going to be tough. the president and the united states needs to -- united states need to exert leadership. >> a political question. the redistricting process is underway. the democrats are in control of the justice department for the first time since the kennedy administration. how does that play out for the democrats' hopes to regain the house next year. >> we have redistricting going on in states around the country. that is a wild card as we go into the next election. how will that shake out? the democrats need 26 seats to regain majority in the house of representatives. a lot of people who thought that the election was about jobs and putting people back to work have

been unpleasantly surprised that our republican colleagues have not been focused on jobs and economic. they have been focused on the peeling health care reform. we will have to see how -- pope r is onepeal -- on repealing health care reform. we will have to see how it all shakes out. >> thank you for being with us. >> former arkansas governor and presidential candidate mike huckabee is the author of a new book. c-span recently had a chance to halt it did talk to him about his possible presidential bid in 2012, the role of the media in politics, social and fiscal issues, and about growing up in hope, arkansas. this is 40 minutes.

>> former arkansas governor mike huckabee. the book is called "a simple government." in researching the book, what did you learn? >> the complex problems we face as a country, and to back up with a macro lens and say what common-sense principle could apply here that would make sense? i wanted this book to be the kind of book that when a person read it, they did not have to have a phd in political science or be an economist. the book was written so that a person could come home from work, read the book, and say i understand that. they may not agree with that, but i wanted them to understand it. to be written in a conversational way, this is where i stand and what i believe. i am hoping it makes sense to people. >> you write that candidate obama said he would discover common ground. president obama is showing

himself to be the most partisan president in my lifetime, hands down. >> he surprised me. i was anticipating that he would govern a lot like he campaigned, all about a new day in washington, a new kind of dynamic. essentially he said republicans, i won, we are in charge, and you are not invited. it was interesting to see that he did not have any meetings with the house leadership for months and months into his presidency. when he had a meeting on health care, and i remember very vividly when paul ryan, congressman from wisconsin, said mr. president, we have some ideas. he kind of basically dismissed him with "we want, you did that ." -- "we won, you didn't."

i saw in him a very different kind of person as president than i had seen, democrat or republican, who when they took the oath of office, understood that there are elevated to a different position than they had been when they were just a candidate. >> so what change? >> i think a lot of it was that he really believed he was on a mission to get his agenda done. i think he misunderstood the voters of 2008. it was like an unchecked mandate that he could go with a blank slate full throttle ahead. but that is not what the people were saying. they were angry at republicans for the way republicans had messed things up, but i don't believe that a 55% vote meant that he had 100% of an opportunity to do whatever he wanted to do. >> your book has as much social policy as public policy. you write about one in three american kids lives with -- in a

home without a dad on the premises. allowing for exceptions as in all things, the typical portrait of these children is grim indeed. where did you get the figure, and what does that say about american society? american society? >> 75% of american verse are out of wedlock. the reason that is important, what i am trying to do in the first chapter of this book is to quantify the economic cost of social breakdown. a lot of times, particularly, people will say this social stuff does not matter. we need to focus on the economy. i could not agree more. if you are serious about

focusing on the economy and dealing with issues like poverty that calls a lot of government money to be spent, you cannot divorce that from the root cause of why we have so many government programs. 14% of our overall federal budget is safety net spending for things like wic, medicaid, a lot of which would not be spending if you had stable, solid, and financially capable families. >> you say that red states have more out-of-wedlock babies and blue states have perhaps you have already guessed it, more abortions. why did you identify that in terms of red and blue? >> i think sometimes people will look at the birth rates of states that are lower portion states and see that the out of wedlock states like arkansas and mississippi and even utah might be high. they say you do not have those kinds of numbers in states like

new york and connecticut. what you have in new york is 33% of pregnancies end in abortion. that figure is more like 9% in arkansas. excuse the figures if you don't interpret them to understand the reason that you don't see as many out of wedlock births is not because the rate has gone down, it is because those babies are aborted rather than born into a single parent homes. >> should roe vs. wade be overturned? >> that is not enough. all that would do, and maybe would be an improvement, but maybe not, because of this. it would then refer all abortion law to the states. if you live in arkansas and are pro-life, that would be very pro-life, that would be very good, because arkansas has an amendment that says that life begins at conception and it is the government's purpose to do everything possible to recognize

the sanctity and worth of every human life and tillis natural conclusion. in other states you might have even more liberal abortion. we need to start recognizing this is not so much about abortion, just that one aspect. the bigger issue is, do we believe that life has value and that every life has intrinsic worth? if we believe that, then we have to believe that it is our purpose as a culture and society to do all that we can to protect and enhance life. the next question is be irrefutable scientific question, when does life begin? we need to be more scientific, whether it is global warming our evolution. human life begins at conception. we can argue philosophically, but biologically, that is when human life begins. 23 chromosomes from a man and 23 from a woman come together and

created the in a schedule that is unique to that individual. it is neither the father nor the mothers dna schedule. as of the elements in its genome at that very moment that it will ever have. and it is life at that point, and it is human. it is not a puppy, it is not a stock of broccoli. it can only be human. if that is in fact him live, is it our responsibility to protect it and to treat it with dignity and worth? i say we should. that may require a constitutional protection for the lives of unborn children. >> so you are saying the government has a responsibility. >> in the same way the government has responsibility to protect people at the other end of life. if we come to the conclusion that it is ok to take human life because it represents a financial hardship. typically the argument is i

