allowed to cross. we will build whatever fence and deploy whatever technology necessary to go from where we are today, which is a border that is 40% secured to a border that is 100% secure. [applause] secondly, we will enforce the laws in this country, and that is on employers to use and verify or some other system that can be developed by the private sector, maybe as an alternative, probably a better alternative, but require businesses to do the proper background checks to determine whether these people who are coming to work for them are legal and allowed to work in this country. and then, of course, enforce the law with respect to people in this country legally, doing illegal activity, and sending them back. that is deportations, working with state and local governments.

i was talking with a sheriff in york county, who is one of the share to actually can and has the funds from the federal government to work with the federal government to arrest people and find people who have broken the law, who wore a the goals, to deport them. most counties in the state cannot do that because they are not provided the resources to do that or the cooperation. we need to make sure that the county and state have the resources to do something the federal government has not been doing, and that is enforce the law. finally, with respect to what do we do with people who have been here, and i know that newt is my friend, and we have a disagreement on this. i don't believe that people who have been here, i don't care how many years, should earn the right to be able to stay in this country as a result of the fact they have been here. [applause] and i say that because i have no animus towards anybody who wants

to come to this country. obviously, i want people to come to this country, but when the first act of people coming to this country is to break our law, the one thing that you would expect that somebody was coming to the country, the first thing they would want to do is learn respect from the law, not break the law. [applause] and the idea that because somebody has been here 25 years and worked, all of these things, raised their family, that that fact should create an opportunity for them to stay longer, i would just say this -- if somebody has been here 25 years, unless there independently wealthy, they have probably broken a lot of other laws, right, as you have to work and if you are working your illegally working. if you found work, you probably had a fraudulent id, which is illegal, or you had a fraudulent

social security number, which is also a legal, and you have stolen some of these identity. it is not like people have committed just one act. we don't want people separated from their families. my grandfather was separated from his family for five years, and did the right way. there are millions of families in america, millions of families that are separated in order to follow the laws of america and with the right way. there are people who break the law today and we send them to jail, yes, and separate them from their family. why? because they broke the law. but st. everybody the same, not treat -- let's treat everybody the same, not treat people who have broken into this country illegally it differently. >> senator, i am co-chairman of the sovereignty caucus and i believe in the sovereignty of the sovereignty of the united states. many americans are their rate of the united nations and other international organizations to constrain american power and infringe on our sovereignty.

conservatives see treaties like the kyoto protocol and the proposed u.n. arms treaty in programs like agenda 21 as international efforts to regulate the united states and weighs the american people -- in ways the american people would never agree to throw a democratic process. as executive of this country, what is the u.s.'s roll going forward in the united nations? >> limit it. it should be limited to basic national security issues. the united nations does provide felly when "some" -- it comes to security issues, international security issues. but with respect to most everything else the united nations does, they are run by countries, groups of countries whose values are not our values. and they are promoting things that do not comport with

american values or american law or the american constitution. why we actively participate and give legitimacy to things that work to provide values in the world that are different than ours makes no sense to me. to do so just because we want to open up relationships, there are all sorts of other ways to open up and have relationships with other countries, as opposed to using organizations that are posed for country. i would go through the process, looking at every one of these different un agencies and bodies, and systematically decide whether we are going to keep that relationship or and our relationship, de-fund it, and narrow our participation. maybe that will send a message because the money will not be flowing as it has in the past, but that will send a message we need an international body that reflects basic international and human rights, which the united nations does not. [applause]

>> senator santorum, thank you very much. we are nearing the end of our time here. as we did for speaker gingrich, i'd like to give you five minutes or so to tell us why you should be the next president of the united states. [applause] >> thank you very much for your questions, and thank you all for being here. i want to thank the people of south carolina for the hospitality you have shown. karen and i have been vacationing in south carolina for almost our entire married life. we vacation along the south carolina coast for 20 years, and my brother lives in south carolina, and my niece and nephew. my niece out is a coquette at usc. i'm not a native, give me a break. anyway, we are very much

connected with south carolina. we know the wonderful and warm hospitality of the people here. having come from new hampshire and protesters and crowds, the screaming and hollering, but occupy wall street, it is great to be in the gentle south. [applause] so -- well, i just want to say that south carolina it is a state that stands up and pride itself on strong traditional values. its conservative values, a state that the leaves and less government, low taxation. the leaves and states' rights, police and a limited federal government, and deeply believes in family and faith. that is the foundation of the principles of our country. [applause] you have an opportunity in this election to make a choice that

will speak very, very loudly to our country. all i would ask you to do is to support a candidate that reflects the values of south carolina. [applause] because over the next few weeks, the next week or so, over the past few weeks, you have been told that your job is to pick somebody who can win. to compromise those values, to settle for something less. to settle for something that, well, maybe is not quite as authentic as your values. maybe is not as consistent. because we so badly need to win. you have been told this many times in the past. as republicans, you are constantly told, well, you cannot really have what you really want because, well, you know, if you put a real strong

conservative but there, across the board on national security and moral culture issues, economic and spending issues, they will have a hard time winning. and we need to win. it was saying that to you? people who don't share your values. they want you to compromise your values so they can have their values being represented on the national ticket. don't be for your judgment. -- don't defer your judgment. the last time we had such a critical election was in 1980, when a country was in an economic malaise, according to jimmy carter. we had the hostage crisis in iran. sound familiar? we were considered weak overseas. and jimmy carter was managing the climate. and we were being told in south carolina, settle for something less so we can win. and you said, no, we're not

going to do that. we will take our chance, our vote, our message to the country and make a statement. we will stand for someone who believes in the values that we know will make america great again. and we're not going to compromise that. i find it incredible -- and i hear this a lot, and legitimately so -- where people say to candidates running for office, why are you compromised? why the compromise? why the compromise on this or that? why don't you stand for your principles? why don't you stand for your principles? [applause] you want your leaders to lead? lead them. [applause]

this is the most important election of your lifetime. south carolina very well may decide who the next president of the united states is going to be. do not defer your judgment to those who did not share your values, to those who don't want to see what happens to america what you want to see happen to america. lead. be bold. -- when south projec carolina voted for ronald reagan, he was not ronald reagan, not the right and we remember. he became the ronald reagan we remember. and use all the ronald reagan and you believe that he could be that man that we would remember sunday. be bold.

do what's right for america. thank you, and god bless you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> senator rick santorum. [applause] ladies and gentlemen, we have used our allotted time, and then some. thank you for your patience in going over this evening. please, another nice and for our questioners tonight. [applause] thank you, gentlemen. and thank you all very much as well for taking the time to come out, expressing a patriotism, showing your interest in america. we greatly appreciate you being here. be safe going home, god bless, and goodnight.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> next, the supreme court oral argument and fcc vs. fox television. after that, president obama

discusses his plan to consolidate some government agencies. then the road to the white house continues with commit ron the town hall and ahead. -- with the mitt romney town hall in hilton head. >> we will hear argument next in case 10-1293, federal communications commission v. fox television stations. general verrilli. >> mr. chief justice, and may it please the court: in its previous decision in this case, the court observed that when a broadcast licensee takes a license for the free and exclusive use of a valuable

part of the public domain, it also accepts enforceable public obligations. one of those enforceable obligations is the indecency restriction which congress has instructed the federal communications commission to enforce between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. respondents in this case have for years benefited enormously from their free and exclusive use of public spectrum. they argue, however, that neither congress nor the commission may as a condition of their licenses require that they refrain from broadcasting indecent material when children are most likely to be in the audience. >> but, general verrilli, it seems to me that this contract notion of yours can only go so far. i mean, if the idea is just, we gave them something, now they have to do whatever we say, you wouldn't accept that. so the question is why is this condition appropriate when many other conditions would not be appropriate? i mean, tell me if i'm wrong, if you would say all

conditions are appropriate. but i --i frankly think you wouldn't. >> this condition is appropriate, justice kagan, because it has been a defining feature of the broadcast medium from its inception in the 1920s in the radio act and has continued to be a defining feature of this medium throughout its history. and the argument that my friends on the other side are making here is that that norm, that legally enforceable norm which has been recognized by this court in pacifica and has been applied since the inception of this medium, needs to be overturned now because circumstances have changed. and i would point out first, if i may -- >> that's one of their arguments. i mean, another one is that you haven't defined it precisely enough, right? >> yes, that's true. >> that's a separate, really a separate argument. >> that's certainly true, justice scalia, and i will certainly get to vagueness, if i -- if i may continue along this line.

