the city does not know how to market. they would like to bring in someone new to do something with it, but is owned by chrysler, the old chrysler, not the new fiat chrysler. with whom do they negotiate? they are asking questions to which have no answers. >> unemployment is a lagging indicator. in past recessions, economic growth starts and unemployment continues to rise for months if not a year or more. there are two types of recovery. there is the high level market, and gdp, market number recovery, and then the average person recovery. my company is doing better and i can get a job, my friends and i are not getting laid off. that is coming much farther down the road.

>> places like gary, indiana, cleveland, ohio, and buffalo new york -- what are you sensing? >> people have grown up expecting a factory job and they do not have that factory jobs. the new industries are not hiring that many new people yet. they are frustrated. it has political ramifications for state and national politics. >> that is why you saw the obama administration dispatched secretary solis and a lot of cabinet secretaries throughout the country to tell them that we feel your pain in here is what we are trying to do to help. is not enough, but they are aware of the political ramifications and want to show that they are on top of it and are concerned. whether it is enough to get people through the crisis is a big question. >> how they deal with this could have an impact in terms of the next governor's race in ohio, the next senate race in ohio,

and on down the line. this is starting to give the republicans, the party at a favor in ohio, some real ammunition for a winning some seats in the next election. >> steve cox is with the "plain dealer. gentlemen, thanks for being with us on "newsmakers." >> tonight on "q&a", governor mitch daniels. he was reelected in 2008. before that he was director of the office of management and budget under president george of the bush and a senior advisor to president reagan. "q&a" at 8:00 eastern here on c- span. >> tomorrow on "washington journal," michael crittenden,

dave mccurdy talks about federal assistance to the of industry and general motors, and stephen aftergood looks at the possibility of a center to speed up the classification of government documents. >> how is c-span funded? >> private donations. >> i do not really know. >> from public television. >> donations. >> i do not know where the money counts from. >> contributions from donors. >> 30 years ago, america's cable companies created c-span as a public service, a private business initiative, no government mandate, no government money. >> nevada senator john ensign was in iowa last week to talk about the future of the

republican party. he also covers the economy, health care, and president obama supreme court nominee during this 50-minute speech. it is hosted by the american future fund. >> it is important that we have some new voices, some fresh faces talking about issues and taking our message to the american people. i have been in the majority and now in the minority. i like the majority better. i am going to be talking about how we get back to the majority and why we should be back in the majority. because i am new to you, let me tell you about my background so you can get to know me a little better. i grew up in nevada almost my entire life. i was raised by a single mom. my parents were divorced when i was very young.

my mom, who believed very much in not going on the government dole, not going on welfare, even though she would have made more money at the time if she would have gone on welfare -- she went out and worked every single day. we live with other families. as a kid, you do not know you are poor. it was really wonderful, because my mom taught me a work ethic. i am so thankful to hurt to this day for that work ethic that she taught me. growing up without a lot of adult supervision in the household, though, probably took a toll with a lot of teams, headed down not exactly the right path. i was very happy when my mom got married and i was adopted by my father when i was 15. i went on to college and decided to become a veterinarian. i ended up one to veterinary school and got my degree.

i love being a veterinarian. i opened a practice in las vegas. a 24-hour town had no 24-hour animal hospitals, so i opened up the first 24-hour animal hospital there. i was very successful doing that. i have since built another hospital and owned and operated both of those hospitals. i love being a veterinarian. my wife and i were married for a few years before that. we had just had our first child, trevor, who is now 17 years of age. it is incredible to think about that, as those of you know who have a lot more of the color of my hair. it seems like each year just goes faster and faster. i have to take a moment to brag. my 17-year-old son is a junior in high school and just won the state golf tournament last week. you can applaud for that. [applause]

