cme world is much more complex because of the nature of the blinded transactions that occur there. so we are open to conversation about that and we consider this an ongoing conversation. but we right now are in the position that i think cms is moving at a a appropriate speed where cme is concerned. we know they bounced around a bit. it's challenging because they issue a regulation that says one thing, then they pull it back slightly that says another. so "the wall street journal" pieces where it seems somewhat confusing to us, but it's because of the back and forth. but ultimately, this is one that's ongoing, but in the main it's getting where we are right first before fully jumping in on cme. that's where we're standing. >> i would just add to that. i think cme has always been a tricky issue. for folks who aren't deep in the

weeds here, to maintain a practicing license has to get a certain amount of continuing medical education every year. and what's happened over the past decade and a half is more and more of that continuing medical education has been funded by the drug companies or the companies that make certain products. and the challenge is as the questioner pointed out, the funding passes through and it's technically an unrestricted grant and there are various fire walls in place. everybody who has looked at this from the senate investigations to the institute of medicine to the american medical colleges report have all expressed deep concern about the potential of cme funding to influence prescribing. but it's been a tricky issue of how do you capture it.

what cme has come down on it is if a company finds out within the year that their funds were used to -- went to a particular doctor then that's a reportable payment and that's consistent with how other indirect payments through an intermediary are treated in the law. that's where it stands now. >> adrian, did you have something you wanted to add? >> cme is the most effective covert form of marketing that pharmaceutical companies have. pharma doesn't fund what doesn't help pharma. the firewalls are a joke. they may not be telling a communication company who they should have speak or what they should have them speak on, but the company knows who do invite and who not to invite. and the concept of an unrestricted educational grant, it's only unrestricted if nobody says something that pharma doesn't like. i have had the experience of

speaking at a pharmaceutical company funded cme where the drug reps packed up their boots and left after my talk and the pharmaceutical company withdrew its funding. >> i think it's a deeply troubling issue. most doctors pay dues to professional societies so there is the money to have conflict free continuing medical education. so there really isn't a need to take it from drug companies. so this is very challenging and i think there's a real issue with the transparency around this specific issue because it's not clear that disclosure helps as much in this issue. the audience often says, it's great that they are being honest about their disclosures. they are really an expert because they get. money from five different pharmaceutical companies. or it just ends up being brand recognition and a gorilla

advertising. it's really challenging to make this work and i don't think there are good solutions other than really us as a profession paying for cme and not relying on industry financing. >> we have a list of free farm ta continuing education on the website. >> one thing i want to be clear. it also covers medical e devices where there are strong industry tries. there are required training by the fda in order to use a particular medical device. allen, can you talk a little bit about medical devices because i don't think we have touched on that much today. >> and i want to just to ekcho something you said earlier. we work closely with a number of companies, including device companies that are just so fully committed to being transparent

about these financial relationships. i don't want to shortchange that commitment in any way. but on the question with a device a drug you prescribe it and the patient tabs a tablet it's a fairly simple process on that level. obviously, you have to understand about the drug. but with a a e device, there's hands-on training required to use it. so there's a much more intrinsic relationship there. medical centers who develop conflict of interest policies have often treated those device reps somewhat differently from pharmaceutical reps because they are much more intrinsic in the process of learning how to use it. >> other questions? >> i jugs want to ask, you talked about the powerful marketing ability of these free samples that reps give to

doctors. any other use for those samples to the reps? are they still conducting any form of testing sometimes using these samples as trials in any way? and secondly the ethics of the involvement with drug reps which has been talked a lot about this morning, is that something that is starting to be incorporated into medical school ethics classes and the secondary extra education that doctors continue to get? >> samples are purely a marketing device. and they do not serve -- they do not serve a good purpose. they are the most effective marketing device that doctors have. some schools have incorporated training. a lot of the training is really bad. especially when it's actually done with industry drug reps. industry will sometimes corporate in these programs and medical students are then left

with the impression that there are good drug reps and you should avoid the bad and only deal with the good which is really not a good message. the message should be you should not see drugjuu reps. that needs to be modelled as well as taught. if students are taught one thing but mentors are doing another, they will adopt what their mentors are doing. >> bill you want to add to that that? >> i wanted to echo that in terms of the very limited utility of free samples. i think there are issues in terms of off label use. the drug reps are not supposed to come and give them for off label use but they are not using them for a study. that's not allowed. that's for fda-approved uses. but i would say there are some schools that are doing education around this. where i teach, we do have a class on this in our bioethics series. then i actually lead a session during the fourth year for all of the students during their

ambulatory rotation around a patient that comes in and has been put on a bunch of samples while uninsured and what the complication of that are and how you disentangle from that. >> other questions from the audience. yes, here? >> i'm barbara to mar this is of great interest to us and has been discussed we have been all over the map trying to work with our meeting people as policy people in d.c. as to what the rules of the game are. as i'm listening to the conversation, i'm beginning to think, it would have been good to have somebody else here who could represent another point of view. it seems like everybody is pretty much on the same page. one of my questions was and i'm not sure if it was in the section in the aca or it was in the original. parsing something done to $10 to me seems absurd.

that's what happens with a lot of the things -- many things in the aca where by the time you got down to the rags and the guidance, it's become almost absurd. so i was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. >> the $10 limit was in the law itself. >> the standard which was $10 created legislatively and ultimately became part of the regulation and how it is. and we have seen through the early rollout that certain manufacturers when they reported data, they went below the $10. cms when we spoke to them, they had a challenge and what to do with that and they went with the decision that ultimately if it was reported, it should be published. i think working with manufacturer manufacturers down the road as

to whether or not they would take -- whether or not they will accept and publish reported below $10 is something that will occur down the road. to something else that you said i think, again and i hope we have been clear, that i have been clear about this representing us and my office and the work that we have done here. this is a conversation. anything that you hear here, respective position that's taken that drug reps, evil that conversation. that's between you and your doctor. now if you're an educated consumer and this is where we encourage you as a consumer to learn more. that you make complex decisions, economic decisions as to things you want and do not want all the time. think about the amount of work you put into determining your cell phone and the service you want. do i want the i, samsung, the

windows thing i don't know how that works and t mobile and sprint and at&t. then there's the verizon thing. you go through and make complex decisions related to that and you make valued judgments as an educated consumer. you have the responsibility to do the same as a patient. so when you walk in that you will never have the advantage of information that you're md does because they went to medical school. you can engaged in an informed conversation. if you see information there about what your provider has taken as part of this database, you can ask questions and engage. that's what we encourage. if you want to take absolute positions as your role as a patient, that is your right. and you now have that tool. but you also have just as much a right to engage in conversation. that's where we'll continue to push that. if the day occurs that we have information out there that allows us to take positions of an absolutist nature and make

changes because we look at the consequences and the research shows us that, that's also out there for us as a matter of policymaking. >> i'll defend the $10. i think it should be $1. small gift. s actually have a larger impact. i won't go into the experiments but it changes your opinion more because nobody likes to think they have been bought off by something small. if you're given something small you actually change your opinion and you think that it's because it's just an independent change. you don't think you're affected by the small gift. i'm happy to share that research with you. >> other comments? >> i think you're right that there is a burden associated with tracking and reporting the shear number of payments and

that's a by-product of the drive for transparency. it may well be over time, and i'm not sure which $10 gifts the members are most concerned about, but it may be over time that companies just say, you know what, we're going to do fewer sandwiches and it may also be over time that doctors say we don't need the sandwich that time will tell. >> yes? >> i'm will schaffer, and my only disclosure is i'm the medical director for the orthopedic surgery and no other disclosures. part of this conversation is confusing to me. obviously, there's industry supported cme that's all about selling their product and selling their devices and that's very clear. then there are cme programs such as what we put on that are blinded in that even the papers

