disputable fact of generations of race discrimination. so you are not going to change that policy if you don't focus on race recognition. so i'm personally committed to work ing toward a viable consensus and to propose real business solutions to close the racial wealth gap. until we achieve such remedies, we will not have an environment in which black wealth can expand and black americans can fully participate in the american dream, thank you. [ applause ] >> let's have a hand for rob beard johnson. >> i think the keyword to use

there was rob beard joert johns. everyone is going to be involved with this. a lot of people taking notes and i see a lot of foot ptapping. i want to finish introducing the rest of the panel. tell us more if i miss something so that i can get into this. i had a whole bunch of thing that is i wanted to talk about. so, dr. laffer livers in nashville, tennessee. he was a consultant to the secretary of defense and you get

the feeling this guy knew his stuff, huh? he was a member of ronald reagan's policy advisory board. and he he was a member of the executive committee in 1984. he was an adviser to prime minister margaret thatcher in the uk during the 1980s during that time that solid ified her s the iron lady. [ applause ] >> is there anything that you want to add to that? >> no, you were pretty thorough. >> i was a professor at the university of chicago. >> all right.

actually it is -- right? >> executive vice president at the national black chamber of commerce. honed her business and development skills over several years with the minority chamber of commercial and as an owner of individual yo stores. signature annual convention in addition to her daily responsibilities for the organizations. personnel budgets and she has coordinated and supervised dedicated to african-american business development. >> thank you, that was good. [ applause ] >> that was perfect. >> thank you very much. >> toya powell, director of

governmental engagement, access to capitol. we have heard that already. chamber development to promote economic empowerment prior to this, she was a real estate economist monitoring real estate markets and she is a business opportunity specialist at the small business administration. and we are going to talk to that to see how we can connect that with the proposals that she just brought up. [ applause ] >> thank you. >> representative mac ber nart currently serving district 84.

is a democratic ranking member of the tour. additionally he is a member of the business and affairs community and the health and human services community and the redistricting committee and i'm surprised they had time to let you go today. and he served as deputy vice mayor of the delray beach commission from 2008 and 2009. he held the position since 2007 representative bernard. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> harry alfred, president and ceo of the national black chamber of commercial.

commerce. he has acted as a leader in the rebuilding of the community after hurricane katrina. for this work he was named cultural ambassador by the united states state department. harry alfred. [ applause ] >> i'm also on the board of the u.s. chamber of commerce. and we're the largest black business association in the world. >> on the board of chamber of commercial you chair the regulatory affairs committee right? >> that is right. >> yes. >> ashley bell was elected in

2008 at age 27 to beam the county's youngest effort commissi commissioner. he attended law school at the university of georgia and law law state university. practicing law through the state of georgia. 21st century fellow. ashley bell. [ applause ] >> you just changed parties recently right? >> okay. ruth c jones city manager riviera beach, florida. mrs. jones serves for a city that is 70% african-american. ms. jones served as deputy county manager for fulton county government in atlanta. she played a key role in the

development of the county's overall budget which totalled nearly $1 billion. she is convinces that riviera beach is nearly the right place at the right time. ruth c jones. emily w murphy senior council small business committee. u.s. house of representatives. specializing and contracting in worth forworkforce issues. she has focused on federal procurement issues spending four year s chief council in a start-up communications company. she has served as the associate

administrator at the u.s. small business administration. the gsa. miss murphy is a graduate of smith college and virginia school of law. darrell jordan communications director. he has been a communications director since february of 2011. before that he was the communications director for congressman alderhalt of alabama. prior to his time on capitol hill he work ed at cnn. at fox he was at the assignment desk. at cnn he work ed in the

production team at the situation room with wolf blitzer and anderson cooper 360. this is your panel. [ applause ] >> there are some specific things that we want to cover today. the obstacles that are preventing minority business ownership. we have heard from mr. johnson on this theories on that. policies and regulations that negatively impact businesses. and we want to know about the role of government. and will probably be the key issue in november's election. look i looking at policies, programs legislation in place that might need an over hall and we are going to talk about plans of

action that need to be taken. the kind of legislation that works without any sort of kinks and also, what the panelists plan to do to follow up from today. so if i could, i heard robert johnson say he was going to leave. quickly, because you strict a nerve on a few things, you said right now if someone owns 51% of a business, certainly 10%, even 10% the tax breaks, how will the rest of america feel, we saw this fed survey wherever i one's income is down. >> very quickly, because i want

to let the other panelists speak. the issue is this, you cannot have the fastest growi ining democratic group in the country being unemployed or under employed. there is no way for the country to completkocompete. american people are compassionate on economic issues we have programs for the poor because we say i guess we assume the poor are in that situation due to no fault of their own. we can become passionate about food stamp s and we do, do it. we have to add another equation to that. it is called being african-american. not me.

