensation insurance and retirement. unions have great victories. i think the units are currently struggling for revel in -- relevance. they are down to 6.4% representation in the workforce for the public and the government combined its only 10.7 and that's a 100 year low. it hasn't been that low since 1916. we were struggling to be relevant and again they are not focusing on what would create jobs and economic growth. they are trying to focus on things they think will attract members and to the union. they are trying to use government to bring members into the union impact on the overdone. for example the 15-dollar minimum wage there was a. reporter: the san francisco --

that said that kurtz the very workers that supposed to help. in san francisco they are going to 15. the harvard business rules came out and said the cause restaurant closures to increase. in seattle when they went to 13 the university of washington are liberal base school came out and said the minimum wage increase in seattle had already taken down low-skilled workers hours 9% and $125 week. low-skilled workers -- i started out of baskin robbins. i'm glad i had that job. taught me a lot. i learned about inventory and taking care of customers and showing up on time and working as a team. the things you learn but it

gives them something to talk about. it draws members and makes it look like they are helping workers that but they are really now. in that sense the policies that the unions are pursuing to generate more growth. i think collective bargaining is something that workers should have the right to do. >> host: does carl's or hardys have restaurants in seattle or san francisco and how would that affect an individual restaurant? >> guest: we have franchise restaurants in seattle and san francisco. the franchisees employ the employees. they have to pay them wages and to the extent it makes it harder to hire people so your labor costs go up. the tendency is to automate and reduce the number of employees or to reduce their hours which is exactly what the harvard

business school and the university of washington study shows happens. i actually did it in a "wall street journal" op-ed send forms and got severely ridiculed for it. i've been trying to convince the restaurant engine -- industry to increase the minimum wage. it is too low. it should go to $9. the level at which you could increase the minimum wage and entry-level jobs. $15 an hour kills jobs and kills businesses and hurts low-skilled workers and lesser skilled workers. it's bad for the american worker and apparently it's good for union with membership. >> host: you "-- in your book "job creation" one of the great mistakes is to judge policies and our programs their programs by their intentions rather than their results.

>> that such a good quote. that's absolute away effort government program should be judged. look at the war on poverty. the intention was to reduce poverty. it hasn't reduce poverty. if we were losing a real war it would change our tactics to win the war. not only do we go with the same tactics that have failed but we put more money into them. we have a president who's willing to change that and if we can get political commitment and energy going particularly in the senate i think we can solve a lot of these problems and make a lot of improvements. >> host: what would have been your first action as labor secretary? >> guest: number one i wanted to implement policies that would help create jobs in the inner cities. i think the policies that have been implemented over the past years have hurt job growth in the inner cities. i want to see those entry-level jobs in the city.

we would have apprenticeship and internship programs and coordinate with the private sector. the government spends about $300 million a year on job training or 300 billion, excuse me 30 billion and the private sector spends 300 billion. let's coordinate with the private sector so running around doing crazy things with their money when the people that have the jobs and are willing to train people for those jobs and are looking for people to fill those jobs than there are many jobs like computer programmers and construction workers but they can't find people to build the jobs. we have 6 million job openings in the country. it's an historic high. there've never been 6 million job openings. we need to get people in the inner cities into the american dream. they need to get into the process. when i worked at baskin robbins

the proudest day of my professional careers was when the franchisee owner handed me the keys and said you are the assistant general manager and you can open in the morning. i'll bet it was the cleanest restaurant in america within a half an hour. there was such pride and accomplishment. this is the kind of thing that keeps you out of the gang and keeps you in school. a surprise that leads you to a better life and a more profitable existence and keeps you out of gangs and away from drugs. it does things that are so meaningful that it is underestimated. those jobs don't exist because people are afraid to go in. we are not creating the kinds of jobs and we are not seeing the growth we should see. i would have done everything i could to increase that. i also would -- the secretary perez created. i think you can get a good idea of what he's doing with the six

years he was secretary of labor. a lot needed to be kept. we needed to take it down some. also there's a womenswear womenswear and the department of labor and i would have worked. there are some very good policies with respect women particularly family leave. by the time i graduated from law school i worked my way through law school. i didn't have government or family assistance. my family couldn't help and it wasn't a government program that works. we had two kids and my wife is pregnant. i remember what it was like at the end of the month when the money didn't make it to the end of the month. there are things government can do to help. if we relieve the burden on business and better tax rates that are regulatory policies and get rid of this terrifically burdensome health care system or health insurance system we currently have we might deal to do some things that really could

generally help people. and to help president trump generate economic growth. nick mulvaney out of management and budget make america great again economics. tax reform and regulatory reform and health care reform to get smarter immigration policy and smarter trade policy and reduce spending. a great article in wall street journal on exactly that. i wish it were there helping. she keeps on me how much better time where having. i'd still love to be in a fight and helping the president every way i can. you talk about health reform or health care reform. how does the affordable care acts affect one of your franchisees?