their argument is that circumstances have fundamentally changed. i want to point out at the outset something i think is significant, which is that their argument would sweep away indecency restriction with respect to radio as well as television, and they would sweep that away in the arguments they are making today without making any showing that circumstances have changed at all with respect to the ubiquity of -- or accessibility of radio. and i think if one looks at the fcc orders that this court cited in its prior decision in this case, one would see that a lot of the most vile and lewd material really is in radio. so i just want to put that marker down at the beginning here

because i do think it is quite important. no showing has been made about radio. >> i didn't quite understand that. today there's a -- there is either a potential or a fact of violent and objectionable broadcasting in radio? i didn't quite understand your point. >> yes. pacifica itself, justice kennedy, was a case about a radio broadcast. >> yes, i understand that. yes. >> and the respondents are arguing in this case that pacifica ought to be overruled because the circumstances that justified its rule no longer obtain. i want to put a marker in at the outset here with respect to radio because i do think it's quite important, that they haven't made any argument that those circumstances are any different with respect to radio. it's just as ubiquitous as it was. there isn't even any argument that there is blocking technology available. i want to make sure, given the kind of vile material that the record demonstrates has been transmitted over time on radio, that the court focuses on the breadth of the argument that the respondents are making here. now, with respect to television, i do think they are making an argument that -- that television broadcasting is no longer uniquely pervasive in the way that it was before. they are not making an argument -but

that, if i may, is a very different kind of argument than one would normally get in support of a -- the suggestion that we ought to depart from stare decisis. they are not -- they are not arguing that broadcast television is any less pervasive than it was. if anything, it is probably more pervasive now. they are not arguing that the harms of that pervasiveness no longer exist. what they are arguing is that there is other media that present harms as well, and that with respect -- and that because those other media also present harms, the circumstances require a change in the rule with respect to broadcasters. now that -- you can i think look at that in one of two ways. you could say either that's an argument that it's futile to continue to impose this restriction on broadcasters, and i think that's what fox says at page 33 of its brief. two points in response to that. i think a significant if not

complete answer was in this court's prior decision in this case in which it said that the maintenance of a safe haven is actually particularly important in -- in the context of these changes, a broadcast safe haven. and also i do think that the idea of futility in that nature is foreign to our first amendment jurisprudence. >> general verrilli, i took it from the briefs and what the fcc has been doing that the major objection is that one cannot tell what's7 indecent and what isn't; that it's fcc, the censor, that's saying "private ryan" is okay, "schindler's list" is okay, but "nypd blue" is not. and i do think that that is the major objection, that we have a -- a government agency that is going to make decisions about when nudity is okay and when it isn't. you can't do it in terms of time because the "nypd" was 7 seconds and another

broadcast, "catch-22," was 40 seconds. so it's -- it's the appearance of arbitrariness about how the fcc is defining indecency in concrete situations. that i think is the nature of the - >> let me turn to that, justice ginsburg. the -- two points about that. the first one is that as we read this court's recent decision in humanitarian law project, the question on the fifth amendment analysis of whether there is vagueness and arbitrary enforcement has to be answered by reference to the specific broadcasts at issue here. in other words, was there fair notice with respect to these specific broadcasts? and i will get to that, but i -- but let me first go directly to your honor's more significant

question. and i think the -- the problem with looking at the case that way is that the lens is focused too narrowly, in that there actually, when one broadens out the lens and looks at the wide range of decisions that the commission is making about indecency and then broadens it out even further and looks at the wide range of broadcasts that occur, actually the number of broadcasts are -- that have been identified as even raising a question of arbitrariness or inconsistency is a -- is really quite a miniscule fraction. it's even quite a miniscule fraction even with respect to broadcasts that the commission has adjudicated as indecent or not indecent. and yes, we would concede that there is not perfect clarity in this rule. it's a context-based rule. as we read pacifica, the court suggested in pacifica that the context-based rule may well be what the constitution requires here, and that's going to result in some -- something less than absolute precision. but the -- of course, the

alternative, i would assume from my friend's perspective, would be worse. the commission could have a list that said: never say the following however many words, never show broadcasting between the hours of 6:00 a.m. -- nudity between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. that would be clearer, but it would -- but in a way the commission here, i think by following the context-based approach that i think pacifica suggested was required, is being -- "punished" is too strong a word, but it's being held against it that it's trying to make reasonable accommodations for first amendment values. and so i think when one looks at it both in terms of where the lenses actually ought to be focused here and the fact that the -- the alternative perfect clarity would reach a less effective accommodation of first amendment values, then i do think that the commission's position is quite reasonable and sensible. >> could you -- could you digress for one minute to help me understand the procedural

posture of this case. when it was here last time, we were dealing with an issue called fleeting expletives and that was fox. and the fox case involved just that. they didn't really, or we didn't, or the court didn't, attack the 2001 order which is now at issue. and then without it going back to the commission, the second circuit decided it on a ground that sets aside the 2001 order. now, can we here just decide the fleeting expletive case, because the fleeting expletive case has to do with one subset of applications of the 2001 order and has to do with part 2.2 or something. i mean, it has -- and how you interpret the words "material dwells on or repeats." now, that i --i understand how to get at. the abc case raises -- doesn't raise fleeting expletives. it wasn't fleeting. and it raises the

question of the validity of, under vagueness grounds, of 2001 industry guidance and how that's been applied. but the second circuit didn't deal with that case. it sent it back to the commission. so has there been a commission decision recently which has reviewed the basic arguments being made here about the validity of the 2001 industry guidance as applied? has there been such a thing? alternatively, has there been an appeals court holding on the analysis of the abc case? >> i do -- i agree with you, justice breyer, a, that this is a complex procedural posture; b, that the court would have some discretion in how it approached and resolved the case. with respect to the abc case, as i read the commission's orders, which are in the appendix to the petition, it applied the 2001 industry guidance to reach the conclusion that the abc broadcast was

indecent. and then that was -- that -- then abc appealed that to the second circuit, as i understand it, and that the second circuit then found that the commission had violated the constitution in reaching that result. >> but they didn't -- they didn't in that case, and they sent the abc case back -- i see your -- >> they did on -- when it came back, your honor, they then, they disposed of the fox case with a lengthy opinion and then essentially applied that analysis to the abc case. so i think in fairness -- >> all right. when this abc case was argued in front of the commission, i have here about 30 briefs at least, maybe 40, and they are filled with very good arguments. were those arguments made to the commission in the context of the abc case? because as it comes up here, we are -- whereas i thought when we granted cert, quite honestly, that this was fox coming back, as i've read the

brief it isn't at all. this is a new case, nothing to do with what we decided before. this is the case of abc, period. and it is an attack on the 2001 guidelines, not fleeting expletives. and therefore, i want to know, at least satisfy myself, that this fox -- this abc case has gone through ordinary procedures and indeed these arguments have all been made in front of the commission and they have been rejected. >> so, justice breyer, i'm not sure that i can vouch for the proposition that the arguments have all been made in front of the commission. >> i'm not saying every one, but has the essence of these arguments -- >> in fairness, i do think that if one reads the commission's disposition of the abc case, it is applying the 2001 guidance reaching the conclusion that the broadcast was indecent under the 2001 guidance. abc paid the fine that it was assessed, and then, as it has -- as it can do,

then invoked the hobbs act and went to the court of appeals to challenge it. and so i do think -- i do actually think that the issues have been considered by the agency and are before the court. and i do agree with your honor, moving i think more directly to the vagueness point, that there really isn't a vagueness issue left with respect to the fleeting expletives in the fox case, because the court said the last time the case was here that there is no problem of arbitrary punishment because there was no forfeiture or any other sanction. abc is in a different position because they were sanctioned. and so there is an issue with respect to the question of whether the commission's indecency standards can constitutionally be applied here and whether they are too vague. but i do think, and i would like to spend a minute on that question of whether there is vagueness as applied to the abc broadcast.