it was fun to go up and follow him around for two days. it was not long after the birth of our first child that bill clinton was elected to office. the democrats control both the house and the senate. there were talks of nationalizing our healthcare system. when i was thinking about either bed near a school or medical school, -- either veterinary school or medical school, back in the 1980's they talked about nationalized health care. i did not want to work for the government, but now i work for the government's, by the way. during the early 1990's when they controlled the white house, the house, and the senate, nationalizing our healthcare system, taxes were going up -- i thought the country was going in the wrong direction. there were two sayings that

inspired me to go be due to run for congress. the only way for evil to prosper is for good people to do nothing. there was a second saying that when along with it. you may only be able to make a small difference, but that does not relieve you of the responsibility to make that small difference. those two sayings went around in my brain. i knew i had to do something. i decided to run for congress. this was a crazy idea and my family. my wife loved being married to a veterinarian. she did not want to be married to a politician. my parents did not like politicians. they did not like lawyers or politicians. hopefully they like least one politician now. i remember my wife and i went to tell my parents that i was

thinking about running for congress. you have to understand that my father was in the casino business for 45 years, until recently. he was very successful, a tremendous business man, but in the casino business, when i went to talk to him, he said to me, john, why do you want to go into such an immoral business? [laughter] he said in the casino business, we are honest with people. they know the odds are against them. politics said it reduced politicians say one thing in the campaign and something else when they get into office. i started out as a democrat.

i voted for jimmy carter when i was 18 years of age. i have been repenting ever since. [laughter] ronald reagan came in and had fresh ideas. they attracted a lot of people to the republican party. they talked about the big tent party. there were certain core values that he talked about, whether you were a northeastern republican or a midwestern or southern, people came together. that attracted me to the party. if i ever thought about being a democrat, once i opened my own business, that all went right out the door. once you try to meet your own payroll, you understand why limited government is such a good idea. i ran for office my very first time in a democrat district. i am obviously a republican, and i had no chance to win. it was back in 1994.

we ran on the limit government principles. instead of just going on welfare, we should reform welfare. getting a job from an employer is better than getting a job from the government, because you can take some pride and teach your children a work ethic. the idea that we should not leave our country with a huge debt, we should leave our country better off for our children. every generation until this generation has always thought that the next generation would have it better. this is the first generation that does not believe that. it is a lot because of what we have done, the people we have elected to office who have spent our children's future. that is some of the issues i want to talk about tonight. how we turn this around, and what is the vision that we should have for america? barack obama was elected to office on hope and change.

we heard all about it during the election. he came in, granted it was a tough economy that he was handed. i believe that economy was mostly government created. it was not the private sector. the government incentivized it, whether through the community reinvestment act -- fannie mae and freddie mac got involved in this, and that allow wall street to get involved in all these financial instruments. everybody was happy, and all this was happening because home prices kept going up and everybody was making money. my state was one of the state's, nevada was leading the bubble. when the bubble burst, we suffer the most during that period time. the rest of the company -- rest of the country got dragged down with us.

barack obama coast office, and his answer to fixing the problem is basically what fdr did. it is like we do not learn from history. it was not fdr's polities that brought us out of the great depression. if it did, would you like to stay in it for 11 years? the only thing that brought us out of the depression was world war ii. it was not the policies of spending. it was a war that brought us out. by the way, the economy was still not good. the stock market did not recover for 26 years. do we want to see wall street not recover for 26 years? i do not think that is the policy we want. i believe that the stimulus bill that the president brought us was the wrong prescription. it is mortgaging our children's

future, running up their credit- card. we are getting the fruits of it, supposedly, and running up their credit card. they will have to pay higher taxes in the future. when you add interest to the stimulus bill, it is over $1 trillion. the following week, they brought spending bills to us that increased last year's spending bills by 8%. shortly after that, the president brought us his budget, and that was the scariest thing i've ever seen come to washington d.c. if you take all the debt that was accumulated from george washington to george bush, he doubles that debt in five years and triple that in 10 years. it is unsustainable. the chinese are getting nervous about buying our treasury bills.