that are picked are blinded to the surgeons who are picking those papers to be delivered. and i guess i'm directing this more to rodney because we have discussed this in the past. i don't believe that the intent of the law was to discourage association cme and continuing medical education. you said that this is legal behavior, but yet it's very clear we're parsing this into legal but immoral or illegal but disdainful behavior, and i don't think that's the intent of the law. >> i'll try as hard as i can and keep at it, which is immoral, disdainful i just reject associating that with my remarks and my boss. 's work here. that in the case of continuing medical education it is not --

it is an ongoing conversation. it's something we think is warranting further conversation but we're not leading the the charge let's go there right now pause of the complexity of the nature of that. we talk about journal articles. that's one where the ability of a manufacturer to provide journal articles to providers out there and whether or not that should be reported. you and i personally spent time on. that's a challenging one, absolutely. but ultimately, i'm comfortable with sitting down with my provider and asking about a payment showing up in the database and having her tell me that, well this is related to learning more about this condition, which you don't have, but another patient may have and that's why that was there. and that there are choices. it's to not take it. it's to take it and report it or

to purchase it on your own. and those are legitimate choices. providers have the opportunity to make those. and then the reports go to the database and the patients can ask. we continue to believe that's totally legitimate, legal. we're not rushing to attach judgment here. i hope i can continue to make that case successfully here. >> can you wait for the mic? >> the idea that a physician should never talk to a pharmaceutical rep or a device rep is like saying please go find a cell phone, but you cannot talk to verizon, you can't talk to at&t. and i still believe that this country is -- those behaviors

are not illegal. >> i get the point, and i realize i'm sitting next to judgment here and i'll give her the opportunity to make her case. but we're not there. and e we don't necessarily agree with some of the things. i cannot wait to go to my wife on our upcoming anniversary and tell her that i heard that little gifts were more meaningful, so i'm just saying, i'm just saying that this snickers bar versus dinner at a nice restaurant, i'm just saying, i heard this was the case. >> you said she's watching. >> i'm just saying. so again, i want to make sure there's a a distinction between remarks i'm making of where we stood and what we stood for in the legislation and maybe some other things that you're hearing from my colleague. >> and to rodney's wife who is watching, she can ask for a

large gift. >> more flowers, more candy. probably people in the audience don't know that when they undergo surgery that there's often a device rep in the operating room assisting the surgeon, although they are not allowed to touch the patient. if you're afraid about relationships between drug reps and physician, you should be more afraid of the relationship between device reps and physicians. that this really contributes to using new, untested devices and people may or may not know that medical devices actually don't have to have been inserted in a human being or tested in human beings before being put on the market. we have had many disasters with metal on metal hips in orthopedic surgery and other device where is we have learned about their dangers after they have been in use. but this is a really kplicomplicated

discussion we don't have time to get into. but there's a lot of ethical and -- a lot of not just ethical discussions, but real patient harm that results from the relationships between medical device reps and surgeons. >> yes in the back. >> good morning thank you very much to the panel and thank you for the national coalition on health care for putting this discussion together. it's very interesting from my perspective sitting here. i'm representing rare diseases today. and i represent individuals who have deficiency. have you ever heard of that? so alpha one is a genetic lung disease that individuals develop even if they have not smoked. and for people with rare disorders, i will tell you that we used to quote it took seven years to diagnosis. actually in october of 2013, the

national organization for rare disorders did an online survey saying it takes at least ten years or more, 20% of respondents said it takes ten years or more. one of the ways that physicians learn about this disease and learn about the treatment is by cme and also through dealing with drug representatives and hearing about -- meeting patients who have this disease who often go in with the drug reps to talk about physicians and their disorder and how they were diagnosed. i wonder if you can make some comments. many of the the things that have been said make a lot of sense when we talk about common disorders, but not necessarily rare diseases. i have u a few other questions. i wanted to ask you if you could define invented diseases and whether or not you think that is by guidelines being revised or whether that actually refers --

you were referring to lug license parameters and how should patients be educated and what should the transparency be for those who serve patient interests? >> a lot of questions there. you did mention issues of invented disease and this question was about the people that are rare disease and many people haven't heard of. . is this transmission of information helpful to consumers sometimes? >> consumers are really important in this conversation in consumer advocacy organization for rare diseases and other diseases are really important. it compromises what they have to say when they are taking money from pharmaceutical companies. there are organizations like the national women's health network, breast cancer action, and health research group there are consumer advocacy organizations

that do not take money from pharmaceutical companies but are active at getting -- at getting health issues and topics that don't receive enough coverage. so even if you're a small organization, you can still get attention and get the word out without farm kud sal money. in terms of invented diseases. this has been called disease mongering or selling sickness. and i mean i use it to refer to conditions or as industry calls them disease states that have literally been created by industry and put forth through third parties because they will hire and convince opinion leaders and advocacy organizations to make particular conditions accepted.

so social anxiety disorder. but these are actually ed out of whole cloth. i don't remember what the other questions were. >> we met on numerous occasions and i get. your point. coming back to where we have been is a provider who wants to become more educated is okay. and no provider should be uncomfortable talking about it. i don't remember if this was you who gave this or you brought me someone from iowa who talked about this this. sometimes we are rotating between hospitals and walk into different surgeries. we discussed in one hospital they have a certain type of device for a hip replacement or

knee replacement. to be able to come in and consult the instructions related to that is important to have on site. if it's gone missing or not there being able to get one immediately. if i come to you and say there was this report here on open payments that talked about this that had this amount and you can tell me that that was to get the instructions on hand for the purposes of your knee replacement, i'm good with that. the opportunity to gain education here is something that is available and no one should be afraid of. and really no one should be afraid of explaining it to their patient. if you're uncomfortable with it, then that's your concern. if you're uncomfortable as the provider having that conversation, that should be a concern. but in so much of what we talk about and where you went, i'd be

incredibly -- this is where i got it and there's this rare disease and i actually had this because i was talking to someone. i consider that valuable. >> allen you had a comment. >> just a couple thoughts. if it's taking ten years to diagnosis a rare condition, then the system isn't working that's the first thing to say. then i think of something that doesn't have a drug treatment. we got to have a system where diagnoses no stigss are learning about rare conditions and not dependent on makers of products to teach them how to diagnosis. and also nobody here is saying that it's a made up condition.

it's very real and a serious condition and has to be appropriately diagnosed and treated. >> i think it's very challenging to get everybody on board with information. it's a huge operation continuing medical education and it's a huge operation in general. i would say that you could say that it's a failure of the profession to reach out to advocacy organizations to learn about these health issues like alpha one deficiency and to really educate providers about this. i would not necessarily say that becomes a justification for getting funding from medication manufacturers or device manufacturers.

i think that we want to know about these things but we also want to empower patients to ask simple questions that can be very powerful. are there other treatment options, what are the pros and con cons of those, every patient should be empowered to ask their provider are there other diagnoses that we should be thinking about? i don't feel like i have a good handle on what's going on. are there other things we should be considering? having an activated patient is often the key to solving a lot of these issues. and can be applicable across a lot of rare diseases not necessarily just one specific one. >> so looid toiki'd like to use the last couple minutes for a lightning round. this is the law of the land. we have heard a lot of areas in mglich it can be expanded from the panel, needs to be improved

from the audience. what are one or two things you'd like to see either with a physician payment act or with other ways of improving disclosure that you think will be next steps going forward. rodney, we'll start with you. >> lightning, it's cms's ongoing work improvement of the website. we look at the next two to three years for that to become accepted respected expected and that it works. that, to us, i think is what is most important right now. outside of that, then we can talk about other issues, but that's where i think we are right now is it working and being established. >> let's have required disclosure for all organizations, national, regional and local whether medical or consumer advocacy anything related with health. >> and i mentioned a few this morning that are within the scope of the current law.