cannot afford this baby, i don't want this baby, it is going to interrupt my college, or my boyfriend will not accept it. if we apply that logic at the beginning of life, then why can we not applied at the end of life? by the same logic, when a person gets older and they become very expensive, because those nursing home bills are not cheap, and the family has to go out and visit grandma and take care of her and look out for her and lose their weekends because they have to go and visit her, they might decide that by the same logic that we can terminate the life at the beginning, we can terminate it at the end. that is where we end up at the logical conclusion of devaluing and human life. >> did you ever councilwoman who had an abortion? >> dozens of times. -- did you ever council a woman who had an abortion? >> there are lots of women who had an abortion, often because they were pressured by their mother, may be pressured by a

boyfriend, had the abortion, and then later they married and had a child. they would no longer just a student who had made a crazy mistake, but as they had their children, it started hitting them and hitting them hard. i saw a level of guilt and pain in the lives of women in their late 20's and early 30's, and i have never seen anything like it before or since. i realize that the people or counseling those young women to get abortions were not telling them the whole story. they were not being honest with them. they were just telling them this is just a block of tissue, don't worry about it. now we have sonograms, which we did not have a generation ago. i am going to be a grandfather this summer. my daughter-in-law showed me the dvd of a little bitty baby

inside of her. it is stunning, and it is a 3 d version of this or you can see facial features. this is a chore of where in any state where abortion is legal -- a child that could be terminated for any reason. you can see the heart beat, you know it is a boy. tests have already been done. these are technologies that did not exist before. the viability of a baby is much different than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. i think that is why we are seeing for the first time in polls this last year that for the first time since 1973, more people identify as pro-life than not, and interesting thing is because younger women are actually more pro-life than their mothers and grandmothers were. it is an encouraging sign that we as a culture and society are beginning to more greatly value

each human life as having intrinsic worth and value. >> you understand the politics on both sides of abortion. if you are the president, realistically what do you think you as president could do on the issue of abortion. >> one thing you could do is reverse the obama decision on the mexico city policy. you could make sure that federal funds never get used to take the life of a child. the president has responsibility to try to explain to the to try to explain to the american people that this is not some extraneous issue that is peripheral, and not an issue that should solely rest just in the caretaker. it should rest with all of us with a deep sense of elevation of every human life. what a president get everything he wants in a pro-life way his first few months in office? probably not, but i think he ought to try. he ought to set the standard high for the value of human life. >> the book is called "a simple

government." >> one of the things i wanted to get across in the book is that the greatest gift a leader gives to his or her constituency is the power to be independent. if a mother and father raise children who never are able to go off on their own, and when they are in their 30's and 40's, they live at home, mom has to cook and clean for them and take care of their clothes, we don't look at that and say what a deal. we look at that and said what a tragedy that that child never grew out of being a child. the whole point of being a parent is to train our children to become a replacement, to take on responsibility. the same thing is true of a pastor. the same thing should be true of

a political leader. it is to empower people so they can live independently with the full expression of their own personal liberty. >> you say sometimes i hear president obama speak and i want to chant the mighty mouse theme. here i come to save the day, that means barack obama is on the way. >> i have been somewhat taken aback by so many references in his speeches to himself. i say that sometimes i think he is more interested in his story than history. i find that the speeches are often about what he thinks, what he believes. this is about the american narrative. in a specific reference to that phrase, here i come to save the day, i think political leaders are first and foremost servants of the people. it does not mean they don't have

strong leadership capacities, but it is not to call attention to themselves nor is it to somehow make the american story all about their own commemorative story. i just have been sometimes amazed listening to the president speak, it was as if it were more about him than it was about us. >> you are right about president reagan, this year marking the centennial of his birth. looking back at the media in particular, social networking, and the plethora of information out there. is that one of the inherent issues that any president today is now facing, that reagan and his predecessors did not face? there are so many different opinions. >> it has changed the internment

completely. i am not sure ron reagan could get the nomination today. here was a guy who changed his position on abortion, he raised taxes, he granted blanket amnesty to illegals by the millions. he pulled out of a conflict in lebanon almost overnight because of attack. leave me, i am speaking as a person who loves rating, voted in campaign for him, a strong supporter of him, then and now, and believe he was one of the greatest american president ever. ever. basically he was living in a world where there were three new sources and broadcast, plus radio and television. even radio was different because the fairness doctrine is still offer to. now, the end user of information has to become his or her own editor. in the old days, there was

someone between reporter and the consumer who asked the consumer who asked the questions, were due to get this information? what is the veracity of this information? how do we know is true? we don't have an editor now. somebody can block anything. the next thing you know, people are saying is true because i read it on the internet. that does not make it true at all. we have to be far more discriminating that what we read may not at all have any semblance of truth. unfortunately, not everybody is being the editor that he or she needs to be. a lot of people have been critical of fox without realizing that the fox news realizing that the fox news channel, when it does the news, i would put the people on the journalism side of fox news at next to anyone.

function on the journalism side on fox news, i am on the program side. it is unapologetically -- i guess you can use the word partisan. i don't pretend to be a journalist, but i know a lot of people who are in mainstream journalism whose roots are in partisan politics. at least i think fox was honest about that. when you have people in the news division, chris wallace, people who report receive any of our news folks, i think you find a level of professionalism that is second to none. they are not commentators. there is not this collusion or one division tells the other what is going to do our thing. there is a law there and i respect and appreciate that. >> with their is opinion journalism on fox and msnbc.

