governing by crisis referring to the shutdown and so on. he expressed some optimism about this budget round in particular avoiding repetition of what happened the late unpleasantness. can you tell us right now here that there will not be another shutdown or another debt limit -- >> i'm comfortable with saying that. whether or not we come to an an agreement or we just have a continuing resolution that just keeps going, either one of those two scenarios will prevail and we will not have a government shutdown. the debt limit is later on. we don't know the timing of that. i don't know if you had jack lew here or not -- >> we did. >> he was able to do more extraordinary measures. that could be into the summer as late or spring but i do not believe we will have -- >> the debt limit -- >> that's going to go on later. these are disjointed events.

i do not believe that you'll have the kind of theatrics surrounding that as well. >> why do you think that it will be different this time within your own conference because the speaker didn't want the crisis that happened the last time. i think and correct me if i'm wrong, i don't think you did. >> that's correct. >> but yet you couldn't control your own members. how can you prevent that from happening again? >> obama care is here now. so you know the reason this happened from our perspective was -- now people understand why we fight obama care so much i guess. you have to understand the mindset of a house republican going into this. we were doing all of these oversight hearings, getting all of this testimony, seeing that this program was not ready for prime time and seeing the damage that was going to come to the people we represent and we wanted to do everything we could to stop it. many of us didn't think that was the right way to stop it. it's very clear that a government shutdown does not

stop obama care because the government did shut down and didn't stop obama care. don't think that will be repeated. that's in the past. it's very clear that won't stop obama care. the things that we feared would happen are now happening and we fear the worst is yet to come with respect to obama care. that will not get in the way of a government shutdown. we will keep the government funded at current levels if need be at the end of the day and not have a government shutdown. >> that won't fire up your members, your rank and file to say now we have an even greater incentive to shut it down. >> it's disconnected. obama care is an entitlement. discretionary spending meaning government shutdown is not an entitlement. they're not related. >> so you're negotiating with the senate democrats and their position is -- one of their positions is all you need to do to get a deal or at least to get them to move on entitlements is to eliminate some tax expenditures that tax subsidies

they call them. for example, carried interest. raise carried interest rate up to normal income tax rate. if that is what you -- all you need to do to get entitlement reform, why not put together that kind of deal. >> that is not what they're saying. they're not saying they're willing to do entitlement reform of any significance whatsoever even with that. they're not suggesting that. that's point number one. they are signaling they're not interested in entitlement reform in any shape of form of any great magnitude. >> that's not their official position. you give us reductions, eliminations, we'll give you something -- >> i don't see that. >> you don't see that? >> let me back up to what i was going to say originally which is if this becomes about raising taxes, we're not going for get anywhere. the president already got another big tax cut in january. 600 billion. that number is higher now that we're a year in from it from the fiscal cliff. that's point number one.

point number two, we're very serious about tax reform. ways and means committee is moving tax reform legislation. max baucus is working on tax reform legislation. that's where taxes should be dealt with. if we take tax loopholes and put them in this budget process, we are short changing tax reform. our goal is to get rates down and get to a 25% rate in an internationally competitive system and we don't want to shortchange that. those so-called loopholes are needed to bring the rates down and get people back to work. on the spending side, we're willing to trade some spending cuts across the board in crude in sequester for other spending cuts on the entitlement side of the budget. that's a trade we're willing to look at and what we're discussing right now. >> is there any progress on that front? >> patty and i are in continual

conversation. we have made progress. we're farther than we were when we started but we do not have an agreement and we do have difference of opinions. you mentioned one of them. we're still going to try to work out our differences. the way i look at this is the bottom line what we ought to do is something that is good for the deficit meaning are we reducing the deficit or not. that's point number one. number two, i'm happy to cut spending in a smarter way and do it in a way that produces more deficit reduction. that to me would be a step in the right direction. by the way, it would show the government can work and function even this divided government and i think if and only we do that, i think that's probably a good sign of confidence. i think it would be nice to show that two parties can function at a basic level but we're not going to raise taxes in order to do that because we think it's bad for the economy, it hurts tax reform and it takes pressure off the fiscal discipline that we have here which is getting spending under control. it's only under control on

