doing this. that's the most important thing and our dip mats are working hard. secretary kerry spoke recently, in fact, to russian leadership about this, and that's the way out of this problem. if it does not look like that's going to happen, then there are, of course, options that i would place to general categories defensive and the other is offensive, that would indicate to, first of all, russia, this is not going to do them any good. this gets into the objectives and causes pieces of deterrence and reassures our partners were very serious about wanting to keep russia's adherence to the treaty that we all signed so long ago. >> all right. i think we've got one more. right here. up front. >> does the russians obviously they continue to make the point, and you've tried to put to rest that european missile sheet is

not about threatening russia. they argue the shield is no longer necessary. they've also according to u.s. officials been helpful in the talks. does russia have a point in bringing this up in light of emerging deal? >> so i think everybody heard the question. first of all, if you look at the capacity of the system that we're installing in europe and this is the analog of the fact that our national ballistic missile defense system is not alined to russia. we just don't have the capacity. they are with a large reasonably powerful country like russia could overwhelm that defense system quickly. it's not about that. so they should not worry about that. they should be encourage that we are helping our allies there, potentially defending iranian or

other threats in the region and as regards to the discussions, the agreement is not cop collusive yet, and once concluded, it -- you know, we still have to make sure that iran sticks to it and a ballistic missile defense system is not something that you turn on overnight in fact, it take longer to establish a missile defense system if iran decides to break out and build a nuclear weapon. the discussion does not address ballistic missile threat at all so i think there's every reason for us to continue what we're doing in western europe with the nato allies. it does not threaten russia. it maintains a hedge against an iranian or other threat in the nation in that region or outside the region that could threaten our partners, and it's really, to me, a no brainer to keep this going. >> real quick question before you go.

right here. yes. real quick. >> two short questions. what is the effective defense mechanism if the threat is arising in a couple years burks if former cop sulation between two countries begins, what would be the goal of the negotiation? the career or do you just have one career that u.s. deployed that to the usfk? thank you. >> not sure i understood the first question. >> what would the responses be? >> all right. the sobm threat the north threat. there's a ways, including taking out the submarine that is

carrying, and it goes without saying, i mean, put together a hypothetical scenario if tensions are high with north korea, submarine gets underway, and appears it might have a hostile event, everyone's interest that not be allowed to happen. if the missile successfully launches, one of the things north korea does is they do not test missiles. they do not have confidence in something like this. if they launch and did does not work, they are in trouble because we will have seen the intent, but if it was launched theoretically, we would have our regional defenses aligned to be able to defend against that threat. in terms of the future, i don't want to speculate on what the configuration would be against a missile defense system, but, obviously, it's in our interest that our partner nations

contribute to defending their own soil in this kind of attack but we're also interested in that particularly since we have so many troops on the ground. i'll leave it to the negotiators, but i have to say, we have not open up any kind of discussion formally with south korea on this particular topic. when it's ripe i'm sure that we'll get into that, but we're approaching this cautiously because we have such great respect for our partners. >> well thank you, admiral. this has been a water front, offense, defense regional cruise missile. thank you for the time. i know you have to run, but i want to say it's an ongoing project. national security program here you'll see more of this stuff, and i want to thank the program sponsors for putting this event on today, so, thank you, please join me in thanks him. >> thank you for hosting it. [ applause ]

coming up live tomorrow on c-span3, a hearing on the future of the u.s.-cuba relations before the foreign relations committee at 10:00 eastern. at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon, u.s. capital police chief kim dine testifies about issues facing the police force. some 1775 sworn officers protect the capital. live coverage on c-span3. plus, cspan.org covers a hearing looking to the response of the nepal earthquakes, again, cspan.org has that at 2:15 eastern tomorrow. here's a few of the book

festivals covered this spring. we'll close out may at book expo america in new york city where the industry showcases upcoming books. on the first week of june live for the chicago tribune printers row lit fest. we have our live in-depth program, and your phone calls this spring on c-span2's booktv. at the brookings institution, senator joe mansion talked about bipartisanship in efforts as a democrat to work with republican colleagues in the senate. he also discusses some of the proposals to make government more efficient. this is just under an hour. good afternoon, everyone. i'm the fellow in the center for effective public management and management editor of the block. i want to welcome you all to the brook igs institution today and to today's event, governing from the middle, a common sense

approach to making government work for the american people. i'd like to thank c-spap for being here and i'd like to invite everyone watching on the webcast to follow along and use the #senmansion. it's no secret that the american government is in a period of dysfunction. our trust in government plummeted, and the publicments mentwants solutions, but it just get s more and more problems. too often, our elected officials adapt to a dysfunctional system rather than trying to work in a way to reform it. that's a serious problem. the result is the system that perpetuates ills rather than trying to find cures. here at brookings through the political realism project, we are engaging a lot of scholars, in house and out of house to look at the types of reforms

