thanks. and if not, we thank you so much for your time. people are available for personal interviews if you want to come up and we hope you'll join us in the fight for passing the end racial profiling act. thank you. [ applause ]

>> you can watch the senate hearing from earlier today on racial profiling at cspan.org. senate gaveling back in shortly at 2:15. that is on c-span it's 2. a reminder that you can find the latest updated information on members of the senate and house in the new c-span 2012 congressional directory. it has member bios, committee assignments, contact information and more. it includes details on governors, cabinet members and supreme court justices. the directory is $12.95 plus shipping and handling. order online at cspan.org/shop. book tv is live tonight with the book "bad religion." how we became a nation of heretics about christianity in america and its influence on today's social and political landscape. he speaks with barbara bradley

hagerty npr religious correspondent and michael gerson, watch it live this evening 7:00 eastern at book tv. while today is tax day. the deadline to file your 2011 state and federal tax returns and our facebook question of the day asks you if you think you pay your fair share? read what others have to say and let us know your opinion. last night in philadelphia republican presidential candidate mitt romney said president obama's proposal to raise taxes on millionaires is quote, not exactly a grand idea. pennsylvania holds its republican presidential primary a week from today tuesday, april 24th, the same day as primaries in delaware, connecticut, new york and rhode island. this was hosted by tind pend tea party association and it's nearly 30 minutes. ♪ >> thank you.

what a welcome. >> thank you. what a welcome from the tea party and thank you to mike for his leadership. and to this group here, i owe a special thanks. the independence hall tea party pac. you guys were the first tea party pac in the nation to endorse me and i appreciate your help. thank you. and michael i appreciate you bringing tea party members from the tristate area together and i just heard senator joe ka ril lows he's going to be a u.s. senator soon. i look forward to working with that guy. he's a terrific guy. thanks, joe. appreciate you being here. thank you. now i am asked from time to time what it is like running for

president. i had not expected to have the great privilege doing this and i find myself having the time of my life. there are challenges and days you get beat up in the newspaper and you don't worry about it because you don't read them. instead you talk anne and i do about the great experiences we've had and the people we've met. and the good news is that america is not just made up of the people you see on the news who by and large have done something unusual that's why they're in the news. and typically that we've done has not been real good and that's also why they're in the news. i had the chance to meet everyday americans living their lives in states across the country. and i come away with more confidence and more optimism about your future. because americans are patriotic. we love this country. we understand the principles of freedom that created this

country. we also -- we also are very entrepreneurial as a people. i was with one woman who runs a business. she said actually her husband runs the operations of the business, but she's the chief executive. she said that i guess he lost his job a number of years ago and he took a class in upholstering. now they have 40 people that work for them. it's just -- [ applause ] i was in one factory as i recall a couple hundred workers i was norm burns' factory. he has plaques of his patents. he has electrical products that he makes over 100 patents. i asked him where he went to graduate skoo school in engineering. he said he didn't. i said where'd you get your undergraduate degree? didn't do that either. just an entrepreneur, a an innovator by virtue of his skills, incites and dreams he

was ain't to build a business that employees hundreds of people. another fellow who lost his job or left it in an advertising agency. he and his son decided to start a business making amplifiers for electric guitars. four people in total work in their business or did. and i just marvel. and the nature of american entrepreneurship and innovativeness. it has driven our economy to be the strongest in the world. but these last three and a half years they haven't been so good. these have been real tough times as you know. we have had 38 straight months with unemployment above 8%. and the president said if we let him borrow $787 billion we'd not have unemployment of 8%. we'd have 2.8 million homes foreclosed upon. we have today the longest period of long-term unemployment. the worst long-term unemployment

record we've seen in america's history. home values have dropped in some places by 1/3 or more. the median income in america, the median income in the last four years has dropped by 10%. even as gasoline prices have now doubled. and as people are paying for more health care in part because of obama care. and so the american people are struggling right now and we have a president that doesn't seem to understand that he's been part of the problem not part of the solution. and i listened to him. he's got these ideas. his big idea now is this buffett rule, which is that -- someone calculated -- someone calculated by the way that the taxes he would raise in his buffett rule would pay for 11 hours of the government. this is not exactly a grand idea. this man is out of ideas. he's out of excuses and a 2012 we're going to make sure he gets put out of office.