discretionary and not big growing part of the budget and we would like to bring some reforms over there if we want to ease some discretionary problems. >> if you can't get that kind of a deal that you just described, would you be willing to accept just an extension of the sequester? >> that's what we will do. >> you consider that -- >> we'll take spending cuts we've got. we'll take the fiscal discipline we have. we think there's a smarter way of doing it and we prefer to do it that smarter way. if we can't do it that way, we'll stick with what we have. >> i want to ask you about something that larry summers said. government can't do two things very well. those two things are, one is spur growth. second reduce deficits. right now given our pultry growth figures, his argument is government needs to do more to spur growth and put the deficit off for another day. what's your response to that? >> growth does reduce the deficit. faster economic growth brings in more revenues which reduces the deficit. we have tried the obama/summers playbook for five years now and

look at the anemic growth we have. this sort of spending stimulus has not worked. is not working. it brings us higher deficits which means more tax increases. it puts higher pressure on interest rates in the future. and it is all done at the expense of pro-growth policies like regulatory reform, certainty. so all of this sugar high temporary stimulus adds to the uncertainty facing businesses, promise up our tax rates, raises our deficits, which adds to more uncertainty in the fact of higher taxes. real pro-growth policies are what we're trying to produce through ways and means through the house, lower tax rates. get internationally competitive tax code. that would be growth. look at this incredible energy boom we could have in this country if we get behind it. energy production on federal land is going up. going up on private land. what if we respond with the same thing on federal lands and regulatory certainty which is

stop the energy boom from happening. those things we think are growth. they produce faster economic growth and more jobs and more revenues and lower deficit. >> you are not prepared to declare victory short-term on the deficit. you think that has to be a priority for your party and the government? >> we don't see these as tradeoffs. faster economic growth, more jobs through pro-growth policies and not borrowing and spending but letting businesses breathe, getting out of their way, reducing uncertainty, lowering tax rates on the margin and on capital, that produces more growth. don't buy the premises of the question which is either deficit reduction or economic growth. >> okay. another growth agenda item people in washington are talking about is immigration reform and we get conflicting reports from the republicans. one minute we hear the speaker said no votes this year. somebody else says, well, there might be votes this year.

yes, we still want to get this done before the election but maybe not until after the primary filing season for the republican candidates. where do you stand on immigration reform? is it something that we can see getting done with maybe starting some votes in the house this year? >> i'm for immigration reform. i'm for what we call the house version of immigration reform. we won't take the senate bill because -- >> breaking it up. >> that's right. i think this is also pro-growth. i think, look, i can go into a whole thing about birth rates and labor markets and future workforces, the point is we're denying our country from having smart people who are educated here to help us create jobs. if we do immigration reform right, that too is pro-growth policy. we will not come you the with a

result of the senate bill. that's what the speaker was talking about the other day. the way the house will work and proceed on immigration reform is a step by step approach getting border secured. it has to be actual and verifiable on border and interior enforcement before other things can be triggered. we want to move from what we call a chain migration or a family relative based immigration system to an economic based immigration. people come here for talent and skills to create and fill jobs. and we want to make sure that we have a system that does not grant amnesty and does not create a moral hazard and that helps respect the rule of law while dealing in an intelligent way with people who are undocumented. we think there's a way to do that in this step by step approach, which is in the senate bill. it's in amnesty. it transforms our system to an economics based system and that's seven or eight different pieces of legislation.

i wanted to do that this calendar year. knowing the schedule as i do and being involved in budget negotiations taking up early december, there's literally not enough time to do it. >> you don't think there will be votes this calendar year? >> we do not have time. >> when will it start? the longer you wait in the new year, the harder it is to get it done. closer you get to november, then all bets are off. >> i agree with that. i wanted to get it done this year. it's not because we don't want to do it that we're not doing it before the end of the year. we're losing our time because we have budget negotiations that have not been resolved. we have a farm bill that's out there. we literally don't have the space on our calendar to do it but we are serious that the house will -- we want to proceed with the immigration reform. we'll do it in the way i just described and do it in a way that guarantees that we don't come out with a senate proposal. >> is there a majority of house republican conference for majority of republican members for a pathway to citizenship for