that help rejuvenate the system get it back to work get public policy moving in the right direction. it's a robust debate here at brookings, a devicive debate in house, but it's one we feel is vital to american democracy and to what the public expects from their government. today, we're joined by a member of the united states senate who is often engaged in similar types of debates with his own colleagues in his own institution. we're pleased to welcome an additional voice in the discussion. joe mansion's in the united states senate and comes to congress with a unique perspective. he's one of ten sitting united states senators who formally served as governor. they bring a critical perspective. they are problem solvers charged by their state to govern. their residents expected action. they oversaw state agencies. they oversaw crisis. they oversaw a public that demanded a lot out of them.

m the expectation was for them to deliver. together the ten members formed the former governor's caucus a group committed to bringing their governing experience to bear in ways that not only form public policy, but the new institution that they serve in, the united states congress. before i turn the podium over to the senator i'd like to offer a bit of a brief introduction. joe mansion is now the senior senator from wefsz, having been a senator since 2010 previously, as i said, he served as governor from 2005 to 2010. over the course of a more than 30 year career in public service, senator mansion served in the west virginia house of delegates, the state senate, and west virginia secretary of state. it's my pleasure to welcome senator mansion to brookings. [ applause ] >> first of all, i thank

brookings for the event today and helping tackle this important issue of how to make government work better. i want to thank you, john, for the hard work on this, and all the people at brookings, i know it's not sexy, and i know it's not grabbing headlines like devicive issues do and operate from the fringes of the right and left gets people fired up. working for the american people is critical to getting the country back on track. in 2010 when senator byrd passed away in june of that summer, hi to make one of the most difficult decisions of my political career. i had to decide should i try to go to washington and lead the office that i love being governor of the great state. i was two years in my second term. in west virginia, you're termed out. you have to set out and come back maybe if people want you, but two consecutive terms, so i

made the decision, and it was the toughest decision i made, but i made it on this premise. i felt we contributed so much brought people together. we had a super majority of democrats in the state senate and legislature and i never would have let the democrats beat up the republicans. i said guys, by the grace of god, it could be us. we need everybody working together. we'd work together. we identified problems that we have for the state of west virginia. we did not make them political. it was not a political victory if we did something, we did our job, and we took that premise, and we did everything in state that needed to be done, very critical, and when i made the decision that i said if i can take the experience that i had and the skeess we have been able to enjoy in west virginia and bring that experience level to washington, maybe i could be of help. i could contribute something. so i made the decision. i felt good about what i left in the state and in the job we had done. i kept remembering senator byrd all the time about the way the senate work, and, of course, he

was the master of the senate and wrote the book. he truly loved this place, and he had the utmost respect for the u.s. institution and tradition and procedure of the senate, and we still abide by a lot of that. we broke a few of his rules, which i'm sure would not favor well with him. he served in a time when it worked. when relationships were built to forge bonds of trust, not political payback. when members sit down for a meal together and knew each other's families and childrens and what they liked and dislike and fortunately today in washington, we live by the concept you're no longer guilty by negotiation. you're guilty by conversation today. if someone sees you talking to the opposite side or somebody that might not have your same thought process or philosophical belief, it's like you've gone to the dark side, and i said my goodness how can we learn our differences if we cannot talk to

someone or communicate to find commontialalityies commonalities. gone are the days of breaking bread in the dining room. i heard about that. we had 4 a dining room on the left. senators would have meetings in there. when i first came here i said, my goodness i don't know why they are not doing that anymore. it's something we should do. tomorrow, tuesday, every tuesday we have a caucus lunch. tomorrow, both the democrats and the republicans will go their separate ways for lunches in two different parts of the capital. very seldom do we get together for a bipartisan meal. so when you see on c-span on the floor, that's about the most time we spend with each other is when you see us during a vote on the floor working back and fort and talking or going back and forth to committees. sometimes you only serve with one member on one committee or another, and you do not have all of them at one time. i've tried to break that.