if they quit buying treasury bills, if they lose confidence in the dollar, the only reason they continue to buy today is that every other country is worse than ours right now. two to three years from now, is it going to be that way? if we keep running these up and just printing money like we are doing today, and the rest of the world does not continue to have confidence in the u.s. dollar, our economy collapses and it will be catastrophic. we need to turn things around. we need to stand up and get behind us and say enough is enough. it is time to start being fiscally responsible to future generations and not being so selfish that we just give us what we want. [applause]

>> we need to take the principles that ronald reagan talked about and apply them to modern problems today. one issue that affects all of us is health care. some say there's not a health care crisis in the united states today. if you are a mom and you have a child and you do not have health insurance, and the child is a serious disease, there is a healthcare crisis. if you have a small business any have been providing health insurance and health care costs are so high is driving you out of business, or if you look at our auto companies, there is a crisis going on in the united states. whatever you want to call it, it is a serious problem, and the need to fix it. we do not need what some of the democrats and the president want to do, and they call it a public auction. they tried to disguise the term. it basically is nationalized

health care. just one quick statistic for you. they like the european or canadian model. if you or a woman in the united states and get breast cancer, your chances in survival in five years or 98%. in great britain, the chances of survival within five years are only 78%. the problem is, in those nationalized health-care system, a bureaucrat it's in the decisionmaking process between you and your doctor. there should not be anybody in that process between you and your doctor. that should be between the two of you. we can cover all americans. they say 47 million. that is greatly mac -- greatly exaggerated. the real number is around 11 million, people who do not have the coverage they need in the united states.

we can cover all americans if we do it taking the principles of the market. we do not have a free market system in health care in the united states. the person receiving care is not responsible for paying for the care. there is no association, so people do not shop. there is no marketplace out there. a couple of years ago, safeway's healthcare was out of control. it was going up 10% a year. when the company sees that happening, they had to do something. they figured out if they focus on four conditions, they thought they could somewhat control their health-care costs. it worked much better than ever believed. they focused on lowering the premiums for anybody who either did not smoke or would quit

smoking, and even paid for the smoking cessation programs. they gave the $350 less in premiums if they did not smoke or if they would quit smoking. if they were the proper way, or if they would lose weight, they gave them an incentive as a lower premium. if they would control their cholesterol, not if they had high cholesterol, but if they would control it, gave them a lower premium. if they controlled their blood pressure, they would actually give them a lower premium. over the last four years, compared to the rest of the united states, they lower their health care costs by 40%. we spend $2 trillion on health care in the united states. imagine lowering that by 40%. we could cover all americans and do it with less money than we are currently doing it. america would be healthier along the way. if you look at the children in

the united states, we have a serious problem. it will get worse unless we incentivize people to have healthier behaviors. we can have these free-market principles in health care, have a healthier country, do it for less money, and not bankrupt or for the bankrupt our children and grandchildren with spending more than $1 trillion. we can do it if we have republican principles at the forefront. the next issue, the president introduced to supreme court nominee. it is good that we take this very seriously and give it some intellectual paul. -- intellectual thought. we need to talk about what the philosophy should be of someone on the supreme court. i do not believe it should be

somebody who actually makes laws. the founders produced the greatest political doctrine in the history of the world. one of the reasons we are so blessed is because of the u.s. constitution and the vision that the founders put down paper. they said if you want to change it, here is how you change it. they did not say supreme court, you can change it because you believe the world should be at a different place. that put an amendment process in place. they made it very difficult to change, because they figured they had gone awry. -- they had got it right. that made it difficult to change. too many people who have gotten on the supreme court had decided that they think they know better, and they want to become legislators. they want to make law instead of just interpreting law. to me, that is fundamental.