[ cheers and applause ] >> i just don't think he understands the power of what makes america such a unique and exceptional nation economically or otherwise. i used to be in the business world. for 25 years i was in business and i traveled around to other countries. i remarked at some point in the enormous differences in the economic vitality of nations right next door to each other. i wondered why that was. why is economic so economically powerful and mexico so much poorer. why is chile so successful and

ecuador so far less successful. and then i read a book called "the wealth and poverty of neighs." he tracks the histories of civilization that grew to become powerful and dominant and how they declined. after 500 pages of analysis, he says roughly these words. he said if you can learn anything at all from the history of the american development of the world it's this, culture makes all the difference. what people believe, their principles. what motivates them, what guides them. that makes all the difference in the world. and the culture of america, the principles of america were established by founders like that one. when they wrote the declaration

of independence and the constitution their insight suggested that they were brilliant and inspired because they wrote words that have changed america, made us exceptional and changed the world. they said the creator endowed us with our rights not the government, not the king, not the state, but the creator. [ applause ] and among those rights were life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. we'll be free in this nation with personal freedoms. we would have the capacity to elect people to represent us in government. that's liberty, but then we would also have the right to pursue happiness as we choose. rather than having the government guide our course in life or the circumstances of birth determining what we could achieve, americans would be free

to pursue their dreams. some of the greatest success stories in american history are people who started off with nothing but an idea and a corner in the garage. and have then built enterprises that have employed hundreds even thousands of other americans. this freedom has propelled america to be the most powerful economy in the world. and the reason this president's had such a hard time understanding what it takes to get the economy going again is he doesn't understand the power and impact of economic freedom. [ applause ] piece by piece he has waged war on economic freedom in this country. you think about this, when you have -- when you have a government that every year aides a trillion dollars to the debt, you're crushing the freedom of the next generation. when you have a government like this one that says they want to

raise taxes from 35% to 40%, by the way, do you know what proportion of our private sector workforce works in businesses that are taxed at the individual tax rate? that 35% rate which he wants to take to 40%? 54% of american workers work in businesses taxed as individuals. you raise that tax rate you will kill jobs. it kills economic freedom. [ applause ] and then there's vice president biden. he's proposed a new global tax. i'm not sure what it's going to look like. he likes the idea of a global tax. and the president of course is going oi cross the nation campaigning to raise taxes on investment that this -- this is their approach and taxes by their definition limit our

freedom. they should be as small as possible to do those things that are absolutely essential like protecting our national security, providing for our schools and taking care of those who can't take care of themselves. so deficits limit our economic freedom. raising taxes affects our economic freedom. regulation, you have to have regulations to make a marketplace work. you have to have rules and regulations. but regulations that get too large can overwhelm the enterprises that you're trying to encourage. so when our friends in washington pass a bill known as dodd frank because they say they want to -- they're concerned about these too big to fail banks they don't understand what they did is make it harder not on the big banks, but on the community banks. they make it harder for them to renegotiate with homeowners so they can city in their homes.

they make it harder for small banks to compete. guess what's happened since dodd frank? the bigger banks got bigger and the community banks have been the ones most badly hurt. we're seeing an insinuation of regulators throughout our economy making it harder and harder for enterprises to accomplish their mission and put people to work. crushing economic freedom. i mean, we built an interstate highway system once. we built the hoover dam. today we can't even build a pipeline for pete's sakes. [ applause ] there was a time we were known as the manufacturers headquarters in the world. largest exporters in the world. now we're known for being the lawsuit capital of the world. there was a time by the way our schools were so superb that our kids were the best educator in the world. now one-half of all the kids in

our a largest cities won't even graduate from high school. it's criminal to see what happened as a result of policies where washington gets larger and larger and doesn't respect the power and impact of free enterprise and freedom. president obama thinks the economy is struggling because the stimulus wasn't big enough. the economy is struggling because government is too big and we're going to bring it down to size. [ applause ] this campaign is just getting going. it's going to be fun. it's going to be -- we're going to be -- [ applause ] and the contrast -- the contrast could not be bigger. he said the other day this is going to be a defining election. that's one thing i agree with them on. we have a very different vision for america. my vision says, for instance, we can't keep spending to the tune of a trillion dollars a year. it's time for us to cut, cap and

balance the budget. people say how are you going to do that? what we do is you start off by taking all the programs we have and say which of them can we not just slow their rate of growth in. which ones can we eliminate, get rid of, cut all together, the first on the list is obama care. let's get rid of that one. there are other programs we're going to keep because they're important but we're not going to have them run at the federal level. we're going to send them back at the states where the states can

determine how to structure them and fashion them to meet the needs of their own people. for instance, do you know how many federal workforce training programs we have? 49. 49. reporting to eight different agencies. take the money. send it back to the states. let the states craft their own programs for their own people. [ applause ] and by the way, what's left bring it down to size. make it smaller. we have too many federal employees through attrition i'll cut it by at least 10% and i want to link the pay of government workers with the pay that exists in the private sector. [ applause ] now the president wants to raise taxes. i want to lower taxes. i want it 20% across the board

reduction in taxes and a simplification plan. the president has a view on energy. he said the other day he likes all of the above. and i thought about that for a moment. it's like, maybe what he means is he likes all the sources of energy that are above the ground. so wind and solar. we like wind and solar, too, but we also like the sources of energy below the ground, oil, natural gas and coal. we're going to become energy independent. [ applause ] i don't know that there's ever been a presidency that's been more attuned to the people that provided money to his party. which are the public unions, the private sector unions, the trial lawyers. he has been doing their bidding by saying they're not going to open up new markets for american goods in the last three years, three and a half years, china and the european union, nations