necessarily. but after can americans who are in need. you take the ten and the 51. why can people look at jamie diamond who does not own 10% of jp morgan chase and nobody will ever question whether or not he is in charge of that bank. let's say the business costs $100,000 he has ten he doesn't have $51,000. $10,000 for an african-american walking around in his pocket is a lot of money. they are in the same situation i talked about. why does he have to have 51? why can't he have ten and be considered a minority qualified business because he raised $10,000 and get whatever the government set aside. why does he have to be pushed to

51. people feel that minorities would be used. some white guy would come up to me and give me $10,000 and say i'm in charge of $51,000 and get government money. it holds back black americans but it is based on a fact. we don't have 51%. but we might have 10%. so change the policy to reflect 10%. the bottom line is america unless you face the fact that there is something that has to be done, to close the wealth gap between minorities and african-americans and white americans you are going to have a population group that is going to be non productive. >> thank you. >> harry alfred, the national black chamber of commercial, i

think your slogan is senior business begins. you have outlined several goals, do you think there needs to be an increased role to helping you achieve what we want to achieve? >> i think the federal government out to back off and get out of our way. i think the department of education which wants to take away financial aid at schools that have a lower pay-back rate namely those schools that have a majority of african-american schools, they want to go after them and shut them down, we want an educated workforce. i think the least government the better it s i think the rules and regulations that you are talking about, access to capi l

capitol, the frank dodd deal has cut the possibility of african-americans getting funding through traditional banks. and i think as they say they party like it is 1992, because that is the value of your money today. that is referring to the wealth through poor. 2010 the net worth of the raf rage american. what i found interesting in that report every category saw their net worth go down. you had $100,000 to $55,000. if you didn't work at all your net worth went from $20,000 to $12,000. >> i would agree. i sit on the committee of small business and the reo -oh curing

theme is the uncertain ti of the tax policy. it is the lack of access to capitol. we get a lot of these testimonies. you know, the dodd frank swung the pendulum too far. the small community banks end up suffering the most. they help to re-establish the relationship with the community because they know individuals. maybe we can reduce the amount of equity and you want to be able to have a boost to the system. i don't think we are talking about doing that. i think it is coming back to what we are doing with financial institutions at the lowest level so that we can open up that infusion of capitol. not just having big banks come

down and have financial literacy courses. but think about the things that we are teaching in these high schools anymore. i graduated from high school and we sat down and had to balance a checkbook. we did those things to understanding cashflow. we havehave great he program in florida where we bring in not high schoolers but we started bringing in 7th and 8th graders. we teach them about a budget. it is never too early to start to do those things. if you want to talk about the start point. it is re-establishing a sense of fiscal education within the black community. we are not doing that anymore.

it is not understanding how to make your money grow. my dad taught me about the stock market by making me sit down and read box scores for baseball and football games. he said this is how you make your money grow. he taught me that when i was in high school. that is the stuff that we have to come back and do. we have a breakdown of the black family. one thing that i did not mention today. husband and wife in the black community 28%. that lead to failure in education and urban economic state statistics and vitalization. >> amen.

there is no doubt about that. emily fur fmurphy, you recent w startup, which is essentially what we're talking about. you have also -- you're on a committee for small businesses at the house of representatives. and you also worked at the sba. we've already talked a lot about access to capital. now i have dealt with the sba in the past, and i always felt like you already had to have the money to qualify for the money. how do minorities get access to this government money that they're sitting on? >> it's interesting. and i will confess i'm not the expert in government contracting, not lending programs. but i was asking our loan expert beforehand about what is going on. and he gave me some great statistics on loans at sba right now. i found out that the 78 program, the largest program for lending to small businesses, only 5% of the loan recipients are african-american. which raises an important question of why. if you look back at the past

decade, just five years ago from 2004 -- i'm sorry, 2002 to 2007, you'll find the minority businesses were being started over double the rate of any other businesses. yet last year when you look at how small businesses were doing and you look at particularly african-american businesses, african-american businesses got an 8% drop in the amount of contracts they were receiving. so what has happened in the past five years? i think that's an important question we have to be addressing when we look at equality of opportunity when is one of mr. west's principles when we first started. we seem to be missing out on the opportunity to succeed. one of the things mr. west has been working on with our committee is a bill on contract bundling, trying to make sure that contracts are structured in such a way that all small businesses, particularly african-american and and small owned businesses compete for them that helps create jobs, brings down the cost that we as taxpayers pay for the goods and services.

we get innovation and end up with a healthier industrial base. everyone wins. >> we're going to talk a lot about government and their role here. but congressman west brought up a fantastic point with respect to family. i want to turn this to ruth c. jones -- >> mr. payne, if i could, please. >> go ahead. >> to dovetail off the previous speaker, the main reason why it's dropping, in october of 2008, the sba no longer certified businesses as small, disadvantaged businesses. it becomes self certification, which means elizabeth warren up in massachusetts can now be an sdb and is wrought with fraud right now. but the showtime comes when these fronts come up there and get their sba lending money. they're not black. they're not hispanic. you know, they're native americans from 132nd parts of their blood. so that's the big problem. they need to shut the program down and recertify everybody all over again.

