so i'm going to take these two questions, this gentleman first, would you like to -- >> thank you for the presentation. freeman daniels with the state department. can the panel incorporate the role that drugs play in this regional cooperation among the various actors? it's been alluded to but can you speak more about how it might be undermining or enabling, which ever it might be, this whole process of economic development and insecurity? >> thank you, and we have one more question down here in the front row. >> my name is mohammed. the question is that -- this is about the russian ties to the taliban. the consent is that is there a to a potential that russia with its contact with the taliban will turn it to either front

against their common enemy, that is the west, united states. or if there is, what's the level of the potential? >> thank you very much. what would like to go first in addressing either question or both? >> about russia i'll just say that i think that they have tested the waters in the past three or four years i've noticed that international conferences there were lot of -- on afghanistan, there were a lot more russian participation informing people in moscow and the policymakers about what people are thinking and saying. but i don't think that they have the resources like in syria or other places. they have committed the resources to do that. now if for example they might be hedging bets, for example, if the situation goes really bad in afghanistan and for some reason

the government in kabul crumbles or the american commitment is no longer there, then maybe they're thinking of it but i think there is kind of two or three schools within russia there's one that is all about engagement and talking to the taliban and all that then there are other elements who might have other designs but i frankly think people dealing with the open source information, we really don't know that. >> thank you. scott? >> i think i'll focus on the role of drugs. i think it was mentioned earlier that one of the key roles of drugs that is more of interest to the u.s. and to western donors is its revenue stream in support of the taliban, number one and also its corrupting influence on the afghan governance which i think is key to stability and part of the solution, number two. i think the more direct regional

interest on the drug trade is in iran where a lot of drugs transit through that country and addiction to drugs coming from afghanistan and probably elsewhere is a social problem in iran so they have been quite vigilant and have made public statements about their interest in reducing that trade and also russia which ultimately is a lip yent and traffic point through to europe. they have been quite vocal on the drugs issue. so i see it affecting those two countries most directly in terms of their own national interest. finally to mention, apart from the corrupting influence the drug trade has in afghanistan, it's also becoming a public health issue because use and addiction within afghanistan is significantly on the rise. >> claire, you have to last word. >> i think it's become a -- it's been covered. >> okay, thank you so much for joining me and can you join me in giving warm applause to all three panelists?

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the federal reserve's open market committee will meet today and after that meeting, fed chair janet yellen will give a news conference. when it gets under way, you can see it live on our companion network c-span. at 8:00 eastern tonight on c-span, minnesota congressman keith ellisson is running for chair of the democratic national committee. vermont senator bernie sanders and american federation of teachers president randy weingarten also speaking at the event. that starts at 8:00 eastern tonight on c-span. c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979 c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and

is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. the center for american progress hosted a conversation recently about the future of anti-poverty policies under the incoming trump administration. we'll hear from journalists, activists and union officials about potential changes to social safety net programs. hello, everyone, and welcome. i'm the vice president of the poverty to prosperity program at the center for american progress. president-elect trump campaigned on a pledge to make america great again and promised working families that he was on their side. unfortunately, he hasn't even taken the oath of office yet and it's becoming more and more apparent that his entire campaign was a bait-and-switch. he campaigned on creating good jobs but rather than propose real policies to track down on unfair trade practices and level

the playing field upward, he's picking his own winners and losers, lavishing tax give aways on companies still shipping jobs overseas and refusing to divest from his massively conflicted global real estate empire. he campaigned on raising wages but his cabinet picks are who's who of ceos and tycoons hostile to working families. and while he's tweeting at the cast of "saturday night live," the public is distracted from the dirty work in the swamp. speaker ryan and majority leader mcconnell are making plans to take health coverage away from 22 million american, roll back consumer protections and dismantle affordable housing, nutrition assistance and other services families turn to in times are tough, especially in an economy that's working for the wealthy few. all this while proposing to give tax give aways to the billionaires. the attacks on working families are coming fast and on multiple front bus the progressive community is not standing by. i am pleased to introduce "washington post" reporter greg sergeant, writier of "the plum

line" who will be interviewing neera tanden on what is at stake for working families in the trump administration and where progressives go from here. >> good morning, everybody. >> hey, greg. >> how are you doing? >> pretty good. [ laughter ] thanks, melissa, for that great intro. >> so now what? >> now -- is that your first question? >> yes. >> now i think we have to hold donald trump accountable for the promises he made to working class families and hold him accountable for the agenda that he's putting forward so far. as melissa outlined, he made a

lot of promises to be the spokesperson and the advocate for families that were struggling in this economy and at least so far we have seen that his promises seem to have false but we have to see an agenda and if that agenda includes block granting medicaid, massive tax give aways to the wealthy, then it's our job to try to advocate for those families and make sure they do better not worse under donald trump. >> it's sot of interesting, right? you have to distinguish between the promises he actually did make and the ones he didn't make. he told everyone pretty clearly he was going to repeal obamacare and give the wealthy a much larger tax break than any republican candidate preceding him ever promised. where do you take that from there? >> yeah. so that is an important point to distinguish i mean, we are now hearing about block granting or

privatizing medicare, donald trump actually campaigned as a person who would support the safety net and while he did mention block granting medicaid i have to say that there was not a robust policy debate on what that would really mean for people. he did talk about repealing the aca, but i think one of the challenges of this election was that a lot of people who voted for him didn't take his policies particularly seriously. you've even highlighted some of the voters, trump voters, who would lose health care under the affordable care act who are saying they didn't expect him to do that. >> i'll just tell the audience about that real quick. we had asked gallup to cut their numbers to get as close as we could to a rough estimate of how many trump -- it's very imperfect methodology. what they came up with was they looked at the drop in the

uninsured rate among non-college whites with a household income of below 36,000 and it turned out the uninsured rate had developed 10 points among that demographic. now we don't know if they're all trump voters and so forth and so on but to the degree that they did probably vote -- disproportionately at the very least. >> and what was interesting about that and i want to ask you about how this can be used in the debate, it's often sort of seen as something that, especially medicaid expansion, helped minorities and especially latinos and african-americans and no question that the drop in uninsured rate has been enormous among those demographics but it's also been enormous among non-college whites who have low incomes. you've got many republican legislators who have states where a lot of people stand to lose coverage whether the medicaid expansion or subsidies. how do you make that stick?

these voters, are they going to be able to be in a position to hold their own representatives accountable? will they even know what happened? >> well, i think the thing is one thing that i focus on is that we had an instance with the grandfather clause a few years ago which actually only affected about 200,000, 300,000 people and as you recall there was a giant kerfuffle around that -- around -- there's another word i could use but i'll go with kerfuffle and i think the issue for us is right now just to lay out where the debate is, the republicans would like to do a repeal and then a replace three years later. and you know that's relatively unprecedented to do a giant policy change in one year and then wait for the answer to that

policy change after the next election. it's three years because they want to do it precisely after the midterms and in that meantime there will be a lot of people who lose health care, cap has done a paper -- did a paper on this a few days after the election which showed that the insurance markets will move into chaos once repeal has been issued as law so our point is that, you know, we think those voters will be affected in those two years. not voters, people will be affected just in that period and it will be because of what republicans did and it will be much more than a couple hundred thousand. we're talking millions of people who will be priced out of the market where the insurance markets will start collapsing where people who have -- receiving health care that they need to survive. cap has just been collecting stories and we have 1,100 stories, people all around the country who rely on health care, people relying on health care

now for life-saving medication and coverage and those people are going to be at risk. and i think that is really -- goes to the broader point which is this was not a policy-rich debate in the election, as you well covered a fair number of trump voters voted for his agenda. we did a poll on election day and a few days afterwards of both clinton and trump voters. 49% of trump voters were sending a message of change to washington. only 29% were supporting his agenda. you have a mixture of voters, people who supported his agenda and people who really just thought he wasn't serious about a lot of the things he said and i think a lot of that is -- a lot of those chickens are coming home to roost. >> some of the anecdotal reporting would seem to support this idea that -- i remember there was one rust belt voter quoted in the "times" after the election saying pretty much that a relative who was very sick was

going to lose health care if the law were repealed and then i believe this woman said something like "i don't believe he'll do it, i think he was bluffing." >> yeah. >> now what i wanted to ask you, though, this is going to be a backward-looking question about what happened in this election. hillary clinton and democratic senate candidates and surrogates and so forth, every democrat who amplified his or her voice said over and over that this guy is a scam, he's going shaft working people, our agenda is better for them. why didn't working class white voters in particular hear that message? is there a flaw with the democratic agenda? is it not ambitious enough? you mention your polls showed a lot of these people were sending a message of just generic change. did democrats signal clearly enough that they're dissatisfied with the status quo or -- and why did they creede that groundo