the 11 million people who are currently undocument ed in the united states? >> i would say no. the way you describe that is if we give someone a jump in the line and giving an undocumented person a patway to go in front of a person who is here legally. here's how i describe what i think we have a manageority for. i don't mean to be too long winded here. what we have been envisions is a person goes on probation and just like any kind of probation period to satisfy the terms of their probation, assimilation. pay taxes. pay a fine. english. civics. can't be on welfare for at least a decade. have to always have a job. and after the border is verifiably secured, e-verify is up and running and after that time and after a period of five years, then you can get out of probation, which during that time you have a work permit. you can keep having a work permit and if you want to get in line to get a green card, like

any other immigrant, you can get in that line. no special line. a line like any other immigrant and you're at the back of that line because we want to preference the person that came here legally and did things right from the get-go and we don't want to give a person who came here by overstaying their visa or crossing the border illegally a jump in the line. that's not a path to citizenship. that's not denying that person who gets right with the law through going through probation and doing things right the ability to get a green card. >> once you get a green card, that is a path to citizenship ultimately and half of your conference would call what you just described amnesty. >> that's not amnesty. it respects the rule of law. the reason we want to map it out this way is we don't want to create a moral hazard where we tell people, wait because congress will wipe the slate clean in a decade. we want reform to make sure we're not in the same place ten years from now. one of the problems we had is we never had enforcement that came with the legal immigration fixes. we want to have the enforcement

that is guarantee that it works and is actionable along with a change in legal system from change to economics and system for undocumented to get right with the law but in a way that doesn't reward them for breaking the law. we think that's the way to do it. it's my opinion that it's very different than the senate approach. it's a way that i think a majority of republicans will vote for because the alternative is amnesty. we won't do that. you won't be able to find 11 million people and deport 11 million people. that's about a 15-year time line before you can become a citizen under what i just described. i would hardly call that an amnesty. >> you watched i'm sure the virginia governor's race. ken cuccinelli won the white vote but lost the election and one reason he did was because the white share of the electorate was 70% when it was 78% four years ago.

reduced by eight points. can republicans continue to -- can they regain the presidency without doing better among minority voters and how does the republican party do that? >> well, forget about electoral college. forget about demographics and what republicans should do. what is the right thing for a public policy -- what is the right thing for a person in public office to do and that's to fight for every single person's vote and have ideas that work for everybody. so where i believe we have a lot of room for improvement as a party is to show that we have better answers for fighting poverty. we have 50th anniversary of the war on poverty next year and it's not working. poverty is winning. 46 million people in poverty. highest rates in a generation. you know, we have known each other a long time. we have to show we have better ideas for fighting poverty and revitalizing our inner cities and be constructive on

immigration reform that works, that's good for the economy, that respects the rule of law, that is inclusive. that brings people here. immigration is a good thing for this country. it's good for our economy. it's what this country has been built upon. we need to speak to all of these issues not because it's good for some political calculation but because it's the right thing to do and it's how we revitalize the american idea. it's how we get back to a pro-growth equal opportunity upper mobile society which is what america has always been. it hasn't been in stagnant times but we have to show we have solutions that speak to that and applies to every person fno matter where they come from. that's the right thing to do. if we do that, those political benefits hopefully will accrue. that should be the reason why we do it. >> you were a national candidate last time. >> i would like to have that again today. the election. >> well, there's a lot of

discussion among republicans, you hear it all the time, that the next republican nominee for president 2016 has to be a governor. has to be somebody like a chris christie or scott walker. do you agree with that? >> no. next question. >> why not? let me play devil's advocate here. you have a mess in washington. your approval rating in congress not yours personally but congress is 10%. 12%. >> that's up from nine. >> the republican electorate looks at that and says i don't want to redo that. just change deck chairs with someone from the other party. let's get someone else with a reputation for governoring and put them in the chair. >> the resume isn't as important as the person and quality of their ideas and trek record of reform and i would like to make sure we get a person who will be a standard bearer that can go the distance.

