now washington journal's interview with michigan state university president lou anna simon, she talks about priorities for the university and higher education moving forward. it's part of our special series on universities in the big ten conference. this is 35 minutes. the cou >> cspan bus has been on a tour of the big ten colleges across the country for the past few weeks and along the way here on the washington journal, we haver been talking withni university t presidents aboutat higher education issues, the point is e cspan bus is on the campus of on michigan state university, in east lansing, michigan, joining us aboard the bus, is lou anna

si simon. let me get started rightti away with the challenges that you see in higher education.value >> good morning, and it's a y. beautiful day in east lansing ge so the promise of higher education -- creating not 1i6rle a job, but a terrific life. and one of our challenges is always to be sure that we work in a way to be as cost effective and relevant as possible so we make people's dreams bigger, that means we have to be at theo front edge ofom -- >> how are you building that affordability for students when it comes to tuition and room and board et cetera. >> when you think about michigan

state, most of our students aree very middle class, families of . $125,000 or less. and the number of students that leave with -- it's about one year's full cost of attendance f with our tuition being about $14,000 for in-state students, so we have to make sure that we can do everything we can to reduce costs and one of our we h platforms would be a high performing organization, not simply a cost cutting organization. and at the same time we need to reduce enormous value when thigh leave michigan state at en thi graduation achkd also throughout their lifetime so we're focused on value. hi >> how difficultga has that bee given this headline from may the that michigan higher education budget cuts some of the deepest in the nation since 2008.

>> it been an extraordinarilily difficult -- if you listen to 2001 until now and you listen to the state tuition, that's only . grown $65 in total over inflation in that entire periodn so that's required us to be extraordinarily innovative, unfortunately, the burden has been shifted a bit as business d leader ts from michigan and oths have pointed out to students and their families. so we're pleased that our educational debt rate, our default rate are well below thec national average, at the same time we have picked up additional funding for our state program, to make michigan states as accessible as possible. but at the same time, we have de had to grow sevalue, which mean you have had to make difficult s priority decisions because our students deserve the best, and w that's what they come for. >> how much of your time the spent negotiating with the

federal government, the state yr governments, and how much of t: your time is fund raising and trying to raise muffin from private donations.ve >> well, michigan state was very late in the game, our legendarya president john hanna believed ve that we should keep our public heart and not raise a lot of private dollars, or about two generations behind in fund raising, even though our're endowment is about a billion and a half now, very low on the big ten but still substantial and tt we're going to be launching a capital campaign, so it's making more and more of our time, but the story is the same, it's about value, and about creating the opportunities for students across the middle class to be extraordinarily successful. when we talk to students we trys to talk about our s aspirations and also about the things we s i need to do to be better every day. >> there are this story about - msu joins the alliance to help o

lower income first generation o students that you will be among 11 public universities across the nation that will be part of a collaborative effort to ensure that these low income and firsts generation college. students ean degrees. what will you be doing?ok >> first of all, michigan state, going into this project was, if you look at u.s. news and world reports, if you look at our size and caliber, that actually had a plus number in terms of predictive and graduation rates for our lowest income students, but we need to be better, because the biggest loss to our society is actually student whob is come to our university and e don't succeed so we make sure ta that every studentbr that comesn michigan state succeeds. pro we're -- class experiences in new and innovative ways to pilo provide the insent tives and th support for students including

using data. our pilot programs showed a 20%e increase in the graduation rates of our lowest income student who is already are achieving at a higher rate than nationally. >> we're talking about affordability and accessibility among higher education with lou sna simon who's the president of michigan state university. we want to get our viewers we w involved in the conversation. you don't have to have any ant o relationship to msu, but we want to hear your questions and hige concerns about higherr educati, the students dial in at 202-585-3882. and michigan residents, you cann call usts at 202-585-3883. president simon, i want to show you thwae column this morning i "the washington post," college priorities adrift. and what he bring writes in her

colleges and universities are all taking part in competing for enrollments based on amenities. as of late 2012, 92 schools had embarked on 157 recreational capital products at a total cost of $1.7 billion.en that just one question, is this the best use of scarce resources. federal and state taxpayer i funding and that colleges are supposed to be, you know, educational institutions. since >> i well, since i haven't seen the entire article, but let me a comment, our research recently came out with the finding that s students who engaged in a healthier lifestyle, which in includesth exercise actually wet successful in the classroom, but there is a ed on balance. we have notre embarked on a jure

recreationalproject, we have for included exercise halls as part of our renovations. but it is important to put those things together, it's not about using amenities to attract students, we're using our outcome of education to attracti students and part of that is to make sure they have a healthy lifestyle. so weea have two big initiative on student success and on health think lifestyles, which is not a simply about exercise orphan si things, it's about developing a lifestyle through college that will make you successful in entf life, we make those things fit r together very, very well. >> do you feel pressure as the president of msu to attract a better student or more studentse to the university with these type of amenities? because a lot of your competition is doing it.cation

>> well, right now we're not a n part of the common application, so when you apply to michigan state, you have to make out a o separate application, our applications are growing, we believe, because we're focussed on the value of an education, not simply the experiences you have on the campus, but your orf success when you leave michigan state achkd tnd the fact that yn part of a net work of par stspa for life. to appreciate the value of their degree over time makes a fad. difference in recruitment, not a specific latest fad.lue, par we're sort of the persistent a consistent way of looking at t value, particularly with all of the students or middle class families that we have. our slogan in 1880 as a pioneer land grant was good enough for the proudest and open to the

poorest. and that's the model we use today. under the brick of empowering s. students of every socioeconomic class. >> we were showing our viewers the msu website and right there on the forefront is an argument for why college is worth it andn why kids should be going to college. why is that right there when you go to msu's website? >> because we know that a number of families, particularly if d you're fromep michigan and have experienced the -- what i would say the epicenter of the recession and you know with families who were educated and had a very, very difficult time, we have to be clear about what we believe is important for the future and why we believe we're a good value.it it's not just about accessibility for us, it's aboue value and making sure that we'rt doing everything we can to enhance the value of our it. education and our degree for our

students and it's right there. people can analyze it, you can u go to our website and dependingn on who you are and your family circumstances, you can actually figure out what it's going to tt cost you to come to michigan state university.case f that transparency is very important. and we have to make a case for value. >> all right. let's hare from stanley, a parent in westboro, massachusetts. you're up, stanley.ing, the >> caller: we do homeschooling, we have for five generations, from machine shop, to welding, the whole thing. i became a nuclear engineer without going to college. companies give courses when they get somebody that they know they can train to do a newfield co coming out that's out. there's a book on tv which i bought, they do the whole family.book is the harding family. and the name of the book is the brainy bunch and they do exactly

what we do, except we would send the kids to public school to cn prevent -- y ques >> stanley, let me jump in, can you get to your point or your cr question here? >> oh, and switzerland, they don't test people in any schoolt germany schools get out at noon and you have to be able to make what you design. they don't teach that anymore. >> what's your point, stanley. >> caller: it's hard to explain unless you read that book. >> lou ann simon, are we doing education right in there country compared to other countries? >> i think that as a land grant university, we were founded to blend thefo theoretical and the practical in ways that students would leave michigan state as t-shaped people with the do capacity to do the kind of things that stanley was talkingh about. and we need to do that in very larg propel the s to

economy forward, michigan state, any university is not rightch f everyone and that's why we have to have choices.may no i agree with stanley that we have a number of jobs that america that require high skilla but mayt not necessarily be something that is amenable to an education at michigan state or similar aau institutions, that'h why we have to have choice. i also believe that g homeschooling can work out effectively for some families, but it requires great discipline. so obviously stanley was a part of a family that was very successful, he sent his kids to public schools and we just and h happen to have the best model for americans and i think the land grant university concept that came out of abraham lincoln is one that's very important for the future. >> joe in annapolis, a parent : there. joe? >> caller: i would like to ask'' about thed admission process, te admission criteria, as i'm sure your guest is aware, recently,

there's a thin cord in fisher no versus texas rule that but h universitiesad can continue to e race as an admissions criteria but had to for the first time demonstrate, prove to a court that they use the least it offensive in terms of constitutional rights, manner to do that and it's not just to pick a word for it, as is sort of the case that involved the university of michigan and university of michigan law i school, so now there's a new mechanism, i think most people understand, and that the university has to demonstrate they have used a nonoffensive to the constitution process, to uso race, my personaln' experience my son's undergraduate acce acceptance that the schools will never tell you that. but it's a relatively new court mandate and i would like see if we offer a specific response to that question, how do you use

race? >> michigan passed a ballot initiate ive that prohibits universities from using race in admissions. so we are even though the university of michigan case was part of the discussion in the , university ofsu texas case, osit becauseio of the supreme court case, subsequent to that there was a michigan ballot composition. so we use a very hole listic admissions process that looks ae academic credentials, community engagement, because we believe m that studentsen who are the mos successful through college are multidimensional, but in ocess. michigan, race is not a factor w in our admissions process, givet the proposal. >> next up, pat who's an educator in michigan, pat, good morning to you.m a >> caller: hello, thank you for cspan. i'm retired, i taught education in a public school. and i finding it amazing that ri

yours ratio of professors to students at michigan state are 17 to one.a commen when i taught kindergarten, i taught 25 to 28 students. >> we work hard to make sure that our opportunities have a world class experience achkd faculty to student ratio is important in that element, but it's simply not what happens in the classroom, it's that our students are engaged in researci and a wide varietyty activitieso that ratio disprovide this capacity to provide this multidimensional experience that provides a college graduate. >> how many are tenured at es michigan state university.ve how many professors do you have that are adjunct status.

