when he was solicited by the legislature in new york, after the gas inquiry, he goes and says "i need a vacation." he is climbing the alps. he loved public service so much. this is a point that is very important. this guy keeps coming back to public service again and again and again. and after he was knocked out of the presidency, he might have said the hell with you people. i have done my time. i have fixed this and that and done this and that, it has cost me money again and again and again. when he was governor, he bore his own expenses on so many of the trips. when he was on the supreme court, that did not pay a lot. even before he became the great crusader, he did not take the big cases. he should have been coming into his peak earning powers. one of his great rivals worked for hearst and said at the time

he became chief justice, public service had cost hughes $6 million. ok? he gave up so much in time and money to serve the public in job after job, which he did so well. now, his intellect, his brains. he had this first-class brain. robert penn warren said that. it was the same with hughes. 6 years old, he goes off to school. he comes home, he says "i am not learning that much there, dad. i can learn more here." "yes, son?" and he lays out his plan of study hour by hour how he is going to do it and he does it.

home schooled. a couple years later, he moves around again, maybe he is going to go back to school. same thing. stays out of school. he is basically home schooled before home schooling was cool. he completes high-school studies on his own. he is too young to get into college. he has to run around new york city for a year before he can go in. there are stories where -- i think when he was secretary of state or governor, whatever. it does not matter. he was handed a three-page memo before going into a meeting. he reads it as he is walking, going into the meeting. the stenographer transcribes what he says. it is off by one word. you see stories like that over and over again. >> at the age of 19, he goes on to cornell law school.

>> actually, he taught at cornell law school for two years and he gave up a very lucrative practice in new york which was supervised by his father-in-law in order to take a health break and also to become an academic. he ended up leaving cornell law school, partly because his father-in-law thoughts his grandchildren should not be raised in such a remote location. he often said amongst his happiest times were the times at the cornell law school. >> he was a graduate of columbia. i apologize. we have a clip of him we want to show so you can get a sense of him. he was considered quite a great orator. let's listen to what he sounded like. >> rancor and bigotry and racial animosities and intolerance are the deadly enemies of true democracy.

there can be no friendly cooperation if they exist. they are enemies more dangerous than any external force. they undermine the very foundation of our democratic effort. >> and we're going to go back to telephone calls. let's listen to a call from boston. you are on the air, frederick. >> i would like to ask a question about where charles evans hughes was born. and did he come from a family of money? where did his family get the money? >> born in 1862 in new york. >> his father was a baptist. they were not particularly affluent. they grew up in humble

circumstances. he was quite influenced by the baptist background he enjoyed from going up. in fact, his father hoped to become a religious man himself. he was disappointed that he decided to go into law instead of religion. his background did influence his jurisprudence later on. we can argue that. he was quite favorable to religious liberty claims and several opinions where he upheld a very strong view of religion under the second amendment. >> this is daniel. welcome. >> thank you for taking the time to let us get in on the conversation. i have a question about if he had been president, the federal reserve would not have been created under his administration, and if it had not have been, where might we be today? >> would the federal reserve have been created under charles evans hughes?

>> it would not, because it already existed. >> there you go. frank? >> wilson ran on a platform against the war, and there was a tremendous explosion in new york harbor, out at black tom's island, and after the war, the court ruled that german agents had in fact caused the explosion. in the 1970's the german government finally paid the government an indemnity. i wonder if you can comment on the role of the wilson administration in covering up the explosion and its effect on the election. i will hang up and listen on the tv.

>> that was a massive explosion of a ship that actually damaged part of the statue of liberty, shattered windows as far north as 42nd street. the wilson administration did downplay this, because they were trying to keep us out of the war at this point. now it was very difficult for hughes that year. he is fighting two things. the country is very prosperous. there was a slight downturn after the adoption of the underwood tariff, but with the war, neutral parties tend to do very well in wartime. there is great prosperity. he is fighting back. he is fighting the fact that we really are at peace. the trouble that had occurred after the sinking of the lusitania, the german government comes to its senses momentarily and ends its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. it is not until after the election that it resumes that. there is tremendous sabotage

going on. there is funding of german groups. one of the problems wilson has is they bring up a meeting he had with four pro-german people. one of them was named jeremiah o'leary, an irish nationalist. this is one of the issues of the 1916 campaign. where would there be anti- english sentiment -- it would be among the irish population. they were still under the british flag. they wanted independence. hughes was facing all these problems. the question is, what is he going to do about it? the trouble arises after that election, particularly in regard to the zimmermann note, where germany was plotting to get mexico to attack us and get their lost provinces back. >> do you know more about how he

and his wife met? >> i do not. >> she was the daughter of a senior partner -- >> yes. >> another thing we want to highlight was the importance of mrs. hughes in his life. we have selected their wedding invitation and a photograph of the two of them in their prime. she was the daughter of walter carter, the senior partner in the hughes law firm. he met her at an office holiday party. she was there with her father. she was a very educated woman, influential in his life. he also had three daughters who together with mrs. hughes, i think they have a great effect on his views, including women's

suffrage among other things. >> the partners were not partners in politics. we learned that in our eugene debs program last week. there were out campaigning all the time. >> getting back to their marriage, their courtship is very slow. they meet a few times. like every few months or something. and because she is the boss's daughter, he will not go near her. people say, "you married the boss's daughter?" it is really a distortion. it is only when he is a full partner that the courtship really begins. particularly if you read about their retirement together, how close a couple they are. they are really deeply in love. she is really the first spouse

who in a full-fledged campaign mode, they go around the country on a train, almost like a proto- eleanor roosevelt. stuff that was not done then. >> you are on the air, jack. >> my question is about charles evans hughes's perspective on racism at the time. >> his perspective on racism. >> he was actually pretty progressive on race. his first term as associate justice, he actually wrote an opinion that suggested it was not valid for railroads to fail to create first-class accommodations for african american passengers, even if they did not have enough passengers to fill those accommodations. he is actually more egalitarian

than a lot of his contemporaries. later on he would be a supporter of decisions that would undermine the separate but equal doctrine and pave the way for brown vs. board of education. >> i have a question that may be a little bit off the beaten path. this is about the institution of the personal income tax. which party was against it, and which party was for it, may i ask? >> income tax comes about as part of the revenue act of 1913, i think, and that is important because that is part of the underwood tariff.

the democrats lower the tariff. they have to make up the revenue. they passed the 16th amendment. that all folds into the income tax. i would say because the republicans are the tariff party, that the democrats are more in favor of the income tax. but hughes is opposed to the income tax. he reads it and he is a lawyer. he is always reading every word, no matter where those words go. and it says "shall tax all revenue." and he says that means they're going to be able to tax the tax refunds of municipalities and states and destroy the balance of federalism. he opposes the 16th amendment, but on those very narrow grounds. i believe that new york state rejects the amendment.

>> you're on the air, joseph. >> good evening. >> in light of the other television programs this week on prohibition, did he have any attitudes or feelings about that ugly affair? >> great question. he is talking about the pbs series about prohibition. his own position? >> neither he nor wilson would be regarded as drys. he started to take a sip during the insurance investigation. he said it was his nurse. this humanizes him. he was very high strung. he started taking a drink then. he was never a big drinker. there is a story told at the havana conference of latin american nations around 1924 or so. he asked the secretary of state whether he will serve booze or not.

he walks over there and takes the first one. he is not a prohibitionist. really none of the great national leaders that we can think of were with any enthusiasm at all. >> it is time for us to dive into more of his supreme court years. we are going to say good bye for now to david. we will see him later on. we will do a deep dive into the supreme court years. to begin our discussion, we will show you president franklin roosevelt in 1937, his take on what was commonly called the court packing plan. after that, you will see chief justice john roberts. he will talk about his perspective on hughes's role during this period. first, a newsreel from that time introducing us to each of the members of the supreme court in 1937. >> associate justice sutherland.

he became a senator from utah. the only supreme court catholic. a democrat who supported president harding. from wyoming -- 78. senior justice, 26 years on the bench. james reynolds of tennessee, 75. confirmed bachelor. a democrat appointed by wilson, has voted against every new deal measure. benjamin nathan cardozo, 67, descended from the jewish rabbi who officiated at george washington's inauguration, appointed by president hoover. harlan stone of new york, a former dean of the columbia university law school. appointed by calvin coolidge.

the oldest justice, justice brandeis of kentucky. wilson dared not appoint him attorney general, but did appoint him to the court. justice owen roberts. at 61, the youngest justice. long a conservative. since this fight began, liberal in seven decisions. and charles evans hughes, 75. chief justice since 1930. sometimes conservative, sometimes liberal. >> president roosevelt goes on the air in an appeal for popular support for his plan to reorganize the federal judiciary. newsreel cameras filmed his fireside chat, his second such appeal within six days.

he tells the people that his plan would protect them. >> those opposing the plan have sought to sow prejudice and fear by saying i am seeking to pack the supreme court, and that a baneful precedent will be established. what did they mean by "packing the supreme court"? let me answer this question with a bluntness that will end all honest misunderstanding of my purpose. if by that phrase is charged i wish to place on the bench spineless puppets to disregard the law and decide specific cases as i wish them to be decided, i make this answer. that no president fit for his office would appoint and no senate of honorable men fit for their office would confirm that kind of appointee to the supreme court of the united states.

we want a supreme court that will do justice under the constitution and not over it. in our courts, we want a government of laws and not of men. >> the court packing plan was a very serious threat. it was proposed by an immensely popular president with huge majorities in both houses of congress and targeting a very unpopular court. as fdr put it, "the people are with me." hughes proceeded cautiously, but with determination. in a letter to congress, he demolished fdr's efficiency argument. he showed that the court was keeping up with this work.

hughes explained that adding more justices would make the court far less efficient. as he put it in his letter, "there would be more judges to hear, more judges to confer, more judges to discuss, more judges to be convinced and to decide." hughes chose not to directly criticize fdr, but to expose the effort for what it was by refuting the efficiency window dressing. and it worked. >> that was a prospectus for anytime and also contemporary perspectives from the fdr era and the court packing history we have learned so much about as we grow up in this country. we are going to learn more about the biography of charles evans hughes, 1916 republican nominee for president. he failed in that bid very narrowly against woodrow wilson. hise learning more about

contributions to society. we're joined by two guests on this beautiful october night in front of the supreme court building. my first guest paul clement served as the u.s. solicitor general, and bernadette meyler is with us throughout this program. she is a professor cornell law school. we're glad to have you. i am going to start because he had two terms on the court. at the time the youngest. in 1930, president hoover appointed him. what is the difference between staying as a justice on the court within a 20-year period? did he come back as a different person? >> he had some incredible experiences in the interim. obviously the presidential run, but also serving as secretary of state, serving on the so-called world court in the hague. he comes back to that job as

chief justice, as a man who certainly had many more difference experiences. considerable executive branch experience, all of which i am sure influenced him as a justice. >> can you tell us a bit about the court of 1930? >> sure. the court was much less conservative than it became in 1935 and 1936. around 1930 when hughes joined and the years directly following that, the court did not really a strike down that much economic legislation. it upheld economic legislation in particular. towards the middle of that decade, it shifted a bit. >> what was he like as a leader in those early days? >> i think he is someone who took to the administrative

parts of the chief justice job right away, and that makes sense. you have someone in the modern era becoming chief justice who has mostly served in judicial capacities, but here is someone who has run the state of new york. he is a great administrator. he took to that aspect of the job immediately. he also took to the other aspects of the job, hitting the ground running, because after all, he had already been an associate justice. this is only the second time in the nation's history up to this point where someone who has been an associate justice goes on to serve as chief justice. in that respect, he was the ideal chief justice and he hits the ground running. >> was he a great broker of opinion? was he a reliable vote on one side or the other? >> i think from the beginning, he was someone harder to typecast than the other justices on the court. he was coming into a court that was not as bitterly divided as it became, but still a divided court.

from his first days, he was essentially near the center of the court. >> this also brings up another point. he loathes to dissent. he wants to create harmony. he wanted to encourage harmony on the court like marshall, chief justice marshall. he rarely wrote dissents. calls's take a couple of and then we will delve more deeply into this. welcome to the discussion. >> thank you for taking my call. great program. was he not considered god-like, too, because he would try to find a medium ground? was roberts pushed by hughes or did hughes follow along?

>> thank you for watching. >> i think hughes was much more of the swing vote than roberts was. roberts tended to vote with the conservative bloc, or with the four horsemen. hughes tended to be a little bit more on both sides. at least he signed himself onto the more liberal opinions. some people think that was a disingenuous move designed to portray himself as being a more liberal orientation than he was. i want to return the one thing you talk about. he was given a jovian presence on the court, and that was about his administrative capability we have been discussing. he held a judicial conference in a pretty authoritarian manner. he would go around and discuss the case after saying his views first. he kept a pretty tight leash on the discussion.

>> what do we know about his style? can we contrast that with what we know of the current justice'' style? >> i think there are a lot of similarities, and not necessarily the point of the way the conferences were conducted on a day-to-day basis. but the chief justice hughes wrote a book on the supreme court. that was a unique thing to get a window into the supreme court for someone who had already served as an associate justice. at the time he is writing the book or giving the lectures, he does not know he is going to be the chief justice. he talks about the role of the chief justice in that book and the limits of what the chief justice can do, because at the end of the day, you are the chief justice of the united states, but you only get one vote and you have to lead in a way that is more subtle than the leadership you have when you're a governor or even secretary of state.

he did manage to do a remarkable job of leading the court. especially in the administrative areas or moving into this building, leading by example. >> let's take a minute and talk about this building. up until this time, the court met across the street at the united states capitol building. tell the story of how the court came to have their own building. >> they decided they wanted to have their own building. that is symbolic and interesting. if you think about the court, they are in constant contact with the legislators, and they are passing each other in the halls of congress. there is something important symbolically of having a separate judicial building with a separate presence. there were, of course, criticisms. as you can see, this is an ornate and beautiful building.

my recollection is it came in under budget, which is remarkable. nonetheless there was some criticism of why they needed to build this marble temple. >> william howard taft who had been president and became chief justice argued that the court needed its own building. he did not live to see it. charles evans hughes was the first chief justice to move in here. i read that this was very controversial at the time. >> i think that was partially because you're talking about justices who are traditionalists. >> and it was the depression. >> and the depression. it was expensive. the optics of moving into this beautiful temple. this political dimension. it was a break with tradition. from the modern perspective, it seems like a terrific break, one that was long overdue. >> this pediment has a depiction of charles evans hughes.

we might be able to get a shot of that so you can see how the architects of this building depicted him. we'll listen to mount joy, pennsylvania. this is harry.>> i used to stude court. i think three major laws were struck down by unanimous supreme court decision. that included the liberals. from what i understood, when roosevelt made his court packing speech, he was one of the most elderly members of the court. he was over 80 years old. i used to do some work on roberts. the folks on the case in 1937 were taken before in the secret chambers of the court. thank you for letting me be on

the show. >> set the stage for us. >> what happened in the -- i want to get back to this caller's questions. fdr became frustrated with the fact that a lot of measures were being struck down by the supreme court. >> on what ground? >> on the ground, first of all, exceeding congress' power under the commerce clause. the commerce clause is relevant today. it is also the source of a lot of legislation that is passed right now.

under the new deal, the court basically was not as expansive in its interpretation of what the commerce power could do for congress and thought often the states autonomy was being infringed upon by congressional enactments. another ground for invalidation was liberty of contract which was read into the 14th amendment or the fifth amendment. hughes court had been striking down a lot of legislation. after his reelection, fdr basically proposed this plan whereby the court's membership would be increased if justices did not retire in a timely fashion. under his plan, there would have been up to six new justices placed upon the court.

this gets into the question that was asked by the caller whether justice roberts had changed his vote before this court packing scheme was promoted. one argument is that once roosevelt won the election, the court felt there would be a lot of pressure to uphold and obstain legislation and they could no longer be striking down as many laws. the court packing scheme itself was almost irrelevant or was not the real catalyst that roberts felt he needed to change his vote because of roosevelts reelection. >> give us a sense of how engaged the country was. was this a hugely controversial, or was this a washington story? >> this was not a washington story. it helps to understand the stage completely which is, think about fdr at this point. he has just been reelected for a second term.

he has been dealing with the great depression. this is the great depression. he is trying to deal with it innovatively, passing this legislation and it is getting struck down by the court. by the time he is done with his fourth term, he will have appointed more supreme court justices that than anyone but george washington. at this point, he is like jimmy carter. he has been a full-time president and has not put anybody on the court. he is very frustrated with the fact they are sort -- there are striking down legislation. he is with the view that they are out of touch with the country. that is the reason the country focuses on this. i think a lot of the frustration goes with what the court is doing, what the age of some of the justices is. all of that boils over into the

court packing plant. i think it is fair to say it is a bit of a black eye to fdr's historical legacy that he let his frustrations boil over and made this proposal. >> good afternoon. it is still afternoon here. i appreciate you taking my call. i presume this is a question for professor bernadette meyler. i am curious as to what she might know regarding the tie- ins between the justice hughes and the sword family. also, part of the reason i am calling is because i have been puzzling for some time. back in that era there is a speech by justice hughes that was indicating the anti-racists

of the community were the republicans. that seems to have switched around the time of woodrow wilson's presidency. i am curious what you may know about that. >> i am not as familiar with the relationship. there is a very interesting story. he invited booker t. washington to an event and it was a somewhat controversial invitation. he escorted him to a table. hughes pretty much retained a uniform position on race throughout his career where he was in favor of greater equality, and i am not sure what extent to full equality. it is a backdrop to the change

were previously republicans had been much more in favor of racial equality and the democrats also sort of took on that mantle. >> returning to the court packing plant, charles evan hughes was how involved in lobbying or setting the stage for it being debated? >> there was as i understand the story, it was something that justice brandeis that was very much in favor of and suggested. the chief justice was direct in the same skillset he brought to bear in investigating gas companies back in the day. he looked at the court's docket. as chief justice roberts indicated, he took a part a neutral case for what fdr was proposing and really laid bare a more obvious motivation. >> how common in today's

relationship between the court and the legislature -- >> it does happen. i don't know if this was the practice back in the day. it has become the practice that basically every year there is essentially a state of the judiciary letter that the chief justice sent over to congress. sometimes it can be pointed. for a number of years, they both made a point of explaining that they were less than happy with the current state of

judicial pay. there continues to be these kinds of issues between and among the branches. i also think the way the chief justice handled the court packing scheme probably took it off the table as a realistic option going forward. >> i just wanted to also add two things. some people may criticize hughes at the time. one part of his letter which was also consulted, what part of the letter said hearing the panel system would not be constitutional. it seems like an advisory opinion. hughes had condemned other justices for trying to produce advisory opinions. >> next call from missouri. >> thank you for taking my call. this is kind of a follow up to the cornell professor comment that roberts aligned himself

more with the four horsemen who were the conservative wing of the court. and after the court packing plan,roberts was part of the 9. from what i read,roberts would never admit that. do either one of you know if he did changes voting patterns? >> the only person who knows for sure is justice roberts. i think this is one of the reasons from an academic standpoint why court packing is so interesting. there are a lot of competing theories that are supported at a detailed level.