gets good significantly increases health care and health insurance costs for everybody. it not only increases the cost of labor labor costs and growing up -- going up dramatically but it had the dramatic impact on the dollars the people have available to spend. health care costs went up seven or 8% last year. they are projected to go up 10% this year or 25% this year and more next year. this is money that people would spend in retail. i had an uncle -- an article in wall street journal. the research shows if you're health care insurance premiums went up so you are 30% more likely not to visit a restaurant as much as she did to display.

or getting a new car. if you take money out of the system you will hurt retail businesses. it's across-the-board. the current system had a devastating impact on businesses but it's nowhere near as devastating as the individuals having to pay the health insurance premiums are having to pay these incredibly high deductibles and don't know where it's going to go next year. they are very concerned about the -- where the system is taking health care. the government solution is a good solution to the senate does get behind it. it gets rid of government compulsion and reinvigorate competition in the system. i'm hoping senators can figure that out and get behind it. >> host: andy puzder is it fair and the in the reading of "job creation" to say you are suspicious of your? >> guest: absolutely. going back to woodrow wilson he wrote about this extensively.

he believed the way the government should be run was sent by elected officials. it was by a barack is the and professionals in a bureaucracy that would institute the functions of government controlled by the political system. we see a lot of that. there's a lot going on in this fourth branch of government that is beyond the control of the present and beyond the control of congress. certainly beyond the control of congress and somewhat the president. look at the problems that president trump's had trying to get the regulatory state and that brockers sanders control. you have things coming out that nobody wants to deal with. we have policies going forward that should be going forward. congress needs to get it under control. i think it needs to be reduced and gotten under control so the people that we elect that are responsive to the american people and the people answered

of them are in charge of what's happening on a bunch of aircraft that get appointed to government posts. >> host: can the president and the congress really make that much difference in the economy or does this chug along by itself? >> guest: let me give you some examples presented beginning of the year we had meaningful regulatory reform under president trump and since election we have had very meaningful increase in business optimism. there are 620,000 more people working from february to june of this year according to the bureau of labor statistics. last year was 40 thousand. of the 620,000 people there are almost 1 million more people working full-time jobs. more people working the jobs are better. our unemployment insurance is at a 40 four-year low.

i'm talking the numbers of people filing claims for unemployment insurance. we have seen median household incomes increase more sense january. the first three months of the year to increase $1300. during the entire 7.5 years of the obama administration increased. we have seen more of an increase in the beginning of this year than we saw through 7.5 years of supposedly cover a. we have seen household wealth, household net worth hit historic highs. it's $27 billion higher than it was before the recession. we have seen job openings had a record high of 6 million. we have seen, can't remember the number but maybe 20 or 30 record highs and the new york stock exchange in the stock market. the stock market prices go up

when businesses and investors are enthusiastic about the future. they don't even invest. they invest where they believe things are going to go. i think we hit another one the day before yesterday. i was -- yesterday so i didn't keep track. we are sailing -- seeing real economic growth since president trump was inaugurated. can you imagine the economic growth we would see if we can do tax reform if we can do infrastructure spending and implement the policies that he says he wants to implement that his entire cabinet and director mulvaney are advocating that we implement. think we will see 3%. businessmen say under promise and over perform. if he can execute these policies congress will work with him.

if we can get them in place we will have dynamic economic growth. politics is a team sport to the guys on our team have to realize it's a team sport. they don't seem to be aware it's a team sport. we need that commitment to policies and commitment to our object gives and commitment to fulfill the promises we made as republicans. so far not seeing it. >> host: who is your co-author? >> guest: david newton is teaching at san diego. a real good guy. we had a lot of fun writing the book. >> host: the book came out in 2009. >> guest: december 2010. >> host: is it still relevant today? >> guest: as a matter of fact it's very relevant today. talks about how this is grow and development. it isn't a book for 2010. the book for people who wonder

how government views particular progressives and government view the new jobs and how they can help the economy and how conservative economic sebile's work much better to generate growth and helping the economy and why. that's an easy statement to make but it explains in great deals why that's turned that's important for people understand. it's not something they will teach an economics class. >> host: the final question andy puzder had to get your message out beyond "the wall street journal" and the libertarian convention? >> guest: personally i'm writing a book and it really is a lot of fun to write. it can be frustrating at times. i wake up at 6:00 in the morning and the first thing i want to do is go to the computer. i go on "fox business" and cnbc

squawk box. i get to reach an audience that is different than the audience i reach on fox or "fox business" or cnbc. when people ask me to come talk if i am able to i go and do it and it's an important message to get out. america did a lot for me. i wanted to give back to the country which is why i was willing to serve as secretary of labor. ..

is the co-author of the book. >> host: the 115 congress starts next week. the senate is back on the third and welcome to democratic lawmakers

offer and entrepreneur the founder of a nonprofit that helps low income people find living wage jobs is also the author of reversing poverty one job at a time. she talks about the new boo loon her nonprofit at the commonwealth club of california. this is an hour and 20 minutes. [applause]