we have about 2,000 roughly faculty who are in the tenure ao system, and another 1,500 or so that are in a variety of ct. appointment statuses that are noted noted noted noted a -- adjunct. they are a a most -- and we have some folks who are on research appointments. >> steve's next in new york, a parent up there. ann hi, steve, you u're on the air. >> caller: hey, how are you? thank you for having me. i was curous about your political science programs.clin a lot of the colleges they're political science programs are a far left leaning -- they embrac. socialism, and i'm curious where michigan state is in that area.c

andie do you guys police your political science people and you know make sure that there's an equal balance? because conservatives have a tough time in colleges up there nowadays. >> well, steve, i think that wee have a political science department that has a worldwide track record of trying to look f at issues from a p variety of pe perspectives becausect you have know a variety of perspectives in order to have your own, but we have a very prestige you feda college.li you have to begin reading the re federalist papers. as part of your educational experience. >> good morning, leslie, you're a parent, what are your concerns with higher education? >> caller: i am so grateful thau university of michigan state tuition hasn't gone out of this world. i am a graduate of michigan state university.

>> leslie, can i ask you what ee did you pay i when you went the? >> caller: i paid tuition because it was cheaper and my dad paid room and board, i don't remember what per credit hour costs were, but i want eed the s wonderful president of michigan ied state university, i completed college in michigan state, it was hard, but i learned al. i wish i would have studied more, if there's any kids listening out there, study more. in college, you'll have more success. i regret some of the time i waisted there. and . >> beverly thank you very much and academic rigor is somethingr that is aep partnership between students and faculty and james madison dews represent that. right now 60% to 70% of our

students work because they are . very upper class upper mobility with a world class education.tsy >> edward on twitter states i hate that out of state students pay double, he thinks it's t ridiculous, why is that?ent to >> because the theory is that the state is making an investment to support the cost of education for its residents and as a result of that, out of state students then are part of the differential between the state and tuition.en >> how many owl ut of state students do you have versus in state? >> we're very unusual in the big ten because our undergraduate education, in terms of out of state students achkd actually

we're leaving about 60 -- we felt that we need to be that s c engine of opportunityat that wod class education from michigan residents, particularly if you think about the economy in michigan, so we have stayed true to our mission, but we do need state stinlts because it be p provides aar positive education and stuchbdents to have be parts a global society. >> and foreign students? do you have a figure on that? >> we have about 178 foreign international clients that began back in the 1880s actually with the first student from japan and we began our development work in china and actually in the 1980s with the rice famine and i michigan state had the first dean of international studies in 1957 because people at that time believed that north for michigan to be successful, we had to havr an internationale perspective.

>> we're talking with lou anna . simon, she's president of michigan state university. we have been interviewing university presidents across thu big ten, we will go next to suzanne in pennsylvania, a parent there, susan, go ahead. >> caller: thank you cspan for taking my call, i appreciate your program because you give us so much information. where are these kids? it's wonderful that they're ther goings to get a good education where are they going to work? their mothers and fathers are a out of work for so long.ment my son has had a good education, but he owes over $60,000 in government loans, when are they going to discount the loans that the older people that took these programs are going to w get any help? >> rookay, we'll leave it there? lou anna simon?

>> i share your concern about the high interest rates for somo of these old loan programs achkr in fact in a conversation with business leaders from michigan yesterday as a part of our gy, e higher education workforce e development, talent development strategy, we need more voices to worry about the large loan interest rates that are a part of the repayment cycle.ith as i said earlier, about 46% of our students leave with educational debt, that average is about $25,000. and our loan default rate ask g. very low, got 5.7%, even though many, many of our students are from michigan and have had verye difficults financial f circumstances over the lastin t years, but this is an investment in the future if we can drop those interest rates a bit. s >> "the washington post" says t reporting this northern that the government says that student loan default nationwide has dropped, has dipped, but they

say the figure is still too stus high. lou anna simon, after your michg graduate your students, how many of them are staying in the state of michigan and getting portun employment as the engine of opportunity as you say, what --t is it difficult for these students to say there and finding employment given the state of the economy after the recession? >> in the period of the recession, when there was such a dislocation of workers in michigan, the number of our loo students who hadk employment ini michigan ghdropped, but if you , look at over top employers right now, it's quicken loans, the auto companies, michigan based fompanies, we have obviously a very large agri food foot print that's obviously strong in michigan and we're working very hard around the state for students to see detroit as an eo opportunity for the n future, a

really cool city to be in and o beingit on the ground fwloor of the pine years of the resurgenca of detroit and we're getting more and more student who is want to stay in the state. we have about ten minutes left here with president lou anna sa simoten of michigan state university. we have someo ca phone lines op so we encourage stuchbdents to l in.. let me go to eric who's a michigan resident, and armada, is it, eric? >> armada.the >> caller: i'm a parent of two h children, one just graduated to ther and the other one is comeg us. i'm wondering if i send my chil to michigan state, will they get the education needed to create a

business not become some lackeyt for somebody else?ersity >> well, if you look at the recent report from the idor, university research co-door in michigan, michigan state and ime university of michigan, you'll see that we have produced many entrepreneurs over our lifetimeo there's a formal entrepreneur ship program, your son or daughter could go to the hatch and get support with their business ideas, we have a new a place called the hive in the residence hall where anybody can go and think about starting businesses. we have a media sand box if ing you're interested in sort of thr gaming technology, those are ft really organic now as part of our neighborhoods, and very, art the future. t for >> miami, florida, gene, a parent there, hi, gene. >> caller: how are you? very good. this message is to dr. simpson, i met her in miami with john vod

saxon from nyu and she gave a very good presentation while we were in miami.hool i i am -- i'm very interested in . michigan state and i know you o have an agricultural program. is there any support that your school will do with haiti or do anything with haiti pertaining to that? >> we have a -- we have had a historic program with haiti in o food and urhealth, and we have also a number of our faculty from the medical schools who are working in haiti periodically as is permitted, given the currentn circumstances. but it's important foren us to p wero also have included haitiani students, interestingly as a migrant program, because as you know, many students from haiti

migrated into florida. and we have a university of michigan migrant program for students from haiti.guest: >> the national security higher education advisory board, what is that? >> it was formed a while ago, to be advisory to the director of the cia and the fbi to try to st better connect the voices of e universities with national security issues, that were all'' need to bes worried about. and it's a group of university u presidents, that talks about everything from cyber security s to how we can better understand the dynamics around our international programs, we needt to be aglobal, we need to be smart about national security as well. and those are tough issues to deal with. we need to talk about them in th genuine way and share views about our programs and host activities so the group is just

a way of having those conversations. ry advisory this board. why was it formed? is it in response to a threat? >> well, if you think about post 911, it was easy for universities and the intelligence communities, the work of the fbi and the cia to become on very different to planets, so to speak, and our interests about the protection of our campuses, how we deal with terrorism, the list that we have been talking about today have to be usualre interests, b we come at them very differently. and it'sct a way to understand different perspectives, because if you understand different perspecti perspectives, you can finding solutions to different problems. >> good morning. i have a question, it's always been at the back of my mind, is how the university handless the professional athletes on their

campus? we have scholarship athletes, s coming on board, how many of these scholarship students actually graduate after four st years? >> well, we have scholarship student athletes who are both men and women, whose graduation rates are as a whole, about the same as our student body. obviously, there are a few individuals who come to the university who leave a bit early to pursue their athletic interests, but we see all of our students, no matter their mic athletic skills as students first and athletes second and u. provide academic support for sut them to be successful.ed to we have also had programs to th ensure that students athletes return to graduate achkd stay connected with us. two examples currently might be