we started the bipartisan center when we got here started the bipartisan lunch, and it's worked being fairly successful at it. you can understand that most of the former governors are the ones that show up quite a bit because they understand that, basically, we have the same problems, no matter the state education problem, medicaid problem, we want to find out who did something that worked and how can we do the same? it was something we exchanged back and forth. i would call. i had no problem calling mitt romeny in massachusetts, calling rick perry in texas. no problem whatsoever. we had great relationships. we are fortunate to have ten former governors. we have five democrats, one independent, and four republicans. we have senator warner, senator caine, senator carper, senator alexander, senator shaheen, and we bring a common sense approach to government, and while we do

not meet as a group as much as we'd like, we naturally gravitate to make deals and work on common sense legislation. when we ran our states basically, most of us had 46 states, i believe had a budget balance amounts, balance budget amendments. first thing you want to know as governor, you're elected, sworn in that day, they take you immediately and show you and what you have to work with. you have cowork with on the budget, and you work on the coming yeerks and you basically i said what's the revenue? every tuesday afternoon, i would have the budget analysis and they meet with me and tell me what our forecasts were and how collections were going and how much we had to work with or areas we had to change and make adjustments. that was cognizant on our mind. can we pay for what we promised or would like to do. you pick priorities based on

values. what's the value of the people, my constituents in west virginia? i knew where we were. it was about our children getting a good start in life. it was about education, obtaining an educational degree that give you the skill sets to compete, caring for the veterans and seniors. so many other things to do, i said no more than i said yes. i 4 to pick things. everybody wanted all these things to be done. i said, fine, here's what i got to work with. tell me which group of people you want to tell that we can't do that anymore. if i picked one that's wasteful show it to me. we'll pick one that's more resourceful. we had to make decisions on revenue and balancing budgets, and we're trying to bring that same approach to the senate and find common sense ways to accomplish the goal of making government work. it's a challenge here. i will share this with you, the first day i was in the senate i said, what's the revenue? i was told immediately we spend

3.5 trillion. i said, okay. how much money will we have? well, we looked at it every way possible. we can't cut much. you want to spend 3.7 trillion? i got that. how much do you think we have to pay? well, we have. 2. i said you know, we're not high in mathematicians back home but we add and sub stragt. you're 1.5 trillion short. i have not figured out the math in washington. i'm trying. i know everyone's confused about the new math. i'm not -- i'm having a hard time myself. you know, and wlse had taxpayer dollar, and another example of what we did, done through property funding. the revenue office is one -- we

had that basically would do budget reviews, general accounting offices, things of this set you did this this, and this, and you saved $100 billion. you save this and this, redundancy in government that these things happened. every present like every governor comes in with a platform, and every legislature wants the first honeymoon session wants to give the new president or that new governor basically a honeymoon if you will, and what we had was a layer on top of layer adding up over the year and every now and again, you have to have a correction, and you have to change and you have to consolidate and rid of those not working. no one's looking at that making governing hard rer and hurting our country when we don't do this. they identify waste, fraud, and abuse inside and outside agencies.

perfect example. when we cut back, and they said revenue's short in the state of west virginia, i said fine, show me where i make money. i said, what? show me where i have an agency that's returning more than we invest in the agency. perfect example, department of revenue. for all my outside auditors, i had inside outside inside the state, outside the state. for every dollar spent, i got $100 return. if i wuld just go go and audit -- this is a gray line, stopping it right there. if they say something, it's an honest mistake because we interpreted it differently. you have to have them, and when we had to flat line them, there was a budget it's common sense. no different how you run the household or business. spending in these offices are positive investments and when we cut funding it's a net loss

which we do every day here. when the cuts, the federal government loses money, and because we lose out on the ability to save money from other programs. that's why i'll introduce legislation to require the generaling thing office to designate federal offices that have saved more money than they have spent. i think that would be an eye opener if we knew that. that's common sense. governors we also looked at the bottom line. we needed to know if the taxes we impose actually helped our hurt. we needed to know if we reduced taxes, and accelerated reduction if the revenue would catch up to it. we would watch it. we put triggers in. we would put triggers to stop and take a pause and see where we were. i always said there's certain things that people would do. first of all, if you're running out of money, the first thing that will happen, they rob the piggy bank, sweep all the accounts and agencies and basically so it's not noticeable to the average public. when it runs out, they make cuts

within government. they'll cut back and lay people off. and the last thing they want to do, oh mied go, they don't want to do this, raise taxes. because then somebody's messed up. that's what they believe. so what you do is look at the holistic approach to how you run the place and then you said -- well, this, we can afford this we cannot afford that, eliminate this, and this we will not. this we increase or -- everybody's afraid to talk about taxes. you wouldn't -- we can't even agree on the definition of revenue. that's hard to believe. if your revenue, reducing to 33 we cut the taxes rate? get rid of the junk in the box, the give aways the programs, basically every lobbyist in the town has been able to get a tax provision put in offset, any one of them for the special interest groups. with all that said that's a tremendous draw on the revenue. no one basically ever says,

