not, there will not be. >> does the prime minister think it fair that a war widow has to pay income tax on her war widow's pension? >> my honorable friend raises a very good point. we need to look at all those sorts of issues under the work that we are doing on the military covenant-there are very complicated issues of pensions and interaction with taxes. i do not want to give a flip answer from the dispatch box; we have a proper process of looking at the military covenant, which is the right way to do things. >> climate finance will be critical at the ongoing climate summit at cancun. although i welcome the fact that the government have pledged £2.9 billion to the global climate fund, will the prime minister confirm that any future money pledge will be additional to existing aid budgets, and can he say what further innovative funding mechanisms he plans to employ to deliver the uk's share of the annual $100 billion pledged at copenhagen? >> the honorable lady is absolutely right to raise that. although cancun will not achieve the binding global

agreement that we want, it can make important steps towards that, so we can stay on track. on climate finance, first, we will stick to what was set out previously on the limit in the aid budget for money used for climate change purposes, although there are very real connections between climate change and poverty; and secondly, there is a commitment, which we will keep to, of £2.9 billion for climate change finance. britain is a leader on that, but as she said, we must look at innovative ways of levering in more money from other parts of the world, including-frankly- from some fast-growing areas which, when kyoto was first thought of, were very underdeveloped and are now fast- developing countries. we need to help them, but the finance should not flow only from us. >> will the prime minister have urgent talks with the leader of the house and the business secretary on introducing legislation for a national regulator or ombudsman for supermarkets before more

suppliers are decimated by their conduct? >> we have new arrangements in terms of ensuring that supermarkets treat farmers fairly. all of us as constituency mps have heard stories about supermarkets behaving very aggressively towards farmers, and it is right that there is a proper way of trying to police that independently, so that our farmers get a fair deal for the food that they produce. >> each week the house of commons is in session, we air prime minister's questions live on c-span2. wednesday's 7:00 a.m. eastern and sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern. c-span.org you can find it archives of past prime ministers questions and websites.

>> next, a discussion on the republican agenda in the next session of congress. then, the russian president and after that the future of the start treaty. >> this week, a discussion on the draft proposal of neutrality. we will hear from marcia blackburn and others. the communicators, monday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. >> find great holiday gifts for the c-span san in your life at the c-span store. from books and the bidis to

mugs, umbrellas and more. >> lamar alexander spoke about the republican agenda in the upcoming 112 congress. he is followed by a panel, including bill kristol. and this is one hour 15 minutes. >> the afternoon. we're pleased to say that we will be celebrating our 50th anniversary of research in 2011. we would like to welcome our audience here at the conference center to today's events. -- audience at home watching on c-span and our viewers at

hudson.org. we -- we are pleased to have hudson alexander here today. lamar alexander -- lamar alexander needs no introduction. set of tennessee. he served as governor of tennessee, as president of the university of tennessee, as u.s. secretary of education, as a businessman, and also as a hudson institute fellow. for a few hundred votes in the new hampshire primary, he would've been the republican nominee in 1986. the senator has treated his signature red flannel shirt for the more muted suit of it u.s. senate. he is a leader who takes ideas

seriously. in recent years, we have worked with him on numerous issues, including the assimilation of immigrants. he and his colleagues will tell you the same. he is one of the most well-liked members on both sides of the senate. that is in part because he has never forgotten his small-town tennessee roots. back in 1994, in the days of strong republican resurgence in congress, former gov. alexander, along with then- hudson senior fellow, promised a new hudson project funded largely by our friends, but not exclusively by our friends, at the liam hadley policy group. the book was a critically

acclaimed volume, a hudson institute press classic. as worthy as the ideas were the time for a variety of complicated reasons, i did not fully take root. 15 years later, as the 112 congress prepares to take office, our panel will look at the themes of the book to examine what vision that derailed and why it is even more urgent today. i have the distinct honor of introducing senator alexander. thank you. [applause]

>> thank you for that introduction. he reminded me of my small town rich. i was driving along lamar alexander parkway. i stopped at the 7-eleven to get a little something and put it on the counter. i had no cash. i reached in my pocket, pulled out my credit card, and handed it to the little girl behind the counter. she said, "may i ask a question?" i said, "yes." she said, "was you named after this road?" [laughter] thank you for doing this. this is a real treat. chuck and i delighted, first, that you sponsor the project to begin with 15 years ago.

we had a good forum about it and a good discussion. we had tremendously talented authors for this volume. and now the palace that are here today, i am genuinely looking for testing to listen to the panelists who are among the most distinguished figures in our country. i thank all of you for coming. the eminent british political philosopher maurice cranston said that the best metaphor for political performance was a theatrical performance because the politician is acting a drama written by the audience themselves. whether it is the british philosopher or me comparing music with politics, we all listen for what resonates.

for phrases that resonated in the 2010 election, we might listen to the senators who were elected and hear what they said. in a year -- and this is what we will find out -- in a year, when television screens displaying your, these politicians often talked about hope. there were rand paul evangelizing market prosperity, instead of dwelling on government austerity. they talked about experience to describe ways to make it easier and cheaper to create private- sector jobs. marco rubio, affirming with his life story, america's exceptionalism, rather than lamenting america's decline. there was too much spending, too many taxes, too much debt, and to many -- and too many washington takeovers. most to worry elected are

american dreamers, who believe that anything is still is possible for anyone who will work for it. europeans and others around the world find this to be an irrational view. yet most of american politics, and i think sam huntington is the one who wrote this, is about setting high goals and dealing with the disappointment of not meeting those goals and then trying again. this is not an unforced americanism where the government in washington tells you what to believe. it is a spontaneous patriotism of the kind that you get from reading lincoln's second inaugural address or the pledge