just an advocate for who is he k playing hockey for the detroit red wings who keeps e-mailing mb thatec he's within six credits getting his degree, if that's possible. you look at people like steve lg smith who's a comment tator on basketball - who's making a gree living after his professional e playing career, he's stayed connected to michigan state as a role model for almost every the student we have. so the media tends to focus on the 1% of students who are really the student athlete who are not indicative of our scholarships. >> we'll hear from chris nextll who's a parent in providence, ea rhode island. >> it's clear that you are, but are you aware that you are a e, puppet to the globalist agenda taught out of the frankfurt

school in nazi germany't i don't know where you're going with that, we're going to move on to nooerm in florida. >> caller: thank you for cspan and i am a michigan state gra graduate, i have a bachelor's achkd a masters for michigan and state. and i was on theoc faculty of michigan state. talked i went up there last summer and got the shock of my life. i went in and talked to the geology department and found out they have 14 faculty members, and i asked them how many students they graduated last year and if at the bachelor's level and they told me eight. and then i asked them how many graduate students they had and they told me three. i was absolutely appalled at what i see in higher education,

i have been essentially a dean of a largest probably t oceanography ocean engineering group, teaching group in the world. sureg my ys madet students got jobs. evidently, these people aren't getting jobs, and the universe needs, including the one that i left here many years ago have all turned into environmental science. the geology department, i figured out there were probablyw about fourer or five at the mos out of that 14 who are actually geologists. >> okay. president simon. well, if you look at the job cl students for students today including the number of what i would call classifying geology programs ash the country, we

have been asked for support plac achkd to be sure that all of ous students are placed in the right kinds of jobs.ig and the placement rate across l all of our geology programs is high. we are have also kept that as part of an interdisciplinary program, that's also how you try to balance current job needs, sg current focus of employers, with keeping a strength in place to m build for the future. >> thank you to michigan state university for allowing us to a come to-- the university today d talk with you about higher education. >> gretaco,me thank you very mut and thanksio to all of your peoe who both listen and called in, this is important dialogue about

not simply michigan state, but n the future of our country and we appreciate everyone's concern as we try to build great value and enhance both competitiveness that all of our students deserve. >> thank you very much. wednesday on cspan 3, washington journal's interview with university of minnesota president eric h heeler. that's followed by part of this year's net roots nation conference. followed by the communist party usa convention. from the campaign for america's future. you can see it all beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on cspan 3. cspan's campaign 2014 is bringing you more than 100 debate this is campaign season. last night we showed you the first live debate between democrat amanda curtis and republican congressman steve danes. here's part of their debate.

>> you know, when our founding fathers wrote our founding st k documents, they never meant for -- to be making the decisions that affect us in our citizen legislature and i have found in meeting montanans that, you know, they're a little bit afraid of being part of the process, maybe they don't think they're quite smart enough to do it or don't have the right backgrounds and the reason that i stepped up to the plate is to prove that you don't have to be a silver spoon-fed politician, a career politician to represent working families and the best person to represent workers in the state is one of us. >> a follow-up to that just with amanda, i think we're getting to your experience, do you think you have the experiencing to represent the state and the u.s. senate with one year in the

house of representatives and your background as a high school teacher. >> absolutely, i'm sure by now, most folks have read in their local paper about my background growing up in poverty, right here in billings and the adversity that i experienced, most people know that i have dedicated my life to education because it's the pathway to major coming the adversity that i have experienced, the experience that i have had in a working class family in the state of montana absolutely make us the best person to be our voice in the united states senate. >> i do agree that we need to have more of a stenotype legislature serving us back in washington, men and women who have real world experience who can give back. growing up in boseman, my grandma still lives in the same

1,100 square feet home on avenue c until she passed away a few months ago. i started watching a man and woman start a construction business from nothing. we moved about every year and a half to stay a step ahead of the bank, i worked summerless in construction to put mice to montana state engineering. i think we need people growing jobs, i'm the only candidate on this stage who has actually been out there and created hundreds of good high paying jobs right here in montana. >> i just have to apologize to all of the teachers out there for what you have just heard, because we know that teachers are also very important job creators in our state and in our country. cspan's campaign 2014 is bringing you more than 100 debates, this election season. you can see three of them on wednesday evening, at 8:00 p.m. eastern, the debate for new

york's 11th conessional district. between republican incumbent representative michael grimm and his republican challenger. then at 9:00, another new york house debate, with democratic congress map shaun mallony -- achbl finally at 10:00, ill republican rodney davis and an callus debate for the senate seat. c span's 2015 student cam competition is under way, this nation wide competition for middle and high school students will award 150 prizes tote mg $100,000. create a 5 to 7 minute documentary on the topic, the three branches and you. videos need to include cspan programming, show various points of view and be submitted by

january 20, 2015. grab a camera and get started today. >> now a pajt discussion, you'll hear from authors, columnists and journalists, on the economy, health care, social policy, foreign policy and the partisan guide. from the manhattan institute in new york city, this is an hour 25 minutes. >> good evening, everyone. i'm president of the manhattan institute. and i want to thank you for joining us tonight for this discussion of conservatism. al what is the future of conservatism, which ideas should it champion? what policy should it embrace. but with the consequences of

today's policy making falling squarely on the shoulders of the next generation, we have assembled a number of younger leading edge journalists, scholars and authors to engage in a discussion about what the way forward could be. deeply versed in the nuances of policy, they will not always agree, but perhaps through a thoughtful discussion, we will illuminate the finer points of the debate, in a way, it reminds me of the early days of city journal when people like heather mcdonald and george callan and people who would be character e characterized as classic conservatives managed to get together and form a conservative policy that was both coherent and very successful. and i feel like in many ways, we are at the same kind of point in history. in any event, we're glad to bring together this group, despite their youth, as someone corrected me earlier, their resumes are very long, they're

very accomplished for their age. i won't through all of those resumes, but i'm happy to welcome our panelists. mega megan, from bloomberg view, ryan has. showed up. better late than never, a contributed editor of national review. and we're very grateful to our moderator, david brooks, columnist for the new york times, whose very successful career has been directed toward the world of very direct ideas. thank you for being here this evening and thanks to those who will be watching over the internet. we all look forward to -- thank you, larry, imafraid, to take part in the it panel.

i may be too old to be a panelist. i used to be one of these people. now i'm no longer on the leading edge, i'm just a dying ember, fading on the vine and so pleased to be joined by my first research assistant, i worked together, he's just waking up. and so it's good that he rolled out of bed for this. i'm just going to have a bunch of quick questions and hopefully not too long answers and hopefully you'll cut each other off and i'm going to start with you all. so what's the problem with conservatism, and i'm going to mangle conservatism and the republican party together. why are we here? what's the problem? >> i was going to say that we don't know how to make an entrance. i guess in the most general sense i would say that the key problem at the moment is that

conservatism and the republican party are not connecting to the problems of the day, they're not speaking to the american public in terms that make sense with people's experience. some people are finishing sentences that people started in the early 1980s and they have forgotten how those sentences started and how. the republican party is not doing the work of actually connecting their ideas to today's problems and voters know it. so voters consider it to be out of touch because in a lot of ways, it's out of touch. >> do you agree? and if so what are today's problems? >> i think there's a big problem with the coalition that came up in the 1960s and '70s and flowered in the 1980s, solved this specific set of problems that existed in 1979 and we have invol sovmed them and the republicans forgot to declare victory and go home. so for a long time there was just tax cuts, tax cuts, tax

cuts, was the one that we could all agree on and that's not speaking to what-especially after the fjt crisis in 2008, people don't want to hear solutions for their parents generation, like long-term unemployment, like feeling like they where not going to move up, that they're not going to do as well, that mobility is contracting. and tax cuts is no longer the answer to that. >> long-term unemployment and mobi mobility are these all issues? >> the anti-seed definite problem are those who represent it the base of the conservative movement. not just in terms of race, but also in regional movement. it's not a southern party, it's an interior party, it's a coastal party, it's a rural

party not an urban party and i think the democratic party has a much more legitimate claim of being a national party than the republican party does and that's one of the reasons why the republican party does a better job to the issue of speak -- >> how much does the white party, i once heard a sentence that may have been forceful, that it's a party looking for white america that's never coming back. i think there is at least among some people, that you hear that among fox a lot. this is not the america i grew up in. so i think that is part of it. i think actually if we step back a minute from that. what we might understand is that conservatives have often prided themselves, longs prided themselves as thinking that we treat everyone as an individual, it's the other party that treats people as a coalition of race and special interests. i don't think that's true anymore. i think there's a degree to which people have become -- it's become a little bit more about