i'm familiar with what going the distance means and it means a lot. it's not easy to do. but also, somebody who is going to be a good standard bearer who is going to be strong on principles, inclusive on ideas, and gives what i call full spectrum conservatism that speaks to each and everybody. i believe this country has just a handful of years before we go down the european path and before we become the social welfare state. and we've got to turn this growth engine back on. the good news in this is that it doesn't take a lot to turn things around to get this country growing again. i don't think we'll have that with this administration. we just won't. i don't think the president has the philosophy and disposition or temperament to do that. i'm hoping we can do a few things to make this divided government work. but to fundamentally fix what needs fixing is doable but it's going to have to take somebody who knows how to do it and could

do it. that could be a governor and someone from the federal side who are they and what are their ideas and what are gifts and abilities and that's what matters to me versus top line on their resume. >> you were out in iowa recently. no doubt investigating the ethanol program. so you did say that you would look closely at making a run yourself. what's your mental checklist? what are you looking at when you decide to make that decision? >> i was there not as putting my toe in the water i was keeping a commitment to a friend of mine who is the governor of iowa who headline this event he asked me to do almost a year ago. >> that's what they all say. >> it's next door. it's wisconsin. it's close by. the way i look at this is this. if i'm going to do a job in the majority as the chairman of the budget committee and leader of my party trying to fix these current problems, i cannot let

my mind be clouded with personal ambition because if i do, i don't think i'll make the right decisions that i need for governing in the majority. i have a job to do on behalf of the people that elected me and behalf of responsibilities i've been given by my caucus and i'll focus on that. after that is done i'll look at those things and do the soul searching it takes and make the decision. i have presidential sized policy ambitions and the question is do i have presidential sized political and personal ambition. >> that's a question a lot of people frankly would ask of you. they said, you know, to win the white house and get the nomination, you have to really want it. >> that's right. >> and people say we don't know if he wants it. >> i've got a young family. i've been a policy guy in congress. i've focused my things on my family and the policy ideas in congress and what we used to call the battle of ideas. where i have been in my career

you can do that and be a good family man. that's been very, very important to me. janna and i had a long talk about going on the ticket whether we could still balance that. we believed we could. therefore i went on the ticket. >> it was a short campaign.tick. >> it was a short campaign. >> it was an 88-day race. we have to make that decision, but the point i made in the beginning was, i've got important work to do, i've got to focus on that work, and i don't want to cloud my thinking based upon what does this do to juxtapose me with this person, that person, i don't want to think about that. i want to focus on my job right now. >> do you have a timeline? >> not exactly, no. >> with that, why don't we get a few questions from the audience. there must be a few for congressman ryan. anybo anybody? none at all? has you totally convinced?

yes, please, right here. got the microphone. >> governor christie last night spoke quite directly, rich lester, sorry, governor christie spoke directly last night about the need to get across the aisle and if he could get 70% of his agenda passed in through compromise, that was moving the state in his case forward by 70%. listening to your comments on immigration, it wasn't clear that there was a mindset that on a bill that, i think, on an issue that most people in this room would see as quite critical for the future, that there's that spirit of a willingness to compromise and get 70% of the republican agenda and 70% of the democratic agenda in order to get something that both sides can live with. >> i didn't mean to leave that impression. >> do you see that spirit, willing to compromise? >> sure, we talk to democrats, understand their positions.

there are certain bottom lines that are important for us just to pass a bill. more importantly, maintain our principles, so, yes, do we believe we need to address visas, high skilled, low skilled, agriculture? absolutely. do we believe we need to get the enforcement, interior enforcement? absolutely. do we believe we have to have a viable answer for the undocumented and do it in such a way that protects the rule of law and does not reward a person for cutting in line? yeah. and i think there are democrats who agree with us on that. those basic principles, i believe that the president and his party would be crazy to walk away from, and so i think there's a way to do this, but, again, it goes both ways. we're not just going to get jammed with a senate bill. we have made it very clear, we will not take that bill and we won't take a process where it leads to that bill. we'll do a process like we've described, which by the way, i think the country prefers that we do these things step by step

so they and we know what we're voting on. i mean, look at obama care. you bring these multi-thousand page bills to the floor, people pass them, then look what happens. we don't want to do that with any issue, let alone immigration reform. >> but then why not try to do what you can do, why not do a dream act bill, for example? why not do a s.t.e.m. graduation? >> we are going to. >> try to get them done, even if you can't get the grant enforcement provisions, if you did three or four of those things, it would be tremendous for the economy and the country. >> so to his question, the democrats will not support and go with us if we just do that, so in working with democrats, they won't even support our s.t.e.m. bill if we bring other bills along with it. what we want is a step-by-step approach bringing these bills out of ju dish jar committee, they are still working on bills there, and do it in a time we're going to deliberate this.