beyond the scope of the current law, it would be lovely to have other health care providers covered. >> i definitely agree with making the website function as well as possible so we can easily see outliars in the profession so that can really be used to drive u culture change. >> join me in thanking this it panel and thanking the national coalition on health care for hosting this event. [ applause ]

coming up today on c-span 2, president obama will speak about access to high speed internet. you can see the remarks live from cedar falls iowa, at 3:o 40 eastern on c-span 2. and a little bit later governor terri mcauliffe will deliver his first state of the commonwealth

address. also on c-span 2. here are some of our featured programs for this weekend on the c-span networks. on c-span 2 saturday night at 10:00 on book tv's afterwords, bret stephens are focusing on domestic concerns. and sunday night at 10:00 democratic representative from new york steve israel on his recent novel about a salesman and government surveillance program. . and on "american history tv" on c-span 3, saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on lectures in history, george mason university professor on the early mormons and their attempt to create a new zion in the american west during the 1830s. and sunday afternoon at 4:00 on real america, the 1964 academy award winning film about the

desegregation of little rock, arkansas,'s all white high school. let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-646-3400, e-mail us or send us a tweet @thom tillis c-span. like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. with with live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span and the senate on c-span 2, here on c-span 3 we compliment that coverage by show inging the most relevant hearings and public affairs events. then on weekends, c-span 3 is the home to "american history tv" with programs that tell our nation's story including six unique series. the civil war's anniversary vitting battlefields, american artifacts touring museums and historic sites to discover what they reveal about america's past history book shelf, the presidency, looking at the

policy policies and legacies of our nation's commanders in chief, lectures in history with top college professors delving into mesh's past, and reel america featuring educational films from the 1930s through '70s. c-span 3 created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local cable or satellite provider. like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. up next former agriculture secretary and congressman dan glickman and senator robert bennett discuss changes to compromise and bipartisanship in congress. the washington center and bipartisan policy center host this discussion. it's about two and a half hours. >> thank you and welcome. it's great to see you all here. it's a great crowd. so i want to talk a little bit about the role of the faculty

director. this is a key person for you here during this experience. it's a key position at the washington center in our academic seminars because the faculty director is the person that will help to frame the issues that are presented to you from over 20 speakers during the week. and she will frame them in an academic context to help you draw them all together. she'll also field questions from you about your reading, about the speakers, your visits and she'll moderate discussions between -- among all of the students. so she's really central to your seminar experience. as you e know, week one of 2015 is called exploring bipartisan solutions and the new congress. and simply by following the news, you're familiar with some of the challenges of bipartisanism in national level politics in america today. the week ahead is going to task you with thinking about many of

these same challenges and considerations that face congress and the president every day. and with your faculty director you'll explore these difficult issues and attempt to find some bipartisan solutions. this seminar is a unique spaced based experience shl learning opportunity that very few will ever have. being here in d.c. together as a group and engaged in the seminar will allow us to do a deep dive into and to remain focused on the issues at hand. with the help of your faculty director, you'll be able to tie the remarks of one speaker to another. you'll tie them back to your readings, to small group discussions and to what you learned through your site visits. in a short period of time, you'll have the opportunity to reflect on a great deal of content and do it here in the

laboratory of politics in washington, d.c. so now i'd like to introduce you to your faculty director for this week. we're really thrilled to have dr. bose back and i wish we could clone her and have her lead all our seminars. she's the exact type of scholar we look for to lead this kind of academic experience for us. dr. bose is the director of center for the study of the american presidency. she's the author of the book "shaping and signaling presidential policy." she's the editor of the reference volume "the new york times" on the presidency and is the co-editor of several volumes in presidency studies. dr. bose is also the third author for the last several

editions of a very popular textbook on american government called "american government institutions and policies." her current research focuses on u.s. presidential leadership in the united nations. dr. bose was active in our nonpartisan courses sponsored by the center nkz the national political party conventions in both tampa and in schaarcharlotte and she was our faculty director for this seminar last year. in addition to hofstra, she's taught at the military academy at west point where she served as the director of american politics in 2006. dr. bose received ba in international politics from penn state university and her ma and. ph.d. from princeton university. please welcome your faculty

director, dr. me, na bose. [ applause ]na bose. [ applause ]na bose. [ applause ]ena bose. [ applause ] >> good morning, everyone. thank you for that warm introduction. i have never been told before that i should be cloned, but i just watched attack of the clones with my 8-year-old son. i can't tell you how many times we have seen this. it give. s me an entirely different vision of clone intellectual, so thank you. how is everyone today? excited for a very busy week on exploring bipartisan solutions in the new congress. i have to tell you over the holidays when i was -- whenever i told people what i was doing in the new year i said i'm going to washington to lead a seminar on exploring bipartisan solutions in the new congress. and inevitably the response was, oh, is congress attending? is anything going to happen?

can you get anything done? i thought, well, why is it that everyone is so skeptical about this topic? of course, if you look at public opinion polls, some real clear politics, which is my source for compilations of polls, president obama's approval ratings, mid-40s. above 52% disapproval. congress's approval ratings, 14%, which is good, at least they are back in double digits. they were at 9% in october 2013 with the government shutdown. and congress's disapproval is more than three quarters. at least this was a compilation of polls for december on real clear. less than a third of the country in the polls said we're moving in the right direction. two-thirds said wrong direction.

so there's a lot of concern i think, in the public about governance. and i think that's actually reflected in our elected officials as well. when you look at the op-ed that senator mcconnell and speaker boehner wrote in the "wall street journal" the day of the elections, president obama's news conference, these were very -- there wasn't a lot of glorification of winning and losing. it was very different message, i think. the results were significant and with party control shifting in the senate will be consequential for policymaking. there seems to be a real focus on what president obama said in the news conference on getting stuff done. and our task over the course of this week is to identify how our

elected officials can get stuff done. now let me give you a little bit of a framework for how we're planning to do that over the course of this week. and as i look at all these bags they make me -- these are bags you should carry with pride. dr. eaton visited hofstra the university where i teach in the summer, and she said why are all these faculty carrying washington center bags. they can hold a laptop computer and not break for a year. because mine is just starting to fray a little. i was so happy to receive a new one yesterday, so hold on to those bags, and they wear well. in this seminar, we have three underlying questions. what i want to do this morning is to kind of talk about these questions and the readings that we have select eded for you to

gurge your analysis of the policy issues we're focusing on, the budget immigration, health care. we'll say more about the specific policy issues over the course of the next three days. i probably won't talk a lot about those today, but i want to talk about the questions are readings and some of the specific scholarly debates that inform the political debates in washington today. the term the participant observer that dr. gross used that really incaps lates well how we want you to approach this seminar. it's different from a 15-week class. we want you to be engaged in the discussions and we want to make the links between the scholarship and the policymaking process explicit. that should happen in the classroom every day. of course, it should, but it's

difficult when you're covering a range of topics in american politics and when you have a diverse audience. here we are kind of a who moj nous audience who are passionate about politics. so we have an opportunity to make some advances from the ideas that form the foundation of o our political debates to engaging the political debates and to participating in it that as all of you will be doing in the simulation and then hopefully finding ways to reach policy outcomes. so i'll say a little bit more about each of those points. i would like to leave a few minutes today, if i kacan. i'll probably have more time tomorrow, but for you to come to the microphones and ask -- if you want to think about this now and i'll get to this in about 20 minutes, questions that you

would like to see us address about bipartisanship or short comments as tony said keep the remarks brief so we have time to participate and i'll try to address your comments in a few minutes. so think about that and i'll try to -- i want this to be a conversation as much as possible. so i'll try to make time for conversation in each of my talks with the group. so the three questions underlying our seminar. why don't we have bipartisanship? i think it's pretty fair to say when you look at the 113th congress, the critiques about the least productive congress, government shutdown 17 days, we haven't seen bipartisanship in recent american politics. why don't we have it. is bipartisanship a desirable goal for american politics in the 21st century. we shouldn't take that as a given. the title of the seminar is