of allegiance which george washington's men swore at valley forge or attending citizenship swearing at a federal courthouse. it is the rest of the book that we propose to discuss today. the remaining chapters argue that to realize the promise of american life, the central government in washington must play a much larger role. his book launched the progressive movement, featuring, first, president wilson and now president obama. his is a strategy of made-in- washington policies, grand schemes to sell big national problems, based upon the assumption that these are things that individual americans simply cannot do for ourselves. in 1995, as he said, at the hudson institute's request, we edited a book which we call "the new promise of american

life." we were fellows at hudson. i was touring the country hoping to persuade americans that i was the logical choice for president of the united states. the public did not agree with my logic, prompting my preacher brother-in-law to suggest that i should think of that political loss as a reverse calling. [laughter] our book was an attempt to provide intellectual content for the anti-washington fervor of the moment. it was a fervor that surges through american history.

we chose the title of " the new promise of american life" because we believe that progressivism had been carried too far and what our country now needed was a reverse mirror image of the vision or less from washington and more of ourselves. our idea of america was one created by state's operating community-by community, depending on civic virtue, valuing individual liberty, in committees to large and too diverse to be managed by a central government in washington, d.c. my best political one minor at the time was "cut their pay and send them home." it referred to congress, which made few friends in the world's greatest deliberative body in which no sir. 15 years ago, i was impressed with the essays from bill kristol and howard baker and francis fukuyama and others. their advice resonates as well

today as it did then. reading their advice also reminds me of how little of that device anyone took. republicans who were elected in 1994 on the cry of "no more unfunded federal mandates soon" replaced liberal government rules. the size of the federal budget has grown 140% and the federal debt is up from $5 trillion to the $14 trillion. in the last two years, the progressive revolution symphony has been playing in washington again. with government bailouts and, as one blogger has pointed out, the appointment of more new czars and czarinas then even the romanov's could have imagined. this form is the result of the suggestion.

after what i have to say, we will hear from a distinguished panel that includes three contributors from the 1995 volume. our hope is the same today as it was 15 years ago, to provide an intellectual context for the latest anti-washington surge, with the additional hope that officials will listen to it and act on our advice. let me begin the discussion with a single suggestion that i have made before. the new congress should proceed step-by-step in the right direction to solve problems in a way that re-earsn the trust of the -- re-earns the trust of the american people. to make this point, i thought of hanging up in the republican cloakroom photographs of nancy pelosi and harry reid. it is not just heading in the wrong direction, but trying to

get there all at once. this is a government trying to take big bites from several apples and trying to solve them at the same time. during the recent health care debate, i heard a number of times from democrats from the other side of the aisle this question. "what are republicans for?" my answer was that, if democrats were waiting for the republican leader, senator mcconnell, to roll into the

senate a wheelbarrow filled with a 2700-page republican health care bill, they would be waiting for a long time. congressional action on comprehensive climate change, comprehensive immigration, and comprehensive health care have been well intended. but the first two fell of their own weight. and the health care law has been subject to multiple efforts to repeal it since it passed the senate a year ago on christmas eve in a driving snowstorm. it has united almost all republicans and the majority of americans against these bills. it is not only in ideology, but comprehensive. two recent articles help to explain the trouble with the democratic conference of

approach. the first appeared in national affairs and written by one of our panelists today. he explained that the "sheer ambition of president obama as a policy president," he wrote that the president advisers have been educated at elite universities and process initiatives all at once and create compressive policies for social systems in a society -- this is the latest outburst of crowlyism or progressivism. systemic problems of health care, energy, education, environment simply cannot be solved in pieces. analyzing the article, historical, that approach has not worked.

the progressives failed to gain more than a brief some woods. the reason for these failures is that "this highly rational comprehensive approach fits uncomfortably with the constitution which proportions powers among so many different players." "democracy is messier than progressives and their heirs wish to recognize. the latest example of mr. wilson's observation can be seen by anyone watching the new health care a lot increase premiums, add to the federal

debt, caused millions of individual policyholders to lose their policies, cause businesses to postpone any new jobs, and in fixed huge unfunded medicaid mandates on states, all consequences of the law never intended. i have to say they were predicted by republicans. neoconservatism was not unorganized ideology or even a necessarily conservative one, but a way of thinking of politics rather than a set of politics or rules. it would have been better if we had been called policy skeptics. this skepticism toward grant legislative policy schemes help -- i have to say that there were predicted by republicans. wilson also wrote that neoconservatism's were not an

organized ideology or necessarily conservative but a way of thinking about politics rather than a set of principles and rules. it would have been better if we have been called policy skeptics. the skepticism toward grand of legislative policy schemes help to explain how during the 2010 election the law of unintended consequences may being a member of the "party of no" and more in electable choice than being a member of the party of "yes we can." respect for the law of unintended consequences is "not an argument for doing nothing, but is one in my view for doing things experimentally." try the idea out in one place

and see what happens before you inflicted on the whole country. that is why the republican party aspires to be a governing party, rather than merely an ideological debating society. the question must still be "what are republicans for?" and the question has to be answered. you will find we have been trying. you will find republican senators trying to edge of the question, following mr. wilson's advice -- trying to answer the question, following mr. wilson's advice. setting a clear goal, reducing america's health care costs so that more of us can afford to buy insurance. but then we propose the first six steps towards that goal. one, allow small businesses to pool their resources to buy health care plans. two, reducing junk lawsuits against doctors. 3, allowing policies against state lines. 5, promoting wellness for