okay, how much did that cost? you introduce something, how much does that cost? that's what we need to know. that's what we will be working on. i focus on tax reform. there's no question i've been a big bowle-simpson supporter. there was a three-pronged approach to fixing it. fix revenue, take care of anything, in your household your daily life, in your businesses, if you get your revenue under control, you're in great shape. when you don't, you are behind the 8 ball, and my grandfather used to say, indebtedness that is unmanageable affects the decisions you make. they sure do. we can immediately focus on adding transparency to the tax code. expenditures have the same budget tear effect as spending increases. while we all know about the mortgage tax deductions, the charitable tax deductions we do

not appreciate the cost of the tax expenditures. with full knowledge of the costs, we start the process of overhauling the tax system but in a calculated way so we are not harming businesses. we have the manage the budget cdo, include tax expenditures and in the same way spending are line items in the reviews today. they are going to have to take them the same as we do in our appropriations. as a former governor wanted to know whether actions we took were working and whether we needed to amend or improve them. in washington, it feels like everything that we do something, we think it needed to be done. never acknowledge it, made a mistake, did not work. if that's the case, why do we come back every year. if we're that good at doing our job, heck, we fixed everything. if we did not, then the reason i think our founding fathers had

us coming back is to make adjustments. to make adjustment you have to make admissions. i made a mistake. it did not work out. the information i got was wrong. we're going to fix this. that's what we're trying to say. in washington it's not different than west virginia. i told people if i got something wrong, i made a mistake, i can fix it. i didn't do it intentionally. i was doing it to try to make things better. it did not work out that way. let's go back, correct it. one way to address this is to reform the system. i will introduce legislation also to reestablish the office of technology assessment. up until 1995 this office provided nonpartisan information to congress on cost benefit analysis of regulations and regulatory changes. currently, the only source for the information is the white house's office of information and regulatory affairs. this is not whether you're democrat or republican, but it shouldn't come from the white house's offices when it comes time for us to make decisions in

congress. that's why we have three branchs of government. we have office of review existing rules and ways to identify available targets. there are already common sense bills out there that help us identify ways of the government to work more efficiently. last congress, i introduced a bipartisan legislation called duplication elimination, to save billions of taxpayer dollars by making it easier for congress to eliminate duplication and overlap across the federal government. the bill would require the president to submit a joint resolution to congress each year on how to carry out recommendations outlined in the government's accountability office. or the gao. for example, some years it could be as much as $300 to $400 billion they recommend in savings, and that's no duplication. we do nothing with this. within 90 days of the gao's report release, president must provide congress with a draft

proposal and report that explains which recommendations are excluded and why they are not included. more importantly, mr. president why did you pick some didn't take the recommendation to consolidate or eliminate and give us your reasoning for doing that, make it transparent so we understand. we think that would work very well. both chambers of congress vote on proposals within ten days and any savings achieved, any dollars achieved in the duplication act must be used for deficit reduction. we're making no attempt at all, and no one is worried about the $18 trillion deficit. we got to start earmarking dollars for that. this is a win-win bill ridding government waste, but holdings the government accountable for unnecessarily and unacceptable redun sandies. now, i know the fixes do not fix dysfunction, but it's a start. we are starting to see a glimmer of hope, that's why i decided to stay in the senate and not

return home to west virginia. if it was personal politics, i'd be out of here, first to tell you that. no place like home. with that said, public office and public service is truly what it refers to. it's public. i looked at it from thedon't -- if i'm governor again, i don't have the same feeling leaving. i feel like i accomplished something back home. i left the state in better shape than i received it. i don't feel like i accomplished enough here. i see changes, but i do not feel like i've done something. there's more to be done. i feel like we can make a difference, and we are making more of a difference. we're having more bipartisan talks, debating legislation, and working on amendments and i feel like there's more work to do. the campaign season a ramping up, negative ads from all over and political knives sharper than ever. i'm hopeful that some of my

colleagues join me in the pledge i took. me personally. i love to see a pledge everyone takes, but i took a pledge, joe why does the place not work? i'll give you a scenario here. human nature is this. it's hard to say no to your friends. it's truly hard. with that you don't have many friendships. from my stand point, i'll work with you. on top of that, every day i come to work, they expect me to make calls and raise money so that money is spent against my colleague. i'm a democrat. they expect every penny i raised to be used against the republican. they expect me to go on the trail and campaign against the republican. they expect all my republican colleagues and friends to do the same against me. how in the world on monday can you say, joe i have aed good idea here when i know last week you raised money spent money on ads against me, went to the home state and told people not to vote for me.