trump? where was the failing? >> i think in any really close election light this where it's 70,000-vote difference there's a multitude of things you can look to. it seems relatively clear to me that as pointed out in that poll, a lot of people weren't voting on particular issues but more of a change message and i take that point that perhaps progressives or the candidates or the whole part yy didn't foc enough on a change message i would say there's a million reasons you can point to, we're learning additional news over the weekend but for us going forward i think the goal has to be -- now that democrats are a minority party, we have an opportunity to be really clear both on economics and as well on political reform and changing

the system. we have a candidate -- we had a candidate who's now has an incoming administration in which he promised to drain the swamp and has actually in all of his cabinet appointments, whether it's the department of labor, the treasury, et cetera, seems to be filling the swamp with people who were his donors who have a record of opposing and actually a record of actually making working people's lives harder. whether it's the treasury secretary who foreclosed on people during the financial crisis or secretary of labor who actually was fined by the department of labor for not paying the wages he owed his workers. i can't think of a -- i can't think of a starker case going forward. i think the real challenge this is that if people didn't take seriously what trump was saying during the election and a lot of

people thought he was kind of bluffing on these things, he wouldn't do these things and i think of a lot of americans are surprised to wake up to this kind of administration and it's up to progressives to make a clear case, a positive agenda on economics and political forum but also a strong critique of how he has betrayed the promises he made already. >> can i ask about that -- you know, heading into the next elections? i think the midterms are looking pretty tough for democrats al though it looks to me like the 2018 gubernatorial elections are going to be a chance for some major gains and a chance to try and hone this oppositional response. but how can democrats improve -- in the short term they're going to be able to be the party that's standing up for medicare against privatization and potentially social security and against taking health care away from 20 million but beyond that,

going into 2020, what needs improvement here? how can democrats kind of craft a stronger more ambitious much more reform-minded kind of agenda? >> so i think we'll have some additional thoughts on this later this week but i think our view is that -- at the center for american progress, we're putting forward a memo on this later but i think our view is that we do need to claim the mantle of "reform." reforming our economics, reforming our politics and in that space i think we have to argue really two things that we have an agenda that does speak to voters and their economics and making their lives better. we'll have a much stronger contrast now than you're able to offer at the end of a democratic administration, we'll have a strong contrast with republicans but i do think we have to focus

on how to improve people's daily lives with harder, clearer arguments. i think one of the things that donald trump showed us in this lix is, you know, a very clear message of i'm going to improve your life, i'm going to get a job for you versus a more complicated answer about wages and costs is a challenge and that's something we're working on now and we'll have answers for folks going into the future. >> i guess one of my concerns on that front is that donald trump did talk about preserving medicare and suiciocial securitt relentlessly it was about jobs whereas if you're going to monday? a more nuanced way to globalization and automation and the need to transition coal a nuanced response is not that satisfying it comes across as

something like, sorry, you're basically screwed. >> i take the point that it's a little bit harder in people's lives and i think, look, the reality is that, you know, i'm proud of the work that cap has done over the last several years to point out and we've talked about this before that the real challenge is around the middle-class squeeze which is stagnant wages and rising costs. but i also take the point that sometimes a much clearer answer to folks is easier than a 10-point plan and that's something that progressives have to focus on but also, you know, i think a lot of voters voted for him because they thought he was a different kind of politician, he was attacking the republicans, he bunt taking money from people himself, the whole drain the swamp message and that message has been almost immediately belied by just the last several weeks of this

transition speared you in terms of the people he's putting in power. if you'd told people ahead of time that he would have the richest cabinet, that most of his cabinet would be donors to him, that it would be not just billionaires and gozillionaires, that would have given some people pause in voting for this change agent. >> well, i guess i wonder -- this question is a real one. he explicitly said during the election that, you know, i have milked the system. i've ripped it off. i've turned politicians into my little pawns. he said that, right? openly again and again and again. he said "that empowers me to perform." and we all laughed and said what a joke, ha ha. but now he won. so i guess i wonder whether there's going to be a similar dynamic setting in with some of these cabinet picks you know, maybe these same types of voters

don't really buy our argument that there are corporation connections and so forth that somehow show their actual priorities. how do you -- >> i think that's a fair question. i think if you listen to trump, he said that the -- i think it was both things, i knew how to make the system -- i knew how to use the system and then he said now i'm going to take my knowledge and work for you. >> right. and i think that's the part that we have to really test which is it does not seem to me that he's using the system to work for us but rather using the system to work for him and so -- and all of his folks and so i think you're absolutely right. we need to test that proposition and we may be wrong but you can't argue that this is an

economic populist election and that populism is on the rise and then say really what people voted for was ensuring that a butch of gazillionaires control all the levers of power in our country. we have to test that proposition. my sense is, you know, he has -- continues to have pretty low approval ratings, he's still governing in a very divided way and we have to see -- i think it will be tested how much people approve of it. people don't seem to be broadly swelling in support of this cabinet he's assembling and i hid the that's the role of orlgss like ours to point out not just that they're bad people but what they will do and what it means in the lives of real people and families. the department of labor is supposed to be a department that advocates for working families. it advocates for working families by ensuring they get the wages they need, that

they're protected in the workplace and he's put someone in the department to run it that is his entire philosophy is antithetical to that. whether it's popular or not it's up to organizations like ours to point out that that is wrong and that does not meet the needs of families and it will be up to the public to see whether that makes sense or not. >> can i ask, are there perils ahead when it comes to democratic unity. in 2018 you're going to have a number of democratic senators who are up in red states. i wonder if there's going to be some kind of temptation on their part to not draw as hard a line as the democratic leadership might want so let's say he goes forward with privatizing medicare and let's say he goes -- well we know they're going to go forward with obamacare repeal. is there a danger that some democrats get a little -- chuck schumer said to me the other day that they would not participate

in any obamacare replacement that falls significantly short in terms of human welfare and will there be a temptation on the part of some of these squishier democrats to maybe go along? >> yeah, i hear what you're saying. >> and the infrastructure agenda, too, is a problem because if he rolls out some sort of privatization/cronyism scream, y scheme, you might want democrats who want a photo-op with him in a red state. >> it really matters what the issue is. the affordable care act is a perfect example. i was really pleased to see senator schumer talk about keeping democrats together on that and what we'll see is that over the next couple of weeks -- next couple of months if they do pass a repeal and replace later -- which i hope they don't do because that would be utterly irresponsible to their own

constituents. let's remember every member of congress has constituents who are receiving health care through the affordable care act and it seems to me like a fundamental responsibility of government to tell people what you'll do. that's not just my view but 90% of americans think that's what they should do. but the answer -- the reality of that is that if they do do a repeal and replace two years later, you will see unraveling in the health care markets and then i don't know that it will be in democrats' best interests to say "i'm part of this problem, too" by rolling up their sleeves to solve it. i think it will be up to republicans to solve it. medicare is another example, these privatization schemes. i don't think there's appetite amongst democrats, even in red state, to take on medicare because truthfully no american thought privatizing medicare was part of the debate. you'll see this in polls now. no one expected this to happen

and they didn't take it seriously as an option so i don't think you'll see -- on infrastructure it depends on what the proposal is. if it's what he's proposed so far democrats will offer an alternative which is an actual infrastructure plan so my view of this is that in the -- even in the last couple of weeks donald trump could have done more to help unify the country but we've seen with his radical picks and proposals to undo the social safety net or the republicans' proposals to undo the social safety net that he's deciding to be a president of the minority of the country and not the whole country and it's up to progressives to offer that alternative which is will be clearer and easier to do in a trump administration. >> can i ask you about that in the context of obamacare, one can envision where they go forward and there is chaos,

republicans try to replace it that's along the lines of tom price's plan that has much fewer protections. i guess there's a role at that point since a lot of conservatives won't support replacement because it spends money on helping people get health care, you know, there might be a role for progressives to roll out these alternatives that you're talking about. like a real infrastructure plan. i don't know what a real obamacare replacement would look like other than obamacare but like a real -- >> real plan on wages. absolutely. i think as we go -- obviously the next few months we're going to be focused on fighting off as many of the terrible things that they want to do to the social safe any net. again, i do not think americans thought that we would have such a radical departure on some basic issues like medicare and

medicaid. but i do think that democrats will be able to offer really clear alternatives. infrastructure is a perfect example. donald trump's proposal around infrastructure so far is one in which he gives massive tax credits to private companies, a lot of -- a lot of hedge funds and private equity firms to induce them into a market and the only way they can recoup those funds is fees on middle-class -- basically tolls and fees on users so basically the taxpayer is paying on both ibds, they're paying through a tax credit then paying higher fees. that makes literally no sense. it's much better to have just direct investment so that's an opportunity for democrats to put forward a robust -- not a small, not an incrementalist, a robust infrastructure package which will really help people around the country. one of the ironies is that an infrastructure program as envisioned by donald trump will