prevention. 6, avoiding fraud and abuse. create the environment for 100 new nuclear plants, in metrified our cars, explore our shore for natural gas and oil, double energy research and develop four new forms of clean energy. this step-by-step republican clean energy plan was a an alternative to the tax that would have imposed an economy- wide cap and trade scheme collecting hundreds of billions of dollars each year for slush funds with which congress could play. here is still another example, a bipartisan one. and 2005, they asked the national academy to identify the first 10 steps congress should take to preserve competitive the

advantage so we could keep growing jobs. the academy recommended 20 steps. congress enacted two-thirds of it. we call it the america competes act of 2007. it was important legislation. some steps are larger and some are smaller, such as banking laws, keeping debt and taxes low, recruiting japanese

industry in the auto industry, but also building highways so suppliers can get their parts to the auto plants in time. and then a better schools program, one of which is to pay our teachers more for teaching well. we became the fastest-growing state in family incomes. as a result of the 2010

elections, we clearly have enough clout to stop risky comprehensive schemes featuring more taxes, more debt, more washington takeovers, and more hidden and unexpected surprises. we have enough clout to suggest alternative approaches for the most urgent problems of the day. in fact, we have an obligation to do so if we want to be able to persuade independent voters, as well as republicans, that we ought to be the governing party in america after 2012. there's no mystery what our focus should be, jobs, debt, payroll. it should be easier and cheaper to create private-sector jobs. make it easier and cheaper to create private-sector jobs. and you can make your list. i can make mine. a list comes to my mind. to not raise taxes on anybody in the middle of an economic downturn. we have a discussion on that in congress this weekend. repeal one by one the mandates

on job creators and the health care law. reduce the corporate tax rate. reduce or eliminate the capital gains tax. defend state's ability to create a work force. enact korea, columbia trade law. such a comprehensive undoing carries the risk of scaring independence. as a practical matter, there is

no better way to do that without replacing a repealing yet with a step-by-step health care costs. most do not take effect until 2014. the same step-by-step approach can be applied to the second goal, making annual spending come to as close to revenues as possible. trying to eliminate the annual deficit in one year will turn the nation upside down. for a nation that is borrowing 42 cents of every dollar, to waste one day to address its debt is suicidal. action should be taken immediately while other steps are being fashioned. one would be no new entitlements on spending programs.

mandatory spending. no more unfunded federal mandates on local governments. tennessee has a $1.5 billion revenue shortfall this year. the health care law will impose $1.1 billion in unfunded medicaid mandates on just our state between 2014 and 2019. caps on discretionary spending. these dollars add up. 3. . .

15 years ago, republicans captured control of congress during one of those recurring outbursts when american voters announced they wanted less of washington and more freedom for themselves that advice was not well-heeded and now we find ourselves again the political beneficiaries of another such outburst and we have an opportunity to lay the groundwork to be a governing party within two years. i hope -- my hope is that this time republicans heed the advice of will son, crystal, that

rather than attempt comprehensive scheme with ekeep our eye on the goals that matter most, making it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs an dealing in a tough, strategic way with terrorism. then we proceed step by step toward those goals in a way that earns the trust of the american people. we should give herbert coley credit for reminding us in 1979 in the first chapter of his "promise for american life,"s that this is the one country in the world where people believe anything is possible and anyone can succeed if he or she works hard. this is the country where still, your grandfather can tell you, aim for the top, there's more room there, and really believe it. hopefully republicans elected in

2010 will follow their instinct not just to oppose progressivism but to offer a new promise of american life as we tried to do 15 years ago. hopefully they'll continue to remind americans that this debate is not some dry, dusty analysis but a contest of competing, governing philosophies about how to realize the dream of an upstart, still-new nation in which most people still believe anything is possible. our argument is that our country's exceptionalism is best realized by the largest number of americans when we expect less of washington and more of ourselves. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, senator, for though characteristically thoughtful yet bold remarks. i'd like to open it up for a couple of questions which the

senator has graciously agreed to take. please identify yourself and speak into the microphone. >> the question i would have for you, senator, is certainly the last time they started strong and ended weak, they were serious about eliminating government functions. i don't hear in your blueprint that you're serious about eliminating the problems of overgrown government that's gone beyond the outlines in even the constitution. further a question i would have for you is the achilles heel of the modern conservative movement, particularly neoconservatives, which is in the so-called war on terror and its -- and all its attendant --

attendants, including two two wars in the middle east, it seems conservatism has followed the so-called comprehensive approach that you have defined. what does conservatism need to do to approach the war on terror in a noncomprehensive way? >> that's a terrorism question. what i'm going to do is give you a very brief answer and leave most of it to the panel because i'm anxious to hear what they have to say anyway and i've had my say for 30 minutes anyway. i meant to be as serious as i could about less from washington, suggesting a focus on no new entitlements, we're at a crisis in our country, we're in a brand new place a point where we have to head the other direction.

i'm deadly serious about that. i think i will -- with respect, take your question and ask if the panel can deal with that question as part of its discussion of the whole issue because it's an excellent question. >> thank you, senator. thank you very much. let me ask the panelists to come up. as the panelists come up, i have the honor of introducing our moderator, kate -- kate o'beirne, previously washington editor, she spent time as a commentator on cnn and frequent guest on "meet the press." she'll moderate the panel and field questions from the public. kate? >> thank you, ken. very encouraging to hearing such a terrific speech from a

senator, so i'm looking for forward to the 112th. we couldn't have this afternoon a more insightful group of speakers. as insightful, maybe, but not more insightful. who are going to share their thoughts about today's topic, less from washington, more ourselves, i'm going to introduce the speakers in the order on which i'll call on them to share their initial thoughts, hopefully that will spark discussion among the panelists. first, chris demuth. he's senior fellow at the american institute. sclaffers at a.e.i. talk about how indy spenceable his insight and guidance was as far as policy topics. previously he was administrator