the interest groups that have assembled in the republican coalition and we have to step outside of that and start to realize that some of these people that don't vote republican, they're individuals, too. and we don't treat them as individuals. >> gosh, we have got the policy problem, not addressing, i guess you call it the mobility agenda and then the demographic problem, is there both, is there a third, is one more important than the other? >> i think the core problem is the -- i think the identity problem is a real thing, but i think if you have the right policies, the problem is a lot easier to fix, democrats got through the civil war and c consolidated the vote because they made the correct appeals on policy. it's not just that the republicans are going after problems we can fix, we got -- a new set of problems as ariz ris

there's a been a coupling of ---one of the key proposit n propositions has been worry first about growth and it will raids all votes and so we shouldn't worry too much about retribution, but in fact when you have returns occurring, that proposition is no longer as appealing to the lower and mid classes. i think we thought to the extent that we have beatening the business cycle and we really haven't. we make the same economic policy restrictions in 010, or maybe nothing the government should do about recessions. there are two problems about that one is that it's wrong and the other is that it zunlt appeal to people that are facing very real economic pain in recessions. and again, another one of the sort of proposition that conservatism puts out is you don't want to give into the temptation to do too -- they also slow economic growth. if we are in a riskier economic

situation where we're going to have worse economic cycles that tradeoff of more security for les growth can look pretty appealing, especially live if with what growth we do get is disproportionately at the top. families are exposed to more risk and less reward fwra economic growth. i think it's a very difficult policy question but it's one that needs to be addressed. >> is capitalism broken then? instead of rising tide lifting all growth, and decoupling productivity from wages. >> i think our mental model is wrong. we gravitate towards the wrong solutions. when we think about globalization, we tend to think of a mental model. you see companies that are kind of competing in a more vigorous kind of way, when in fact it's really the division of labor is

now global in scale, yet you still have hierarchies, you still have the more privileged part of labor where value is -- what happened the big change that happened and you have less privileged parts. the change that happened after the late 1980's is that many countries became integrated and specialized in the division of labor. the most privileged and best places to be in that division of labor are still the united states and in places like it, but the people at the top of those hierarchies are not all americans. it's not the entire country. u.s. corporations manufacture 40% of what is made in the world, but the value is not flowing to the population. capitalism is working extraordinarily well. globalization has been miraculous in terms of raising living standards around the world. the question is where are you situated in those hierarchies. the problem in america right now is that a chunk of the population exactly where you want to be in terms of the way the new capitalism works and the

other chunk is not in a very good place. they are in and in between place where other people can do some of this work better than they can. that is a core challenge. i think conservatives have the right instinct about it but there has not been enough rigorous thinking about how to address that problem. >> does anybody disagree with this basic notion that capitalism is, somehow not functioning in the way the 1980's model assumed it would? >> i think in some ways that describes the model. mis-describes the model. the idea of what america is is shaped by a postwar america that

could not exist again and is never going to exist again anywhere else in the world. the country that won a war and strengthened its economy while all of its competitors burned each other to the ground and so for a decade could contain within itself the growth of capitalism. although boats all did rise in a way, to some extent, that model defines our expectations in a way that is going to be very difficult to change. i had the experience last year of reading charles murray's new book right after reading paul krugman's. they start in the same way, pure nostalgia for the 1960s, and almost in the same terms. and they are right. those are years we should miss. those are -- there is a lot about them to miss. but our politics has been geared

around how to bring them back as opposed to how do we deal with today. both parties are intellectually exhausted at the same time in a way that is very bad for the country. >> the government was big. big labor was big and there was a lot of economic dynamism at the same time. that's true, but it doesn't mean we could do it today. >> so what is the future? the 60s were pretty good to me. i know you guys don't remember it. >> we weren't born then. >> that's why i enjoyed them. [laughter] >> one way to think about that is that an important difference between the two parties now is that democrats tend to think about the future in terms of large institutions. republicans, when they think about it at all, which is not enough, tend to think about it in more decentralized terms.

in that sense, i think republicans might better be situated to have a vision of the future than the democrats. >> the information economy is a different type of economy than the industrial economy and i think the political class in general having been raised on the '50s nostalgia but the industrial idea is not equipped to think about how the information economy is different and that leads to different set of policy problems what you do with unskilled male workers who are left behind in the information economy the way the college educated worker is not but it goes beyond that.

it's about a pace of innovation and a type of innovation and a type of labor force that's very, very different from what, again, the political class -- political people and people who are intellectuals tend to be old school in the way they live their lives, they write, they read, that's not necessarily what the average person is doing today. people who are in that economy are much more attuned to that than those who comment on it. >> if you look at molecular -- >> and when you look at, first of all older people tend to

be -- i look down becoming one, older people tend to be more conservative but there's this thing if you're 57 and i come to you i want you to give me your savings and in 30 years you'll be a millionaire. literally, the calculus on risk taking an innovation changes as people age. >> you all made the point that a core distinction between left and right in the future is centralization versus decentralization. i want to get back to that point in a minute. let's go to megan's point, which reminds me of a book called the great stagnation from a couple of years ago which argues that we are winding down productivity or at least we are

in a time of slow technological innovation and rose. that ties into the idea that america is on a downward slope. do you buy into that? >> i am not sure there is much policy can do about that. i tend to think that the likely long-run pace of gdp growth is acceptable to the extent that it is distributed in a way that people feel they are getting standard of living growth. part of the reason i wonder about how much policy can do is because i think we have been in an environment for the last decade where we have had a de facto weakening of a lot of intellectual property protections such as copyright and patents. >> there has been a weakening.

>> there is rampant piracy and music. as far as i can tell music has not gotten any worse. the revenue model of television and movies has been disrupted but the quality seems to be improving. this is bad for producers but good for consumers. what it makes me wonder is for the quantity of innovation we get is the ip policy matter that much. i am skeptical of the ability of policymakers to influence it, so it's not where i would direct my energies. >> i have great respect for tyler but i completely disagree with his thesis about the idea that the low hanging fruit of innovation has declined. if you look at molecular biology and genetics, we are barely in the first inning if even in the first pitch of what will be an incredible revolution of our knowledge of how the cells works, how the brain works, how

the body works. i think the thing we're missing when we are too optimistic about that side is the risk of the potential for a catastrophic fiscal and financial crisis, which is what got me into this world out of the business world i was in before. we have more of a conception of what that could look like and we did in 2007, but we are so far removed from the depression that we really don't understand what a true catastrophic financial crisis could look like. >> didn't we just go through one? >> it was not as bad as the depression. i think something conservatives have not fully processed is how traumatic this has been for much of the country. >> i think it is nothing compared to what will come if we don't get our house in order fiscally. the past is not a predictor of the future. >> sure it is.

>> ok, well. let's get to the core question of the future left-right divide of the country. you all have put something on the table. centralization, decentralization. does that strike everybody as true? >> i don't know. i think the core fight is the one we have been having politically about economic distribution and the role of the government as a redistribute or and protector of poor and middle-class interests. it is not a fight we are done having, but to put it bluntly, it bluntly, it's sort of the where's my growth, where's my piece of the economy. that's going to be the key question. >> you think wage amelioration is going to be decentralized. >> i think the two are closely connected. there is a real logic to the left and the rights ways of thinking about the role of government in our economy and there is a real difference in where the left thinks in terms of managing large institutions. it sees society as a set of

systems that are disordered and require better organization. it is a coherent argument. i don't agree with that but it's not a crazy argument. the right seems to feel that the role of government is not to manage the sides, but to create the space in which the sides can flourish. and that looks like chaos, and it is in many ways. that is how innovation happens. it's also how problem-solving happens. it happens in a local way, one-on-one, through local markets and institutions that bubble up, trial and error and pilot programs, not a centralized here's the technical answer. i think we are getting back to a place where things are apparent and there is something like political economy on the table rather than just technical economics, where economics is subsumed by argument about priorities which in turn is subsumed in an argument about what american life is really all about. that is why i think conservatives could be better positioned than they now seem to be to address the public stories

in a way that makes sense to voters. people have a sense that we are living in a society that is decentralized that offers them a huge range of options. younger people, in particular, like that and expect that and want that. you see that in the health-care debate. the sheer consolidation of large systems that is involved in the left way of thinking is not appealing to a lot of people. the right, i think, has not offered a coherent alternative. conservatives don't go around saying we have a view. allowing competition to happen. rhetorically, conservatism isn't that. it is solutions to problems that were prominent in the late

'70s. >> i have two stories in terms of how i think about the future of the left-right divide. one is that the left is a party of democracy and the other is a party of diversity. in the first story, the idea is that when you are contrasting a corporation and a republic, they are similar entities. their legal, institutional entities that own themselves and have their own cultures and codes. you have one that succeeds and other corporations mimic that corporation until a newer more successful model emerges. the appeal of democracy to the left is we have true egalitarian function making and organization that leads to a different type of decision making. that's an attractive story to tell.

