what we have done is to take this relationship and say, we know that since the 1980's it has increased in the u.s., but plug in that increase and make a projection using this line to project how intergenerational mobility will change in the future. if you want to see thiswe can g. each point shows every five years, so we end up using the 2010 the debt on inequality. this is a sobering prediction. [unintelligible] an excellent question. this is not in a steady state this, the way to read i

this is for today's children and when they have grown up. i will be happy to take questions afterwards. how do we interpret this? what the figure shows is the intergenerational elasticity is expected to rise from 0.47 2.56. in other words, the persistence and advantages and disadvantages in income is predicted to rise by about 1/44 the next generation as the result of the rise of any quality that the u.s. has seen in the last quarter century. it is hard to look at these figures and not be concerned that rising inequality is jeopardize in our tradition of equality of opportunity. the fortunes of one's parents

seem to matter increasingly in american society. children of wealthy parents already have much more access to opportunities to succeed than the children of poor families. this is likely to be increasingly the case in the future unless we take steps to ensure that all children have access to quality education, health care, a safe environment, and other opportunities that are essentials to having a fair shot at economic success. next i will describe and discuss some of the causes of the trends we have seen. as a labor economist, i feel compelled to talk about causality. in a mechanical sense, much of the rise in household income inequality in the u. s can be traced to a rise in the variability in hourly earnings.

other factors, such as the number of workers per family and family labor supply decisions also matter. but understanding why did this person in wages has changed is key to understanding the rise of inequality in america. there is considerable professional disagreement about the causes of increased dispersion and wage rates in the u.s. in the mid 1990's, i did a poll of a non random group of professional economists attending a conference at the new york federal reserve. i asked them to the extent to which various factors contribute to the rise in inequality. this survey, which was meant to give me a rough idea, took on a life of its own. it was reprinted in the economic report of the president in 1997,

and then reprinted in the new yorker magazine. this poll is clearly an oversimplification of a complicated dynamic that has changed the u.s. labor vdot -- market, but nonetheless gives a rough sense of the way economists think about these issues. the most important factor according to respondents was skill-biased technical change. a lot of activities people do at work have become automated as a result of computers and information technology. much of this automation has favored people with the analytical skills to get the most out of the technology. i would like to say we have gone from the flintstones to the jacksons. this is one reason why there will wage gap between those with a college education or higher and those with less college education have soared in the last three decades.

after reading so much of a rise in skilled differentials to shifts in demand across groups as a result of technological change can be a little bit misleading because there were also -- there has also been a slowdown in the growth of the supply of relatively highly educated workers in the u.s. in this period. while the economy has continued to demand highly skilled workers because of technological changes, over the last three decades we have not increased our supply of highly educated workers at the same rate we have been doing previously. now, if you return to this poll, this shows the futility of economists. the second most common factor cited was other and that

unknown. i think we have come to know the little more about these factors since this poll was conducted in the mid 1990's. in particular, it is clear that the proliferation of high salaries earned in the financial sector has contributed to the rise in income inequality. the proportionate -- proportion of people in the top 1% hoop or from the finance or real estate industry, nearly doubled from 1979 to 2005. in 2005, executives from the financial and real estate sector made 1/4 of all the income in the top one-tenth of 1%. another factor that was sighted in my poll made matter now more than it did, and that is increase globalization. the number of workers against whom the american labor force

competes has jumped. some have benefited as demand for the goods and services they provide as risen, but other workers have been left behind by globalization. the worst record of job creation in 50 case, and that was the case before the recession that started at the end of 2007. recent research by david otter and others suggests china's adoption of cutting edge technology in many industries has had an even more profound effect on labor demand in the u.s. in the 2000's than it did in the 1990's. there have been important institutional changes that have contributed to the rise in income inequality in the u.s. union membership declined from

20% of employees in 1983 to 12% today. this is important because others have shown that unions affect the wage structure primarily by lifting the wages of lower and middle-class workers into the middle class. in addition, the decline in the real value of the minimum wage in the 1980's contributed to the rise in inequality, as david lee and others have pointed out. lastly, i want to note that tax policy has played a role in rising inequality. although our tax code is still progress of, tax changes in the early 2000's benefited the very wealthy weigh much more than other taxpayers. this compounded the widening gap in pre-tax income. as a result of reduced progress

of the, the wealthy are now paying some of the war -- some of the lowest tax rates in the history of the u.s. average tax rates for the wealthiest one-tenth of 1% had been in decline for five decades. it should also be noted that our tax system is less progressive than that in other countries. this chart shows the coefficient for oecd countries. the blue bars indicate before income tax, and a red bars, after-tax income. the difference in height between the bars is a measure of how much the tax code reduces inequality. of all the oecd countries, only chile, korea, and succulent tax systems that reduce inequality

more than the u. s. i can highlight the u.s. using this technology. i can see why someone could support tax cuts for the top income earners if they had materially benefited the u.s. economy. but the macro evidence is clear that the economy did not perform any better after last decade's tax cuts and they did after taxes were increased on top earlier -- earners in the early 1990's. i already showed you evidence that income growth was stronger for lower- and middle-income families than it was in the last 40 years. the next chart shows the was more job growth in start-ups in the 1990's than later. across all businesses, job growth was much weaker in the

2000 cost than in the 1990's. there is little empirical support for the claim that reducing the progress of the -- progressivity has hurt job growth. next i will discuss three potential consequences of rising inequality for the economy. i have already presented evidence suggesting that as inequality rises, the prospects for intergenerational mobility fall. support for equality of opportunity should be a non- partisan issue. it is hard not to bemoan the fact that because of rising inequality the happenstance of having been born to poor parents makes it harder to climb the ladder of economic success. there is a cost to the economy

and society if children from low-income families do not have anything close to the opportunities to develop and use their talent as the more fortunate can from better off families, who can attend better schools, receive college prep tutoring, and draw on a network of family connections. one would think it inexcusable that public policy has exacerbated this trend, but that is exactly what has happened over the last decade. as i mentioned, income tax changes have made a distribution of after-tax income more unequal, not less. moreover, the drastic cuts in the state tax will reduce economic mobility in the u.s. going forward, as a tremendous resources accrued by the wealthy can now be transferred to their heirs at much lower tax cost.

robert reich and otehrs have suggested a second way where income growth to the vast middle class have harmed the u.s. economy, namely, by encouraging many families to borrow beyond their means to try to maintain their consumption and by reducing aggregate demand. in his book, "fault lines, the author goes so far to argued that this over leveraging, as a result of increased inequality, was a significant cause of the financial crisis in 2008. in the spirit of earlier eras, reich argues increased inequality has reduced aggregate demand because the well-off have

a lower marginal propensity to consume than everyone else. while one could reasonably expect all families to consume their permanent income or lifetime income over the course of their lifetimes, studies have found that the marginal propensity to consume is lower higher income levels in the short run. one might expect the reduction in the state tax to prolong the short run today, because the cost of saving to the next generation for the wealthy is considerably reduced since inheritances will be taxed at a much lower rate. all the potential drag on aggregate demand from the shifts in the income distribution are hard to document, the following fact that the calculation makes clear that it could be

substantial. as i mentioned earlier, the share of income going to the top 1% increase by 13.5 percentage points from 1979 to 2007. that is the equivalent of $1.10 trillion in 2007 income per year. these researchers on the savings behavior on the top of the income distribution is scarce, but according to research, the top 1% of households saved about half of the increases in their wealth, of the population at large had a general savings rate of about 10%. this implies that the other 1.1 trillion dollars had been burned by the bottom 99%, annual consumption would be about $440 billion hiker. that would be a 5% increase the

consumption. there are many capriotes to attach to this calculation, particularly since estimates of the marginal propensity to consume, are not well-known for the upper end of the income distribution. and this does not say that the rise in inequality cut aggregate demand by $440 billion a year, because households could have and many probably did borrow to make up for weak income growth. the scope for such borrowing has clearly come to an end. this calculation indicates the kinds -- the kind of late in pressure that could be placed on aggregate demand as a result of the changes we have seen in the income distribution. now that we are in a period of excess capacity, these calculations a clear that the

economy would be in much better shape and aggregate demand would be stronger if the size of the middle-class had not dwindled as a result of rising inequality over the past decades. president obama made this point very clearly in his kansas speech. when middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, it drags down the entire economy, from top to bottom. the third line of research on the consequences of the rise in inequality that i want to mention is there has been active work examining the connection between any quality and longer- term economic growth. in a seminal paper, authors argued that in a society where inequality is greater, political

decisions are likely to result in policies that lead to less growth. they provided evidence to support this conclusion. a new paper from the imf finds that more equality in the income distribution is associated with more stable economic growth. less equality associated with more and stable economic growth, more fluctuations. historically, a growing middle class has led to new markets, supported economic growth, and build stronger communities. the studies on inequality and growth may have found and in verse relationship between those variables for the reasons that reported to two decades ago, because the top tensed to say in said the spend their incomes.

or for reasons that have been emphasized about excess borrowing. while research on the macro economic consequences of inequality is controversial, there is much microeconomic evidence that in my view convincingly finds that spread disease can be bad for morale and productivity. the one recent experiment found that raising pay for workers who felt they were underpaid substantially increased their productivity, but raising pay for those who did not feel underpaid had no effect on productivity. in another experiment, he found that increasing the disparity in pay between pairs of workers decrease the productivity of both workers combined. these studies and others suggest

that a more fair distribution of wages would be good for business, because it would raise morale and productivity. this is in an addition to in the fact that an increase in the size of the middle-class would have on the demand for the products. my theme that rising inequality has been bad for the u.s. economy was nice anticipated by others. it was recently written, but we now know is a strong middle- class creeds stable market for businesses to invest. the decline of america pause middle-class and tails hardships for families and limits opportunities. it also appears that the demise of our middle class is a part of what ails our economy overall.

the next question to raise is what should be done to bring back more fairness to the u.s. economy, to ensure that hard work and responsibility are rewarded by a good shot of making it into the middle class, regardless of where someone starts out. while this could be a subject of another lecture, and i am not doubting it will be, let me highlight a few significant areas of public policy to conclude. i promised to return to the affordable care act. the affordable care act is already helping middle-class families. it has been well publicized that an estimated to provide additional million young people have obtained health insurance because the affordable care act allow them to stay on their parents' plan. these young adults

overwhelmingly come from but middle class families. how think churns coverage did not rise for students because they had -- health insurance coverage did not rise for students because they already had it. these are overwhelmingly responsible families who are working to maintain their position in the economy despite economic forces that have been working against them for decades. furthermore, when it is fully implemented, the affordable care act will help the middle class and those struggling to get into the middle class by lowering the growth of health care costs by preventing those with pre-existing conditions from being denied health insurance coverage, by creating the exchanges for small businesses and lower-income families to obtain health insurance at competitive rates, and by providing tax subsidies to small businesses and lower-

income workers to purchase insurance. second, it is critical to take the steps necessary to ensure that the current economic recovery continues to rebuild the middle class. economic slumps tend to hit those struggling to get into the middle class the hardest. although the economy has been expanding for 10 straight quarters, the right policy action would strengthen economic growth. president obama proposed the american jobs are back in september to strengthen the recovery and speed job growth. among many measures to support the economy, the american jobs act included an extension of the payroll tax cut for the rest of this year. this would put an extra $1,000 in the hands of a typical middle-class family, and he also proposed continuing extension of

unemployment insurance benefits. although congress has extended both of these measures until the end of next month, it is critical for the recovery that they are extended for the rest of the year. the american jobs act also called for expanded reemployment services and the paddling back to work find that states could use to help less skilled job seekers find jobs. creating these opportunities for less-skilled workers will get them back to work faster and help expand their opportunities in the future. third, i think it is clear that we cannot go back to the types of policies that exacerbated the rise in inequality and threatened economic mobility in the first place if we want an economy that builds the middle- class.

this means that we must adequately regulate excessive risk taking and corrupt practices in financial markets, and it also means that we cannot go back to tax policies that did not generates faster economic growth for jobs, but rather increase inequality. instead of going backwards, which should adhere to principles like the buffet rule, that states those making more than $1 million per year should not paid a lower share of their income than taxed middle class families. which should end unnecessary tax cuts for the wealthy and return the estate tax to what it was in 2009. we should ensure that all children have adequate nutrition, access to health care, and a secure environment, and a fair shot at a good education, regardless of their parents' background.

lastly, i want to emphasize that restoring more fairness to the economy would be good for all parts of american society. this is not a zero-sum game. the evidence suggests that a growing middle class is good for the economy, and that a more fair distribution of income would hasten economic growth. businesses would benefit from restoring more fairness to the economy by having more middle- class customers, or stable markets, and improved employee team morale and productivity. president obama said it this much better than i ever could. " this is not about class warfare. this is about the nation's welfare. it is about making choices that benefit not just the people who

have done best -- fantastically well over the last few decades, but benefits the middle-class and those fighting to get to the middle-class and the economy as a whole." thank you very much. [applause] >> hello, thank you so much. that was a fantastic speech did it is my honor to get to pick on you four questions. i am a senior economist at the center for american progress. i will take the privilege of asking the first question, which is, do you think that we can pull up our economy out of the ravages left but the great recession and moved into a fully-fledged recovery without focusing on rebuilding the middle class? >> i think the two are united.

as i emphasized in my remarks, continuing the covering -- the recovery is an important step for building a greater future. we know from much evidence in economics that downturns hit the lower middle class, people struggling to get into the middle class, a hardest. an essential step is to ensure that the recovery continues. the economy is slowly healing, but the problems that caused a recession were a long time in the making. people understand we will not fix them all over not, but we are making progress. it is important continue to make that progress. as you make that progress we need to put the foundation for an economy that is built to last, not subject to nearly extreme fluctuations as we have seen, that has more shared growth as the economy expands,

all segments and expand as well. that means investing more in education. it means making sure that children have access to higher education. in means investing in our infrastructure so we have a more productive economy in the future. it requires many of these steps, but in the near term, staying focused on making sure that the recovery continues i think is the central. >> i would like to open it up to questions from the press. yes. [unintelligible] >> thank you. my question is, do you believe the recent statistics on housing, auto sales, and labor on unemployment suggest that

there will be more economic growth in 2012? >> that is a bit of a trick question because the council of economic advisors make the forecasts. we produce forecasts twice a year. the last one was over the summer. we will release our next forecast together with budgets. i do not want to get ahead of the budget process. if you look at the statistics that are coming in, it is clear that we are painting a picture of an economy that is slowly recovering. it is extremely important that we keep that momentum going forward. steps that i would highlight most importantly are extending the payroll tax cuts through the end of the year. extending unemployment insurance. the congressional budget office concluded that out of all the measures it looked at, extending unemployment benefits

have the most bang for the buck in terms of supporting demand, raising economic growth, and creating jobs. >> yes? >> [unintelligible] i was puzzled. the trend of incumbents inequality was apparent, so why did tax policy not come up as a specific answer at all? >> we were in a different policy environment and 1997 than we are today. 1997 taxes had been increase in the early 1990's. there was not a discussion about lowering taxes on the very wealthy. that happened in the early 2000's. i would add if we do that poll again today, i would add tax

policy to the elements causing these cuts. >> [unintelligible] >> i have no idea. i can tell you from my own at perspective, tax policy, particularly tax cuts for the very wealthy, i alluded to the state tax reduction, have exacerbated the inequalities in income we have seen it expand in the u.s. >> yes? >> mike dorning, bloomberg. given that one in five home loans is under water and one in 13 is more than 90 days past due, how long until there is a

more aggressive attempt to address these differences in mortgage values and home values? that is typically help people build wealth in the united states in the top quintile. >> thank you. the housing market clearly poses challenges for the economy going forward. one of those long time making problems was the housing bubble. that burst in 2006 or so. and prices came down considerably. middle-class families who had most of the wealth tied in their houses suffered a tremendous loss of wealth as a result. that has been a head wind for the economy going forward. households are trying to pay down the debt. you mentioned a large number are under water.

we have been recovering in spite of those problems. but the recovery would be more robust if we did not have those problems. those problems are weighing on the recovery. because we over-builds so much initialin the 2000's, construction has been a very flat. in the typical recovery, construction is very strong. that is another drag on the recovery, again. the reasons the recovery is not faster is directly related to the kinds of problems that we have had for decades that came to a boil in the recession, over-boiled. i think it is extremely important that we take the steps that we have to keep the recovery going. that confidence comes back, so we can get into a more virtuous

cycle where we continue to move towards a more virtuous cycle where more people are going back to work, they are feeling more comfortable and more confident, spending more, and a stronger economy overall will help the housing market. but that is not enough. at the very beginning when i joined to the administration in 2009, a tremendous amount when into trying to assist the housing market in the sense of helping home owners -- homeowners refinance their mortgages, take prudent to steps so they can take advantage -- take prudent steps so they can take advantage of the low interest rates. that has helped the recovery go forward. >> last question? >> [unintelligible] international trade was a major

reason for income inequality. do you agree? if so, how should we think about the best way for the nation to stimulate trade? >> we're in a global world. there is no question. the world is more integrated today than it was back in the 1990's. we had very strong growth in the mid to late 1990's. your note. -- you know, we are a more mobilized economy today, and even though we are competing with lower-paid workers in other countries, we have seen is possible to survive in this environment. the right step will make this increase in globalization an advantage for the u.s. the president held an event yesterday that was fortunate enough to attend on insourcing.

companies go through their costs. the college enterprise costs or total costs. they think about -- they call it enterprise costs or total costs. that i think is a trend we will see continuing and we need to look at ways we can speed up that trend. another thing i would highlights is the advantage of the u.s. is more dance production, more dense technology, higher skilled type work. the education is the future for the american work force so we can continue to thrive in this type of environment. this is the speech i gave -- the chairman of the council, he gave a speech just before december

in north carolina about what kind of jobs we could expect in the united states. when you think about a certain thing, you would be paying for. when i started to think about the economy in that respect, one area where we have tremendous assets in the u.s. is innovation. we of the best universities in the world. i think what we need to do to make sure that as a country as a whole, as the economy is moving in this direction, we have the resources to match these moments and take advantage of the opportunities to produce better products, to take advantage of larger markets abroad, but we have to make sure that we take the steps so everyone in the country can benefit from it.