in the office of management and budget and executive director of the presidential task force on regulatory policy. he worked on urban and environmental policy in the nixon white house he holds an a.b. from washington university. our second speaker, bill shambla, director of the bradley center for philanthropy and civic renewal. he was director of programs for the bradley foundation in milwaukee. he served as speech writer for attorney general edwin meeks and director of the office of personnel management connie horner and secretary of health and human services lewis sullvn and he was co-director of a.e.i.'s constitution, he served

on the committee for records and he served on the board of directors for the corporation for national and community service. bill crystal is editor of "the weekly standard" which he co-founded in 1995. he frequently appears on fox news sunday and the fox news channel. before starting the "weekly standard" he led the project for republican future and served as chief of staff to vice president dan quayle and secretary of education william bennett. he taught politics at the university of pennsylvania and finally, senator alexander's coed tore is joining us, checker finn is president of the fordham institute, a think tank devoted

to furthering educational excellence. he's part of the task force on k-12 education. he's senior outstand -- on education reform, education next. he's an adjunct fellow here at the hudson institute. he's the author of 19 books and innumerable articles and holds an undergraduate degree in history a master's degree in social studies and teaching and a doctorate, all from harvard university. with that, i turn the program over to chris demuth for his initial remarks, then bill shambra, bill crystal and checker finn. 6 >> realizing the new promise of american life as described in senator alexander and checker finn's book of 1995 involves many political -- i'm sorry, am

i not on? it involves many political and cultural challenges described in the book. it also involves challenges as emphasized in bill crystal's essay in that volume that are primarily institutional, that is how well or poorly our legal and political institutions do at translating popular sentiment into policy and shaping the decisions of those in authority in a public interested direction. the recent elections are reasons to be very pleased with our political institutions as a whole, a dramatic shift in popular opinion changed our major legislative institutions at the national level and many political institutions at the state level in just a very few years. it is impossible in any other advanced democracy for a shift

in public opinion to translate into a change of government so rapidly and the fact that we have institutions that are so responsive affects and encourages political participation. i want to focus, however, on an institutional problem that i think is particularly severe and is particularly related to the progressive movement which inspired that book and this panel and that is the problem of government regulation. let me offer this current example. federal spending and debt has been growing at terrifying rates in recent years. federal taxation is set to increase substantially in just a few weeks. but following the elections, which were animated by these prospects, this is likely to change. the 112th congress is going to take a very different view toward new spending and under the constitution, at least, it

has the power of the purse. in collaboration with the obama administration, the new congress is likely to moderate, perhaps substantially, the scheduled tax increases. but federal rule making and regulation has also been growing at an unprecedented rate in recent years. as a result of the environmental protection agencies -- agency's enormously ambitious agenda to revise and extend most of its important environmental and pollution control rules, as a result of the deployment of many energy conservation regulations enacted in statute in the bush administration as a result of the f.c.c.'s ambitions to regulate the internet and dozens and dozens of other initiatives. that scheduled growth -- that growth is going to increase very significantly in the next couple of years as a result of the regulatory juggernauts created

by the obama care legislation and the dodd-frank act which are launching literally hundreds of new rule making proceedings. yet under current arrangements, the trajectory of regulatory growth will be little influenced by the elections because it is on auto pilot as far as our electionive legislateture is concerned. here the laws are written, the costs imposed, the benefits dispersed, not by congress but by regulatory agencies in the executive branch acting under delegations of power from past congresses. from congresses in 2009, in 1970, or in the new deal or even earlier. and we have lately been putting in place many new innovations or increase -- for increasing the autonomy of regulatory agencies from the congress. just in the past few years, for example, in the bush administration, under the sarbanes oxley act, we created a

new regulatory agency in washington with independent taxing power. the public company accounting oversight board a 501 c 34 like the hudson institute create -- a 501 c 3 like the hudson institute, taxes must be paid or you go to 11 worth as if you don't pay a tax bill. this was taken a step further in the dodd frank, the new protection agency doesn't have to go to congress either. it takes its budget as a cut of the federal reserve bank's profits. the federal reserve is -- gets an automatic share of that. the regulatory state has been the most durable legacy of the progressive era itself, growing and morphing for now a century. the -- right down to the present long after the progressive

impulse had faded. the original rationale of the specialized agency delegated with law making power from the congress was expertise. the idea was that the neutral application of rational analysis beyond politics could improve society and improve economic performance. but long after that original idea lost its luster, the independent agency -- the agency independent of the congress developed a political object of its own. congress, our elected representatives, can take credit for lofty goals, clean air, safe products, or the solution of exigent problems or crises such as the cry soifs 2008 but leave the hard, contentious decisions, the real policy decisions, to regulators and that approach was the primary approach in response

to the depression, it was the primary response to the growth of environmentalism and consumerism in the 1970's, it was the response to a variety of crises that marked the w. bush administration such as the accounting scandals that gave us sarbanes oxley, the -- sarbanes-oxley, the energy price increases that gai us this vast new arsenal of conservation regulations and more recently in the dodd-frank and the obama care act we find a very, very heavy reliance on regulatory authority so when you talk about what the acts say, they say we have to wait and see. the statutes are there but what they mean is to be determined by the bureaucracy. there are two other features that make regulation so persistence. it proceeds minutely in tiny,

tiny little steps through regulatory procedures that amount to assembling a co-list -- coalition of interest groups, an equill inreyum in favor of each small step. each small step is very, very secure against being unwound. second, the costs are off budget. the current estimate is that regulatory costs are $1.75 trillion a year. i think that's probably right within a half trillion one way or the other. it's hard to estimate. but the important thing is, no congressman or senator ever voted to appropriate those moneys. they are not subject to any kind of budgetary control. so you get things such as the t.s.a. or the e.p.a. is always taking further and further and further steps. if the costs of the new t.s.a.