we don't really know for sure. i think it is fair that if you look at justice roberts' voting record, there does seem to be a fork in the road that go in a different direction. >> he did definitely protest that he was not influenced by politics at all, but it is hard to believe that. >> we talked about the fact that this court opened in 1935 -- it is a beautiful building. he spent a lot of time in that courtroom. is the court room he operated in as chief justice the same today? >> there are some minor differences. there are changes to the size and shape of the bench from time to time over the time. >> we also have a historic photograph from the supreme court historical society. it was somewhat illicitly taken. it is a photograph from inside the quarter while the court is in session with chief justice hughes presiding. as we are looking at that, you

do not see that very often. while we are talking about that, we did not mention it in his biography, and between his first and second service on the court, he was a private practice lawyer much sought after. he argued 50 cases before the court. having had that experience, what were his arguments like in court? >> i think it is a really good point. it is something very similar to the situation we have now with chief justice roberts. we have somebody in him who argued nearly 40 cases when he was -- before he came onto the bench. chief justice hughes had him beat. i think that was part of the point that was made about the

sacrifices he made for public service. he comes to the court as somebody who bought only has appreciation for the job of the court because he has previously served, but he has some sympathy and understanding as the role of counsel as well. i think he is somebody who was willing to ask questions of counsel and also had a real appreciation that kelso had prepared for the argument. they have points that wanted to make. he was ready and willing to listen to council. >> this is tim from pittsburgh. >> i have a question about the circumstances of justice hughes ascending to the court as chief justice in 1930. i don't know if this story is true so i hope your guests can confirm it. the conventional wisdom after taft had died is that hughes

would not agree to serve as chief justice because doing so would mean that his son would have to resign as solicitor general. to everybody's surprise, charles evan hughes sr. decided to take his job and the sun had to be solicitor general. >> i have heard the story. i do not know whether it is true. i heard different versions of the story. he may have a perspective as to the truth of that. i will say this. i think if somebody -- if the president really thought that charles evan hughes would not take the job and was not interested in being a chief justice, that seems like a naive assumption. hughes had an interest in the job going way back. when he was first put on record as an associate justice, he was appointed with an understanding that he may be elevated very

early when there was an opening at that point. he was passed over for chief justice white. president taft was the one who passed him over. i definitely heard the story. it certainly had to be a difficult moment around the family at dinner table since there is no question that chief justice hughes accepting the job meant his son would have to give up the solicitor general job. i do think it is a little naive to think he was going to turn it down. >> i think some people did think so at the time, but they were probably misled. just one more addendum about the fact that he may have had at versions to the job earlier, there was some possibility that

he would be appointed rather than associate justice when he was first appointed to the court. and being passed over i have been one of the reasons he was more willing to take the presidential nomination and not. he ultimately aspire to the chief justiceship. >> one thing i wanted to talk about is, i have a problem with the justice is staying on until they are 80, 90 years old. they don't have a lot in common with the people. they still have the same beliefs than what everybody else has in this country.

we ought to be able to vote them in. it might be a little more fair than the way they are in now. they would be more a part of this country. it is like they are gods or something now. >> thank you for your question. he talks about supreme court justice is not knowing much about the rest of us in society. >> i think this is part of what motivated fdr's court packing plan. part of what he was saying is the older justices had antiquated notions about society that needed to be superseded and that they were two out of touch. i think that is why all of the justices took offense at his plan. >> i think that is right. there have been ideas that

maybe we should need term limits, a retirement age, some way of making the justices more responsive were you there limiting the length of which they serve. these are topics that hughes addresses in his book of the supreme court. he is certainly confident that there can be a difficulty. sometimes just to stay on longer than they should. the current system we have is the best system we can have. that is especially when it comes to indicating individual rights, it is a virtue and not a device that justices are removed from everyday politics. >> there are two very large conference rooms used often for public events. there are portraits of each of the chief justices who have served.

we are going to show you the portrait of charles evan hughes that is here inside the court. as we look at that, i would like you, bernadette meyler, to talk about the opinions he offered. >> he did author a number of opinions. one opinion he is significant and i think this not discuss this bailey vs. alabama. this is an opinion he issued early on when he was associate justice. it involved in striking down a peonage lot. even though slavery had been abolished, under the 37 that it was not clear whether there could be labor in compensation to debt. he struck down a lot that had allowed for peonage and said it was not relevant that the party involved was african american but nobody should be subjected to the requirement of labor for debt.

he had an output -- he had a lot of important decisions he offered -- he authored during his time of chief justice. among them were decisions on both sides of the spectrum in terms of striking down economic legislation. one case that was crucial because it signaled his willingness to understand the flexibility that was required by economic legislation early on in his term was the case of home building and loan association. this was a case involving a minnesota mortgage moratorium act. basically, the claim was this violated the state's wisconsin military not to impair the liability of the contract. chief justice hughes said in this case that basically contracts had to be understood within the context of the public interest.

one of the things he kept coming back to was the way in which individual rights had to be maintained. that had to be in the context of the protection of the public interest. >> do you have anything you would like to add? >> i think those are great opinions to highlight. the great thing is, he was the chief justice for a number of years. he wrote more than his fair share of the opinions. they are a opinions we can point to. those are the ones that are pivot points for the switch in time. those are very important opinions. i also think there are some of what i would describe a civil liberty opinions he wrote. it is now hard to imagine the supreme court of the united states without the first amendment.

it is an important a part of their daughter can't. --of their dockett. there is another case that recognizes the freedom of assembly and problems with laws that try to target people for being members of unpopular groups. the court has waxed and waned. in many respects, the decision he wrote was the head of its time. >> hi. i would like to ask your panel, with both charles evan hughes and fdr being a part of the aristocratic elite, both were progressive governors, one with the judicial route and one what the highest elected office, what kind of report was there

between them? i was also wondering if there is any evidence of any cordiality or was fdr regarded by hughes as a traitor to his class? also, i was thinking of this while i was listening to your discussion, was there a point in which hughes realize that even though he was an elected governor, he realized his aristocratic background that he could not aspire to running for president even though he wanted to be president. i am thinking of the last viceroy of india who had the ability, but because he was from the aristocratic class he had no point -- he had no chance. >> certainly, hughes swore in fdr on several occasions. i think the court packing scheme and the various tensions over the relations between the

court and president at that point in time did not really lead to a very amicable friendship between the two men. also, hughes was somewhat reserved in terms of social life in washington, d.c. he and his wife would only attend a dinner party on saturday night because he felt it would contravene his austere mode of preparing for judicial practice if he actually went out any other time. he was not as much of a figure in the washington social scene as one might imagine. >> the only thing i would add, he really was not from quite the same aristocratic roots as

roosevelt's. his up -- was exceptional from an education standpoint. his parents were a remarkable individuals. i don't think it was a use of great luxury or wealth. i think most of the wealthy accomplished over his career accumulated through his own law practice and endeavors. i do think there were differences personality wise and background wise as well. >> the next call is from stockton, california. >> my question was, he said that supreme court justice hughes -- was he still the chief justice in 1948 or did he retire before his death which would have made him around 85 years old at the time? >> thank you very much. when did he retire from the court? >> 1941.

>> exactly. he stepped down when he still had a few years left. i think that was probably something that was not unintentional. he had done his time on the court. he had seen some justices get to the end of their time and have difficulty issues on where they should leave. when he came back to the court even though he had been away for 20 years, justice holmes was still on the bench. one of the things he had to do was deliver the news to justice holmes that his colleagues on the court had decided that it might be time for him to move on. i think that was one of the most difficult things he probably had to do as chief justice, especially because of the closeness between the two men. i am sure it was one of the most difficult both -- difficult things justice holmes had to do. >> i think that brandeis

rejected a lot of hughes' philosophy and was much more liberal. he respected him as an intellect. >> i need to ask you, you have described his formidable intellect. if you could time travel, would you want to argue a case in front of his court? >> i think it would be fascinating. some of the other justices on the court were kind of difficult personalities from the

bench. i am not sure it would be all roses. i think it would be a remarkable experience. obviously, you are talking about not just the opportunity to argue in front of chief justice hughes, but also justice brandeis, some rail lines of intellect. >> today there are about 8000 petitions to be heard. they hear about one out of 100. what was the workload of the court back then? >> it was not that many more cases they were hearing, but the petitions were much lower. when roosevelt proposed the court packing scheme, there were only 100 something that had been granted. i think that was one of his grounds for complaint against the course they did not have enough energy to hear cases. we have a much greater

proportion between cases where there are petitions and granted. >> arguments are generally one hour today. what were they at the time? >> i think there were typically more constrained. in the early days, arguments would go on for days. i also think just to follow up on the very good point that was made, i think one of the stories is that more of their documents have become -- more of their dockets have become discretionary. one of the things chief justice hughes did was move the court into the direction of having greater discretion. that was a potential controversy that they were expressing discretion to not hear some cases. these days it seems quite. >> we have half an hour left to go in our two our look of "the contenders." it was a close election against

woodrow wilson who was vying for his second term. then charles evan hughes went on to serve as chief justice in his second term on the supreme court. he was very much the center of restoring fdr policy court packing scheme. >> i hope you have a happy and healthy baby. i try to catch the show every friday night. my question is -- justice hughes sounds like a man that was for progression. i hear you talking about how he wanted the blacks to step forward. but what you think about women stepping forward and them being on the court now? what he would think about the wrongdoings that are going on the court today. >> i think that it's a really interesting question about his attitude toward women. we heard earlier he was in

question -- we heard earlier he was in favor of women's suffrage. i think he was somewhat ambiguous. he was an advocate for a lot more progressive legislation that he was later. some have argued he had a turn more toward the right leader in his career. among legislation he was interested in -- interested in at the time was to protect women and children laborers. even in his later time on the court and as chief justice, in a sense he used some logic about protecting women against unfair labor practices. not just protecting any labor, but women might need special protection. on the one hand, he was in

favor of allowing women more autonomy. on the other hand, he also had a paternalistic view point. >> columbia, tennessee. >> thank you for a wonderful program. i'd like to know the opinion from your panel as to what you believe charles evans hughes might make politically and judicially of what is going on and wall street right now? >> can you project? >> everybody has their own a perspective on what is going on at wall street. i do think charles evan hughes was in some respects one of the great early reformers. if you think about the trajectory of his career, he did not seek out public service for sort of his own sake or something he really wanted elective office. he came to public service

through his law practice and through an opportunity to investigate industries where there was a lot of corruption. i think this is something that was a hallmark of his career. even in his presidential run, it is consistent with the idea that he was not necessarily the world was the best backslapper or do how to build alliances with people. i think he was very focused on getting rid of corruption. he did not care if a few sacred cows get slaughtered in the process. >> you mention his was one of the first controversial appointments of chief justice. i read as far as the two sides were concerned he would be too pro-business. >> this is a somewhat paradoxical concern. given his earlier term on the court and also his time as governor, he was very reform minded. i think of him sometimes as combining teddy roosevelt's reform-minded this as woodrow wilson's internationalism. people were very concerned that his time as a private attorney and time in private practice have led him into pro-business

alliances that would make him exposed to regulate companies anymore. i think the main issue was the time he had spent in private practice. i think that concern was not really warranted given his earlier career. >> we will take a call from toledo and that we have a clip about charles evan hughes and race. >> thank you for taking my call. this particular question is probably directed toward paul clement. sir, how you feel mr. hughes would have responded to unelected officials on an international scale, being able to dictate international law as opposed to an elected official who would use the congress to pass particular laws?

>> thank you. >> that is a great question. i think chief justice use would have had the ones to use and not something where he would say, you know, he would be hostile to the international organizations. this is somebody who came to the chief justiceship after serving on the international court. he has been sort of an internationalist. in his writings, he has been less critical of the idea that international law is our law. in this book, he specifically says international law is our law. on the other hand, i think he would ultimately save our own elected officials have the ultimate say over what the scope of our law is. i think he would have a view that congress had a wide scope to embrace international law

principles but congress wanted to say that principles of international law did not apply to the united states and that would be the last word. >> i think that is exactly right. he says congress has the last word. international law can fill in gaps in certain respects. i also think he was a head of his time in promoting u.s. involvement in the court of international justice. he was not only a judge on that court, but also he advocated the u.s. adopting jurisdiction of the permanent court. >> we have had a few callers who have asked about charles evan hughes and race. we are going to return to his law firm still existing in new york city for a story from his autobiography. >> in the charles evan hughes conference center, we try to select things that would reflect important stages of his life. we have collected a number of things including original books

that charles evan hughes author. most notably is the autobiography that we find interesting. my favorite story in here is one that justice hughes tells. a visit when he was the president of the baptists society in new york city. he asked to booker t. washington to come and speak to the assembly. when booker t. washington and his wife arrived, justice hughes escorted him to his own table and sat in there. at that time, that was a controversial thing to do. justice hughes took advantage of that to speak about the importance of diversity and tolerance. he was very disappointed that a group of religious people themselves would be intolerant to having booker t. washington at their table. >> we have about 22 minutes left talking about charles evan hughes. we have brought back one of our first guest who is joining us on the plaza of the supreme court.

david pietrusza, one aspect we have not spent much time on his his chair as secretary of state in his pivotal one post world war i years. would you tell us about what contributions he made in that role? >> he is regarded as not only one of the great chief justices, he is regarded as one of the great secretary of state. he is regarded as one of the top three. what he does is he inherits a great mess because of the failure of the league of nations, he was for the league of it -- he was for the league of nations, for the united states of america that entered the league, but he was not about to hand sovereignty to the league of nations.

article 10 said the united states would go to war if we were going to defend boundaries of the messes in europe. he thought that the league could be fixed. he planned to submit a clean bill treaty which could get through the senate when he became secretary of state. that was impossible. warren harding saw this a little quicker than he did. hughes recognized the truth that it was really a fool's errand to go back there. he moved on from there. he stayed. he talked about resigning. he pioneers an international disarmament in a groundbreaking navy treaty which casts the ratio of 10-10-6 with u.s., u.k., and japan. he scrapped and lot of heavy

battleships. this is a good deal for the united states because with our congress, we were not about to spend the money on the military. we would have lost ground to japan in that decade. he also moves on to other treaties in the far east. he gets japan to give back to china which was a major accomplishment. going into that decade, the united kingdom, britain, was united in treaty -- if they were attacked or the other party was attacked, they would go to war. the other party was japan. it was a fear that if we got embroiled in a controversy with japan, we might have to go to war with britain on that. he broke that treaty very smoothly. one thing he was not successful at was the emigration treaty with japan which was in the 1924 and was the japanese

exclusion act. he tried quite hard. he was not able to do that. the senate was a great problem to him. it would be a tossup between that and france. >> this is charlie. >> what a wonderful series and thank goodness for c-span. who was the person in the 1916 election on the republican side that ran against hughes? i had heard that if the other person had been the nominee, they would have beaten. >> the contenders that year were senator fairbanks who had been a vice president under roosevelt, senator burton of

ohio, the conservative candidate -- i would hesitate to say that any number -- any one of those would have run a better race than hughes. i think the deck was stacked -- it was close. if you change any one thing, maybe you do not have a railroad strike that impacted the voting in ohio. you just don't know. i don't know if you could say that anyone stronger candidate. if he had been so strong, he would have won the nomination. >> for all three of our guests, we will go one at a time. it is time to wrap this conversation up and think about charles evan hughes' legacy. how the world might have been different if he had not been here.

i am going to take a call, and then i will start with you so i will give you a chance to think about that. >> good evening. i would like to ask the panelists to please explain why the hughes decided to disregard the judicial precedents, particularly the ruling in schechter and carter in order to recognize a fundamental right to organize unions and labor relations. could you please harmonize justice hughes'judicial reasoning? >> i will give it a try. there is a way to reconcile those feelings. another caller pointed out earlier. it is easy to think about decisions as the same as being 5-4 one way and then 4-5 the

other. it is much more complicated than that. every member of the court said there was something wrong with the statue of there. and it leaves lawyers scratching their head. it is the first call the non delegation doctrine. from time to time, lawyers for to fit cases into the not delegation doctrine. that was really eight different doctrine that was at issue when the wagner act comes before the court. i think what is precedent setting and does break from the prior decisions in that decision is really the court in the previous decisions had distinguished commerce from production or other forms of economic -- economic activity. it is something that really

bedeviled the court. these are really difficult distinctions to drop. if you look at 1957 commerce clause, it is this categorical approach that required some very thin and difficult distinctions. i do think in that sense, those decisions were not so satisfying that they were decisions that were not that easy. i think the court essentially and ultimately became persuaded that looking at the commerce clause would not work. >> i think the most important part of hughes'legacy is that basically the hughes courts created the modern commerce power allowing for the commerce power to be construed broadly. so much of the regulatory system that we are under right now or that we can enjoy really derived from congress's power under the commerce clause. i think that is one of the things that hughes shepherded into court during a difficult

time and allow for this outcome to the marriage -- >> hello, charles. >> i want to thank you for your record of public service. the question i wanted to ask was about chief justice hughes attitude about oral argument. he believed it should be how it is today where they are largely focused on questions or did he have another attitude toward that? >> he had a more balanced use of oral argument, i think. he understood both the virtues of asking questions and also the virtues of having lawyers have been of -- ample opportunity to explain positions. in a sense we have moved to a different place hysterically or supreme court arguments is

dominated by the questions. at that time, justices and in his book, it is almost like they felt the need to explain why it was appropriate for them to ask questions at all. some lawyers had the idea that oral argument was their time. i think he was of the view that it was important for the justices to have an opportunity to ask questions and it was good for the lawyer to have an understanding of what was bothering the justices about their side of the case. >> friend from washington, d.c. welcome to our discussion. >> my question is -- i would like to know if any of the members of the panel can make a comment about the justice's view of that time between church and state court at that time any of their colleagues, what was their view? >> this was a moment in time

when the notion of a wall of separation was coming much more prevalent. the hughes courts look at religion more generally. the establishment clause of the first amendment was inc. against the state to the due process called the 14th amendment. there were held to apply it from state to state action. that allowed for a lot more suits based on violation of religious liberty than previously heard it. >> how about if you take the question about it hughes' legacy?