do very little for rural parts of the country. it whether only help big programs and cities which i'm in favor of but i think we should do more for folks around the country so that's why that gives people an opportunity to really lay out their -- progressives lay out an alternative vision of how they are going to better represent people. when you stand back, it's a lot easier to offer that alternative when you're dealing with a trump administration. >> well, i wonder if there's a role for progressive groups in the event that democrats -- some democrats get -- >> they have to push zblahard. >> to demand that the democratic party remain united behind what you're calling robust public expenditure plans. >> i think there's a role. if you think about where we are eight years ago at this time, people -- you had a democratic president who was just actually elected by a strong majority of

the country and people wanted the country to pull together and i think in this moment you have a person who was elected by a minority of the country and hasn't done anything to kind of try to be the leader for the whole country. is really -- not just in his tweet bus in his cabinet appointments, in his public face and language and the things he says everyday it's clear he's trying to govern for the people -- for just half of the country and not even that in some of his policies. it's up to progressives to provide a strong alternative vision and to say to democratic leaders that we need you to hold strong on these core values. >> i think you'll see some pretty -- some potentially really racially charged stuff happening too. trump's sweet the other day where he said millions of people voted illegally struck me and a

number of voting rights advocates i talked to as a signal a mayor wave of voter presentation is coming and we've seen that used as 2 justification for a lot of these on the state level that in addition to potential persecution of muslim which is i think is a genuine possibility -- >> and what he's going do on undocumented. >> right so this is going to be an occasion for democrats to strong -- mount a strong stand in defense of persecuted minorities. >> and i think there's been a debate in the sort of -- i think a little bit of an unhealthy debate in the democratic party or amongst progressives between so-called identity politics and struggles for economic justice and to me, in my view you can't -- the democratic party cannot turn its back on some of these core values. i mean, this is a party that has

represented the struggle for civil rights for 50 years and to turn its back on those fights as we see particular groups under attack whether it's muslims or undocumented immigrants or an effort to disenfranchise minority voters or people of color would be a travesty and would prove to people that people are just politicians, not worthy of core beliefs or acting on core beliefs. at the same time we are going to have to be called on to do both -- protect civil rights and also articulate an affirmative argument against him on economic and i also would argue political reform grounds and i think that's -- and truthfully we've called that kind of work in the past where you knit together a civil rights strategy with an economic justice strategy, the bobby kennedy coalition. so you pull together people who are both, you know, working

class families of all colors -- white, african-american, latino and also focus but never turn your back on the struggles of people of color and i think he racialized this race and he created a lot of anger between different groups and -- but i think there are a lot of his voters who we can reach with a stronger economic and political reform message. >> can i ask you one last question about that? i agree the debate has largely been a false choice between on the one hand the -- speaking to the economic anxieties of blue-collar whites and on the other playing quote/unquote identity politics but couldn't democrats and all of us be doing a better job of explaining that, you know, a lot of the stuff that we're saying on behalf of minority groups actually is an economic argument, to?

>> absolutely. i totally agree. >> that seems to be lost in the discussion and i don't know how to fix that. >> but, see, this is a perfect example. we've champion add higher minimum wage for a long time. that helps a lot of voters. a lot of white voters, a lot of african-american voters, a lot of latino voters, a lot of the policies we've championed around child care and paid leave, those policies help families of color but also help white families. i think the truth is that we can be bolder in what we're saying and clearer in our message, absolutely. is but i don't think we should fall to the charge that that was targeted in any particular group, it never was. these programs we've put forward have always been around helping all families and i think it's

sad and honestly pathetic that he was able to racialize this race in so many ways but i also think he'll have now the burden of governing and people will be able to see whether his policies truly help them or not and so far it seems like much of his -- the republican agenda which he seems to be signing off on is going to hurt the very people that he said he would help. and that's -- and that's a tragedy. thanks, greg! >> okay. and on that happy note, for those guys. come on up. [ applause ] >> thank you for framing what's at stake for working families in the trump administration and where progressive cans go from hear. before we turn to the panel discussion and delve further into some of these themes i want

to introduce stephanie land who will offer up a personal reflection that will ground the discussion because while we have all the data in the world to underscore why the trump agenda is a disaster for working families, stephanie knows firsthand how important it is to provide basic living standards to workers struggling to make ends meet. the rollback of labor rights, the cuts to core supports of working families, the appointment of an attorney general who voted for funding of violence against women act, these are nabstractions to stephanie. not abstractions. her work has appeared in the "new york times," the "washington post," the guardian, vox, salon and many other outlets. she focuses on social and economic justice as a writing fellow through the center for community change and to the economic hardship reporting project. her memoir, "maid, a single mother's journey from cleaning house to finding a home" is forthcoming and she holds a bachelor's degree in english with a creative writing emphasis

from university of montana and lives with her two daughters in missoula. welcome, stephanie. thank you so much for joining us. [ applause ] >> thank you to the center for american progress for this opportunity to speak in front of all of you today. six years ago i lived with my then three-year-old daughter in a studio apartment. during the day i worked full time as a maid cleaning the houses of the wealthy and at night i stayed up completing course work for several online college classes. i worked full time and i was able to do that because of support that helped me pay for child care. i worked full time and yet i still had to turn to food assistance to help feed myself and my daughter because, after paying rent, gas, and utilities, most months i only had $50 left for things like toilet paper and

soap. that december it got so cold i had to close the french doors to keep the area we both slept in. i'm so sorry. i had the close the french doors to the area we both slept in and fold out the small couch i had found for free because i couldn't afford to keep our entire space warm. it snowed quite a bit that winter. more than my 1983 honda civic could handle. for an entire week i tried to will the snowplows to come down the steep little alley our apartment sat above every day i missed work meant another bill i wouldn't be able to pay -- first electric and then rent the reason i was in this situation, a couple years earlier i fled from my daughter's father when an argument we had prompted me to call the police for safety. suddenly i found myself homeless with a six-month-old. i worked as a landscaper while we moved from a homeless shelter to transitional housing and finally our own apartment.

we couldn't have made it out of the shelter without help from a now-elusive grant called tenant-based rental assistance. eventually i was able to find a full-time job that paid $8 an hour while going to school full time but $8 an hour is not enough to provide for a family. even with a full-time job we had to go without basics. i had to budget for when i could purchase a new sponge or even paper towels. finally after that cold winter in our tiny apartment, thanks to terned income tax credit and the child tax credit i was able to buy toothbrushes, curtains, a desk to do home work on, blankets and a bed i still sleep on today. i bought a heated mattress pad so i didn't have to heat the whole room. my daughter mia and i slept at night cozy and warm but i still lived in a fog of hopelessness,

anxiety and doubt. i didn't have a family who could financially or even emotionally support me, my daughter's father still tried to cut me down every chance that he could. lifelines like food assistance, rental assistance and tax credits were the things that kept us afloat and helped me get back on my feet and now the assistance that helped us thrive faces the biggest threats to their existence when donald trump and his cabinet come in at a time families need it the most. the safety net has already been under attack by republican legislatures such as house speaker paul ryan. these politicians will likely walk the programs that were our lifeblood to their death march. we can't let this happen and that's why i continue to tell my story. a month after i graduated college i gave birth to a second little girl. eventually we were able to move into warm, safe, and secure housing i could afford and it meant i could focus on my chosen

career as a writer. somehow my gamble in getting an english degree paid off. in july of 2015, an article i wrote about those years i spent as a maid went viral. it not only brought in the interest of one of the top literary agents in the country, it launched my career. over the next few months, my bylines grew rapidly. i started working as a writing fellow through the center for community change and with barbara's hardship reporting project. i published pieces where i admitted something i was most ashamed of -- when i fell on hard times i relied on food stamps. i wrote about our struggle to survive and the constant stress when the wages weren't enough to provide for my family through my position at the center for community change, i learned how to write opinion pieces and the economic hardship reporting project supported a piece that ended up in the "new york times." last summer on my youngest's

daughter's second birs day a accepted an offer from a book group from my memoir. it's story of not only finding happiness in the little things but of the grit it takes to find resources to survive then leap to the other side where you no longer need them. i worked my way through school all the while raising two children but i know i couldn't have done that without basic living standards that helped me get ahead. paul ryan may think his plan is a better way but it's anything butment his agenda does nothing to create jobs or raise wages. it cut essen shl resourpss like food stamps and medicaid, kicking people when they were already down. this is a population who needs good quality food and not whatever has the most calories at the cheapest price. they need regular checkups and access to prescription medications because they can't afford vitamins or regular exercise. their backs ache from long hours

at jobs that no one else wants to do but are vital to keep our society running smoothly. maybe donald trump and paul ryan need to work one of those jobs. maybe they need to stand out in the cold of december ringing a bell in a santa suit. maybe they need to go home to an unheated house with bare cupboards, still hungry from their one meal a day at a soup kitchen. they need to go home to children who won't have dinner, children who had to sit in an office during recess because their family couldn't afford to get them a coat that winter. maybe donald trump and paul ryan need to spend the night on a fold out couch snuggled up next to their families for warmth only to wake up the next day and do it all over again. thank you for listening. [ applause ]