what makes you think i want to sit down with you on monday and work something else? that does not make sense. i will not raise a dollar or campaign against any colleague. i will not. no matter whether we agree or disagree. that makes a horrible atmosphere and horrible situation we live with up there, and if you want to know why it's dysfunctional is because everybody's afraid to talk, guilt by conversation. they are afraid to talk and tell them exactly what they are working on because it could be used against them in an ad. they see whatever they talk about coming up in an ad against them. that's a pledge i want the whole town engaged in. it used to be unwritten pledge. i heard that nobody campaigned against each other before. boy, that's not the case anymore. that's what i'm trying to do. there is not one colleague of mine who i disagree with, there's not one i can't work with. not one can say joe mansion's trying to beat me to take my job. not one.

that makes it easy for me to cross the aisle. i'm the bell weather person there. bring it to me. i tell them, well, let me talk to the colleagues to see if we can agree, and we start moving from there. we try to find commonality, and the governor's cause kus is one we work closely with. so this place is not working like senators told me it did. i'm not going to stop fighting. i think it's well worth the fight. we have challenges greater than this in our country, and we've overcome them all and i think we can overcome this too. i want to thank you, all, i appreciate it and we'll have questions now. thank you. [ applause ]

>> listen to me, senator mansion, and senator byrd was on my mind because you are so much -- we have been talking to senator mansion's staff for some months now about the interesting and valuable perspective that former governors bring to the work of the united states senate. one of our brookings advisers here is former governor from ohio, on the phone with him the other day. he was thrilled to hear that you're doing this. he was a former governor a former mayor and a senator and when he left the senate we lost a champion for sensible government reform in the senate.

i'm proud to see senator mansion stepping in the role today with his other former governors, both democrats and republican, and i must say i'm very impressed with the reform agenda he's outlined here. from processed agendas like returning to bipart san lunches and the government caucus itself to substantive reforms like including tax expenditures in the process. it's something we talked about for a long time and it needs to be something people are grappling with politically. to the return of the office of technology assessment one of the few truly valuable small, i think the whole thing had 90 people in it or something, small pieces of government well worth its weight and somehow got chopped. i'd like to open senator, by asking you a general question. why is it so hard to get the

united states congress interested in these common sense nonpartisan reform issues? >> well, as i said, they are not sexy. it's not something that makes you want to go out and vote or makes you want to write a check to help somebody, and right now, they are chasing the almighty dollar in the vote wherever it may be. there's a never ending cycle. everyone's in cycle all the time, where's it is a six year cycle we're in in the senate or two year for congress, four year sickle for president everyone's in election cycle. if you notice, when people say outrageous things and people of responsibility, you think that makes no sense, why say that? the country's so divided with the 24/7 news cycle, we're on overload. people don't know what to believe.

paranoia runs rampant. people talking about stuff you know, last thing i heard about was special forces are going to take over texas. [ laughter ] remember that one? >> yes. >> i couldn't believe when i heard that. i says, what? well, we need the national guard in texas watching special forces come in for training. they have been over for quite some time. i just kind of said, well, you know what? if you're that worried in texas about federal government and special forces, we'll take them all in west virginia because we still trust them. >> ha-ha! >> this is what it's gotten to. how do you get out of that? i don't know. i mean, i can honestly tell you i don't think citizens united did us any favor for our country. we're individuals now, and they talk about a very wealthy

individual having their own primary. that's where the super pac money's going to go. that's not how we do it. it's not how we do it back home in west virginia, but we don't have anybody that wealthy to go after. and if we did, it wouldn't be the right thing. we have limits of a thousand dollars, no corporation's $1,000 is the maximum for any candidate. i think that works well. >>ed goo edgood. let's go to tax reform for a moment. this notion of tax expenditures for many of you in the room, i'm sure know, that over the last several decades, the discretionary part of the budget slunk as a portion of the whole. we've legislated via tax expenditures, and those have gone way up. obviously, because then you -- somebody can go home and they can say, well, we gave you this but it's -- we did not increase government spending.

tax expenditures are obviously very seductive to politicians. do you think we can break that habit? it was such -- they snuck up with no one knowing what was happening. >> oh they knew what was happening. just not the general public. i have to tell you when i said we can't agree on the definition of revenue i'll tell you what i meant by that. i talk to friends all the time. as a governor as an individual, you know a bumgdget. you know what fixed costs are and variables are and what you have to play with, and you try to stay within the balance. we do the same here. we got to the point in 1997 basically, the author of working with the republican congress at that time under senator, under president clinton, and put a

