the way i like to look at it, one of the first thing is taught in macroeconomics is that the share of national and come that a cruise -- income that accrues -- it looks like it is going down. it is supposed to be constant over time. the reason is happening, we are living through a dramatic change in terms of a globalized labour market or increasingly globalized labour market. there are lots of estimates, but basically, effectively, the labor supply has doubled to quadrupled at the same time the global capital supply has not.

the result of that shift is a downward trajectory and labour's share of national income. if you want to understand some of the frustration that people are clearly expressing, one way of looking at that is that if the labour share had been constant instead of declining labor would be earning $500 billion-$750 billion a year greater. no one has any great ideas and exactly what to do about it. you have a lot of frustration but got a lot of policy prescription to address it. the manifestation again, one of them is the declining labor share. the other is stagnant, real wages for many american workers. this chart shows you what is happening to the worker at the fiftieth percentile, right in

the middle of the wage distribution of the united states. the red line shows you that those working full time year round, their earnings have been flat. once you include the people that don't have full-time work on the blue line, if anything, there has been some decline. it has been shown in family income as well. the bottom line is for married couples right at the fiftieth percentile where there is only one spouse working. and not surprisingly given earnings have been flat, our earnings distribution family income has been flat if there is only one worker. the reason that we have had some modest uplifted median income, the top line, is solely because it is increasingly likely that both spouses work. that is the underlying

tectonics' plates shifted being driven not only by technological change that we can discuss in addition, but transportation costs and a globalized labor pool that is causing a significant shift. i also mentioned that to date, it has affected those up to the seventy fifth percentile disproportionately. i strongly suspect that it is reaching out further into the income distribution. anything that can be digitized is subject to the same force. it opens up a series of other occupations and skill sets relative to the effects that were primarily felt in the past. what about the overlay of the surface waves we have been living through? one way of looking at that is to examine total private-sector borrowing. in the united states, it reached a 30% of gdp in 2007. in 2009, is m wasinus -- it

was minus 15% of gdp. it would count as economic trauma under any definition of that term. if it was 40%. the result has been, as with most experiences with other countries have suggested, a sluggish recovery. it is fundamentally different to a downturn caused by excess inventory, the central bank tries towring inflation out of the economy -- trying to wring inflation out of the economy. is hard slog. money, ms. live through this kind of thing the recovery is hard becauseit takes time to deleverage. it has the housing sector feeding on to a weak economy and back on the housing sector. it takes time to work its way through.

that is what has been happening in the united states. this is the share of the population that are working. you can see it falls off a cliff at the same time the total private sector borrowing the financial crisis, hit. the key thing, it has not come back. it has remained at a subdued level for the past two or three years. this is fundamentally different from other recent downturns. we're the red line there. the one that falls that doesn't go anywhere. the other recent downturns are of less severe in the collapse of employment to population ratio or the share of the population working, and they tend to come back more quickly. i would also note that every single formal macro econometric

model, from the federal reserve, private sector forecasts, they all got this wrong. in the beginning of 2009 they were suggesting a rapid and more v-shaped recovery. despite the fact that a financial crisis is different from other downturns. for example, for this year if you look at the forecast from the congressional budget office, in january 2009, they were projecting an unemployment rate for 2012 of 6.8%. anyone willing to take that bet with me has to take the other side of if we are going to hit 6.8% or not this year. fundamentally, the nature of this l-shaped recovery was absent from every single formal model.

the only people that got that right were basing their analysis on history or some other process, not a formal model. the lesson i take away from that, there are lots of people that will walk around with very precise estimates of a fundamentally on certain things and you have to pay attention to uncertain things, and you have uncertainty. frankly, we can still do -- i there are lots of things we could have done in response to the uncertainty. will give you one example. there is a lot of debate over whether the initial 2009 stimulus should have been a lot bigger. i did not think that would be legislatively possible but let's say that congress would have voted for -- i wish i could tell you it would have been the case. but a $1.20 trillion stimulus. this is a very temporary

problem, it would have all been delivered in 2009 and early 2010. 2010 would be stronger, but 2011 and 2012 would not have been that much different at all. what it misses is the time dimension. it would be far better to tie things to the unemployment ratios of that they remain in force as long as the economy is weak. and then they disappear as the economy recovers rather than pretendthere is false precision at the end of this year, that support will no longer be necessary. where are we in this hard slog? we are part of the way through it but not all of the way through it. the only debate is if we are mostly or halfway through. this is one way of looking at that phenomenon. the share of vacant homes,