the story you could tell going forward is how we make different decisions. it's actually a good thing to have the trial and error process. you cannot just say what works, determine what works through a randomized controlled trial and then distribute that to all of society. the question is what works where. the other story that i have become more and more concerned about is the idea that the left is very concerned about the distribution of resources. but there are growing populations that are marginalized from the pieces of our culture that are actually working very well. when you think about civil society, we tend to think about

formal institutions. also think formal networks. when you think about friendships, for example. when you think about how upper middle-class people think about friendships as vehicles of mobility, whereas working-class people tend not to be connected to the networks that give you access to upward mobility or opportunity. i actually think that when you think about inclusion and the goal of inclusion, it leads you to different policies. for example, minimum wage. if you care about inclusion, it's a big deal. it is locking out a swath of the population from mainstream institutions that allow people to accumulate resources, build social connections and break out of the isolation that is toxic. that suddenly becomes a very big deal. that's not to say that inequality is not a problem at

all. it's to say that maybe we ought to think more about inclusion and then we have to look differently at a whole host of questions including immigration, integration, housing markets, zoning laws, but i really think that is the debate that i would want to see. >> let's try to get a concrete view. i will introduce two characters. john is 42 years old. he used to work at the mill. he now works at a warehouse for nine dollars an hour. pretty much stagnant wages when he is employed. not going anywhere. sort of falling through the cracks. jane is a waitress making 27 $27,000, two kids. what are republicans offering these people?

>> that's the question. the problem is this nebulous idea of the decentralized system of networks that we are not telling you what to do, we are trying to build the environment. we have had this big increase in perceived and actual economic risk over the last few years. what the left has is a suite of centralized programs to offer that are designed to mitigate those risks, and the pitch we are proposing to offer from the right is basically we will have pilot programs and state governments will take approaches of their own and figured things out. we will have civil society and such. that creates a lot of risk which is compounded by the fact that when you look at actual republican politicians, they have not expressed a lot of interest in doing policy innovations. on these core economic issues, although i think they have been innovative on issues that are not core to the debate today. one problem is a credibility issue. also, it is not responsive to this broad new problem of risk. i think the way conservatives can adjust to that to some

extent is to move away from fiscal policy as an emphasis. there are areas -- there is still deregulatory opportunities at the local level, occupational licensing, planning and zoning. there are opportunities at the federal level in intellectual property were you could unleash market forces, create faster growth, beat down rents so that you improve returns to labor >> i think there is a way to talk about this that democrats also aren't, which is reciprocity. one way to view the world is to think about what happens economically either as a forger does where you have higher risk -- you know, you go out hunting, and maybe there is nothing there. maybe you are a bad hunter or maybe there is no animal there.

or you can look at it as a farmer. you put it in the ground, you do the work, you should get the crop, right? how we judge economic policy often very much boils down to is this outcome fundamentally about risk or fundamentally about effort. here is the thing though. forager societies still have very tightly linked networks. that is a position democrats are often in the place of advocating now, which is that the rich are taking too much. we need to take it from them. what obligation do these people have? none. we have been cheated. i think what republicans can do is look at a policy emphasis and say, if you do the right things, it should be possible for you to get ahead. it should be possible for you to stay connected to the labor

market. looking at policy through that lens, things like wage subsidies, trying to get long-term unemployed back to work through tax rebates or what have you, those are things that say you are doing the right stuff and therefore you have -- we have an obligation to you. if you're not doing the right stuff, we don't. if you're not trying to work, we don't have an obligation to support you. i don't think either party has captured that space yet and that would be a good space for republicans to go. >> tell me how wage subsidies would work. >> there is a problem right now which is that americans are not competitive with chinese workers or whatever. or they are not competitive at the level their parents worked at. so they are downwardly mobile because the work they do doesn't pay what it paid their dad. and a lot of them are saying no, why should i do this. this is demeaning but i have to

go work for a pittance for the rest of my life and it's all downhill from here. so they go on disability, which is a terrible program in many ways, not for people who are truly disabled, but it is becoming like a backdoor trap unemployment insurance. and it was not meant to have that role. what you can say is we are going to make up that difference. we are going to make it easier for you to support a family at the basic level your dad did it, at least, on the same kind of work. and maybe you are 55 years old and you're not going to go back to college and become an electrical engineer. that ship has sailed. but we are going to make it possible to maintain a minimum provided you are doing 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. >> we being the federal

government. >> its tax rebates and subsidies. there are ways to structure this so that it works. right now, you can work for a very small percentage of the year and get quite large subsidies for that. >> i want to raise a couple of points related to your original question. an increasingly wealthy society can have more expensive restaurants. a starbucks barista does better than her counterpart did 50 years ago. the millworker though, that job is gone and not coming back. i don't think either party has a particularly good solution. there is one thing we have ignored. we have talked a lot about income inequality, but we don't talk about the importance of cost of living living relative

to income inequality. if you live in a low-cost part of the country and your wages are low, you're not that bad off. it's trying to live on that wage in new york city that stuff. has to do with the fact that both at the local level in the federal level we have done a lot to drive up housing, food, basic goods and services that a low income person will have. so a message that is very free-market oriented that will help that person is to say we are going to drive the cost of your health insurance down. we are going to drive the cost of your housing, your mortgage, rent down. those things make it easier to live your life. >> does everyone here agree it is a decent idea or? >> i think it's a decent idea with the caveat that there are still a large number of people looking for work relative to the number of people hiring. a wage subsidy is only going to further imbalance that by drawing more people into the labor market. it doesn't mean it's a bad idea, it just means it's ever more important to have policies to

promote full employment so that the wage subsidy translates into higher incomes rather than just allowing firms to pay lower wages. >> i actually fundamentally disagree with that. this labor market looks great. leave it alone. it's fine. it's recovering. it's back where you want it. it's of this labor market. one thing you could try doing is making that labour market cheaper. why don't we rebate the payroll tax one month for every month someone has been out of work. it is obviously not going to take every long-term unemployed person and fix the problem, but there are ways we can redirect this and say look, we know you want to work. we know you have been trying. we are going to try to make it more attractive for employers to

hire you rather than another

the reason the policy makers and the republican party can't get anywhere and don't have any influence is because the people who vote republican aren't especially interested in that aspect of the republican policy agenda. the key thing i think about when i think about who would be a favorite in 2016 is who can expand who votes republican the most, because that is what presidents do. josh mentioned civil rights and the democrats. a lot of democrats were opposed to it. what happened? the iron will and incredible finesse of lbj who rammed through civil rights despite the opposition of democrats, and in time, that got democrats the allegiance of black voters. perhaps republicans need to do something similar with the conservative message that appeals to a broader slice. >> are you saying they won't

hear policy proposals like the ones we have just been hearing? >> i don't know if i would put immigration reform at the cost of the list. i would put universal coverage at the top of the list. until conservatives can articulate their side they don't deserve to have a broader base of support. >> i think we are now at the point where it should be more a matter of us being outraged that candidates don't have a serious health reform agenda, labor market agenda. those are two particularly crucial pieces. but if you don't have something to say about wage stagnation and what is an actual, viable alternative to obamacare, then i think you shouldn't be taken seriously. the last time around, that was

not the case. you had a couple of candidates who had exotic tax reform proposals that were exotic, by which i mean laughable. this time around, i think we have enough of an infrastructure. we have enough of a body of ideas where i think it is at a bare minimum the candidates should have some kind of serious agenda around health form, labor market and taxes. the truth is that i have found certain developments in the republican presidential field moderately dispiriting. maybe there were some people i was excited about in the recent past and that is less the case now, but that is actually >> don't be coy. >> it should not be about character or personality. we should have a situation where everyone who wants to be taken seriously as a presidential

candidate understands that they need to have a serious agenda. they need to actually engage in these arguments. something weird happens. there are easy ways to become a conservative celebrity, by saying outrageous things, etc. but some people are realizing that saying new things about real problems that exist is not necessarily the number one way to get attention but it actually is becoming a way to get attention, and i think that's really new and very exciting. >> it used to be in the early part of every presidential season, candidates would give a series of worthy speeches. george bush came here in 1999 and gave a speech attacking grover norquist, which i loved. he gave that kind of speech. the last couple of cycles, they have not been giving those speeches. my impression is the only person doing that is marco rubio right now. >> of the imaginable candidates,