"exploring bipartisan solutions in the new congress." as you will see when our speakers come over the next three days to talk about the budget immigration and health care their definitions of bipartisanship are not always the same. without getting into specifics because i don't want to steal their talks, but we have two repeat speakers from last year and other new ones. the speakers we're returning have very clear positions on what the federal government needs to do about economic policy and what bipartisanship actually means. so not everyone, and this is reflected in the scholarly readings as well the one by the political scientists grossman and hopkins article on the

differences in the political parties, is bipartisanship what voters what the public always wants? then the third question is the most policy oriented one. what can the 114th congress and president obama do to achieve bipartisanship with the budget immigration and health care. to address these three questions, we spent some time this fall identifying a series of readings that incap su late the most pressing scholarly debates that have appeared most often in public discussion. the first one the first set of readings, the debate over is the american public polarized or sorted, is one that's received

quite a bit of discussion in the past decade. in fact, i was listening to the news shows this morning. i always switch between fox and msnbc to see what everyone is saying and there was discussions of the 2016 race. when are the announcements going to be made? and then there was a discussion with the new congress convening. what's going to get done? are we too polarized? it's fascinating, the terms that are in our scholarly discussion is part of the current debate in washington today. so the first question for all of us, i think the first debate that i'd like you to engage as you listen o to speakers write your journals think about the papers, do we have polarization? what does the american public think about policymaking in the 21st century?

political scientist at stanford published a book ten years ago "culture wars" in which he argues that the american public hasn't changed in the last several decades. we still have a strong center, but that the extremes on both sides, the far left and the far right, have become much more polarized and much more activists. and he blames where he attributes the dysfunction or the obstacles, the barriers to policymaking to polarization among party elites. so that is elected officials and political activists. the professor has a different argument. he says -- i should have also added, the polarization at the extremes, the public has sorted. he says the public is not polarized. you still have a large group of

people in the middle, people to the left have moved further left, but you still have a middle. actually, no, this sorting, the polarization, he agrees about polarization among the elites, but says that has filtered through to even the less attentive public. that public opinion more broadly reads the public opinion data differently and says, no, actually, we do have larger scale polarization in the public and then also combines that with divided government and what he says is misuse -- abuse of the filibuster in the senate to halt pollicymaking or to create what has become almost very not impossible to overcome but highly difficult to move past these barriers. so that's the first debate that

is important for us to engage because when we look at public opinion and political parties representative democracy depends on public opinion. and the framers didn't want political framers didn't want critical parties, but the organization of the parties is to bring voters together the reading by ezra klein on red states and blue states i think is very informative because it talks about differences in the composition of the political party. and klein looks at the research by matthew grossman and david harkins and when they look at the constituency of the republicans and the democrats, they see parties have different interests. they find that republican --

republicans and the american public tend to be much more focused on ideology, small government, and democrats represent a coalition of groups that focus on compromise and governes. it is not to say one is good or bad. if you take ideology compromise and governes, but we should embrace them all in some reform. we don't want officials who don't know what they are doing or couldn't governor and we need officials to work together but the two parties according to grossman and hopkins have diverged in their constituencies. the people who go toward one party favor those principals and the others in the other party go

for a different set. it is hard to bring both parties together. the reason i picks as for klein's and also for the leadership in the new yorker, he presents i think a very thoughtful summary and then a critique. with the grossman and hopkins piece, he points out and said his view is that the voters can change parties and if voters are currently -- if voters see ideology as their main goal they can also shift the direction of their party to be more amenable to governance. if compromise loses sight of the larger longer term goal -- health care but incremental health care reform rather than the larger plans that were proposed in 2009 to give an

example of what we're discussing today. klein said voters can shift parties, because the -- the parties represent all of us. look at that when you think of political parties and voters. to what degree to we see polarization and is that among the elites or the general public? how do the parties reflect the interests of their constituencies and are those -- do voters and party members direct their officials to act in certain ways as farther as either pushing forward the policy process or halting it. once we slip from voters and parties, then we read on the institutions. not so much on the courts though as we talk about health care obviously the supreme

court continues to play a significant role. and we will discuss that. but for the policy-making process. >> it is appropriate particularly for the know folks to look at the congress and the white house. i'll talk about the reading in the new yorker about the bully pulpit first because i think that addresses a number of issues and presidential studies that seem to be at odds with how presidential politics works in practice. and the main debate in presidential politics today presidential studies today is what is presidential power? what is presidential power. richard new staten island, a famous political scientist, published a book, senator kennedy read it with a model as to how he would govern in office

and after the bay of pigs he said we hit eisenhower but not kennedy. but new stat said in this book the presidential power is the power to persuade. and he goes on to say that the power to persuade is the power to bargain. how do persuade? well newstat talks about professional representation with members of congress the circle group, the lobbyists, that make up the policy-making sphere in washington, including elects officials but not only elected officials and that is why many speakers you see come from major think tanks in washington that have played a significant role in influencing the policy debate. for immigration i was very excited that we were able to bring two speakers from

organizations that have been in the news repeatedly since president obama announced his executive order on immigration. so we'll get a chance -- people who are not legislating, but significantlyin flewencing legislation. and so he said presidents persuade and through public prestige. how how do they build a public support? a common argument is they do it through the bully pulpit. and roosevelt said the term is attributed to him by scholars are having a hard time trying to find where he used that phrase. but we'll give him credit for it because he liked it. well george edwards, political scientist at texas a&m published

a book said on deaf ears, the limits of the bully pulpit. and he said public opinion doesn't persuade at all and he's gone on to say that newstat presidential power isn't persuasion. if president obama could just give a speech like the ones he gave in 2008 or the speech in 2004 in boston, the key note address for senator kerry accepting the democratic nomination and then he could move the process forward. and there are suggestions that he could do something to move privately in congress. and that is a slightly different argument and we can talk about that later. but the idea that the president can shift the political debate in washington or move the public

through public communication is just wrong. now, maybe it is not easy to say one person is right and one is wrong. we had a conference honoring newstat and i went to the conference and he spoke and said i'm thrilled you're using my book nearly 40 years after my publication and i hope that 40 years from now you use something else. one book should not define a field of politics for so long. but i think it is still an active debate. we pay attention to the presidential presentations or that the presidential address will be on january 20th and the president is visiting several states and laying out his program will be. this is unusual. presidents have been delivering their state of address in person before congress in 1913.

woodrow wilson resumed it and washington and adams did it and then they sent their speech in writing until woodrow wilson decided to pick it up and today presidential addresses are a big public event. we pay attention to them. we look at what president's have to say. they have been the source of significant statements. think about president bush in 2002 the axis of evil in january 29, 2002 address. but the presidents use the address to lay out what they are going to say and president obama has given indications of how he'll move forward in -- with policies including health care and energy immigration, economic policy. and he'll be making the case for that in the next couple of weeks as the build-up to his state of

the union address. is it fair to say none of that matters. maybe it doesn't shift public opinion polls. evidence -- it doesn't persuade. and if you say obama isn't a good example president reagan's advisors said reagan would go out and give a speech and get a lot of applause and not move the public opinion needles at all. so we can like a president's communication and appreciate them but that doesn't mean we're persuaded to shift our policy views. so i would like you to think about this debate over what is -- what is presidential power. is it the power to persuade. and if so how important are a president's public and private communication.