now, the commission's standards in the 2001 guidance say that this is essentially a two-part test. first is a subject matter question: is there a description or depiction of sexual or excretory activities or organs? and then there is the question of whether the depiction or description is patently offensive under community standards for broadcast informed by three factors: whether the expression is explicit; whether the broadcast dwells on it; and whether it's shocking or pandering or titillating. now, abc makes an argument with respect to this broadcast that the nudity in the "nypd blue" episode is outside of the first subject matter criteria because it didn't have fair notice that buttocks would be considered sexual organs for purposes of application of this -- of this standard. the commission said, and this is at page 137a of the appendix

to the petition, that it's impossible to believe that they didn't think that the naked display of buttocks would bring them within -14 that they didn't have fair notice that the naked display of buttocks would bring them within this rule. i'm not sure anything more needs to be said about that. >> well, the broader point, general verrilli, isn't it, is that no matter -- even if you are right that there are many non-vague applications of this commission policy, that there is some amount of uncertainty and abc finds itself in that area of uncertainty -- >> i don't -- >> -- because it turns out that nudity -- that there really -- sometimes it's allowed as to some body parts and sometimes it's not allowed, and the commission hadn't really said anything about it for 50 years, and the length of time doesn't seem to be what's indicative of anything, the kind of body part doesn't seem to be, with some limits, what is indicative of anything, so that abc just didn't really know.

>> with respect, justice kagan, i really disagree with that characterization of the situation. moving to the second part of the analysis here, i think it's important to take a half a step back. the fact of the matter is, and i think everybody, all of us, understands in our experience, that nudity on broadcast television is an exceedingly, exceedingly rare thing at any time of the day, and certainly between 6:00 a.m. and 10 p.m. it is exceedingly rare, and all of us from our experience know that. and the -- >> well, i'm not so sure, because the examples were given of i guess excerpts from "private ryan" and from "schindler's list," have been on television. >> yes, that's true, justice ginsburg. but again i think that's another issue about where the lens is focused. there have been thousands and thousands and thousands of broadcasts, and the respondents have identified four in which -- over 25 years, in which any nudity has been present.

>> they have their own guidelines that generally prohibit it, don't they? >> that is certainty true, justice scalia. and i do think in reno this court described the carlin monologue at issue in pacifica in the following way. it said that monologue was readily identifiable as indecent because it was a dramatic departure from the customary norms for the broadcast medium. i think the kind of nudity -- and i think if one just looks at the video here and sees it, i think it's hard to disagree with the proposition that that is a dramatic departure from what's the norm for broadcast television. >> if they did an excerpt from "hair," could they televise that? >> i think it would raise serious questions. i think nudity is going to raise very serious questions, and i think -- >> in the opera in the "metropolis" case there's a scene where a woman is seen nude entering a bathtub. suppose

that were shown, that scene from the opera. >> well, i don't -- i think, justice ginsburg, that in a context-based approach, there's not going to be perfect clarity. we recognize that. but i do think with respect to this broadcast, and that's the question before the court, whether fox -excuse me, whether abc was on fair notice of whether this broadcast would bring them within the rule. >> what -- what you're saying is, is that there is a public value in having a particular segment of the media with different standards than other segments. and forget radio. let's just talk about television. but -- you know, in the briefs, it says how much -- how many cable stations there are, and you, what do you call it, you surf the -- you go through all the channels. and it's not apparent to many people which are broadcast and which are not. but you're saying that there's

still a value, an importance, in having a higher standard or different standard for broadcast media on the television. why is that, when there are so many other options, and -- and when it's not apparent to many viewers which of the two they're watching? just because it's an important symbol for our society that we aspire to a culture that's not vulgar in -- in a very small segment? >> two points in response to that, justice kennedy. first, i think the court's previous decision in this case goes a long way to providing an answer, that yes, it does make a difference to preserve a safe haven where if parents want to put their kids down in front of the television at 8:00 p.m., they know that there's a segment of what's available that -- where they're not going to have to worry about whether the kids are going to get bombarded with curse words or nudity. >> well, but --

>> but this goes >> and then there's -- and then there's the chip that's available. and of course, you ask your 15-year-old, or your 10-year-old, how to turn off of the chip. they're the only ones that know how to do it. that does point out the problem with the v-chip, of course, the v-chip is not new. it's been around for more than a decade, and the -- the broadcasters have tried to encourage uptake. the government has tried to encourage uptake. but -- but is your point is that the chip technology works better if you have this differentiation between broadcast and cable media? >> no, a different point. i think that -- i want to get to what i think is the fundamental point here, that whatever may be the case with respect to the ability of a viewer to differentiate whether something is a broadcast channel or a cable channel, the reality is that broadcasters are in a different position by virtue of the fact that they have a license from the government that comes with this

enforceable public obligation that allows the government to create this safe haven, and that puts them in a different position. >> well, in a way, that's circular. that's what we're here to argue about. i'm asking, is there a functional, pragmatic, practical difference between the two? >> is there -- well, i'm sorry, justice kennedy. the v-chip works with both broadcast and cable transmissions, to the extent it works. the -- what the briefs have pointed out -- and i would suggest in particular that the court look at the brief from the american academy of pediatrics, which does a very thorough job in explaining the many ways in which the v-chip has proven to be a deficient technology. a lot of it goes to the inaccuracy and incompleteness of the codes, the labels that the programmers put in to begin with, which have to be there in order for the v-chip to decide what gets through and what doesn't. and i would point out in this very case, for example, with

respect to the -- for example, the 2003 billboard music awards broadcast with the paris hilton-nicole richie back and forth, one would never have known from the code affixed for the v-chip purpose that that broadcast was going to have those kinds of words in them. >> what will happen when when we get to the point where -- when there are only a handful of people in the entire country who are still receiving television programs via the airwaves? >> well, i do think we're not there now, as we've said in our brief. >> we're almost there, right? 10 percent? >> but that -- but i think that really makes what i think is one of the most fundamental points here, is that the broadcasters want to have it both ways, right? they -- the spectrum licenses they have are worth billions and billions of dollars. spectrum is staggeringly, staggeringly scarce, and -- and they're

sitting on an enormously valuable resource which they got for free, and then they have a statutory benefit of must- carry, which gets them on cable systems automatically, and a further statutory benefit of preferred channel placement on -- on those -- >> sign -- sign me up as supporting justice kennedy's notion that this has a symbolic value, just as we require a certain modicum of dress for the people that attend this court and the people that attend other federal courts. it's a symbolic matter. and if this is -- these are public airwaves, the government is entitled to insist upon a certain modicum of decency. i'm not sure it even has to relate to juveniles, to tell you the truth. >> and we certainly agree, justice scalia, with the point

that was made in the court's previous decision in this case, that -- for example, the words that are in the fox broadcast, teachers don't use those words with students. you don't hear those words in churches or synagogues. you -there are many, many contexts -- >> well, you do more and more. you do more and more, since there's --[laughter] since there's so much of it on -- >> if i think if i may -- >> you are saying that the standard can still be symbolic, as justice scalia said. we want the king's english -- for the very children we're talking about when they go on the street, when they -- their big brother says something to them, it is -- the words that were, the expletives, are in common parlance today. i mean, it is -- i think that children -- the children are not going to be shocked by them the way they might have been a generation ago. >> justice ginsburg, something

this court said in its prior decision is right on the mark with respect to this issue, which is it's a question of whether it's portrayed as appropriate. and when it is -- it's one thing when your 13- year-old brother is saying it to you or some bully in the schoolyard's saying it to you. it's another when it's presented to you in this medium as an appropriate means of communication. that's true with respect to words, and it's also true with respect to nudity. if i might reserve the balance of my time. >> thank you, general. mr. phillips. >> thank you, mr. chief justice, and may it please the court: i'd like to respond initially to some of general verrilli's general observations. first of all, he talks about indecency as somehow serving as the core of the overall understanding of the regulatory deal that was made here. and it's difficult for me to accept that notion when there was no effort whatsoever to enforce the standard of indecency between 1927 and 1975. >> well, that's because broadcasts didn't commonly have this sort of -- these sorts of words or these sorts of images.