>> thank you, chairman krueger. please join me in thanking you for taking your time today. [applause] we are done. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> our live campaign 2012 coverage continues later today. mitt romney is forming a town hall meeting for veterans in hilton head, south carolina and a couple of hours. south carolina gov. nicky caylee and john mccain will be there, endorsing mayor ronnie.

also rick santorum and newt gingrich it will -- will take part in an event in denton, south carolina. is hosted by the spartanburg republicans. that will be live here today on c-span at 6:20. we will have a program on the constitutionality of the fcc indecency rules. 8:00is tonight's at eastern here on c-span. now to a discussion on right to work issues from this morning's washington journal. >> thank you for joining us.

our discussion is on a right to work laws of. this is a state of the state address. with that is our starting point, let me introduce our two guests, the director of the american worker project, a progressive think tank in washington, d.c. my second guest is the president of the national right to work committee. for people who do not understand the phrase right to work, what is the concept? >> the idea is to have the right to work without paying dues or fees to a union. >> how many states currently have a right to work lost? >> there are 20. caller: they weekend -- guest:

the weaken the rights of workers to have higher wages and benefits. and that is good not just for those workers, but for other workers to also see benefits. caller: -- host: make the case for it, place. caller: the union -- guest: the union contract holds back workers in favors a of workers to do not necessarily want to. the notion that union contracts are better for all workers is a fallacy. lots of workers would prefer nothing more than to be out from under that contract and make their own way. federal law allows the unions to pull the representation of these

people, but it should not be that these people are forced to pay for services they do not want. host: -- guest: no one is forced to join a union. if they join the union, and that union is able to negotiate with their employer a clause that requires everyone benefiting from that contract to pay just for the portion of the contract that benefits them, so when you are negotiating the contract, the worker must pay for those fees. they do not have to pay for the political activities of the union. other things like that. they simply have the cost of that contract. without that, the union would totally have an economic

incentive that does not work. think about providing a service. you provide a service for workers and they get it for free. that will not work. host: if i am a non union worker and union facility, you are arguing i get the wage benefits negotiated by the union and therefore ought to pay for it? guest: that is slightly more complicated. you do not relate directly benefit. but if you are a worker that directly benefits from that contract, you should pay, which is the current law, for the benefits of that contract. those and not part of that direct contract. otherwise, because the law is the union must represent all the workers. that is the lot. you are only required to represent -- guest: you are only

required to represent all the workers if you represent exclusive membership of the. your only required to represent them if you exert the power over them. guest: that is not true. the law does not allow power over minorities in the union. guest: it is the freedom of the union to negotiate a members only contract. unions do not like it. is not required to it -- it is not required to except that monopoly power. once they accept it, yes. if they leave the people free, they can go to the employers and say, we want to write a contract with you that negotiates for our members. that is what i am advocating for. i want people to be free of the union. guest: generally, when people

join a union, their wages and benefits go up. on average, this is controlling for education levels, demographics. wages are 15% more -- a higher for union members. what he is advocating for is the non-union members would enjoy those benefits and wages, because you're not seeing give them back, but not pay for any of the cost of doing business. guest: that is exactly the opposite of what i just said. asset write a contract for union members and let everyone else -- i said write a contract for union members and let everyone else the throne deal. maybe they do better. maybe they do worse. host: let me jump in because you're arguing the point of right to work and you have set

the table for our conversation with the audience. to view the numbers. you can also send a tweet or e- mail us. let me ask you about the relationship between the federal government and the state's. guest: the federal law sets the basic standards for employment throughout the country, but it allows states, if they so choose, to pass right to work was. but the general states of the federal law is when you are a member, when you benefit from a contract, you should pay for that contract. host: let me put the map on the screen of the 22 states that have a right to work laws. what can you tell me regionally about this. is there demographic or is there something else going on here? you see most of the

right to work states -- historical a the northeast and the industrial midwest at the largest share of the market the longest and are among the last places in the country to start moving towards right to work. in general, they have more of a mind for independence. we have seen the right to work laws. most of these right to work laws were passed decades ago. the low hanging fruit is always picked, if you will. host: is indiana the only state where it right to work laws are being hotly debated right now? guest: new hampshire was the most recent major battle. there, i think what is constructive, a number of republicans decided to vote against a right to work, to uphold the governor's viso.

guest: a number of republicans voted co override the veto. it did not come to a vote because the house did not override, but we feel confident we have the two-thirds. it had overwhelming support within the legislature. not quite enough to override a veto. host: we mentioned in the and that is the hot-button state in this debate. gov. daniel talked about the right to work laws in his state of the state address. let's listen to a little bit of that. [video clip] >> too often we do not get this chance because our right to work lot is not a national requirement. a poor state need every edge a can get. everyone knows -- i did not come

lightly or quickly to the standby state right now. if this proposal limited in any way the right to organize, i would not support it. we cannot dolon missing on the middle-class a jump our state needs -- we cannot go on missing on the middle class jump our state needs. for the young people just beginning be a cent up life's latter, i ask you -- just upinning to make the asscent less later -- lives latter, i asked you to remove this obstacle. [video clip] >> whose families are facing tough times, but some politicians are playing politics. this law does nothing to create jobs. we need our leaders to stop targeting workers and start

working to fix our economy. call your representatives. tell them we need to focus on helping hoosier families. paid for by a working person like year. host: arguments pro at -- pro and con for indiana's right to work state debate. let's discuss part of this, which is which scenario has the tendency to create more jobs? that seems to be the heart of the argument in this economy where people love been unable to find jobs for such a long time. how do right to work laws increase the prospects for job creation? guest: there are people who specialize in helping a company find a new place to locate or grow a business. large percentages, from 30% to 50%, rule the right to work states out immediately before they even start looking at other factors. for other clients is one of the

most significant factors. as governor daniels said, in indiana while the state has a lot going for it in terms of great workers and central location in the country, they often never of a chance to compete for jobs, because they are not a right to work estate. host: your response? guest: the statistics you are indicating are completely bogus. the idea of the site selection committee -- these are paid people. any study that has looked at the impact of right to work finds no impact on employment -- on unemployment. the most important thing to consider is oklahoma, the most recent state to pass right to work in 2001, after they passed this the manufacturing class -- presumably the employers looking most closely at right to work --

decreased 50,000. also, similarly, the unemployment rate has increased since then. am i seeing right to work cost less? no. it just does not been a factor. individual businesses have said that right to work is nowhere near the top factor they consider. its never cracked the top 10. it is just not a factor. guest: the oklahoma study cited was at two years before the law was passed, while it was tied up in court. while yes, it may have decreased in oklahoma, it has decreased everywhere and it has decreased less in oklahoma. in terms of the rest of your comments, when you talk to actual businesses, do they list right to work among their top priorities? no. because they are afraid of the

persecution like boeing had. but the people they hire to find a place to write to work tellus confidentially their clients -- large percentages of them -- strike the right to work states of the list immediately. guest: in an anonymous survey, businesses are afraid of persecution. it seems very unlikely that is the case. in oklahoma, unemployment rate has gone up, manufacturing rate has gone down. also the number of new businesses that have come to oklahoma -- this is from the oklahoma department of commerce -- have decreased since right to work was passed. he said, you know what? the economy will be great after we pass right to work. all of those same things have come to pass.

what has come to pass is that wages have bottomed out. host: larry, a democrat, you are on the year. caller: good morning -- the full title should be right to work for less. another example of how we are in this country are race to the bottom. it is a never-ending search for cheaper labor. it can be borne out more easily by the chart reflecting the income inequality that is going on here. it seems to me that certain people will not be happy until we are all making chinese wages. i think it has a lot to do with problems better going on in our country right now. -- that are going on in our country right now. i have worked hard. i have a penchant. -- pension.

those benefits paid off well for me, and i am proud of that. guest: companies do not move to write to worst days to get lower wages. the move to right to work states because they understand the union only has the financial incentive to organize a work force that needs and wants it. that means when a company moves to our right to work state, if they treat their people well, they probably are not going to end up with the union. the problem most employers have with unionization is the work pul. when the guy who turns the hammer cannot turn the ranch -- wrench. that is the kind of thing companies of trying to avoid when they move to a right to work state. people only get unions at they want them. i have heard time and time

again from business leaders across the country, you get the union you deserve. if you treat your people well, they treat you well. if you treat your people poorly, you end up with the union that is going to impose all these restrictive work rules. host: i will take a call and we will come to you next. this is from michigan, good morning to doug, an independent. caller: good morning. i just want to share i am a former member of unions. i was a teamster. i am part of the michigan free to work coalition. we are expecting legislation to be introduced in the michigan house and senate to pass freedom to work legislation, which is very similar to a right to work legislation. michigan, our state, has been devastated, and a big part of the work force unionization in the state. we of lost -- we have lost

10,000 jobs in the last 10 years. if you look at the same 10-year. the states that lost jobs were all right to work stays. they were all forced unionization stays. you cannot have freedom for right to work in the pro-union. i pray to god we can best freedom to work legislation in michigan. caller: i want to respond to both scholars because i think the first caller -- to both callers, because i think the first caller had a right. study after study shows workers get dramatically lower wages and benefits -- $1,500 on average -- that is a big, big difference.

and the strategy for rights to work is our race to the bottom, as the caller explained. the problem is not only is it bad for individual workers, but it is a totally failed economic strategy peeling -- strategy. it is a race to the bottom to china. that is a failed strategy. that is not going to work. the right strategy is investing in education, investing in the middle class. a strong middle class is what creates economic growth. when you are cutting wages, there is no demand in the economy that all the other businesses depend on. that is what drives people to locate their business. because there are consumers their. you do not have any real reason to exist. as part of the last caller, some states with right to work faster

or slower -- the evidence is there is no impact. the state with the highest unemployment rate is right to work. the state with the lowest unemployment is right to work. the averages do not tell you the story. there is no evidence when you compare apples to apples. think about this. if he wants to think about an average that does not tell the true story, states thatif you're to teach the warm weather. no impact. host: let me put a few comments by e-mail on the table. this is ralph, a democrat from syracuse.

host: and this view from seattle. host: our necks, comes by phone from oklahoma -- are next comment, david. caller: thank you. i live here in oklahoma.

i have watched the wages decrease dramatically since 2001, since frank keating, who my voted for and i'm ashamed to have done so -- they took our right to bargain away. i have watched our wages decrease by least 25%. my wages 1 from $22 an hour -- my wages went from $22 an hour down to $14 an hour. i went from paid insurance to not having paid insurance. my wages have dropped and my benefits have dropped dramatically since 2001. it did not happen slowly. it happened all at once. the command and chopped

everybody's wages -- they came in and chopped everybody's wages. they got the right to work past and it was over. guest: the right to work lot was not what caused your problem. the right to work law did not affect collective bargaining rights. you have the right to bargain with your employer. been had, it would've declared nonfunctional. when it became effective, people in your unit that did not want its representation could not be forced to pay for it. conditions deteriorated. your union is serving a badly.

guest: the average is basically what the studies show us. wages and benefits go down when you pass right to work laws. also, jobs do not come. what is behind this? if you create lots of jobs and wages stayed the same, who wouldn't be for this? what is behind this? either ideology, some opposition to unions, or a political opposition to unions. there is no economic evidence that they do anything good. the do things a bad for workers. they weakened unions.

so we know that they'd weakened unions. unions organize workers to get involved in politics. they tend to vote more for democrats. so republicans oppose them. guest: your assertion about the statistics is false. for every site you show they make a difference, i can show the other. the wages are higher in the non right to work states. there's plenty of evidence that right to work states do bring jobs. the right to work states are weather in the storm in much better shape. host: south carolina is it right to work state.

help us understand the correlation. guest: i would suggest there is not a correlation. it brought bowling into that state -- boeing. overall, how many jobs has it brought? south carolina has been right to work for decades. perhaps it was from loaded and there may be other factors in south carolina. guest: can i respond? right to work has no affect. that is by her from his answer -- that is what i heard from his answer. i'm sorry that we have to get

into this academic debate. those studies to not control any of the factors that you would need to control for if you were going to do an academic study and find out the effect of right to work is. the studies that do that have no impact. it is a debate between junk science and there's no real impact. >> that is done by epi, a union-funded think tank. host: another worker from illinois writes -- we're talking about the right

to work laws because of the big debate in indiana over this. lancaster, pennsylvania, van. caller: sorry, you're not favoring the worker. the workers should get a right to join the union and one is represented by the union, he should have a justifiable wage of the revenue dollar. if the executives can give themselves a high bonuses and high wages, the working man on the production line or union shop should have a person that can bargain for him. what you're advocating is for the person to go into work and

he can ask for a wage, but he does not have any kind of chance of getting wages, increasing wages. these things are just what a corporation would want to have so they can bring wages down dramatically and then we're not going to have people that are being well paid to be able to afford to make a living. guest: i agree that workers should have the right to join unions and to bargain collectively with their employer. part of the work force wants to be able to make your own deal. if they get excluded by the union contract, a lesson learned.

that's the fundamental principle of freedom that this country is based on. the national labor relations act is a cynically written a piece of legislation. it guarantees the right to refrain from doing so. you can be forced to pay for it. that is an exercise in cynicism. the right not to associate has ceased to exist. host: we have a clip from mitt romney on his view on workers rights and right to work. [video clip] >> i have been campaigning. i see companies building new manufacturing facilities all

over the south. i think we have to come to grips that businesses will go where they think the labor rules will be productive. they did not mind paying wage rates the same. work rules have to be structured so that the enterprise can thrive. that will be up to the states. host: whether the republican candidates are supportive of right to work? guest: they are all unanimous in terms of state right to work laws. host: will this issue to be fought in the presidential campaign? guest: i think obliquely. i don't think it will become a major debate. whether unions should exist or

whether they have a powerful and positive impact on the economy is going to be a basic debate in the presidential debate. what is not been part of the story is that unions are could not just for their workers but they are probably good for all workers in that state. they raise wages and benefits for all workers. to have some union members who negotiate for higher wages and benefits and there is a spillover effect for non union members. they have some political power. the business lobbyists spend more money and are more powerful. states that higher utilization rates are more likely to route health coverage. -- are more likely to have health coverage.

if you pass right to work laws, you limit or'occurs ability to advance policies that help the middle class. guest: it is not an argument to force people to subsidize and support an opinion that they do not believe in. workers the do not want to be part of a union should not be forced to pay union fees and dues. try and enforce that. unions are finding ways to get around that. people and not paying for that. guest: let's talk about the basic idea of freedom and what rights you should have. that the law is not being in force -- basic rights that workers have.

they have a democratic vote. there's a vote about whether the workers want to accept the contract. there is the right to pay for joining a union. there can be a vote to decertify the union. we have a trade-off in a democracy. you can say, i do not want to pay taxes. you pay basic fees as part of the deal. guest: unions are not the government. guest: you have to join the bar association if you want to be a lawyer. as a condition for employment, you pay for things. they don't give you access for all things without paying fees.

host: kelly in indiana. caller: thank you. this is a great piece you are doing here. the earlier caller said we would be making chinese wages without unions. china has the perfect economic model, according to an editorial in "the wall street journal." i know unions due to production and how they protect lousy workers. one of our citizens in indiana has written a book. you can go but his book. he will talk about the bully pulpit of the union.

we have a huge building containing the indiana state teachers association. i look at that the city's huge building in washington. the unit is padding their coffers -- the union. god bless the gentleman speaking for me. host: sam in new hampshire. oscar is independent. caller: if you don't want to work for a union, you don't have to join the company that has the union. that is your free right. the comment about picking up a

hammer -- operations in unions negotiate these things. under that stance, that is the corporation's fault for negotiating that. to think that you don't have a right, you have a right not to join a union and not to work for the company if they have a union. to take away that right would not be right. host: thank you. you have spent 15 years on this issue. tell me what drives you to spend this much time and i got involved. guest: i got involved out of college doing campaign work around virginia and i got to know some of the people during

those days. i was acquitted with the notion that people can be forced to pay union dues. it struck me as ridiculous that people can be forced to pay dues to a private organization just to have a job to feed their families. the more i learn about how much money the union's final into their political agenda, it became clear to me that that was where i needed to be spending my efforts and my life, fighting against this tyrannical powers to confiscate wages for people and spend it on things people don't believe in. politics in negotiating the contract hurts those people. host: david madland, how did you get to focus on this as your career path? guest: on the personal side, i saw the difference in the union made in my grandfather's life. relatively uneducated, but was able to retire with dignity,

because he had a pension, good wages, good benefits. also, as an academic, ph.d., i went to school and looked at the impact unions have on our broader economy and democracy. you will not have a strong middle-class without unions. the ability of providing the kind of country i want to live in is why i focus on these kinds of issues. host: would you agree that the unions contribute to a strong middle-class? guest: when they were first created, they had a really important role to play in checking some of the excesses of the business community, but in this day and age, i would suggest to you that most workers find that unions no longer serve their needs. host: hello to mary, a democrat.

caller: i am 66 now. i have lived in three states. my first was brooklyn, new york, and connecticut, and now i am here in south carolina. i were to jobs that had unions and and did not have unions. it is better to work for a job offers unions, for the simple reason that the bad experience with one job. -- a girl worked all day, never give the company any problems. they fired her one day, never gave her a reason. that is part of having been in, to protect the workers' rights, being fired because the supervisor didn't like you. that is why she got fired, the supervisor it didn't like her. the union -- why this particular worker is in

performing his or her job. another thing -- i moved here to south carolina, and the wages were so lousy that i wouldn't work. i started my own business. state to work for -- this state is the worst state to work for. you don't get no benefits. my aunt worked till she was 74 years old. she cannot live a decent life on social security. she had to work until the day she died. that is how lousy south carolina it is to employees. they want to make you work for slave salary. host: either of you, our response for mary? guest: again, this is not a discussion about whether or not unions should exist. i am glad unions exist. it is about whether people who

don't want to be in when it should be forced to pay the fees. guest: you have free riders who don't want to pay in. but -- in it but reap benefits. no businesses survive under those conditions. there was no doubts that right to work states to radically cut union's. the idea that unions have had their day -- maybe unions created a middle-class and then. today we have record height inequality, same as the 1920's and 1930's. same kinds of things are happening. unions have a fundamentally

important role to play. states with a hired union density have a strong or middle-class. host: richard, it independent. caller: good morning. i am an older fellow, but i have a personal story. when i was in my early 40's, i went to work for a gentleman because he at the paper wrapped -- wrapped -- he had a paper route, "houston post," no longer exists. this particular gentleman did not have a right arm. he told me the story about how people in this area told him he was a great athlete. i remember him kicking 30-yard field goals. this guy at scholarships everywhere. he went to -- cut off his arm with a saw.

i said, what did you get for that arm? two weeks' pay, they did not pay medical bills. that is all anybody got back then. unions abroad about good things for this country, and i would hate to see anything destroy that. the gentleman is supporting this right-to-work -- it is just a word. it is a race to the bottom. i hope we don't go back to those days. back: i hope we don't go to those days either. it is not about whether unions have done good. they have. it is about whether people who disagree with a particular union in their particular place ought to forced to subsidize them. host: sally, you are on the air.

caller: good morning to you, and the gentleman. my father owns two businesses in houston, texas. one had eight union, local 211. 211 wanted to manhandle and make him buy materials for union reps. he opened another company for stress relieving, and the unions have brought down the work of the country. they have said jobs overseas -- sent jobs overseas. i don't think the union has been beneficial to this country overall. host: response? caller: sure. union density in the private sector is 7%. very hard to believe. strong decline over the past few years. hard to believe that it

contributed to the problems today. host: al -- have to push the button -- you are on the air. caller: i look at it like we have this common theme and a narrative that exists in this country, that blue-collar workers are somehow anti- american to unite together and sell their labor justice entrepreneurs would do. some of the largest ceo posture in biggest companies in -- ceo's in the biggest companies in the nation don't hesitate to band together to assert their power in the chamber of commerce. the petroleum institute, that group danced together to assert their authority -- bands together to assert their authority. people victimized by this attitude of blue-collar workers

could look at it another way, thinking outside the box. a lot of corporations, there is going to be a union inside the corporation, may be legislation to have it limited to two unions, people within a workplace that would be more along the lines of the corporation they work for than the traditional union under the same rules. host: ok. have you recovered enough for your response? ok, we will go to greg mourad. guest: the workers can cut their own deal or form another union and negotiate with them, to and make a contract with them. all that is allowed.

the unions have a very strong interest in disinformation on this. they want to propel the story that they represent everybody because it helps the idea that that they need everybody to pay dues. if the majority union would refrain from exerting what they call exclusive representation, what we really call monopoly bargaining, and instead only represent their own members and let everybody else figure out their own solution. host: bruce, independent. good morning. caller: how are you, gentlemen? i'm really not sure it is a good idea to have a union, because it does protect the guy out there that doesn't work. i have seen this time and time again. this hurts the guys out there who are working. the yen has three different contracts, and the new guys coming at the door, and they have nothing, they ain't got nothing. we have the union, and around and taking union dues from these

people. they pay union dues. i don't see the yen and volunteering to give the money back -- the union falling to give the money back. host: what kind of work to do? caller: i deal with foods. there is a lot of misrepresentation by the unions dealing with people. i have a hard time understanding that, when they turned around and they have three different contracts and everybody is on three different rules. they have hard workers, and the people who go off. host -- goof off. host: he is essentially making greg mourad's argument. caller: it was hard to hear, but not everything unions do is good.