and we can talk more about that too -- in achieving persuasion of the public and elected officials. we also assigned two readings by thomas mann and norman ornstein. and they have been in the public eye, they pub lired a -- published a work in 2012, it will only get worse the problem with dysfunction in congress. we saw a 206 and a 2012 article and the 2012 article points out what they say are the sources of dysfunction in congress, the gridlock and argue that the polarization among elites is they see that as -- more strongly in the republican elites than in democrat elites. so that is the argument they made. and in the 2006 article, though it focuses on foreign policies

which isn't one of our topic this week, but the article is significant because they say congress has conducted less oversight in the 21st century than after world war ii and they question whether congress is losing its institutional identity. the system of checks and balances that the framers' created intended for the congress as article one and president is article two. the congress is to legislate and the president approves. and so from the 21st century that balance of power has shifted too much toward the executive and congress has not asserted itself enough. now you could say with the government shut down was by congress not doing anything. but it is not just numbers what has been passed or proposed it is more of an argument about the

balance of power. who is leading the policy making process in washington? and focusing on congress not to say that they identify short comings on the executive side as well, but focusing on congress, they argue congress is losing its institutional identity and needs to regain it. so you have those three sets of scholarly readings and i'm hopeful you'll see over the course of the how all of those things, public opinions, political parties and president and congress influence the political and policy debates we are looking at this week. and a quick word on the simulation, i'm excited about the roles you will all be playing this week. we started with -- we created these diff solution groups last

year but we've taken it to a new level this year with the assignments. and i was speaking with a few of you today and a little bit yesterday on how you take on a role. you don't have to take on the personality of someone. but reflecting their views, their position in congress, their state interest i think is very significant because we are all hemmed in and restricted to a certain degree by our organization, by the people we represent, by what our role is. whether it is in the classroom whether it is in a student organization an internship or a job. we are all restricted to a certain degree by our responsibilities, the organization that we work for and the fact -- and the pressures on that organization. and so it's -- it's easy to come up with big ideas.

but it is much more difficult to put ideas in practice. and so the theme from president obama and speaker boehner and senator mcconnell i heard it on the talk shows this morning the american public wants us to get things done. now, what does that mean when you take apart the debates over polarization, sorting, what the political parties are supposed to do and how they represent the voters how does getting stuff done mean gets for complicated. but for the next week for this part of the academy seminar, for you to participate and think about the process and then play a part of the process through a specific role and seeing what opportunities that brings for you as well as the constraints. we have about five minutes. do we have time to take a couple of questions? is that all right.

okay. if anyone has any quick comments or questions and you would like to come up to the microphones i would be glad to address those now. no one at this point? if not then i'll say a few more words but i would like to hear from someone and we do need you to come up so it can all be recorded but if would you like to come up and give your name and a question you have for the week. about bipartisanship or any of the topics we were just discussing? i will say a few more things now but if you do have a question just come up and we'll incorporate that. i didn't say a lot yet about the policy issues because we will be discussing those in much more

detail tuesday, wednesday and thursday. tomorrow you have the budget. we'll talk about the budget and healthcare. wednesday will be focused on immigration, so you'll hear multiple perspectives on immigration policy and president obama's recent executive order. thursday we'll do budget and health care. we have assigned for each of those topics a series of readings from the bipartisan policy center's website. and you'll see there is a lot to cover there. we try to identify -- you can go to the web page and find sub-topics and we pointed you to word links an the links come to a link of recent articles some of them are a little dated but they give you historical backgrounds and some are much

more current. we want you to engage in the wealth of detail on each one of these policies. it is a delicate balance with policy issues. we don't want to overwhelm you, but we want you as participates in the simulation to be award of how much information is out there and how you try to crystallize the range of perspectives on, let's say, health care policy. what is a full-time worker? how do you arrange delivery services? how do we issue payments to doctors? how do we bring that together. and the question about subsidies for the federal exchange and for the majority of the states that did not create exchanges. how do you engage those issues. for inkorps -- incorporation how do we address visas, potential

worker programs and undocumented immigrants currently in the country. how do we build upon the executive order from 2012. how does the 2014 executive order get implemented over the next six months and for the budget, how do we address tax policy. we haven't seen major institutional tax reform since 1986. is it time? is there a possibility for tax reform and can tax reform address our longer term concerns about the deficit and national debt. those are some of the questions that we plan to address. please engage those policy readings as much as you can and try to come away from them with an appreciation of the details and also in a sense of what your larger questions will be. with that, i'll turn it back to dr. eaton. [ applause ] >> well one really great thing

about this seminar, is it is a product of a very valuable and relatively new partnership center and the washington policy center. bpp has aarounded this and last year's seminar and because of the involvement in this creation for you, the washington center aworded bpp with the civic award last october. there is a long relationship with the co-founders tom dashel, and he sends his best but he can't make the seminar this way. you would like to introduce you to mr. jason grumet. he is the founder of the policy center and is accepted on both

sides of the aisle for effective government acceptance n. 2011 he founded b pc with howard baker, tom dashel bob dole and george mitchell to develop and promote bipartisan solutions to america's most difficult policy challenges. bpp is activating organization reform, health care, housing and economic policy and energy -- energy security and national security. grumet really authors op ed pieces and have testified before congress and is sought out by policymakers and business leaders. his first book, city of rivals is called city of rivals,

restoring the glorious mess of american democracy, that is a great title and released this past december. please welcome mr. jason grumet. [ applause ] good morning, folks. a couple of things to get started. i want to first of all thank professor bose. we've had a terrific time being a friend with the washington center and based on that, i wish i had the opportunity to spend the next couple of weeks with you all reflecting on what will happen in 2015. also want to stress the fact that i'm about to offer a lot of opinions. they are just opinions. and what you are going to hear for the next couple of weeks is a remarkable number of people doing the exact thing.

none of us know anything. we all have ideas based on our experience and the great opportunity you all have is toward the end of the process is to form your own opinions because that is the coin of the realm here in washington. if you want to come back and work in any position the goal is to have views on things and this is a nice way to get started. i also just want to acknowledge, i feel just like you guys. it is monday morning and everybody has been off for weeks and nobody came to the microphone. don't take a lot of notes. buy the book if you like what i'm saying. and so my job is to give you some pragmatic on democracy. and the mess is the spear of the country from the very beginning. our founders were profound

optimists that created a democracy that if you look at it, it shouldn't work. but it has. it has imagined that a group of people that live near each other have to inact with each other and that is the diversity of the country deflected in both creativity but also the resiliency of our public policy. and while this town is a mess, i think more of a real old piano. it is like my kids are playing it. it is aco coughenous and i think this is about how you can provide that kind of tune-up, but with productive partnership which is the essence of how we've made good laws over time. so i'll tell you about the

bi-policy center and giving you a different point of view than you'll hear from other speakers and i should point out that we are the bipartisan policy center. we are not the partisan or nonpartisan or trans-partisan center. that is the engine of our democracy. and this isn't a new idea. we've had partnership in this country from the very beginning. if you ever watch the history challenge, you may have heard of the clinton administration and during that time we had the contract with america we had a government shut down, we that little lewinsky scandal where they impeached the sitting president and while that was happening, congress was passing legislation. within three weeks of being impeached by congress the

president signed several pieces of legislation, meaning that while impeaching him congress was able to work together and get things done. i'm told though i could not confirm, on the day he was impeached, he called speaker gingrich to talk about legislative ideas he had. he was a unique individual. but the question we ask ourselves is what has happened, what has changed in the 20 years that does the allow washington to metabolize the hostility that is essential in the democratic process. and i guess the first thing i would suggest is you think about inverting the question a little bit. so in the way people think about washington is that toxic angry bipartisanship causes gridlock. but what if gridlock causes toxic, angry partisanship.