>> my name is rebecca valles, the managing director of the poverty to prosperity program at the center for american progress. it's my privilege to host this distinguished panel of experts. bob greenstein is the president of the center on budget and policy priorities which he founded in 1981 and formerly served as administrator of the food and nutrition service under president carter where he designed the landmark food stamp act of 1977. he's a recipient of the macarthur fellowship. to his right is steve christburg, the director of research and collective bargaining at afscme where he oversees the collective bargaining pension benefits and this follows three decades in various roles as a professional staff person in the labor movement. bishop dwayne royceter is the

political director of people improving communities through organizing, this is a national network of congregations representing 50 different denominations and faith traditions across 150 cities and 17 states. he's also senior pastor and founder emeritus of living water united church of christ in philadelphia, one of my favorite cities, personally. michelle taylor is the manager of witnesses to hunger, a research and advocacy project founded in philadelphia and now spreading to other cities. witnesses partners with the real experts on hunger -- mothers and caregivers of young children who have experienced hunger and poverty and use photography to frame the issues moers important to them and their children. she's also an award-winning writer. finally last but very much not least, steve sabner is the director of public policy at the center for community change which sponsors the writing fellow program that stephanie participates in. ccc is a national organization

focused on building the power and capacity of low-income workers to change their communities and public policies for the better and he has a long career helping fight for policies including at the center for law and social policy. that was a mouthful, thank you for bearing with me but this is a panel that deserves to be laud add little bit. i want to get right down to it. we've heard a lot so far about both the importance of policies that are critical to working families as well as programs that support them when wages aren't enough. we heard from neera and her conversation with greg sargent about the promises that trump made when he was campaigning, too many to many of those workers. steve, i want to start with you by asking, do you think trump is going to keep those promises to save jobs and make life better for working families, as the head of a workers party? >> no.

[ laughter ] >> would you care to elaborate? >> sure i would. i think we learned about mr. trump is that we probably shouldn't listen as much to him as watch him. you know, neera spoke a little bit about some of his cabinet appointee appointees and the direction that process has taken us but we can step back a bit from trump and i think he's much more of a product or consistent with the modern republican party more generally. he's really not a radical actor other than his rhetoric and by that i mean the republicans have a vision of governance which is that they believe the purpose of government is to facilitate commerce and the making of money with the belief the more money we make in society the more will trickle down. they may reject that characterization, but i believe it's a fair one. the democratic party is a much more muddled message and i don't think it's monolithic.

what it ought to be at its core is that government ought to be used to deal with what economists call external altys. we ought to mitigate unintended consequences and adverse effects of our effects of our capitalist system so cub lifted up. we ought to have child labor laws, clean water, clean air, climate change. those are democratic principles because we recognize if we continue to search for commercial development and extra profit, we won't address societal problems. so if we bring that to the working class, it's a broader issue of the working class. we know we have a labor nominee that doesn't believe in regulation. a dilatant who is going to run the department of education, who destroyed the school system in detroit by simply creating choice without accountability. we can go on and on and on through these cabinet appointees. what do they really mean? it means those of us in society

who don't have independent means and wealth are not going to have the opportunities to succeed and get ahead. i firmly believe the trump administration is part of a broader republican agenda that essentially has a blind eye towards the society that considers economic justice, human rights and really externalities that, you know, are complicit in capitalist system. >> bob greenstein, i want to turn to you next as we continue the discussion of what we expect to wo and what's at stake for working families. you've done a number of public appearances over the past few weeks where you have spoken very boldly about in your 30 to 40 year career working on these issues. you have never seen a greater threat to safety net programs which, as stephanie discussed, are really there for people when wages are not enough or work is not possible. why have you characterized what we're seeing as the greatest

threat to these programs? and particularly following the election of a man who claimed and promised he wasn't going to cut social security, medicare, medicaid and so forth? >> i'm not sure he ever prompted he wasn't going to cut medicaid. seems to be going straight down the path to do just that. if you look at the whole picture, let's start with last year's house republican budget and some of the budget proposals that president-elect trump issued during the campaign and are on his website. so we know that a significant part of the budget has the wonky in the beltway term nondefense discretionary programs, it just really means everything in the budget outside the fence that isn't an entitlement program. it has it in it rental assistance you talked about. it has education, job training, the enforcement of labor standards, the enforcement of

environmental standards, child care. all of these are part of that part of the budget. it's already been cut in recent years. we all know that. where we're all heading is at best towards the full budget cuts under what's called sequestration taking effect for the first time starting in october, that would take total funding for this important part of the budget to the lowest level as a share of the economy on record with data back to 1962. however, the house republican budget of last year and the trump campaign proposal proposed to cut this part of the budget way below the sequestration level. actually almost 30% below sequestration level by the end of the decade. so we're talking about pretty massive cuts in areas like education, child care, low income housing assistance, and a

variety of other things like that. that's just that part of the budget. then you come to some of the core assistance for people who work for low wages or lose their jobs during recessions. things like health care coverage under medicate, food assistance through s.n.a.p., which we used to call food stamps. these programs are set up in a way there are national -- at least minimum national eligibility standards. anyone who is eligible, if you fall on hard times, you lose your job in a recession. you're not put on a waiting list. you get the assistance. if need goes up, like when the economy goes down, the programs respond automatically. last year's house republican budget would have gutted the structure of both of those programs. that goes beyond repealing affordable care act and converting these programs in the block grants are mechanism where there's a fixed amount of money each state gets for the year.

it does not keep pace with need. for example, it doesn't keep pace with health care costs and doesn't respond in a recession. last year's house republican budget took about a trillion dollars over 10 years in cuts out of health care and food assistance for low income families by block granting these programs on top of the savings for appealing affordable care act and wiping out health coverage expansions, which are primarily overwhelmingly for working people that were in the affordable care act. and trump has essentially endorsed block grant and medicaid program since the the election. so if you put all of these pieces together, i've been working in this area since the early '70s, i don't remember any time when there was a simultaneous assault on so many of these key supports for people who are unemployed, who work for

low wages, who have hard times making ends meet, all at the same time and with cuts called for. it kind of adds insult to injury that alongside this are proposals for some of the biggest tax cuts for people at the top that we've seen modern -- right alongside proposals for really huge cuts for people who worked for low wages and struggle to make ends meet every week. >> i think you've terrified everyone in this room sufficiently, but steve savner, i want to turn to you something that is framed in dichotomy terms. there's often a discussion about workers and a discussion that happens about the so-called poor as though they are different conversations or should be and

often the two questions i just asked of steve and bob are rarely actually seated next to each other and happening in the same room. is there really a dichotomy between so-called workers and the poor and is there actually a relationship between what we just heard from the two speakers before you? >> i think largely there is no distinction between people who are in the working class, working poor and people who are poor. most people who receive publicist answer, whether it's food stamps or s.n.a.p. or medicaid, medicaid isn't health assistance but health insurance but most people who receive that are in and out of the labor market in low wage jobs. i think it's a false distinction to be making. there are people in deep poverty with very limited opportunity who live in communities that have been disinvested,

disproportionately african-american and immigrants but the broad characterization, i think, feeds into a story that poverty is really a function of personal responsibility and the failure of people to act appropriately. that's just not true. we know that's not true. we know that people who get much of the publicist answer that they want to cut, like i said, are in and out of the labor market. we're not talking about two distinct set of people. we're talking about a mass of people who are struggling to find stability in a labor market changing dramatically and which doesn't provide stability in wages and compensation for most workers. so i think it's not the way to be looking at this. i think the tragedy, and we've seen it before in these debates about welfare in the '90s is that there's an effort, a very conscious effort, to blame people of color and poor people

for the insecurity and fear working people have because the economy is changing and because their security is threatened by what's going on in the labor market. we all know the story and it's very difficult to combat. i think we've seen it most extremely during the current campaign and the visibility and enabling of white nationalists as part of -- not the whole but part of the coalition of voters who voted for trump. >> as we start to look forward, and bishop dwayne, i want to direct this question to you as we look forward how progress i wos can def voters, many of them did plays their bet on donald trump to save their jobs and make their life better, how do we start to build a coalition that bridges that divide so that it isn't an us and them or two groups with a level of resentment has been fueled, really, by folks on the other side of the aisle trying to divide and conquer.