if you are an activist judge, you have no place on the supreme court. if you interpret the constitution correctly, then you should. [applause] the talk about litmus tests. that is the litmus test. folks have actually decided international law over the u.s. constitution. to me, that has no place. it should be the u.s. constitution is the supreme law of the land, period. that is the way it should be. [applause] last year, we had high gasoline prices. people were talking about energy. we have to do something about energy. in gas prices started going down, and the debate faded away. does anybody here really believe that gas prices and energy costs are going to stay down? we need a national energy

policy. we absolutely need one. i believe strongly in green energy. i was the sponsor of the alternative renewable energy bill last year in the u.s. senate, so i believe strongly in solar power, biodiesel, wind, and we have a lot of geothermal in my home state of nevada. it is not the full answer for the united states. we cannot get there in a short period time to what people would like to see as a green economy. it takes time for the technology to develop to where we can actually afford it. the president has proposed something he calls cap and trade. every time you flip a light switch on, every time you drive your car or buy something, it takes energy to produce. the average american family will have an average of cost of four

thousand dollars a year. that is the wrong approach to an energy policy for the united states. i believe there are answers. first of all, while we are transitioning to a green economy, which is going to take some time, we need more american energy. the bottom line is we need more american oil, more american natural gas. [applause] we should develop more clean coal technology. my state has yucca mountain. yucca mountain was not the answer for nuclear waste. it was a huge waste of money. we have to recycle nuclear waste, but we have to invest more in nuclear power. if the french can have nuclear power, we should have nuclear power. [applause]

lastly, the issue of energy is critical, not only to the economic security of the united states, but our national security as well. i do not know about you, but in looking at who we buy a lot of oil from, they are not exactly our friends. hugo job as from venezuela -- chavez, ahmadinejad, they are not exactly friends to the united states. we should be independent of foreign sources of energy in the united states. we have the energy. if we have the will, we can do it, and we can do it together. [applause] this is an issue that you do not hear republicans talk a lot about. i believe it is an issue we can actually take from the democrats. it is the issue of education. it has been said that education

is the new civil right in america. i believe that. to compete in the 21st century, our kids need the best schools that they can go to. they already have it in our colleges and universities. we have the finest colleges and universities anywhere in the world. people all over the world want to come to america to go to our colleges and universities. we have arguably the second worst k-12 system in the industrialized world. we are not inspiring children to become and engineers. they need the tools in the fields of science, technology, and engineering to compete. the university said the kids are not coming to us prepared. they are having to teach remedial courses today because they are not prepared. the democrats have controlled our schools for too long. they have allowed special

interests to be in front of our kids'education. we need to take back our schools. education is mostly a local and state issue. there are things the federal government can do. we can show programs that are working in various places in the country. if you look at the number one difference between k-12 and higher education, if you get a pell grant, a student loan, the gi bill, some kind of financial assistance should to go to college, you conducted any college you want to if you can get into it. our colleges and universities go to high schools to recruit. there are competing for students. they want the money and the talent. what happens in k-12? for 90% of americans, it is where you live. it is a monopoly situation.

war choice in education will lead to better schools. -- more choice in education will lead to better schools. there is no one simple answer to improving the system, but there are a lot of answers that will help and will work. charter schools, public school choice, vouchers, the idea of taking merit pay and paying good teachers more. in exchange for that, if you are a bad teacher, go do something else. we do not want you are ruining our kids' education anymore. instead of protecting bad teachers, let's put our kids' education first and foremost in our school system. [applause] this is an issue we can actually take back. it is not just a question of more money.

washington spends more than $15,000 per student per year. i doubt if there's a person in this room that will allow your kids to go to school in washington d.c. it is that bad. it is a question of how the money is spent. let me give you one example of answers. our gifted kids today are the kids we really want to be inspired. they will create most of the jobs. they will come up with the really neat ideas for the future. 20% of gifted kids drop out of school today. one out of five gifted kids drops out of school today because they are not challenged. we have an incredible school in northern nevada call the davidson academy. this is for the really highly gifted. these are kids in fifth