budget together in a tax reform that basically put us on a path i think, of solvency. if we stayed under the clinton tax rates, we'd been totally tax debt free as a nation by 2012. 2012. we had debts two wars unfunded and it crumbled from there. i tell democrats, if you want to blame republicans, go ahead. they are at fault. i tell republicans you want to blame the democrats? go ahead, we're at fault. we all added to it. how do we fix it? we can. when you cannot agree on revenue, if you get a tax code, and this is where there was the three-pronged approach revenue expenditure, reform. you have to look at everything. everybody has to take a little bit of a haircut to get this thing back in place, but no one is willing to sacrifice a vote for that or a bad ad on tv against you, and i think what we

ought to do is get a bunch of senators thinking about retiring, who could care less about getting reelected and say listen, we'll sacrifice ourselves. we'll be the ones that will fix this thing for the next generation. we have done tax reform about every 17 years, we have not done major tax reform since 19 8 6. i tell the republican friends who took a no new tax pledge i said, i understand it's going to be hard for you, anything we do. how do we pay down $18 trillion? if i reduce the tax from 39 to 33, corporate from 35 to 25, 26 27 but get rid of the junk at the box, the credits offsets, the goodies you had written in over the years, those go away. at the end of the day, we spin off a trillion dollars, you are going to have dynamic growth, dynamic growth is going to happen, and when it happens, when you have confidence in a fair system. when you know the system's fair and you are treated fair the

sky's the limit because then you have confidence. you'll do things. with that said how do you spend a trillion? i talked to the republican friends. i said why don't you take this position? we have what we have a global competitive rate and personal and corporations, okay. they can't hide money, can't go offshore, pay here. we do that. we have money coming in. even though we just reduced the rate, friends say, hey, my rate was 39 but i had a lot of justify sets, and i pay more now at 33 than 39. that could be true for some. with that said, let me tell you how i made democrats spend it if you're a republican. 60 cents of every new dollar came in went to debt reduction. that's manageable. that's what's manageable. the other 40 cents of every dollar goes to infrastructure bank, only used for

infrastructure in the united states of america. nowhere else. that's it. you rebuild america. you got a cash flow into a bank. that's an 80/20 match coming off of that, and the 60 cents of every new dollar goes in debt reduction. the republicans have held the democrats' feet to the fire. you can't expand, basically entitlement programs. we were able to, as democrats put a fair system in, and we were ail to dedicate getting rid of our debt and you can have a balanced budget in 10 to 15 years, that why. i talked to them i said, can you go home and defend yourself? i i think i can. i said let's try it then. let's do something. >> that's great. >> it's a step. >> when you talk about retiring senators, that reminds me of the famous movie of abe lincoln that was just out a couple years ago where when he was counting up votes to pass the 13th amendment, what was the first thing he did? he found everybody getting ready to retire, and then --

>> a lot more courage then. >> that's right. we have a great audience here. a couple questions? we have time before the senator leaves. yessings yes, right there. say who you are, please. >> i'm grahm vise, with policy news website inside sources. senator, last week, the mayor came to washington outlining a different policy agenda than the one you just outlined. he talled for a $15 minimum wage sick leave, carrying the loophole. why are he and other senators wrong to advocate a liberal agenda, and what do you think is the future of the democratic party if it goes down that path? >> they are not wrong. first of all, the loophole is the biggest hoop hole we have. there's not a hemgdge fund today that even defends it. it should be done away with. we agree on that. the $15 minimum wage, i, you

know minimum -- i'm for raising the minimum wage. it should be indexed, a lot of things should be once they are back to where they should be, minimum wage is not going to raise the middle class. you know, we're not going to be able to. we are ready to pass one of the largest trade deals in history of this country. if we do that without looking at what we're doing and understanding what's happened to us, and hindsight's 20/20, 1992, my state of west virginia lost 31,000 from nafta. hard to say this is going to be different, so much better for you. look at where a lot of our jobs were lost, that was in the inner city, where a lot of the textile -- we had a lot of things going on. we lost it. it's now rampant with crime and high unemployment. how are we better off? look at that. minimum wage is what they think is the only way we can raise, you know, any type of quality life. we're in trouble.

the other thing is is that no one -- you have not hear anyone on the trail talk about drug abuse, have you? it's not sexy. you know why? there's not one of us in the room who does not know someone in the immediate family or extended family who had a prescription drug problem. it's rampant. we can't find people clean enough to work. our education is not pushing them to get skill sets to compete. there's a lot going on there. i know these -- i'm fine. i can look at progressive. i can look at conservatives, but somewhere in between, you got to, you know, i said this i'm not -- i'm not right on every issue, but i'm not wrong on every issue. i got something to contribute. when the mayor came god bless him. we want to hear all the ideas. you know? and elizabeth warren, a good friend of mine, and kewe teamed up together. trying to put balance on this thing, but on the other hand,

you can't chastise out there trying to get a return on investment, willing to take a risk, and we just got to make sure we can continue for this system of ours. it's unbelievable. the economy we have is $18 trillion. closest one to us is china, $10 trillion. everything falls off from there. everybody falls off, nobody above $5 trillion after that. that tells you we are the big people, the super power we have a super economy. people want in the marketplace. we have to protect jobs we have here and grossing jobs. that's the problem. i don't -- you know, a lot of things agree and disagree, but i find a balance because i talk to the people from the far left and the far right and tell them, i said, sounds good, but does not make sense. i can't sell that back home. >> let's see. right here. yes.