i think fox is honest about saying if you watch bill reilly r mike huckabee are sean hannity, you are going to get an opinion. we tell you this is an opinion show. if you watch shepard smith, you are going to see journalism. you are not going to know if they or liberal or conservative. shepard smith, i have no idea how he voted in the last election, and i watch his show. i cannot detect that he has a bias. sometimes i think he may lean a little more left than other people, but i don't know. i feel like the news guys do their job professionally and very well. we do not pretend to be

journalists. we do commentary and we do opinionated programs. >> you share one thing in common with bill clinton. euro from hope, arkansas. describe the town. >> when i grew up there it was a town of about 8000 people. i grew up in the old deep south culture, seeing jim crow laws and segregation. i remember -- it was a great time to grow up there. people knew each other and look after each other. i used to say that if i got in trouble eight blocks from home, before i could get my bicycle home, six people would call my parents and tell them what i had done. there was a sense in which the village was involved. it was a good community, good

schools, teachers that inspired us. there was a sense of civic life there that was very admirable. i also saw that community grow and change. one of the things i am proud of is seeing that in my lifetime, i have seen an african-american elected president. i said that right after the election. i write about it and make it very clear that my home town was a very good place to grow up. >> you refer to -- barack obama refer to the unprecedented economic crisis. you said that the word you are looking for is debt. >> i don't think he is listening. at some point you have to say, i

got elected to the job and have taken command of the ship. it is my baby and i have to nurse it. the fact is, president obama has increased the debt of the united states several times over. the greatest challenge facing our country is debt. i write about it extensively because it is important for americans to understand what 1 billion looks like and what one trillion looks like. frankly i think it is one of the most important parts of the book. if there was one thing i could say as why you should read this book, look at the pictures. a picture is worth a thousand words. my book has several telson words in it. it is staggering when people start grasping the sheer magnitude of one trillion dollars, and to think that this

country is in debt between $14 trillion and $15 trillion, it is a stunning revelation. >> both parties are responsible. >> of course they are. democrats have taken into an era -- inouye level in the past couple of years. believing that we can just continue to at entitlements. the obamacare bill will add another trillion dollars. that is not going to save us money. that never made sense to anybody. >> he pointed out the multiple tax increases. can you reduce the debt without raising taxes? >> first of all, you have to get spending under control and start cutting the spending before you even put any talk of taxes on the table.

i don't think the problem in i don't think the problem in america is that we don't have enough taxes. our problem is that we have become addicted to spending and we use it as a political tool. i also think our tax system is completely skewed, and the way we assessed taxes is fundamentally wrong. we penalize the productivity of our citizens. i write about the tax system in the book. my position has been that we need a consumption tax. we should be taxed on our consumption at the point of retail sales, not taxing people because they worked, earned, and saved. those are good things. those are the things that do stimulate the economy and create jobs and cause people to manufacture. we penalize productivity and then you subsidize irresponsibility, like we do is bail out, you do harm to the economy, you don't improve it. >> did you support the tarp

bailout? >> i did not. >> and yet most of the money has been paid back. >> the government should never have been in the business of picking winners and losers in the marketplace. why did the government decide that goldman sachs should live and lehman brothers should not? i look around at all these so- called conservatives who were supporting tarp. there is nothing conservative about the government bailing out poorly, recklessly manage companies to got in trouble because of their own mismanagement. the fact is, the role of the government is to be that of the referee. they are there to where the striped shirts and referee the game to make sure everyone is playing fairly. their game is not -- their job is not to put on a team jersey and determine the outcome by picking the team that is going to win to the exclusion of the others. when the government says we are going to let lehman brothers fail, but not goldman sachs,

aig, we are going to bail them out. why? if the companies are in a position to fail because they were not run properly, i hate to say this, but maybe they need to fail. maybe good companies and better run company should rise to the occasion in come to the top. i have heard all the arguments from republicans, the hand- wringing, the sweating about the economy collapsing. i think the economy will collapse in the future because we set a precedent that is impossible to keep, that if you fail, the government will bail you out. that is the equivalent of enabling a drug addict who continually messes up, but his family always rushes in and saves him and rescues him. there are some tough consequences of getting on drugs. you are going to hit bottom before you ever start climbing back to the top. what we have done as the

government is decided we are going to bail these folks out without ever letting them experience the consequences of their own reckless actions. >> it was president bush and the secretary of the treasury who pushed for part. how will historians view george w. bush? >> given the way that the prevailing view is, they may say it was a necessary thing to do. i will go to my grave saying it was an unconstitutional intrusion in the marketplace, and it was fundamentally wrong and it set a terrible precedent. i am a big fan of george the bush. i like him personally and i thought he managed the duties far better than people will ever give him credit for, until some were out in history. on that issue, i disagree with that then and i disagree with it now. >> how does a baptist minister become governor of arkansas?

>> a lot of people would like to know how that happened. i first career was broadcasting and advertising, and by a circuitous route i ended up pasturing a church, which was a magnificent experience. it gave me an opportunity to deal with people on every level. it was 25 or 30 years ago now, but part of my experience was, i saw every social pathology that can be described. it was not just that i sought in an abstract way. i could put a name and face to every issue we were facing, if it was homelessness, drug addiction, alcoholismand make tr eat or have madison, young couples, struggling with too couples, struggling with too much debt, it is nothing that a person could made that i cannot put a face to. over the course of that time, i

became increasingly convinced that the people studying public policy did not have a clue about what the root causes of a lot of our social problems tunnel breakdowns of our culture were, and i am not just talking about social. poverty, disease. i became convinced that in a representative form of government, we needed people who represented all kinds of people who lived in our culture and society. it did not see people like me involved, so three long process of conversations with my wife, i decided to step out of the stands and get down on the arena and i guess the rest is, as they say calm history. >> why did you ultimately decide to run? to run?