have opened up some 44 different trade agreements at various stages with other nations. we've opened up none. the three we got were by his predecessor, george w. bush. no question the unions don't like these trade agreements. then of course you have the decision by the national labor relations board telling boeing you can't build a factory in a right to work state. that's what his special interests were telling him to do. and then of course he took some of your money to invest in some businesses of the people who contributed to his campaigns. people say he likes to pick winners and losers. i said no, he just likes to pick losers. [ applause ] the right course for america's economy is not to have the government try to guide the economy or to bow to the special interests that paid for their campaigns. the right course for america's

economy is to return to consumer griffin free markets and i will get that job done. the president says he wants to transform america. i don't want to transform america. i want to restore to america the principles that made us the hope of the earth. and if i'm so fortunate that i can become president of this great country, i will endeavor -- to unite america again -- i will not do as this president is doing, dividing us as every occasion, attacking one american after the other, trying to find one scapegoat, trying to find someone who, by virtue attacking them can divert from

his failures economically. i will bring us together because i believe that we are one nation under god. >> and if i'm -- if i'm so fortunate to become president, i will not apologize for success here at home. and i will -- i will certainly not apologize for america's success at broad. abroad. this nation -- this nation has done more to free people from tyranny and help lift people out

of poverty by the virtues these grade founders had in mind and shared with the in addition, that anybody in history, we have no reason to apologize for the greatness of america. the founders expected us to not only live by the principles about when they wrote, but also to preserve them and protect them. and over the centuries, over 1 million men and women have paid the ultimate sacrifice. made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of those principles and those freedoms, and it's an image in my mind as i've recognized that the great month joirt of the people in this country, i think all the people in this country, revere those who have fought and died for the preservation of our liberty. i remember i was -- i was serving as the governor of my state towards the end of my t m term, and we got a call from the

airport saying that the remains of one of our soldiers killed in iraq, as i recall, was being sent back to massachusetts. he was coming in on a us airways flight, and the parents had been called, but they lived too far away to get to the airport to receive the body, and they wondered if i could come in their stead. because my office was closer to the airport, and i said, of course. so we drove to the airport, and the big glass wall there in

boston. there's a huge glass wall for us airways and it seems that people that got out of the aircraft had seen all the police cars so they all lined up against the window to see what's was going on and then the people walking down the hall getting to their flights or going home, they saw the people lined up against the glass, so they prodded in behind them. it was quite a crowd. every person i saw had their hand on their heart. we're patriotic people. we love this country. when i think of america, when i think of our future, i think of scenes like that, where we come together. we need a president who will not attack fellow americans. who will bring us together --

>> you know, it's always made me feel a little taller and stand a little straighter as i'm sure it has you, to know we have a gift no one else in the world has. we're american. something we've always known. people around the world know there's something very special about america. it means something different to each of us, but it means something special to all of us. today there are some who question that around the world. maybe even some among us question that. we're bringing back that confidence and that commitment and that love in america. and making sure that destiny is consistent with the principles of our great founding. and we're doing that, because we believe in america. we believe in the principles

that made this nation the nation it is. we love america. we're going to bring it back because of our conviction of america. i need your help. i need to make sure that those who believe in those principles are willing to work and stand up and make sure we take back this great country, and keep america as it's always been -- the hope of the earth. thank you so much. you guys are terrific. thank you. thank you. thank you. ♪ the river rages strong is the wind that makes it, dreams it face it, father time ♪ deep like the grandest canyon ♪ wide like an untamed stallion ♪ ♪ if you can't see my heart you must be blind ♪ you can hunt me down and watch me bleed but you can't keep no chains on me ♪

♪ i was born free i was born free ♪ ♪ i was born free born free ♪ ♪ and i'm not good at long good-byes but look deep into nigh eyes ♪ ♪ i was born free ♪ ♪ yeah, yeah yeah, yeah ♪ ooh-ooh ♪

♪ come facing danger lost like an unknown stranger ♪ ♪ grateful for my time with low regrets ♪ close to my destination time frail and aching ♪ ♪ waiting patient for the sun to set ♪ ♪ and when it's done believe that i will yell from that mountain high ♪ ♪ i was born free i was born free i was born free ♪ born free and i will bow to shining seas

and celebrate god's grace on thee ♪ ♪ i was born free ♪ i was born free i was born free born free ♪ ♪ and oh-oh-oh-oh-oh ♪ oh, oh-oh-oh-oh, oh ♪ yeah, yeah yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh ♪ oh, oh-oh-oh-oh, oh ♪ yeah mitt romney last night in philadelphia. speaker john boehner this morning announced he's supporting mitt romney saying that he is going to be our nominee. i think mitt romney has a set of