that is probably true. part of it is there are more ideas out there. in a sense, the policy vacuum on the right itself has been the fault for a long time of people like us. i think that is less true now because some of the some of the thinking has been done, and the working out of what it looks like as a political agenda has been done. the idea that if those things exist, they are on the ground, a politician should think at this point of speech i should say something about what i am going to do. we cannot think of ourselves as being on the cutting-edge of anything. i mean, look at us. but that is a way we can be useful. well, some of us. look at me. i think the ways in which people

who think about policy can be helpful is by preparing the ground, making sure those ideas are out there and that these conversations are happening. there are not separate from the political process. when it is time for a politician to think how do i speak to the party in the country about the issues people face, there are actual ideas out there rather than thinking the only way i can do it is to get this amount of face time on fox and that means i have to say this, that and the other, 9-9-9. >> it seemed for a little while that there was a rising libertarian wave. rand paul certainly exemplifies that. is that still true? >> i think there is on some issues. gay marriage is an issue that i

think the republicans have lost on and i think that is going to be the future of the party. that is going to collapse on both sides. you see a lot less enthusiasm for invading middle eastern countries and so forth then we had in 2003. in that sense, i think it is true. it's just kind of hard to say, in 2012, and the election was interesting because both candidates seemed interested in saying as little as possible about what they would do. can anyone name a policy agenda either obama or romney had other than other than repealing obamacare? >> i wish mitt romney had noticed. >> and in general, there was a reason for that. we are out of money. when you poll people, they want to cut the huge foreign aid budget and raise taxes but only on people who make $2 billion a year. they want all the social spending we are doing and everything else and they also

want a balanced budget. you can point out things that are mathematically impossible. i want to balance the budget but only raise taxes on four people and don't cut any foreign aid. what i fear is that will be 2016 as well. what i hope is that that will be the way to win. obama won by not saying anything. romney could've won by not saying anything. but i hope we are going to talk about these problems because they are huge and they need to be addressed. it's no longer possible to sit on the sidelines. >> romney tried not to have a tax plan, and then and i think february of 2012 he felt like he was backed into a corner by rick santorum, and then like everybody else he felt like he needed a tax plan, and it came back to bite him in the fall because the numbers added up to you either had to raise taxes on

the middle class or it had to be a net revenue loss. i think the lesson people take away from that is that mitt romney got too specific on policy and would have done well to be even vaguer. >> they thought through whether they should have a policy agenda and concluded that they should not have one. it left us with a headache. they thought it through. it was not that they had no idea how it would work. they thought the politics of that would be a bad idea. that has to change. the politics of that has to change. >> one thing we have not really talk about this evening is that cultural conservatism is fragile intellectually and also in terms of what appeals to a broad section of america. there are a lot of reasons for that. we always talk about economic

policy. we like to wonk out. but young people today grew up well after the 1960's. they put last night's date on instagram or snap chat. that is a large part of what is going on in america that we as conservatives have still not moved past the battles of the 1960s. are we comfortable with the fact that the vast majority of americans engage in premarital sex? i don't say that to be ironic. i think that is something conservatives really have wrestled with and don't have a good solution to. i think we will end up a pro-life party that will accept liberal hegemony on other social issues. >> i think a marriage is an issue where republicans will lose, but if you look at marriage as a whole, it is in

disastrous shape, and that will hurt the economy. on a personal level, marriage makes people happier and healthier. it's actually good for people. if you have serial parenting where people have multiple children by different parents, the father tends to invest in the mother with whom he gets along the best, that is not a stable model for the 21st century. i actually think there is a way in which the gay marriage issue could be used to make a more robust plan. ok, we have marriage equality, now everyone get married. >> you can make that policy. >> i think actually having people voice cultural policy also matters, right? i mean, look how influential hollywood was on gay marriage.

the positions tv shows took on it, how much that changed public opinion. >> that we should take over hollywood. >> let me try to answer that question if i can jump out of my moderator role. like most of us here, i looked at pro-marriage policies and my conclusion was that none of them worked. my second solution is that parenting skill coaching actually does work. so don't focus on marriage, focus on parenting skills, particularly for single moms. some of that includes nurse family partnerships that government could fund and other things. as a matter of curiosity, would people on this panel support those sorts of policies, government-funded, maybe if not government delivered, like nurse-family partnerships or

early childhood education? >> i think when you're looking at parenting skills -- basically, what you see is that everyone is delaying marriage and society, and one swath of the society is delaying children until after marriage and another swath is not. with regard to that kind of investment, i think -- i call myself conservative despite the fact that i am influenced by a lot of libertarian thinking. this goes back to the issue of inclusion more broadly. when you are looking at how parenting has evolved, when you look at upper middle income people, college-educated people, they are parenting not in the way that people parented in the 1950s and 1960s. they are parenting in a new way, a high investment style that happens to be very well suited to a society with rapid change. is high investment parenting something only this narrow group of people can do or isn't something a large swath of the

population can do? if you need public policy, as i suspect you do, i think that is something we need to think hard about and feel that it is appropriate for conservatives to embrace, but i think that is going to introduce an interesting new tension. there is a lot of exhaustion and faith in failed public institutions, but i think you're seeing a whole series of issues, for example, marijuana regulation, where you're seeing the conflict between chaos and order. even subsidies. some libertarians say the labor market is not inclusive enough. minimum wage might not be the way to do it but wage subsidies might make it more inclusive. i think conservatives need to feel more comfortable acknowledging that they are not libertarians and i think

investing in parenting skills is one part of that puzzle. >> i want to hit on the theme of paternalism. welfare reform is paternalistic. schools are paternalistic. nurse-family partnerships are paternalistic. as conservatives, are we comfortable with a certain level of public paternalism? >> part of what has happened in the last few years is a change in our own understanding of our fairly recent history has been. you say welfare reform, which is what everybody talks about first when they talk about conservative public policy should look like. it was very paternalistic. it was also very decentralized. conservatives are comfortable with paternalism when it is relatively local and can be defined differently in different places.

even if there is centralized funding behind it. there's certainly room for that to help people with family formation and with other concerns, but they are always going to work at the margins. it's true, there is some evidence that helping people with parenting skills works. it helps a little. it works better than marriage promotion, which does not really seem to do anything, but it only helps very little. if we talk about the ways in which capitalism does not seem to be working right now, capitalism requires a kind of citizen that it does not produce. i think we are seeing now what it looks like when we fail at least in some portions of society to produce that citizen. and you can't blame the people in these situations. you can't blame the larger society, at least not in the simple sense. this is the greatest of it all is the problem we have. i am very much an optimist about america but on the matter of how to help people in those situations, i don't think anyone

has any idea. >> capitalism requires a kind of citizen it does not produce. very well put. >> libertarians are pretty comfortable with paternalism aimed at children. treat kids like kids. i'm good with that. i will also say that there is public policy and wages -- when you talk to people who study marriage, a lot of them talk about the fact that the wage situation is such right now that men cannot get steady work for 50 weeks out of the year that pays anything and therefore they are not any use around the house. does marriage promotion work? no, but there are broader public policies where you can try to do things that make it easier to form an intact family. things like early childhood education, i don't know if you can actually scale it.

i think preschools do a good job. i am not convinced you can reproduce perry preschools for 4 million kids a year. a partnership, even if it does a little, is better than nothing for kids who have very little. >> i think it's right that you want to try these things on a decentralized basis. things that involve complex delivery are better off being done by local governments. i think doing this with a decentralized model depends on having a centralized fiscal policy layer on top of it. it's one thing to say we're going to do parenting classes and various other things to try to improve outcomes for kids and families. it's another to say we are to do this and then we can cut the food stamp program. to develop trust among voters this will to be done in some way

and there are separate approaches with their own merits that can to be done together, it's really important to pair those two things. >> question. right over here. microphone coming and a bunch over here. >> thank you. if you don't mind, i'd like to bring the discussion from 30,000 feet down to ground level. you have mentioned that it is important to create the citizen for the appropriate scales for the new age. i would put to you that any candidate, democrat or republican, who can address the problem of having the right worker, the right employee, would get everyone's vote. let me give you an example. the president of the national association of manufacturers said that at any one time there are 2 million manufacturing jobs

openings that are going unfilled because of a skills gap. why is that? certainly throwing more money at the education system is not going to close that. so we need a set of policies that closes that skills gap and cements the workers' stake in the system by giving him and her those skills that are marketable and are sought after. right now manufacturing is 12% of the economy. if it can be raised to 15% of the economy, we would have the same level of employment in the manufacturing sector as we had in 1980. now, will we go back to 1946, hell no, that will never happen. but there are -- so the question is, who can help create the kind of policies that will create a closure of the skills gap, to