same thing with corporations and businesses. the idea is that there is a democratic right to join unions, and that without them, workers would have a very little power. you would have an economy and democracy are run by corporations and the wealthy, and unfortunately, that is the situation we are getting close to right now, and this would be far exacerbated if we passed right-to-work laws. we know the effect on the economy, know the effect on employment, that it is bad for workers' wages. why support this? we know it will weaken its unions, which will weaken their ability to advocate politics. host: what is the next thing you expect? guest: the bill should come to

the floor of the indiana house of representatives. it has cleared committees in both chambers. we are hoping and expecting that they will have the votes to defeat all the amendments. the unions are proposed in number of amendments that are just poison pills. host: what is the breakdown of the legislature? guest: in the house, it is 60- 40. i think and they cut a deal a couple of days ago -- the democrats have agreed to come back to work and let them get on with the business of the state, and the speaker agreed to put the bill off until tuesday. host: it was in protest of the right-to-work -- guest: they abandoned their posts and left to go high in the basement to avoid having a quorum. they eventually realize they cannot keep that up forever. i think wednesday's final

passage. host: did i also hear or read in the interim that the legislature as proposed, $1,000- a-day see if members are not on the floor? guest: exactly. republicans previously passed a law to up the fee significantly for members of the representatives out of the legislature. they use it to tonight --t o deny a quororum to advocate for that -- to deny a quorum for the minority to advocate for what they want. they want to be able to offer amendments. those seem like reasonable requests. guest: they will have a chance to offer amendments on the floor, and i absolutely disagree that this is being rushed through. last year they did hours and hours of committee hearings,

hours of testimony, five hours just last friday. this has been very well vetted in indiana. host: joanne, republican. caller: i wanted to make a comment that i was in a union over 10 years ago, and i did have wages -- i think it was a little too much for what we were doing. most of the time i was so embarrassed that i was in it, because like some people are saying, it is not the wages that is the problem, it is the work rules. we have one guy who would it work, because there was an incident -- wouldn't work, because there was an incident -- he had 15 minutes to change his clothes. very uncooperative, people who were deadbeats.

i would have loved to have not been in that union, but i didn't have a choice. that is my comment. host: everyone calling has had at either good or bad stories from experiences, so we will let joanne's comments stand. what happens in new hampshire with this? guest: i think for the time being is over. major issue in the next gubernatorial race. greg mourad, for being here and helping us understand what is happening in indiana and around the country on this issue. >> coming up, we will go live to south carolina where most candidates are stumping for

votes. mitt romney will speak. john mccain and the governor will be there. live coverage starts at 5:00 05 eastern. also, gingrich and rick santorum are part of a presidential forum in duncan, south carolina. and tonight at 8:00, we will shift gears and show you the argument on the fcc rules pertaining to foul language and nudity on television and radio. that is tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. >> in this place you will stand for all time, among monuments to those who fathered this nation and those who defended it, a

black preacher, no offical rank or title, who somehow gave voice to our deepest dreams and our most lasting ideals. >> saturday, president obama is joined by civil rights leaders and the king family for the dedication of the martin luther king jr. memorial on the national mall. also, saturday, civil war scholars look at the direction of the war as well as northern and southern strengths and weaknesses in 1861. sunday, after serving from 1960 until 1970 in the navy, now senator john kerry became an opponent of the vietnam war. his story on american history tv this weekend on c-span3. this weekend, but t.d. looks at the life and legacy of dr. martin luther king jr.

john lewis on a memoir of the movement. and then on sunday, dexter king on growing up king. also this weekend, in a new release, "the new york times" correspondent jodi kantor looks at the first couple. the nation's highest ranking military officer spoke at duke university last night about the new strategic defense review. >> let me say what a great pleasure is to be asked to introduce the lecture.

what a special honor it is for me to introduce the man who will give a lecture, the chairman of the two chiefs of staff, the 18th chairman to hold that position, general martin dempsey. what i thought was there is some way in which this speaker and bodies in a powerful way what universities are all about. universities do a million things, but at their core, it gives young people and education so they can go forward and assume responsibility in the world, shoulder the difficult challenges that will arise in their time. you would agree this is a person who has done that in spades. martin dempsey was born in new jersey. he graduated from west point in 1974. after his forced tour of duties, he went to duke where he got an

m.a. in literature. while here, they had their home at duke. welcome home. subsequently after his duke career, martin dempsey went forward to assume command in every echelon of the armed services. he has served in war, in peace, he has served at home and abroad. was really, his leadership during the second iraq war led barry mccaffrey to refer to him as the best combat division commander in the decade. he then became acting commander of all u.s. forces in the middle east. more recently, chief of staff of the army, and now has assumed that title of chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. he is the highest-ranking military officer in the u.s. armed forces and the principal military adviser to the president, the secretary of defense, and the national security council.

that is a job description, but if we stop for a minute we could think of other ways to describe his job. this is a person who has the well-being of the 1.4 million people who are on active duty in u.s. armed services under his party trick is a person who also has another 1.4 million who are in the army reserves. he is a person who is this nation's leader in facing of security threats, including all the familiar ones, none of which ever seen to go away, and many new and unfamiliar ones that seem to emerge year by year and sometimes nowadays it appears month by month. he has had a further challenge of having to face all kinds of new challenges and old challenges at a time when the underlying budgetary realities of everything in this country have become newly challenging. i speak about taking on responsibilities. you will agree these are jobs that need someone who is smart, strong, as real lidded --

leadership gifts, and i was a general martin dempsey, thank you for your service, and welcome back to one of your many homes. [applause] >> thanks very much. nobody has referred to me as a young man in a long time. i heard you say, bringing young people back here to do it university. in the spirit of that, i would like to declare you not the commander of chief -- in chief, but rather the supreme allied commander of durham. dave and kate, i am honored to be part of it and thank you for what you do to encourage thinking and

conversation. i would like to characterize this tonight not as a lecture, but as a conversation about the topic of strategy. frankly, i think strategy and particularly in this century and a very complex issues that face us, i think to suggest that someone would actually lecture about it, which is to say, try to impart any particular bit of wisdom on it, might be a bit of hubris. the eight steps and understanding strategy -- which i thought was a wonderful piece of work -- president, thank you for what you do here at the university. thank you for your collaboration overtime on the issue of civil-military relations. you have been helpful in helping me to understand my

responsibility as the steward of the profession. i understand the congressman is here, and some members of kay hagen's staff. she has been a great supporter of the military up there in washington, d.c. , i am not sure why your are here tonight, because there is a duke basketball game at some point in and near future here. my own recollection of my time at duke suggests before basketball games i would find my way not into a lecture hall, but rather down to shooters -- [laughter] if i did not have this lecture tonight, i would probably be back there, trying to find my favorite [unintelligible] [applause] this is actually my first public

speaking opportunity since the secretary of defense and i rolled out what was described by the secretary as strategic guidance, but as that guy is comes to us, it takes the shape of an emerging security or emergency -- emerging defense strategy. it is an opportunity for me to crystalized my thinking, and i promise i will leave time at the end of the session, may be the majority of the time, to see if we can interact a bit. i will reflect about my arrival here at duke in 1982. we drove over from fort carson, colorado, where i was stationed as a captain, and we arrived here. i remember at the time that the coach was hanging in effigy out in a quadruple their, and the chronicle was predicting his imminent demise.

if any of you were involved in that strategy, the strategy that thought he might get rid of the coach, nice going. what he has accomplished here, not just in basketball, has been remarkable, and it reminds me by the way that in this age of technology and information, the unblinking eye, i wonder and i have always wanted to ask coach k if he would have survived to become the coach and person he was capable of becoming, and it would give us pause if we think that is no. there is a linkage between that experience and what we're are to talk about here in terms of our strategy. he got to give a strategy time to succeed. i will speak more about that in the future. yet the thing i will tell you about my early days at duke is

i had, as part of the english program, i had to take a foreign language exam, so i had taken french in high school and signed up for french, believing that i could set that record off to the side, and then in subsequent semester's i failed the damn thing twice. this is like this restrike rule. -- this is like the third strike role. i got into is about the study of french, and i pass the exam. i thought about that aspect of development, which is to say i do not know that i feel anything up to that point in time. as we look at how we develop the young men and women who will and eventually have to deliver the strategy we're talking about, i think it is extraordinarily important that we give them the opportunity to see what failure looks like said they can come to the conclusion that it is not

something they like, and also come to the conclusion that with the right attitude and the right work they can actually overcome it. i do worry in the context of the strategy, it has got to be given time to work, strategy, and as we step off to execute it, we know there will be mistakes, missteps, and we got to underwrite that because ultimately we continue to grow and develop mostly through adversity. then there is plenty of opportunities for adversely right there. i studied william blake and considered myself to be the next renaissance man, at least for the army, and i studied blake a bit because i was intrigued by the way he emerged -- he merged the written word with the illuminated manuscripts, and decided that i had figured it all out and spend all whole semester working on what i thought was an incredibly hot-

provoking and probably doctoral thesis-were the paper. only to find out i got a c- at the effort, and i went to the professor and said, i can live with a c-, because i'm here on this caution. this rocks beat back a bit because i really worked hard on this, and i would never forget the professor sang to me, i am sure you did. where is the reward in all this? we did not reward you for the effort. we reward you for the outcome. that was one of those white ball moments for me. it is some combination of pork, but at the end of the day, and that is especially true, the more senior you become, you got to the liver. he got to produce, you got to achieve the outcome that is necessary and what ever line of work you have, or you do not

succeed, the matter how hard you work. the last thing is i chose, because -- the last thing released my experience, i chose william butler yeats as the poet that i would study and write about and think about. i did it because i am irish, he was irish, i thought we would have this mythical linkage and it would be easier, and if i got into trouble i could always quote my grandmother and maybe the professor would take pity on me. what i learned about yeats that i did not know going into it -- i learned is that he was probably one of those poets and that he allowed himself to change and to reflect about that change as he went through his

life. he did some bizarre stuff at the end of his life. that said, he was always the man who could understand his time and himself, and he understood in that regard the context in which he was living. that is the point. that is the point i want to pull into our discussion. strategy is the ability to predict what is going to happen, but is also about understanding the context in which is being formulated, and then if you have to be open-minded to the fact that you are not going to get it right at the very beginning. you have a certain set of context in which you are operating, and then apply yourself against that context, which changes the environment and introduces another set of complex challenges. it is a fascinating issue, this notion of strategy, but i want to lay the groundwork up front to suggest to you that i think

the development -- my development, and i am sure some of the young men and women out there who are similarly being developed now -- to become capable of thinking strategically starts in ways that are sometimes unexpected and actually quite surprising. so let me tell you a little bit about becoming the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. people say, what is it like? i see a pretty good. four-star general, nice house, nice airplane. angelina jolie came to my advice yesterday, one of some advice, and i was happy to give a star. she did come to my office, but she is a humanitarian, and she wanted to get up to speed on some of the issues in africa and notably in afghanistan and pakistan. we were glad to help her. deanie and i have been married

36 years, and when i got nominated to be the chairman, i was serving -- had servingtwo- week period between jobs. we went to high school together with some friends. in the northeast there are still people who come out and put the gasoline in your car, and they will not let you do it yourself. we pulled into a gas station, and this guy walks out, it turns out it was a guy that deanie had dated in high school. i did not say anything. i said hello. i was very polite. great guy, by the way. when we got back in the car, i was feeling like it's a little bit, thinking to myself, hel l, yes. [laughter] i said, i did not to be boastful, but you got to feel

pretty good about the fact that you chose me and not bobby, and she looked me dead in the eye, and said, listen, if i had married bobby, he would have been the joint chiefs chairman. [applause] i had to concede she was probably right. the fact that i am not pumping gas is all deanie. i promise you because there is a basketball game i will not let these remarks go into overtime, but i want to start with a grand strategy and some of the substance -- subsets of that, make assertions about the top, and get a chance to interact with you about it. the grand strategy -- and if you have not read the comments about grand strategy come i think they are extraordinarily poor important. -- important. the way i communicate on the issue of grand strategy with the

joint chiefs and my bosses is on simplistically as the integration of the instruments of national power to achieve particular outcomes. diplomatic information cannot military, and economic. it is very much the integration and into relationship of those notably four instruments of national power that do and must define a grand strategy. of the four, the one that i scratch my head most out -- most often about, is the i, the information. i do not think even in this most recent work there is work yet begun to understand the impact of information the way it is passed, the way it is absorbed, the weight is generated that has

an affect on our strategic desires and aspirations that would probably press that we have not come to grips with it but we have come to grips with the interrelationship of the diplomatic, military, and economic instruments, and if you wonder why this is being our grand strategy, being renegotiated in terms of outcomes, in the face of the nation's budget crisis, it is because truly we are only as strong as those three pillars can interrelate with each other to achieve a common outcome. if one of those is weakened, they are all we can. it makes no sense of us as a nation to have an extraordinarily capable military instrument of power if we are economically disadvantaged around the world. we've got to rebalance our s, and that is what i

would offer to you. the application of that grand strategy to achieve different outcomes of run the world depends on what has been told us in the 19th century which, simply is that strategy is to a try at, and -- triad, and it is the interactions of things. in our system, we have truly never been denied the means. it has been a great strength of a nation because of our economic well-being, at least to the period of my time in the service, that the means were never a limiting factor in any way, norway -- nor were they an independent variable in the equation of ends, ways and means trick that means we typically spend most of our time thinking about the ends, what it is

you're trying to achieve, and then we apply the mean spirit we were not forced to really confront the issue of is there another way to do this. i think the most important part of the emerging defense strategy and where we are trying to get between now and 2020 is we are confronting the fact that in a constrained fiscal environment -- and given that the ends are changing, but not dramatically. we still aspire to be a global power. the ends are not changing much. they are being shifted, and i will mention that in a moment. the means have changed. the question for me to the service chiefs, to the secretary of defense, is, how can we look at changing the way we deliver those objectives, given the means available? it is an enormous opportunity, and i am not being pollyannish

about this, but there is as much opportunity as liability. we as service chiefs and joint chiefs do not feel victimized by this. this is quite healthy for us and the sense that because we have not had to confront this issue of ways, i think we have missed opportunities in the past. look, if we have not learned anything over the last 10 years, where we have exhausted the enormous resources and put people at risk and suffered great losses to achieve the neediest and shut -- in the m ideast, shame on us. how have we found ways to accomplish our tasks that were different than they were 10 years ago, and how do we leverage that to deliver the grand strategy and this emerging defense strategy that i mentioned. in the context of that i want to

mention some continuities and discontinuities, meaning for us to accomplish this we have to recognize the continuities, that is, what is it would that will endure, and we have to recognize there are discontinuities, some of which we cannot see yet. first and foremost, our american values. sometimes i think we are a little bashful or reluctant or loath to remind ourselves of who we are and what we stand for. i'm telling you, i have lived in half of my career, in countries, have interacted with partners. you know that drill. they are not going to say that we have it all right and have a all wrong and would not do that either. privately, they do understand who we are, where we stand for, and they do understand that generally speaking, when we show

up we show up to try to make the situation better, not to make it worse. that is for them and for us. that is a dow use system that i think provides -- --think provie leverage as we decide how to change from a foundation of strength and not from a foundation of weakness. the second is u.s. geography. it is not the nineteenth century, we are not protected by two oceans or from cyber attacks, which is ubiquitous on around us. but i will say that the geography of the united states provides a certain continuity and a certain set of expectations that is a continuity on which we can rely. i will say the u.s. homeland is no longer sanctuary. we are vulnerable. part of the strategy is to understand the vulnerability and understand that we reduce it or lower the risk. the other thing is demographics,

that we are a diverse society. that we have the ability to allow other people of different races, creeds, colors, we are a diverse society. and when we allow too, had provided enormous strength to our nation. we are trying to capture that in our strategy. the fourth thing is resource competition. it is the fact that as the world's demographic and economic shift occurs, the world is shifting to the pacific. if you had been in new york city, you will drive by the un. welcome to the world, number 7 billion. it took six years to get from 6 billion anto 7 billion. what happens as this accelerates

and we introduced even the most simplistic terms, when you introduce that kind of population growth and to the world's economy, what is it going to mean? resource constraints, resource competition is a reality. it is a continuity and we have to be alert to that. the fifth thing is, sadly, violent extremist organizations. at a law passed judgment on any particular kind of ideology, but there are groups that are that worked, decentralized, syndicated, and they act against our national interests around the world. i would suggest for the time we are talking between now and 2020, that is a continuity that we have to confront. the final continuity for the military in particular is that we are a profession, simply

stated, i just left 400 young faces in the rotc cadets from the surrounding universities. if you're not sure where we are heading in you are not feeling good about the direction of the country or direction of the military, chat with some of those young kids and you will come out of that experience with a much different feeling. great young men and women that have agreed -- but what they have done is sworn allegiance already, as cadets, hot to a political party or monarch. they have sworn to a set of ideals and the a bottom at of the constitution. it is a great strength of -- and the embodiment of the

constitution. there is the arab spring. number two is the occupy movement. and that is a discontinuity. what doesn't mean -- what does it mean to our system of government? the north korean regime change. that is a continuity that will stabilize, but we described it sometimes does black swans, they manifest themselves at unexpected times. the fourth one is information technology. there is thought out there that information technology has flattened. others say that we are at the curve and it is about to increase again exponentially. i will tell you that if you

think about this word "cyber," ten years ago, yeah, yeah, have a nice time. breath through your nose, or they would call you a geek. cyber is a reality with security implications. the other will make me sound like i have potentially lost my mind and given up roots as a scholar, and that is non- biological intelligence. you probably saw the jeopardy show with watson. there is a book i would encourage to take part of the most human human, the annual test pitting computers against

humans with a blind panel trying to figure out which one is the computer and which one is the human. the human has always won, but the computer is getting close. as non-biological or artificial intelligence increases, what will that mean across all sectors of society? and economics, education, all kinds of things. we have been flat for a while and it is about to spike, others believe it is relatively flat. y in thata discontinuitie issue, that issue of non- biological intelligence. ok, so strategy. is it hindsight or foresight?

some say strategy is written after you see what happens, knit it together and take credit for strategy. i don't take is a dichotomy. -- think it is a dichotomy. there are aspects that are backward looking and aspects that are forward looking. do we spike the ball in the end zone, pat ourselves on the back, or is it opportunistic, something that has to be touched and changed? should it be entirely clear or should it introduce ambiguity? think of some nations with whom we deal and think of other strategies being entirely clear. again, it is one of these cases. andtegy's about context

choice. choices have consequences and consequences produce new contact. -- context. it is dynamic. you have to actually forced it to. or the strategy will not be what the nation needs. i became interested in context for this reason. i grew up in an army that was very centralized and hierarchical. i had the expectation that the best information i could possibly receive would come from the top down. the echelons above me would have the best capability to grab information, gather

intelligence, analyze it, and push it to me. this is all through the cold war, by the way. i was in the business of consuming the intelligence information, acting on it. the best information didn't come from the top down. rather, it came from the bottom up. what happened is that this very hierarchical organization, in some cases, junior leaders knew they had to do it. it had become decentralized, and syndicated, and now

the best information comes from the bottom of. -- bottom up. they were doing it on their own and when i was the chief of the army, i said that the environment has changed. we are no longer centralized. we are very much a global and networked. we are decentralized. what are the attributes necessary to take advantage of that? to get at this issue of cont ext. the fascinating thing i have learned, i will use myself as an example. when i go to a meeting to discuss policy, strategy, operations plans, he who has the best context generally prevails and the argument.

not necessarily who has got the best facts. it's who has the best context in which those facts exist. one of the challenges of this education, and one of the challenges for us four leaders to execute strategy, we have to develop leaders that can apply context and understand. you remember what einstein said, march 14, same birthday as me. ic onsider -- i consider it an omen. [laughter] if i had an hour to save the world, i would spend 55 minutes ha understanding the problem and five men at solving its -- five minutes solving it. i would say it is more true in the twenty first century.