and it leads you to a different imagination of possible solutions. first thing to express is this is not new. through the history, we have been furious at each other in the democratic process and we don't need a constitutional amendment. restricting patters but not as -- matters but not so much that it will affect and it is almost impossible to draw competitive districts in most of the country and the notion that the media is to blame. of course the media is to blame. they have always sucked. this is true. in the election of washington and -- jeffer on andrews. and he was referred to as the

firmness of a man and at a woman. >> and if he was elected, black people will be arrested. it is the rachel maddow conversation only less worldly. but to the extent that you believe there is some role in dysfunction causing partnership that leads you to a set of solutions that are practical on how to make the place function better and create a more virtuous cycle. so let me give you a couple of those ideas and i'll say some words about the policy issues an the background issues that may make washington better than last and you will be challenged to stand up to the microphone. so it is hard to get things done if you don't know each other.

this is simple kindergarten 101. congress needs to spend more time in washington. you cannot run a country on a wednesday, which is what we've been doing on the last seven years and mcconnell and mccarthy have both instituted policies that would have them in congress for four weeks and it has allowed fights within the family and then move on the next day. i think pro -- professor bose made point of the challenge of having so much focus on leadership. and all of the power has been take and way from the congressional committees. congressional chitties is -- committees is where you worked things out. the ag committee was partisan but they cared about agriculture. they have a sense of a shared mission. they would be the places where you would take votes and send bills forward and a piece of legislation that out of

committee with a significant majority would get to the floor. that was kind of the understanding. not any more. these days it is all controlled by leadership and the leadership imperative is to stay in leadership. so everyone acts on their logical incentive and their incentive to get more out of everything they can which is a different structure. and senator reid, former reid made a bad call in this session. it was a standard practice. and it was from trying to protect democrats taking a hard vote and put them at odds with some aspects of their continuancy. and first of all, it didn't work. they all lost. they lost because they couldn't differentiate themselves from

the president. every one of them faced commercials, votes with the president 98% or 99% of the time. if they had taken hard sloats they -- votes, they would have voted differently and giving them different space. but more importantly, that is what they are to do. senator bagich did not give a single vote on the amandment. six years not one time did he have the ability to change legislation and have it voted on. this makes them mad. so one of my arguments is part of the rp for the cox isity of -- reason for the toxicity is not the process. and accomplishing things is fun.

and in the failure to accomplish and influence things you get angry. and the only place to go is to goo into the tribal party dissidence. and a couple of suggestions in my book which are a little bit less obvious bring back ear marks. i don't know how much you foe the way the process works, but since 1780s, they can direct bills in a specific amount of money for something of interest. the notion of getting rid of them is just nutty. we want members of congress to take, quote, unquote, taking a national interest against some of the voters' interest. if we deprive them of doing anything their constituents like

and they won't do anything they do like and then they won't do anything. earmarks are the balance between the obligation to have a national interest and a local election embedded into the constitution. they don't cost any more money which is a big fallacy, it is a question of whether the congress or the executive branch directs the money and they need to be put on a website and voted on but the idea that we've eliminated them has made it harder to pass legislation. and then aided by technology, there has been an everive increasein -- ever-increasing love with transparency. any democracy feeds to take that seriously. i make the point in my book that the opposite of transparency is privacy, not corruption. we need to find a way to balance the essential obligation for people to explore new ideas

without tv cameras on. with the executive branch not always having to be concerned about freedom of information requests. and then it is pretty simple stuff. it doesn't sound right to a lot of people, but congress are people too. the example i give is every holiday season my wife and i have to decide whose inlaws to visit. it could be a much different conversation if our in-laws were in the room. and what we have done is allowed the people with the best vested interest is standing over the politicians shoulder and all of that needs to be put in the record and at the moment you are trying to craft an innovative solution or exploring something that you know are at odds with your party, we need to avoid technology from time to time

because that is the only way to get to know each other. you'll hear shortly from our commission on the political reform which is one of the products we're most proud of last year and a lot of the recommendations i mentioned will be addressed. and we make a number of suggestions on how to go through the reform of the election process. because it is amplifying the bipartisanship in our basic society. what we need to do is just get people participating. it is hard to run a democracy with less than one in five people participating. and that brings out the people that are the most focused and organized and the most ideological. and it will take a while to shift that around. the political scientists tell me things that don't make sense,

but are consistent on it, like moving up the voting does increase voter turn-out like i thought it would. do you know why we have voting on tuesdays? because years ago, a not of people lines to live by the church and many found it hard to get back and so then you rode your horseback on tuesday to vote. and those with tougher schedules have a tougher time getting to the polls. most people don't even know the primary is having, let alone vote on it. and this is in nonpresidential years. and this is consistent with the eejos of the bipartisan center

we need to strengthen the third party groups vis-a-vis in elections and because the parties are the ones with the bad name. you have to ask yourself compared to what? what we've done through mccain finegold is limited resources going to party and made it possible for unlimited pars to go to the dark money third parties. and you should ask senator bennett about his experience and congress glickman jumped over the fence because some got to bipartisan. and sometimes they are so awful in what you are suggesting about your opponent you feel the need to run against your own supporters or take the blame. and so one of the ironic increases in campaign money is

candidates fearing they have to identify themselves more aggressively earlier against their own supporters, let alone against the efforts of their points. and so congress in the crom nibbous, which is the worst word did in fact in fine gold to change the third parties and we have to require disclosure of campaign financing. there is no constitutional argument against disclosure. scalia has been a strong advocate of disclosure. and they have to report and dark horses don't and that is a way to level the playing field. so my general theme before turning to the moment and that clock is -- i guess it is on the

minute, so i guess you need to start wincing. so there is a lot of practical things none of them epiphanies, but modest steps that could get the system working good enough. in the clinton administration 50% of the public thought congress was doing a good job. that is good enough. 9% is not good enough. but this is not a country that wants the public to believe with 87% enthusiasm that the government is great. we're a divided country and who is not in power is going to be criticalch but -- but we can make steps in that direction. and let me end with a couple of words that give us optimism. and it is a low bar so take that with this understanding. having a truly divided government, where both parties are accountable to lead is a

better system than what we had where we had the congress split and one party in the white house. this is going to on gate the -- obligate the republican party to demonstrate its capacity to get this done with much more accountability that was plausible when you had a divided congress. another important factor is the economy is getting better. one thing we haven't talked much about when talking about polarization and dysfunction, is this was an awful decade for a lot of people. people were deeply hurt. that makes them mad. and it makes them look for someone to plame-- to blame. and it creates the an imous that feeds into this polarization. the tea party grew out of that economic anger and sense of unfairness and the economy

getting better will make us happier and easier to get things done. the senate will flip back almost certainly in two years because in 2016, i think 24 of the 33 seats that are up are incumbent republicans and they have to protect more seats and barring some dramatic change, it will revert back. that is a good read for mcconnell. no one will have a mandate in this country for a long time and that they are changing seats in 24 months is a somewhat productive incentive. and then the last theme that we're playing with and we'll see if it is true is constructive anger. so for the last several years, the anger has been coming from the edges. and it is almost always true when you have an insurgent movement and in this case it baz

the tea party and -- case it was the tea party, and it tends to shut things down and the people who are used to getting things done don't know how to respond to -- things don't know how to respond to that kind of anger. if you had your leader rp to support legislation and the senate was ready to support the legislation, you could round up the votes. that wasn't the case. it was -- i think the expectation that you would always have the majority of the majority so-called haster rule, which he said he never created. the understanding was that you would have to get the majority of the majority. and if the last several years it was hard to do. when boehner moved forward, it strengthened his hand rather than falling through the ice as many fear. but the sense that we have is that the folks who want to get stuff done are getting --.