create the employee that is sought after by the new capitalist economy? >> there are a couple of questions in that. and all of them are framed from the point of view of an employer in a way that's interesting. that's useful but i think is also probably too often the way conservatives think about questions like this. i would say it's certainly true that our education system -- the education system of any republic that takes it seriously is always going to face the challenge of balancing its self-understanding. is your role to create a citizen that is capable of self-government or the worker your economy needs? the answer is both but the way to balance those, the way to distinguish between what is universal education and what is specialized education for what's needed here and now is a challenge for our education

system. we at this point are probably not doing either of those things very well and our education system is not great. for many people it's fine. for some people it's absolutely dreadful. from the point of view of employers, it seems to have all the wrong priorities. i think that requires some changes in the way we think about the distinction between higher ed and secondary education. the distinction between worker training and education. those things have got to be -- have got to answer needs that bubble up from the bottom, as you're suggesting. so they've got to be a little more flexible, they've got to be capable of offering people more options, i think there's a lot of room for improvements in the way that our public education system works and the education in general works. i think it's a low-ranging fruit for public policy. there are a lot of low hanging fruits for public policy. there are a lot of places where the inefficiency of the systems that we have is so great and their inability to deal with problems that are perfectly obvious is so great that you can really improve things quite a

bit in a lot of areas. education certainly is one of them. i think thinking about it in terms of worker training is one obvious way to do it. we do have to be careful it's not the only way to do it, because it's not the only problem with our education system. >> i want to jump on this just briefly. my personal view is that the real problem is that you have corporations that have very high profits right now, you have corporations sitting on enormous reserves of cash and why is that? that's because they're not afraid. i think when you look at economic sectors in which firms are afraid that their advantage is going to evaporate, that some new startup is going to come and destroy them, those are the firms that are hiring. facebook started out as a relatively small company. they're hiring quite a lot. they're never going to become as big as g.m. but they're hiring a lot. they're paying higher and higher wages to the people who have skills and that in itself is creating a dynamic in which people are seeking to build those skills. when you look at the corporate tax code, the way it rewards

large incumbents, if you look at all kinds of aspects that we treat business enterprises, we are not creating an environment in which these firms are afraid. it's perfect to have a safety net for citizens. it's not appropriate to have a safety net for corporations. i think an environment in which more corporations are afraid of i think that would actually be very good and would be particularly good for workers. >> i almost never disagree with reihan but i have to here. corporations are sitting on cash because of political and economic uncertainty. they're concerned about higher taxes, regulations can drive up the cost of their business, cost of capital. >> let's get some more questions here. >> mike with the manhattan institute. we talked about cities, we talked about conservatives needing a national movement. in order to be a national movement we need to compete in

cities. that's how we move senate races and certainly eventually presidential races. and we have the examples. we have right here in new york, indianapolis, reforms on public labor and certainly most recently public safety. but we lose cities. so my question is why? is it messaging? do we need a new agenda? many of you would say that we are kind of solving the problems of a decade or two decades ago. but i think in cities we're solving today's problems but >> in 2008 when obama was elected, i actually looked at this problem and thought, ok, is this true in other advanced economies? where the cities always vote left and the rural areas always vote right? and it turns out in europe there isn't a clear pattern. in some european countries the cities are actually more politically conservative than the rural areas and there are maybe a lot of different reasons for that. but that gives me hope that there isn't any inherent -- anything inherent about urban life that necessarily means people must vote more left than

rural people. but i do think it's a huge problem and something we need to address and we have to be willing to compete in areas where there isn't a short-term payoff. that's the hardest thing about the political cycle. is the short-term payoff leads us to cultivate the voters that we can win in the near term and that leads people away from cities. >> thank you for being here today. this has been a very interesting panel discussion. i wanted to ask about education but you touched on that. i want to ask about foreign policy. it doesn't translate into a lot of votes but it's something that's obviously very important. the bush years could be described briefly as perhaps overreach. and now you can say that a conservative critique of obama might be that we withdraw too much and it allows a vacuum for strong men like putin. what would be the conservative response, what would be your response, your policy prescriptions for what's going on in the world right now,

particularly in ukraine and syria and how you guys would think about handling that? >> i doubt we can touch on all of those things. but this is an area where the panel is pretty divided. i personally believe that joe has this -- he said in the 1990s i think it was, securities like oxygen, you only notice when it's vanished. i personally think that u.s. global leadership, i think it's extremely important in undergirding much of the rice of global prosperity we've seen. i do think it's fair to say there was overreach during the bush years but it's very important that we invest and i think the problem is that the investing in our capabilities, the benefits of that are not always clearly visible. i also think it's true that the problem is that there are big swaps at the national security state that are ok. it's hard to tell. it's hard to have a coherent

cost-benefit analysis. there are real structural problems and we might want to shift resources. but do i think there's a dangerous tendency on the right to give short drift to the importance of american power undergirding global stability but this is not a popular view. least of all among younger conservatives. >> foreign policy is important but it's not going to be important in the political debates of the next decade or decade and a half. i think -- we've had very little recent time where we've sort of had a normal political environment on foreign policy because we had the cold war and then september 11th. but i think the best we got for where foreign policy is going to sit in american politics was the period from 1990 to 2001 where it was not salient. you can see that in the way conservatives talk now about the obama foreign policies. they try to find points to sort of harp on where the president is seen as weak. i think that's behind the obsession with the benghazi attack. i think there was also a very

telling statement from marco rubio about syria, when we were -- when the president was waffling about whether we were going to intervene there and rubio took up a position where he wasn't sure if he was for or against an attack in syria but he was against whatever the president was for. and so i think i don't know what kind of foreign policy a republican president will enact if elected. george w. bush ran things that he was going to have a humbler foreign policy and then september 11th happened and directions changed. i don't think that's going to be a key driver of elections. >> hi. first, thank you, everyone and moderator, for hosting a really interesting discussion. i have a question about health care. i'm directing it toward josh. toward the end of the discussion you suggested the decentralization of service

delivery as superior. there is a segment of the health care complex called home health agencies and they take patients in a recouperative and rehabilitative phase and bring them home and it suggests much higher outcome, much cheaper delivery. the affordable care act has almost destroyed the industry. it's led to major reimbursement cuts over a multiple last two, three, four years. do you see this vis-a-vis the left-right divide, given there's a superior outcome with it, as something conservatives can reintroduce, repackage, rebrand and sell in the health care complex for superior outcomes? >> i think the interesting thing that we've seen or an interesting thing we've seen with the implementation of obamacare is i think to an extent it's been a driver of innovation among providers because they're faced with these reimbursement rate cuts. there's been a real drive in the industry to find ways to contain

costs. we've seen i think a slowing in health care expenditure over the last couple of years. and so actually the government turning off those taps to an extent -- and remember, it's not like we had a private health t. it's not like we had a private healthcare system before obamacare. the government is an enormous payer through medicare. by paying less i think that can be a driver of decentralized innovation where the government is basically saying we're going to pay less, you figure out how to do it with less money. although, i would note that among the somewhat disappointing findings from the oregon health study, we did find people seemed to be consuming more healthcare which suggests that barriers were not as large a problem as people on the right sometimes say. you don't want the federal government telling healthcare providers exactly how to do

their problems, but i do think that centralized fiscal policies can be a driver of decentralized outcomes about service delivery. >> it's very simple. give consumers control of their own health dollars. then all of these things, whether it's home healthcare, retainer-based primary care, a lot of the innovations and delivery will automatically happen. why? because in the consumer is controlling the dollars, the industry works for who pays them. today it's the government and third parties that pays the deliverer of healthcare services, so the person who is important is the payer, not the patient. if the patient is controlling the dollars, the system works to control the patient. i resist this because i think the opposite is what we need. we need to actually restrict the amount the government is doing but actually get people the money. if we're concerned that people don't have the means to support

themselves in certain ways, that doesn't mean have some complex government program that tells them what to do. give them the economic resources to pursue the people who can deliver those services directly. >> the point that josh finished which i very much agree with, in a certain way the home healthcare question is the one that shows the problem with the system we had before obamacare and the system we have now. in the bush years there was huge pressure to increase investment in all forms of home-based healthcare which was a centralized decision about how the system should work. it didn't work very well. it was probably an enormous waste of money. and now we're doing the reverse. either of these is the right approach. and so the medicare system we have and really that larger healthcare system we have had before was not a consumer-centered, market ori t oriented system. well to the right of the system

we've had for decades. that's the direction that conservatives need to move. >> paul ruben from emory university. some of this sounds very familiar to me. the pessimism i'm hearing is very similar to the pessimism of the late carter years. i was in the reagan administration and it was amazing how quickly things turned around. i think some of the '80s solutions are still there. i think obamacare has messed up the medical markets but it's also messed up the labor markets tremendously, financial regulation. just today there was a very large number of new species being declared endangered. everywhere we look in the economy is increased regulation, and i think that's a lot of the unemployment we're seeing goes back to your him worker, why does he have trouble finding a