this is a personal indictment. we spend too little time understanding problems before we try to solve them. i am even in conversation with men and women like tony wagner, fundamental change to the secretary school education program, to develop leaders that can develop context and understand problems before lurching to find the answer. the last thing i'll mention before i say a few words about the new strategy and what it means to the nation is this idea of cost as an independent variable. we, the military, are not being victimized by this budget issue. there are some out there speaking about it in those terms, but as i mentioned, we clearly have a role to play.

helping the nation address the economic crisis. i will not be the only one that goes to the altar and put something in the basket. i suggest that we understand for the nation to overcome the debt crisis and some of the other economic challenges, we have got to get a hold of cost as an independent variable in the development of organizations, training, maintenance, modernization programs. we are not being victimized by this. this is something the joint chiefs has embraced as what is best for america and we will figure it out. cost is now an independent variable of decisions of what we will and will not do. cost has always been a variable, but it is not an independent

variable. it is. it's ok, we will adapt and figure it out. we can't underestimate the impact of cost. besides learning the lessons of the last 10 years of war, perhaps it is this notion of cost as an independent variable. in terms of real strategy, it is not just a dusted off and polished off, marginally edited cousin of the former strategies, we've made real choices. we have taken ownership of a, and it is a strategy that is based -- it seeks a balance of principal and pragmatism. it looks out to 2020. we have decided what we want to do between now and 17.

the secretary of defense will submit a budget at the end of this month. and, we are't looking for 2020. why 2020? nobody wants the mid-future. if you do go to a cocktail party, see if you can get someone into a conversation about 2050. talk of the global warming, demographic shift, life on other planets, it is not hard to get somebody to talk about 2050. or get them to talk about what happens today or tomorrow or yesterday. not a porblem. -- problem. people are very up to speed, linked in and connected. but what do you think about 2020? crickets. why is 2020 so intimidating?

we had the opportunity to shape its and we are going to own it. as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, we will submit for budgets -- four budgets. 1417, 1418, 1519, i hope you can discover it will cover 1620. i will be the chairman that delivers either deliberately or inadvertently, delivers the choice for 2020. not what we are going to do on this one budget, but what is it the nation needs in 2020? it is a complication of changed relationships between the conventional and unconventional military components. the merging components.

the lessons of the last 10 years of war. it is a new relationship among the services, potentially. to link the two together about the way we approached security challenges, not just by dialing up and down resources. we have a reasonable chance of doing it. you will hear famously that we are more interested now in the strategic challenges that are emanating from the pacific. what it doesn't mean is that we will neglect strategic traditional partners in europe. we have to understand how a partner with them and build their capabilities in a different way than just dropping large amounts and a large numbers of u.s. troops on their soil. we can figure this out. we can shift to the view of the strategic challenges, but it has yet to be determined how we are going to react to that.

there is something powerful about that notion. the other thing about strategy as the doctor put in his article, oftentimes, and nobody pays attention to them unless they end in m-e-n-t. you have to have a bumper sticker or nobody gets interested. shifting strategic priorities to the pacific is probably profound enough for now. now it is up to us, those that deliver the strategy, to deliver what that means. as you know, we have said for decades, since the fall of the wall and the demise of the soviet union, we have to be able to fight two nearly simultaneous wars. we have taken that language out. now you're only going to fight one war?

i did not say that. the nation does not need a military that can only do one thing at a time. the nation needs a military that can do multiple things based on the needs and give the national command authority as many options as possible. they say you can't do that, but i say, i can. this is the english major coming out, we have free ourselves from the tyranny of language associated with a two-war construct. let me give you an example. we had this to-work of structure that said you must fight to simultaneously. -- two simultaneously. this goes back several years, one was iraq. the other was iran, north korea, but there were two scenarios

where we must be prepared to fight. by accounting rules of the fourth distribution, you provide combat power and enablers. you have to make a judgment about days of supply of ammunition. not much wiggle room. you have to be able to two wars, and the army ended up with 264,000 trucks. you might say, that is absurd, how did you end up with 264,000 trucks? three days of supply of ammunition spread out over too complex for three days -- two conflcts. it was a mathematical drill. there was a tyranny to the two- war constructs that was fine when the world was like that and

resources were not independent variable. it is no longer fine. by freeing ourselves of that year any of the vocabulary, what we have allowed ourselves to do is think differently about how we achieve the outcome both in term sos of scope and scale over time. we have distance to travel, but what i am suggesting is that by freeing ourselves of the tyranny of that particular language, you will find us to be a better force in the future. we have to keep it balanced, so we have to invest in had power, structure, military construction. we will do that. if i had to pick one placed on which the strategy will succeed or fail, it will be on the ability to develop leaders to execute. even in the face of resource constraints, we have to redouble

our efforts. no strategy will ever be executed as we intend, and it will be the leaders that adapt and make it work in whatever circumstance they find themselves. i went to a funeral yesterday for one of our very famous generals, a guy named don star who served at the end of world war two, vietnam, became a four- star. he was credited, for me, with taking the army of vietnam and turning it into the army that became the army we know today. we are at another one of those inflection points in history. listen to what he said about how he kind of engaged in what was important in life -- a

gagauged what was important in life. i've got this extraordinary. "i suggest your life takes on meeting only to the causes to which your cat attach yourself e meaning. to something that lives after its. in the end, you become what you are for some caused you have made your own. in many ways, it is a far higher ideal to live an ordinary life in an extraordinary way." as i sat at the service listening to those words, i think it captured what we should all be about, not just those of us that serve in the military. but anyone that considers themselves to be a citizen of this great nation. god bless you all, i look forward to taking your

questions. [applause] >> thank you, general. we have some time, and we have microphones down there. if you would make your way to the microphones. i will ask the first question. last week, when you were speaking about the president's strategy, you mentioned risk. managing risk. can you talk about what you think is the biggest risk in the strategy? what are the risks you would want to focus attention on? >> i'm held accountable annually. the chairman, just after the budget submission, i have to submit a document cleverly

called the chairman's risk assessment. it is against the strategy, will this budget deliver the strategy? i think about strategy in two important ways. one is almost mechanical. you take a look at the likelihood of something occurring against the consequences of that occurring. take the easiest example, the consequence of a global nuclear exchange is extraordinary, but the likelihood is quite low. that allows you to determine, as we did in the recent negotiations, to determine where you are willing to take risks. that is true at any point along the spectrum of conflict. what is the likelihood and what with the consequences be? the other way to look at it for this particular strategy, since we are getting smaller, we are taking a risk in time and

capacity. i will elaborate very briefly. time that means it might take us longer to go to a fight. it might take us longer to finish a fight. in terms of capacity, how often can you use the force, will we get into another protracted stability operation? the active component would not be capable of taking a protracted stability operation because once you get into a protracted conflict, you have to rotate people in and out. this has been done to mitigate the risk of time and capacity. >> general, thank you for your remarks. my name's steve kelly, a retired officer that teaches here at duke. you talked about continuity, specifically the competition of

resources. i would like to ask you about energy in general. the pentagon is very focused -- you consume 80% of the energy that the federal government consumes. i would like to know your thinking on that as a way forward to save money and work with a smaller budget. related to that is energy and the relationship with u.s. national security. your take on events in iran and nigeria, the impact on oil supply for the united states over the coming months or years. >> thank you for sharing your nightmares with me, i share them myself. you left off one or two ofnst points, but you got most them. energy is the right thing to do.

i am not a card-carrying member of greenpeace, but i recognize it is the right thing to do for become alert and aware and concerned about energy. the other is cost. we consume enormous amounts of fossil fuels. the reason i am passionate about energy and i have made it a focus area for myself, i would describe it as operational energy. i might be off by a few, but 250 either forward operating out afghanistan.s in all the things that sustain life, and every one of those generally requires us to drive it in or fly in or drop in. we have a remarkable system of parachute extraction.

it is physical, we have to get it there. and by doing that, we have people at risk. we would be more effective if we had a brigade combat team that was self-sufficient, net zero in terms of energy consumption. every service has a program, i can only speak for the army. we have the five installations in this country that has a goal of and by 2015 or 2017, achieving a net zero energy consumption goal. there are the operational aspects of that, and there are programatics as we put out a request of my particular vehicle, we introduce energy into the peak performance parameters. all of that is somewhat aspirational. it is part of the joint force 2020 vision that we will become

-- or we are trying to benchmark its. we are trying to become energy efficient. in terms of the security environment, there are those that believe that that is the issue over which the traditional and the emerging powers will find common interest. another reason to try to break this kind of paradox, it's also related to what i mentioned to you earlier about demographic trends as well. i don't know if you have a more specific questions, and not to be tried, i share your concern that energy could become the issue of the last half of this century. >> my name is julian specter, i was surprised to hear your

english background from duke, i was wondering if you can talk about how the humanities experience influenced and translated into your subsequent military career? >> [inaudible] >> yeah, i get asked that a lot. when i came to duke university in 1982, i might as well have been planted on the moon. here is why i say that. i had grown up in a series of catholic grammar schools, i went to catholic high school, west point, i never had to think about what to wear. i got to do it and i was at the panic. -- duke and i was in a panic. i am way overdressed, by the way, people are walking around

in shorts and i stuck out like a sore thumb. one of the funny things that happens to me, on the first day of class, i am an army guy. i'm doing intelligence work and on the list of incoming graduate students, there was a priest, an air force guy, and army guy, and several students that had just graduated into matriculated strayed into their graduate degree. -- straight into their graduate degree. i wonder who the priest is. i realize everyone in the class is doing the same damn thing. which was the priest? i got the most votes as the priest. [laughter] i swear to god. the priest got the most votes as the army officer. to your question, it was incredibly broadening.

every place i went to school, you could label it as somewhat conservative and maybe dramatically conservative. i came to duke and i was confronted, and a positive way, with few points that i had never -- viewpoints i had never been confronted with. i fell woefully inadequate. the priest was working on his doctorate in literature and he was quoting things from his master's program and i felt completely left behind. i clawed my way back. one, it gave me enormous confidence. second, it opened my mind to seek, not just accept, but seek other ways of thinking about

things. the third way, it helps you communicate. point, theyt to west held up the dictionary in the works of shakespeare. he said, this will tell you the definition of the words. the dictionary will tell you what they mean. i found that to be extraordinary. i have been an avid reader and i am always looking for ways to phrase things in a way that is persuasive. you heard me say that even in our government, he or she that has the best context prevails. and he or she that is the most persuasive will prevail. >> let's take two questions at a time. >> i served with you in third armored division along time

ago. i have a question as it relates to volunteer force. the willingness to serve will be based on how we take care of those that have served. what would be your recommendation to help transition soldiers back into the workforce as well as take care of their long-term care is after the war's subside? >> i am part of the occupy movement. i guess i was really curious to hear, you mention occupy wall street as a key discontinuity that you feel like there is a military need to respond to. i was wondering why you feel like it demands a military response and what the response might look like? >> i think she misunderstood. asked thatm glad you question, because if you have

doubt, i need to clear it up. i am not in any way advocating a military response to the occupy movement. that would have made news. there is this thing called the arab spring that has changed in the security environment internationally. the same kind of technology has produced this occupy movement changing the internal political dynamic of this country. not necessarily military, but it is almost linked to your question. how do we make sure that changes in the political climate calculation that we can preserve, the volunteer force to continue to make sure that we have the right kind of man and lemon, we are not going anywhere

near a military -- men and women. we are not going anywhere near a military response to the occupy movement. it is not just about things military. it is economics, political change. it is information proliferation, and i am trying to figure it out. the same kids that are out there on the street, think about it this way. there are kids connected 24 hours a day, kids that will sit in the middle of a football field with a laptop computer and they are by themselves but connected to the world. how they will come into the army and police say, you can't do that. you can't -- they will come into the army and we will say, you can't do that. these kids come in with a different set of expectations. i tell people that as the

chairman, i will manage three significant transitions. the first is a military that has been generally fighting as the principal -- it will go back to being a military that continues the fight and is applying less -- deploying less. the next transition is bigger to smaller budgets. the trend line is pretty clear. the third, because we are going to get smaller, we will transition tens of thousands into civilian life and it is our obligation to manage their transition. i will give you an example. we are working with the veterans administration and we are trying to think of transition not as an episodic event at the end of your service. the last six weeks, we fill your head with the transition stuff, we are trying to think of transition -- when you agree to

serve, we will start to do things that will prepare you to transition out, even if you never do. we have to look at it as a continuum and not episodic. we have partnered with business industries and academia. >> i am afraid we have run out of time, but you have started a conversation that i am happy to report we will continue all semester long. we will have another lecture at the end of the semester. you have proven to us in the business of strategy, where there is always the need for more. thank you for your service. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> in about 25 men mit,t romney's -- minutes, mitt

romney's campaign with veterans. it will be at the hilton head resort at 5:05 easter time n time tonight. and we will stay in south carolina for a republican presidential forum and a barbecue. just two candidates are participating in, and making bridge and a former pennsylvania senator rick santourm. -- santorum. >> the south carolina primary is saturday, january 21. the winner has gone on to become the presidential nominee. we take you to the candidate events. >> i think you have to say this has been a failed presidency. i don't think he tried to make it that, he just did not know what to do.

>> across this nation and in particular, and the states that are necessary for us to win this election. >> candidates get their message out and be to voters. dodge we don't need another war where we don't know why we are there. >> if we are going to use national security assets, the element of power, we need to make sure that it is in the national security interested we are not spread so thin that we can't do it right. >> take a picture. >> we want to put this on the news page. >> find more resources that c- span's campaign website with more video from the campaign trail and read the latest from candidates, political reporters, and people like to you at c- span.org/campaign2012. should the government

responsible for policing the broadcast airwaves for profanity and nudity? tonight, we will air this week's oral argument for the supreme court on federal communication rules. you can also find it on line at the c-span video library. >> we sort of thought what we knew what the commission's rules might be, although i may not be able to go beyond the bewilderment of the position you have taken. the commission changes and we have no idea what their perspective is. >> the decency regulations have a safe harbor for programming after 10:00 p.m. at before 6:00 a.m.. any broadcaster that is under some confusion in their own mind about whether a particular broadcast would be found indecent is simply to just put the programming in a safe harbour. >> search the archives, clip and

share. >> we will take you to the state department earlier today, secretary hillary clinton announced the u.s. would exchange ambassadors with burma since the country began freeing political prisoners and putting in place other reforms. burma signed a cease-fire with the largest armed rebel group. the announcement is about five minutes. >> good morning. burm is ata in -- when i visited burma in december, i encourage the authorities to continue along the path of reform. in particular, i urged them to unconditionally release all political prisoners, halt hostilities in ethnic areas and to seek a true political settlement.

this would broaden the space for political and civic activity. by doing so, it would lay the groundwork to fully implement legislation that would protect universal freedoms of assembly, speech, and association. i also urged that they sever a lesson military ties with north korea. we have seen progress on several fronts. i join president obama in welcoming the news that the government has released hundreds of political prisoners. several of whom have languished in prison for decades. this is a substantial and serious step forward in the government's stated commitment to political reform and i applaud it. the entire international community should as well. the leader has welcome to these dramatic steps as further indication of further progress

and commitment. many of the people released today have distinguished themselves as a steadfast, courageous leaders in the fight for democracy and human rights. at critical times in their country's recent history, and like all the people, they deserve to have a voice in the decision that affect their lives. i also warmly welcomed news of a cease fire agreement between the government and the paris national union. the knu has been involved in one of the longest running insurgencies. entering a ceasefire agreement that begins to address the longstanding grievances of the people is an important step forward. it is in that spirit that i urge the government to enter into meaningful dialogue with all ethnic groups to achieve

national reconciliation. to allow news media and humanitarian groups access to ethnic areas. in addition to the cease-fire and the release of political prisoners, the civilian leadership has taken other important steps since assuming power in april 2011. including easing restrictions on media and civil society, in gauging -- engaging in a substantive dialogue and l laws totingawimplementing participate in the political process. passing new legislation to protect the right of assembly and the rights of workers. beginning to provide humanitarian access for the united nations and ngo's to conflict areas and establishing the national human rights commission.

as i said in december, the united states will meet action with action. based on the steps taken so far, we will vow began -- we will now begin. at the direction of president obama, we will start the process of exchanging ambassadors with burma. we will identify a candidate to serve as u.s. ambassador to represent the united states government and our broader efforts to strengthen and deepen our ties with both the people and the government. this is a lengthy process that will depend on continuing progress and reform. an american ambassador will help strengthen our efforts to support the historic and promising steps that are now unfolding. i have also instructed my team at the state department to

identify further steps that the united states can take in conjunction with our friends and allies to support the reforms underway. i intend to call the presidents this weekend to underscore our commitment to walk together with them on the path of reform. of course, there is more work to be done and we will continue to work with the government on their reform and reconciliation efforts, including taking further steps to address the concerns of ethnic minority groups, making sure there is a free and fair election. and making all the releases of prison unconditional, and all remaining political detainees are also released. this is a momentous day for the perverse people of burma. we will continue -- the for the

diverse people of burma. we will continue to take steps to build the kind of free and prosperous nation that i heard from everyone i met with. -- met with that they desire to see. we look forward to being a partner and a friend as we see the progress continue. thank you. >> and from the state department to the white house where earlier, president obama elevated the small business administration to cabinet level today. he also urged congress to give him the authority to consolidate agencies to make them more cost-

effective by avoiding overlap. this is about 15 minutes. >> ladies and gentleman, the president of the united states. >> good morning, everybody. please have a seat. welcome to the white house. i see all sorts of small business people here and i am thrilled to have you here. as a small business owners, you know as well as anybody that if we are going to rebuild an economy that lasts, an economy that creates good, middle-class jobs, we will have to up hour our game. i met with business leaders that are doing their part by hauling jobs back to the united states. i told them that if you are willing to ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back, i will make sure that you have a government that helps you

succeed. that is why we are here today. i ran for office pledging to make our government leaner, smarter, more consumer friendly. from the moment i got here, i saw what many of you know to be true. the government we have is not the government that we need. we live in the twenty first century economy, but we have a government organized for the twentieth century. our economy has fundamentally changed, as has the world. but our agencies have not. the needs of our citizens have fundamentally changed, but the government has not. it has often grown more complicated and more confusing. there are five different entities dealing with housing. there are more than one dozen agencies dealing with food safety. my favorite example that i

mentioned in last year's state of the union address, the interior department in charge asalmon in -- of salmon in fresh water, but the commerce department is in charge of them in salt water. apparently, it had something to do with president nixon being unhappy with his interior secretary for criticizing him about the vietnam war. he decided not to put noah in what would have been a more sensible place. no business for nonprofit leaders would allow this kind of duplication or unnecessary complexity in their operations. you would not do that thinking about your businesses. why is it ok for government? it is not. it has to change.