>> well, maybe, maybe not. we don't know. all we know is that for a period of 50 years, nothing happened, so the idea -- >> we know. we know. we can -- it was not the case from 1927 until whenever you -- what, 1970-something -- that nudity commonly appeared on broadcast television or the various words we're dealing with here commonly appeared. so it seems a bit much to say well, they didn't bring any cases for that period. there were no cases to be brought. >> the only point i'm trying to make, chief justice, is that if you're talking about this as sort of the core understanding between the parties, it simply played a fairly minor role in the process through the bulk of the regulatory period we're talking about. and indeed, if you put it in context, this is a statute that prohibits obscenity, profanity and indecency. and while the fcc spent a lot of time writing about profanity as somehow being offended by what went on in this omnibus order, the commission has completely abandoned that under the -- >> how about this, mr. phillips -- look, you've been given a

privilege and that gives the government at least somewhat more leeway to impose obligation on you. not -- can't impose everything, but at least has a bit more leeway. and here we've had something that's very historically grounded. we've had this for decades and decades that the broadcast is -- the broadcaster is treated differently. it seems to work and it -- it seems to be a good thing that there is some safe haven, even if the old technological bases for that safe haven don't exist anymore. so why not just keep it as it is? >> well, first of all, justice kagan, it was important to catch the answer to your question when you asked it of general verrilli, which was, you're not saying that we lose all of our first amendment rights. so clearly we retain our first amendment rights. and under those circumstances, it seems to me you've got just two ways. first of all, the idea that it, quote, "worked," it worked perfectly fine from all the way up until 2001, even i would say until 2004, when the commission wildly

changed its approach. and it's only become dysfunctional since 2004. and as we sit here today, literally facing thousands and thousands of ginned-up computer-generated complaints that are holding up literally hundreds of tv license renewals, so that the whole system has come to a screeching halt because of the difficulty of trying to resolve these issues. so to say that the system is working well seems to me, at least from the broadcasters' perspective, is to suggest that's just not true. >> well, you want us to overrule a decision of this court, pacifica? >> yes, justice. >> now, as to radio, what has changed? >> i'm not here -- >> -- to justify that? well, could we hold that the policy is invalid as to -- on first amendment grounds as to tv but not as to radio? >> absolutely, your honor, because there are fundamentally different media and there are different protections and the circumstances are different and the court has recognized that media have to be evaluated

individually. but what has happened over the 30 years with respect to the broadcast side of television is a very fundamental change. cable is now equally pervasive. cable is now equally accessible to tv, satellite equally accessible to tv. >> but that cuts both ways. people who want to watch broadcasts where these words or expose their children to broadcasts where these words are used, where there is nudity, there are 800 channels where they can go for that. all we are asking for, what the government is asking for, is a few channels where you can say i'm not going to -- they are not going to hear the s word, the f word. they are not going to see nudity. so the proliferation of other media it seems to me cuts against you. >> well, it seems to me there are two answers to that. first of all the notion that one medium operates in a certain way in the exercise of its first amendment rights can be used as an explanation for taking away or for restricting the first amendment rights of

another medium is flatly inconsistent with what this court has said across the board in the first amendment context. you don't balance off one speaker against another and give one favored status and give another unfavored status. >> well, that's your argument there, is that it's not a legitimate objective to have a safe harbor. >> well, you can get a safe harbor, and indeed there are a number of safe harbors that are out there. first of all, there are a ton of cable networks that are aimed exclusively at children. there are five, six, eight stations that i guarantee you where you will see none of that language. and second of all, it's always available to the united states government to decide to hold this -to create its own license for the united states to be a broadcaster and to ensure that the broadcasts of the united states public network exclude anything they want to exclude, because that's government speech, and it is in no way restricted by what the first amendment would provide. >> but if we rule in your favor on first amendment grounds, what will -- people who watch fox be seeing between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.? are they going

to be seeing a lot of people parading around in the nude and a stream of expletives? >> not under the guidelines that fox has used consistently from 10:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. and candidly that all of the other networks follow. the truth is the advertisers and the audiences that have to be responded to by the networks insist on some measure of restraint, not a measure of restraint -- >> so what will you put on that you are not able to put on now? >> well, some of the things that we could at least wonder about is "saving private ryan," "catch-22," perhaps the beginning of the olympics. there is a whole slew of questions, i mean. and if you go beyond that and you think about what speech has been chilled, the tillman memorial service is not broadcast because of fear of what's going to be said there. football games, basketball games, local news events -- >> all right, so suppose we take that particular line. you

didn't argue -- i mean, fox didn't argue -- fox was worried about the fleeting expletive policy in golden globe. i doubt in golden globe, when it was before the commission, they raised all these vagueness challenges to the whole 2001 policy. so why -- here you have taken a much broader stance, now, though you didn't before. i mean do you want to say anything about what i think is the basic issue that fox raises? we don't have to overrule pacifica. what fox was penalized for was two women on television who basically used a fleeting expletive which seems to be naturally part of their vocabulary. [laughter] >> and we're worried about small stations that cannot censor people because they don't know what they are going to say. all right, that is what we wrote, i think in my opinion, anyway. we were worried about that. >> right. >> are you abandoning that argument? >> no, no, no, of course not.

but you have to realize, justice breyer, i mean the second circuit, because it didn't have available to it sort of what to do precisely with pacifica, tended to focus on the question of vagueness. vagueness was certainly an argument that we made there, but -- >> it's an a, b, c argument primarily. but you made that argument in the second circuit. what i am fishing with, you don't have to comment more, but -- is do we have to reach that argument? it's -- >> no -- >> it's very, very broad. >> no. it's absolutely clear to me that if this court wants to say we decided the outer limits of the 1st amendment in pacifica and it goes to the verbal shock treatment that justice powell described in a separate opinion, and this doesn't come anywhere near that, and therefore this is beyond what the 1st amendment provides, the court can clearly hold that way and -- >> well, that's not really clear. i mean, if you want us to be really clear you should ask the fcc to simply outlaw any fleeting use of the f word or the s word, any shots of any nudity in any movie, buttocks included; that would give you

all of the notice that you need. why don't you propose that? boy, that's certain as can be. >> well, our basic argument would then -- i mean, obviously what -- you would be taking away the vagueness argument, but that would just bring you back then, justice scalia, to the core pacifica argument and the question of how far can the -- how is it permissible to allow the fcc to regulate the broadcast networks on standards that are fundamentally different than cable, the internet and every other medium that exists? i would be perfectly happy if they want to try to adopt those kinds of standards and subject them to the strict scrutiny requirements that this court applies to every other medium because the truth is those requirements will not withstand scrutiny under those particular standards. >> well, broadcast tv is living on borrowed time. it is not going to be long before it goes the way of vinyl records and 8 track tapes. >> i hope that -- i'm sure my client is not thrilled to have you say that. >> well, i'm sure -- i'm sure

your clients will continue to make billions of dollars on their programs which are transmitted by cable and by satellite and by internet. but to the extent they are making money from people who are using rabbit ears, that is disappearing. do you disagree with that? >> no, i -- it would be -- you know, obviously not, because that's why we are not uniquely accessible or uniquely pervasive. >> yeah. so why not let this die a natural death? or why do you want us to intervene -- >> well, because -- well, we didn't ask you to intervene, actually the fcc is going to ask you to intervene -- >> but you are asking us to intervene by overruling a prior precedent. >> well, i believe -- well, i think once the issue is before the court it ought to decide the 1st amendment question that's presented here. and the 1st amendment question says what can the fcc do under these circumstances. it seems to me there are probably 4 different ways you can go about it, all of which says what the fcc did here is wrong. you can say pacifica is an exceedingly narrow decision and it goes to the outer limits of what the