it will require the bank and -- the rank and file members of saying why they came here. one senator said he is a glorified telemarketer who gets to vote occasionally for legislation. and you see the bipartisan gangs forming, that is going to have to be part of the committees and you see the polls shifting. when people are ideologically polarized and the numbers of people who want to see people get things done are going to be useful as we go forward. >> i think you will have a great couple of weeks. the timing couldn't be better. there is a lot of play. this is not an easy predictable couple of years and we're happy to work with the washington

center. and we hope you enjoy our website. thank you. [ applause ] >> should i threaten them for questions, are we over? >> yeah, the next panelist isn't here. >> okay. i can stretch. you walked right by it. hiding in plain sight. >> so my name is jordy and i'm from milan and i was wonder, for the people's anger that you were talking about, if they are not satisfied with the congress and what they are not doing, how come there hasn't been a bill or a proposition to make voting day

a holiday. i know in belgium where i'm from voting day is a holiday and you have to vote so i'm sure if they enforce that here it should help. >> so those ideas have been raised. pretty consistently. they have not gotten as much traction as they need to. a couple of things encourage me to think they'll be taken more seriously. the first is that the parties for a while thought that the motivation and the edges was just good for them. and this is mostly again in the last few years, the republican party thinking about how the tea party affects them. and they believe that in some cases, lower turn-out would advantage their candidates. i think two things are happening. one is that the people getting elected in the lower turn-out elections are not very often the

people who work well with party. and so now the party is looking for a slightly different kind of candidate and there is a very big debate within the republican party about whether it can sustain the perception that it is interested in reducing turnout. whether you believe that some of these access to the ballot laws are designed for voter integrity or if you believe some of them have a more electoral motivation, who knows what people 's intent are, but the appearance of that and the idea that the republican voter base is shrinking is something that has a lot of republicans concerned. so whether it is a national holiday, which is costing a lot or moving it to saturday or at the state level more extensive voting periods i think you'll see more of that. our little pesky constitution prevents mandatory voting. and i should tell you

afterwards, that we've heard from folks in australia, it is not as great as it sounds and you are forcing people to vote that don't know anything at all. so you are getting counter intuitive responses. but one out of 20 people voting will not sustain a democracy. >> all right, well thank you. >> you're welcome. >> my name is james. i hail from central michigan university. i had a question regarding the ear marks. i know they tend to be a very controversial issue at least for local elections, but why such an emphasis on returning ear marks

because i know that -- it tends to be a thing as they are trying to add -- each congressman is trying to add something in for their local constituency but don't the local people vote on national issues? >> so i think i'll start with the end. i don't think a lot of local people vote on purely national issues. i've never seen a polling that tries to differentiate. but i have both philosophical and practical arguments for earmarks. the philosophical arguments are that the essential tension in our government from the very beginning, 1776, was federal versus state. don't want a monarch or this organization, have to balance those two things. and a member of congress seeking to do something that helps them locally is not skur illes.

i think the system did get out of hand. but by the time we got away with it i think it was notable and the administration having to comment on the projects and all of that is good. but the idea that philosophically we should say only the president, the executive branch should decide how to spend the money i don't think is true to the way it was set up to work. but pragmatically, and we'll see this in the products -- projects, 15 people working on a project. we call it ornaments on a tree. if somebody gets their thing, a little thing into the group they are in, they are then invested in the whole. they are almost like policy earmarks in our context. but it is the same four members of congress. once you have your upgraded v.a. hospital in the health care

bill it is your health care bill. if you talk to the elected officials, as senators lott and dashel will tell you it is tough to lead when you have no incentives. so if it takes a rather useless runway in rural missouri, a couple of fire stations that theoretically were not cost beneficial and a nursing home to get entitlement reform take the deal. my last little story because i like this topic. we have a civil rights act basically because of ear marks. in the last kiro book on the johnson presidency he relates the story that the bill was once again stuck in the house rules committee where a democratic chairman said it would never see the light of day and johnson needed to go to the republicans to get it out -- the republican

commit. and he went to them and said what do you need? and the answer was a nasa center at my beloved purdue company. is nasa the best place to have a center at purdue university? who knows. but with dignity, the moments come along. and the greater good is if we empower voters to add to that national interest. >> one more question and then we move on. >> thank you. eric gone from the university of san diego. my question was about the way we conduct primary elections and i

was wondering if you think the shift in the last dumb of decades from convention style of primaries to more direct primary elections has increased partisanship or decreased it? >> it is hard to point to anything in the last decade and say it is decreased partisan. but the view of the commission was you should have the most democratic open possible programs and processes. we have seen in some closed caucus systems, people who you would not expect to have broad public support to come out as the candidate. and i can only suggest that you talk to senator bennett who will be here, if he is not here already, about the challenges of basically having a 70-plus percent approval rating and not getting out of the caucus. so i think the broader the

better. >> thank you. >> all right. it is now my pleasure to introduce michael thorning, who is a policy analyst, working at our democracy project and michael has worked on capitol hill for senators binghamton and ludden thal. and at our office party, we took a chance and did the karaoke. and he is really good. if you don't ask any questions he might break into song. michael? [ applause ] >> thank you jason, for reminding us all about the holiday party karaoke. i'm going to go ahead and bring up -- our first panelist, we're supposed to have two and senator bennett hasn't been able to join us yet.

>> he's on the way. >> he's on the way. but the first person i want to bring up is former agriculture secretary dan glickman. he is a senior fellow at the bipartisan policy center and co-chairs our commission on political reform which is what we're here to talk about and as well as our physical physician and nutrition strategy. and he is the director of the aspen institute congressional program which is a nongovernmental or non-partisan session of congress. and we do have programs out there that help congress do their jobs better. and this is one of the most interesting jobs glickman had, he was chairman of the motion picture association of america representing hollywood and those folks in california and also the

director of the institute of politics at harvard. now before he had all of these great jobs, he had a career in politics. he was the agriculture secretary during clinton administration and 18 years in the house of representatives, representing the fourth congressional district in kansas. so let's welcome senator michael thorning. >> thank you. so i want to start and give some background on our commission on political reform. it was sort of bourne out of the stormy political presence that we're living in and i think that -- actually right now we'll introduce senator benefit. >> hello. [ applause ] senator bennett is also a senior fellow at the bipartisan policy center and prior to that he served in the u.s. senate for 18

years, first being elected in 1993. senator bennett was on the banking committee the joint economic committee so he has a strong background in national economic issues, is also a member of the appropriations committee so he has a great understanding of our budgeting process and the spending process, which a lot of people don't realize aren't the same process. prior to serving in the senate senator bennett was a highly successful entrepreneur. he was the ceo of franklin quest and he continues to work sort of in the private sector on entrepreneurial issues and ep has a good understanding of the nexus of those two issues. but one thing i want to bring up -- two great quotes about senator bennett. he's been praised for two