>> i think it is important of how he stopped the court packing scheme, how the regulatory nature of decisions changed. how the but the republican party back together again. i think his legacy is one of service. if he is a man at one time after and after a gain he leaves his normal state of life to serve the country and it does it with remarkable intelligence and integrity. at a time with so much fractured his and our nation, i think it is good to look back on positive examples and to take hope from them. but i read from one biographer who said he has a constant tug between the legal and political spheres. did you have the same sense with him? >> yes. i think after he left the secretary of stateship, i think

someone said he was our first citizens. i think that is a wonderful thing to say and something true to say about him. again, he made some amazing sacrifices. when he left the state department, he was able to make a peak of $400,000 a year. jobs he had prior to that were in the range of $12,000. part of him leaving was that he knew he had to take care of his family. in between all of those times and even when he was off the court, if you take a look at all the organizations he was involved in including the foundation of the national conference of christians and jews to advocate tolerance in the mid 1920's, a time when it was often in short supply, the

man was a powerhouse, tireless whether he was in public service officially or not. he was always doing the public's work. >> we have 10 minutes left and our program. we have time for a couple more calls. the me ask this in question of you. >> i would say there are two aspects of it. i am approaching get more from the legal perspective. what has already been touched on is the commerce clause jurisprudence. i think what makes that legacy so interesting is we are still dealing with this issue. chief justice rejected hughes the categorical approach which even he was very quick to add that the commerce clause was not unlimited. it was a limited power, the framers had enumerated the various powers in the constitution and none of them gave the government's absolute power. he played out the basic framework we are wrestling with and we still have this idea that the commerce clause is broad but it is not unlimited. where the limits are is

something we continue to struggle with. the other thing i would really emphasize is the legacy of judicial independence. i do think that the court packing idea was probably the single greatest challenge to judicial independence, at least in the 20th century. i think the way he fought that off is something -- i don't think we will ever see another court packing effort. i think that is a great legacy. i would add in her book about the supreme court, he addressed what were the three worst supreme court decisions that the court had made up to that point. one of was a decision called the legal tender -- the legal tender decision. it was for the court first struck down a statue and after changing its membership and it up upholding the statute. he said it was the core's fault

for the way they handled it. he pointed out it was not president's grants faults. he uses the word court packing. he said nobody could accuse grant of packing the court. this was something that was in the back of his mind before he was a chief justice. he sees the threat to the courts and defense it off. i think that is a very worthy legacy. >> hi greg, you are on. >> when this chief justice hughes get done been on the court? >> 1941. >> was he the chief justice when komatsu vs come asa was written? >> no, he was not. "i was just curious. >> he was off the court at that point. >> how do you explain about his final years? he resigned from the court as we just said in 1941 and lives the next five or six years and it dies at the age of 86.

what were his final years like? >> he is very old when he goes on to the court and very old when he gets off. two years before he gets off the court he gets a real scare. it is almost like a stroke. he recovers. when he leaves the court he is fairly vigorous. what does happen, he returns to new york. his children are up there. he remains in washington, d.c. his marriage was really a close one and very wonderful. at this point, he decided he would make up for lost time. she takes still fairly quickly. i think by the end of the war she has passed away. it is a very tragic time for him.

it is one of the very few times it is recorded that he has lost control of his emotions. it is so painful for him. his health continues fairly strongly until 1948. he goes up to, i believe, cape cod. there he takes a sudden turn for the worse. he passes away. he had a fear to not be like justice cardoso had been helpless toward the end of his life. his wish was granted. he passed away with all the dignity which he had lived. >> we have about four minutes left. we have a clip of him swearing in franklin delano roosevelt. >> do you solemnly swear to faithfully execute the office of president of the united states to the best of your ability to

preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the united states so help you god? >> i franklin delano roosevelt do solemnly swear that i will faithfully execute the office of president of the united states. i will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the united states and so help me god. >> charles evan hughes swearing in franklin delano roosevelt. his legacy, especially during the court packing era, is something we have discussed. i want to go back and talk about the 1916 election. if he had one that and woodrow

wilson had not won a second term, how would the world have been different? >> that is a very consequential question. it is hard to reconstruct how it would have been so different in some critical factor had not taken place. wilson was a president to lead us into the entry into world war i and move us forward. i think he is somebody that history regards very well. understanding the character of the person that charles evan hughes was, it is hard for me to think we would be poorly served during that critical time by somebody who had done some exceptionally well in such a tight. i think he would be very comfortable in leading us in our foreign affairs.

>> what are your thoughts regarding entry into world war i? >> i think the exit from world war i is were the change would have been made. we are talking about the peace process. woodrow wilson boxes that tremendously. what i neglected to mention in his post justiceship years is he is called in to consult on the structure for the do you -- the new united nations. he put some things and and makes it far more workable. he is a very practical guide. he has been interested in world justice and rule of law internationally from an early point. if he had proposed a league of nations, there is a good chance

it would have been approved by the united states of america. >> other than your own book, what is one of the best books on this era that you can recommend it? >> certainly on hughes, the ii volume biography is a terrific book. that is the book if you want to know an awful lot about mr. hughes. >> he brought a book of his letters i understand it? >> it is actually a collection of six different lectures that he gave at columbia university. it is really a unique insight. here is ruminations about the supreme court of the united states from somebody who had been an associate justice and soon would be the chief justice of the united states but is a candid look of what a lawyer thinks about the supreme court. >> highly readable? >> a very highly readable. it is fascinating how contemporary a lot of the discussion is. >> last question for you. when first-year law students

come can, what is the one thing you want them to know about it? >> i want them to know about the time and if he had been political or may not have been and what the consequences are. >> i want to say thank you to our three guests who have been here tonight on our program. from outside the united states supreme court, we appreciate your time with us as we learned about this. of american history. we are going to close now has restarted with some archival footage from the 1916 campaign. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> "the ceonteders" looks back at 40 men who ran and lost and had a impact on history. next week the series continues at starting monday with thomas e. dew >> tamara, a discussion about the accomplishments of the 2012 congress. after that, juan williams of fox news. and later a look at the world of the u.s. military with phyllis venicbennis.

>> sunday, house budget committee ranking member chris van hollenbeck about the debate on the tax cut and unemployment insurance. -- chris van hollanen about the debate on the tax cut and unemployment insurance. today, the house and senate passed a 60-day extension of the tax cut. harry reid spoke to reporters on the hill about negotiating a one-year extension. this is about 24 minutes. >> i am certain --

>> i am certain that most of you would rather be anyplace than here. i am glad you're here today. i will be relatively brief. the conferees i am going to chairman of the finance committee, ben cardin, a member of the finance committee. no one in the senate has been more protective of federal employees than senator carden, and when we were doing the negotiations, one of the places that people were looking to do some real difficult things for federal employees, ben will be fair but not punitive. nevada has had an unemployment very high for a long time. a state that has been hit really hard by unemployment has also been rhode island. no one in the senate has been more protective of the unemployed than jack grade. the fourth will be bob casey. he is chairman of the joint economic committee and this is his bill, the payroll tax holiday extension is bob casey's legislation.

i have talked to each of them and they will work expeditiously to come up with a long-term arrangement on the payroll tax, unemployment of course. i have great confidence in them and i also want to say that most everything we do around here is based on trust. that is how we get things done. i want everyone to understand how much i appreciate mitch mcconnell sticking by the arrangement, the agreement we made. i have told that personally and i say that to all of you. when we come back next month, we will have important things to do. i have already talked about the payroll tax package. have to do that and we can pay for it in many different ways. we have to be somewhat invented. during the past few days i have

had many calls from my congressmembers about ideas they have that would protect the people that need the extra few bucks each month, but also save money in the long run. unemployment, we have to figure out a way to extend that period. this is the first time that we have paid for unemployment tax extension, which i do not favor, but a significant number of my own caucus did, so that is something we had to do and we'll continue to fight for the long-term unemployed. i would hope that we can do something final to get rid of this sgr, this doc fix so doctors to take care of senior citizens did not have to worry every few months that they are going to get paid the following month. those are some of the things we certainly have to do. a couple of other things that are paramount in my mind -- we have to get this done.

the faa authorization. we have a short-term extension. this involves the employment of a couple of hundred thousand new people. we have made many offers in the house and we have to get this done and forget about all the and deal with it. the same applies to a very good bill. it was reported out of the environment public works committee. it is very conservative. it is a very good bill. i would hope that my colleagues do not play any games with this bill. it is important. the short-term extension can save the jobs of millions of people. those are --those are a few things that we have to do. i hope this congress has had a

very good learning experience, especially those who are new. everything we do around here does not have to wind up in a fight. that is not the way things have to be. people wonder why the approval rating of congress is so low. i do not wonder. it seems that everything we have done this last year has been a knockdown, drag out fight. there is no reason to do that. if there was a message received from this last thing we have been through, i would hope they would understand that legislation is the art of compromise. not trying to push through issues were you did not have the -- not pushing your way

through issues where you do not have the support -- support of the american people. this institution relies on trust and goodwill to get work done. the american people need this institution to work effectively. there are enormous challenges facing our country. we have a new year coming very quickly. working families that we have hoped for a couple of months, that is not enough. they sent us to washington to find ways to make their life italy easier and give them the -- to make their life a little easier and give them the tools they need to try to get ahead. they did not send us your to wage a partisan battles or settle ideological scores. i say to my colleagues, it is new year's. let's put those games aside and make its our top priority. it is not for political advantage, but to get things done. if we are able to get things done, there is a lot of credit to go around to everybody. if we do not get things done, there is criticism.

let's show the american people that despite our differences, we can tackle the big challenges that stand before us. the stakes are too high for us to do anything else. i would like to take questions. yes? >> looking forward to 2012, there are 21 democratic seats up for election. how does this tax cut extension communicated to voters in those seats that are up for election? >> that has been pretty well done by all of you in the last few days. >> you just won a battle with house republicans on taxes. how does this set you up for the battle in february? how does it set you up for the tough negotiations with the bush tax cuts? >> the first thing we will do -- we have work at hand. i have gone over some of the

things on my mind. -- i want to get the appropriations bill done and not have to worry about this omnibus which was very difficult for this year. as i have indicated this morning, i would hope this experience will make us better legislators. >> i have instructed my staff to get together with them sometime next week. we have senate democrats that -- we senate democrats wil willt together and there will be scheduled. we will come up with this schedule so that during the time we are out of session, will still of work to do. >> this bill will reduce the duration of unemployment by 20 weeks. is that something democrats are going to revisit? >> we have people that have

spoken out loudly. about cutting this back. this is something that we could not get done otherwise. we will revisit that. i want someone that works every day to understand the plight of people who do not have jobs. i have not seen anyone who is more in tune with that than jack grade. i have instructed in my -- >> what was the consensus of that the democrats made in this issue. -- issue? >> i have instructed my telephone calls, there is nothing off the table. everything is on the table. i have talked to senate republicans who think there

should be a fairer tax on rich people. there are stories written about it. you have seen the stories. i am going to make sure that it could be part of what we're trying to do. we will see what happens. >> [inaudible] we will see a number of people who have already been through these discussions as part of the super committee. is there any reason to expect a different conclusion this time? >> the reason i went to some -- this is a totally different program than the super committee. the reason why i went to some

lengths to describe this -- lengths to describe -- i want to make sure that everybody i want to make sure that everybody understands that this is a new day. i am very disappointed that the conferees that the house has appointed have already spoken out prior to being appointed against extending the payroll tax cuts. that is why i spend a lot of time this morning indicating that this is a new day. i would hope that prior statements will not prevent us from getting something that is good for the american people. >> a few days before the senate voted on this bill, you had a meeting with john boehner and mitch mcconnell. was there room for confusion about [inaudible] could you shed some light? >> i understand everybody's curiosity. we did what was right for the country. thank you, everybody. have a good christmas, hanukkah, new year's.

if you have your board this afternoon at 5:00 p.m., you know who is playing in california on cbs? [laughter] >> basketball. >> good morning. we are very pleased today that the anxiety and fear that americans had has been resolved. we are pleased that this agreement. i have talked to leader nancy pelosi and she already has appointed conferees. senator harry reid is doing the same. we're looking forward to assuring in the 01-year extension that everybody said they wanted. we're looking for to make sure the unemployed are not put at risk by falling off the rolls

and we are very pleased that 48 million seniors will have the confidence that their medicare will continue to compensate their doctors said they will be available for them. this is a good day for the american people the american people's voice was heard their concerns were heard and we have responded. i also want to congratulate president obama who showed great leadership in this effort. they articulated to the american the people and what was at issue. i am pleased that we have come together to make this agreement. we will go forward understanding that our work is not yet done and we intend to do

it in a constructive, a bipartisan fashion. i want to yield to the vice chairman of our caucus. javier becerra. >> i know i speak for each and every one of the members of the democratic caucus when i say that this will be a much better christmas, much better holiday season, for all americans, but certainly 160 million working americans. 48 million seniors and 2.5 million americans who are out of work through no fault of their own. i know that most people were concentrating on the other things. in this case, we can tell those folks that they can continue to focus on buying those last- minute presents because we did our work and we can now move forward.

a big cheer to a guy named barack obama, the president of the united states. he started this campaign a long time ago to really press the urgency of middle-class americans and it took months to make clear how important this issue was. we are moving forward and we want to say to each and every american who helped with their stories, with their commitment to try to push this across the finish line. thank you very much for letting us and 2011 on a good note. -- for letting us end 2011 on a good note. >> this is a victory for the american people. i want to thank all of the people who spoke up. we received over 400 stories from the unemployed telling us how hard they work looking for

work, how difficult it was. now we can go on and solve the larger issues that relate to a full one-year extension. i want to say to the president, you said enough was enough. what we did today was to come here and say, enough was enough. we are ready to move on. a want to thank the american people for calling on us to do the right thing and we want to make sure we extend a payroll tax cuts for the full year as the president called for. it is time for congress to get right back to work.

i want to introduce the dean of the congressional delegation. >> congratulations to you. to our leader, mr. hoyer, to sandy, and to you, chris. merry christmas to the american people. this is a small win, but it is a big one. as i look behind me, i see the statue of will rogers. what has happened today in the last few days would be something that would give him some wonderful opportunities for some rather funny, but acerbic, comments about the congress of the united states. this is something which i am hoping is a sign of good things to come. i hope we can expect that my republican colleagues will learn to work together in a bipartisan fashion in the best tradition of the house of representatives.

i am hoping that they will also learn to follow their leader, mr. boehner, who established the beginnings of some good working relationships, and i am hopeful this will lead to the congress now proceeding to deal with the nation's business in a proper way in which we have the necessary and proper respect and cooperation and bipartisanship. congratulations to all, merry christmas to all, and at this time, a very good night. >> thank you very much. we're also joined by steve cohen. did you want to say a few words? >> i appreciate the opportunity with all this leadership, i feel like tiny tim. it is a special time. i did not stay here for this purpose. i stayed here to watch the university of memphis played georgetown last night by sore a

-- but i saw a more experienced team beat a younger team. hopefully my team will improve and hopefully the tea party will learn from that so we will not be in march madness, a comeback. they will learn from their mistakes and get better. that was a game and this is real life and this was a great day for america. >> thank you very much and i want to say in closing that we had much work to do. there is no more important job which faces the congress of the united states and growing our economy and creating the jobs that people meet, which frankly brought us to this point. we'll come back from our break in january focused on doing that and we hope that we will be able to do so in a bipartisan way so that the economy will have the certainty and the success that we want it to have. are there any questions? >> mr. dingell? what are you looking for two or

-- forward to in the next two months? will you address the millionaire surtax? and also the pipeline? >> now was not the time to get into the specifics of the negotiations. as chris van hollen was very clear about yesterday when he said there are differences between the two parties which is why this extension was necessary we will obviously have to deal with those details. the conference committee will be convened i believe after the holidays and will be working on those issues. >> their republican colleagues are talking about reforms to unemployment insurance and things like urine tests and shortening the duration of unemployment benefits. >> again, there'll be time to get to the specifics. those specifics and the others

that mr. van hollen mentioned yesterday are differences between the two parties and i will have to be addressed. this agreement we have reached today gives us the opportunity to do that which was the intention of the senate and why we were so supportive of adopting the senate bill and why i am pleased we did that. >> can i briefly comment? you mentioned many of these issues are within the ways and means committee. we will sit down at a conference table to try to work out differences. those differences have been expressed before they are some bigger ones that need to be worked out. >> the three of you were appointed as conferees. when will you be starting negotiations? >> right away. >> senator harry reid and leader nancy pelosi have indicated they are prepared to move forward immediately following the holidays which

means the first week in january. >> you have been here an awful long time, >> i don't like the way you say that. [laughter] >> i have been here a productive period of time. [laughter] >> john dingell said that i hope the tea party and the members will follow john boehner. rarely have we heard such a firestorm like this. your said it was critical of what was going on and factions within the republican party. what is your observation on what that means for what is ahead in the new year for the republicans? >> i will end with this -- as we have had a good day -- 160 million people are confident

they will get their tax cut, the first paycheck in january. 48 million seniors are confident they will be able to see their doctors and 2.2 million americans are pleased they will not lose their unemployment insurance. there will be time to talk about the other matters as we go forward i think the american people's voice was heard very loudly. they want us to work together in a productive, positive, constructive way. i am hopeful that we will do that. thank you very much. have a great holiday. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> president obama spoke to reporters after signing the extension. during his remarks, commends lawmakers for coming to an agreement. >> good afternoon, everybody. i know you are looking forward to spending time with your families over the holidays, but >> we did have one last piece of business to finish up. i said it was critical for congress not to go home without preventing a tax increase on 160 million working americans and i am pleased to say they got it done. i want to thank all the members of congress for ending the stalemate and making this

happen. because of this agreement, every working american will keep their tax cut, about $1,000 for a typical family. that translates into an extra $40 or so and every pay check. -- or so in every pay check. vital unemployment insurance will continue for millions of americans who are looking for work. when congress returns, i urge them to keep working, without drama and without delay, to reach an agreement that extends this tax cut as well as unemployment insurance through all of 2012. last week, i said they should be a formality and that is still the case. let's make sure that we extend the tax break and unemployment insurance for a full year for families but also for our economy. it is the right thing to do because more money spent by more americans means more business as hiring more workers and that is a boost for everybody and a boost that we

very much need right now. finally, i want to take a moment to thank my fellow americans for bringing their voices to this debate. i met with several here at the white house yesterday. i really think it takes courage to believe that your voice can make a difference. i promise you the american people that your voice has made a difference on this debate whether you tweeted or called or wrote, you're reminded people in -- you reminded people in this town with this debate and all of our debates should be about. it is about you. it is about your lives, it is about your families, you did not send us to this town to play partisan games and see who is up and who is down. you sent us here to serve and make your lives a little bit better, to do what's right. unfortunately, that is how this -- fortunately, that is how

this week ended. this is some good news in the nick of time for the holiday spirit i want to be clear though, we have a lot more work to do. this continues to be a make or break moment for the middle class in this country and we will have to roll our sleeves together, democrats and republicans, to make sure the economy is growing and to make sure that more jobs are created. we have an economy that is showing some positive signs. we have seen many consecutive months of private sector job growth but it is not happening as fast as it needs to. that means that we've got to redouble our efforts working together and it means we have to make sure we are rebuilding an economy where if you work hard, that work will be rewarded. the kind of economy where everyone is doing their fair share and everybody plays by the same set of rules, everybody has a fair chance, and everybody is acting responsibly, including those in washington. there will be important debates next year, some tough fights i

am sure in the years to come, but that is the kind of country i am fighting for, one where everybody has a fair chance and everybody is doing their fair share that is the kind of country i think the american people deserve and the kind of country that american people want. i want to wish everybody a merry christmas, happy holidays, a happy new year to you and your families and that includes everybody here in the press corps. i know you guys have been working hard and your families will be happy to spend more time with you over the next few days. i also want to make sure to send the warmest holiday wishes to all the men and women in uniform for serving overseas who may not -- in uniform who are serving overseas who may not have a chance to see their families this holiday season. we are grateful for everything

you do. thank you, guys, aloha. >> happy new year, sir. >> shortly after briefing reporters, president obama headed to hawaii. he will join his wife and daughters.