>> sure. thanks rebecca for the question, and thanks for the invitation to come. people national network is the largest network, fed indications in 22 states, multiple fakes, christian, lutheran and others. we have a vast diversity of people, native american, latino, asian and white folk that are all part of our coalition of work. we represent about 2 million families from across the nation will i think one of the things that's very critical in this moment, i think even as we talk about this is to not run from race but run into race. i think part of the challenge is that we've talked about this earlier that trump has racialized this moment, used a lot of dog whistle language to really be able to get working class white folk to be afraid. part of the challenge for

progressives is we have to help working class white folk have more in common with working class african-american, asian, the 1 percenters or oligarchs, whatever term is popular to define those really in the trump camp right now. i think it's very critical that we understand that we don't have to sort of do flavor of the month activities in terms of working on policies and that we can't abandon race in this moment. i think neera said it earlier in terps of civil rights agenda we have to do racial and economic justice at the same time. we have to really begin to disabuse america of this notion that somehow or another, you know, undocumented immigrants whose families are full of dignity and worth and value are really tearing at the fabric of this nation or that african-american families who have been here for hundreds of years, whose very backs have been beaten in building this country are, you know, somehow

or another all criminals or all out to destroy communities or, you know, various communities, native communities watching right now, have to remind folks these are all families. they have dignity, worth, value. they bring a lot to the american table. either not just white folk that do that. we have to be able to find ways to bridge the gap to have a conversation that talks about policies like raising the minimum wage. policies talking about making sure everybody has health care. policies that talk about child care for all families that impact all communities together and not again run from race or try to become race neutral or color-blind but do things, run to it, and have a conversation about the impact of race in this country. everybody has pain and we need to validate everybody's pain. we're big enough to do that. we need to be clear that part of the trauma we're dealing with right now is an issue of the racialized sin of racial oppression as exists in this

country since its very founding. >> michelle, i want to bring you into this conversation as well. a big part of what your organization, witnesses to hunger, does is to bring people who themselves have been impacted by these policies, by insufficient wages, by life line programs like nutritionists we've been hearing about, brings those voices together as experts. what can we as progressives learn from witnesses models and how can your organization and others serving that game goal and working in that same way be part of building a movement that fights back against this onslaught? >> absolutely. thank you so much for having us here. so i think so much of this is about destigmatizing poverty and the language that we use. for example, everybody in this room was on welfare at some point and everyone has experienced it. shout out to mimi who kept seeing this thing, everybody gets some form of social

welfare. if they study social welfare for a few moments knows this. someone receiving $160 in tanf gets way less than mortgage tax credit. hi, it's welfare. remind your self of that. your student loan tax credit is welfare. all these things you get for having a child is welfare. so i think when we start to change the conversation to those people over there and make it about all of us here and how we benefit for the government wanting to provide social welfare benefits we can start to think about this in a more humane way. what witnesses to chunker do, present the humane face. we can say in philadelphia there's 26 poverty rate and 13% depoverty rate what does that look like? these are just figures on paper. have you spoken to somebody that lives it on a daily basis. what we have to do in these conversations is separating poor from working.

stop with the language of no one who works 40 hours a week should live in poverty. no one should live in poverty. full stop. no one should live in poverty. full stop. so when we have that conversation, what we're doing is forcing this idea that work is the solution to everyone's problems and that is not it. what if you disabled? what if you are unable to leave your home because you're an agorephobic. what is that supposed to do? we talk about wages we pay people, america never recovered from bottom line that had no labor cost. free labor. 100 years of building an economic system based on free labor. we're struggling still to do that. as was mentioned, you have a country that was founded on genocide and enslavement. that's your roots. you reap what you sew. here we are finally, finally seeing what searcenturies of appropriating this kind of approach to human beings is starting to, look, we have --

starting to be president. another day, another lie. lockheed martin lost $4 billion because of a tweet he put out. this is where we are in our world. how do we work against that? we have to get organizations on the ground doing the work and support them. my biggest fear, funding for our organization. how do we get the funding to continue to elevate experts. we can have poverty panels with doctor this, doctor that, why don't we value the experiences and narrative of somebody who actually lives in poverty. that's what we have to do, we have to get into the communities, talk to people, see what they need and stop projecting our own do gooder like this is what we think they need so let's give them this. i'll give you one example of that. the members of witnesses to hunger have expressed there are some issues with the school book bag lunch program. for those of you who don't know,

there are some children who on friday they can take a book bag home filled with food and have it for the weekends because we know many children will not eat if they cannot get to public cool. people are like, yes, that's the way of the future. that's how we're going to fix this. some of the wit they did say wait a minute, what's the psychological impact of giving a child a bag of food to take home they have to share with their family and they become responsible feeding their family at seven, eight, nine. what happens if they live in a violent neighbor and they can be attacked and have that stolen. they have to walk it home and say my family can't eat this weekend because i didn't bring the bag home. have these conversations so we can pick up on these nuance things and understand there's more to poverty than the facts and the figures, the lowest that and that, people are real people. we do more of that is correct i think we'll get somewhere. >> one of the threads throughout this post election analysis period we've all been living

through, as well as a thread throughout this morning's conversation has been around how do we communicate more effectively, how do we communicate in different ways than maybe we have been that will have a better chance of reaching people who maybe didn't hear progressives message and say that's the answer to my problems. we're simultaneously, as we have this conversation, realizing that we're also living in a post truth world, which was merriam webster's word of the year. so in a world where fake news is beating out real news and real facts and figures, and i'm going to be self-aware as i ask this question, at a think tank, how do progressives and folks like the center for american progress where we are so accustomed to thinking facts and figures are going to win the day because they are true. how do we live in this new world in a way that's going to reach people who haven't been won over with facts and figures? steve, i'll start with you.

>> a good question. we have to live our values. that's about commitment. our union what unites us, this is a very diverse union, we are majority women, we have all different races, different immigration status, different sexual orientations, none of that matters because we're united around specific goals and we work together and we work together well. people may have individual views about all sorts of things but we know what unites us. i think more generally speaking, people who are workers in this country understand what it is that they are seeking on a broad societal basis for themselves. they are seeking a better life for themselves and their children. oftentimes i think what we found on the progressive side is our economic message gets awfully confusing and muddled. it would be absolutely wrong for us to dismiss president obama's obsession with the trans-pacific

partnership not having an impact on this election. i say that not at chris sichl of president obama or tpp. what it does is it undermines economic message as most working people were hearing it. i think what we have to understand is that people are looking for a commitment. they are looking for somebody who is willing to fight for their values. it's not always about a nuance in a political system. i think we often answer simple questions with five paragraphs because it is so nuanced and it is so difficult, we want to figure out a more straight line way of communicating with people. we do that oftentimes in the labor movement. but how do you transfer that kind of communication we have in sometimes a closed system to a more open type of debate? i think what it means, like i said at the beginning of the statement, it's about living our values and having a clear set and understanding of what those are and trying to ensure we have a consensus around it.

i think most people want what we claim progressives want, which is a fair and just society. a society where people are not exploited. a society which is nurturing. we want that. we have a number of federal policies in place to get us there. some have been undermined. we are about to embark on a journey where 80 years of consensus policy adopted the new deal is at stake. communicating that with facts and figures and charts is not the best way to do it. it's more visceral than that for a lot of folks. when we communicate with our members and our union, we try to make it as real and accessible as possible so they understand how it affects their neighbors, how it affects services they provide because people have a tremendous commitment on what they do on their jobs. most people take a lot of pride

in their work, whether working fast-food for carl jr. or working for nasa, people take pride in their work. and we have to listen to them and give them that pride. oftentimes we're dismissive of many of these concerns in search of a bigger agenda and we have to get more basic on communication and hear people and have credibility with economic message because we don't have it and we need to get it. >> turning back to you, bob. i don't think probably anyone in this room has forgotten the signs, get your government hands off my medicare that have really come to serve as symbols of submerged state, a lot of what michelle was describing. people are unaware of the kinds of programs and policies they benefit from, not just in the sense of home interest deduction, michelle but, for example, health insurance from the government. >> public school. >> or public school. how do we accomplish the goals

steve just laid out, ambitious goals they are, of helping people to understand that the safety net as it's often called is actually for them. and that an attack on the safety net like we're expecting to see under trump and ryan regime is an assault on workers. >> so i think we have to marry improved ways of communicating, some of the things steve was talking about, with still a variety of facts and figures. we absolutely can't give up. >> it's not defense of facts and figures. >> so you know, if you look at the campaign we just had, trump had particularly in the domestic arena very few specific policies. it was just a lot of fuzz and big rhetoric. when the congress begins to act, when the president begins to put

proposals forward, there are specific proposals that will get voted on on the hill. and part of all of our job is to analyze them, to look at what they do, and to communicate that effectively. let me give you a little bit of an analogy. as you know in 2015 there was an ultimately successful effort to make -- have congress make permanent improvements for low and moderate income working families through the earned income tax credit and child tax credit. we found when we began early in 2015 to talk to various republican members, particularly in the house, generally they and their staff were under the impression oh, this is a low income program, it's primarily for the cities. in fact the larger share of households get earned income