>> i thought that i had the internal compass that pointed north, and i understood why i believe what i did and could defend it and i believe in the greatness of america. having been a governor for years, i had more executive experience. when a person is a governor, they have actually run a microcosm of the federal government. every agency that you have of the federal level, you really have at the state level. millions and billions, more like millions and billions, more like trillions, ebut the premise of what you're governing is really what you have as a governor, and i understood that the job in that role, the executive branch, very different from the legislative branch, where you can specialize in two or three different things.

it needed a person who had clarity of vision, and many people encouraged me to run, and i decided that was exactly what i would do. >> during the campaign, did you learn anything new about yourself that you did not know? >> i learned that i was more resilient and i had anticipated. it was not as savidge running for president than it was running for anything i ran for at the arkansas state level, because arkansas is a tough political environment. political environment. it is sort of an old school kind of place, where it is down there at the retail level, and i think it is one of the reasons looking back, when i saw bill clinton go through so many different challenges, some of which were his own making, but he kept coming back after them, people were amazed, and i felt later on, after my own campaign, i kind of get it now, because once you have gone through the

political sausage making an arkansas, you are going to take some real hits to the head. there are going to be some political concussions going on, but you learn to get up, dust yourself off, and fight another day. >> let's talk about 2012. if you were to run, what questions would you ask yourself this time around? >> am i the best person prepared not just to run but to eat? and do my ideas really make sense to the american people, because ultimately, you have to have the consented to be able to govern effectively. i wrote this book largely because i wanted to lay it out there. here is what i believe. do not listen to what somebody says i am about, because political opponents will distort, contort your message and all different ways to make it look different than it is. i wanted to say," here is to i am." if you read that book, and you

say, "you know, that guy's got to make sense to me," then that is good. if you read it and say, "none of that makes sense to me," then it is something that is true and not something you read on the internet. >> i thoughtful, mature, and tempered leader, but that could be lost in a sea of gotcha games, while political hacks and media hit men look for the slightest change in a candid its history. >> we are less interested in where a candidate stands and what he stands there than we are interested in what i call the gotcha questions. some almost very rare, nuanced position that may have taken 30 years ago, and the show that in your face of a sudden, unexpectedly, almost as if to say, "ah-ha."

it looks like a great "60 minutes" moment, but it does not give people of the country an idea of who you are, and what i think we should be talking about is how you would deal with border security or terrorism, how would you deal with these? the deficit? social security? frankly, i think i take some risks in this book. i take on some of the sacred cows a politics that people do not talk about, social security, medicare. interestingly enough, a hot item over the past few weeks has been unions. unpaged 35 of the book, this was written back in last june, i talk about it, but this was a train wreck that i think any governor could see coming, and i talk about the relationship that unions have with states and the symbiotic relationship they have with the federal government. it made me feel good that the

very week that the book came out, the front page everywhere was all of this issue about can we afford to continue to pay public employees disproportionately better than people in the private sector make? >> so where is mike huckabee right now in terms of a presidential bid? >> right now, i am very seriously contemplating it, but i and taking my time in a methodical way. i am not going to rush into it because of a 24-hour news cycle. first of all, this is different than four years ago. the calendar itself as far as the primary is going to be elongated, so there is no sense for starting it up as early as last time, because very few people can sustain a campaign. one of the things i am gauging is how do people respond to the message, and the best way i know to present a message, other than being on radio every day and television every week, is to really codify it into a book

form and say, "here is where i stand. this is it. it is in print. you can read it. you can underline it. you can read it twice." you can go back and read the same page again. if people say, "i think this guy has the ideas that can help this country get back on its feet," that is going to go on long way. i said i sure hope i had something. in terms of what i be a different person, i hope not, because i tried to be as authentic as i can possibly be and not be duplicitous about what i believe or where i stood. i tried to answer the questions asked of me, and i would hope to be able to do that again. >> if elected, what kind of president would you like to be? >> i would like to be the kind of president that whether they liked me at the time, in retrospect, they would say,

"they really gave his wholehearted to raise this country to the best it could be ." "he was a great american president pierre " -- president." there is still 40% of the people who did not vote for him, it is his job to serve them as much as the 60% that on the front and put him there in the first place. one benefit i have been a governor -- on the front anend. it reminded me every day pair that i cannot go in saying, "this is how we are going to get it done, fellows, and we are going to do it my way. i am proud of the job creation,

educational excellence, et changing the tax structures so that we actually lower taxes on working families and couples who are married. there are many things i could point to, but i also believe that is how you govern. it is not from some sense of ideological idea. i am an ideological person. my convictions are pretty doggone clear. i have been about as plainspoken as i think a person can be, but as i think a person can be, but i also recognize that when you govern, and you have to govern within the context of the consent of the governed, and i always remind myself that if the voters had sent other people to the legislative body, i may not have voted for those guys, but their constituents back home did. they may not have voted for me, some of their constituents did. somehow, the constituents, the people we all work for, our employers, expect us to be able

to work together to solve their problems, not create our own. >> two final points. what do you like about campaigning, and what do you not like? >> what i love about campaigning is getting out to talk to people, looking them in the eye, learning from them, and get a the energy that comes from the with some of the campaign. you know, i love the campaign. some people have said that i do not like this. no, i loved it. i wake up every morning, and i cannot wait to get out there. what i do not like about it is you get distracted from the actual campaign of substance of louis saying, "this is what we need to do," -- substantively saying. that is frustrating, because it takes the meeting away from the reason iran. it was not to play defense all

day long. -- the reason you ran. "i think you are right. those are the important issues, and i will give you the opportunity to lead us. >> and finally, whether you run or not, what will the republican field look like in 2012 >> i hope there will be more governors. i think governors made better presidents because they have actually run something. i like the fact that there are a number of governors who are talking about running or are taking steps about running. i will be a lot more comfortable when somebody is sitting there making decisions who has a history and a track record of governing from the executive branch. >> a former governor, 2008 presidential candidate, michael huckabee, thank you for joining us. >> thank you.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> use the c-span video library. all free, on-line. search, watch, click, and cher, anytime. >> now, maryland governor martin o'malley and texas governor rick perry discussed the physical conditions of their state. politico hosted this 40-minute event. >> good afternoon, and the executive director of politico.