[no audio] >> sunday, house budget ranking member chris van hollen. have democrats plan to approach the spending legislation. that is at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern. >> this weekend, sunday, christmas morning, michelle obama welcomes military families to see the holiday decorations at the white house. then alberto gonzales on his experiences in the judge --

george w. bush white house. efforts to reform lobbying at 6:30 eastern. and the dedication of the martin luther king jr. memorial. also, ronald reagan's use of intelligence at 1:10. at 7:00 p.m., mobile telecommunications. for the complete schedule, go to c-span.org. >> i am here arguing in favor of a wealthy americans. >> would you be willing to donate? >> individually? no. >> i am philanthropic reactive. >> all you need to do is put in the credit card. >> that is not going to help

anybody. >> you do not want to donate to the government? >> you have heard me. you're being silly. >> i am a video journalist. what we're doing is almost like psittacine journalism. when an individual who does not have that much training as the tools of modern technology to capture an event that does not have a background in journalism. >> michele fields shares her experiences working on a daily caller. sunday night on q&a. >> beauty gingrich held a meeting in colombia, south carolina state. this is his final stop. he is scheduled to resume in iowa in preparation for the january caucuses.

the republican primary is scheduled to be held on saturday, january 21. this is a little over one hour. [applause] >> how are we you? hello, hello, hello. all right. ok. that is very funny. let me have your attention for a moment. i am from columbia. i only blue marlin. -- own the blue marlin. i hope you enjoyed your dinner today. i know you did not come here to listen to me. i want to introduce mary louise.

here she is. if you have not contributed anything, canned goods, a non- perishables, please, please, and to your pocket before you leave. we have a difficult situation. three out of every four children go to bed without a nourishing meal. i do not need any more statistics. moving on. i am here to introduce bill lee. he was a judge appointed by ronald reagan. he is known for playing a pivotal role in the decision to a prestigious military career and holds the rank of a retired

general. billy and his wife are here as co-chairs for a new's campaign. i would like to introduce him. [applause] use] >> join me in expressing our appreciation for bill's generous hospitality. [applause] [applause] i want to welcome everyone here and tell you that i am delighted that you are willing to become part of the passion and action of our time. >> under his lead as speaker of the house, get this, the budget was balanced, the federal budget was balanced with the first time in over a generation. [applause] [applause] under his lead we experience welfare reform and taxes were cut significantly.

newt has experience, knowledge, intellect, and the strong work ethic to get america growing in the right direction again. in naming him man of the year, time magazine said this, and i quote, leaders make things possible. exceptional leaders make them inevitable. heelongs to that category of exceptional. [applause] [applause] well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome the next president of the uted states. [applause] [applause]

>> thank you all very much. first of all, thank you for coming out just two days before christmas. let me start by saying, merry christmas to all of you. i hope you have a wonderful christmas. judge, thank you for helping. i really appreciate it. thank you for hosting over here. you have a great lunch. of very, very wonderful chance to have some self carolina cooking, and i appreciated very much as a georgian. i am really glad to be here, and i want to talk about a couple of key things, and then i'm going to take questions. i want to five please be seated. let me start to talk to what just happened in washington, and i don't know how we get this message across to both parties, but there is something profoundly wrong in this economy with the problems around the world press need to make it worse to have a president and

the congress think that they have accomplished something by passing a 2-month extension of one item. [applause] [applaus and as my dear friend and former congressman was saying, we were talking. we were able to work with the democratic president to get things done. we got welfare reform done. we got the first tax cut in 16 years done, the largest capital gains tax done, four consecutive balanced budgets done. these were real achievements that have a real effect. unemployment went down. how much better christmas we would have if our unemployment were at 4%. so let me talk for a minute about creating jobs, and we will talk specifically about south carolina. one of the great opportunities

in all of america for job creation if we have the right policies. the boston consulting group, with a steady in august that said that by 2015 wn you take total cost of energy, transportation, equipment, manpower, it will be less expensive to manufacture in south carolina than in the coastal region of china. now, they did not take into account the obama national labor relations effort. nonetheless, that effort for the moment has been pushed back. what does it mean to think that weould be competitive head to head in south carolina with the area around shanghai? it means that we have a chance of the world market to create manufacturing jobs right here selling worldwide. what does that mean? it means we have to modernize. [applause]

[applause] and it also means that part of the process we have to modernize is a little bit north of georgetown. now, people have known this for years. our red tape, and this requires of but not to reform of the army corps of engineers, which is why i worked with strong american now, the same modern management in government we apply in our manufacturing companies. the texas locker today to plan the modernization of the port of charleston than it is killing to take to modernize t panama canal. now, that is just plain incompetence. that is the government bureaucracy which has ground down to a level that is unbelievable. i remind people that when you have an aircraft carrier out here, we've fought the entire second world war from dember the seventh, 1941, to victory

over japan in august of 1945. it is three years in eight months. in 44 months we defeat nazi germany, and imperial japan. recently took 23 years todd a fifth runway. now, that is all -- this is of humanly created incompetence. ..

governor reagan campaigned on it. his program for job creation was for things, one, cut taxes, two cut regulations, three, favor american energy, four, praise the people who create jobs. now what is the obama model? the exact opposite. raise taxes, increase regulations, be against the american energy and attack the people who create jobs. exactly backwards. what was the result of the reagan approach? we created millions of new jobs in august of 1983. we have created 1,300,000 new jobs. the unemployment rate dropped from 10.8% to about 5.6% during the reagan years. i became speaker. what was the gingrich jobs

program? well, i believe in imitating. we have a good lunch here and if i wanted to cutack on a particular dish i would come to him and say can i have a recipe? i wouldn't go out and try to invent my own recipe. i don't know if they would give it to me but stillthe ideas right. [laughter] i promise i won't open up a restaurant across the street but here is the point. when you get it good recipe you cook with it. obama's recipe is so messed up, you think you get a hard egged by putting it in the freezer. [laughter] [applause] so what do we do? we cut taxes including the largest capital gains tax in history. precut regulation. we strengthen american energy and we work with the people who create jobs. and we know what works and in the four years i was speaker not only did we balance the budget

and pay off $405 billion in debt, we balance it for four raight years, to while i was speaker and two in the media following uris based on on the policies we establish. in addition to all that, their 11 million new jobs created. so we know what works and we had to classic studies. let me talk about how it ought to work here. its accommodation of exactly what i just described, taxes, zero capital gains tax, hundreds of billions of dollars will pour into the country. 12.5% corporate tax rate, that is the average tax rate. we would overnight tier companies be more competitive. we would liberate about $700 billion in money locked up overseas and this is what i tell my liberal friends, at 12.5% general electric would actually pay taxes. [applause] 35% by 12.5% day -- and p their tax. this is very important.

100% expensing for all new equipment. what does that mean? it means if you're a farmer or a factory or a restaurant your business and you buy new equipping you write it off in one year. why does that matter? we wan american workers to be the most modern, most productive workers in the world with the best equipment. [applause] in the gingrich jobs and economic growth plan, we eliminate permanently the death tax. it is an immoral tax. [applause] it's both costly, wrong and economically wrong. it's costly wrong because the fact is, if you work all your life you save all your life, you do the right things all your life, but what right does a politician come in and take half your money when you die? it's just wrong. but it's also economically wrong.

if you have somebody who is smart and effective you don't want them to spend the last 15 years of their life trying to avoid taxation. you want them to spend the last 15 years of their life building new and better jobs and creating new and better companies. it's a better approach. [applause] for individuals under the gingrich plan, we also created create an optional 15% flat tax for anybody who wants to can either keep the current system with all of the deduions or this is -- write-down this is what i earn and this is my dependence. hong kong has a two-page plan. you can either have a complicated system or simple system. they have had of her generation and it works. now let's talk about how do you build onhe tax policy? deregulation, one. repeal obamacare immediately. [applause] two, repeal the dodd-frank bill

immediately. [applause] three, repeal sarbanes-oxley immediately. [applause] everyone at the steps raises more jobs. eryone of the steps liberate small banks, moves it in the right direction and again i do think you need some health reform right after you appeal obamacare. i think we need to reform some financial services right after re-repeal dodd-frank at this big government centralized bureaucratic system is guaranteed to be corrupt and is guaranteed to be wrong and it is crippling the american economy. now a couple more steps. we need to replace the environmental protection agency with a brand-new -- [applause] we need a brand-new solutions agency and when i say replace i mean i would not transfer anybody from the current agency. this is an institution which has

grown so radical, so lacking in common sense and so dedicated to crippling american business and dictating thlocal communities that it needs to be replaced by a commonsense, practical organization that takes into account economics and that focuses on innovation and developing new and better approaches that doesn't focus on litigation and punishment and dictating to the whole country. one last big change. i'm for a 21st century food and drug administration which is in the laboratory understanding science and accelerates getting a 21st century say you get it as best as possible. the biggest market in e 21st century is going to be health care as people get wealthier. they want to live better. i would like america to be the leading producer of health products of the world. those are high value-added jobs with high profit origins. we want them to be here in america, not in china, not in india, not in europe but here in america. [applause]

now let me talk very briefly about energy. there is an estimated $29 billion plus in natural gas just offshore. you set a standard so it's far enough offshore doesn't affect tourism and you set a standard that it doesn't affect the fishing industry. that's thousands of high value-added jobs. in louisiana that industry averages $80,000 a year. it also produces royalties. and i like a bill that is introduced by two democratic senators webb and warner from virginia. says in virginia they can develop offshore 50% of the oil goes to the federal government, 37.5 goes to the commonwealth of virginia, 12.5 goes to infrastructure and to land conservation. now if you take that model you would generate more than enough money to redevelop not just the support infrastructure but also

the roads and railroad infrastructure necessary to maximize their productivity and the job creation capacity of south south south carolina. that is a plan that is a win-win. you create jobs in the energy industry. that improves the chance to export. that creates jobs in manufacturing. suddenly have dramatically expanded the job base of south carolina and he will put people back to work. i will tell you one of the major themes of 2012, we have today the finest, most effective odstamp president in american history. no one has ever put as many people on food stamps as barack obama. i would like to become the best paycheck president in american history. [applause] now i will say these two last things and then i'm going to take questions. first i want to tell you, i'm not going to ask any of you to be for me.

becausif you are for me you are going to vote and go home and say i sure -- frankly i can't fix it by myself. even as president. i need your help. so what i'm going to do is ask you to be with me, to agree to be with me for the next eight years. i want you to be with the first of all to stand side-by-side to remind the congress, the governor come the state legislature, the city council, the county commission, the school board. this is the direction america is going to go in because we are going to get america back on the right track and we need your help doing it and that takes it is in power to get elected officials to do the right thing. [applause] second, i'm going to ask you to be with me because in a practical level if you have as many changes as we need to get back on the right track we are going to make mistakes. dwindle emit mistakes i want you

to tell us. this isn't working. we have a better idea. the world has changed. it's important that we recognize no 537 people in washington can possibly understand enough to see all the different things that have to be fixed. so we are going to build using social networks. we are going to build the ability for people to really stay in touch to really understand it to be able to say look this is an improvement. we haveto fix that. it will make us to radically more effective. there's a third reason. if we apply the 10th amendment and we shrink the government in washington, we have to grow citizens back home. because you have to fill the vacuum we are creating. so i am going to ask you to be with me. lastly, it is a huge choice. to go with a solve wolinsky model of socialism or with the american exceptionalism, the decoration of independence, our rights coming from our creator and us being citizens, not

subject to the government should serve us. we don't serve the government. [applause] this is possibly the biggest choice in over 100 years. which direction do we go in? eight years of barack obama will wreck this country on a scale that will make it almost unrecognizable. and therefore we need to win, not just the house, not just the senate and not just the presidency but we need to win the argument about the nature of america and the nature of solutions that will work. that is why if you help me, and i believe if i win south carolina, i will be the nominee. [applause] if you will help me, as the nominee i will challenge president obama's 27, three are

debas in the lincoln-douglass tradition of a timekeeper and no moderator. [applause] to be fair, i will concede in advance that he can use the teleprompter. [applause] after all, let's be honest, if you had to defend obamacare, wouldn't you want a teleprompter? [applause] w people think that is not going to accept that i believe he is going to accept for three reasons. first, he announced in fbruary of 2007 in springfield, illinois, quoting lincoln. second, it's a question of ego. this is a graduate of columbia university, a graduate of harvard law school, the editor of "the harvard law review," the finest orator in the democratic party. how does he look at a mirror and

say he is afraid to debate some guy who taught at west georgia college? [applause] but finally, as many of you know, i study history. and unlike the president, i udy american history. [laughter] in 1858 abraham lincoln had been out of office for 10 years. he served one term in the u.s. house before that in the state legislature. when he announced he was announcing against the most powerful senator in the country, the probable next president he said they are 105 days left in this campaign. let's debate every day. douglas said, i don't think so. so lincoln adopted a policy, wherever douglas went, lincoln would show up the next day and after about three weeks douglas

figured out the newspaper coverage was lincoln's rebuttal of douglas' speech. and so he wrote link in a letter and said alright i will agree to the debates. there were nine congressional districts. is that i'm not going back to the first two. you a party been there but i will debate you seven times. those seven debates, each one was covered by the newspapers across the whole country. lincoln then had it published in the book in 59. it was a major factor in his emergence as a presidential candidate. so i want to take lincoln' idea. ifou help me become the nominee, in tampa, in my acceptance speech, if the president has not yet accepted, i will announce that as of that night, the white house will be my scheduler. [laughter] wherever the president goes, i will show up four hours later, and i will answer his speech. now the age of talk radio,

social media, 24 hour cable television news, i don't think it will take ver many weeks for them to decide that having gingrich answer each speech is a dead ler in the debate is a lot better gamble. so i think the odds are very good, we will end up with seven, three our debates. one of them can be on obamacare versus real health reform. one can be on job creation versus job-killi. one of them could be on american exceptionalism versus european values. we will have a contest later on to figure out what the seven topics are. and it will be a lot of fun. it will be a good experience. somebody wrote me the other day and they said the president's challenges iran last time with the slogan yes we can and is going to run next time with the slogan, why we couldn't. [laughter] so again i am thrilled to have come out just before christmas.

i think we have two microphones in the audience. so, if you will hold up your nd, and microphone person will come to you. here we go. you take decided you take that side. this gentleman right here. and then we will come to you. there we go. >> mr. speaker, when you become president sir, will you be in a position to actively campaign to get rid of pelosi and reed? >> oh sure. [laughter] i mean pelosi is pretty hard because she represents san francisco and she may actually be a more conservative person then her district. >> hopefully they will secede by that time. another short things there, no it's, know the amendment is free speech and all but is there any way to hold the media accountable for the lies and the in the misrepresentation?

beasher, we will watch them. [applause] my view is there certain channels i refuse to watch because we no they are not in touch with reality. several of which could be called the science iction channel news. yes, maam. >>r. speaker in the small business owner here in columbia soh carolina independent voter and i recently applied for a loan and was denied. i have perfe credit so i don't know what the bankdo with their money, but i know you had a recent contract with america, where you had supported term limits because i know the president has one and as i see it now i eel like all of our politicians are bought out by special interest. i don't care what party you're in and they don't listen to the voters. i don't how you get special-interest money out of politics. i think that is really hard to do but i think it would be may be easier to support term limits and i wonder if you support that idea? >> if you are a small business owner, two things are your comment. one is we are working to velop it the equivalent of 12.5% tax

rate for subchapter s as well as corporations because the corporate tax cut doesn't help you. iran for small subchapter s's over the last year so understand the difference. the second is your challenge of getting moy is exactly why we should repeal dodd-frank. dodd-frank is killing independent small businesses and killing independent banks and is actually maximizing the likelihood of the big banks becoming even bigger in a way that is totally destructive of this country and the number of small-business owners who can't get credit when they are totally come exactly why it each gets credit out is mind-boggling. to big factor on why the economy is not recovering. i'm not a big fan of term limits because we now have have had 20 years experience with thm and what they have done is, in a place like sacramento, term limits are so short that the elected officials never know what's going on and the result is that bureaucrats in and the lobbyists run the city. what i am in favor of is the

decisive election reform that says anybody who wants to can give any amount of tax money they want to give as long as it's repted every night on the internet so you know where the money comes from. overnight cannot, challengers could raise the money to run against incumbent nd you would certainly see incumbent in trouble everywhere all the time. the current campaign finance laws protects incumbents because it made it so hard to raise money for a challenger that it is a fundamental impediment to mocracy. [applause] >> you talked about jobs. what would you do specifically to help e 50 to 64-year-olds who are unemployed now and how would you help them save for retirement and protect social security so they will be able to retire someday? >> a couple of things. first of all, let me work backwards. social security for your generation is not in trouble. it was infuriating to have obama say in july, i may not be able to send you your check.