heavy petting procedures at the airport, whatever they're called, if those were quantified and put on budget, it would be a very different sort of debate. the result is that the growth of regulation is continuous and utterly bipartisan since the new deal, although republican rhetoric is far more attuned to free markets, much more kept call of regulation and democratic rhetoric, democratic party rhetoric is much more pro regulation, pro control. you see very little change as a practical matter from administration to administration. in fact, the regulatory champs since 1960, the administrations where we've seen the greatest regulatory growth, have been the administrations of richard nixon and george w. bush. we had this brief interlude of popularity of deregulation, which was similarly bipartisan, it began in the ford administration but gathered

great momentum under jimmy carter with the aid of senator kennedy and then was continued in at least the first term of senator reagan. even very smart, ambitious, principled, conservative reformers stay away from regulation. the 1994 contract with america, the 2010 pledge to america, the lion road map to american prosperity, they're on large issues, cultural issues, economic issues. there are reasons for this and i've described some of them but just to kind of end with a point of emphasis here, there are several current e.p.a. regulations that are as complex and resistant to understanding and summary as the proposal for a new arms control agreement

with the soviet union. which of the two should a conscientious legislator focus on? and the e.p.a. rules, each one of them is designed to provide us with cleaner air, better health and the agency can tell us about the vast benefits that will result in allegedly even vaster than the costs. "the wall street journal" this morning has a very good op-ed article proposing the abolition of the federal communications commission. it runs that article once every five years by one person or another, sometimes it's a liberal, sometimes a condition servetive. among people who understand the telecommunications industry, everyone agrees that the f.c.c. is beyond any justification but

no politician would go near that with a 10-foot pole. i wouldn't say the regulatory ouevre as that of the i.r.s. but the i.r.s. touches more people and is easier to summarize and characterize. there are several proposals springing up to change the institution of regulation. one proposal, senator mark warner falls into this category is to take account of the problem of off-budget costs. he would like to put regulation on a pay-go basis, so if an agency had a regulation of $50 million a year, they would have to clean up old regulations to the tune of $50 million in

savings through reform. an even more radical proposal is from senator demint and senator davis of kentucky. the so-called reins act, which says no regulation costing $100,000 or more can take effect until it's approved by a joint resolution of congress bearing the president's signature. that's addressed to the delegation problem. and it has the advantage of going right to the heart of the problems of the autonomous regulatory state and being for all of its audacity, being difficult to oppose in principle. what congressman or senator will say, no, we should not stand up and be counted on something that's going to cost $100 billion a year. i like the institutional reform ideas. i like the practical step by

step approach emphasized by senator alexander in his prepresidential years, ronald reagan was a crusading newspaper columnist focused on big issues about our contest with the soviet union, issues in taxation, issues in spend bug we always pause, every couple of columns, he'd get down in the weeds so some preposterous regulatory proposal and make great fun of it, very knowledgeable and make great fun of it. i would like to see the new congress do a couple of step-by-step things and my proposal for starters is to pass a simple law repealing the law passed in the bush administration that is now being implemented to ban the incandescent light bulb. individual cases like this can have a great effect on the direction of plcy -- policy and there is -- there are a huge number of them to be addressed.

thank you very much. >> thank you, chris. bill shambra. >> thank you for calling us together and especially the honor of being mentioned in the same speech with irindividual crystal and james q. wilson, from whom i learned whatever i knew about public policy. when hudson institute undertook the promise of the american life, it was my privilege to be working alongside others for the project's financial backer, the lynde and harry bradley foundation in milwaukee. it was a particular honor to work for the late mike joyce, the co-author of the essay in the volume. our enthusiasm for the project came not from sam ideological doctrine but rather from our work on the ground in the low income neighborhoods of milwaukee.

for decades, those neighborhoods had been supervised by cadres of social service professionals who claimed to know better than everyday sints how their affairs should be managed. the results there, as elsewhere across america, had been disastrous. duquesne -- decaying families, rising crime rights. in milwaukee we saw and the bradley foundation encouraged the first sign of a populist rebellion, namely parental choice. for the first time, low-income parents were able to make one of the most critical life choices on their own, selecting the school their children could attend with public dollars. the idea proved unsettling to anyone with professional social

service credential. surely that certificate of expertise showed they'd be better than mere public citizens. as that was going on in milwaukee, others began to explore the underinpin -- the intellectual underpinnings of what lamar came to call government arrogant empire. that led us to herbert proehly, best known in public policy but he also argued for its professionalization, for the turning over of public policy to the credentialed experts as

well. the reason for that was that in the complex and interconnected circumstances of the 20th century, he believed, the promise of american life could no longer be fulfilled by the idiosyncratic and amateurish workings of democratic individualalism. the promise instead demand our national life be turned over to knowledgeable experts immersed in the new sciences of nature and society which enabled us to manage the growing webs of interdependentence. those purely public spirited social engineers would be voted heart and soul to a grand vision of national purpose or national community, a vision that was all too likely to elude ordinary citizens trapped as they were in shab belo call communities still clinging to antiquated prokal moral and religious smiths. by the early 1990's, we'd seen the result his vision.