what we have tried to do over the first three years is to do a whole range of changes administratively to make processes, procedures, agencies more consumer friendly. we need to do more and we need authority to do more. i am calling on congress to reinstate the authority that past presidents have had to streamlined and reform the executive branch. this is the same authority that every business owner has to make sure that his or her company keeps pace with the times. let me be clear, i will use this authority for more efficient, better service, and a leaner government. a little bit of history, congress first granted this authority in the midst of the great depression so they can

swiftly reorganize the executive branch to respond to the changing needs of the american people in the immediate challenges of the depression. over the next 52 years, presidents were able to streamline or consolidate the executive branch by submitting a proposal to congress that was guaranteed a simple up or down vote. in 1984, while ronald reagan was president, congress stopped granting that authority. when the process was left, the followed the usual congressional pace and procedures it b,ogge, it bogged down. lobbyists fought to keep things the way they were. it is always easier to add events attract -- than subtract, layers kept getting

added on and added on. homelandrtment of all la security was supposed to consolidate, but congress did not consolidate on their side. they're over 100 different congressional panels. that is a lot of reports to prepare. that is not adding value or making us safer. it has been a generation since a president has had the authority to proposed streamlining the government in a way that allows for real change to take place. imagine all the things that have happened since 1984. we didn't have the internet. just to take one example. a generation of america has come of age, it has given way to

globalization. so much has happened. the government we have today is largely the government we had back that and we deserve better. by the way, you won't meet harder working folks that some of the folks in these federal agencies. they devote countless hours to trying to make sure that they are serving the american people. they will tell you that their efforts are constantly undermined by an outdated bureaucratic base. if you talk to ordinary americans, including small business leaders, they will tell you that to deal with government on a regular basis is not always the highlight of their day. [laughter] over the past three years, we have tried to take steps to

fix the problem, bring the government into this century. and in doing so, root out waste. we made sure the government sends checks to the right people in the right amount. which should be obvious, but we have been able to prevent $20 billion of waste just by making sure that checks are spent properly -- sent properly. we cut government contractors for the first time in a decade and a whole range of overlapping programs. we tried to yank the federal government to the twenty first century when it comes to technology and making everything we do local and web-friendly. that helps in terms of accountability and transparency. the public can go to whitehouse.gov, see what is happening, and track where money

goes. we've done a lot, but we have got to do more and think bigger. today, i am outlining changes we can make if congress gives the green light to allow us to modernize. these changes will help small business owners like you. it will also help medium and large businesses. as a consequence, it will help create more jobs, sell more products overseas, grow the economy faster, improve our quality of life. right now, there are six departments and agencies focused primarily on business and trade in the federal government. six. the commerce department, small business administration, u.s. trade representative's office. six is not better than one. sometimes more is better, this is not one of those cases.

it produces redundancy and inefficiency. we could consolidate them all into one department to we with onebsite, -- one website and phone number to help businesses succeed. that is a big idea. [applause] we've put a lot of thought into this. over the past year, we spoke with folks across the government and across the country. most importantly, we have spoken with businesses to hear what works and what doesn't. what is frustrating, what will add value? we have found of satisfied customers. -- unsatisfied customers.

the person was helpful, but the process was confusing. most of the complaints were about a system that was too much of a maze. take a look at this slide. i do not usually use props in my speeches, but i thought this was useful. this is the system that small- business owners face. this is what they have to deal with it they want even the most basic answers to the most basic questions like whether they qualify for a loan. this is actually the simple version because there are some color codes. business owners do not get the blue and purple.

it is all just -- [laughter] there is a whole host of web sites. all sorts of customer service centers, but each are offering different assistance. it is a mess. this should be easy for small business owners. they want to concentrate on making products, creating services, selling to customers. we are supposed to make it easy for them, and we can. there are some tools we can put in place that every day are helping small business owners across the country, but we are wasting too much time getting that help out. if congress would reinstate the authority that previous presidents have had, we would be able to fix this. we would have one department where entrepreneurs could go, and they come up with an idea they need a patent, and that is the day they start building a product.

one website, easy-to-use, clear. one department where all our trade agencies will work together to insure businesses and agencies can export by veteran forcing our trade agreements. one department dedicated to helping our businesses sell their products to 95% of global customers live beyond our shores. with this authority, we could help businesses grow, save businesses time, save taxpayer dollars, and this is just one example of what we could do. the contrast between this and this. sums up what we could do on the business side, but these kinds up inefficiencies' exist across government. there is a real opportunity right now for us to fundamentally rethink reform and

remake our government so that it is worthy of the american people and so that it works. this should not be a partisan issue. congress needs to reinstate this authority that has in the past be given to democratic -- to democratic and republican presidents for decades. in the meantime, as long as folks are looking for work and small businesses are looking for customers, i will keep doing everything i can with my current authority to help. to take one example, as of today, i am elevating the small business administration to a cabinet-level agency. [applause] karen mills, who is here today and who has been doing an outstanding job leading the agency, is going to make sure the small business owners have their own seat at the table in our cabinet meets.

in the coming weeks, we will also unveil a new web site, and it will be a one-stop shop for small businesses and exporters, and it will consolidate information that right now is spread across all these various sites so that it is all in one place and it is easy to search. with or without congress, i will keep at it, but it would be a lot easier if congress help. [laughter] this is an area that should receive bipartisan support because making our government more responsive and strategic and leader should not be a partisan issue. we can do this better. we can provide taxpayers better value. so much of the argument out there all the time is these abstract arguments about, you know, who is conservative or who is liberal. most americans and certainly

most small-business owners -- you guys are just trying to figure out how we make things work. how do we impart common sense? that is what this is about. so i will keep fighting every day to rebuild the economy so that hard work pays off, responsibility is rewarded, and we have a government that is helping to create the foundation for the incredible energy and on to for new ship the all of you represent. i will keep fighting to make sure that middle-class families regain the security they have lost over the last decade. i have said before -- i believe this is a make or break moment for families who are trying to get in the middle class, folks trying to maintain their security, folks who are trying to start businesses. there is enormous potential out there, but the trend lines in our global economy are moving in our direction towards innovation and openness and transparency. but we have got to take

advantage of it. we need a strong ally and an effective, lean government. that is what this authority can do. thank you very much, everybody. thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

>> we will be heading live shortly to hilton head, south carolina. mitt romney is holding a campaign event with veterans there. we also expect to hear from arizona senator john mccain, who is the ranking member of the armed services committee, as well as the south carolina governor. it will be at the ballroom of the hilton oceanfront resort. earlier today, the former massachusetts governor got the support of a number of retired or non-active-duty veterans in south carolina, including the former president of the citadel.

we will be looking shortly at south carolina and mitt romney holding a campaign event there.

while we are here in south carolina waiting for the former massachusetts governor, mitt romney, to attend this veterans campaign event, news about another primary, the virginia primary, where most of the gop presidential candidates failed to get on the ballot. earlier today, a judge ruled against a lawsuit that candidate rick perry had brought. rick perry, new gingrich, rick

santorum, and jon huntsman were all trying to sue to get on the virginia primary ballot. that means the failure for them to get on the ballot means only two main candidates will be on the march 6 virginia primary. it will be ron paul and mitt romney, who we will be hearing from shortly here in south carolina.

>> we are at a mitt romney campaign event. you can see a number of veterans getting ready, setting up on stage. we will also see tonight arizona governor john mccain, -- arizona representative john mccain. also expected to speak tonight in hilton head, south carolina, is south carolina's governor. this is all from the ballroom of the hilton oceanfront resort there. earlier today, -- it is important that the -- have the veterans today because the former massachusetts governor

received the support of a number of retired or non-active duty veterans, including the support of the former president of the citadel. we will wait here with the veterans for mr. romney's our rival, who was expected about 10 minutes ago. he is scheduled to be arriving shortly. -- we will wait here with the veterans for mr. rodney's a rival -- for mr. romney's arrival.

>> you are here in hilton head, south carolina, still waiting for mitt romney to show up to this campaign event with veterans at the hilton oceanfront resort. in the meantime, we are going to look at a gallop poll, showing that there has been a pretty big increase in the number of people who say they are politically independent. we will show you as much as we can before coming back to the

mitt romney campaign when he arrives. host: the top line on this is the the number of americans identifying themselves as politically independent is the highest you have seen. guest: more americans are disengaged and not as involved and more likely to tell but they are independent or democrat. host: i have a chart, and we will look at charts during this, but the trend for independent voters from 1980 forward. in 1980, 33% of people

identified themselves as independent. what, do you think, is contributing to that? guest: if you look at the chart, you will see there are ups and downs. 1988 is an election year when bush won over dukakis. it goes up and down, but in general, we think americans are, and this is probably the key factor, very disengaged from, angry with, disappointed in the political process. i say i think that. actually, the data shows that. indicators we look at last year showed at or near a record low in terms of americans assessment of congress and the political process. images of the two parties are at or near all-time lows as well. we think part of the reason we may be seeing a high independent percentage is that americans are saying they are not democrat or republican, at least in initial the vacation when pollsters are asking the question, because they are kind of fed up with the

whole process, and that would include both political parties. host: for those of you who are independent and will be using the independent line, tell us a little bit when you call in about how long you have been an independent, which way you lean -- republican or democrat or conservative or liberal. and when you made the choice to, if you did, leave a party and become an independent. you will help us understand where we are trying to get with our number segment. but the numbers on the screen, and we will get the calls in just a couple of minutes. we have done a lot of things looking at annual averages. if we were to look overall at how independents tend to break, what do we find? >> that is an important question because it is very important to point out that when the 40% say they are independent, it does not mean they are totally apathetic. it means when a pollster calls them and ask them, their first

response is to say independent, so they are loose in their party affiliation, but -- and that gets to your question -- when we follow-up and ask if they lead to one party or the other, the majority will say they lean one way or the other. right now, when you look at the percentage who initially say they are democrat or republican, there is a slight democratic edge by about four points. however, the independents actually lean a little more republican. when you're through, you have a dead even situation. 44% of americans will say they are democrat or lean that way. 45% said they are republican or lean that way. these are but 10% of americans who are pure independent, which is as much as we love them, they say they are pure independent. looking at the leading data, we are a breakeven country. >> which is reflected in the

base in washington? if it is 45/45, we see over the past several years, the come to bear in congress and washington? guest: we have had gridlock or deadlock in washington or congress, which is part of the reason the public is upset. in the good old days, so to speak -- i should not say that because it implies a value judgment and i am not making that, but in the old days, americans tended to identify very much more as democrat. that was the traditional pattern. so it is a change now. by the way, this is a change from 2008 when obama was elected. we had more democratically and in the party. as obama goes into reelection, he does not have the advantage. host: when you change the question to ideology -- liberal, conservative -- i have a chart that looks at trends among independents and where they fall on the spectrum. guest: it comes as no great shock that independence tend to

be moderates. host: the numbers here, if i'm reading them, conservatives at 41%, moderate at 35%. little at 20%. trend among independent's for conservative, moderate, and liberal. am i reading that correctly? it suggests there are more conservative. guest: if you look towards the middle line, 35 is conservative theory the top line is moderate. you are correct if you look at all americans, everybody, they are more conservative, but independents, moderate pops out, as i mentioned. host: year ago, 41% say they are moderate. -- here we go. thanks for clarifying. next time, use red or something. let's start taking telephone calls. chairman, west virginia, you are up first, george.

we are talking about the effect of independents in the upcoming election year. caller: i have been a conservative democrat 81 years now. i am 81. over the past 15, 20, 30 years, the democratic party is becoming so corrupt. it is unbelievable how corrupt they are getting with the money. i mean, look at this president right now. his -- what you call -- reelection campaign almost $350,000, $400,000 in his bank already, and he has been going out campaigning when he should have been in washington, d.c., taking care of the house and the bills and everything and the problems of the american people. everybody that is in poverty right now and no work for them. 150,000 people not even looking for a job anymore. host: he describes himself as a

reagan democrat. i do not have numbers that go back to 1980's one ronald reagan built a coalition of conservative democrats would join him in his bid for the white house. guest: what has basically happened is it used to be you had a lot of moderate and conservative democrats who were mostly white and mostly in the south. remember lyndon johnson in texas? he was a democrat. a lot of the south, if you look at the data, prior to reagan and the years before that, was democratic territory. it tended to be more conservative but for historic reasons identified themselves as democrats. over the years, they have leaned more were public and, and that is the transition we have seen. you used to see a much higher democratic identification in america because republicans were more isolated, but now, republicans had taken over.

you look at the map on election day, the solid republican states are down there in the south. host: first caller on the independent line for this segment. robert, welcome to the program. how long have you been independent? caller: i have been independent since teddy bush was in office. i was a republican up until then, pretty much conservative. i am is so conservative, but not republican any more because of ronald reagan and his so-called conservative ways that was not conservative. he raised the debt ceiling 18 times, taxes 11 times, and killed the union working people. he was not for the working people. he was strictly for corporations. host: you left the party label. do you both the person? caller: i vote for the person.

host: have you tended to vote more republican or democrat? caller: i vote pretty much independent. host: you have to end of choosing in the end. caller: i do. i write names in. i wrote ron paul's name in last time. host: thanks very much. have you drill down enough to know if it and the voters vote more for an independent candidate? guest: we ask and have asked if they support the idea of a third-party candidate, and the significantly more likely than republicans or democrats to say yes, which is not really surprising. the caller brings up an interesting point, and that was, typically, in the presidential election year, it goes -- the percentage of independent voters goes back down again, and that is because people tend to

affiliate with parties as they get closer to election, and the exception is 1992, and that was the year we had an independent candidate, ross perot. was it because voters were independent and therefore receptive to grow, or did procreate the appetite for -- or did ross perot create the appetite for an independent candidate? this year, circumstances would be ripe for a third-party candidate. talk about michael bloomberg because he has the money, as did ross perot. also, the caller mentioned ron paul pyrrhic if he were to branch out and run as an independent, he might have some of the votes that might have traditionally gone to some of the other parties. -- to one of the other parties. host: an online primary might provide another venue for people to express their opinions.

my next several slides from you of about americans'view jobs. first was the three-day rolling average of president obama's job approval. it takes it from july to january. guest: it is extremely important, one of our best summary measures of all in terms of reelection probability. it is a great summary judgment for a lot of things. the mood of the countries express. after 9/11, george w. bush's job approval jumped up to 90%, symbolizing the rallying affect run the country. we are monitoring obama's job approval rating extremely carefully. it has been operating in that range. typically, to be reelected, based on our limited history since world war ii, an incumbent needs to have 40% or 50% or higher, so he is under the zone where he would typically be reelected. he is close. the one thing we really want to

monitor for obama's job approval rating is -- can he in the summer and into the fall get it up to 47%, 40%, and even 50%? if so, i would say his chances of reelection are good, but if it stays where it is or goes lower, he could be in the same vote that george h. w. bush was in in 1992 and jimmy carter. both were denied their second term. host: we are putting on screen when you drill down and look at president job approval ratings. democrats at 81%. and it endeds -- independents, 42 percent said. republicans 10%. >> obviously, democrats will high percentage say yes, they approve. republicans disapprove. if obama's job approval rating

bursts up through the 50% barrier, and to will come from those independents -- more of it will come from those independents. host: rochester, new york, matthew is a republican. caller: i am registered as a republican, but i am more of an independent, again, because of the disenfranchisement of my party to the middle-class and the population. the fact of the matter is we are no longer in democracy. we are in a hypocrisy. that is what we are. we work for the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, and the whole political system is built around hounding to get a job as a congressman or a senator, and who will give them the money? the rich. that is all i have to say. thank you. host: next, a call from chicago where michael is watching this, and michael is an independent.

caller: we need a third party in this country. we have been forced for too long to choose between republican and democrat. caller: i am from chicago and i usually vote democrat. unfortunately, i voted for the current president. and i regretted. host: why is that? caller: he did not do everything he promised he would do when he was running he sold us a bogus bag of goods. he has not put us back to work. he should have focused on the economy from the get go, the day he started. we have to stop selling off american jobs. we need a third party.

what that party be the libertarian party. we need to go back to what our government said they were going to do when they created the constitution. host: he voted for president obama, but he leans libertarian. interesting duality. when you ask people about the issues that are most important, is it all economics? guest: dad is clearly the dominant issue. -- this is clearly the dominant issue. americans mention jobs and employment. all the political candidate know that. second is the dead and the deficit. third -- the debt and the deficit. third was the inefficiency of government.

democrats tended to say it was bickering and the republican house. the third group of responses after unemployment and the deficit or people said it was washington that cannot fix the economy. they think their elected representatives are not doing their job well at all. host: on the campaign trail, the republican candidate scott about obamacare. the supreme court is set to hear oral arguments in the health- care law challenges. is health care still an important issue?

it is inefficiency in government. dysfunction and government. i keep coming back to that. a lot of americans are disgusted. host: let's take a look at these congressional approval numbers. there you go. 13% disapprove -- 13% approved. do those numbers change when you look at party affiliations? guest: they give a little higher -- democrats are a little bit more positive -- excuse me, republicans are a little bit more positive. in general, and everybody is low on congress. these are at record lows. in a lot of people opinions, it is not a positive state of

affairs when at of eight out of 10 americans say they disapprove of the way the men and women are doing their job. host: looking back from 1974 forward, it is the same question. what happened to me look over a generation or so? guest: approval is fairly low. it has never -- it is not as high as presidential approval. the average congress' approval is much lower than 50%. americans are never totally -- you see some spikes in the chart. after 9/11, we had a rally of fact when americans were very positive about the way everybody was doing their job. they were coming together. if the look at the craft, and it

continued to descend down after that point. host: what happened when it was at a bottoming point? 19% and 18%. guest: both of those years were a bad economic times. we have similarities between those years and now. that is a warning sign for obama because 1979 and 1980, carter was defeated. when the economy is pork, there is a class a displacement effect. a lot of americans -- when the economy is poor, there is a classic displacement of fact. we do tend to get mad at congress. host: this is the charts that frank was suggesting print a book that congressional job approval by party id. for those of you watching at home, the dark green level is

democrats. the light green and dependents, and the metal green, republicans. you can focus on that with your high definition televisions. caller: i am an independent. i was raised in a family of pro- life, pro union conservative democrats. it sounds like an oxymoron in today's society. i voted for the first time in 1972. i voted against nixon. i have a perfect record of 0 for 10 in presidential elections. obama this coming november. the gop has taken a turn for the worse. it seems strange how the gop was

angry at obama for what they called the bathetic job he has done. -- pathetic job he has done. i do not know what to do other than to say that i will vote for obama this november. host: the next charge, 81% dissatisfied. the question is asked in a different way. would you say you are satisfied or dissatisfied with the way the nation is being governed? guest: it is symptomatic of the same constructs. in social science, you have measures, but they aren't getting at the same constructs. the american the use of government. when we ask this question about how the nation is being governed, we find very low marks. some of that is a bad economy,

some of its results from things we saw last summer, like the debt ceiling debate. we have asked americans and number of times, would you what your elected representatives to stick to his or her principles or compromise, even if it means abandoning the principles. the majority of americans a compromise and abandoned principles. the public clearly wants compromise out of congress. we get these kinds of results. host: discharge its confidence in the legislative branch. the number is different, 69%. it is different than the 81% dissatisfied. what are we learning? guest: it is a different scale.

it has also dropped to a new low. we have 10 different measures like this. it is extremely low. i would point out on this, we asked the same question on all three branches of government. the legislative branch is the lowest of the three. i want to point this out. we also said, how much confidence do you have in the average men and women in the country to make decisions about policies? that is the highest we see. americans have a lot of confidence in themselves. they do not think the men and women they elect to represent them do a good job when they come to washington. >> we do not have it in front of us. how was the supreme court doing in public opinion? cast -- guest " it does better.

it is doing ok, not as high as it has been. host: i'm texas, and attendant, you are on. caller: i would just like to say that i will vote christian and go by what the bible says. i was raised a democrat, but i have mostly voted republican. i am against abortion and gays and lesbians. i do not think that is biblical. it is not biblical. i may agree on some democratic issues. but i believe that is wrong.

i cannot vote for them if the democrats is for them. on some of the christian stations i listened to, obama is spending billions of dollars to muslim and muslim countries, when our country is hurting so bad. i believe that is wrong. host: linda from texas. guest: religion is one of the big political divides that we see in american politics. you have to take off african- americans, who are very religious and very democratic. if you look at white americans, religion is an important dividing variable. the more religious you are, the more likely you are to vote republican. the caller from texas was exemplifying in what we find in the data.

people who are deeply religious will strongly goat in the republican -- in the voting booth for the republican candidate. host: the next call is going to be from st. louis. this is too much for people to digest at home. it is a demographic view. let's listen to a democrat in st. louis. caller: one of the problems i have with the independence, they swing so much. a little bit of everywhere. i think they are responsible for a lot of the things that happen here in america. they never did blamed for anything.