there e two gillian four and a billion dollars in the social security trustund. this was pure cynical politics and its most disgusting and this president does it routinely and he seems to have no care about the truth and no care about whether or not he is scaring people unnecessarily. the fact is the money was there. they could easily have passed the provisions or congress that said that ose checks would be e first line of credit on the federal government andthey could have paid them even during the debt ceiling fight. close the government twice. we never once threatened social security or air traffic control or the military or anybody who is engaged in public safety because we were careful not to do damage. this president has no care about the number of people he frightens who don't understand the real world and the real situation. i think that part is different. second i think we need to fnd a way to increase the amount you can save and a tax-free and tax-sheltered way. people need to make up for a

lost decade. people who have actually perfect plans for retirement under any reasonable standard are now being hurt. third, what bernanke is done at the federal reserve at keeping interest rates this low really hurts everybody who has saved. if you have savings, you look at what you're getting in your savings right now. this is an attack on every save for -- saver in america by the federal reserve system and one of the reasons i would like to fire bernanke soon as i get into office. [applause] lastly i will give the same general answer i give young people who say to me ho my going to pay out my student loans because i can't find a job? the best answer isn't to find some tech need to allow you to not pay yo student loans. the best answer is why do we an economic wolesi that creates so many jobs that everybody gets hired? at 4.2% unemployment virtually everybody is willing to work find a job so that includes people over 50 and includes people under 30. so i think we have to have is a goal for this country, let's get back to everybody having a job.

america only works when americans are working. [applause] >> h are you doing today mr. gingrich? my question is, i am a little nervous. how are your policies going to help improve the lives in in a poor and minority counities which the recession recession really has it is hard. i just wanted to know that how your policies will be any different than republican, democrat, whatsoever. are you willing to put your registration to a different background, not cause you know him personally but the background is different and he wanted different mindset than the same old same old that went to this college went to that college or you network. serious change, thank you. >> it's a good question. donna brazil rand algor's campaign and she was at one time the assistant to the delegate from washington d.c..

shwill tell you in the four years i was speaker, i was the most pro-district of columbia speaker in history. adopted policies that helps bring people back in the city and we adopted policies that help businesses come back into the city. we did everything we could to make sure that everybody was engaged and had a better future. i think it's very important and i say this to everyconservative in the country, if you truly believe that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rightsmong whih are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then we who are conservative have an obligation to go into the poorest neighborhoods in america and in a practical role up your sleeves vel, find out how we help every single american have the right to pursue happiness. now that requires rethinking the schools. it requires rethinking the red

tape on the tax policies. it requires making it easy for people to become entrepreneurs and start work. how many of you heard the idea that i got in trouble for recently. i ca like a miser with some ideas that they left probably goes crazy, rensin circles. "time" magazine once had me as scrooge holding tiny thames bre in crutch. and it wasn't enough that i had stolen the crutch. i had broken it. and the title was, how mean will gingrich be? that was before i was sworn in as speaker. the following week "newsweek" had me at a doctor seuss figure and the title the grinch who stole christmas. gave you some sense of how the elite media response to that. am going to give an example of an idea i've been describing to people. i believe the poorest communities we should really be creative in our schools. finding a way to help young people actually have a part-time job in the school.

i think it will reduce the dropout rate. it will increase -- they will have money and they will actually have a job. it will increase their sense of pride in their school because they will be taking care of it. this got an article that said gingrich wants to trap poor pete -- children into being genders and then it was he wants 12-year-olds to do dangerous things. you can't believe the discourse in. so i'm in new hampshire on wednesday. the 16-year-old kid comes up to me. his father is an adviser of investmentsinvestments, 401(k)s and that sort of thing. this kid has his own doughnut compy at 16. and i said well when did you start? he said 11. he now has two restaurants that take his donuts and he sells, he does four, six, eight dozen donuts at a time. he is 16 years old. his father said he finally can drive and now he can deliver his own donuts.

but here's my point. i want to go in with the idea that every person is has a chance to become nonpoor. i don't want to make life easier for the poor. i want to make the poor middle-class. that means better education pro-grins, easier smaller business rules, printed ships and work programs. [applause] i will give you one of example. i want to modify unemployment compensation so in order to get unemployment compensation, you sign-up for a business based training program so we are not paying people to do nothing for 99 weeks. we are paying them to learn a new set of skills and a new job opportunity. [applause] does that help? let him come back one time. >> i like that idea. i think the biggest thing is opportunity. i hear what you have to say but a lot of timeseople i know you know, they will go to college so sometimes that weight is on them or they have to raise their brothers and sisters. when you talk about pull

yourself up by your own bootstraps, i know people who take care of their families because their mom and dad had a substance abuse problem. a lot of times you haven't been in those ootsteps and you can't talk aboutit. do you know what i'm saying? when i was young my mother worked a lot. i had to run her bathwater. she worked hard hours and that made me a better man and my father, both of them, my father and my mother. they taught me a lot of values. it was a committee thing but a lot of times you don't have that. what we need is opportunity. are you willing to put that into your administration? a lot of times people in your position say one thing and do another. i want real change like anyone else. that is why i came out here today, to hear what politicians want to d. >> let me tell you the dierence. i know this is very good and i am really glad you have the courage to get up and persist. let me tell you the difference. i am not for outreach. i am for inclusion. and i will eplain the difference. outreaches 15 white guys will the meeting and then call you.

[laughter] inclusionist when you are in a meetin and i can assure you precisely because we want to decentralize back home. we want to have people back home with a bigger responsibility. at is why i'm asking you to be with me. i want every community in america to have a better future and i will tell you some candidates if if the naacp invites me to come to their annual convention i'm going to come that i'm going to invite them to joins in getting america back on thright track so every american can work. [applause] this guy right here. >> mr. president-elect. >> not yet, with your help but not yet. >> i'm retired military. i retired after 33 years and what i've watched over the last four years as the military being decimated. what will you do to ensure that we stay the strongest country in the strongest military in the

world? >> well the question is how to be strong as an important question and let me start off by saying because i'm really concerned about this. the only person i know who is for a weaker military than barack obama is ron paul. we have to be honest about this. his positions are fundamentally wrong on national security. i do not agree with him that america is at fault for 9/11. i do not agree with him that we can ignore it and iranian nuclear weapon and i do not agree with him that it's okay if israel disappears. i think that is important to understand that america has a key roleo play in the world. the world is a better place because since 1941, we have been a stabilizing force that has enabled the world market to grow, has enabled freedom to grow and has enabled people to get to know each other better and if the united states pulls out and we go isolationist, the world is going to become more dangerous overnight. you are watching it in iraq right now.

this president pulled out of iraq in such an abrupt manner that the place is starting to fall apart within days and it is supposed to be clear. it was barack obama overling his own generals. have great concerns aut the campaign in the middle east. i think we need to rethink it from the gund up that i want to -- two major concerns of national security. china and the middle east. they are fundamentally different concerns. in the case of china, the number one challenge is us. if we rebuild our schools, we rebuild our science, we rebuild our manufacturing, we reinvest and recapitalize our military with new equipment, chinese aren't going to catch us in 75 years. that is what we have to do. [applause] the problem in the middle east is fundamentally different. we need to liberate our intelligence community on the mindlessly stupid laws of the past since 1975. we today have no ability to run a genuine intelligence

operation. we actually rely on the pakistanis for intelligence. now i mean, this makes no sense at all. and so i'm for fundamental reform and i want to ay one last thing. i'm a hawk but i'm a cheap hawk. i want to reform the pentagon as much as anyplace else and there is no excuse for wasting money just because is in uniform and when you have the procurement process along you can buy new weapon in the cycle time of the technology, there something fundamentally wrong with what you are doing. these two young men right here need to have a ance. let me take another person here and then we will come to these two young men. >> i'm an independent voter and i'm curious about your position regarding the confederate flag flying over the statehouse grounds. as an historian you must have some opinion on the matter. what is your stance? >> i have a strong opinion and i will tell it to the people of south carolina.

[applause] that may be very clear. is a matter of personal deeply felt feelings, i am opposed to segregation and opposed to slavery. i think all those things were terrible and i thought it was fabulous to come into a fund-raiser for tim's got across the street in the largest slave auction site in the united states and it says an immense amount about america and how we pealed and how we have come together. i also believe you will even attend them and there's a lot of stuff local people need to argue locally and they don't need other folks coming in and are getting it for them. that is how i would answer that question. these two young folks and then after the one there, come back here because otherwise she is going to attack me from the back. this yng man here first. >> do you think you will win the

war in afghanistan while you are president? >> it's a very good question. i personally do not believe we are going to win that war. i think that affect the sooner we can fina way to recognize that the problems are dramatically different and harder, the problems may well be with us our entire lifetime. trying to root out and defeat a religiously upheld terrorist operation that is very widespread requires i think a totally new strategy. this is why we need american energy policy. the saudi's are the largest funders of wahabism across the planet. they have more schools teaching more people to hate us than any other group even though -- and i guarantee you i will never bow to a saudi king or walk arm in arm with one. [applause] the iranians currently have a dictatorship dedicated to a religious system in which

causing a nuclear war is seen as a positive event, because it would lead to the coming of the 12th imam. the pakistanis have been lying to us. i mean, when you learn that bin laden was in the military city about a mile away from the national war college, the one thing you know is the pakistani gornment was protecting him. there had to be some element to the pakistani government to protect him. what was the reaction of the pakistanis to our killing him? it wasn't to be angry about the people who were hiding him but the angry the people who helped us find them. that to me. that to me is a symptom of how bad the situation is so i think we have to rethink. thiss not a military go shoot people problem. this is a fundamental strategy of thinking through how we are going to change those cultures and that is going to be a long, hard process that involves diplomacy, information campaigns, education, lots of things but it is not going to be compress by the military a i think it's tragic the young men and women get lost in the campaign which in the end

justice in iraq is going to turn out not to change the country. on last thing. by the way how old are you? you are 12. a very good question. one of my two leading debate coaches is 12. [laughter] maggie is my older, she is my granddaughter and she is 12 and she is one of my -- and m grandson robert is the other one. he is 10 and i will report to them that you're doing a good job here. i will tell all of you i wrote a paper in august of 2002 for the bush administration. it was called operation switch and i said in that paper we should go in and defeat saddam hussein. it should take about 21 days and it actually took 23. we should immediately hired the iraqi regular army. and we should pull out of the cities immediately. we should be the reinforcers, but we should never be the enforcers because we don't know enough to police countries like

that. unfortunately we did exactly the right thing for the first 23 days. ambassador bremer made a huge mistake and decided to try to reshape iraq. in december 2003 i went on "meet the press" and i talked to "newsweek" and i said we have gone off the cliff. we are now trying to do something we cannot do. i mean if we have put and a half million troops in the beginning and if we had been prepared to kill a lot of people, we might have done it. you look at germany and you look at japan, those were total war. weere prepared to engage in total war and when you're dealing with a society which repels you, you either crushing or you get defeated. we were not prepared to crush it. we could not sustain crushing it it would have sickened us to try to do that so we need a longer, more indirect strategy that modernizes the region and defeat our enemies but does so with the recognition of how hard it is.

somebody's going to bring you a microphone i think. then you need to come to her. otherwise she is going toet real upset. i'm easily intimidated by these things. >> thank you are. at the best ways out of poverty as you know is to enlist in the military. are you aware that the department of defense regulations prohibit anyone with hiv from enlisting in any branch of the armed forces? with south carolina arts been the top 10 of new hiv cases, what will a gingrich administration do to preserve our militaryor the future? >> well i won insist that the military except people who have a communicable disease that in combat might well lead to the transmission to other people. [applause] i will on the other hand be happy to collaborate with a public health department to try to eliminate the transmission of hiv in south carolina would talk to be our goal.

show everybody your sign. you have been waiting it. [laughter] go ahead. >> what is your opinion about bringing prayer back into the schools? congress opens up with a devotion and has a pastor prayer before they go into session. what is your position? >> i personally believe that prayer would be a useful thing to re-enter in school en if a was only a moment of silence. you start down the road of saying to people, there is a supreme being. we are subordinated to that supreme being. the people around us are part of that same fabric and therefore, you change the way people think of themselves. i think you go back to 1963 and the school prayer decision and you say what were the problems in schools in 1963? what are the problems in schools in 2011? it's pretty hard to argue that the modern secular situation ethics, undisciplined, totally -- let me give you self-esteem as opposed to earning self-esteem model has

been a success. but look, i'm very bold about this that. t only do i think it would be good to have a moment of silence every single day but i think would be good to reestablish the idea of discipline and to say if a teacher is a problem with you, yourarents ought to have a problem with you because your job is to be there learning from the teacher. [applause] >> mr. speaker my name is james porter. i'm a young high school student and as i find myself looking forward to a career in the future, i find myself facing immense competition from illegal immigrants and the threat that they pose to our job market. what will be your steps as president to enforce the border? >> well i actually have, go to newt.org and we have a number of steps laid out. the first one is to have absolute control of the border by january 1, 2014. [applause] we are drafting a bill that will post early next year which is

very simple. it reestablishes world war ii speed and effectiveness, waives all of the various impact studies and all the other stuff that slows it down and says, the person in charge of securing the border will get it done by january 1, 2014. just gdo it. there is no question my mind that if you're serious about you can get it done. in the world war ii generation would have thought it absurd that 25 years after reagan said we needed to do is we still haven't done it. the second to get favors making english the official language of government. [applause] the third thing i favor is having requirement to the an american citizen you have to have a much deeper knowlge of american history than we currently require an candidly i'd also say for american students it would be good before graduated for you to have a deeper knowledge of american history than we currently require. [applause] before thing i would do is actuly modernize the visa program so it's easier.

if you want to come to visit the u.s., if you want to do business in the u.s., if you are legally coming here to visit your family or whatever, it would be easy to do. takes 174 days in brazil to apply for a visa. i mean the amount we cost ourselves in tourism dollars is astonishing as its just a pain in the neck to come to america now so w have to modernize that. the other thing which modernizes their deportation process. if you belong to ms-13 which is now salvadoran gang in our southern cities we should be a will to deport you in three days. if you're not american citizen you should not be protected under american civil law. [applause] i would then establish an american guestworker program so that people could come here to work with a guestworker card but i would outsource the card to american express, visa or mastercard so it's very hard to have fraud and cheating. the federal government is holess and running a program like that. finally, and i would -- much

deeper economic penalties for any employ who hired someone illegally once there was a card program and wants you could swipe it and he knew exactly what you were doing. [applause] i think most people who are here illegally should go home, period. but i do think when you talk to someone who has been here for 25 years, they been working, paying taxes and part of the community. they are not citizens were working and paying taxes than they are part of the community, they have a family and it might have children and grandchildren, they may belong to yourchurch. i don't think we have to go in d roothem out. it's just not going to happen so i think there ought to be a citizen certification program builds on the world war ii draft board model where local citizens would review applicants. the applicant would have to be sponsored by an american family and they would have to have proof that they have been here, proof they been paying the bills, proof they been paying their taxes. those folks i think should get a residency permit.

it doesn't lead to citizenship but it means they come out from under the illegality. if ty want to apply for citizenship they would have to go back to their home country and applied and be in line li everybody else back there and not become until that point whenever that is finally there but i do think what i just outlined is imperfect but it's actually doable. and i would not doit in a single conference of bill. i think first of all you will never pass it. nobody is going to trust the government until they see real idence we are going to control the border and i think once we control the border, people will be much more practical about the follow-on steps and the last step is the one of certification. the way people say well, one of my competitors said that will be a real magnet. you have to be your here 25 years, so that means instead of going to the guestworker program, said of applying legally today, you're going to try to sneak in so that 25 years

from now, and mean it's not much of a magnet. but it is i think a practical solution to a hard problem. yes maam. >> mr. speaker, first of all you just pointed out to me why -- you have just pointed out to me why i so admired you in the debates. you are lead, follow or get out of the way with your solutions whereas mitt, and i'm not really sure, but the reaon -- south carolina's very obviously very important and this ws in the career in charleston about the romney bein connection. are you familiar with that? >> i haven't seen the article. >> okay, anyway. i'm with you. i do not believe in negative campaigning but i will hand this off to your staffers. you can look at it but what it amounts to is he supported this big conglomerate and what it

end up doing was losing south carolinians a lot of jobs and the guy that was behind it came out smelling like a rose. >> look if you want to share that with their 6000 closest friends. that is certainly your prerogative. let me just tell you'm not going to use that. the strongest thing i will s abt governor romney is that he is a massachusetts derate trying to come down and pretend to be conservative that i'm not going to say anything stronger than that. i want to's -- focus on positive things but actually that says it all. i don't want to spend a lot of time being negative. let's go back to being positive. i have one opponent, barack obama. [applause] after him there is a guy way in the very back. >> mr. speaker, i am curious about the medical situation.

all that is happening course with the settlements or the $100,000 stuff like that. what could be done? >> are you talking that litigation when it ces to health care? well we did a study at the center for health transformation with the gallup poll and with jackson health. we interviewed doctors and we found that the best estimate was at 800 alien dollars a year is fensive medicine. that is, medicine where they are dering something you don't need in order to avoid a lawsuit or to be ready if there is a lawsuit. $800 billion. that's about 25% of all costs in health care so obviously if you are serious about health costs, one of the key things has to be litigation reform and here i will say on behalf of governor

perry who's a good friend of mine, the malprtice reforms in texas were quite effective. back here, yes or. >> mr. speaker, first of all thank you for standing up. we really appreciate it. next, i want to thank you for initiating welfare reform. it is was the first time people like herself, who actually i'm the chairman of yourself carolina social conservative coalition, the chance to push back against the liberal policies pushed by the nation called health and human services and education of the united states. they are indoctrinating the next generation and to give us a chance to push back. as a result pregnancy rates across the nation among teenagers has gone down almost 50%. you don't hear that on the evening news, so thank you for that. but there is a culture war and i wonder, if you given any thought

to the effect in education has shown in reducing teen pregnancy under welfare reform and will you connue to support that? thane. >> the answer is yes i'm aware it. we help fund it and i would have fact -- though there's a guy in the very back. get his at times -- get his attention some way. somebody way back there. so i would support it. it's something i supported when i as speaker. the welfare reform is a good example of how i operate. because we actually brought in the governors, geor allen and george engler and others and their staffs actually helps write the bill. so it was a very practical bill because we have the people who implemented helpin rig at which frankly offended some of the federal staff who didn't like the idea that we brought in these outsiders. go ahead, yes maam. >> thank you for being here two days before christmas.