-- i am the executive director. we are honored to have two of the most influential governors with us today. the head of the democratic governors' association, maryland governor martin o'malley, and the republican and the association governor, rick perry, from texas. we are going to have a conversation note and two housekeeping items before we get going. one, there are cards by your chairs, where you can write questions and ask them of the governors later in the day, and also, you can engage in the conversation on twitter. so i turn it over. thank you, governors.

>> what have we learned? >> from what i learned when i was governor in baltimore, on one side of the equation, but i think you're asking for trouble. we all have to go through a time of readjustment, pin but i think the best way to do that is to bring people together. we are not asking them to give up their right to have their voices heard. >> maryland is having some real problems. >> right. we inherited two big deficits, if you will. one was on the operating side, and the other was with the pensions. they are not happy about it, but

they are at the table, and we're asking them to pay more in their contribution, and the state will pay more with its contribution, but these are the things that we need to do in order to be fiscally responsible and move our state court. >> governor perry, is he doing the right thing in wisconsin? if you had any advice for him, what would you say? >> well, the key for us is that we note -- the message is you will hear it more than once. my point is we are 50 different laboratories, and frankly, for me to tell martin how to run my state, or for him to tell me how to run my state is a little bit over the line from my perspective, but the key is, you

believe what you believe. and we had an election. i did not get confused about what they were saying on the second day of november. they said they want us to of a meaner, more efficient government. that is what they sure told us in texas. and i think that is what scott walker heard, so my point is he knows what he believes in, and he is expressing that and the voters in wisconsin, they basically said this is the person that we want running the state, and that first amendment, it is a beautiful thing, and they are out there, expressing their free will and what have you. >> to get to the heart of the matter and take a step back, people know in this room that the public employees and more broadly organized labor are a key element of the democratic coalition, and in a lot of state parties, it is the financial

force, the force in terms of ground troops when it comes to election time. if governor walker succeeds here and is able to in this legislation strip away the compulsive reduce pain, that could be a real blow, governor o'malley, to organize labour and to democratic party's, right? >> i do not know note any ceo who would take this over. there is politics in the fact that tax cuts for the wealthy are always pushed up the top of the republican agenda at a time when welfare as never been more concentrated in the hands of 1% of our nation and it is no, not since 1931. beyond that is, i think, bringing people together. the governor mentioned, what did people tell us in the midterm

elections? i think they said that we need to be fiscally responsible. we need to reduce the size of government, but what i thought i heard is we need to create jobs and make sure we make the right decisions in the tough decisions know so that we can create jobs in this new economy, and they do not think the drama and the circuits going on with this eliminating unions, to punish unions, to take them of the political equation, but that has anything to do with creating jobs. i do not think it helps to create jobs, and i do not think it helps to solve the problem of imbalances in the pension systems. >> governor perry? >> we led the nation in job creation in texas since the entire decade of the 2000's. it is very simple, really. you do not have to have a ph.d. from our korea in political science to understand it.

you do not overtax. you keep a relatively low tax structure. you have a regulatory structure that is fair and predictable. you have a legal system that does not allow for over suing, and continue to have a terrible public schools, which basically tells employers that you have got a skilled work force there, and that is what we have had in place for a decade in the state of texas, and i am quite proud of what we did in the state of texas. people vote with their feet. that is the beauty of the 10th amendment. i have got to say, i really do not want washington, d.c., telling us how to run our business in the state of texas. the states of substantial power. they are limited by the constitution. the 10th amendment is clear, and having the federal government is

telling us how to deliver health care where educate our children or have energy policy is very foreign to me, and i bet you that martin does not want the federal government down your telling him how to run his state. >> wanting the federal government telling how to run my state? no. but i do not want the federal government to shut down. i do not want the federal government to stop defending my country or funding research, develop it, education, more affordable college that expands opportunity in college at a time when our whole world economy is changing, so i do believe there are some things that are so large that we can only hope, and i think our federal government is an important part of doing that. there was an article in "the washington post" today about some of the things we are doing

with health care in order to bring down the high cost of health care. all of these are things the people expect us to do, managing for results, reducing spending, so businesses can be more successful, so instead of investing in rising health costs, these are the things they functioning, working government does. >> i wanted to ask you about the federal stimulus, because a lot of governors at, gop governors, had some real concerns about, and i think you were one of them. taxes, using some of those federal dollars for budget polls. the stimulus. >> before i address that, let me say that we take federal dollars, but less time i checked, note we sent more dollars to washington, d.c. then texas gets back. we are called a donor states.

-- state. martin says something very important in a like us to focus on. one of the main responsibilities of the federal government is to secure this country, and i think all of us realize that that is one of the very important things that the federal government does. my dad, a world war ii veteran, said the government is supposed to do three things. the military, and we do, we have the finest men and women in the military around the world and here at home, and he said they are supposed to deliver the mail, preferably on saturdays and on time, and the key is, i want to go back to the security issue. the state i have the privilege to serve as a border with a foreign country, mexico.

mexico is inextricably intertwined with texas. we have married each other. hell, they owed us at one point in our history. they are our number one trading partner, but today, the mexican border is a war zone. it is every bit as dangerous, i would suggest, as iraq. we had another american citizen who was a texan who was killed this past week by the drug cartels, and our federal government, i cannot get them to address what i consider to be and what our citizens considered to be one of the most important duties that are federal government has, and that is defending the border against some very vicious thugs and zetas, the drughe cartels, etc., and it is not just about the security of our people, which is paramount. it is also allowing the economy

to continue to grow and the rest of the united states. >> but did you governors are facing deficits in your states. governor o'malley, a want to start with you. what are you doing to close the deficit? what about the red ink that you are facing? >> this recession as impacted every single state in our union. we have gone time and time again to the legislature and the public works with more and more and more cuts. i think right now, with the latest budget korea submitted, we are up to $6.60 billion in cuts over the last five years. we have eliminated some 4200 positions. all of our employees of had to endure for low days for the last three years, so these of the things in your doing towards the end of making our state more competitive and creating jobs in this new economy.