>> thank you. >> it's corrupt. >> well, i got to tell you, that sounds like -- an answer a lot of government policies and government function out there. we probably could scrape the whole thing at the same time. and this is -- but, again, ruth jones, in your town, from what i read, your per capita income is significantly below the rest of the state. poverty the last i saw 23% versus 13% for the state, and even less than that for america. what role does the lack of family structure play in that? >> charles, it plays a major role in the development and the success and the structure in which we're working. if you look at the data and the information as it relates to family, when you do not have the family structure of the father, the mother teaching, and it

could be the mother teaching, but it's the teaching inside of the household that before you go outside, you know what you need to do. so that's a very important part of the structure as well as the family encourages education. so if we're going to continue to strive and continue encouraging our young people to get into business or be more entrepreneurial to save and to invest, we have also got to teach them at a very early age. >> would you say it's possible -- let's just say the most incredible plan that robert johnson could think of with respect to government and banks teaching people about this sort of financial literacy, is it possible to succeed without any sort of backup within a household itself? can government do it alone? >> government can't do it alone, but the family can do it. my great grandmother was a slave. she put all her family in a boxcar. she didn't have it in the

household, but she went and earned it and she taught us how to make money. so i do believe you can do it, but it's going to take everyone. it's going to take the family. it's going to take the parents. it's going to take the church. >> right. >> because that's your biggest area right there. and more of our churches need to be teaching investment and financial independence and how to start businesses. you go get the people where the people are. >> right. >> and if the people are at church or in those particular activities, that's where we've got to go in order to strengthen our families and to teach our individuals within the particular organizations, as well as the churches, how to manage money, how to save, how to invest. because the word says a man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. >> thank you very much. art laffer -- [ applause ] art laffer, you're a free market

warrior. congressman west started this off by talking about free markets. in fact, i think we've got a gigantic battle over in europe at this very moment about the notion of free markets and, you know, whether -- and it gets almost back to robert johnson's point about people who are working and paying extraordinarily -- extraordinary taxes for people who aren't working. and at some point there is a major, major problem there. free markets with respect to policy in this country. is it effective anymore? because i sometimes feel the new mantra should be the harder i work, the more i owe. the less i work the more that is owed to me. >> if i can, i mean you're right. if you tax people who work and you pay people who don't work, do i need to say the next sentence to you? if you tax rich people and you give the money to poor people, you're going to have lots and lots of poor people and no rich people.

you know, if there are two locations, a and b, you raise taxes in b and you lower in a, producers and manufacturers and people are going to move from to. this as larry gatlin says, this isn't rocket surgery. >> everybody in the room is familiar with larry gatlin. >> but if i can, the children's children, i love that very much, because i've got six children, as you know, charles, and i've got 11 grandchildren so far. we're just beginning. but let me just tell you, if i can, just to pull back, you need the right environment for all these other policies to take place. you can't just have a family in a vacuum doing something and throw the kid out, or you can't have a school sitting there and have the kid going to an environment that doesn't work. i mean you've really got to have the right environment. if you look at the environment today, you can see it. u.s. tax structure. and it's not just tax rates. government spending is taxation. and i've got to explain it to you.

you know, it's so complicated in the 315 million person world with chinese capital and fred default swaps, you just get dizzy. you can't fall the t accounts. but if it's good economics, it works just as well in a two-person world as it does in the 315 million person. good economics is scaleable. are all of you with me? if it makes sense, it makes sense across the whole range. the only need thing about a two-person world is you can actually understand it. you can see it. package in we have two farmer, farmer a and farmer b. that's it. nothing else. nothing else outside this world. if farmer b gets unemployment benefits, who do you think pays for him? i mean i'm not going way over your heads here. and yet i hear larry summers and i hear austin golds bee. the doesn't create resources.

it redistributes resources. and it redistributes them from people who produced them to people who didn't produce them. it makes no sense. state governments too. look at what has happened to my home state. and forgive me for being a little chauvinistic here, but i'm from cleveland, ohio. and in 1972, cleveland did -- ohio did not have an income tax. we have more fortune 500 headquarters in ohio than any other state in the nation. we were the blooming state, and all of the sudden they came in and west virginiaized my home state. i went back to cleveland. my mom and dad were born in cleveland. all four of my grandparents were born in cleveland. seven out of my grandparents were born in cleveland. up in the cemetery, i went and visited my family and drove around cleveland. have you seen cleveland? have you seen what happened? 11 states in the last 50 years have introduced a progressive income tax. 11. maine, connecticut, new jersey, pennsylvania, ohio, wisconsin,