[applause] we understand how hard you're having to work at this and we appreciate immensely that your foe is obama. one thing i would suggest to you, don't call him a target. that gets all of us in trouble. he is your adversary. i agree with you 100%. two things that i wanted to point out is you can have your researchers verify this. 60 gallup, 65% of all the nation are not concerned about big business. we are concerned about big government. i think you are right on with all of your proposals. that is omething that should be hammered home along with the fact that you are opposing obama. secondly, i heard and again i don't know if this is true, it was reported from overseas, a publication overseas which a lot of times we can trust more than our own media.

it was reported that an obama strategist indicated that he is not at all concerned about the white working class. he is not going to approach any of us for our votes in the election in 2012. those are two points that i think if true, could be used to our advantage by you. thank you. we appreciate your effort. spiegefor take the last question, let me just say one ing about thatast comment. i don't think about the white working class. i think about every american who would like to have a job. [applause] and i reject the racism on both the right and the left. i want to campaign in black communities and i want to campaign in latino communities

and i want to campaign in asian communities. i'm going to campaign among native americans and i'm going to campaign across this country and i want to ask this simple question. would you rather your children had food stamps or payecks? would you rather they beat deep tendon or independent? anybody of any background who would like to have a paycheck and be independent i am going to reach out to and i want to challenge the president. this idea of dividing americs with class warfare and in videos rhetoric and using racism as an excuse for thought i think is absolutely totally unacceptable to the american people and of every background. [alause] >> mr. speaker, john steinberger. without the 2% payroll tax holiday the social security account will still be in the red by 46 billion in 2011 alone nd we have got tens of millions of baby boomers retiring. how can we sustain social

security for he 12.4% payroll tax? >> i will say twothings. first of all what they should've done is apply the principles of strong america now who believes modernizing the government saves $500 billion a year. obviously i would replace the money with those cost costs with the tax cuts of the tax cut would not increase the deficit. i would cut spending an amount equal to the tax cut. second, waiver program with over 100 llege campuses where the young people who want the right to choose a personal social security savings account on the model of galveston texas and the country of chile. we have 30 years of experience and we know fewer like to have your money go into your own personal accot, the built-up compound interest your entire working lifetime you have to do three times as much money. by the way this is all voluntary. if you wt to stay the current system and not have the extra money you are allowed to. the social security actuary is

said 95 to 97% of them would voluntarily pick the new program because the economic return is so massive. you do that, and the other thing we do is we take -- this number is amazing. we take the 185 different federal programs for the poor and we lock grant them into one grant to the states, eliminate all the federal bureaucrats. that saves enough money that you can afford to allow young people to have their personal accounts and you can take the savings and put them into social security and the whole system works out economically. i think the gentleman comes a very tall gentleman in the very back who was honestly fairly visible because he is slightly taller than the 10. i think you have the last question. >> yeah chinned in 1980 you came to washington with ronald reagan to help save america. during that same time governor romney was a proclaimed independent and announce his presidency as late as 1994. you created a contract with america american 94 that prove sweeping victories from coast-to-coast.

governor rney said it was a bad idea. the same ideas got a lot of political calculations wrong over the last six or seven years in telling us he is more electable. this strikes me as sort of ludicrous considering ronald reagan -- and governor romney lost by 27 points and you ve created victories nationwide. my question to you is since governor romney has been lying to to you in iowa for the lesser aches will you tell the truth about him next week? >> that would be so painful. [lauter] what i've said to meg yesterday and the day before is, since he determined to spend like a million, $40,000 in negative ads next week most of them enact red and since he does not want to, she said i guess part of what got my goat was when said that i was not a reliable conservative. and i thought to myself, let me get this straight. as you point out the massachusetts moderate who did not support reagan bush and did

not support the contract with america wonders if i am a reliable conservative. how would he know? [laughter] i have a 90% american conservative union voting record for my lifetime and at 98.6% right to life voting record for my lifetime. i was honored by the national rifle association for lifetime legislative achievement in defense of the second amendment. i've helped balance the budget for four straight years. we were formed welfare and i voted against the two tax increases republican presidents tried to pass one of which led in houston that hit a certain unhappiness withe. i think i'm about as staunch a conservative as you have seen since ronald reagan but i said to the governor because i think we should be fair that i would be willing to need him anywhere in iowa between now and the third and have a 90 minute debate with a timekeeper, no moderator. i will bring his negative ads and he can explain them.

and so far is not seemed as excited by the opportunities that i thought he might. all i can tell you is that i wish all of you and candidly i wish all of my opponents and i wish the president and his family a very merry christmas and maybe for a few days we can slow down, enjoy life and then get back on the trail next monday. thank you all very very much. >> voters will head to the polls for south carolina's

south carolina can try to get the law approved by a federal court or submit a new law to the justice department. >> from "washington journal" a look at the 2012 campaign and the g.o.p. presidential primary. this is about 40 minutes.

about 15%, it was at a low point earlier at 12%. but about 15% only say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the united states. and let's do a year over year look at this. this was back in 179 all the way through 2009. here's the current number and took a low dip in 2008 after the financial crisis blow with 15. but we've been trending down at 6,000. 60% of americans are pretty satisfied. let me twin that with the lead el -- editorial on "u.s. today." here are some of the things they say are good about the country. the world is getting more peaceful. the troops are coming home. america's importing less oil. traffic fatalities are falling. and gas prices are still dropping. >> the social indicate doors have got -- indicators have

gotten better for a decade. i did an essay a couple of years ago and if you look at the social indicators from 19 60's, everything got worse. welfare, education, drug use and so forth. and a whole series of indicators got bert. most of them got much better right around the mid 1990's. crime is now at the rates of roughly the mid 1960's. so that is an area of a lot of, i think of good cheer and optimism. but the economy is very weak very fragile right now. and i think the public is concerned. they have reasons to be concern as far as the u.s.a. editorial the world being more peaceful. in some places yes, and in some

places no. we've seen some very bad news in iraq. 15 bombings. 18 bombings in the last 24 hours. that's an area that concerns me a lot. iran is racing towards getting nuclear weapons. so it's a mixed bag. it's always a plixed bag. but of course, these things are a relative judgment. and that gallop figure poll is quite concerning i think for the president because as you said since 1979 this is the second worst year since the carter presidency. 2008 was the worst year. 17% from 1979 until today we've had three periods where we have had 60% satisfaction. this is a country which is in a funk and a lot of reasons to be that way. >> what do you believe that the public's view -- the republicans responsibility for that -- they say it's going to

be tough for president. but do you see overwhelming sentiment? >> it's very, very low. congress' rating is the lowest it's ever been. >> 9%. >> that's right. and they're viewed toward the political class in general is very, very negative. i think the reason it hurts the president the most is because the president is used as the captain of the ship. sometimes that's fair and sometimes it's not. but there's not a republican that's going against the president. there will be a specific republican. it's going to help presumably the nominee. if you go through and we go through this as the show progresses but as you go through political discretion

that doesn't mean he can't win. the republicans may lose it. >> well, it was a good week for the democrats. >> bood week for the president battling republicans, with the payroll tax resolution. it was viewed that the republican party primarily the house was opposed to an extension of a middle-class tax cut that the public viewed as a no tax cut. the house wanted to extend the payroll tax cut for a year. the reason they opposed this bill is because they felt two months was too short a period of time. and they actually pushed the legislation sooner than the senat. the house went forward.

they were first and they said we want this tax cut for a year. but the democrats did a very good job of framing the issue as the republicans and the house being obstructionist and i think what really hurt the republicans is that speaker boehner and senator mcconnell in the senat were at odds. the senate passed the two-month extension. boehner thought ha the house would do the same. he had a rebellion within his ranks. he opposed it. it was tremendous pressure against the republicans. >> wasn't the krux of the argument how this would be paid for? >> yeah, that was the argument. the senat didn't go along with it but the way that it got played in terms of the optics was that the republicans were against middle tax tax cuts and for tax cuts for the rich. they've succeeded. and this week in framing mr.

obama as a leader in tax cuts. and there was -- the president is now higher than republicans which is unusual. >> we welcome your participation our discussion. we're going to cover a broad range of topics including looking at some of the g.o.p. candidates that say they are closer to the iowa caucus closer in the area and get hiss take on public response o that. you can tweet us and e-mail us as well. >> another "usa today" article what they picked up today is the report and the analysis of what they did state voter registration showing more than 2.5 million voters have left democratic and democratic parties since the 2008 election while the number of vo independent voters continues to vote. what is the main implication?

>> the party that's going win the senat and the house is going have to get independence. they're going to make larger portion of the electorate conceivably. but this goes back to what we were talking about earlier. there is a tremendous amount of cynicism and dissatisfaction with the political class in general with the police cal parties. it's an interesting thing because the public complains about stalemate and about things not getting done. but of course, that's what they voted for. they voted for a democratic senat, democratic house. and the president pretty much got everything he wanted by create an i enormous amount of dissatisfaction.

that inevitably led to stalemate that's what the public was saying that they wanted. but now that they have stalemate they look at the house and the senat, the president says why can't we agree on things and so they're unhappy with that. there is some public agreement on this. there is plenty to blame congress and too often bipartisan politics gets in the way. >> before he brought his commentary to the public media, he spent a good deal of time in the city. helping to strategize on policy and communicate about it. let me tell you a little bit on his background. he was a speech writer in the regan administration in the department of education for secretary bill bennett. and bush 41 administration. special assistant to the drug

control policy. director of speech writer. later named director of strategic initiatives for president george w. bush. again our phone lines are open for your conversation with him. among those presidents looking back through the lens of a little bit of history. which of them influenced your thinking. president regan, i mean, i was a young man when he won the presidency. and there's a whole generation of conservatives who became conservatives in large part because of president regan. he was not only a successful president but a person with whom really imbodied

conservatism and was at his core a person who believed in a political policy and often that doesn't happen with politicians or presidents. and the way he conducted himself, he was a man of tremendous principle and strength. but he was deeply decent and civilized man. they was kind of model to many of us. it's interesting that he's growing in the imagination of the blick including democrats. that was not the case all the time when he was president. president bush i was closer to because i worked in the white house. and he's a man of tremendous personal integrity. and i think i think the act of greatest political purge that i ever witnessed in my term was president bush during the service in iraq. it was tremendously unpopular the war was. the number of people who supported the surge in 2006, you could fit in a phone booth

virtually. the senat majority leader came into the white house to have a one-on-one with the president and said you've got to fwraw iraq or else you're going to show a crisis in the election. and he said no way. people forget now but there were gail force political winds against president push and so i would say those two. >> let's get some calls. but caller from maryland. how long have you been an independent? >> coirp about seven years. hoist were you a member of the party earlier? >> i got tired of the corruption amongst the local political circles. became a republican.

found out through rough experience it was a closed club just as capable of being corrupt as the democrats. i've been an independent ever since. >> as an independent, how do you -- why do you stay involved in the political process? you've had some bad experiences on both sides. >> the political process is a part where we can pressure for the country to go in the right direction. i was wondering whether you're guests would care to talk about the ethics of a nation that has two million people being locked up in jail. a nation that has had about half of its population with low income or in poverty, a nation where we have dropout rates in urban high schools of 50% or later. where there's a look of social mobility where question have

the most expensive and profitable health care system and yet on a ranking scale we have number 37 in results. if ethics and puck blick policy mean anything, how can the average person hope that our political class can make things happen for the average person in our quality of life that are the life expect tansy and the ability to feel that their children have a chance to be treated fairly? >> let's stop it there and get a response. >> you raised the two million people in prison and the ethics in that. they committed crimes they should go to prison. one large reason they have been going down is because we've been locking down the bad guys. the other issue is poverty.

i would simply point out that poverty is a record level. i think all those are serious problems. and they're all aimmuneable solutions. people with different views and policies arguing and debating and implementing policies and find out which one works. we had record welfare -- number of people in the welfare. the republicans pushed the welfare reform by. president clinton's third effort and welfare dropped by 60% and the condition of the poor got better. it's one of the great social achievements in the last half century. i want to also go with a larger point that the caller raised. the sentiment toward the

political class. corruption is part of the human condition. it's not isolated to politicians. and i understand the frustration with politicians and the political system and i have my own. but there are a lot of good and admirable people in washington and in public life. most people that are lawmakers and involved in politics are involved for the right reasons which is they have certain views to advance the human good. now it's mixed into politics and partisan politics because all human mote vacations are mixed. but i think that not enough people understand that and the last thing i'll say is that the founders themselves set up a political system which put a premium on stalemate and on stopping things not on getting legislation through easily. they believed and they believe thrad that was the best thing to tiering. we have a system of checks and

balances and the executive and legislative and judicial branch and that makes gloverpbing hard and frustrating. the united states is the greatest nation on earth. but there's a reason that's happened and our political system is one of the reasons. >> our next caller. dane. >> >> good morning. i have a question about the, you know, that just concluded battle of the two-month extension of the, you know, tax cut for social security. i had trouble finding out just what was behind, you know, the positions of the two parties. and i finally through reading the newspapers believe that i understand partly what the two positions were. the question is how to pay this . the white house and the democrats wanted to pay for it

by allowing freddie may and freddie mac and fannie mae have upfront mortgage charges, i guess that the republicans wanted to pay for in what i believe was a good government way as opposed to the bad government way of the white house and democrats. they wanted to freeze -- one of the things they wanted to do was freeze federal pay which is long overdue because they get twice as much as people in the private sector who do comparable work. people in the private sector are productive as opposed to most employees. i've worked in washington twice. but could you comment on this? and on the ethics of the press and the white house, frankly, i

think that, you know, one other option, the white house kept using the figure, $50,000 a year for an average worker and they would save $1,000 by the extension of the tax cut. i think the real figure out here in the real world when you consider the entire country and men and women that work, it would be about 30,000. so 2% of that of the savings would be $600 for this two-month period, the saving would be about $200. >> ok. dane, thanks. >> he did a good job explaining it as you pointed out at the outset of our conversation, the chief difference between the two-month extension and the two-year extension had to do with paying for it. republicans and democrats ha a different view with how to pay that. i think the republican pan was the better. that's now how it played out to

the public at large. that's why the house republicans gave in terms of the date itself. i think ha the $50,000 figure is roughly correct but i would have to go back to see that. >> picking up on our earlier conversation d.w. sends us this, what's going right is that we are learning. we are getting a lot of experience. maybe in the end we will realize we are just humans and start forgiving each other for it. guest: that sounds pretty good. i am a christian, so i am all for forgiveness and for learning, too. the issue is whether one learns and you gain wisdom. it is not simply the experience that teaches people, it is whether you take the right lessons. sometimes you do, and sometimes

you do not. host: let's jump into presidential politics by showing you a character at from mitt romney. >> you could never predict what kind of tough positions -- decisions will come in from the president's desk, but if you trust they will do the hard thing, and maybe not a popular thing, and if you really want to know how it person will operate, look at how they live their life. i think that is why it is so important to understand the character of a person. to meet him, it makes a huge difference. they to some voters it does not, but to me it makes a huge difference. >> i am mitt romney, and i approve this message. host: what is your view of the campaign so far? guest: in is the most professional team assembled in the republican field. of the people that are in, i think his team is the best look, i think he is in a good situation, not a great one. every time there has been a

candidate rise to challenge him in the polls, of course we're not have any election jet, with the first and january 3 in iowa, they have been on the hot seat, then got burned, and some in the polls. newt gingrich is the latest. he is looking very, very strong, and now he is lower. romney seems very steady. if you check the polling data over the year, is between 21 and 26% almost the entire time. he seems to have a strong core base of support, for which no other candidate outside of ron paul seems to have. if i think is a much improved headed from 2008. is quite a good debater. i've been very -- is a much improved candidate from 2008. he is quite a good debater. there are a lot of skeptics among conservatives with him.

host: who are the earliest primary voters next -- voters? guest: iowa. particularly social conservatives. if you were in the romney campaign right now, you would not need a victory in iowa to make you happy, but you would need someone like ron paul to win, and the preference would be the newt gingrich would not, so the strongest challenger to mitt romney does not win in iowa. he goes to new hampshire, and wins, and then there is a war because of proportional representation. it is not water-tight-all. he as the best team. i believe he believes he can win in the long haul. host: to w all news items. "the financial times" --

host: this is all called the new york post -- "de new york post." chris christie is not finished third in with a run for national audience. he is refused republicans pleaded with him to get into the presidential race, but he admitted he might answer the call to be mitt romney's vice presidential running mate. the fact is if he wants to talk to me about that, we will have a phone conversation, and my wife and i will make the decision about what we want to do with my future. let's go back to calls. erie, pennsylvania. laura, republican. caller: we brought up a couple of issues earlier regarding social ills like poverty, and the guest was saying how much

some of that has improved. i think we have addressed -- we are not addressed the fact that most of those social ills are linked to one particular behavior, and that is used engaging in sex when they're not married. that is the number one group trapped in poverty. single-headed households, poverty by far, the group is not married. abstinence education funding needs to be addressed in the welfare reform bill. i think it has the biggest impact on all of those social ills -- abortion going down. teenagers to not get pregnant, they will not have to make the choice to kill the baby. if they will not have std's, the out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and we need to come to the conclusion that social conservatives what abstinence

education because it will address fiscal responsibilities in the future. there will be a lot less money going if we teach our youth how to exercise self control. guest: i agree with a lot of what the caller said. there is no question that the ethical and moral basis of individuals will determine whether we have social pathologies l or -- or not. three conditions, if you graduate high school, and not have a child until after you are married, your chances are being -- of being in poverty are very low. if she is quite right if you look at single-family families. they're the ones that comprise most of the people in poverty for obvious reasons. abstinence education work should be funded.

my former boss bill bennett's wife runs a program that is directed the debt issue, the absence of education. -- at that issue, abstinence and education. it gets ridiculed from elite circles. it is the right message to send, the moral message, and the compassion and message. if you have a child, and you are not married, odds are you will encounter a lot of difficulty in life, and so will your child. there's a lot to be said for the institution of marriage host: -- marriage. host: california. a democrat, good morning. caller: happy holidays to you and your guest. when president obama was elected to be present, this was the -- to be president, this was the first time in my entire life that i have never placed a vote.