if we're going to cram and rush just because it's the calendar year, we don't think that's responsible. we literally don't have the time to do that, but the other part is, there are big problems that need fixing across the immigration system. we want to do it in pieces, but we want to show how these pieces integrate and work together so we're doing it in a way that's smart and we're not going to get jammed with a senate bill, so the process matters, as well. >> next question. yes, please, in the bank accock. can we get a microphone? >> hello, claus klinefeld. when we shut down the government and debate around the debt ceiling happened, it sent shivers down the spine of pretty much every business leader around the world, and i think also many, many consumers. now we have resolved it, but only to shift it, so come

january, come the next deadline, what do we have to expect? >> that's why i wasn't really a big fan of the way it was done, because it was just a can-kicking exercise. here's what sends shivers down my spine, is that we go into next year where the federal reserve begins to taper, begins to normalize their policy, and perhaps interest rates begin rising and we will have not taken advantage of this low-interest rate moment to get a down payment on our debt. we know from the cbo that our debt is about to take off in a few years and never come back down if we don't do anything about it. we have 100% increase in retirement population and 17% increase in the worker population paying for their programs and the cost of those programs they use is growing 6% to 8% a year. that's a whole lot faster than the economy, wages, or inflation. so this is our concern, which is what we get from the president is, just give me more debt, give

me more debt without doing anything to deal with why the debt is rising so fast. we want to get a down payment on our debt problems, and the reason we want to do this is because if we do it now, we can do it on our own terms as a nation. if we wait till we have a crisis, just like europe, we're in panic mode, cutting the safety net, reneging on promises and doing it in crisis. we want to get ahead of our problems, and we also think that that's good for growth. we think if we get some debt reduction under control now, that's going to bring more certainty to the credit markets and that interest rates when they normalize will normalize at lower rates than they otherwise would normalize if we didn't get a budget agreement. and so the only kind of leverage we ever get with this kind of divided government, that does not want to reduce the debt, that does not want to reform the drivers of our debt, our entitlement programs, is this, so that is why we want to have

serious conversations about what it's going to take to get a down payment on this problem. i put an op ed in paul's page a month ago, two months ago saying there are all these entitlement reforms the president put in his budget. we'll take those as a down payment. that will get us a start. means testing, that makes sense, we're for that. the problem is, we do not have a receptive audience from the other side of the aisle to do even these small, minimal things, so we have to look where leverage is to try and get these down payments on the dealt because we think that's in our nation's interest. and if we don't do that, if we lose three years on not getting this debt under control, which is good for growth, credit markets, good for certainty, then that's three years where we're digging the hole even deeper and the ultimate solution will be that much uglier when we come to fix the problem. that's why. >> one more right here, please. >> bill, highmark health.

can you envision your party, the republican party, coming forward with an alternative to the affordable care act that incorporates many of the provisions, the popular provisions, provisions people think work that could be a viable solution to some of the problems that seem to be in the rising with the law? >> yes, so we believe -- >> this year. >> so, well -- this year, tack that at the end there. many of us are working on alternatives, but it's literally a function of running numbers. i don't think this year big reforms will be ready yet and that's just a logistical point. the republican study committee has a bill for a complete obama care replacement that's been released that has 100 co-sponsors already. tom coburn and i, back in 2009, 2010, had complete alternative

patient-center reforms that we offered when obama care was being deliberated, so before, during, and after obama care, was deliberated and passed, we put out very comprehensive patient-centered market-based plans and i do envision us doing so again. to your other part of your question is, i believe that we can come up with a system that has guaranteed access for affordable health insurance for all americans, regardless of whether a person has preexisting conditions or not, without this costly government takeover, without this big brother database, without government running health care, without government mandating what you can and cannot do. the problem that the president has is he jammed this through one party rule, there are a plenty of republicans, myself included, who were offering to work with him at the time for bipartisan solutions, they said none of that, and now we have what we have. so, can we have a system where people with