job? maybe because the employees won't commit to hiring him because they don't know what healthcare expenses he's going to generate in the future. if we can deregulate some of these things, we might be able to move away from some of these problems. >> but the policy challenges are very different than the challenges of 1970. look at the tax rates versus today. regulation is a much, much bigger problem today than it was there. fiscal imbalances are a much bigger problem, healthcare entitlements, a much bigger problem. we have to have an agenda that's tailored to the challenges today. >> hello. thank you. you guys talked about how there's no republican plan to deal with decentralization in civil society, but i'd argue that the ryan plan was conceptually about that, privatization, voucherization and a large amount of spending

cuts which will allow civil society to flourish, yet that program seemed unpopular with. s and very, very unpopular with the public. i'm curious if you think they sound like good concepts but if in practice they're far too volatile and unpopular to base a coherent public policy around. >> first of all, almost no voters care about decentralization as sup. so you can't build the message around that. nobody goes to the voting booth and says do i want a government that is more or less central. they care about pocketbook issues. but the ryan plan thing goes to a distinction that i mentioned earlier that you want to decentralize certainly kienlds of delivery because of the value of local knowledge, b. but that doesn't mean you have

to decentralize the actual fiscal flows where the federal government has a significant advantage in its ability to tax and borrow. in fact, if you commit to those becoming decentralized, it says really, we are decentralizing to harness local innovation. this is not just a way to reduce incomes for people with low and moderate incomes. >> i think there's a real problem that democrats and republicans are going to have to deal with. obamacare wasn't popular. most things that are fiscally feasible are wildly unpopular. this is the fundamentals of politics and it's never been more true than it is today because we have an aging population that's concerned with keeping what it has gotten. with lower growth is face harder fiscal tradeoffs.

you can't take it out of the surplus. i think this is going to be a big challenge for republicans as they frame an agenda which is that if you're going to be honest about what it's going to cost and how you're going to do this and who the losers are going to be because there's no such thing as a policy in which someone is not worse off, then you're going to have to go out and say that and to be credible that's going to make those people very upset. >> democrats didn't do that. >> no, they didn't. >> i think the problem is that it takes us 40 minutes and a future of conservatism talk to even mention anything about social issues. we lose people flat out because we have this continuing blood letting of state by state gay

marriage, yes or no, so is there some kind of way that we can avoid a possible schism of northeast republicans who frankly, this issues settled. all of us have gay friends, we are fine with it. but for southern republicans, how do we keep them from going off and causing a schism and running away with todd aiken and pat robinson? >> i think there's a -- even in the south young republicans have your views on the social issues. i think this is a generational transition that's going on on both the right and the left that perhaps won't be as substantial in the future. that's the political element of it. i actually wish and hope that conservatives would have a coherent political philosophy around what they think culture and society should look like that would accept the post '60s

reality. >> a couple questions from social media, well, i'm going to jump in. the republican party is a pro life party. it will never not be a pro life party. it would die without being a pro life party. i'm not a pro life person. >> but there's no generational shift on abortion. >> this is a question from one of our twitter followers who is watching via live stream. why not define debt ceiling to be the ratio of debt to gdp? >> the fundamental problem, this is just a general political thing. people believe if they can only come up with some great rule, they could stop people from doing stuff they don't like. first of all, you can never get the rule because the other side understands what you're doing so they're just like, no, you can't have the rule.

but the second problem is that there's always going to be an out for an emergency. so we declare war on iceland once a year and give them a marshall plan and we've gone right back. there's always ways to gimmick these budget rules. the hard job is to tell politicians, don't borrow anymore money. by the way, this is something the republican party needs to do is say when you spend money, that's borrowing it. the decision to spend is the decision ultimately to borrow and then the decision to tax. george bush totally lied the fact that when he spent money he was ultimately going to pay for that through taxation. obama hasn't even been interested in that distinction but on both sides we need to understand that they're all the the same thing and trying to focus on the debt ceiling as a way to control that is not focusing on the fundamental problem which is the stuff we

bought. >> that's not the biggest problem with that. the biggest problem is that the economic crises in this country is massive unemployment and the fact that wage growth is anemic because the labor market is slack. conservatives have become a movement of people who think that is a less important issue than government debt even though interest rates are extremely low and capital is flowing into u.s. treasuries because the market is strongly accepting of the fact that the u.s. government will pay those debts. if we continue to prioritize this debt issue over issues that are actually of economic importance to 85% of americans, we won't be able to appeal to them. >> i disagree on two levels. yes, interest rates are low now. that's not a fixed law of the universe. but more broadly, politically, people hate the debt. this polls incredibly well, democrats, and republicans. do they act on that, no. are they totally hypocritical,

yes. is this a political problem for republicans, no. when they go out and talk about it, this polls extremely well and does good at the ballot box. >> it's a profound economic problem. >> a conservative is somebody who thinks every market is efficient except the treasury bond market. >> there are a lot of reasons -- if we have a debate about monetary policy and why bond prices are what they're that's fine. but in 204 2040 which china has better gdp than we do, you'll be very concerned about those treasuries. >> we have one minute left. i'm going to ask you one informational question. since you're all young hipsters, name a politician or a writer who will have a profound impact

on conservatism, slash, the republican party. >> i'm willing to say i'm probably the least influential writer on the republican party. david brooks. >> credibility shot. >> one person who gives me hope at this point is mike leak, who is first of all a senator who doesn't think he's running for president which is a wonderful thing in american life, very rare. but he's also a person who is shaping a conservative vision that's a kind of rugged commune therrienism that markes a lot o sense to me. >> i think the most important policy right now is actually on criminal justice and revisiting the idea that it's a good idea to massively incars rate people, especially for nonviolent crime and a number of southern governors have been doing good things on that including

mississippi and louisiana and north carolina and so i think that's unheralded. >> the most influential writer will be the one who makes conservatism accepting of modern society and modern social issues, leaving abortion aside. maybe that's a politician or a writer, we'll see. >> i hate to cater to our hosts but jim manzen is a niche product. he's not going to capture the hearts of the massives but he gets that markets are about a decentralized process. they're actually really important and that the right really ought to be the party of experimentation and i encourage everyone in this room and everyone watching to read him and follow him. >> he's had some major pieces. >> he's got the lead piece in the next national affairs.

>> the masses love regression analysis. >> charts, charts. >> thank you very much. guys. [ applause ] wednesday, washington journal's interview with university of minnesota president eric kay lore, part of our special series in the big ten conference. that's followed by part of this year's net roots nation conference, selections from the communist party usa annual

convention and views on progressive politics from the campaign for america's future. you can see it all beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span 3. be part of c-span's 2014 coverage. follow us on twitter and like us on facebook to get debate schedules, video clips of key moments, debate previews from our politics team. c-span is bringing you over 100 senate, house and governor debates, and you can instantly share your reactions to what the candidates are saying. the battle for control of congress, stay in touch and engaged by following us on twitter at c-span and liking us on facebook at facebook.com/c-span. coming up, part of colorado christian university's western conservative sum it. first, republican senator tim scott talks about school choice and the economy. then in 30 minutes, conservative

media figures debate the influence of the tea party on the g.o.p. the group includes rush limbaugh, radio producer, games golden who goes by the name bo snerdly on the air. plus author katie paf lich and fox news contributor mary katharine ham. this part of the news forum is just over an hour. >> thank you. it's so good to be with my fellow conservatives today. as many of you know, i'm the number one target for the democratic campaign congressional committee nationally, and they're going to find out that taking on a united states marine corps combat veteran is going to be a lot tougher than they ever thought. it's an honor for me to introduce a former colleague of

mine. senator tim scott is the epitome of conservative values and principles. he grew up poor in a single parent household in north charleston, south carolina. he learned the importance of faith, hard work, and family. he started from humble beginnings to build one of the most successful allstate agencies in south carolina. prior to being sworn in to the u.s. senate in january 2013, tim scott served in the united states house of representatives from 2011 to 2013. he was a member of the house leadership and sat on the influential house rules committee. he also served in the charleston city council for 13 years, including four terms as the council chair. he was a member of south

carolina house of representatives and was elected chairman of the freshman caucus and house whip. today senator scott works to promote conservative causes in congress where he has worked with senate colleagues to introduce a balanced budget amendment to strip the power away from congress to spend money that we do not have. he also was an original co-sponsor of the bill that would permanently ban the wasteful earmark process. tim scott's agenda will empower america through economic freedom and education. he is dedicated to working with anyone committed to building a better future to develop bold ideas that break away from this country's past fare