-- that i had ever placed a vote, however. i thought at that moment it was a great day for the country just because you had an african-american been voted into the presidency. i could tell my grandkids that this is a real possibility. what i'm really struck by is here you have a man and his family -- he appears to be a devoted husband and father, and has all the character traits that one would like to read as a leader, does not have anyone in charge, or in the office, and -- any and turns are anybody in the office, and here we are questioning about him being able to be reelected. what really strikes me and saddens me is you have a man in the face of everything that he has been under, a country that is really been drained of all of its finances, and turmoil,

and yet, when a man has to go before the nation to show his birth certificate -- i did not think he has a chance, and that is a reflection on our consciousness. but she called thank you for the call. -- guest:. -- guest: thank you for the call. i felt it too. slavery and race has been america's terrible sin, and the fact we elected an african- american s president said a lot about us, a lot about him, and it was a good moment and i shared in it. i think you're quite right. he seems to be by all accounts a very good family man, and a devoted father, and that is to his credit.

that matters as well. thirdly, on the birth certificate issue, i hated that issue. i thought it was silly and stupid, yeah i think it made sense that donald trump, who i think is somewhat of a buffoon made a lot out of it. most americans, i do not think, took that to seriously. having said all those things on behalf of the president, let me just say that by almost every objective standard i think he has been a failure. if you look it just the economic metrics, the so-called misery index is the worst in 28 years. the credit rating went down for the first time in history paid unemployment is the worst since the great depression. we've had 34 straight months of unemployment 8% or higher, and the president said the stimulus plan was passed it would not go above 8%.

several years of trillion dollar deficits. federal spending is at the highest level in terms of percentage of gdp since world war two. housing prices are worse than the great depression -- on and on it goes. now, the president's policies are more or less response will depend in on how you disaggregate that, but the fact is if you judge him on his own standards, the things he said his policies would accomplish, he has failed. i could go to the litany on the foreign-policy side. look, that matters. at the end of the day, people judge it president and his performance in office, and how they believe his policies are doing, and the country is doing. 70% are satisfied -- 17% are satisfied. that is not all president obama's fault, but he should be held accountable. host: here is a news article.

host: attorneys said they would repeal the decision. one group seeking to find review by the full panel. let's move onto another candidate, newt gingrich. on december 7 you filed this piece, and it says one of the most damaging words used against politicians --

his: let's watch one of most recent ads. >> is there anything more inspiring than american towns and neighborhoods brightly lit for the holidays? >> we take it as a sign of great optimism. it reminds us of the fire of freedom that burns bright in the america we love, and a flair that the goodness of our nation will be rewarded with peace and brotherhood. >> from our family to yours, merry christmas, and happy new year. >> i am newt gingrich, and i approved this message. >> what do you think? guest: i think it is in nice and, but i think he is in trouble. in the broader view, newt gingrich has some considerable strength here is an intelligent man with an active mind, and is a good debater. he had good, when he was speaker of the house, but on the downside, the charge of his

erratic and chronically on discipline is true. i do not think he is the temperament that i would want in a president. it is interesting. one of the issues that makes a great deal of difference is a lot of the people that work with him and under him or for him over the years do not want him to be president. i put a lot of weight in that. if people were colleagues of yours and were in the foxholes with you, and make the judgment you are not fit for office, i put a lot of weight in that. i know people who have worked for speaker gingrich, who like him, did not have a personal animus, he was kind to them, but they just feel like he is not stable enough. i do not mean he is mentally incompetent, but i think he is a person that is erratic in what he says and how he governs. his ability to focus on issues

and prioritize issues is not real good, and i think that is a problem. i think that is coming through. he is being hit by a barrage of negative ads in iowa, he does not that money there, and as been a target. he is not only cut, the bleeding badly right now. host: in relation to the millions spent on negative ads, here is a "washington post" had -- article. host: we have five minutes left with peter wehner. michigan, an independent. you are on. caller: good morning, c-span, and good morning america, merry christmas. guest: merry christmas. caller: our forefathers created a system based on what is known as due process, and when that

due process is compromise, it is breaking the law. when this occurred at the beginning of the week, i contacted the department of justice to is a retreat to report a major crime being committed for the american people. i explained to them what had happened and they tell me, yes, we understand. and i said, ok, as an american citizen, i have done my job. it is time for you to do yours. the white house has been hijacked. the united states government has been taken over by these high style elite. it is just not republicans, it is both republicans and democrats. very wealthy people are going against what our forefathers have created. like i said, when you process is compromised, that is breaking the law.

>> the wealthy have too much power in the united states. guest: they have power. the wealthy always have had power, but we have elections and the wealthy or the people with wealth to support doing things are wrong, then there are consequences. and there are wealthy people that support democrats and republicans, so it is difficult to tell. often their advocate different things. no doubt that welt and wealth creators are targets for president obama and his entire party. the term inequality which is a key issue, they will be one of the pillar of obama's realizing campaign. you find that america is divided

between has and has not said, there's a 49/49 split in 2008. today is almost 40-60. income inequality, fewer people think we need to fix it now than in the past. it was quite interesting, a gallup poll in the last couple of weeks that found that when asked whether big government or big business was the greatest threat to america, in almost record numbers, 64% said that government was the threat, and roughly 25% said big business. that seems counterintuitive in the political conversation directed against the wealthy. that has never worked as a political strategy and i do not suspect it will work now. american square or to care more about equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. host: some headlines for ron paul.

and opinion piece in the kit you washington times," ron paul moment. we do not have time for comments on that. gettysburg, pennsylvania. caller: i have a brief comment and one question for your guest. i believe that the social pathology affecting the nation and the world is this fast transfer of wealth to the top. -- to the top 0.1%, taken away from the vast majority of americans. this has been a 35-year plan, and it is sad that the modern conservative movement of corporate-run government, have a question. what is your definition of fascism?

guest: i will get to that in a moment. fascism is a term that goes back to miscellany and italians. it has to do in part with a government of oppression towards its people and is contrary to the founding american principles. in terms of this notion of this 30-year project of free markets. it goes back a lot longer than that. the modern founder of the free market is adam smith. i agree with you if you on corporate cronyism. like the obama administration funding solyndra and that kind of thing. cronyism is very problematic. it is an enemy of free-market capitalism. --it is an enemy of free market capitalism. politicians choosing winners and losers. distorting the marketplace. people are investing and earning money. that is a good thing.

then they start businesses and that creates prosperity. is were prosperous times during the reagan era. you had 60% satisfaction. the issue here is not rich and the poor. the issue is what is causing poverty and how you get out of it. we have to focus on economic growth. reactionary liberals are more concerned about penalizing and taxing the rich. then they are with prosperity. they believe there is a moral prayer vacation that happens when you tax the rich. it is not driven by economics. it is how we can penalize those

that we think have profited on fairly. you can go to greece if you want to get rid of income and inequality. there has been a less income inequality there is the years go by. -- as the years go back. they are at the point of default and they bring the european financial systems down. host: thank you for being with us. justice say will list of some recent blog post from our guests, climate change recently, several of his recent columns,. we will come back to talk about climate change later. yes guest: i would like said. did you tomorrow on "washington journal, sam goldfarb, and then juan williams on the 2012 presidential campaign.

later, a look at the u.s. military with phyllis dennis -- bennis. that is all live at 7:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span. >> sunday, house budget committee ranking member chris van hollen on the debate to extend the peril tax cut in unemployment insurance and how democrats plan to approach spending legislation. 10 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> so i am here arguing in favor of higher taxes on the wealthy. i'm one of the wealthiest 1%. >> if would you be willing to donate? >> individually? i know. how >> would you? >> i am very philanthropic lee afpak. >> all you have to do is put in your credit card number and you can donate to government. that is not going to help anybody. >> you do not want to donate to government? >> you have heard me.

you're being silly. >> i am a video journalists. i would say that " we are doing is almost like citizen journalism. it is basically when an individual who does not have that much training in journalism has the tools of modern technology to capture a live event, that does not have a background in journalism. >> michele feels as sellers her experience reporting on the 24 new site that daily caller, sunday night. >> a discussion about a new alliance between turkey and saudi arabia and how iran might be affected as the current government in syria falls apart. this is about one hour and 25 minutes.

>> can i ask you to take your seats because we're going to start? good afternoon. i joined the middle east program at the woodrow wilson international center for scholars. welcome to today's meeting on enemies or allies in the new middle east, turkey, iran, and saudi arabia. this meeting is part of an ongoing series of meetings we have had for the whole year

since the beginning of the revolutions in tunisia, egypt, libya, and yemen and also the ongoing events in syria. and bahrain. our speakers today are david ottaway, he is a senior scholar at the woodrow wilson center and the former cairo euro chief -- bureau chief for the washington post. i will be brief. david, the last paper, as part of our occasional series, was

saudi arabia in the shadow of the arab revolt. we have a few copies left outside. we urge you to take one on your way out. our second speaker is a former fellow at the wilson center. he is a professor of international relations at the university. i just received a copy of his latest book, "iraq: its neighbors." witchy added. -- which he edited. our next speaker is the president of the national iranian-american consul.

the former public policy scholar at the wilson center in on his upcoming book, a single roll of the dice. it will come out in the new year. we have planned a book talk for mr. parsi in february. i think i will stop here and ask each of our speakers to speak for 15 minutes so we have enough time for a discussion. there is overflow in the fourth floor. we will take questions in writing. david, you have the floor. >> thank you. i am going to focus on the rapprochement between saudi arabia and turkey and look at their from the turkish viewpoint.

i think the first thing that strikes me about this a new relationship between saudi arabia and turkey is that if you look at their history, you would not say they might ever become friends. this was brought home to me this month. i was attending a conference on the saudi foreign ministry and they took us to the history of -- the museum of natural history which is the whole history of the arabian peninsula back to the big bang when the world began. there is a section there on the three states. -- three wahhabi states.

there is quite a bit about the relationship between saudi arabia and the ottoman empire. there was a reminder to me of how these to have historically interacted and been enemies. just to mention a few things, the ottoman empire and its struggle with the portuguese established an outpost in an eastern province in 1551 and stayed there until they were driven out in 1680. mecca came under ottoman rule starting in 1517 and fought in the army of the first saudi state. it is an alliance between a religious leader and the saudi family. that is how the whole thing outgoing and continues until the state.

-- until this day. the first saudi state began in 1744. immediately it went to war against the armies of the ottoman empire input to egypt in charge of regaining control of mecca, the holiest site in the moseley -- muslim world. it had been lost to the wahhabi saudis in 17 03. 1818, abrahim reached the capital of the first saudi state. he captured it and destroyed the first saudi state. worse than that, he sent its amir back to constantinople to be executed. that is an interesting relationship.

the ottomans were in control of the western part of saudi arabia. until 1916 when the sheriff went into revolt with the help of florence -- lawrence. he tried to set up a kingdom there. and then the saudis captured it in 1924. the point is this relationship between saudi arabia and turkey carries a lot of historical baggage and helped keep them apart for many decades. all of this began changing after 9/11. this was because of three developments happening during the past decade. first was the fallout from 9/11 which i will discuss. the second was the ak party coming to power and the third

was iran accelerating its nuclear program. what happened after 9/11, and there were endless debates here and in saudi arabia about whether we saw each other as friends or flow because 15 of the hijackers were from saudi arabia. osama bin laden was behind it. there was a lot of tension in the relationship and the saudis decided they had to look for allies other than united states. and indeed they did. when he became king in 2005, when of his first trips was to beijing indicate where they were -- just to indicate where they were thinking there were going to get major help. in august 2006, he went to istanbul and this began a series of exchanges between the

senior leaders of the countries. he has been prime minister but spent eight years working for the islamic development bank. he knew in saudi arabia and they knew him. there was a flurry of diplomatic contact and relationship between them. i think initially the motives or different. the turks were looking for new business in turkish policy. they were looking for new markets. the saudis from the beginning were looking for a sunni counterweight to iran. unfortunately turkey's zero policy kept turkey from coming

out on this side of the kingdom. furthermore, turkey was buying gas from iran. they had a lot of economic relations. the turks did not -- they seemed anxious not to alienate iran. strangely enough, things did not begin to change until the arab spring at the beginning of this year. one by one, the turks and the saudis found themselves more or less on the same side in libya. it took turkey while to come to the side of the rebels there. the saudis were with them from the beginning. syria, where they are both on the same side working with the

opposition to overthrow the regime. not for the same reasons. in the case of turkey, it was more a personal the trail -- betrayal. the saudi position is to eliminate irani and influence in syria and to get even for what happened in iraq where the american invasion created a shiite dominated government which is a major loss in the saudi constellation and thinking about the arab world. so, here they are on the same side, fighting to overthrow h

the assad government. in september, turkey decides it is going to host that nato anti-missile system aimed mostly against iran. this puts a turkey on the saudi-side of the saudi-iranian conflict. i think that is a major turning point in the relationship because that is where turkey commit itself to being on the side of the saudis. you might ask, how solid is this proper of small -- rapprochment? it mostly has political rather than security meaning for the

kingdom, for the saudi kingdom. it is true the turkish decision to host the early-morning system is important to the saudis but turkey, in my mind, cannot replace the united states as the ultimate guarantor of the kingdom's security. i think turks are unlikely to ever sent troops into the kingdom because of their past history if it comes to a military showdown between iran and saudi arabia. there are much more likely to look for pakistani said and americans -- pakistanis and americans. officially, you have the saudis welcoming their new engagement in the arab world and saying they see no competition for leadership.

unofficially, the saudis remain wary of the turkish bid for influence in the arab world. because of the historical baggage between them and because the turkish model of multi-party democracy, even if it is islamic-oriented, is an antenna -- anathema. they are not interested in any form of democracy. you get to these imbibes when you see -- these vibes when you see, they spoke for 20 minutes about the wonders of the new turkish government and what they're doing overseas. at the end of the speech, he got hardly packs the -- reaction at all.

i was struck by a lack of excitement in the saudi audience for aragon. -- erdagon. then there are other strange things going on. the saudis ambassador, the last one left early this year. they have not replaced the ambassador there. they have named them but they have not gone back for reasons that remain obscure to me except it may have to do with a changing of the guard in the saudi leadership at the highest levels. there is some tension between the two. i expect you will see a lot of publicity about this new relationship on both sides because it suits their interests. no doubt that the turkish turn against him is big news for the saudis because the king has all kinds of reasons he wants to

get rid of assad. i think what you will see is they will line up depending on the issue. iran will help keep them together. to me, it is not impossible they will work in iraq to help the sunni faction of the iraqi equation to have some say in the government there. i would say what we're seeing is all about politics and not an affinity for democracy behind the alliance. it is important, particularly

to the saudis. one of the major new developments in saudi arabia's search for allies around the world. >> thank you, david ottaway. >> thank you for inviting me. as i was preparing for this presentation, it made me think, we talked -- keep talking about friends and enemies. maybe we need a new word to explain things. the only word was acquaintances they came to my mind. that was not very satisfying either. this captures the essence of the relationship. we are not talking about of friends and enemies but states that are making do with what they have in front of them. when you look back people

talking about this turkish access, now we're talking about this major rift. the fact of the matter is that events happened. some of them are momentous. no question that these are very uncertain times. but things will change and countries will adapt. what exists is an enduring competition for resources and influence just to able to say, i am the number one in the region. there's no question that with the arab spring and the iraq war, three countries have been taken out of the current equation. iraq, syria, egypt. they do not have any influence at the moment. that leaves some arabia and turkey -- saudi arabia and

turkey. and iran. the saudis are the only arab country. in many ways the saudis see themselves in a do and i -- die confrontation with the iranians. partially it is sectarian. they see the emergence of the new iraqi state as a major loss for their own strategic position. they resent the fact that here is an arab country run by shia. and has occurred for president. -- a kurd for a president. by contrast, as we heard from david, it may -- they may take relief that iran's main ally is in deep trouble.

syria may collapse. with that, that would be a serious blow not just to iran's on influence, but with hezbollah, which has been a ron's great arm for both deterrence and punishment for anyone it did not like. but in syria and iraq, you see the saudis at loggerheads. look at the turks, potentially for balance. it is principally a sunni country, it has religious roots in feeling and orientation. but it is also not exactly an islamic country. there is great secularism. they went through north africa basically saying that individuals cannot be secularist but governments and systems have to be secular. so it is a government that is

actually a member of the west, has alliances with the west, but is increasingly being an important role in foreign policy, both in the region and beyond. and when you look at turkish foreign policy, it has two drivers. number one, turkey wants to be an important global player. it is not just regional. the region in some ways is the steppingstone for greatness. the turks are now part of many international institutions, part of the g-20, they are in the security council, trying to get back into the security council, trying to play an international role but clearly what happens with the arab spring has opened up many opportunities. the other driver, which did alluded to, is commercial. here the turks, when you look at the turkish economy and i do not

have the chart with me but look at turkish exports since 2000, and nothing to do with that transformation that took place in the turkish economy. it goes up almost exponentially in terms of the rate is increasing. and commerce, exports are critical to turkey. n when you look at turkey's zero problems with the neighbors policy, it was opening up markets to sell to the neighbors. neighbors which had been in previous governments ignored. to some extent, this need for zero problems, this need have exports for your wares has driven turkey to be really very status quo oriented.

it did not want change for chaos. chaos came, but it never saw it. it did not see it because it did not want to upset commercial relations. when you looked turkey's relationship with syria and all those countries, it was one of, zero problems with regimes. that is understandable because the regimes are in control of all the access to trade. at the same time, the turks have proven to be quite pragmatic and adaptable. when things change, when relations with israel changed for instance, they took advantage of this. they turned that deteriorated relationship with israel to its advantage.