once-proud self-reliant american citizens were being turned into passive, helpless clients, increasingly dependent on social service, lavishly funded but poorly designed and ineffectively delivered. this helped -- if this helped fuel the congressional election os of 2004, how much more true that of the elections of 2010. once gep with e-- again we see the fiercely proud don't tread on me against the elites whose qualify -- qualifications make them able to change our system. once again they say it's religious cook trinh against the global interconnectedness. and once again the tone deaf arrogance of the elite's

response feeds the populist fires. if we declared war against herbert proly in 1995, it seems he won, at least that round. how will things be different this time? if the professional service state was becoming too expensive in the mid 1990's, it most certainly is too expensive now and cutbacks that were unimaginable then are going to be unavoidable today. if it seemed a quee hotic challenge -- a quixotic challenge in the 1990's, today movies like "waiting for superman" promotes charters and blames teachers unions rather than the prad lee foundation for the problem of public education. the new promise was one of the first conservative projects to suggest that herbert's utopian intellectual vision might be

more a source of our problems than f.d.r.'s more practical new deal, for instance. since then, i think it's become clearer to us how much of our politics, how much of our daily politics, spins out of the tension between progressive nationalist vision of a rain of experts and the democratic decentralist vision of the framers of the american constitution. such arguments were once of interest only to a handful of intellectuals but they have today found their way onto the white boards of our nation's leading news network while fell thumbed copies of the constitution protrude from thousands of pockets at the nation's tea party rallies. one other thing will be necessary if he's to be beaten in this next round. in the summer of 1994, lamar alexander traveled across the country spending times with -- time with dozens of neighborhood leaders addressing our nation's

ills. their approach reflected the traditional common sense of the american people. rather then the elitist doctrines of professional expertise. in his book entitled "we know what to do" -- that is, american citizens, not the experts, know what to do, he described his visits to sites like a school for low income children in savanna and a job training program in east l.a. his notion that we must first look to street level problem solvers for wisdom rather than credentialed elites mevent that lamar was tea party before tea party was cool. if things are going to be different in 2010, our new congressional conservatives have to follow lamar's example and

turn once again to the experience and wisdom of grass roots leaders but they have to show a steadiness of purpose that failed them in 1994, once they had their own hands on the levers of national power. as we seek to -- ways to roll back government, the problems sought to address are not going away. alternatives have to be found and we'll have to look again at the more effective, less expensive decentralized solutions that, as bob woodson has argued for 30 year arkse peer in glorious profusion across america's neighborhoods. this is pratches another version of the step-by-step approach you were describing. for conservatives, the next successful journey to the white house begin with a tour like lamar's. it will seebling out the local wisdom of grass roots leaders and explore ways to sweep aside the failed solutions of progressivism's arrogant empire

so local wisdom can flourish. >> thank you, bill. >> thank you. good to be on such a fair and balanced panel. i like lamar's story about the young lady in tennessee thinking he might have been named after a highway. i suppose that means you would have been named after an earmark, so i'm sure of course the lamar alexander highway was not an earmark and even if it was an earmark it just came out of a pool of money that would have been spent anyway. the governor is not an earmark. at the executive's discretion. i'll just -- i think it's very

stimulating and the comments of the panel have been stimulating. i want to say about chris demuth, i agree with the idea to repeal the no incandescent light bulbs, bush era law. that should be the second thing the republicans do, the first being the npr defunding. let me talk about the step-by-step issue which lamar laid out with which i basically agree but let me offer a qualification. this also deals with the question asked of lamar. it seems you can do both step-by-step and a comprehensive

reform but conservative comprehensiveness is different than liberal or progressive comprehensiveness. the simplest way to put it, would be this, they concede that progressivism is central planning. but the alternative to that fatal conceit is not know thinking about the broad, about the arrangement of constitutions -- institutions or about the,ment of incentives so as to have sensible public policies and a free and well-ordered and well-functioning society. it is thinking about what i call the constitutional liberty. conservative comprehensiveness is much more -- thinks much more about how to arrangement institutions, how to arrange incentives, how to arrange structures so as to allow people to really pursue happiness and this be entrepreneurial and to

allow states and localities to experiment and reflect the wishes of the people and to allow self-government to flourish and do all the things that avoid what tocqueville warned against, the nanny state and do what the federalists want. it's a very different kind of comprehensive thinking than the attempt to plan everything from washington. i do think what is needed what is happening is a rebirth of a kind of serious thinking about institutions, incentives, structures in the spirit, actually of course the federalists, of tocqueville, of hayek, many people who thought about this over the last centuries, so that one can have a well-functioning and free and spirited and successful free society and successful self-government like the tea parties actually are sort of onto that when they talk about the constitution.

what is the constitution? it's a comprehensive account of how government should work and when people -- the left makes fun of the tea party people for being simple minded about the constitution but the notion of constitutionalism is the right kind -- the restitution of constitutionalism is the right kind of comprehensiveness, as opposed to the more liberal/progressive welfare state. practically, what i think that means is it ends up being sequential. if you're in opposition or trying to stop something bad, big change from happening of the nature we've had a lot other the last couple of years, it's perfectly reasonable to put up step-by-step changes and the situation can go on for a year or two. certainly when one is in semiopposition which is the current position for the next two years, conservatives control

one branch of government, have some influence in the other half and will be mostly struggling with the president, it would be -- there's no need and no purpose for conservatives to spend a huge amount of effort in trying to implement what i consider to be comprehensive conservative reforms. it's important to articulate them but practically speaking, extending the current tax rate is a better solution than raising taxes. repealing various bad regulations of the sort chris mentioned and bigger ones, too, that the e.p.a. is involved in, is a practical thing to do as opposed to entirely redoing our regulatory framework as opposed to getting rid of the f.c.c. not creating new entitlements and stripping away some current ones is a good thing to do for the next two years as opposed to fundamental paul-ryan like

reform of the entire structure. not print manager money would be a good thing to push the fed to do, though i believe permly that two or three or four years from now, there needs to be a rethinking of fundamental monetary policy, not that i'm an expert on that, but the current system, i think, is fundamentally flawed. i think step by step can precede a certain kind of comprehensive rethinking of policies and of structures, monetary policy, entitlements, tax policy, taxes are the most obvious idea. i'm not saying anything fancy or speculative, conservatives will spend the next few weeks on current tax rates, they may spend the next current session of congress to improve incentives for job creation or growth but fundamentally in