who are these people? again, i know you get into the ages and so on and so forth i'd like to know more about that thank you. guest: host: the independent swings so much. guest: if you are hard-core republican or hard-core democrats, that are highly likely to vote for their party. strategist will tell you the only real issue with those people is turnout.

even if they lean one way or the other, they're not as attached. that is why political strategists, when they run commercials, they're saying, we're trying to get messages that will reach these people. host: they can make the difference in elections. guest: turnout -- host: they are not an organized group so you cannot point to think -- point the finger of blame. are there more men than women? what region of the country do they come from, what race? guest: great questions. intendeds -- independents tend to be disengage, much less likely to attend church.

if you are disengaged from church, you tended to disengage from the political process. younger men are more likely to tell pollsters they are independent, all the women are least likely -- older women are least likely. low-income people are more likely to be independent than people with higher incomes. host: you do ask a race question. guest: non-blacks are more likely to be independent. host: hispanics? guest: blacks are more likely to identify themselves as democrats, no great shock. strongest party affiliation of any group we look at today is african-americans, who reliably vote democratic.

if you look at hispanics, >> we take you to hilton head, south carolina. ♪ ♪

>> thank you so much. what a great crowd. but just came in from the overflow room. i am so proud to be back in our second home. we love to come here often. this is for michael is from. we get to come often. we will start with the fact that i am very blessed to be married to a man who puts on a military uniform every day. michael haley, stand up and say hello. [applause] we have had an amazing time. the reason we have had an amazing time, there is a

groundswell in south carolina that understands all eyes from around the country are on our great state. i could not be more proud. what we are seeing is a great debate about what we will do, how we will do it, and being smarter about it. what i am thrilled to say that we're backing the man that has a record. it is not what he said, it is what he has done. he has a record for taking broken companies and fixing them. he has a record for taking a failing olympics in making it a sense of pride for our country. going yen as a governor of a liberal state, cutting taxes 19 times within 85% democratic legislature, and balancing their budget. could we use that in washington right now? [applause] this is a man, when we are still in a primary with six

candidates, all the democrats are only talking about him. what does that tell you? i think somebody is a little bit scared. this is a time where i think it is good. we have seen what it is like when we have gone to the extreme. we know what the voting for a personality will get you. we are a proud military family. michael loved his country. i know that i and the kids understand that he is going to be called and when he does, we all sacrifice. what we need and what i note governor romney will give us, he understands the strength in your military and you never apologize for america. [applause] you combine all of that with the fact that i asked him about health care and he said, we will appeal obamacare. [applause]

you combine all that with the fact that i said, governor romney, can you believe that if we have to use picture aideed to buy food -- id to buy food and a store? we should use picture aideed io vote. the department is justice has called us on that, but the governor will stand by our side on that and allow us to love voter i.d. in this country. [applause] time and time again, we have heard president obama said that he wants to see things made in america. we have some great boeing airplanes made in its charleston, south carolina. [applause] he sure did not help us, but i will tell you that governor romney will stand by and never let them do that to our free

market ever. we look forward to that. [applause] before i turn the microphone over to these great men, i want to remind you that we are conservatives. we are republicans. whether we are independent, what ever we are. what makes this country great is that we value the free market. let's not let ourselves get involved in a debate and joined the democrats when we start trashing the free-market are trashing private enterprise. i ask you to join me, it is a dangerous killed to go down. we do not want to go down that. thank you for making me proud. i told him that hilton head was a place they had to go. i know you will be a little bit busy the sure, but how cool when it be its present romney came

for the heritage next year? [applause] thank you very much. god bless you. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] thank you so much. please. it is an honor to be here with the debate. and to be on this stage with these military veterans. their service is greatly appreciated by the entire nation. the chance to be with you. i appreciate the chance to be introduced by your governor. what of the great conservative leaders in our country. [applause] to be here with senator john mccain, a national hero.

[applause] one of the conservative leaders in our country is stand up for american ideals, that is the ambassador -- [applause] with michael year, i thought i might describe my experience with the national guard in my state. the kind of patriotism that exists. whether active duty or reservists or national guard, i've always been inspired by the passion of the people who serve this country. i happen to be in afghanistan and iraq, this was several years ago, about 2007. it was before the surge had been implemented successfully. it was early on. i went from base to base to see members of the national guard

from my state, as well as active-duty personnel. as i go to various bases, the media came to me -- if he would like me to call your family, a slip of paper with your name and your number and i will call them when i get home. by the time i left, i had 63 pieces of paper in my pocket. this is going to take awhile. i got home on the day before memorial day. on memorial day morning, before the kids get up and we played together, i will bang out three or four calls. i was a little nervous about the calls. it was before the surge had been devised. this was a time when people like harry reid were saying that we have lost in iraq. when our current vice president, then senator biden, said we would divide the country in three. i expected that i would be

hearing saying, why is my loved ones still there? what are we doing in iraq? i began making my calls. the second or third call, the person when -- the person who answered the phone, said, governor romney, i thought that might be you calling. [laughter] they said, you made a couple of calls earlier this morning. the spouses e-mail and their loved ones in iraq and afghanistan to say that you were calling. they e-mails their bodies and the e-mail is the spouse is to say, do you expect your call today? i made 63 calls on memorial day. [applause] it was an inspiration. in 63 calls, not one complaint. not one question about the decision of our commander-in- chief. not one.

i would into the calls by saying these words, on behalf of our country and on behalf of the commonwealth of massachusetts, i want to express my appreciation to you for the sacrifice of your family. having your loved one away it and appreciate their sacrifice in serving the country. they would either wait until i was finished or interrupt me and said, it is an honor to be able to sacrifice for the greatest nation on earth. every time, i heard that message. this is a patriotic people. i have behind me members of the greatest generation, i imagine. [applause] do you have a secret weapon to win the war? he said, the best soldiers in the world. he is right. that was the greatest generation. those who serve today are the greatest members of this generation. their passion and their

willingness to sacrifice for this country is an inspiration to the entire nation. we appreciate their service. i am disappointed that this administration has failed and in so many ways. as they are coming home from iraq, as they come come from afghanistan, they find it hard to find a job. this president has not been able to create the jobs our economy needs. if you borrow almost 100 -- 35 straight month above 8%. 25 million people are out of work. or stopped looking for work, or in part time work. the president has failed the american people. our men and women in uniform are particularly hard hit by this failure in our economy. he was critical of president bush for putting together deficits. his deficits are three times as large or larger. he is on track in his first term, his only term, by the way

-- [applause] he is on track to put in place more adept on america then all the prior presidents combined. it is unthinkable. the veterans administration has not done the job it ought to have done. the backlog for veterans claims, benefits claims, is now twice as large as under the prior administration. the number of veterans claims that of got over 125 days is four times as large as under the prior administration. we need to do a better job to care for our veterans. our hospitals, are care -- [applause] we also need to make sure that our fighting men and women of the future have the weapons

systems to make sure they can be successful and be protected and can come home safe and secure. i am very disappointed. he signed up with a plan with congress to take out another $800 billion more. i do not think this is a time the justifies our reigning in the capacity of america's military. we have fewer ships in our navy than anytime since 1917. our forests, it is older and smaller than anytime since its founding in 1947. rotation after rotation, they're planning on reducing our number of active-duty personnel. i know there are many that believe we can keep on shrinking the size of our military budget. i do not agree. i know there is waste there.

there is waste in the military, that is for sure. but i want to find the waste and use it to make sure we rebuild the most modern military in the world. i want to take our shipbuilding from -- i want to make sure that we rebuild our air force. i want to make sure we have at least 100,000 additional active duty troops. i want to make sure we use the money to care for the veterans in the way they deserve to be treated. [applause] the secretary of defense has said these cuts represented doomsday scenario. that is a frightening thought. i do not think the world has become safer. we can shrink our military, if we do so, the world will somehow forget this and not be as high style. i believe -- and that is

hostile. i believe the best piece is a strong america, not eight week america. [applause] i am convinced that the best deterrent against war is to have a military so superior that no one would ever think of testing expert that is the right course for america's military strategy. [applause] this is a campaign about two very different directions. in some respects, it is a campaign about the soul of america. when the founders of this country crofter national document, the declaration of independence, the constitution, they saw an america as an opportunity nation. the creator had endowed us with certain unalienable rights. life, liberty, and the pursuit

of happiness. we would be free to choose what we wanted in life. what we wanted to be, where we wanted to live, where we want to build our businesses. what kind of health care we would have. that created an opportunity society, up where people based on their education, and hard work, their willingness to take risks, the dreams come at these things and left certain individuals to become so successful, they hope to employ many of us. the success of some does not make the rest of us poorer. it helps the rest of us become better off. this is the nature of free enterprise and freedom and opportunity. [applause] we have a president takes its inspiration from the european style welfare state.

it has a vision of an entitlement society rather than an opportunity society. an entitlement society, government tax from some to give to others. the only people who do well are the people who did the giving and taking. the government. that is not the right course for america. europe is not working in europe. it sure will not work here. [applause] i love our national hymns. i love this country. when i was a boy, my mantra was around to the national parks. we had a rambler, remember those? [laughter] i knew what my parents were doing. they want us to follow with america. and i did.

i am troubled as i watched the president and some in his party divide america. trying to pursue this european welfare state they seem to want to replace ambition with envy. they poison the very spirit of america with class warfare. i believe america will be strong as long as we're one nation under god. [applause] my mom would sing various patriotic songs. american anthems. my favorite was open " america the beautiful." purple mountains' majesty across the fruited plains. when i was in iowa, i liked to pretend that corn qualified.

[laughter] "oh beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years." the patriots, the founders, in devising this country, this opportunity society, crafted something that was not temporary, but enduring. the principles of america with the principles that would guide us for centuries. those would take us in a different direction do not understand. it is those principles we must return. the president says he wants to fundamentally transform america. i do not want to transform america. i want to restore the principles that made america great. [applause] what more verse. "oh beautiful for heroes proved

immigrating strife who more than self their country love and mercy mortem life." we have one of those heroes today. senator john mccain. [applause] >> thank you very much. [applause] >> was and that a marvelous speech, my friends? [applause] we have been together a long time. that is really one of the most powerful speeches i have seen him or anyone else to give. thank you for that -- [applause] i have to follow it. it reminds me of an old-line i used to use all the time. i feel like zsa zsa gabor's

fifth husband. i know what i'm supposed to do, i just do not know how to make it interesting. [laughter] i want to thank the woman of courage, a great leader of the state of south carolina. these things do take courage. she decided some time ago who she felt was the best person to be president of the united states. among some very highly qualified individuals. thank you for your support and your leadership. [applause] one of them turns to the other one says, the food was a lot better in your when you were governor.

[laughter] some states, you cannot tell the joke. [laughter] anyone here from illinois? [laughter] i would also like to say, you old geezers behind me, thank you and god bless you. can we thank all of our veterans? would you stand and say thank you for your service? [applause] these are the men and women who kept our nation free. some through some dark times.

a our nation and the world stance in everlasting debt. myself, i was able to intercept a missile with my own airplane. [laughter] it was no mean feat. i have to tell you, when i graduated from the naval academy, i tried to get into the marine corps. my parents were married. [laughter] i have told that joke a lot of times. lo and behold, i have a son who enlisted in the united states marine corps at age 18. he fought in iraq.

he says, the marines are part of the navy department. the men's department. i did have a great opportunity of spending time with mitt romney and their family. they have a wonderful family. they are a family that americans can look up to. after i lost november of 2008, i slept like a baby. sleep two hours, wake up and cry, two hours. [laughter] everybody says, i voted for you. i will demand a recount. it is a tough fight. we did have a tough fight. listen, politics is not been bad. as it is that campaign was

over, no one campaigned harder for me than mitt romney. we spend time together with their families. i got to know and respect for mitt. their five sons and 16 grandchildren. [applause] more importantly, mitt romney understands what this nation needs. i thought he just gave you a strong articulation about our national security challenges. my friend, mitt romney knows how to restore america's economy. we are hurting in south carolina. we are hurting in arizona. in my home state, more than -- all little less than half of the homes are under water. worth less than their mortgage payments.

10% unemployment here in south carolina. for two years, this president have majorities in both houses of congress. what did you do? he dug us deeper in debt. we cannot stand that any more. we can talk about addition, a theory. here is the best example. i am sure you know about staples. staples was started by mitt romney and others with $5 million and a warehouse. compare that with the view of this administration and its president and solyndra. that did not start in a warehouse. they started in some beautiful glass palace with $500 million of your tax dollars. the differences, mitt romney

believed business creates jobs. the free enterprise system. sometimes some of them fail. none of them ever failed in the soviet union did they? some of them fail, but it is the greatest free enterprise system. it is the greatest job crater there is. this man was part of that. yes, there were some jobs lost, but it is what the free enterprise system is all about. jobs and businesses were created all over this country by mitt romney. he knows how it is to get our economy back on track. less taxes, less regulation, less government intervention. give the american entrepreneur a chance. that is all it is. i just came from visiting with friends of mine in new york. i did the letterman show for those of you were up late last night. you know what they're saying? they said, give us some

certainty. give us some certainty, that is what we want. we do not know when the next resolution is coming down. the dodd-frank bill has hundreds of pages of regulations. mitt romney will get our economy back on track and get this country back to where we all know it must be and can be and will be. the greatest nation on earth. [applause] can i just say a word? i would like to tell you a quick story. i succeeded. goldwater and the united states senate. on election night, when i was elected, he said, if i would of been elected president in 1964 and beaten lyndon johnson, you would never have spent all those years in a vietnamese prison camp. i said, you are right. it would have been a chinese prison camp.

[laughter] he was not amused. [laughter] can i say to you that throughout we arerld, they believe in retreat. we agree did they believe we are leaving. we left iraq without a residual force. 4474 brave young americans sacrificed their lives and thousands were wounded. we won the war and we're losing the peace. in afghanistan, the president is pulling their troops out of iraq before we finish the part that needs to be done in the eastern part of can stand.

we cannot let these brave young americans go with that kind of leadership. we need the kind of leadership that mitt romney has proven he is capable of and you will. i believed in america and its future. you believed in america and its future. it is time we got mitt romney as president of the united states of america. thank you very much. [applause] i have talked too long, and i apologize. mitt romney has made history. he won the iowa, and he won the new hampshire. first time that anyone has ever done that. if we put south carolina into the win column, this campaign will be on its way to a very important victory. we take no votes for granted. this is going to be a tough

competition. please get out the vote. call your friends. call your neighbors. make sure everyone you know of votes. this area, these brave people who have served, these wonderful people in hilton head and along the coast, are going to be very important. please remember the immortal words of the late mayor daley of chicago. he said a vote early, and vote often. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. [applause] thank you very months. my thanks to the governor for being such a kind hostess in south carolina. this is my first rally for mitt romney. i am delighted to be here. it is always great to be on the same platform with john mccain, a man who stood by me during my confirmation difficulties a few

years ago. somebody i have always looked up to, a real american hero. it makes us all proud to be americans. [applause] it just underlines, i think, the importance of electing a real president this november. i am proud to support mitt romney. like many voters, i wanted to make the right choice. i was looking for the person i thought most exemplified the values of ronald reagan, the kind of person who could provide that leadership for us. i think it is mitt romney. i understand, as a foreign- policy national security guy, that the economy is the top issue. the president has taken three years and made it worse. he has made it an even more important issue, is that as possible. our national security and our economy are intimately related. you cannot have a strong

national defense without a strong economy. we cannot have a strong the economy if we cannot protect america's interest and their friends and allies around the world. this president has done almost everything possible to weekenak the united states. the irony is he is campaigning on the basis that he is a success as a foreign-policy president. this is amazing. seal team killed osama bin laden. that is his definition of success. 1969, when americans landed on the moon, it is like richard nixon taking credit for that. it happened to occur during his presidency. the fact of the matter is this president has been a failure across the board in foreign policy. it is jeopardized in the united states in critical ways. as john mccain said, he has

pulled out of iraq and jeopardized the gains won. he is about to do the same in afghanistan. he has ignored the nuclear weapons threats posed by north korea. completely mishandled the nuclear weapons threats posed by iran, which is on the verge of getting nuclear weapons. he has not only the most radical president in history domestically, he is the first president, republican or democrat, since franklin roosevelt, who did not get up every morning thinking first about what the united states faces. he just does not care about national security. he is much more interested in moving us towards a social democratic health-care system. a social democratic environment. you get the picture. that is what he wants to do. it is time we had a president who understood you cannot have

freedom and prosperity in america unless we are prepared to defend ourselves around the world. not just on the traditional military front. look at the front that we face from north korea and iran. look at the threats we face from accidental nuclear launches from russia or china. what has this president done to defend us against these challenges? he had reduced our miss our defense program. he has taken something that ronald reagan conceived in the mid-1980's and bought to implement -- and thought to implement. president bush worked hard to move toward a national missile defense capability to protect the innocent american civilians in our country from nuclear attack. i was proud and that administration to be the negotiator who got us out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty. it forbade us to build a

national defense. it is hard to believe, but in the cold war, people like vice- president biden believed that missile defense was a bad thing. it might upset the soviet union. today, these people are in power. they do not believe in defending the american homeland from the spread. you can add in places like moscow and beijing, they understand exactly what this administration is doing. pressing the reset button with russia, making concession after concession, not being able to deal with the threat of a nuclear iran. ladies and gentlemen, we need a president who appreciates these threats. who is firm enough to deal with them and can take these measures to protect us here at home. i understand, the american people, when they look at a president from the national security point of view, they are making a huge delegation of authority. they will not get into the

specifics of the day to day of foreign policy. when it let the national security issues, they are making a judgment on an old- fashioned word. they're making a judgment on character. they want a president who has judgment, steadiness of purpose, leadership, well to falter in a crisis, and to does not believe the role of america in the world is to be a well. doormat -- doormen. [applause] i believe our safety's sake, critical to our liberty at home, critical to our economic prosperity, the first duty of the sovereign is to protect the people against foreign attack. i think there is only one person in the race today that we can count on to do that for the united states of america.

that is mitt romney. thank you very much. [applause] >> part of my additional duties is to recognize people love questions or consoles -- comments or insults. if you would just raise your hand. >> [inaudible] i have a question. where did you hide the teleprompter is? [laughter] [applause] >> thank you. >> governor romney, iam for you, but i need to ask you a personal

question. do you believe in the divine saving greece of jesus christ? -- grace of jesus christ? >> yes, i do. [applause] i would note that there are people in our nation that have different beliefs. there are people of the jewish faith and people of islamic faith. our present will be president of the people of all faiths. [applause] our nation was founded on the principle of religious tolerance and liberty. the welcome people of other faiths. i happen to believe that jesus christ is the son of god, and my savior. i know that other people have different views. i respect those views. respect the fact that in this

country, we welcome folks of different perspectives and face. i was very proud to live in a state like massachusetts, where our heritage was one of welcoming people of other faiths. we had some struggles with that. the great majority of us have decided that this is something that does not determine who should be our president or vice president or governor or senator. we look at the character of the man or woman. thank you. [applause] >> [inaudible] what are we going to do about the illegal immigrants? >> i will let the governor start off with that. >> i will tell you that to we passed illegal immigration reform in the state. that was absolutely -- [applause]

we passed reform in this state. it was stronger than arizona. guess what. the department of justice stop the spread -- stopped us. i asked the governor what he would do would bar illegal immigration reform bill. >> i supported. [applause] if the federal government is failing in its duty to protect our borders, states have to take action to protect their citizens. john mccain's comments in this are quite powerful. my solution is to have a sense, have been of border patrol agents to defend it, and crackdown on employers to hire people who are here legally. >> need a program in the agriculture sector. we need to keep these young people receiving an education in

our country, a high technical skills, we can have that kind of a program. i want to point out one of the other things you never hear about illegal immigration. there is a great danger that the drug cartels pose an actual threat to the nation of mexico. 40,000 people recently have been murdered in this terrible gruesome drug cartel behavior. my state of arizona, there are guides on mountains that are guiding the drug runners as they go through the border into phoenix or drugs are distributed throughout the country. there is one other aspect that you do not hear about. there is now about the only way that someone can come across the border is true of paying these coyotes.