it could camouflage some of the changes they made with their policy to iran and syria, and they garnered sympathy and support on the arab street. you have heard -- i do not know if we should believe them but no question that these opinion polls, especially recently, show that the turkey are very popular on their street. -- on the arab street. when they realize that gaddafi was a problem, decided. the same thing is happening with president assad. he was the poster child of the expression for turkey's zero problems with the neighbors policy. it went from 1988, to a situation where the two countries were talking about two

peoples, one government. so much integration between the two. and if there was a change. and the changes pragmatism. and yes, fundamentally it is a determination that the turkish a made thessad is not going to survive. -- the turkish made that assad is not going to survive. he will not be a good trading partner for turkey or any part. -- any kind of partner for the center that he goes, this is exactly the same thing they did with gaddafi, which -- with whom they had very deep economic and commercial relations. you see this change also in

iraq, where for many years the turkish government could not even utter the word kurdish regional government. today, they are one of their most important trading partners. everything and curtis don is a turkish. in syria and iraq, now you see a clear way -- less competition for lack of a better word. that is to say, the iranians and the turks have carved up the racked up a little bit into zones of influence. in the north, turkey is far more dominant, and the kurds wanted that way. they see a relationship with sri lanka to the west as most important, and the sow, shia,

much more dependent on iran. and the center, the iranians are probably more powerful there, but nonetheless, we should not exaggerate anybody else's influence in the wake of the american departure from iraq. i think the iraqis are ultimately going to draw up their own charter vote -- will chart its own course. and iran and iraq does have the memory of border issues still, and the warm has a memory. but there is competition. clearly the saudis, as david also mentioned, the saudis are also involved. they are trying to support the sunni opposition, and also supported the competition.

that competition will exist. before i stopped, which is the most important case, let me set few more things about the turkish-iranian relationship. the relationship has gone through ups and downs, but fundamentally it is a relationship that is solid but unexciting. the two countries do have strong commercial ties. the turks are completely energy dependent on imports of energy whether from russia, a primary gas supplier, iran is the no. 2 supplier, but it is not just cass but they also import all their oil. as the turkish economy grows, that energy need continues to increase. therefore commit turkey is not in a position to stand up to the

iranians on energy. their party build the pipelines. you cannot just the destination from one day to the other. so both countries know that they have to coexist with each other. there have been times when the turkeys have been there -- the turkish have been very nice to the iranians. they never could decide the 2009 collection, there were the first to congratulate on the victory, they're doing the pressure on the and added nations when they were on the security council. they came up with agreements with the brazilians they're really upset the united states

and created a huge crisis with united states here. but on the other hand, uc for instance that the iranians are now supposedly unhappy about what the turks are doing in the arab spring, and in other areas. we had also mentioned of the defense, the radar that the turks put in, and we heard iranian official saying if there is an attack on iran, one of the first targets would be the area where the radar will be. but there is no radar at the moment. god knows when the radar is going to come in. the will be bombing an empty place. but if you are an iranian, did you think that the turks had a choice when it came to that regard? had they not put in the record, it would at creating such a crisis with united states and whispered the only country in

nato going against the native consensus. certainly, krenz the united states, and with this they have a relationship, some of the tensions that existed in the city, it would a played right into the hands -- so the iranians understand that. they will make some noise about it but i do not think there was ever a serious issue. but syria, ok, syria is the most important test of turkish- iranian relationships. i'm sure he is going to talk about this. syria is still critical for our iran. the loss of syria would be very devastating because it also stops access to hezbollah. it is not so much that the turks are taking a position against assad. they are now actively engaged in undermining him. in istanbul, the turks have

been helping the opposition come together, they have engaged in some -- some sanctions. but they have in many ways, it is like the turkish position on bashar, it is like a good housekeeping seal, because they were so close. these two leaders are really part of like one family. and to turn around 180 greece and to go after bashar, it carries much more weight. the question is, if there is a civil war in syria, what will the turks do? will they intervene militarily? will that be a conflict? because of its long borders, but also think about the proximity of the posts, turkey is the only

country that can play a very active role in the decision to intervene militarily or a civil war. that is when, i think, the rubber will hit the road and we see whether the iranians react against turkey and if that relationship becomes one of the committee. >> and now to the iranians. >> thank you so much. a great pleasure being here. thank you for the kind invitation. as always, you pick the timeless issues to discuss. the question of turkey, iran, and saudi arabia, critical roles in shaping the future of regional security architecture. i will focus primarily on looking at this from that geopolitical perspective. take a look at the region. you see that iran has been a long time opponent of the status quo and the american-led security. long harboring aspirations for regional pre-eminence, it is an

order that tends to punish any opposition to american leadership forces, or israeli interests. one of the most powerful statements, iran as part of any security arrangements. it is not part of any security party. most of the security bodies in the region tend to be created in order to balance and contain iran. seurat and has no voice, it has conceded the table, and if you are not at the table, then you are on the menu. that is a way the iranians view it. as such, the iranians have welcomed american decline in the region and taken advantage of washington's many mistakes in the last couple of years. and the period prior to 2009, the iranians managed to expand their influence in the region both by filling the vacuum created by a declining american

power, but also by expanding its soft power base by challenging and increasing the unpopular americans in the region. on the other side of the spectrum, if you have saudi arabia, a key benefactor of the old american order. it has crumbled and as washington has recognized, the status quo is not sustainable, saudi arabia along with israel has emerged as the two states most adamant at pressing the united states to be resurrect the old order.

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there's definitely other issues on the european agenda. when i was in brussels, one of the comments that i received on this is that this is not part of the agenda, the crackdown and so on. so, whatever happens today will have its own dynamic. turkey's shift of foreign policy division is what's wrong with the arab world. it's more assertive role as a regional player. but it is not done in view of support of turkey's accession. it has its own dynamic. it is part of turkey's own foreign policy division of becoming a regional power.

so, to come back to your question how that will fit in the turkey relationship, it will depend on what will come up from this crisis, because the e.u. that we'll see two years down the road will not be the view of our fathers. it's going to be a very different structure, different to you, a year with a core and with a period that will include u.k. and possibly a number of other countries. so how would he engage with that with you? . the fact that turkey has this very influential role will certainly help turkey in its future negotiations with the e.u. but we still don't know where they'll lead to, because we still don't know what e.u. will emerge from this crisis. so i think we need to wait for at least two years for this new

structure to emerge with the e.u. and for the e.u.'s new vision. well, the customs union is the way to overcome many problems in terms of integration and so on. it would be the big political idea that the e.u. and turkey could launch in the region, because when we now look at what the e.u. is trying to do, it is behind the curve in many ways. it's behind the curve financially. so this would be a very appealing way to come to the region with a big political way of enlarging the turkey union. i've been talking about this idea, and it's starting to get traction t. has the support of

a number of governments. the only people that are against it so far are the people that is in the commission, because they don't want their own mental roots to be criticized and to be transferred. so this is a discussion that i think will certainly gain some traction in the u.s. >> we'll take just a couple more and finish up. i see a lot of hands. sir, then this, and then in the back there. yeah, right there. >> first of all, i want to compliment you on this paper, which i think makes an important contribution to framing and stimulating the conversation on both sides of the atlantic. i'd like to follow up on two points. one is your comment about giving the model partnership

real substance, which i think you're right on, real substance in terms of the rising generations, if you will, of folks within the bureaucracy in both countries. i think that's really needed, and that's something that should be explored further. and would help with the capacity issue you're addressing. the second is another fenn knoll that's also generational in its implications, which is the networking, the engaging of civil societies in the region. i was in istanbul and there was a fascinating conference of the nava network, and the young citizens movements which sought to bring together elements from across the region, younger elements, the facebookers of the world, if you will.

and the exchange of ideas and brain storming and sparking off one another from their differing perspectives, their differing context, their differing experiences, and that bottoms up approach you were mentioning about how you make a transition to this new paradigm, whatever it might be in each of these dmpt countries. again, in a similar way, not trying to impose a model so much as sharing experiences and approaches. >> take two more. directly behind the woman there. >> i was very interested in your model, and i think it does have many positive --

>> it's not his, it's the turkish model. >> i think it does have many elements that would apeople to the region. however, i was wondering about the appeal of perhaps deficiencies in what's happening in turkey. you have a very dominant leadership, personalistic leadership of the prime minister. and lack of overall party reform, reform of the parliamentary, etc., that enables the dominance of the ruling party.

thank you. >> thank you. >> assuming that this model does get promoted as you describe it, what would you expect the reaction of iran to be? >> i'll start with iran. the relationship with iran has today become one of the very clearly problematic relationships. we see it on a daily basis. they are constantly criticizing turkey on its approach to syria.

the sanctity of the state approach, to even being the protector of the victimized people type approach. is going to have fundamental consequences for the relationship with iran. because unlike what turkey did in the past, which was to call ahmadinejad on the day that he was elected after the elections in 2008, where there was gross violations, and you're going to iran at the peak of the oppressions against the regime and not saying a word about them in iran, in tehran, in his official talks. today with the new turkish policy, criticizing syria on how it treated its own citizens, turkey cannot remain

aloof anymore to the behavior of the region in iran. so i think that relationship, as well as the relationship with damascus is in a very tense period. we already see signs of that in many ways. there's also deficiencies within the church model, but i didn't want to go into that because i think that -- i don't think that's unimportant, but i just wanted to look at what can be done constructively in the region. but certainly there are deficiencies in turkey's own democratic system, these deficiencies are possibly becoming more apparent now, and with the fundamental shortcoming of not really having checks and balances in the system. which allows the political party that's in power to

enlarge, day after day, its influence over the turkish state. that's want just the executive. that's all branches and even beyond. that's the threat that turkish democracy is facing. having said that, and i hear this argument very often, how can turkey be a model because it has its own deficiencies in its democratic order. now, that's true, but that's also why no way, what is out there? if you're going to compare to iran, which is also trying to play this, even with all the deficiencies, the turkish model is likely to remain much more attractive. in a way, it works in practice because of the demand side figures that i've tried to share with you.

the turkish model remains appealing. i think it works in practice. now, on civil society engagement, again, turkey is rather new to this game. there are a number of informal links that have been formed on the party level, but also interestingly on the humanitarian aid level. there are a number of islamic n.g.o.'s of turkish origin that have quite a significant footprint in the region. beyond that, at the level of think tanks, academics, it's still very, very slim.

we don't speak ar abig, and we don't have enough people that do in the economic circles, so that's certainly a handicap. it's a handicap in the type we do in turkey. but there's now an enormous interest for turkey to expand its human resources. i think that is certainly going to be the type of involvement we shall see more and more in the future. >> we're short of time, and sorry, sir, we're just about out of time. would you like to say anything else, if you could? >> i think it would be more accurate not to talk about the turkish model once again, but to talk about attributes of a turkish experience that can be applied to different groups and

countries. at the first one, first point i want to make. the second one is that i believe much of the interest in the turkish model again, especially in the west, is because of secularism in turkey. as i said before, it does not apply to this. i think the best one can hope for in the arab world is to talk about states in playing an important role, but within a democratic content. but to talk about secular regimes in the arab world is not possible. i think one of the best things that can happen to turkey that might positively affect groups in the arab world making the transition to democracy is something that has not happened

yet in turkey, which is what happens when they lose. it's an example that can come town to a lot of people in the arab world will believe that a peaceful rotation of power is possible within an islamic society. >> they should voluntarily lose elections? >> voluntarily give up? no. one final comment from tom. >> just to reiterate, the point that we have been here before. in the early 1990's, the turkey, post-soviet states emerged independent, there was an expectation that the turkish model could be applied here, that it didn't work.

and i think we wish the second experiment greater success, but it is worth reviewing why that didn't fail last time as you seek a very a very good model. >> you've added an important dimension to that. we look forward to your next paper. thank you for coming and sharing this one with us. thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> today on "washington journal," a discussion about the accomplishment says of the congress. after that, juan williams of fox news on the 2012 presidential campaign. and later, a look at the role of the u.s. military with phyllis bennis of the institute for policy studies.

that's live starting at 7:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span. sunday, congressman chris van holland on the debate to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance and how democrats plan to approach the spending legislation. that's at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> i'm one of the wealthiest 1%. >> would you be willing to donate to the department of treasury are you? >> individually? >> yes. >> no. >> no. >> philanthropically i'm very active. >> all you need to do is put in your credit card number and you can donate to the government. >> that is not going to help anybody. >> you don't want to donate to the government? >> i want our class to be -- you've heard me. you're being silly.

>> i am a video journalist. i would say that what we're doing is almost like citizen journalism, which is basically when an individual who doesn't have that much training in journalism has the tools of modern technology to capture a live event, but doesn't have a background in journalism. >> video journalist michelle fields shares her experience for reporting for the 24-hour news site, the daily caller, sunday night on c-span's "q&a." >> newt gipp griff held a town hall meeting in south carolina today. this is his final campaign stop prior to the christmas holiday. he's scheduled to resume campaigning on tuesday, december 27, in iowa, in preparation for the state's january 3 caucuses. the south carolina republican primary is scheduled to be held on saturday, january 21. this is a little over an hour.

[applause] [applause] hello. hello. hello. [applause] [applause] all right. okay that's very funny. let me -- let me have your attention for just a moment, please. my name is bill duke's. i am from columbia. i own the blue marlin. i hope that you enjoyed your lunch today. well, thank you. let me just move ahead because i know you did not come here to listen to me. okay. i want to introduce their release. -- mary louise. i will ask you this. if you have not contributed anything, canned goods, not

perishables to more money, please, please into your pockets before you leave. we have a very difficult situation got three of every four children to go to bed at night in south carolina without a nursing meal. that is enough for you to think about. i don't want to give you any more statistics. moving non. i'm here to introduced billy wilkens. the first federal judge in the nation appointed by newly elected president ronald reagan. most recently known for playing a very simple rule on boeing's decision to locate in south carolina. in addition to a prestigious military ceer he now holds the rank of retired brigadier-general. billy and his wife deborah and congressman john pierre are here as coach fares for nudes campaign in south carolina. at this time of like to

introduce bill lee wilkins. [applause] [applause] >> join me in expressing our appreciation for bill's generous hospitality. [applause] [applause] i want to welcome everyone here and tell you that i am delighted that you are willing to become part of the passion and action of our time. >> under his lead as speaker of the house, get this, the budget was balanced, the federal budget was balanced with the first time in over a generation. [applause] [applause] under his lead we experience welfare reform and taxes were cut significantly. newt has experience, knowledge, intellect, and the strong work ethic to get america growing in

the right direction again. in naming him man of the year, time magazine said this, and i quote, leaders make things possible. exceptional leaders make them inevitable. he belongs to that category of exceptional. [applause] [applause] well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome the next president of the united states. [applause] [applause] >> thank you all very much. first of a, thankou for coming out just two days before christmas. let me start by saying, merry

christmas to all of you. i hope you have a wonderful christmas. judge, thank you for helping. i really appreciate it. thank you for hosting over here. you have a great lunch. of very, very wonderful chance to have some self carolina cooking, and i appreciated very much as a georgian. i a really glad to be here, and i want to talk about a couple of key things, and then i'm going to take questions. i want to five please be seated. let me start to talk to what just happened in washington, and i don't know how we get this message across to both parties, but there is something profoundly wrong in this economy with the problems around the world press need to make it worse to have a president and the congress think that they have accomplished something by passing a 2-month extension of one item. [applause]

[applause] and as my dear friend and former congressman was saying, we were talking. we were able to work with the democratic president to get things done. we got welfare reform done. we got the first tax cut i16 years done, the largest capital gains tax done, four consecutive balanced budgets done. these were real achievements that have a real effect. unemployment went down. how much better christmas we would have if our unemployment were at 4%. so let me talk for a minute about creating jobs, and we will talk specifically about south carolina. one of the great opportunities in all of america for job creation if we have the right policies. the boston consulting group, with a steady in august that

said that by 2015 when you take total cost of eney, transportation, equipment, manpower, it will be less expensive to manufacture in south carolina than in the coastal region of china. now, they did not take into account the obama national labor relations effort. nonetheless, that effort for the moment has been pushed back. what does it mean to think that we would be competitive head to head in south carolina with the area around shanghai? it means that we have a chance of the world market to create manufacturing jobs right here selling worldwide. what does that mean? it means we have to modernize. [applause] [applause] and it also means that part of the process we have to modernize is little bit north of

georgetown. no people have known this for years. our red tape, and this requires of but not to reform of the army corps of engineers, which is why i worked with strong american now, the same modern management in government we apply in our manufacturing companies. e texas locker today to plan the modernization of the port of charleston than it is killing to take to modernize the panama canal. now, that is just plain incompetence. that is the government bureaucracy which has ground down to a level that is unbelievable. i remind people that when you have an aircraft carrier out here, we've fought the entire second world war from december the seventh, 1941, to victory over japan in august of 1945. it is three years in eight months. in 44 months we defeat nazi

germany, and imperial japan. recently took 23 years to add a fifth runway. now, that is all -- this is of humanly created incompetence. .. governor reagan campaigned on

it. his program for job creation was r things, one, cut taxes, two cut regulations, three, favor american energy, four, praise the people who create jobs. now what is the obama model? the exact opposite. raise taxes, increase regulations, be against the american energy and attack the people who create jobs. exactly backwards. what was the result of the reagan approach? we created millions of new jobs in august of 1983. we have created 1,300,000 new jobs. the unemployment rate dropped from 10.8% to about 5.6% during the reagan years. i became speaker. what was the gingrich jobs program? well, i believe in imitating. we have a good lunch hereand if i wanted to cut back on a particular dish i would come to

him and say can i have a recipe? i wouldn't go out and try to invent my own recipe. i don't know if they would give it to me but still, the ideas right. [laughter] i promise i won't open up a restaurant across the street but here is the point. when you get it good recipe you cook with it. obama's recipe is so messed up, you think you get a hard egged by putting it inthe freezer. [laughter] [applause] so what do we do? we cut taxes including the largest capital gains tax in history. precut regulation. we strengthen american energy and we work with the people who create jobs. and we know what works and in the four years i was speaker not only did we balance the budget and pay off $405 billion in debt, we balance it for four straight years, to while i was speaker and two in the media

following uris ased on on the policies we establish. in addition to all that, their 11 million new jobs created. so we know what works and we had to classic studies. let me talk about how it ought to work here. its accommodation of exactly what i just described, taxes, zero capital gains tax, hundreds of billions of dollars will pour into the country. 12.5% corporate tax rate, that is the average tax rate. we would overnight tier companies be more competitive. we would liberate about $700 billion in money locked up overseas and this is what i tell my liberal friend at 12.5% general electric would actually pay taxes. [applause] 35% by 12.5% day -- and pay their tax. this is very important. 100% expensing for all new equipment. what does that mean? it means if you're a farmer or a factory or a restaurant your