1st amendment allows the fcc to do. what they have done here is unconstitutional. >> but isn't the inevitable consequence or this precise consequence that you're arguing for on this fleeting expletive portion of this case, that every celebrity or want to be celebrity that is interviewed can feel free to use one of these words. we will just expect it as a matter of course, if you prevail. isn't that the necessary consequence of this case? >> well, that they will use it, perhaps. but that doesn't mean that we wouldn't continue to try to bleep it out as best we could. because we have our own -- >> well, i mean even you did in tis one, you said now remember you're on television, which was just -- giving an added incentive for these vulgar comments. >> well, that was clearly not -- i mean from fox's perspective it was not scripted to set it up that way. but, remember, the first -- the first expletive -- >> but, i mean, isn't it inevitable that this will happen? >> it is inevitable that -well, i think it's inevitable

regardless that people are going to continue to use language that they would naturally use. so yes, i do think you can expect on cable and any other forum in which you have humans speaking that this kind of language will expand. i don't know that it -- and it will probably be the case that in some context, particularly live television, which is really what is placed in jeopardy by this, that you will have less live television because your concern is people will continue to use this language. on a lot of awards shows i think it's candidly easier to go ahead and bleep this. it's not always -- it's not foolproof, but the stations are committed to doing that. they have all got their standards and that was applied in this particular case. so while there may be some marginal increase in it, if you compare it to the use of this language beyond the broadcast context, it is just the narrowest of slivers of entry -- >> do you think that there is a difference between what a person sees on broadcast channels and what a person sees

on basic cable? basic cable now? >> can the average child understand of the difference between the two -- >> no, in content. is there a difference in content? because basic cable channels are not restricted by these rules, and i am just wondering whether you think there is a difference. because it has not been apparent to me that there is. >> well, i mean, in some show --i think it probably depends on which -- which channels you -- you look at, and even in the basic channels. but the -- there is a cartoon that is significantly more adult that is on the cable channels than the cartoons that you might see on the -- on the fox television. so yes, i think there is probably a certain edgierness to it, but that said, it's still clear that -- that as long as you have advertising revenue that -- that drives a significant amount of the decisionmaking here, you are going to have the kind of self- restraint that frankly ought to cause the court to say we should no -- we no longer need to treat the broadcast medium as the weak sister of -- of the media.

and therefore they ought to have the same protections that everybody else has, and that they will engage in the same restrained approach to these kinds of issues that newspapers do -- i mean, the post doesn't run the language of the case that's - that's being argued before it -- that cable does, all of those media do; because there are natural restraints. you don't need the federal communications commission any longer to ensure under these circumstances. >> what you acknowledge to be the vulgarity of cable suggests otherwise, doesn't it? >> well, i'm not suggesting that there is -- there is some kind of wildly different approach. all i am suggesting is that there -- that in general most people who -- who rely upon advertising and have to play to a particular audience in order to make their money, it's going to -- it's going to obviously be restrained. >> well, that depends what your audience -- >> but at a minimum broadcasting will be -- >> it depends on what audience

you're -- you're trying to get, and the demographic. if you are trying to get an audience that is older, maybe you will decide this is what is going to attract them. they don't want sanitized language. they want to hear the -- the -- all those other words. if your target is a much younger audience, maybe that will happen. but the idea that you're -- the problem is going to go away because you are going to be good as you can be, that seems an odd way to analyze first amendment problems. >> well, no, i think it ought to go -- it ought to be analyzed the exact opposite, which is that -- that the -- the obligation, the burden rests on the federal communications commission and congress to show that there is a real problem that needs to be solved and that this is narrowly tailored to achieve that. thank you. >> thank you, mr. phillips. mr. waxman. >> mr. chief justice, and may it please the court: when the issue is the content-

based regulation of speech, it is the government, not the speaker, that must steer, quote, "far wide of the prohibited zone." that foundational principle is nowhere in evidence in the fcc's current enforcement regime, which not only intrudes into the prohibited zone but also enforces the indecency ban in a starkly inconsistent manner. a regime in which government officials decide years after the fact that 7 seconds of rear nudity in this particular episode of "nypd blue" is indecent, but 40 seconds of nudity including full frontal nudity in "catch-22" is not; that expletives in a documentary about blues musicians is indecent, but even more of those expletives in a fictional movie about world war ii is not, is constitutionally intolerable.

>> people understand -what you have demonstrated i think is that the context matters. people understand that, including children. when they hear a bad word when someone hits their thumb ith a hammer, they understand that's different than having an adult stand in normal conversations and use the words. and it seems to me that your position is saying that the government cannot regulate with an understanding of what takes place in the real world. the government's effort is to try to understand the context. that's why you get a different rule in "saving private ryan" than you get with paris hilton and nicole richie. and what your argument seems to be is they can't take context into account. >> on -- quite the contrary. this court made clear, in particularly justice powell's concurrence in pacifica, that context is all-important. and just look at this case. despite -- and this goes directly to some of these questions about nudity -despite decades of denying complaints

about televised nudity, the commission chose this case for the first time to sanction nudity on television in serious drama that had been on for 10 years that had featured over -- >> but this wasn't -- i mean, i -- don't know about this instance. it's called "nude awakening," it's about the sexual awakening of a child. you ran it, your client, after 10:00 on both coasts and they choose to run it at 9:00 for some unknown reason in the midwest. maybe they thought -- i don't know, whatever. >> i -- >> but my point is what the fcc terribly told you to do was run it 1 hour later in the midwest, just as you did on the coast. >> yes. >> and -- and why is that not -- i'm not saying, taking this point of view, but i'm saying why -- isn't that just time,

manner and circumstance that puts you to very little trouble, and allows everybody to see it, and therefore is constitutional? >> the -- this is not some sort of obscure, unknown reason. this show was run across the country in the last hour of prime time which happens to be from 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. in the midwest and mountain time zones. >> because you wanted to make more money from it, i understand that. and maybe people would have been a little bit inconvenienced, but the inconvenience -- they made a judgment that looking at this show is not like "private ryan," it's about sexual awakening; they are showing a part of a nude woman, the viewer is supposed to put himself in the position of the boy who is seeing her, and the whole thing was titillating. now they might be wrong; there are two sides to that argument; and so i guess what you are

arguing is, if i were to say is that a reasonable view -- i guess i would have to say it. but you have to say much -- you are telling me i have to say much more than that. >> well, number -- yes. number one, it is not a reasonable view, for reasons i will explain. it was not sexual awakening; this was a portrayal in the context of a story line about the difficulties and embarrassments of blended families. this was an exploration of one of the things that happens, which is a little boy stumbles in and watches a woman in the quotidian activity of preparing her morning shower. in any event, the commission for years had been adjudicating complaints about nudity, and i -- >> all right. >> it is simply untrue -- it is simply untrue that this had never occurred before. "nypd blue" itself was in its tenth season. the very first episode which caused a lot of media attention included a nude scene of love making. it was the

subject of any number of complaints. >> you're going off the question. >> okay. >> which -- you haven't seen where i'm going. i wanted you to say just exactly what you said, and you did, which i thank you -- [laughter] >> and -- and my question, which i have been trying to get so you would see very precisely what it is, is why don't i just say, if you are right, just what you said? and say this is an instance, case-by-case, in which, for the reasons and i quote you, that the first amendment forbids the application of a good guideline to this case. in other words, what i'm driving at is the basic thing that's worrying me here: does this case in front of us really call for the earthshaking decision that you all have argued for in the -- in the briefs? and that's what i'm trying to figure out, and that's why i am particularly worried about whether or not this whole big argument here was presented to the fcc about whether we have to reach that far. now do you