the fiscal discipline is critically important, and without it, no progress is possible, but i believe that fiscal discipline is a means to an end, he expanding opportunities. -- expending opportunities. those man came back to a country that invested in the gi bill, expanded the middle class opportunity in ways we never had before. those are some of the things we can do together and are not only the right thing to do morally, but it is the right thing to do economically, so in our state, not only have we made these, i just want to underscore this. we have increased our investment and education.

three years in a row. we are the only state to go years in a row without one pennies increase in tuition. we know our education levels are tied to our economic future. >> with other recovery in investment dollars, many things would have crumbled. there is no way we could have avoided a second depression had not been for the recovery and investment act dollars. they were never designed to be a permanent situation. every state used those dollars. >> employers, hotjobs. events.

it is one of the most aggressive that you get, going up for each other. governor perry, in particular, you go out there on a hunting measure. there is a story from the "l.a. times" from earlier this month. before all of the critique of california, and it was said, quote, someone turned the lights in in the bar.

i do not have a problem with that at all, other than it is wrong. >> putting programs in place to make it look more attractive, the technology. that is a great concept. to read iran ties companies or companies to come from other places -- to entice companies or companies to come from other places. they are highly successful. the enterprise fund, which has been around since 2003, that is what we really used in california. we are not picking on california. they are just such a target-rich environment. let me tell you. there is plenty to go round. [laughter]

martinez is the new governor of new mexico. i do. i do not try to offend people, but i am very forward in challenging states to change the way that they do business so that their business men and women will stay in their states or will expand in their state. i do not have a problem with that. i will give you an example about how new mexico was very good at luring the film industry, very, very successful, and we were losing people from texas to go to mexico, so we changed our film incentive to be richer, not as big as new mexico has, but the fact is, it does not have to be. .

the governor talked about some of those things in his state and we have competitive advantages and some of our areas that continue to grow and excel, life science, biotech, i.t., joint cyber command and things related to that. port of baltimore, we have been a private-public partnership and when the larger ships can pass through the panama canal they don't pass through maryland. we are engaged in global trade

and new jobs of the future and we have also -- the governor talked about the proposal we have before the state legislature. a way of replenishing our venture with $100 million and allowing insurance companies to forward pay at a discount their tax liability and we put that into the maryland venture fund for some of the startups and entrepreneurial endeavors that are going on in our state. the u.s. chamber of commerce named maryland one of the top two most entrepreneur-friendly states in the u.s. the kaufman foundation ranked us among the top three in terms of being well positioned to be a winner in this changing new economy. these are some of the things we are doing. we created a new hiring tax credit for any business, large, medium or small that hires a marylander off the unemployment

rolls. we expanded our life science and biotech tax credit and expanded our research and development tax credit. these are some of the things. >> there are a lot of things about health care reform and the new green motor being built at white marsh. there is a lot of talk about health care reform and about the impact of the legislation that was passed in the congress and was signed into law. i'm going to ask you, at a practical level, what is the impact at the state level of the health care reform law? governor o'malley, i'll start with you. >> over the next 10 years we will avoid $850 million in costs that we would otherwise incur, but the bigger hope, the great opportunity from health care reform that we will finally get one of the most out of control and fastest escalating costs off

our businesses. i mean, every year for the last 10, 15 years, our businesses have been sending another 17%, 15%, 20% for health care coverage. and those are dollars that they cannot invest in their plant, that they cannot invest in creating jobs, that they cannot invest in marketing their products abroad. there will be states that really embrace this and forefront of implementing it. and the states that do that will become far more attractive to all businesses and especially to those start-ups, family-owned entrepreneurial businesses. the states that resist it and fight it will have a very, very difficult time ever bringing health care costs down in their state and that's the goal here in terms of job creation. >> governor perry. >> i have looked for some time for a state that would actually say that the health care bill was good and it helped them.

congratulations. you are the first. and i say that with all due respect, because our states are different. and the way that you are structured may be where long-term, it's good for you. let me tell you what it does for the state of texas. our calculation is that over the next 10 years, it will cost the state of texas over and above what we already pay for health care $30 billion. i talked to a couple of new democratic governors over the course of the last two, three weeks, the maintenance of effort requirement in the health care bill is devastating for a state like california. i talked to jerry brown and i'm not going to put words in his mouth, but he recognizes the problem of the maintenance of effort portion of the bill. our solution from the standpoint of health care is again, i get

back to -- i can't find anything in the constitution that says that washington is supposed to tell us in texas how to deliver health care. and i've asked for -- and this isn't just the current administration. the previous administration wouldn't give us a waiver to allow us to be innovative and look at different ways -- i happen to think that the states are the laboratory of innovation. if we will give martin or marry fallin in oklahoma the freedom to deliver health care to their own citizens and create insurance programs, create different programs of which people can pick and choose, that they can best come up with the ways to deliver health care. with all due respect to our friends in washington, d.c., they just cannot understand how to deliver health care in the vast various in the geographic and the culturally different areas of texas once you fit.