right there oh. that's okay. >> hey, i'm john, just here by myself, so i was wondering, kind of how you see the trend of your state over the long term. i noticed in previous election cycles, it's gone hard to the right, and i know lots of those probably in reaction to obama, and i was wondering, do you see things improving maybe after obama and then, also, i would like to hear your thoughts on mr. justice, who is going to run for that. yeah. >> first of all my state has, and since bill clinton was the last presidential candidate to win as a democrat in west virginia, we've gone, states went progressively republican since then even though we have 6 62% of all citizens registered democrats. you'd think with that many registered democrats, but i tell them, you know we're different

democrats in west virginia. you know, it's a -- i try to describe myself. i tell people, i says, i'm fiscally responsible and socially compassionate. i think that's most people. whether you're democrat or republican that kind of gravitates -- gathers a lot of people in that arena. with that said, social our social agenda basically is much more conservative than the national democrat agenda. with that, we have to be able to articulate that a little bit clearer. justice is a republican just turned democrat to run for governor. jim's one of the guys that crosses over. he's a great person created a lot of jobs, and he'll be a job creator. he thinks outside the box. that would be good. the democratic voters need to be

looking more. president obama brought in a climate agenda that we differ with. it's not because we don't want it clean. we want a clean climate. we want clean air, water all of that. there's a balance between environment and the economy. only thing i said, not attainable attainable, it's not reasonable. there's things in play that we don't have the technology in place. the federal government wants to invest and find technology that does a certain things and you decide you don't do it because it costs too much? i'm sorry. you're out of business. if the technology is not developed and you're doing everything you can to the best of what's available then we shouldn't push you out because you just don't like what you're doing. that's what's happening. when a coal miner and a family lose an $80,000 job, and all they got looking them in the face is a service job for $25,000, this is personal. it's got deep seeds. it's got -- there's just deep animosity towards the president and his policies and all the democrats are suffering from it.

>> let me ask the senator something i've been thinking about since you brought up this revenue positive jobs. or officers. it's interesting. i wonder how your republican colleagues feel about this. if you do, in fact go identify these, the argument then is made that for every, say, medicaid or medicare fraud invers itstigateinvestigator, we have to hire more. that's an argument for increasing the federal work force, which, of course, the republicans seem to be completely allergic to. do you think that if, in fact you could prove that there were in fact, revenue positive offices, you get momentum for helping them bring in more money? >> i'd like to think they would look at it that way. i would sure try. i sure think they would accept it, but, you know it makes sense if we can show you that rather than changing the whole makeup of social security and medicare and medicaid, reform

it. president clinton reformed medicaid reform. which helped send a positive message. you know five years and you're out, you have to find a job. we're not rehabilitating anybody. the thing that -- the culture of america is we don't seem to want to hold you responsible or accountable. you know we give you something. if it does not work, we give you twice as much. it's not like -- why don't you go to the doctor's visits. when i was governor i asked for a medicaid waiver because i couldn't keep up the cost. i had a lot of people who needed help. i told the federal government, do not make me take care of the healthy poor person the way i think i have a moral responsibility to take care of a sick poor person. that sick poor person has very little options. the healthy person, if i get them back in the work stream, they can get off their -- get on their feet and do something. i called it mountain choices

rewards. i rewarded you. you know, pain and suffering for dental and for eye care, and i said, if you went to the doctor's visit and not the emergency room, if you joined the healthy choice, healthy lifestyle lifestyle, ate properly, and you exercised, and you did things you -- i'd have you ready to go back in the work force. federal government fought me tooth and nail against that type of a responsible, reasonable approach. just makes sense. if we cannot hold people accountable or responsible i tell my republican friends let us try. i said, before you want to privatize this or that you can't privatize, you know social security or medicare. i'm 65 70 years old and now i have the best deal? my negotiating days are over by then. i'm not a good negotiator as i was a little while ago. don't put me in that position because i'll get hurt. that's just the humanistic approach to some of these