they mistreat them, they keep them in houses, the worst kind of conditions. they hold them for ransom. these are unspeakable cruelties that are committed. where are the human rights activists on this issue? that is my question. every nation has the obligation to secure its borders. we are a nation of immigrants. everybody in this room came from someplace else. everybody should come up through the legal and that this that we have to become a citizen of this country. [applause] >> i want to underscore something. we like legal immigration. we like people coming here legally. we want to stop illegal immigration. so we can protect legal immigration in this country. thank you. [applause]

all the way back there. >> >> my arms are long but not that long. >> i would like to know what you feel about the federal reserve. >> they are better at managing currency than congress would be. we have a choice of having a federal reserve, which is independent of politics, or having congress manage our currency. i want to have a stable and strong currency. i think there are a lot of the things the federal reserve has done wrong. there are a lot of mistakes that have made. i can reverse some of those. i cannot imagine what would happen if we had congress doing it. i would keep the federal reserve and monitor them to make sure what they're doing comports with our values. at the same time, i am not

looking to eliminate the federal reserve or replace them. their job is to keep our currency worth something and keep inflation at a reasonable rate. there is no question the mistakes were real. i would a point of a new head of the federal reserve to make sure we maintain the strength of america's currency grid does anyone want to add to that? senator? there is a question right here. just pass the microphone. >> i would like to ask your position with regard to business, particularly focusing on the auto industry. we have seen cycles were the biggest companies in the world have gone bankrupt. what i would like to know is what you will do as president to put a firm foundation under businesses like that so they can be successful like they were in the past in this country. >> thank you. my own view as to what general motors and chrysler got in so much trouble is that over the

years, the unions asked for too much and the management gave too much. they all said, we are and to pass along the burden into the future. we will add more and more costs. you see numbers like $70 per hour being paid for people. ultimately, you cannot compete globally. you cannot compete with foreign manufacturers if your compensation level is completely out of alignment. the areas that were a problem were the work rules and the legacy, retiree costs became overwhelming. companies were barring more money to pay for this and it could not go on forever. they had to go through bankruptcy. a bankruptcy does not necessarily mean closing the doors. bankruptcy can mean the financiers, the shareholders lose their money, the bondholders lose their money. if they were not doing their job properly, in some respects, people are not born to cry about that. in the case of general motors

and chrysler, i believe they need to go through bankruptcy to get rid of some of these debts and get the legacy costs' out of the way and bring compensation levels down. it was a failure of management that caused the failure of these industries. going forward, if they start feeding at the trough again, putting on more and more obligations, building in more and more benefits, we will lose those industries. there is no reason we cannot compete making cars and. they're doing it here. you are making bmws and selling them around the world. we can manufacture. [applause] this idea that we cannot manufacture is wrong. we can compete. foreign companies are coming here in right to work states. if you want states to have more jobs, make it right-to-work. as an old detroit die, i like

cars and i want to keep seeing american cars. i do not see any reason we cannot have american cars. another reason we have had some challenges is when it came to american trade, he were so nervous with what the chinese and others might think, we did not stand up for ourselves. china has: intellectual property, patents, designs. the head back into our computers. that have held down the value of their currency. it makes or prices artificially low and that drives american businesses out of business and kills jobs. to see a strong and vibrant u.s. auto industry, we are right to have to have strong leadership among managers and we will have to stand up for people who cheat like china and. [applause] >> this is very important to south carolina. this goes back to why i endorsed governor romney to be the next president. we are trying to manufacture in

south carolina. i sleep, eat, breathe jobs in the state because that is what we desperately need. if you give a person a job, you take care of a family. we have a lot of families to take care of. we have something to celebrate in south carolina. yesterday, i was at bmw. they produced their 2 million car in the state of south carolina. [applause] not only that, not only did they produce it, but they invested and announced that they are investing $900 million more in the state of south carolina, starting a new model, the bmw x4, and announced a 1000 new jobs in the next four years korea -- in the next four years. [applause] someone came up to me and said, how do we make sure that these jobs are born to happen -- these

jobs are going to happen? i said, we are going to get mitt romney as president. >> one of the most outrageous decisions i've ever made was followed up bay -- by an unconstitutional of women of members of the nlrb. the boeing company in seattle wanted to expand their business here in south carolina. you all know this. incredibly, incredibly, the nlrb prevented that from happening. where is boeing going to go? overseas. the next time you hear the president of the united states say he wants to create jobs in the united states of america, think what is that all about? it is disgraceful. he just appointed members while the senate is still in session. if that holds, and i do not think it will, it could be a terribly dangerous erosion of the constitutional authority of

the responsibility of the united states senate. this young lady right there, please. >> thank you for being here, governor romney. i was doing a science products -- a science project on germs. i was wondering, how many hands you say per day and how often the wash them? [laughter] [applause] >> that is a very important question. you will be happy to hear that i do wash my hands regularly so that as i shake your hand today, you do not have to worry about whether the terms i got earlier today in florida will be coming to south carolina. i wash my hands regularly. i use hand sanitizer to make sure i do not pass this along to faulty. i appreciate that. that is a good question.

thank you for your science project. [applause] there is a question over there it >> social security and strengthen it for future generations. >> that is a great question and an important one. i go to various places and see signs outside. they say they are building a republic of change by having signs that say do not touch my medicare or social security. i say i agree with you guys because there is only one president that has cut medicare by $500 billion. that is barack obama. he cut medicare $500 billion. not to reduce our deficit but to pay for obama care. it is unthinkable. seniors across this country better recognize what he is willing to sacrifice to pay for his new entitlements. i will protect social security and medicare and i would not change those programs for current retirees or those getting close to retirement. those who are 55 and older.

people count on those programs and understand how their work. i would not change them. for people who are younger, 20, .0, early-'50s i want to make sure the promises we have made are the promises we keep. that is the way the nation has to be. what would i do? for the next generation of seniors, i would say to them that we probably ought to add a year or two to the retirement age. people who are 20 or 30 will know the retirement age will not be 65 or 67, it will move up one or two years. i would give bigger benefits to lower income folks that i would to higher income falls. -- higher income folks. the inflator used for higher income people would be lower than that for lower income people.

that way, people would be able to use social security in the future. with regard to the next generation of medicare, i would give people something a lot like medicare advantage, the premium support program where people can take their premium support and use it either to buy traditional medicare or by a private medicare plan. some people, like me, would rather have a private medicare plan where if i do not like the service i am getting, i can get rid of it and go to another one or back to standard medicare. those are the changes i would make. the key thing is this, we have got to protect those programs for current retirees and we have to make sure the promises we have made our promises we can deliver. it is essential to protect medicare and social security for our current generations and coming generations. hank you. -- yankee -- thank you. [applause]

here is one in the front row. >> would you comment on your plans for energy independence? >> yes. thank you. something happened a few years ago that has changed the energy picture in this country. we always been able to drill a vertically into the earth to get oil and gas. they found a way to grow vertically and then go horizontals. i do not know how they do it, but they go horizontals. going horizontals, they can tap into pockets of oil and gas. they forced fluid into the ground and it pushes the oil and gas out for these horizontal pipes that they put in. by virtue of those technologies, we have discovered massive new natural gas reserves in pennsylvania, north dakota, texas, oklahoma. we have about 100 years of natural gas. it is cheap because there is so much of it. he one of the way to become energy secure is by taking advantage of that natural gas. we have an administration that

does not seem to like gas, coal, nuclear, oil, any of the major providers of energy for the nation. they like wind and solar. i also like wind and solar but they are not want to make us energy independent. i was with an executive at a large chemical company and he said he just announced a $20 billion factory in saudi arabia. he said, we wanted to build in pennsylvania but the regulators in this country are making it so hard, we do not know if we would ever be able to get the gas for our facility. we have to go to saudi arabia. we have to get our regulations and regulators to encourage private enterprise and encourage our energy sources. i will develop our gas, oil, coal, nuclear resources. i will direct the secretary of energy to provide licenses to those who do the drilling for oil and a draft -- for oil and

gas. start getting that energy also we are not as beholden to the cartel's around the world. [applause] i want to thank you. do not get up yet. i am going on for another hour. i am just kidding. [laughter] this is such an extraordinary country that the people who come here, the passion that people have is inspiring to me. i had the chance of helping organize the of the games in utah in 2002. when our kids got a gold medal in the national anthem was played, our young people would put their hand over their hearts. the only people in the world to do that. you can see our kids singing the national anthem, sometimes getting the words right. we are a patriotic people. this tradition of putting our hand over our heart was begun by fdr during the second world war. he asked us to do so in recognition of the blood that

was being shed by our sons and daughters in far off places. we are a patriotic people and i happen to believe that despite all the challenges we have, that if we have leaders like these will tell the truth and live with integrity, who know how to lead, that if they draw on the patriotism of the american people and ask for the sacrifices necessary to this nation's strong, we will overcome our challenges and as ronald reagan used to say, this wonderful, shining city on the hill. i will -- i intend to be one of those leaders if you give me your vote. thank you. [applause] ♪ [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

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>> thank you again. wonderful. come on, guys. who is this? >> we are so happy for you. you have got to win. >> you have my vote. >> thank you so much. i appreciate that. >> can we get a picture? >> there we go. >> thank you gary -- thank you. >> thank you.

>> it happens on every campaign. ♪

>> what are they going to do? you cannot hear anything? no, one of the others.

>> and it romney wrapping up his event in hilton head, south carolina. we are going to leave him as he meets and greets his supporters and take you to the western part of the state. we're or to get another campaign stop with newt gingrich and rick santorum. this is the republican forum that is introducing the candidates to people at a high school in duncan, south carolina. >> we will have enough time to explore them in some depth. we will do that for a period of about 30 minutes. at the conclusion of that 30 minutes, a question and answer session between the congressman and the former speaker. he will depart and we will bring in former senator rick santorum, where we will repeat the procedure. he will have a period of about 30 minutes where he will be questioned by congress.

while we await the arrival of former speaker gingrich and the questioning begins, angela will take a quick break. when we come back, we'll be joined by speaker gingrich. [applause] >> how are you? we have a 90-second break and we will be back.

>> good evening once again, ladies and gentlemen. we are broadcasting live from our gop 2012 presidential candidate forum. we are joined by former speaker of the house newt gingrich who is going to make his way up to the podium in the next few minutes. he is joined by his lovely wife. will you welcome the former speaker of the house, newt gingrich. [applause]

>> i am thrilled to be here. you have two great congressmen as your moderator's, who i suspect will do a lot better job than some of the reporters and you have been up against. i am looking forward to it. [applause] >> on behalf of congressman duncan and everyone here, and this also goes for senator santorum, we can scarcely imagine the sacrifices that are involved with running for political office. we want to thank your families for the sacrifices they have made as you go on this journey. [applause]

justice david souter, john paul stevens, harry blackmun, william brennan have two things in common. they are widely perceived as being liberally biased and they were appointed by republican presidents. how to make sure we are not surprised again with supreme court nominations in the gingrich administration? >> that is a good question. i want to broaden it to talk about how we rebalance the judiciary. there is a 50-page paper the stars of the declaration of independence, the constitution, the federalist papers. it goes to jefferson, jackson, lincoln, franklin delano roosevelt. it outlines the administration to rebalance the courts as they get out. if i'm nominated by you, i do believe it your primary will be the key, if i'm nominated by the

republican party and i become president, i will point constitutional judges who believe in american history, who believe that we are endowed by our creators. they believe that the constitution is a contract and their jobs are limited to interpreting the law, not rewriting it. i would seek people like that. you cannot just rely on that. if you look at the history of the united states, starting with the revolutionary war,the number two complete of the american resolute -- revolutionaries was against activists who they regarded as dictators. the number one complaint was no taxation without representation. they set out, and the constitution, to limit the judiciary. they created three equal branches. the first branch, which you belong to, is the legislative

branch, the largest and closest to the people. the second is the executive, the president. the third and least powerful is the judiciary. this was all set in 1958 by the court that asserted that the supreme court was the last word on the constitution. that is factually false. the supreme court is one of three interpreters of the constitution. the other two are congress and the president. elsewhere on oath to uphold the constitution. the constitution is a freestanding document. we have for liberal and for conservative -- four liberal and four conservative justices and justice kennedy. if justice kennedy was up and he is a liberal one day, we have a one-person constitutional convention. if he wakes up one day and he is

conservative, we have a one- person constitutional convention. this is not. one person who is an appointed lawyer being a one-person constitutional commission. i would appoint conservative justices. i would support the congress in limiting the reach of the court. the 14th amendment says congress shall define personhood. i support the idea that we should pass that law that says personhood begins at conception and if the court will not appeal or review the law. [applause] i want to say a couple other quick things. this is a topic i worked on for nine years. i was inspired by the ninth circuit court in 2002 when they ruled that one nation under god was on is that -- was unconstitutional. i decided if there was an american court the was that anti-american, it deserves

serious study. we have to be much more militant. i will give you three examples. jefferson, in 18 02, abolishes 18 out of 35 federal justices. over half. several of them tried to file a lawsuit saying it was unconstitutional. the remaining 17 judges refused to take the case on the grounds that jefferson was going to abolish their court. [laughter] i think that is an extreme example, but i want to show you the framework historically. we are not helpless. we are not governed by nine lawyers. [applause] jefferson, when asked if the supreme court was supreme, said it was observed. that would be an oligarchy. when asked if the bank of the united states was constitutional, he said, that is their opinion.

in my branch, the presidency, he disagreed so he vetoed it and kill it. he said, i am the president and i have an opinion. i will enact my judgment. it is gone. lincoln, who was offended by the dread scott decision, in his first inaugural says, "this has to be the law of the case. it cannot be the law of the land because if nine people can create the law of the land, we, the american people, have no freedom." that is pretty definitive. [applause] franklin delano roosevelt, on arresting 14 knots the saboteurs who had been landed by submarine, said to his attorney general, as commander in chief during world war two, "in my commander in chief role, there will be tried by a military tribunal and executed within

three weeks." i want you to instruct the supreme court. we will not recognize the writ of habeas corpus. that matters because, there is a recent supreme court -- there is a recent supreme court case in which they oppose american civil liberties on any combatants on a battlefield. it is a fundamentally on american decision, violating the role of the commander in chief as the defender of the united states and as president, i would instruct the national security apparatus to ignore that rule. it is null and void on grounds that it interferes with the constitutional duty of the president of the united states to defend the united states. [applause] >> welcome to south carolina. as a member of the committee on national resources, the question i have -- americans have spent billions of dollars, collected

in user fees from their power bills to construct a facility that was supposed to store the nation's nuclear waste but was blocked by president obama and harry reid. if your president, would you push for the opening? if not, what is your solution for removing nuclear waste temporarily stored in south carolina? why would you do to ensure that south carolina taxpayers get their money back? >> my position is straightforward. first of all, it is totally safe and there is a way to do it. you have to meet the concerns of the people of nevada in terms of the safety of delivering the material. that is something we have done before. i believe we did -- we should either notion -- negotiate with the people of nevada to get their approval. i do not like the idea of 49 other states running over a state. there are a lot of circumstances. if you're near a nuclear power plant, you pay less electricity

rates. people said, now what is the break i get on electricity? can we negotiate a deal? one way would be to set, what are the circumstances under which you can be comfortable? the federal government, under any circumstance, owes you either the money back or a solution. what they should not be doing is taking your money while leaving you with the problem. ideally, we could convince nevada to accept it. if we could not, you should get the money back. [applause] >> thank you. >> i want to ask you about recess appointments and executive orders. people are hungry for a consistent paradigm that does not flow with the vagaries of which party is in control.

whether there is a republican president or a democratic president. under what circumstances would you consider a recess appointment and what is the force of law on executive orders? >> those are two very good questions. they are very different topics. if you do not mind, i will separate them. a recess appointment is a time- ordered pattern by which, if the congress is in recess, the president is in a position to make the appointment. it only lasts till the end of the term of congress unless it is ratified by them. in all of american history, there have -- there has been a countervailing pattern which is that either the house or the senate does not go out. if they do not go out, they are not at recess. this is a dance the branches play which is part of our balance of power. this president is the most anti- constitutional president in the history of the united states. [applause]

i am about to go meddling here. bear with me. one, there is no doubt in my mind that he is a radical who believes in breaking down the norms and patterns of the united states and that what he is doing is egregiously non- constitutional and in violation of the law. [applause] two, there is a very simple answer which i would apply to the national labor relations board and the new credit agency that he has illegally appointed. the republicans in the house should announce that they will cut off all funding, period. they will not fund it and it will cease to exist. it is unequivocally in the hands of congress. no money shall be spent except for what is spent in the congress. if you want a constitutional

showdown, we will show you a constitutional showdown. if you act illegally, we will shut down your money. [applause] let me be very clear about this, because i am of meddling and i think it is time somebody did. when i was speaker of the house, we collided head on with bill clinton and the result was we got four consecutive balanced budgets, we reform welfare for the first time in history, the first tax cuts in 16 years. he had to know that we were deadly serious. does the president have advantages? of course. as a liberal democrat, he has more advantages. he has the power of the white house to communicate and he has media on his side. but we have greater powers. we have the constitution of the united states and we have the american people. [applause] now, as four executive orders, i

believe that all the way back to george washington. a correct executive order is doubtless is within the law of the presidency will execute the law. that is what is an executive order. it does not make law or change law. it is a crime to do so, by definition a violation. i intend to use executive orders on the very first day, shortly after the inaugural address. i will stop and sign a number of executive orders. the first will abolish all of the white house czars as of that moment. any executive order which infringes upon law should be met by a lawsuit by congress on the grounds that the president is now violating the oath of office and is making law instead of executing law. [applause]

>> as co-chairman of the sovereignty caucus in the united states congress, the sovereignty of the united states is important to me. many americans are leery of the united nations, and other international organizations to constrain american power and infringe on our sovereignty. conservative treaties such as the kyoto protocol and the un convention on the law of the sea, the proposed human arms treaty, programs like agenda 21 and international efforts to regulate the united states in ways the american people would never agree to throw our democratic process. if elected, how would you treat the united nations and operate within an international system to protect and promote the united states national address while strengthening american sovereignty? >> a very powerful question. what is disturbing is that a significant part of the american e. lee joined with these efforts to undermine american sovereignty -- elite

joined with these efforts to undermine american sovereignty but because they know they cannot get what they want to get in the united states. for example, the small arms treaty is an effort to violate the second amendment. i am totally opposed to any kind of treaty which limits the right to bear arms. in fact, i would lead an effort to convince the rest of the world that every country should have a second amendment. that way, the people can protect themselves from the government and every country should have that right. [applause] let me go down the list. as speaker of the house, i send a separate delegation to kyoto to watch out for those trying to sell out the united states. that is what they were doing. the deal was that would adopt an agreement was totally anti- american so the europeans love it and it would exempt china and india so they love it. it was a mess.

ironically, a lot of folks came back and said the realize the last few hours, they ran out of money to pay the translators? that was true. there were all there babbling without translation, trying to figure out what it was there were riding. what was the result? it was rejected in the -- in the united states senate 99-0. teddy kennedy voted no. the treaty was designed so bad that even his left wing bob was crazy. it was a remarkable achievement. when i left the speakership, i left the co-chair with george mitchell. the united nations review task force. however bad you think the un is, it is worse. this is a corrupt, bureaucratic, anti-american collection of people from all eround the world who have com

to find ways to undermine us at their own advantage. it needs to be overhauled. if i were president, i would send every ambassador i appointed, one of your top three assignments is to gather votes for the fundamental overhaul of the united nations. the state department, your assignment is to begin building a democratic alliance outside the united nations so we can make clear that a general assembly, which has country's smaller than our counties, should not be taken seriously because it is increasingly an anti-american assembly and it has been growing more and more so for the last 30 years. our state department, far from standing up to it, we recently held a conference with the organization of islamic countries in order to talk about how to sensor americans from criticizing islam in a way which i regard as the most fundamental betrayal of the

american system you can imagine. we have to stand up for our civilization and we have to stand up for our sovereignty. we have to stand up for america as a country that is exceptional. i do not care if that irritates the international leaders and i do not care if it bothers the new york colleagues. -- elites. [applause] >> one-third of south carolina's congressional delegation is african-american, which may well be the highest percentage in all of congress. our governor is of indian descent and i cannot think of a single ruble allegation of repression in my 16 years as a prosecutor. how much longer will we have to ask permission for the department of justice to do something as simple as requiring a photo id before you vote?