qualities. his intellect and he was said he's an old-fashioned conservative. i don't know if he thinks÷h÷ old-fashioned. >> i'm older than clinton. >> you're old and you wear nice fashion. >> and harry reid said there was no more hovr honorable member -- no more honorable member than senator bennett over his career so we're happy to have him here with us today as well. so our commission on political reform. it was really bourne out of a stormy political presence that i think everyone in this room has been watching over the last few years. polarization is at the highest level since reconstruction according to a poll that we commissioned with usa today. we don't mix with our neighbors who -- if we're republicans, we don't talk to theqe=ñ democrats in the same neighborhood and we

probably don't even live in the same neighborhoods or states with democrats. and more and more we get our news that with biased or ideologically drifted. and rancor and citizenship are at an all-time high. if you don't see it on cspan we see it on the news networks. and that is on display in congress, over the last two congresses, we've had the least productive in the modern era. and not just unable to address pressing issues but unable to do their basic job, struggling to pass budgets struggling to pass appropriations bills, struggling to pay our national debts. these are basic functions congress should be able to do. and not surprisingly the approval rating is at an all-time low. i won't mention the other professions they rank in these

things, but they are toward the bottom amod some unsavory folks and i think even with some of you, i think a lot of citizens have a sense of apathy, and maybe futility but certainly distrust in the system. it is not working. and so what was born at b pc was a forum for people like these two gentlemen, people that believe we can transcend this that the trends are not permanent. if we listen to one another, we could find common ground. we can govern even in this polarized environment. so we put together a 29-member commission and our co-chairs were former senator majority leaders, sam dashel trent lott and olympia snow and dirk ken thorn and senator glickman was a co-chair and bennett was one of our members and we had a really

knock-out group of people. former members of congress, governors and cabinet officials, we had academics civil and business leaders people from all walks18-month process, went all over the country, in california, we were in ohio, we were in philadelphia, we were in boston, we had meetings, engaged a whole wide swath of the american public. and then they had some debate. and they had deliberation, they had some arguments, they had things they couldn't agree on, but they were able to compromise. they did find common ground. and the product of that was our report, our blueprint, our bipartisan blueprint for strengthening our democracy. includes 69 recommendations, we're not going to go through all of them today. but three major areas of reform. reforming congress, reforming our elections system, and then a call to public service. and now all of these aren't a

magic pill you know. if we enacted them all tomorrow, the system is not going to turn around, á,fú i think you see big changes. but as these things go you know, there is always a way to find out how to work the system. but these arepax achievable steps practical, and they4aa-u can really begin to lower the political temperature, and get our system back to a level at which it can function. so i want to start out kind of broad and ask you two, you know, is our system broken? we, you know, are we in control. is there a m1$dáu)%car what is the outlook? >> first of all,0 thanks for allowing us to be here. came last year and really a great thing. is our system in trouble? well, first of all our system was created almost to ensure gridlock okay. so imagine this. most countries have either a authoritarian system like the

chinese or thet;0d russians or they have a parliamentary system like the british or the canadians where the chief executive is also the chief member of the legislature. so the and legislature together. we have this system called separation of powers so the founding fathers wanted to split authority and government so they created congress, executive, and the courts. and theywnj said they were all equal. so if you don't think that's a prescription for gridlock nothing is. you know, it is like almost created a system that did not have a center of accountability at all. so from the very beginning our system wasn't necessarily designed to be extremely smoothly operating and there was great distrust of the king or the executive and they always worried about the tyranny of executives. that's why they -- by the way, they made congress article one, not the executive article one, that's a pretty compelling point

ultimate party. and then they thought well congress could be a tyranny as well. so they split that into two into house and senate. and our system is kind of designed to have one foot on the brake and one foot on thea jñ accelerator. at all times anyway. and it only works if there is trust across the aisle and if there is leadership in the institutions of government and if congress has rules and systems that work well. and the president works with congress and congress works with the president and there is a trust between the two branches, the executive and the legislative branch. and i think what has happened in the last several years, maybe couple of decades, and i know senator bennett has strong thoughts on this as well, is that the basic system of separation and gridlock, kind ofp úr constitutionally put into our system, but there are always ways to work around it. one way was regular order

getting work done, having systems in place. one way is for the president and congress to work together on primary issues. and now you've had a lot of -- i listened to jason talk, a lot of pressures on the system that we never had before, massive money in our political system. it really has a monumental impact. we ago. and now in an average congressional -- congressional contested race is $5 million and average senate contested race might be $25 million imagine what that does for the political system. and you combine that with 24-hour media and combine that with social media and all of the new things, just all of these social pressures on the system that we just never had before. and instantaneous access is there. and so saying that i don't think the system is going to fall apart. i think our political system is still very resilient. parts of our system are working much better, states, local units

of government are working bet and the congress works when it has to. the last month or two of the session of this year, they got some stuff done because they had to. and so what it does it puts a much greater premium on leadership at the executive and the congressional level to act like leaders and it puts a more premium on the people to kind of understand what they should and should not expect out of their government to do. so i would say the system is troubled, but not deceased and not dead. and it is, frankly, the people that are going to decide whether the system is resilient enough for us to be a competitive power economic and political power in the world in years to come. >> i'm in agreement with what secretary glickman has had to say. i do want to make these additional comments about it.

the ultimate source of power in america is the people. that is different from many other countries. we are the oldest democracy in the world. they had a parliament before we had a democracy, but they did not have the kind of constraints on the king that they have now. until we showed them the way of allowing the people it make the decision. if you don't think the people are still in charge and you think outside forces are in charge, just ask jimmy carter. or george h.w. bush. both of whom had all of the powers of the presidency at their control, and the people

decided they wante28qf get rid of them. and they could not maintain their power regardless of all the formal levers of power when the people decided we want somebody else. ultimately the people, and the way people vote, determines what is going to happen in american politics and provides a leveling factor and a change factor that can take care of the extremes. now when this report came out from bpc of all of the things that should be change edd, bpc took it to the capitol hill. and started showing it to congressional leaders in capitol hill. one of the leaders they went to very appropriately was senator mcconnell, the republican

leader. and senator mcconnell said, look, i don't have time to go through it all, will you take it to senator alexander, whom i listened to on these issues. he wasn't being rude. he was just being realistic about the kinds of pressures that aili and the bpc staff said to me, you're close to alexander which is true. will you go with us? kind of to make sure that alexander would come to the meeting, i guess. i don't think that was necessary. i think lamar would have showed up whether i was there or not. but i went in with the o0qú; and they presented these recommendations. and lamar alexander, who is a student of american politics and longabo time participant, he was in the nixon white house, that's where i first met him when i was in the nixon administration, he was governor

of tennessee he's been a university president, he's a cabinet officer and now a senator, there isn't anybody that has a broader background in american politics than lamar alexander, he listened politely to the thins we had to say and then he said picking out one item, he said with the exception of this item, we could change everything you're asking for and accomplish everything you want this afternoon if we had a different majority leader. well, we now have a different majority leader. and as i was riding in this morning and got out the newspaper, there was a story on the front page of the washington post about mitch mcconnell's goal for the next two years as the new majority leader. any of you see it? i recommend you read it. summarized in one sentence, he

said mitch mcconnell says he wants the republicans to not be scary between now and 2016. he wants to set the table for the republican nominee in 2016 by demonstrating that the republicans are capable of governing. and uses the phrase, we don't want to be scary. well, what is he talking about? he's talking about the tea party. in 20 10, the wave election of the people saying we don't like what is going on in washington with the democrats in complete control of the presidency and both houses of congress, we want a change, the people said that, there are a lot of folks riding that wave with some that were pretty scary. and here i