credit in rural areas because wages are lower and more people qualify. we found a number of these offices were stunned when we showed them the actual figures on their area. i think in the period ahead, whatever the policy or program is that's under attack that serves low and moderate income families we need to put information together, state by state, locality by locality. what does it do in these rural, economically challenged areas where there were big votes, among other things, for president-elect trump. but areas in which people often rely on these programs to a greater degree than people in urban areas do. we haven't succeeded in getting -- i'm not sure we've tried hard enough to really communicate that. that leads to the second part, which is as specific cuts come on the table, we need everything

from human stories of what they would do to actual information and data that bring it home to people in rural areas, in ex-urban areas, in areas where people work for low wages to counter this false impression it doesn't fact them at all. it affects other people that don't look like them that they maybe think they don't want to help, not even understanding the degree which so many kinds of support and other assistance are fundamental for them. that's going to entail us doing not only the normal kind of analysis. but since many of the cuts are likely to come are likely to come either inappropriated programs that are effectively grants and aid state and local governments that then deliver the services, or if a program like medicaid is block granted to states with inequality funding, the states that have to

live within the inadequate funds, they are the ones who make the specific cuts. we have to communicate where this is coming from, which are these decisions out of washington, should they be made. finally, i think we do need to tie this to some of the debates on tax policies starting next month. so the bill that's expected to come before congress next month to repeal the guts of the affordable care act bill that the urban institute said last week would most likely raise 30 million people, this bill includes a provision to reveal application of medicare tax, the tax that goes right into the medicare hospital insurance trust fund on the investment income of very wealthy people. this providing, if enacted means a worker making 30, 40, 50, $60,000 a year has to continue

to pay medicare tax on all their wages while somebody making $5 million a year in capital gains and dividends doesn't pay any medicare tax once again on any of that. i don't think that would be particularly possible alongside paul ryan's false claims, though claims nonetheless, medicare is in trouble, it's going to go bankrupt. you're going to advance that message on one side of your mouth while on the other side say rich people should be ab solved paying their fair share of the medicare program. you're going to do that while refusing to raise minimum wage which makes working people more in need of food assistance and at the same time you're going to cut food assistance, we have to put all that together and localize it. >> steve savner, i'm going to ask you what i view as the million dollar question right

now. a lot of progressives have been ruckett to normalize trump. his presidency, that carries risks and consequences we don't want to be responsible for, or part of. at the same time i will confess great fear that if we continue to spend a lot of time paying attention to the side show of what did he tweet this morning, that it's going to leave a lot of space for, say, republicans to push through a major piece of legislation that would slash social security benefits. such a piece of legislation was just introduced last week by chairman of social security subcommittee of ways and means, impact americans of all stripes in very serious ways. which side do you land on? do we normalize or do we not? >> it's up to us as to whether or not he becomes normalized. he's got to be president in the next couple of months.

he's going to have incredible power. i think we have to deal with that. i think that the way we deal with that is to call him out on both the lies that he's told and the things he said he supports, which are really not in the interest of working people. i think it's both. both things he said he wasn't honest about and things he was honest about but are simply not good for people including the people who he claims to be supporting. so i think that i completely agree we can't immediately get caught up in every tweet that he sends out, but we have to recognize that's a different kind of communication and mobilization than we're used to certainly from high elected officials. i think on the communications question, i think there's part of the problem that we have is that in our research at the center for community change has shown us that we need to be connecting with people based on shared values. that's the starting point.

we need facts and figures. we need an analysis of how proposals are going to benefit and hurt various people. but the starting place, what are the shared values, it's about family, community, fairness, opportunity. all those things are things i think most americans can connect to. once you make that connection, then you can start telling a story about what's going on and help them think about it clearly. i think part of the other thing, and bob said this in an implicit way -- or maybe explicit -- which is the benefits of the policies that republicans and trump are talking about are not going to go to the working people, they are going to go to rich people and corporations. and so they want big tax cuts and they want block grants. those two things are not disconnected. they want block grants because it saves money and pays for their tax cuts. i think there's a story we need

to tell that has appeal across the board. i think we saw it from the sanders campaign, which is there are corporate interests and wall street interests who want tax cuts, who want more money, less regulation because that benefits them and doesn't benefit working people. so we need to be able to tell that story. i think the last thing and the most challenging is that we can't shy away from race. we have to talk about how that has harmed and continues to harm african-americans in this country, african-american poor communities, and we need to have a frank conversation and deal with folks who don't share those views in a direct way and, again, talk about common and shared values. it's 100 years of history that's not going to get overcome quickly or easily. this can't all be about the 1%

and 99%. it's also going to be about who has been harmed by the structures of this country since its founding and the prejudice that's now whipped up against both blacks and immigrants and people of color generally. >> before i turn it over to audience q&a, because i can feel you guys have questions for this panel, i want to turn one last question to bishop dwayne and to michelle. so at a point where economic power is now kroltd by ever smaller number of incredible powerful and incredibly rich corporationing, how do we build up power base in communities and movement, which is a huge part of what both of you are involved in in a way that can counter-balance currently and who is pulling strings on decisions getting made. and, it's a two-parter. establishment structures and organizations based in

washington, d.c., connect with folks on the ground building those power bases. i'll start with you, bishop dwayne. >> it goes back for we have to work closely together. we have to get think tank folks, intellectual elites with people on the ground. they need to be listening to each other. it is not an issue, and i think you talked about this earlier and we've often said this in our own work. the best policymakers in our country are not people sitting in high top towers but people sitting in the projects and row homes. if you want to ask somebody about what it would take for them to get out of poverty, you don't ask phd, you ask the person in poverty what it would take to get out. we think that's critical. we think it has to be a closer relationship with intellectual elites listening more and doing less talking and hearing deeply from people that are struggling in understanding what their issues -- what structural issues are. i find it interesting having

this conversation we're talking about social security, medicare, medicaid. but the day after the election stocks in private prisons went up 300% in this country. we're going to use misery of dark skinned bodies, african-americans and undocumented immigrants around the nation to basically build the economy in some communities because we're going to increase the use of prisons. president-elect document famili families. those that came for a better life, throw them in private prisons, national stop and frisk, coming from a city personally we fought toting rid of stop and frisk and continued to do so. a lot of folk in legal system making money off stop and frisk unnecessarily in those circumstances. when we look at this and talk

about normalization we cannot allow donald trump to be normalized by any means because the very things he's trying to do in this country will destroy this country and especially those communities that are struggling the dopest and those experiencing some level of pain. i think it's absolutely critical that we are all figuring out how to work together, how to listen to one another. we are out fighting together, marching together, wrestling together. we have to help progressive leadership in the house and senate to have in this moment. sometimes when it appears they want to cut deals not to cut deals across this country. they have to hold the line, moral decisions being made. they are benefiting a few

instead of the majority. >> michelle. >> so everything you just said and everything on the panel because of my educational background people won't know what you're talking about. we have to make sure when we talk about communication, we have to make sure we're communicating. i agree we need the facts and figures because that's where the proof is. if people can't read chart, they won't understand what any of it means. how do we get out in communities and translate that in a way that makes sense for people. yes, we have to talk about racism. it is the foundation of all of this. it is why a poor white person will believe they deserve food stamps and a poor black person is a moocher. this is part of racism, how trump gets elected. i know they say you're not supposed to talk about racism and how it relates to trump but we have to. when asked why did these white women vote for trump, because of racism. that's a big part of it. it's not necessarily about economically insecurity because

they were economically insecure and have been forever. appalachian folks, rust belt folks, this poverty and this struggle is not new to them. this is not just an obama thing. this has been in generations of their families every since they were competing with slave labor. they know what this is. they want to put this blame and frame it in this way because they lack the education that teaches them about how this came to be and how them and their families ended up being in the situations they are. they listened to the rhetoric, facebook memes, fake news. they are susceptible to it because they lack the education and knowledge they need to combat it. i think what we have to prioritize on both sides is education about this process of participating in america as a citizen. because when you have progressives going and voting for hillary down ballot and they haven't heard names of people on the down ballot, that is just as bad as someone going and voting for trump ignorantly. we have to make sure when we are sending people to vote, when we are sending people to sit on

jury duties, jury duty, that's one of the scariest things, we have people judging other people's lives and they don't know anything about the law. they don't know anything. all they are doing is going with their gut. i think she's guilty, not guilty. we have to work on that we're not going to be able to communicate with each other until we talk about racism, sexism, xenophobia, everything that fuels both sides, okay, because it's about preservation of resources. when progressives act like they are not, racism in the democratic party is disgusting. in my opinion in many cases worse than what we see from gop because it's in siddious and they hide it and they act like they are not racists. until we start talking about that and educate in those ways we're not going anywhere. that's how it happened and will continue to happen. calling someone a white nationalist is redundant. the only people that have access to nationalists are white people. these are the kinds of