see where i was trying to get? >> i think so. >> all right. >> and if not, i -- i hope you will tell me. first of all, the -- the -- both the first amendment and fifth amendment issues were fully argued in front of the commission, and the commission addressed them in its decision in the abc case. -- of course, didn't ask the or suggest to the commission that it should no longer apply pacifica because the factual predicates for more relaxed scrutiny didn't apply, as we didn't in the second circuit, because only this court can reconsider the application of that standard. so that's an argument we are making here. that argument is not necessary to resolving this case, either on first or fifth amendment grounds. this broadcast -- and particularly in light of the ubiquitous v-chip, this broadcast is not actionably indecent under pacifica, number one. with respect to notice or the vagueness of the application

to this show, clearly this was a shot out of the blue. the commission cannot identify -- i challenge the commission to identify a single decision of the commission issued before this was broadcast in 2003 in which it had sanctioned any display of nudity, and i'm going all the way back to 1978. >> by -- by sanctioned, you mean punished as rather -- as opposed to sanctions? >> yes, yes, yes. sanctioned in the "ouch" sense. [laughter] >> how many displays -- how many displays of nudity were there that -- that went unsanctioned? >> well, for -- i can't tell you, but i can tell you -- >> well, i mean, if there are very few, it's -- it's not a very powerful argument. >> well, i -- i think it's a powerful argument. let me explain the ones that i know of. 1978, the commission's decision in wgbh, which complained about scenes of explicit nudity in "monty python's flying circus": denied. "catch-22," 40 seconds of

nudity, including 10 seconds of full frontal female nudity: denied. the four or five decisions that we cite -that we discuss on page 18 of our brief, and that are appended to the merits brief of the abc affiliates -- i can't remember whether it's 12 or 16, but more than a dozen episodes of "nypd blue" itself that included displays -- graphic displays of nudity during the prior nine seasons. complained about and not adjudicated. that is the backdrop against which - >> but i -- >> that's what you've got -- >> -- looked and found 17, looked and -- i'm sorry. >> that's what you've got over 85 years. >> well, first of all, we don't have television broadcasts over

85 years, and since there were no reported decisions of any indecency enforcement until pacifica, i think it's only fair, as you pointed out yourself, to look at what the commission has been addressing. they're right now -- i mean, you know, i've cited the ones that are the subject of commission decisions. i haven't cited the ones -- i haven't attempted to hypothesize about all the other instances, but let's just look at what's at stake here. because the issue, justice breyer, is not just notice to abc in this case, the question is whether the standards -- the commission's standards as it's currently applying them are so vague and capacious that they not only permit arbitrary action, but they are engaging in arbitrary action. right now, as -- as mr. phillips suggested, the commission has pending before it, which it has not denied for years, complaints about the opening episode of the

last olympics, which included a statue very much like some of the statues that are here in this courtroom, that had bare breasts and buttocks. it -- it has refused to say that "catch-22" -- it's "catch-22" -- right over here, justice scalia. [laughter] >> well, there's a bare buttock there, and there's a bare buttock here. and there may be more that i hadn't seen. but frankly, i had never focused on it before. but the point - justice scalia: me neither. [laughter] >> could -- could abc or anybody else rebroadcast the "roots" series? could it rebroadcast "catch-22," which the commission is now here saying, oh, no, no, no, that was just our staff, that wasn't us. in the "saving private ryan" context, where the commission did say as a commission: not actionably indecent. >> but your only conclusion from that is that they can't have any rule. >> no. >> what is -- i looked through the briefs; i don't see what you're -- tell me where in these briefs do you suggest what the

rule ought to be. >> in our brief, we don't suggest what the rule ought to be, because a, it's not our burden; b, it's not yours; and c, there are any number of options. >> well, we -- well, we have to anticipate what the natural results or consequences of our decision will be. >> sure. >> as i understand it, the same rules that we apply to obscenity for printed material under your view would apply to television. >> well, those rules certainly would apply. and before i -- >> in other words, if it's -if it's not obscene, you can publish it. period. >> no, no, no. i'm not suggesting that the indecency proscription in the statute cannot be applied in a constitutional way. i can give you four different -- >> well, i thought that was the whole gravamen of your argument.\ >> no. our -- our arbitrariness argument is that we now have a standard that employs nonexclusive factors that use

capacious, vague words that can be balanced any way the commission wants to without explanation for what all the factors are. >> but isn't that inherent in a context-based approach? unless you have an approach that says there are certain body parts you can never show, then aren't you going to get into -- isn't someone going to be able to come up and say you have this broadcast and you said that's okay, and this one, you said is not okay? >> it certainly is not. and i can offer the court or perhaps the commission four approaches it could take to reduce the astonishing vagueness of the current - >> are they in the briefs? can you just cite the pages where i will find the alternatives to the present system that don't jump obscenity alone. >> i don't know the pages. let me just -- i can't remember the pages. let me just outline what i think four different things that could ameliorate the vagueness of the current regime. first of all, the fcc could revert back to it's quote "emphatically narrow enforcement regime," which acknowledged one, that it had to defer to reasonable judgments of the broadcasters,

and not exercise the -- an editorial eye looking at camera angles, whether something was or wasn't necessary to the message. number 2 -- >> i -- i'm going to let you get all four out. but on that, the reasonable deference to the broadcasters, your policy was not to allow people in the situation of paris hilton and nicole richie to use those words. so if they deferred to your reasonable judgment, your friend's reasonable judgment, they would sanction those. >> i am not owning nicole richie, and i think the best answer to the nicole richie point is that there is a scienter requirement in the statute that, you know, would preclude the application to a good-faith effort. but let me just -- >> okay. go on to number 2. >> i'll just go back. well, no. there are three parts to number 1. i'm not being -- [laughter] >> your time's -- i think you are. your time is about to expire. if you want to get your four points out, you'd better move. >> okay. the first one is to revert back to the prior

enforcement regime that existed before 2004, which deferred to reasonable judgments, was restricted to material that is not momentary exposure but is dwelled upon. and that as pacifica explained, was egregious material akin to depictions of erotic activity. the second thing they could do is make this three-factor test -- or however many factors it is -- a test, not just a nonexclusive list of an infinite number of factors that could or couldn't be balanced in any way the commission wants to. even if it wants to leave it as factors -- and this is number 3 -- it could at least identify what they are, and apply them consistency -consistently through adjudication that explains why one over-balances the other, which it certainly did not do in this case. and it also could clean up the actual form of the words that it uses, referring, for example, to sexually explicit or excretory activities. thank you, mr. chief justice.

>> thank you, counsel. general verrilli, you have 4 minutes remaining. >> thank you, mr. chief justice. first with respect to the notion of self restraint on the part of broadcasters, i think a little history is in order here. the commission started with the rule that came out of pacifica. what it faced in the 1980's, with that being the outer bound of the commission's authority, was the explosion of the shock jock phenomenon, howard stern and bubba the love sponge and the rest of it which didn't use any of the seven words in the carlin monologue, but which was highly vile and lewd, and it required the commission to make a judgment. now, that was all advertising sponsored broadcast. and so i do think the

risk of the race to the bottom is real, and i think history is showing it. >> general, i think that the, the networks really are saying: well, even if some regulation is permissible, the kind of regulation that the fcc has done here is regulation that gives it complete discretion as to what kind of speech to go after and what not to go after; that it has not tied itself in any way to any kinds of standards. and, it's, you know, evident in the notion that this -- the way that this policy seems to work, it's like nobody can use dirty words or nudity except for steven spielberg and that there's a lot of room here for fcc enforcement on the basis of what speech they think is kind of nice and proper and good. and so that's a serious first amendment issue. >> i -- well, i disagree. first, that's the lens problem again. we are talking about a tiny, tiny number of the