it won't work that way. >> you are chairs of your respective of your committees. so it would be fitting to chat politics for a bit. you had a tough year, governor o'malley. and you had a great year. >> thank you. >> but a lot of your colleagues didn't fair as well. why is 2011, why is 2012 and there are a handful of races, why is that different for democrats if we haven't seen unemployment nationally come down? that's a big if. as i look at some of these leading indicators, it seems pretty apparent to me and from the commentators i listen to on the news, everybody agrees we are doing better now. our economy is doing better now

than it was two years ago, than it was a year ago. and the big if in your question is what the economy will be doing and will our people be going back to work in greater numbers by the next election. i think we are going to continue to see our economy improve, but we have a long way to go, but i think over the course of time, people will have a better opportunity to evaluate whether the president's call about outeducate, outinnovate the rest of the world is the way to go. historically, that has always been true. i think it can still be true. there is a long time that will go by between now and the next election. but more importantly is this, in all of the states, without the recovery and re-investment dollars, people are going to see a strikingly different opinion.

we have to balance, but democratic governors do so that protect the education of our people, that improve the skills of our people and give our people a better footing in order to be winners in this changing new economy. >> there were a good number of congress that didn't want president obama on the campaign trail with them last fall. straight talk, if you are a governor in a place like kentucky, you want to have president obama this fall? >> i sure wanted him in maryland. and every governor will make their own decisions on that. the president was a tremendous help to us in maryland. his organization was a tremendous help to us. every governor will make that decision. i think what all of us do want from the president, and republicans and democrats alike is for him to be successful in getting our economy moving again and creating jobs. >> governor perry, looking into

the future here for a minute, what is going to be the impact of having president obama on the ballot in 2012 in a lot of the governor races? >> you will see a continuation of what occurred in november of 2010. >> why? >> individuals and individuals back in the states truly believe that the massive amount of money and they correctly identify that that money that was spent didn't create the jobs that the president said they were going to do. and in fact, all it did was add to a monstrous debt load. one of the things i have seen across the country, particularly in texas, is the young people are coming back to the republican party because they are starting to understand that the debt that's been created by this administration is monstrous. and it is going to have to be paid off by them.

look at a guy that's my age and i may be gone before that debt really becomes incredibly indelible in our country. you will see a lot of young people coming back to the republican side of the ledger that voted for president obama in 2008. and it is going to be driven almost exclusively by their concern about the economy and what this administration has done to their ability to live free. >> how concerned are you about hispanics and the g.o.p.? you were hurt in 2008 because they went for president obama overwhelmingly. are you concerned about your party's tone and sort of slipping of hispanics when it comes to the g.o.p.? >> we do quite well. i think that the party can look at us and the has hispanic

population in texas are pro-life, hard-working and patriotic folks and you want to keep more of what you work hard for, republican party is where you need to be. and i think we are making great progress along those lines. i stand up and i talk about border security. there are mexicans, 34,000 mexican citizens that have been murdered by the drug cartels since 2007. and in a lot of cases in texas, family members, they're losing people's lives in mexico and what we are doing to help mexico and along the border, the hispanic population certainly in the state of texas -- >> you had ads that you aired in spanish. and your tone is a lot different than other folks in your party in different states?

>> i'm blueprint about people trying to differentiate between people the way they look. i call them out on a regular basis. we are a very -- my brother-in-law is hispanic. we marry each ear and the idea that the republican party is not open and frankly, i think very alluring looking to the hispanic population, because as they become more educated, as they become more engaged in the great free market, american experiment, they are going to go to the place where they can keep more of which they work for and that's generally speaking by republican administration. >> may i say that i greatly admire that quality in governor perry that he looks and see the dignity in every individual and doesn't allow people to denigrate each other because of their cultural background. and we are entitled to our

differences of opinion but not entitled to our own version of the facts here. by 2019, 55% of the federal deficit will have been driven by and created by, 55% of it, by bush-era tax cuts, tax cuts that benefited primarily the wealthiest 1 or 2% of the americans where wages stagnated and started to go down. 13% of that deficit will be driven by the series of ongoing desert wars that our nation has been fighting and only 4% of it is driven by the recovery and reinvestment act without which we would have plunged into a second great depression. i disagree with the assertion strongly and the facts bear it out that things that president obama has done have driven this

deficit. took a surplus situation, by a democratic president and drove it into the ground and put our country in a position of red ink for the cost of wars charged to our children's credit cards. >> fast questions before we close. i have one last question, you have been involved in the d.l.c., democratic leadership council, a modern democratic organization for a few years. they have announced that they are going to be closing their doors. what happened to the d.l.c. and do you worry about the impact of their shuttering on moderation in your party? >> i think the d.l.c., the democratic party has the presidency, i think it's harder for other groups to sustain themselves. and the d.l.c. had a great run. and think it brought to our country and president clinton --

>> what happened? >> what happened was, you saw a very successful administration in bill clinton's administration with security, responsibility, opportunity, all of the things that resonate across the board in our country and every organization -- nothing lasts forever. and i think they had a very good run and the d.l.c. contributed a lot to this debate. the question is what happens to moderate democrats? >> yeah. >> and you see this in the newly elected democratic governors. i think the more recently elected democrats, new generation of democrats, if you will, are fundamentally not ideological but entrepreneurial and pragmatic in their approach to governance. so i think some of the tug of war in the party's change which was completed to a large degree with bill clinton, i think those sorts of tensions are not as

prominent as they were and therefore, what we are all looking for are the things that work to create jobs to get people back to work and it's that opportunity. >> were they a victim of their own success? i don't know, i don't consider anyone who is successful to be a victim. if president obama is re-elected will you run for president in 2016? >> no. >> governor perry, 2012? >> let me go back and address -- >> 2012, president? >> no. no. same answer through the last -- he said something that is very important that i just want to defend for just a moment. washington has been on spending spree -- i frankly it has been horrible for our country and it goes back to the washington