conversations we need to have. >> i am going to turn it over to the audience for q&a. i would be remiss if steve kreisberg i didn't give you a chance to weigh in on these outside where they exist today. >> as i indicated before, as really one of the few institutions in america that is diverse in all senses, we have a special obligation. and the fact of the matter is, the republican marty has long appreciated us more than the democratic party. we've been the target of republican attacks because they recognize the power of working people coming together, yet there's been new progressives, new democrats who don't quite see the value of collective bargaining, don't quite see the value of labor. it is the only institution where workers can exercise power on their own by joining together. everything else is filtered through a political system. as we've seen, the political

system doesn't always work well for us. judicial system even works worse. so the institution of collective bargaining needs to be preserved and strengthened. we are now facing the likelihood of a 50-year-old supreme court precedent being reversed. not just roe versus wade but the idea of strong unions. we may see right to work laws throughout the entire sector. these are very intentional mechanism to undermine power of labor. when you've got the governor of the state, south carolina, nikki haley, nominee as u.n. ambassador using the power of her state to defeat unionism in a private corporation, in boeing, that boeing plant, when you've seen state of tennessee, u.s. senators from state of tennessee as well as governor undermining right of workers to organize that volkswagen plant in chattanooga, we have a

serious problem in this state. the policy of the federal government toys promote collective bargaining, yet have a party that's complicit to it, lack of value for institution of collective bargaining. collective bargain k has been bulwark against democracy across the globe and it will prove to be so here. republicans recognize that and we need democrats to recognize with greater vigor if we're going to be successful. >> the moment has arrived. i want to hear from you. we're running a few minutes over because we start add few minutes later. thank you for bearing with me. audience questions, raise your hand if you've got one and mike will come to you. raise your hand in the back. i saw urgs first. >> jim webber, i used to publish newsletter in rural america but my biggest claim to fame working

with bob green stein. my question for anyone on the panel, when does buyer's remorse set in small town rural america. >> great question. who would like to take a stab at that first. >> real quick. when they realize what's happening. it goes back to education. as trump begin to name people, a lot of those folks don't know who those folks are, what their work that been, their impact in spaces. as we educate get articles out saying, okay, here is five things you need to know about this person. people maybe will learn more, hear more and start realizing, wait a minute, these people are exactly who we didn't want. right now a lot of these names come out and folks are like who? we have to start there and i think we'll start to see that. >> any other add ons to that. >> i think it's already started quite frankly. i think even though he has yet to take office because of what he's doing, some of the decisions he's making, i think people are already saying, what

do we do across multiple communities that did or did not vote for him but they are seeing the danger of what he's doing at this moment in time. i think it's already beginning to kick in to some extent. >> i think it will also be affected by the state of the economy. it will come more quickly if a recession comes sooner. i think it will be difficult for a trump administration to blame the next recession on obama but i'm sure they will try, give eight shot. i do think what happens to overall economy will have an impact on this. we have to see. there are a series of policies that trump talked about during the campaign that many cob mists believe would accelerate recession. to be determined. >> a hand right here in the front. >> good morning. thank you very much. i've considered myself a hubert

humphrey liberal, to put me politically in perspective when i ask the following question. it's about thinking of corporate america as monolithic. i'm wondering if the progress i was don't mean to find more alliances within various business and corporate communities. the affordable care act was supposed to hurt small business. i don't know if it did or it didn't. if it did, you need to find the ways to make it better when they are trying to dismantle it and have small business people have petitions to the new small business chairman. if it didn't, then as an example, that needs to be touted by small business. in north carolina, we have a democratic governor because corporate america weighed in so

strongly on what some of what hb 2 is it called? so in communities like philadelphia, you have universities, you have corporations, not all of whom are adverse to a hubert humphrey agenda. so don't you need to find new partners and kind of get out of your bubble. >> the fantastic question, and i think a very apt one for this conversation, particularly with assault not only on affordable care act but programs such as food stamps, which walmart doesn't want to see cut any more than folks on this stage, who wants to take a crack at that. steve. >> well, first of all, we did and the folks who worked to build support for and help enact the affordable care act relied very strongly on small business and they were very outspoken. many of them were outspoken. so i do think that there are specific corporations,

businesses, small businesses who will speak up on a number of these issues, either because it's in their self-interest, like agriculture will support food stamps because it expands demand for the goods they are producing. but i also don't think we're living in a bubble to recognize that groups like the chamber of commerce, nfib, national retailers association have incredible power and working every, every day against workers rights, workers well-being, and security. so i think we should look for corporate and small business allies, but ultimately i think the main alliances we need to build are among working class people, multi-racial organizing efforts to build political power for people who don't have power. >> i saw a hand over here, right

here up in front. >> thank you so much. thank you all for coming out here and chatting with us. do i have a quick question, maybe piggy backing a little on the previous question, which is about how as progressives we all have our individual spaces, right? we worked for climate change. we worked to protect the safety net. we work where supporters of black lives matter, supporters of immigration, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. how do we as progressives come together, despite sort of our very passionate focus on our individual issues particularly as we probably suspect that the trump add manage is going to want to start picking off different groups at a time. what does that mean? how do we come together? how do we maneuver through all that particular landscape? >> another great question. how do we break down silos.

>> we're a broad-based organization so we work on multiple issues simultaneously. we don't do siloed work. one of the things we've been actually challenging our colleagues who do single issue work is we're all fighting the same people. every fight that you have, whether mass incarceration, dealing with undocumented immigrants in this country, whether we're dealing with, you know, child care issues, whether we're dealing with voter suppression and voter id laws is the exact same folk. we have to begin to think in a way i know progressive circles we don't use military terms but we have to build an army, right, that is essentially learning how to attack and maintain vigilence against the opponents of the various issues we work against and not allow ourselves to be picked off one by one. as long as we stay in silos, i used to teach this to my organizers, as long as we stay in silos, it's easy to crush a

silo. it's up and down. if you're big enough can you crush the silo. what we need to become is the wheel. i might not be working on your issue today. but at some point if we're working on the same issues against the same people we will begin to turn the tide over a period of time. we keep rolling, it's very difficult to stop a wheel. with a wheel can you actually have multiple issues in that wheel simultaneously. so i think we have to figure out -- we have to work to get out of our silos. we have to understand what we're fighting against is not policies and issues but a mind set and narrative what this country ought to look like. we need a mind-set and narrative to talk about what this country looks like where every family in this country can thrive not just survive. quickly, that's what we need to get to. >> last word, michelle. >> self-reflection and confronting our own biases. a lot of times in silos we're

looking at one issues but may have issues with other people. anti-blackness, xenophobia, views that happen within social justice works. i think the other part of it is understanding every single issue has multi-layers. there is no such thing as issue, if you're talking about activist talk about poverty, racism, sexism, pofrlt, domestic violence, mental health, all these things. every single issue, if we recognize they are so multi-layered we come together and connect on those points. we cannot have those conversations until we confront the things that get in the way of us being able to communicate. >> words to end on. join me in thanking our panelists. [ applause ] >> the federal reserves open market committee will meet today. after that meeting fed chair

janet yellen will answer reporters questions at a news conference. scheduled to start 2:30 eastern. when it gets under way you'll see it live on our companion network c-span3. 8:30 tonight keith ellison running for chair of the democratic national committee, vermont senator bernie sanders and american federation of teachers also speaking at the event. that starts 8:00 eastern tonight on c-span. president-elect donald trump has offered montana congressman ryan zinke the job of interior secretary. mr. zinke serves on national resources committee which has oversight of the interior department. earlier this year he asked the current interior secretary about the department's priorities. >> i'm sure we all agree the importance of our parks. by looking at your budget, we all know you're behind. i just got finished talking to

superintendent of yellowstone. i know the superintendent of glacier. i know how important it is. i grew up in the backyard. you and i both have toured the parks. in your budget, it doesn't seem like you prioritized the infrastructure. if the infrastructure is so important on road maintenance, why isn't it at the top of the list on your budget as far as of national parks. >> infrastructure and beginning to deal with a backlog is a very high priority in our budget, so it's in there not only in the discussionary budget but recommendations centennial issue which would clear up priority maintenance back-up. >> priority, when you look through it there's a lot of programs in there but should be infrastructure first before some of these other education programs, some are less on the list. >> in our centennial year of the park service, visitors experience also is very important. >> follow the transition of government on c-span as

president-elect donald trump selects his cabinet and the republicans and democrats prepare for the next congress will take you to key events as they happen without an interruption watch live on c-span, watch on demand at c-span.org or listen on our free c-span radio app. >> google recently hosted a discussion on digital advertising strategies of republican candidates in the 2016 election. we'll hear from republican campaign strategist and political reporters and see some of the advertising from presidential and congressional candidates. >> okay. i'm going to kick this off from