broadcasts that occur in a month, much less a year, much less a decade. so the idea that there's a significant first amendment problem that encompasses a wide variety of broadcast expression, i just don't think comports with the facts. second, i do think if one looks at the corpus of decisions that the commission has made about what is indecent and what isn't, i think one can see with respect to the large majority of them, the vast majority of them that it is clear which side of the line something fell on. yes, there is isn't perfect clarity, there are going to be some hard cases, but they really have identified where is, in the great scheme of things, a trivial number of hard cases. i don't think one can say that this is a situation like in reno which there is effectively no standard at all. in reno, this court distinguished the pacifica situation eight ways to sunday, and i think we've identified them in our brief and those are valid. i do think there is a significant problem with thinking about pacifica as the outer bound of the commission's authority under the

first amendment in addition to the shock jock problem. of course -- >> even though the justices involved said this is a narrow decision, both justice stevens and justice powell. >> yes, and, justice ginsburg, that is true and the principles the commission continues to apply are narrow principles. this is not -- this is not something that covers a vast array of speech on broadcast. it's a tiny fraction. and so -- and i do think if you are talking about pacifica as the outer bound, the consequences of the shock jocks are fine; the super bowl half time episode with janet jackson is fine. you can have as many of these seven second episodes of "nypd blue" as you want. that's all fine. in fact, anything that isn't at that extreme level -- >> but on the other side, you'd better be careful about calling certain people, certain artists to be interviewed because we know it's unscripted. they are going to risk that they are going to say something they shouldn't say. >> but i -- a couple answers

there. one is the delaying bleeping technology, justice ginsburg, and the other one is that there is a scienter requirement under the commission's enforcement authority here. and so in that situation, it seems highly unlikely you had would have the requisite scienter that could lead to a forfeiture. >> maybe the third is you shouldn't interview these people. >> let me spend, if i could, a minute on the "nypd blue" broadcast. the -- abc hinges a lot on the notion, justice breyer, that this is a non- sexualized episode. i mean, i guess one could make up ones own mind looking at the video. the commission decided that that was -- it was essentially voyeurism. the -- >> finish your sentence, please. >> thank you. the little boy walks into the room at the very end of that -- of that segment of nudity, and i do think that fully vindicates the commission's judgment with respect to the nature of that broadcast. >> thank you, general. >> next president obama

discusses consolidating some agencies. a mitt romney town hall with veterans and hiltonhead. >> and this episode of that fact check video, we will look at mitt romney surprising comments about climate change. >> think there are a substantial amount of scientists that have manipulated data. >> i re to different comments from politicians on a 1-4 scale. if you say something complete out bridges, you will get for pinocchio's. if you say something slightly misleading you might get one pinocchio. >> glen ridge the truthfulness of political figures and others. >> i do think if a politician

says the same thing over and over again, they know they are saying something untrue. they are going to say it anyway. >> glenn kessler, sunday night at 8:00. >> president obama has elevated small business to cabinet level status. he has urged congress to give him authority to purchase six, starting agencies into one. his remarks are about 20 minutes. >> ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. >> good morning everybody. please have a seat. welcome to the white house. i see all kinds of small

business people here, and i am thrilled to have you here. as a small-business owners, you know as well as anybody if we are going to rebuild an economy that lasts, an economy that creates good middle-class jobs, we are all going to have to up our game. the other day i met with business leaders who are doing their part by in sourcing and by bringing jobs back to the united states. i told them that if you are willing to keep asking yourself what you can do to bring jobs back, i will make sure you have a government that helps to succeed. that is why we are here today. i ran for office pledging to make our government leaner, smarter, and more consumer friendly. from the moment i got here i saw up close what many of you believe to be untrue. the government we have is not the government we need it. we live in a 21st century

economy but we still have a government organized for the 20th century. our economy has fundamentally changed. our government agencies have not. the needs of our citizens have fundamentally changed, but their government has not. instead it has often grown more complicated and sometimes more confusing. i will give you a few examples. there are five different entities dealing with houses. there are more than one dozen agencies dealing with food safety. my sixth -- my favorite example that i mentioned in last year's state of the union address, the interior department is in charge of salmon and fresh water but the commerce department handles them in saltwater. if you are wondering what the genesis of this was, 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 or nonprofit leader would allow this kind of duplication or unnecessary complexity in their operations. you would not do it when you are thinking about your business. why is it ok for our government? it is not. it has to change. what we have had -- what we have tried to do over the first three years of my administration is do a whole lot of steps administratively to try to make processes and agencies more consumer friendly. we need to do more. we need authority to do more. today i am calling on congress

to reinstate the authority that past presidents have had to streamline 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 only use this authority for reforms that result in more efficiency, better service, and a leaner government. now, a little bit of history here. congress first granted this authority to presidents and the best of the great depression so they could swiftly reorganize the consent of branch to respond to the immediate challenges of the depression. for the next 52 years, presidents were able to streamline or consolidate the executive branch by submitting a proposal to congress that was able to have a simple up or down a boat.

-- vote. in 1984, congress stopped granting that authority. when the process was lost in the congressional procedures, it to bog it down. congressional committees fought to protect their turf and the lobbyists fought to keep things the way they were because they were the only ones that could navigate the confusion. it is always easier to add and subtract in washington. inertia prevented any real reform from happening. the department of homeland security was created to consolidate security agencies but congress did not consolidate on its side. the department of homeland security reports to over 100 different congressional panels. that is a lot of paper work and

a lot of reports to prepare. that is not adding value or making us safer to file a bunch of reports all of the time. it has been a generation since a president had the authority to propose a streamlining the government that allowed for real change to take place. imagine all of the things that have happened since 1984. 1984, we did not have the internet to take one example. a generation of americans have come of age. the cold war has given way to globalization. so much has happened and yet the government we have today is largely the government we had back then. we deserve better. don't talk to the skilled professionals in the government who are serving their country. you will not meet harder working folks and some of the folks in these federal agencies.

they devote countless hours to try to make sure they are serving the american people. they will tell you their efforts are constantly undermined by an outdated bureaucratic mess. if you go talk to ordinary americans including some of the small business leaders here today, they will tell you that to deal with government on a regular basis is not always the highlight of their day. over a past three years, we have tried to take some steps to fix the problem. to bring our government into this century and in doing so to read out waste. we made sure the government sends checks to the right people in the right about. it should be obvious. we have been able to prevent it 20 -- billion dollars and waste

to make sure checks are spent properly and we reduce our areas -- errors. we cut a whole range of overlapping programs. we have tried to yank the federal government in the 21st century when it comes to technology and making sure everything we do a little more web a friendly. that helps in terms of accountability and transparency because the government can -- the public can get on whitehouse.gov and see what is happening at the track where money goes. we have done a lot but we need to do more. today i am outlining changes we could make if congress gives the green light to allow us to modernize and streamline. these changes would help small business owners like you. it would also help medium and large businesses. as a consequence, it would

create more jobs, sell more products overseas, grow our economy faster and improve our quality of life. right now there are six departments and agencies focus primarily on business and trade and the federal government. the commerce department, small business of the nasturtium, -- administration. it produces redundancy and inefficiency. with the authority i am requesting today, we could consolidate them all into one compartment with one website and 1 and one mission -- helping american businesses succeed. that is the big idea. [applause]

we have 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 spoke with businesses including hundreds of small businesses to hear what works and what does not when you deal with the government. what is frustrating and what is a value added. frankly in those conversations we found some unsatisfied customers. we heard that the individual who i am working with is really helpful to me but the process itself is too confusing. most of the complaints were not about an unresponsive federal worker, they were about a system that was too much of a maze. take a look at this slide. i do not easily use props in my

speeches. i thought this was useful. this is the system that small- business owners face. this is what they have to deal with if they want even the most basic answers to the most basic questions like how to export to a new country or whether they qualify for a long period by the way, this is simplified because there are some color codes. the business owners do not get the blue and the purple. there is a whole host of web sites, all kinds of toll free numbers and service centers. each are offering different assistance. it is a mess. this should be easy for small business owners. they want to concentrate on creating products and services