2012, i predict the presidential candidate will run on a big comprehensive tax reform. i don't think that violates conservatism to violate tax reform. there's going to be a tax code, you do have to think comprehensively, if that's the right word, or from the point of view as a whole, what it encourages, what judgments it embodies, how it compares with the tax codes of other nations, what the relationship of federal and state is, all these big questions that come at the sort of more, you know, regime level or big public policy level, let's say, as opposed to the step-by-step improvement in the current situation level. one should never minimize the importance of step-by-step and most politics is and should be in a decentre jet stream like ours, step-by-step. things are not crises and on the whole, the old, divisive -- the

old advice of air stott 8, one should be -- should be ware -- beware of changes because they have unintended consequences and it's disruptive to the stable political order, one doesn't want to be doing huge reforms every few years. on the other hand, when one hits watershed moments and i think we're hitting them in a lot of areas, whether debt and deficit or the regulatory system or i would say in certain areas of financial structure, one does need to have a big -- bigger framework for one's reform. as i say, if one thinks of that reform as more reforming the rules of the road, institutional structural reform, that's the kind of reforms conservatives should favor. they lay the groundwork for lots of step-by-step changes in the

future, they increase liberty and don't people what to do, create stable structures that are friendly to people exercising their liberty both economic liberty and other forms of liberty. i think that's true in foreign policy too. after 9/11 we did do lots of step-by-step things, we did mostly step-by-step things, quite reasonably, since you can't do everything at once. we did some other things, i think we erred on the side of not doing enough comprehensive changes and what our policy needs to be. it isn't that we've done too much big thinking but in some ways we've been under in the need to deal with actual concrete threats. we've done concrete things but without stepping back and thinking, huh about the whole structure of the u.s. government are the intelligence agencies

arranged, does the diplomacy make sense, what threats need to be dealt with? in foreign policy as in domestic policy, the basic principle once you combine step-by-step policies, when one needs to do more or doesn't have the time to do more with longer term constitutional level, almost, more comprehensive reforms, is a -- that's a manageable task. i think that is what conservatives need to do over the next few years. what's impressive to me is the tea party activists get this instinctively. they want tax rates kept the same, they want foolish things stopped but they understand over the long-term, not just long-term but medium term, we need to have more fundamental reforms in the modern welfare state because we are careening

off the cliff for various reasons and all these problems and deficiencies have come to a head in the last few years and it's evident that fundamental reform is needed. i think conservatives can be for both step-by-step and fundamental reform. >> bill. thank you. >> the problem of comprehensive reform, let's talk about education. 15 years ago, when we were ed iting this book, the outgoing 103rd congress had just passed and president clinton had eagerly signed the goals act and the ump teent renewal of l.b.j.'s elementary and secondary education act. both of those measures were logical outgrowths of a mostly bipartisan sequence of education reform efforts dating back to a nation at risk in 1983 and the 1989 charlottesville education summit where president bush

senior and all the governors settled on a set of national education goals. the 1994 legislation owed more than a little to bush's and secretary of education lamar zanter's america 2000 plans of 1991 which was set to give traction to those national goals. it seemed to make sense at the time or so i thought. i also noticed at the time that these did further the cult of fundamentalism. they definitely tended to draw toward washington the need for school reform but reresponsibility of which had been vested in the states. it may seem like ancient history today, it wasn't that long ago, at least in geological terms that governors such as of all people lamar smith, comemy

thompson and bill clinton and others were sending education reform onto the beaches of their own states. two things occurred on this front, from the right, mostly from republicans, especially new house members came a clamor to stop the world, we want to get off, the push to abolish the department of education. the intent was to return control to the states, districts and parents. the impullings was understandable but the proposal was symbolic and hollow. what matters is not the name over the door of the federal agency but what goes on inside it by way of spending and regulating. without other sweeping changes would in effect recreate the old department of h.e.w., which wouldn't -- might not be a bad thing to do but wouldn't promote local control of education.

the other big thing was a move led by democrats and resisted by republicans the move to tighten the screws of education and give greater authority to washington. it was evident that many states were not doing a good job of setting academic standards, developing good tests or holding their schools accountable. the 1994 legislation did not require them to do those things though it set the stage for the federal government to monitor and evaluate and prod them. when many states lagged on these fronts as early as 1997 my own fordham institute was reporting on the crummy standards most states were using, the call of fundamentalism kicked in big time and eyes turned to washington for more leverage. the unexpected development was that this impulse became bipartisan in the 2000 election and soon thereafter, george w. bush and ted kennedy and others teamed up to give us na'il

nilede. president bush believed what worked in texas would work in the country and enough leverage in washington would cause it to happen. some members of congress agreed, others felt obligated to let him try. nine years later, one of the main challenges awaiting the 112th congress will be to set things right. nclb has done a bit of good, flag ing the achievement gaps that plague us, attempting to boost everyone's achievement toward some notion of proficiency and to give kids alternatives to bad schools. there have been some minor achievement gains, mainly in math, almost entirely in the early grades. nothing has changed by way of high school graduation or 12th grade achievement and nothing much has changed this reading. you're aware of the overriding problem which is not much different today than it was in 1983. kids aren't learning enough.