centric concept of washington knows best. the idea that washington, d.c., needs to be telling martin how to educate his children in maryland is just -- i think it's nuts. i'm not a fan of no child left behind. i don't think washington, d.c., should be telling you how to educate your children. that's your people and your innovative ways to do that. same thing on the health care, big pharmaceutical bill, there is a huge monumental debt that has been put on. and again, it comes back to washington, d.c.,. one of my goals over the course of the next few years working with the democratic and republican governors, frankly, because there are a number of governors and sometimes in the quietness of our private conversations and maybe there's a little bit more heat to not speak out against a sitting

president or sitting party that's in power, but the fact is that washington, d.c., is trying to tell all of us how to run our states with way too much speaks physicianity and the cost of that is what is driving the deficits in this country. and if we would get back to a substantially leaner federal government, do what you are supposed to do right, defend our borders, i mean, mr. president, come to texas and defend our border, then we might have a conversation about some of these other things you are wanting to do, come into our state and clean our air permitting process. this drives me up the wall. we have had one of the great -- we cleaned up our air more than any other state. ozone levels down 27%. oxide levels down 50-something percent. and the e.p.a. -- while we are

creating more jobs than anybody else in the nation, i thought we would get an award. the e.p.a. has come in and taken over our air permitting process. i don't understand that. to me that is the problem that we have in america that we have to address as a country and talk about what is the proper role for washington and isn't it costing us way too much money. >> we are going to take a few questions before the governors have to run. first one is -- how important is innovative technology in your states to job creation? >> it's key. some of the fastest areas of growth in the state are in biotechnology and cybersecurity. we were able to compete for and win a federal grant to expand brondband connections to connect all 24 counties in our state.

we believe that cyber highway is really the key to the future and so technology is the center of our economy. >> well said. and absolutely technology is going to -- and finding the cures for the diseases in 2005 i believe it was, we passed a $3 billion effort over a 10-year period of time to find cures for cancer. it's those big ideas, it's those very innovative and all the spinoff that comes from that, the jobs that are created, so technology and -- you know whether it's in the energy field. we haven't talked about energy at all. and the fact of the matter is, as we are seeing the middle east and those areas literally in flames, countries that have massive reserves of oil and gas, yet in this country, whether

it's the -- both of the dacts and eastern side of montana, monstrous reserves that we are using our technology today, martin, to find ways to not only discover it and 15 years ago we had no ideas there were tremendous reserves of natural gas in three our four different locations in our country. eagle ford formation down in south texas. and through technology again, ways to extract it. so the idea that we aren't giving tax credits and not giving incentives to domestic exploration of our natural resources is just beyond me. that ought to be one of the focuses, i would suggest, from our current administration and

to become more energy independent. but again, it's all driven by technology. and technology, you know, whether it's green jobs and cleaning up our environment, it's all in the innovative mind and generally speaking, it's in the states. >> can i give a plug also for wind. we are focused on offshore wind and one of the great renewable sources of energy that we have to capture all the mid-atlantic states is the offshore atlantic wind. and we are interested in pursuing that and reduce energy consumption in our state and advancing green buildings and the technologies in terms of geo design and green architecture that can not only improve the environment and spur jobs. >> one last question to where we began here this morning and that's very much on the news, if we were to have this discussion

10 years from now, projecting forward, what will then be the role of public employees, labor issues, in terms of states, government-state spending, state budget issues? governor perry? >> i think every state should be able to decide that themselves and i hope we don't have a federal government that tries to inject themselves into the structure of our states and martin and i like fraternity boys trying to maybe get elected fraternity president here, but we have more wind energy than any other state in the nation, so -- >> that's good competition. i want martin to be pushing me to get more incentives to get more wind energy. the fact is, in 10 years, my dream is for the states to be

substantially less intelligentered to a federal government that is telling us how to educate our children, create more energy and transportation infrastructure or delivering health care. to me that's the beauty, competing against the states and we have gotten away from that. and i don't think anybody doesn't recognize that washington, d.c., has way too much influence and costs to all of us. >> governor o'malley, your question is 10 years from now? >> i think right now, we are coming out of the worst recession our country has seen. what people want right now are the county executives to focus on solving the problem so we can move forward and they also want people that are not ideological and want people that are pragmatic and bring people together that find the things

that work and move forward. that's number one. number two, i do believe that people are hungry to understand how they and their families fit and make it in this new changing economy. the states that win will be those states that can bring people together in this temporary, temporary fiscal crisis and protect the priorities that allow their states to be big job creators as we transform into this new economy. i don't think 10 years we'll say that there were unions here. once people had the freedom to organize but that was no more and that was all done away with in the most recent recession. i don't think that's going to happen. one of the reasons you see the public pushback on the extremism and i hadology is because people see it as fundamentally unfair.

>> people look for sort of a mags national. >> in time of scarcity there is a great danger that any group of people become scapegots and some governors instead of that they focus on on that. greater numbers of them are registered republicans and then they are not so angry at them for organizing and having their voice heard. >> governor perry? >> we are a right to work state. in texas, our public employees are well thought of. and they're not surrounding the capitol. >> there are teachers that have come to austin. >> we have people come to austin. please come. we like to be interactive and go back and forth. how boring would it be if there

weren't people out front with their expressing what they love. that is -- >> my point is that -- i keep going back like a broken record but our states being able to compete against each other, that's going to be the future of how strong america is, if we truly believe that the laboratories of innovation are in this -- the states and the states are different and people should be allowed to decide where they want to live. listen, california, i go to san diego almost every summer between -- sometime in july and august, because trust me, they have better weather than we have in texas and i'm sitting there, thinking, how can you screw this up so bad that people would leave this? >> it is beautiful. but the fact is, let the states

decide about taxes and what have you and let people decide where they want to live. >> can we all agree where people want to live. we will wrap it up, governors. thanks for joining us. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [caption