share of homes offered for sale that are vacant, it goes up following the financial crisis. it is on its way down, but we are depending on the estimates between 500,001 million more homes vacant and being offered for sale that under normal -- 500,000 and 1 million more homes vacant and being offered for sale than under normal conditions. so there is a tectonics' shift and surface waves to the financial crisis. with regard to the latter, it is a simpler set of solutions. my solution would be more support for the economy now coupled with a deficit reduction that is enacted mal to take effect over time. -- enacted now to take effect over time. with an elevated the unemployment rate, debt rises

quickly. combine it with a deficit reduction that takes us back with delay. the underlying tectonic plate shift by contrast is much harder to respond to. typically, what we argue is that what we need to do is more education and better more investment in infrastructure. those will help, but this force is so powerful that we should not hold up the false hope that we will online dollar that. -- have to unwind all of that. let's look at what is possible there. in education. it is often not noticed that we have had, up until those that

were born in about 1950 or so, wind at our back, from reaching educational attainment. the rate of increase has slowed dramatically. those born 1950 and after educational attainment has risen, but not as fast as earlier generations. you can see earlier in this slide that breaks it down into different time periods between 1940 and 1960, it is mixing that a bit. the supply of college graduates is growing very rapidly. this is for the actual years sorry. today, there is much less rapid growth. there is still an increase in college enrollment, but it is rising at a slower rate than

previously. that diminishes the underlying economic productivity growth. another effect of it is to raise the premium for college workers. since supply is growing less rapidly and at the same time we have at the technological change in the underlying tectonics' played shift that raises the demand for college workers, you have a right not and how much college-educated workers are relative to those -- you have a run up on how much college-educated workers earn relative to those that are not. how do we get back on the path of rapid educational attainment? the answer will involve a lot more attention on lower and middle income and romans and completion of college. college. that is where the most improvement is possible in the lowest 20%-40% of the population.

there is a very steep gradient to college enrollment by income. some people argue that that is because low-income kids are not prepared for college, and there is a significant component to which college preparation does vary by family income. one of the things that we should be disturbed by, take a look at this chart. this shows you what your scores were like in a standardized test in eighth grade and what the subsequent college enrollment rate was by family income. what i want to draw attention to, the lowest performers from high-income families are enrolling in college at the same rate as the highest performers from low-income families.

that is a problem. we need to make sure that the highest performers regardless of income, get the opportunity to go to college. it will help us, it is fair, and it will get us to rapidly rising educational attainment overtime. all of these forces have led to what is widely described and widely known as a rise of income inequality in the united states where the sluggish growth in the middle has occured at the same time as very rapid growth for the top 10% and top 1% over time in the united states. and the tax code has offset part of that, but not much of it. the policy discussion often says, what are we going to do

about this rather than other education. it will take time to move kids through college, community colleges, it plays out over a law period -- along period of time. with regard to the tax code, it works quickly, but we should not expect it to be a full solution here or anywhere close to a full solution. most of the increase that has occurred has occurred with regard to pretax income. there is no plausible set of changes one can put into play where you can take this chart and offset any significant share of that over time. the tax code can help a bit, but it is not a full solution. we should not hold out false hope that this is going to change instantaneously.

what are the implications of all this? there are some implications with regard to differential spending patterns. those of you in retail have undoubtedly noticed that high- end retail has been doing better than mid-tier and a discount retail over the past couple of years. another implication has to do with income mobility. we like to pretend there is a huge amount of mobility from one generation to the next in the united states. it has been more of a myth that we would like to believe. what a way of looking at that is this chart. if you were born into the bottom 20% of income distribution in the united states, there is a 40% chance that as an adult, you are still in the lowest percentage of the distribution and only a 6% chance that you are in the talks.

similarly, there is a 40% chance you will remain there as an adult and only a 9% chance that you decline to the bottom 20% as an adult. is this related to, or is there any implication of changes of the income inequality for income mobility? they're essentially different topics. ey're essentially there is suggested evidence that says as income inequality goes up mobility goes down. there has been some recent controversy over this. this is -- this is a chart that alan krueger put up by recent talk suggesting exactly this that as income inequality rises, intergenerational mobility declines. that may be another implication. perhaps the most challenging of

all the implications has to do with our political economy which is where i will end. there has been a very fundamental change in the congress that has occurred at exactly the same time that in and the quality has gone up and i don't think these two phenomenon are not related. let me illustrate first what has happened to congress. this chart shows you the reddit distribution is republicans in the house and the blue is democrats. the key thing and want to focus on is that in the late 1960's which is the upper part of that chart, there was a significant amount of overlap the most liberal republicans and the most conservative democrats were voting together on a significant share of things and a model that both of us have our head about how policy should be made reflects that. people should come together in the middle and have a