this good looking republicans in the senate and house and hold the administration. [ applause ] >> yeah, come on. i'm going to kick us off with a video because most of you heard me say over and over again and most of you taught me to say it over and over again, this the year of the video. tell a story. nobody taught candidates better how to tell a story than someone who is going to be our first guest today. so i'm going to kick it off with two-minute closing video, both candidates did two-minute videos to close the campaign three or four days before the campaign. i urge you to go and watch hillary's. this is a lot of hillary face to camera, sharp contrast. this the closing argument the trump campaign gave to voters. lived all my life to say this. gavin, roll tape. >> our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt

political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the american people. the establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. for those who control the levers of power in washington and for the global special interest, they partner with these people that don't have your good in mind. the political establishment that is trying to stop us is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry. the political establishment has brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs as they flee to mexico, china, and other countries all around the world. it's a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class,

stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political enti entities. the ensemble thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. the only force strong enough to save our country is us. the only people brave enough to vote out this corrupt establishment is you the american people. i'm doing this for the people and for the movement, and we will take back this country for you, and we will make america great again. i'm donald trump and i approve this message. >> that video -- that video

became the sixth fastest trending video on youtube the two days before the campaign organically. it told a story. it motivated people and it motivated voters. so i'll let brad, i won't steal his thunder how he came up with that ad. let's dive into 2016 beyond the presidential. so everybody has heard us say this over and over again this year. voters spent more time online in 2016 and were more influenced online by what they read and saw online about candidates than ever before. we are finally at the point where voters are spending more of their time online, and have been persuaded more often by something they saw online, by a friend, neighbor, advertisement. and this might actually lead to us in politics catching up to the corporate america. in 2016, corporate america is going to spend more money on

digital online advertising than tv. politics tends to be 10 years behind corporate america. our party doesn't have ten years to wait, catch up. let me tell you, the good news is we did a great job in 2016 because of many of you. this graph is going to blow the minds of ddscc. on average, gop candidates spend earlier and spent more on google products. i would make the assumption on other online products as well. but nobody ran a better race online than rob portman. and nobody opened up a wider lead against their opponent sooner on the gop side than rob portman. i'll let you make the correlation. one of the top lessons from 2016 we all learned and i hope we carry to the next cycle. go big, go big online, don't go small. go really big. gop campaigns with google products spent three times the

amount their democratic opponents spent with google on products. i'd like to credit that to a great sales team but i think people running great word's man. but they believed in the products and they saw the results. what's really striking is that gop candidates outspent their democrat counterparts between april and july -- this is not the traditional time where people spend time. it's not post labor day. april through july they outspent their democrat opponents 20 to one online with google products. that opens up a huge lead. this wasn't only on the candidate side. we saw it on the super pacs. some campaigns like a presidential campaign went even bigger. one of the things we learned from the trump campaign, do not make assumptions about voters. you may find voters where you least suspect to do so.

so where most presidential campaigns and this one concentrated their money in nine or ten states, they also didn't forget that there are a lot of other americans throughout that need to be motivated to vote. a youtube masthead can promotiv them and activate. the trump for president campaign was the first gop candidate to ever buy a youtube masthead. previously it was just obama. not only did the trump for president campaign buy one masthead, they bought two. they bought the one after the first debate where we see a huge surge of online traffic and they bought one election day. the hillary campaign bought one. so when you think you've got big, go even bigger. lesson two, go early. a lot of you saw this search graph. i had a gop campaign manager tell me the other day that he decided how and when to drop

opposition research on their opponent using this graph. because as you know, if you drip, drip, drip opposition research and news, guess where voters are seeing that. on google. he made sure every time someone googled the opponent's new name there was a new news story that was not flattering. he made sure did he it early. 50% of the interest in elections, candidates, the gop race, the race for president, the race for senate happens by july. next time your campaign manager tells you, we really want to hold our money until after labor day, they are being very foolish. best thing about going early is you can define yourself as a candidate. what you should be doing is defining your opponent. two senate campaigns that defined their opponent early and never stopped defining their opponent was the todd young for senate campaign and the rob portman campaign. i mean, you can even see here that the opponents don't even have search ads up to counter the attack ads that were being

run against them. i'm proud to say in every gop senate campaign, either the candidate or the nrsc were up to search ads for the opponent and the candidate. they defined themselvesopponent. they didn't let anyone define them. the other really interesting thing about going early is that it really allows you to hopefully save money in the end and pull away. the green graph is the amount of money and when portman for senate spent on google products. the gray line is the average senate campaign, that's democratic and republican. look closely, when portman's spending spiked, which as you can see is april, may, june, that's when he started to pull away from i had opponent. does anyone remember how many points portman pulled away from his opponent on election day? over 20 points. start early and start big.

start often. lesson three, go big, go early, go often. we get asked all the time, what's the right frequency i should have with an ad? corporate america tends to go seven or eight times for the frequency. we saw with most campaigns on the political side that they were going about three or four times. three times generally showed a two times greater favorability shift and a four times greater intent to vote. it was greater when it was a true view ad. when somebody opted in to watch it. if your content is good enough for the voter to watch your content, you can win that voert online. we found senate races were particularly open to voters to look at advertising. again, i think part of it is because presidential candidates are so well defined by the media. senate and house candidates have to get out there and define themselves, which is another reason why to go early. 2016 lessons we learned, thanks to all of you who ran gop

campaigns, go big, go early, go often. and then you will go home to your constituents and be hopefully re-elected again and again and again. so thank you all for a really interesting race where we all learned a lot. now i want to turn aover to natalie andrews. everyone come fill the seats. i couldn't figure out what that hand gesture was. natalie, brad, come on up. [ applause ]

>> i'm glad we're here to talk about the last 18 months or so. >> 624 days. >> 624 days and counting for you. still very much involved in the campaign. >> tell me about your first role with the trump organization and walk us up to here. what were you doing then? how did you get involved? >> way back? >> let's go way back. i think you started in 2011? >> 2010. >> 2010. give us the very condensed version. give us the very condensed version. but you are now -- your title is digital director. it's a pretty expanded role from what a digital director was in 2012. >> yes. in 2010, i was hired -- actually, a phone call happened before that. i was hired to be -- to make a real estate website. it was basic. however, i knew it was probably a good step to get inside with the trump organization and trump family being from san antonio, texas. we don't have a lot of trumps

there. got a contract making a website. i knew that i had to have a competitive price to compete in the new york market, since i had only been to new york once in my life. that's how i first started. over a five-year period of time, i got more and more contracts with the trump family. i became kind of -- throughout the organization knowing the family and different things going on, so when the campaigno. it was basic. $1500 for a splash page for the exploratory committee. at the end, we know now about $93 million my company was paid. >> calling you a political outsider wouldn't be an understatement. >> i never worked on a political campaign before this one. >> now $93 million later, what

would you sum up as some of your biggest things you brought into politics? >> i think you have to understand the entire process of the campaign. if you look at the campaign, it was stuck in three major stages. if you follow the media, that was tied along with two major firings or let goes or people leaving. verse 1.0 which i pretty much call from the day he came down the escalator to pretty much the republican convention. that's version 1.0 of the campaign. that role, my role is probably the smallest. not minuscule, but it wasn't as large as in 3.0. you take the 2.0, the campaign from the republican convention right before the republican convention to i believe somewhere in august -- august 22, i think, is the date. then that's where 3.0 started. then you have 3.0, which is i call the general campaign where

we became a media engine. go to the first version of the campaign, my role was more of a consultant. i ran most of the entire primary digital and advertising from the laptop in my living room. i had no -- they didn't want to pay for my staff at that point. we had no budget. most of the major vendors -- twitter, google, facebook -- didn't know i existed. i got random phone calls in the night. are you the guy doing the dibe h digital stuff for trump? as it became obvious he was in this. i didn't have any data scientists. i didn't have the great people i had later in the campaign. i had to do pretty much home-based marketing efforts to try to maximize our effort across social media platforms. now one thing i learned in politics, the 1.0 version is a more ideological different competition than version 3.0. the needs were different.

i think as you see as we progress on to 2.0, i would actually say my role is the least in 2.0 around the convention. the rnc started to step up. you have coa operations. you have people that have a big implementation what's going to be done. at this point, we're just -- 2.0 turned into fund-raising, less into media operations and persuasion. 3.0 turned into kind of the -- what i would consider the closest to what have i done for 20 years, a media conquest of trying to bring home the vote. you have to understand the three things to ask the right question. >> you had a candidate who famously talked a lot about how he didn't need data early on. >> he didn't need it in 1.0. >> things like that. was it you that was doing any of the convincing to say, we do need to bring on data? we do need data in this campaign? what turnedha