the next comparison tests will be out on tuesday and will underscore this, we're following behind the rest of the world. we're essentially flat and other places are getting better. the problem first identified in 1983 remains unsolved in 2010. no child left behind has not solved it, neither will tightening the screws further. we've had two decades of screw tightening and what it's mainly done is take control of the schools from those who run them, narrowed the curriculum to little more than reading and math, neglected kids proficient in those subjects, failed to turn around broken schools and encouraged states to lower standards so more kids would appear to be protisht and -- proficient and federal standards would be met. i think it needs to be said that duncan and president obama have tried to ease this problem through federal funding and regulation.

their program has a lot of merit and their race to the top was an earnest and partly successful attempt to get states to make changes without forcing them to do so. congress has so far avoided grappling with nclb itself. everything i've heard, lamar is inside and probably knows more, they say while there's a consensus about the failings, there's no agreement about how to fix it. one problem, this comes to comprehensiveness versus step-by-step, nclb ran to about 1,000 pages and contains dozens and dozens of programs that you've never heard of, most of which have nothing to do with education reform but all of which would have to be agreed with before major reform would take place. meanwhile a sort of pinser movement is evident between those who would still tighten the regulatory schedule scrues

tighter, yes, i could name names, and those who want uncle sam to butt out and leave them to run their own schools with no interteerns from washington. i think both views are crazy. tightening the screws dent work but uncle sam abandoning the field leaves room for greedy unions and corrupt local governments to take charge again. is there a way out? a sensible middle ground? there is one to be described a step-by-step approach, actually. it partakes of something lamar earlier talked about, which is to try to set up a comprehensive re-authorization to identify the major problems we face and solve just them. and make things better. i think that this could be done in the core title i program where much of the money is and most of the problems arise.

i think it involves doing five things, just very briefly, first, largely embrace the administration's blueprint to abandon federal oversight of accountability for the vast majority of american schools. kill adequate yearly progress. hand the ball back to states to design accountable for the schools but two, at the same time, insist on greater transparent soif 1c508 results tied to rigorous assessments. there's a worthy, organic process under way in this country embraced at least on paper by 45 states to share common standards and development common assessments without any federal involvement. something never done before in this country. this has great promise in the direction of transparency. and congress can reasonably expect the states, if they'll make the performance of their schools transparent, maybe as a national assessment, a benchmark for that.

third, choose incentives over mandates, rather than requiring prescrippingtive teacher evaluation programs, create a federal grant program that rewards states that want to push this. fourth, consolidate dollars from as many programs as possible in the flexible funding streams. put it out through the title i formula, the best way to get dollars to the classroom, might cut down administrative costs too, and do some good to help cash-strapped states and districts at a time when i don't think we'll have more federal bailouts. fifth and last, allow states to negotiate to do things very differently. that's all. that's all we need to do to start. but that's plenty. it respects the principle of subsidiaryity, it escapes, i think, the political pinser i mentioned and may -- pincher i

mentioned and may do some good for our kids in international come tetpiveness. thank you. >> thank you, chester. thank you all. let me maybe kick off this discussion beginning with senator alexander's remarks, you include, senator, an extremely promising agenda, making it easier and cheaper to create jobs for sure. when you raise the question comparing this moment based on re-election results last month with what happened 15 years ago, you remind us that like then, we're looking for an intellectual context for this latest anti-washington surge. i think bill chrisle to reminded us that -- kristol reminded us that the tea party activists have provided that, they are

extremely serious about returning washington to its proper constitutional limits. i think that's extremely promising. what better intellectual context for what we all would like to see happen and it's certainly more of a battle cry, rallying cry, than smaller steps, it seems to me. such an organizing, worthy principle. i wholly agree with chris demuth. i propose beginning a list, another revolution betrayed if the ban on incandescent light bulbs is not repealed. we should definitely keep this list. i have one i'd add. as you well know in modifying the student loan program a very generous loan forgiveness is extended to graduates who go into public service. we ought to give a generous loan

forgiveness to graduates who don't go into public service. that's how dramatically i think we have to reorient how we feel about things. what's with the glorification of the public sector? i have a test for aspiring politicians. yesterday, the child nutrition bill passed the house, $4.5 billion a year. this is washington, d.c., dictating what vending machines in grammar schools contain. now, how the same people who talk about the importance of returning washington toits constitutional limits think they ought to be dictating what vending machines carry, you know, the premise that federal politicians somehow care more about the well-being of children than state and local officials is really stunning. in any event, my test run for being a politician would be, if you're preoccupied with what a fourth grader is having for

lunch, don't run for federal office. it's a worthy concern but stay home and preoccupy yourself with what's being served in lunch rooms at home. it's not washington's concern. when we talk about cutting back spending and discretionary caps, well overdue, the response is, these are worthy programs and wholly legitimate for washington to be running but we don't have the money to pay for them, or are we going to gradually and incrementally articulate the new proposition, we're not spending money on this because it's not washington's concern. and wouldn't we be rebuilding trust in the federal government if they constrain themselves to their fundamental responsibilities like maybe they'd do a better job with re-- with respect to their fundamental responsibilities if they weren't trying to do way too much. the question i'll pose to the panel and maybe they each have an example, i wholly agree when

there is a problem to solve, incremental steps make more sense. obviously the government is not good. i agree with george will and senator alexander, and there's a conservatism on the part thief public with the big grand scheme. i think there's a natural resistance too. but are there national problems with no appropriate federal solution? because i think that's what the new congress really ought to grapple with. allow that there's no federal solution even though it's an acknowledged national problem and begin returning washington toits proper limits. can you identify for me national problems that don't have a federal solution? >> sure. safe schools. ensuring children's safety in schools cannot be mandated or