things. doesn't even ring true. we keep looking for fraud social security, we got more people signing up for just total disability than ever before. there's people that know, i can go anywhere in the country you know somebody's receiving a government check that you don't think should be? everybody raises their hand yeah, i know somebody i know somebody. how come -- why don't we check? come back, reevaluate if they are totally disabled. you know, you give lifetime award, lifetime check, that's the jackpot. you dope hit the lottery. those types of things, you know, we have to look at that. you know, and what -- tell me why, on social security that we've capped -- is it 112 now? all we have to do is get that up to where, you know the average of $250,000, and index it from there, and that we have cash flow that keeps us going for

quite some time. that's not offensive. you know as a senator and congressman, we make 174. at 174,000, our pay changes seven months into it. seven or eight months i learned how to live off six or seven months. that does not hurt me taking that out. that just makes sense. we talk about these things, and people have a hard time understanding it. i've talked about -- i threw this out social security they talked about cost of living increases. let me tell you, there's certain people that have to have a cost of living increase because that's all they got. there's other people that might not. my parents did not need the cost of living increase. my parents would have been find. my aunt wouldn't have been fine. you think, okay in real world

how do you make it work? say anybody that has income of greater than $250 or even $300% of the poverty guidelines, 60,000 are they exempt? in one is exempt from getting their social security. you'll get a social security check. if you're below a certain level you get the cola. if you're above, you might. we got in all this other stuff you know all the fight and arguments going on. with the colas and no one's having the real hard discussions on this stuff. >> yes. >> i think we go to her right there. >> yes, right there. >> yes, ma'am? >> hi, i'm sharon, a moderate, and last wednesday, ross roland had a meeting with me, the trained legend that did the american freedom train and bicentennial reagan's appointment, and he basically staid our meeting was god's way of acting anonymously because there are republicans that want

to fund and track infrastructure. they are scared. they are nervous. there's experts in both parties that want to help provide information to senate and congress. is there a list of politicians open to hearing from a bipartisan coalition that would like -- >> well, what we do on that, any time you have somebody that wants to get a point across and really has something look at the committee that it would adhere to. if it's commerce that's probably commerce committee. get a senator, myself, i'm on commerce. ask them to present at a public hearing. come to a public hearing or come to a subcommittee hearing. they can get their point across much better that way and see if it's worthwhile than trying to run the halls and find a couple people sympathetic towards them. i recommend them coming to any

committee member and asked to be on a subcommittee panel to present their views. that would be the best way. >> great. senator, thank you so much. you have laid out a pretty amazing reform agenda here today. i'm hoping that the former governor's caucus is going to become a real force in the united states senate, and remember it is a bipartisan caucus because there's some republican former governors as well as democrats, and therefore, brookings is at your disposal to help you make government as good as it possibly can be. >> i have to say at brookings we have used you quite extensively. all of us, democrats and republicans, looking to find common sense in the middle of the road, if you will. it is going to have to be people speaking out i mean, before we hit the proverbial wall and the financial wall is the one i'm concerned about. you know, wall street can't be

doing this tremendous when everyone else is not getting the bump they should be getting out of it, and before long, people will lose confidence and when we lose confidence, there's a big switch. when there's a switch people are reluctant and scared. when that happens there's serious problems on your hands as we can in 2007. we're watching closely. we'll be involved. i enconcernurage you, be followed in the office, web pages, commerce, web pages are a great way to get to us. our staff monitors that and gets it right to the concerns that you might have, and some great ideas that we get from you all government of the people, by the people, and for the people. it's not just congress, but you all. stay involved. thank you. >> thank you senator. [ applause ]

[ applause ] [ inaudible ] for he today that sheds blood with me shall be my brother. be he their so vile, this day shall gentle his condition, and gentlemen in england now abid shall think themselves a curse that they were not here. >> one drop of blood drawn from thy country's bossom should

grieve thee more than streams of foreign gore. >> director of the shakespeare library, michael whitmore, talking about politicians and how they use quotes in speeches. >> sometimes you go with the music of the words, the poetic images the sound of the rhymes, and also in the way as senators do, you are able to pause, linger over a long phrase, and then stop and keep going. i think he's really using the rhythms of the language, which is something that shakespeare did so brilliantly so he can take english and he can put it into high gear at one moment, and then he can slow down and that's something that shakespeare lets you do if you're a politician. >> sunday night, 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span's "q&a." >> good night, good night, parting is sweet sorerowsorrow, and it really is. at a recent summit on youth

violence, the mayors of camden, new jersey, oakland, california, and minneapolis as well as other local officials discuss efforts to keep young people and their cities safe from violent crime. this was part of an event hosted by the national forum on use violence prevention, a network of mu mispalnicipal agencies and governments. this is an hour and 20 minutes. captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2008 captioning performed by vitac