[applause] >> i think you misunderstand the sensitivity of the attorney general. [laughter] his interest in having dead people, illegal people, non- people, invented people have their full rights. the democratic party, everyone in the country is terrified of honest voting. you see this all over the country. it is one of the most amazing patterns that the news refuses to cover. in georgia, when we first brought this up, we went so far as to say we will give you a free photo id. you do not have to pay for it. if you do not own a car, that is fine. we would like to know that you are you when you vote. this was seen by every left-

winger as a vicious act of oppression against non-existing people. we have to understand their fear. if the only people who vote in american elections are law- abiding, hard-working citizens who are committed to america, the left wing and democratic party will cease to exist. [applause] i want you to know that among the directions i will issue on the first day, two hours after the inaugural, will be instructions of the attorney general to drop the lawsuit in south carolina on voting and instruct the attorney general to drop all three lawsuits about legal immigration. [applause] it is the job of the united states to enforce the law and to work with those who are willing to help enforce the law, not to obstruct the enforcement of the law. that is the kind of attorney general i would want to a point. [applause]

>> my 16-year-old son recently had a school project where he asked the freshman united states congressman from south carolina to describe and define what they believe to be the american dream. what, in your opinion, is the american dream and what are you going to do to protect that dream so that my son has the same freedoms and liberties that the nation had when you're 16? >> i cannot help but comment that your son is doing all right if he gets to have as his school project all of the -- interviewing all of the congressmen. that is not a bad deal as research goes. when i was 16, my father was serving in the united states army. we were in this regard, germany. -- stuttgart, germany.

we watched the french paratroopers till the fourth republic and bring back the general to establish a republic. i realize that everything about this process was real. countries can die and leadership makes an enormous difference. i grew up surrounded by people who believed passionately in america. they believe in america because they did not have very much economically. when i was a child, we lived above a gas station on a square in pennsylvania. my dad was in korea. we did not think we were poor but we did not have enough money. -- we did not have much money. but we were americans and therefore, we were rich. we have freedom. we had a sense of safety. we believe in fair play. we thought everybody had an equal opportunity to pursue happiness because they had --

because they had been given that by god. i was raised by a grandmother who was old-fashion. she taught me the kind of patriotism they taught in the 1920's and 1930's. it was believed that george washington was a heroic figure. the founding fathers were remarkably wise. i was only 100 miles from philadelphia and so we could go and see independence hall. we valley forge. we could have the sense of what it took to make america. i would say to every young person in america that the american dream is to recognize that we exist under our creator and because of the endowment by our creator, unalienable rights. no president, congress, judge, bureaucrat can take away our rights. because we exist under god and

because we have been endowed by our creator, we also have responsibilities. the right to pursue happiness implies you ought to get off your tail and pursue it. [applause] we also have a very deep strain in us that our intellectuals are terrified of. it comes, in part, from south carolina and north carolina, tennessee. it is the jacksonian tradition. andrew jackson was here during the revolutionary war. he was 13 years old when the british cavalry officer struck him with a saber, leaving him with a scar on his face for the rest of his life. he represented a tradition that was represented not far up the road at kings mountain, where americans gathered to slaughter the british for indignities. we are a tough country.

we are a country that believes in a flag with a snake on it that says "don't tread on me." we are a country who has not yet begun to fight. we have no interest in coming over there. someone once said, "the only part of france that we want is the graveyard for our troops." being american means you have to love the country, what it stood for, what it offers every single american of every background, and you have to dedicate yourself to work in all of your life for your family, friends, neighbors, the chance to pass on to your children and grandchildren what is the freest and most open society in the history of the world, a treasure that we should not lightly give up or lightly allow to be taken away from us. [applause]

>> thank you very much for taking time to share your thoughts. as you all is brilliantly do with us -- always brilliantly do with us as we reached the conclusion of the two and a portion. do you have any closing remarks at this time? >> he said i could have 50 minutes. [laughter] santorum is a lawyer and he will get three minutes. [laughter] let me just say i first came to south carolina to help the conservative movement in 1964 to a goldwater trading program.

the chair of that program is still in greenbelt. i came back over the years and my younger daughter came here. washusband's grandfather the dairy agent for the whole state. his father was strom thurmond's first chief of staff in the senate. as jordan's, we have long ties to south carolina. this is the most important election of our lifetime. if barack obama, the disaster he has been, can get reelected, the level of radicalism he will impose in his second term will be beyond anything we have imagined. he will feel totally vindicated in the approach he has taken. defeating him is central to everything we're doing. he already has $240 million in the bank. they intend to run the most dishonest, ruthless, vicious

campaign in history because it is the only hope they have for winning. the have gone from being a campaign that said yes we can to a campaign that says why we could not. they cannot run on any positive achievements. i believe the key to the feeding obama is two things -- secondarily, having someone who can stand on the same platform and defeat him decisively in the debate by proving the difference between american and socialism and radicalism. between getting a pri -- getting a paycheck for a great jobs program like reagan and such as i had in the 1990's and the food stamp program that barack obama has. between an american energy program that would include offshore development with $80,000 per year jobs. you need someone who can carry that case so convincingly that

they wash away $0.5 billion of advertising. that is how important this is. secondly, you need a solid conservative because you have to be able to draw the contrast. if we run a moderate who is in any way close to what obama is, we will lose. the moderate will not be able to explain anything. [applause] my only appeal to you is to say a few things and then i will get out of the way for rick santorum. i am very fond of his family. i have known him for many years. i think i am the right person. i have been in office and i helped ronald reagan in 1980 with his campaign, with the economic plan he created. i designed the 1994 campaign, which was the largest one-party increase in american history. 9 million extra votes. we created 11 million new jobs

in four years and we balance the federal budget for four years. i am the only candidate who has done this on that scale. if we end up splitting the conservative vote, we are going to stumble into nominating somebody that 95% of the people in the room will be very uncomfortable with. [applause] it is just that simple. if you look at the polling data and look at what is going on, the scale of the campaign, i believe if you will help me, we can win on the 21st. we will go into florida with momentum and we will win in florida rick if we win those back-to-back, we will guarantee a conservative nominee on a conservative platform to operate clear and decisive

choices. i believe that is the only road that gives us the chance to be barack obama and the only opportunity we have to put american exceptional as a back in charge in washington d.c. thank you. good luck and god bless you. [applause] >> thank you very much for coming here this evening. it only the former speaker could cram this speech into five minutes. we will continue with our program when we come right back. we will take a quick commercial break because we happen to be capitalists. we will take a quick break and then we will come right back.

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>> welcome back to the 2012 jumped -- candidate forum. we would like to thank newt gingrich for adjourning us here this evening. i want to take a moment to grass is our sponsors for tonight's broadcast. www.fortuneinassets.com as we continue with our program, the next 20 or 25 minutes or so,

we will bring up our next candidate who has joined us this evening. richard john santorum was born in 1958 in winchester virginia. the second of three children, his father is a psychologist and his mother is a nurse. rick santorum grew up in the suburb outside of pittsburgh, pennsylvania. a city i know very well. he actually graduated from high school in illinois. in 1990, he ran for political office for the first time as a lawn-shot candidate for the united states house of representatives in pennsylvania and's 18th congressional district. he surprised of the pundits by winning the election, not -- knocking dove walder in out of office. he won the election to the

senate in 1994 at the age of 36. again, knocking out a long tenured incumbent. six years later, he won reelection to a second term when he became chairman of the senate republican conference. in 2006, a year many of you recall that democrats make sweeping gains in elections, rick santorum failed in reelection campaign to democrat bob. he received his undergraduate degree from penn state university. his mba from the university of pittsburgh. his law degree from the dickinson school love ya. he in his wife are the parents of seven children. will you welcome rick santorum? [applause] >> how are you, senator? agreed to see you again. -- great to see you again.

>> i can tell i was in a family friendly place when you mentioned we had seven children and no one made a sound. [laughter] up north, everybody goes oo. very good. >> i want to say the same thing i said on behalf of all of us. we can scarcely imagine the sacrifices that you and your family are making in pursuit of this office. motivated by love of your country. on behalf of all of us, thank you and your family for the sacrifices. [applause] >> that is my view to introduce my wife who is right here. if you would welcome karen who is here with me. [applause] the rest of the family is here, also. they're manning the offices in charleston. we have all seven kids in south carolina. many of you have seen my

children as we have been traveling. you will see more of them between now and saturday. >> if you cannot serve in congress and look at the budget without realizing that entitlement programs are what is driving the debt. congressman ryan proposed a reform package. what would your entitlement reform package look-alike and do you agree that if use -- are serious about shrinking the dead, you have to take on the three entitlements? >> you understand the situation very well. the national budget is the highest priority for the next president to go in there and take this profligate spending, a dramatic increase in the scale of the government and get it back to its constitutional limits. getting back to a budget that is not going to mortgage our -- is bankrupt our country. if we do not get this runaway government under control, that

will happen. u.s. highlighted -- you have highlighted that there is a reason for the big budget deficit. the economy is not generating revenue. it is not generating tax revenue. we are del -- below the historical average from 18% of the overall economy being selected in revenue. we are way over the amount of spending we are doing. we are up to 25% of the economy -- is being consumed by government spending. that is the above the historical average of 18%. part of that is because the economy is doing poorly and spending goes up because of the transfer programs, welfare programs like on enjoyments -- unemployment insurance. there is a structural deficit, even if the economy was booming and we had revenues up, we would

still be in a very bad deficit position. social security is one example. up until lester, it was a surplus. it is no longer a surplus. it will not do that ever again unless we change it. it will never again run a surplus unless we change it. it will never meet the amount of money coming in -- what will -- what is being paid out unless we change it. we are referring to the entitlements. let me define an entitlement. in entitlement is something that is in the law that if you qualify for come under the law, you get it. you are entitled to it. you can say that you paid into some. you have major entitlement programs. there are 72 entitlement programs in washington, d.c.. when everybody goes out and talks about your marks --

earmarks -- we need to end them. it is less than 1% of the budget. it is the part that is not an entitlement. they have nothing to do with entitlements. they have to do with discretionary spending, which breaks into two parts. the fence and non-defense, domestic spending. it comprises less than 40% of the budget. the idea that we will reform earmarks -- the deficit problem is not in defense spending. defense spending, 50 years ago, was not 20% of the budget. it was 60% of the budget. when some say that we have to slash our defense spending because it is causing the huge budget deficit, that is false. it is not. [applause]

we have to deal with entitlements. hello? i bring them into two pieces. means-tested entitlement programs and social security and medicare. all of these other programs, the other 70, our means-tested entitlements. they are anti-party programs. food stamps, medicaid, housing programs. education training programs. there are a whole host of them. school lunch programs. people are entitled to them if they meet income qualifications. these are all programs that, in my opinion, have absolutely no business at the federal level. [applause] under the constitution, but under common sense, we do not need to be solving these problems at a level so far removed from the people they are

trying to help. we need to understand that the principles of our country was to build a great nation from the bottom of and to be able to solve -- problems closest where the problem is. some are beyond the family's ability to solve. the church's ability to solve. we should not automatically go to the highest level of government to solve these problems. what i have suggested is, and i know others have agreed with this -- we need to eliminate the means-tested entitlement programs. we need to send them back to the states, remove the federal oversight, and let the states have the flexibility to deliver the programs. [applause] unlike other people and who are running for office, i have done this. i was the author -- of the house

welfare reform proposal, which got the ball rolling on welfare reform. it was part of the contract with america. when i came to the senate, i managed a welfare bill. it had more to do with passing that bill and -- i had more to do with any other passing that bill except maybe bill clinton. washington post just did a fact check on that statement and they said it is true. that is what we did. we were the leader. we led the fight. we were able to get bipartisan support to do something that had never been done in the history of our country. and a broad based federal entitlement. -- end a broadbased federal entitlement. [applause] clinton vetoed and we got 70

votes in the senate because we motivated the american people. we told them what welfare was doing in an attempt to help. we must do the same thing. go out and communicate to the public that these programs are not helping people as much as they could. we need to give flexibility to the local communities to make sure that these programs are not dependency programs. do what we did with welfare. we need to have a work requirement. number two, we need to have a time limit. [applause] those two things, if we can do that for the rest of these programs like we did for welfare, we can accomplish what we did in welfare. we cut the role by over 50%. that is a good thing. it is not a good thing if we cut the rolls and people ended up in

poverty. people went back to work. people went back to work and started providing for their families. guess what also happened? poverty rate was at the lowest level ever. [applause] we have a model that works on medicare and social security -- those are federal programs that must be maintained. i agree with the why and ride in plan. i am not waiting 10 years. we have a 15 trillion dollar debt. it is the size of our economy. if we did not have a federal reserve that could bring our own money, we would be greiss -- greece. who thinkspresident nothing is wrong. [applause] we need to have an honest

conversation with americans and with seniors and with young people about what we can do. here is what we need to say to seniors with respect to medicare. you believe it yourselves and you can handle freedom and responsibility. do you need to be ruled? are you in a position where you need the government to tell you the programs you are supposed to get? what a doctor to see? what you're co-payment is? you need to be given a one-size- fits-all program or can we say, and all -- no. we trust that you can go out with the same resources that are provided with medicare and finding program in the marketplace that fits you better. the answer to that is going to be very critical as to whether seniors believe that they are capable of freedom.

whether they want to be ruled. i believe that the american people. i believe that seniors, as well as every american, while freedom is harder, when we exercise our freedom in whatever -- there are lots of people out there across america who want to help to exercise that freedom. why? they can profit from doing so. they can help you. we can help design, using free markets, and set markets, a health-care system that all costs, provide quality care, better actions, and not have government ration care, which is what is going to happen under medicare. [applause] >> welcome to south carolina, senator.

as a member of the committee on natural resources in the united states congress, and a congressman from a state that understands there cannot be national security without energy security, i would like to ask -- puts south carolina is the leader in nuclear power. we are one of only four states. do you support advancing nuclear power? how? i want to give you an opportunity to expand on your energy policy. >> thank you. i come from southwestern pennsylvania. in my old district when i served in the house, was a nuclear power. -- power plant. their research facility is right there in my district. similar to what you have it with a great nuclear facility in south carolina, i was familiar and was one of the great promoter said supporters of nuclear power and i still am.

i believe nuclear power is a long-term option for this country and something that is a green and efficient way of generating energy in this country, the electric generation. i also believe in markets and markets have to be fair. in the nuclear case coming in is not fair because it is so costly and it is so delayed in order to get all of the process is necessary to move nuclear power plants through. it makes it less economical to do. i know we have proved that. -- improved to that. the market is probably going to drive non-nuclear power. this leads to your second. -- point. because there is a fuel that is cleaner than nuclear.

that fuel has been led by a a dramatic increase in supply. i got a kick out of president obama when he gave a speech in cleveland. he made fun of the drilling. he made fun of sarah palin. we know that will not work. haha. all the students left at that. as a the president of the united states -- we are familiar with economics class in college. he took economics 50.5. [laughter] [applause] those children also did to because the only understood demand and not supplied. you can reduce prices by not just reducing demand, which is all the president wants to do. he wants to make demand go down by telling you to inslee toor tires properly and do all of those things they wanted you to do. -- inslee toor tires properly and do all of those things they

wanted you to do. when i left the united states tenet -- united states senate, the price of natural gas was $12. and then, we found this huge field and pennsylvania. we drove 3000 wells a year. -- drilled 3,000 miles a year. small towns, rural areas are growing and prospering because of the energy resources that were taken out of the ground. guess who else's property? you are. natural gas is not $12 anymore. natural gas prices are down to $2.70. to give you an idea of what that means, that is oil being $20 a barrel. supply here. drilling here. drill, baby, drill works and

helps our economy. [applause] as a result of that, we need to actually expand our natural gas infrastructure. there are oil wells -- there is not enough room in the pipelines to move the gas to market. we have 300 years of natural gas. when the president says that we must move and we must think billions -- take billions of your dollars and suspended on green energy,say, drill baby, drill. natural gas, it works. we need to look natural gas as an alternative to 18-wheelers and buses and other fleet vehicles as a way of burning clean energy, affordable energy.

we are 100% self-sufficient on natural gas in this country. it is a fuel we should be using more of. it is cheap and it can be used in transportation. not automobiles because you have to have tanks all over the place. it can be used on larger vehicles and we need to be moving towards that direction. the maintenance is a lot less. the long-term use of it is cheaper and better for your in gen. that is where -- we need to be moving. that is one example. there are all sorts of other things that we need to do. anup anwar -- open up and more. build those pipelines. [applause] we will lower energy prices, which will help make us competitive on a variety of fronts, including manufacturing. as you know, i am big gun manufacturing. [applause]

-- big on manufacturing. one of the -- one of the things that will help them is natural gas. >> i am allowed a follow-up question. when we talk about nuclear power, and i appreciate your stance. the generation of nuclear power and the creation of the nation to attack legacy weapons products has left us with some product that needs to be sort -- stored. i would like to ask your opinion on yucca mountain. what would you do about south carolina appears to have the billions of dollars to fund that? >> i have always supported the opening of yucca mountain. we have to have a permanent repository. i would work towards making sure that we do have a permanent repository. if for some reason -- harry reid

cannot stay in the senate for ever. we hope. [applause] the objective would be to get a permit to reach a permanent repository and if for some reason, that is foiled, the ratepayers to pay for the repository should get their money back. >> [applause] states are being sued for trying to do what congress has abjectly failed to do, which is immigration reform. how do you balance respect for the rule of law and make allowances for our agriculture interests and resolve this once and for all in our country? >> let me hit on illegal immigration part because you mentioned your agriculture. i am the son of a legal immigrant. my grandfather came here and

brought my father. he worked in this country for five years to earn his citizenship and make enough money to bring the rest of the family over. he left my dad and visited him once for about two months. he made the sacrifice because america was worth it. it was worth it to be able to give your children the opportunity to live in the greatest country in the history of the world. when we talk about illegal -- legal immigration, it is a great thing. it has to be a lot more water than it is today. the fact we have a lottery system is silly. people should not be in a lottery to determine whether they come to this country. they should come here based on a whole bunch of different criteria. one of them should not be relatives coming into the country. immediate family is one thing

but extended family is another thing. [applause] america needs to look for people who want to come here and the americans and want to contribute to this country. i am not saying that we bring rocket scientist into this country. we need a variety of different people and skills. we have to look at it from that perspective. not just economically, but from the standpoint of the kind of melting pot that america is. bringing in diversity, which is good for america. on illegal immigration front -- front, wemmigration need to expand it in the area of agriculture. some of these worker programs that the obama administration has deliberately allowed -- re- structured so they won't work. the labor unions.

the labor unions do not want the competition. they have put pressure on the presidents to screw up all of these programs. we will restore the these of programs where there is a demonstrated need in our society for people to have to come and do jobs that americans, as we in south carolina and georgia -- there was not anyone to harvest the produce. we have to have responsible programs that work with our community and agriculture to make sure that they have the labor that is necessary to do that. that is a responsible program that allows people to come and then leave. and work here and then be able to go home. with respect to illegal immigration, i believe that you enforce the law. the law is, the border should be secure. secure. people should not be