and selling it to customers. we are supposed to make it easy on them. there are some tools we can put in place that every day would help small business owners across the country. we waste 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 or entrepreneur is could go on the day they come up with an idea and need a patent to the day the start building a product and it need financing to the day they want to export and break into new markets overseas. one website, easy-to-use, clear -- one department or all of our trade agencies will work together to make sure businesses could better export. one department dedicated to helping businesses sell their products that the 95% of global customers who live beyond our

shores. with this authority, we could help businesses grow, save businesses time, save taxpayer dollars. this is just one example of what we could do. the contrast between this and this. it sums up what we could do on the business side. these kind of inefficiencies' exist across government. there is a real opportunity for us to rethink reform and remake our government so it can meet the demands of our time. it is worthy of the american people and so it works. this should not be a partisan issue. congress to reinstate the authority in the past it has given to democratic and republican presidents for decades. in the meantime as long as the 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 elevate -- 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 will make sure small- business owners have their own seat at the table at our cabinet meetings. we will also unveil the new website, business usa. it will consolidate information that right now is spread apart all of these various sites. this way it is all in one place and easy to search. with or without congress, i will keep at it. it would be a lot easier if

congress helped. this is an area that should receive bipartisan support. making our government stronger and leaner -- 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 up and 40,000 feet. these abstract arguments about who is conservative or who is liberal. most americans and most small- business owners, you guys are trying to figure out how do we make things work. how do we apply common sense? that is what this is about to. i will keep fighting every day to rebuild this economy so hard work pays off, responsibilities are awarded, and we have a government that is helping create a foundation for a

credible energy entrepreneur ship that all of you represent. i will keep fighting to make sure middle-class families regain security they have lost over the last decade. i believe this is a bank or break moment for families who are trying to get into the middle class, folks who are trying to start businesses. there is enormous potential out there. the trend lines and our global economy is moving in our direction toward innovation, openness, and it transparency. we have to take advantage of it. you need a strong ally in an effective, lean government. [applause] thank you very much everybody. thank you. [applause]

>> next, c-span is the road to the white house coverage from south carolina continues with a mitt romney town hall in hilton head. then a candidates forum with newt gingrich and rick santorum. after that, the fcc vs fox television oral argument. >> chris matthews on the potential political maneuverings in the presidential debate. >> nixon gets control of it. he brings a lot of the temperature in the room down to 40 degrees. again, he is with bill wilson. wilson goes racing down to the basement and finds the guy in charge of the thermostat. a nixon guy is standing guard on the thermostat. he said if you do not get out of the way and let me turn it up to 65 or 70, i am calling the

police. they ended up compromising on the temperature. the whole idea was that did not want richard nixon to sweat. they said, we would not let this happen again. they all knew what was going on. this is about who is going to roll in america. >> this weekend, chris matthews new book "jack kennedy." on "book tv." >> i believe it is important to emphasize that while it is great to have this memorial to his memory and it is great to have streets and schools and hospitals named in his honor all over our nation and world, it is also important not to place too much emphasis on martin luther king day, the idol, and not enough emphasis on the ideals of

martin luther king, jr. >> take a look online at the c- span video library. search, it is what you want when he wants. >> republican presidential candidates mitt romney speaks to veterans in hilton head, south carolina. he is joined by john mccain, john bolton, and the south carolina's governor nikki haley. it will hold the republican primary on january 21. this is about one hour. ♪

>> thank you so much. what a great crowd. i 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 where 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 and making it a sense of pride for our country. going in as a governor of a liberal state, cutting taxes 19 times within 85% democratic legislature, and balancing their budget.

couldn't 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 voting for a personality will get you. we are a proud military family. michael loves 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 know governor romney will give us, he understands you strengthen 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] we should use picture id to vote. the department of justice has called us on that, but the governor will stand by our side on that and allow us to have 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 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, whatever 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 and trashing private enterprise. i ask you to join me -- it is a dangerous hill 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 this year, but how cool when it be if president 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. 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. one 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 to stand up for american ideals, that is ambassador john bolton. [applause] with michael here, 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, they came to me -- if you 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 play 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 them 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 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 called to say that you were calling. they e-mailed their buddies and they e-mailed the spouses to say to 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 end 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." they would either wait until i was finished or interrupt me and say, "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 damn 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 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. 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 debt on america than 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 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, our 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 air force, 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 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 a 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 hostile. i believe the best peace is a strong america, not a weak 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 it. 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 crafted our national documents -- 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, where people, based on their education, and hard work, their willingness to take risks, the dreams, these things and left certain individuals to become so successful, they 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 who takes his inspiration from the european style welfare state. it has a vision of an entitlement society rather than an opportunity society. an entitlement society, government takes from some to give to others. the only people who do well are the people who do 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 mom took us around to the national parks. we had a rambler, remember those? [laughter] i knew what my parents were doing.

they want us to fall in love with america. and i did. i am troubled as i watch 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 "america the beautiful." "purple mountain majesty across

the fruited plains." when i was in iowa, i liked to pretend that corn qualified. [laughter] "o 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 were the principles that would guide us for centuries. those who 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] one more verse. "o beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life." we have one of those heroes today. senator john mccain. [applause] >> thank you very much. [applause] >> wasn't 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, 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 a 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]

[no audio] one of them turns to the other one says, the food was a lot better in here when you were governor. [laughter] in some states you cannot tell that joke. [laughter] is anyone from illinois? [laughter] i would like to say, thank you for serving. 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 through some dark times a. and our nation and the world stands 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 his 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. as soon as that campaign was over, no one campaigned harder for me than mitt romney. we spent time together with our families. i got to know and respect 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 friends, mitt romney knows how to restore america's economy. we are hurting in south

carolina. we are hurting in arizona. in my home state,a little less than half of the homes are underwater. worth less than their mortgage payments. 10% unemployment here in south carolina. for two years, this president had majorities in both houses of congress. what did he do? he dug us deeper in debt. we cannot stand that any more. we can talk about vision, 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 believes 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 creator 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 who 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 barry goldwater in the united states senate. on election night, when i was elected, he said, if i would have 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 the world, they believe we are in retreat. they believe we are leaving. we left iraq without a residual force. 4474 brave young americans sacrificed their lives and thousands were wounded. losingthe war and we're the peace. in afghanistan, the president is pulling our troops out of

iraq before we finish the part that needs to be done in the eastern part of afghanistan. 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 he will. i believe in america and its future. you believe 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 in iowa, and he won in 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 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,"vote early, and vote often." [laughter] [applause] and now john bolton. >> thank you. thank you very much. [applause] thank you very much. 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 economy if we cannot protect america's interest and our friends and allies around the world. this president has done almost everything possible to weaken 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. navy 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 has 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 been only the most radical president in history domestically, he is the first president, republican or democrat, since franklin roosevelt, who does not get up every morning thinking first about threats 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 has reduced our missile defense program. he has taken something that ronald reagan conceived in the mid-1980's 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 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 bet 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. 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, will not falter in a crisis, and who does not believe the role of america in the world is to be a well- bred doorman. [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 who have questions or comments or insults. if you would just raise your hand. >> [inaudible] i have a question. where did you hide the teleprompters? [laughter] [applause] >> thank you.

>> governor romney, i am for you, but i need to ask you a personal question. do you believe in the divine saving 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 president will be president of the people of all faiths. [applause] our nation was founded on the principle of religious tolerance and liberty. we 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 faiths. 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 in our early years. 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 stopped us. i asked the governor what he would do with our illegal immigration reform bill. >> i support it. [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 fense, have enough border patrol agents to defend it, and crackdown on employers who 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, 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 where 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 through 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 through the legal process 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. >> i would like to thank you very much. >> 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. -- they've hacked 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. [applause] someone came up to me and said,

how do we make sure that 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 by an unconstitutional of women of members of the nlrb. -- appointment 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 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 wash my hands regularly. i use hand sanitizer to