bipartisan, centrist piece of legislation. the problem is bad middle is disappearing. started the late 1960's to go to the late 1980's and it is dwindling. it is busily gone today. we are effectively two different parties united by a single congress with almost no moderates anymore especially since melissa is not there anymore. there are far reaching consequences. why is this happening? th epunditry suggest this proportionally that it is gerrymandering, that we have jumped congressional district into pieces of spaghetti creating safe republican and democratic areas in the cause a split. most of the political science

literature suggests that is a very small part of what has been happening. i thought i had a sly but apparently i don't -- you could see that by what has happened in the house versus the senate. the senate has gone up almost as much as a house. we have not redistricted state lines, raising questions about districting solutions or explanation. the question that becomes if it is not gerrymandering, if it is an inside the beltway phenomena are do is urge -- or does it affect us. if it was gerrymandering, we could fix it. if it is an inside the hellboy phenomenon, you can vote in different people. it is -- it is reflecting us much more difficult. there is a heated debate as to whether it is an inside or out way beltway development. there are 17 states with

senators from different parties and they are clearly representing the same constituents in different ways suggesting that members of congress and centers have the flexibility or the operational room too polarized themselves. when a district does flip parties but that member of congress represents the same constituents much different ways. it that were happening you expect the vast majority of people when asked if they are a member of comte -- if their member of congress is too extreme for them, a larger share of them will say yes. that has not happened. if it were any inside the beltway phenomenon you expect state legislatures to be polarizing less than the house of prisons says. about tuzla story of state registers have polarized more than the house of representatives. this suggests a concern -- a significant content of this is

just becoming more polarized as a people. i think we are increasingly physically surrounding ourselves with like-minded people. one of the most compelling pieces of evidence bras social psychology is if you put like- minded people together in a group, the group will become more extreme than any given individual when they started. this is because the people want to prove the truth members of the tribe. you only hear self reenforcing points of view and so forth. this is happening virtually because we can choose our own news sources. it used to be that we would read the name -- read this newspaper watch tv news and now we can select our own reality. my favorite example was that it is upper -- is that i have a twitter accounts. i use it as a news feed. i notice that one of the people

i was following was saying a lot of things i did not like mostly because he was criticizing me. [laughter] i responded by un-following him. he no longer occupies my brain space. the point of view was no longer present in my thought process. similarly, to the degree i think has been underappreciated, we are now segregating ourselves by political parties. republicans are moving into republican everest and democrats are moving it to democratic neighborhoods our members are increasingly from a like-minded perspective.

you can do this for any of the races in the '60s or '70s the look of the bass part of the country that is white on that map where does not landslide when our way or another. that is the 1970's and that is today. the white is disappearing. there is roughly 30% more of the population today that lives in a polarized county than in the 1970's. the implications of this are far reaching because it is still the case that you have to win presidential elections by appealing to those increasingly rare mixed counties. they are therefore run to the middle. i am no longer sure that we you

connects the legislate there. that is because the middle is gone. that's right to the extent this reflects us, we will face a central dilemma in our political economy. you run to the middle and a national election and you cannot legislate their and the only way you might be able to legislate in any meaningful way is by dominating the political system, winning the white house, the house and senate and legislating based on one part of that by mobil distribution. if you do so in those rare circumstances, you will generate inevitably, some of \ that the temporary dominance will then disappear. we would then have a significant gridlock. it was not that damaging because you had enough overlap that you could legislate despite

providing government. the key changes with the disappearance of moderates it is not clear that a divided government lead to anything other than gridlock and inertia which can be quite damaging at different times in history. how about this time next year we are going to face the fiscal trifecta that will make last summer look like child's play. because the debt limit will be pumping up against it. the tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 will have expired or are scheduled to expire in full at the end of this year and we have very large scheduled cuts in both defense and non-defense but beyond what anyone believes is plausible. it is all happening at the same time. that has starkly would have been

a moment because of some of the things that have to happen for big legislation to occur. instead dealing with the rather unpleasant topics, but some lipstick on it and go bigger of something. i suspect that if we wind up with a divided government scenario next january the prospect that the legislation are much smaller than they should be because of the disappearance of moderates. thank you all for having me. i am delighted to be here. let me just say three things i think can help alleviate some of the trends. the first is, the evidence is overwhelming that was what i figure is what's causing the polarization is not being exposed to a trance about points of view. as citizens, we all owe it to the country to go out of our way to sort of cross-pollinate

intellectually and expose yourself to points of view that you would not normally agree with. the second thing that i think corporate leaders in particular can do is to try to provide some kind of relief on the tech talk played ships. tectonic plates shifte. i mentioned education. we typically talk about the institutions of higher education that are the crown jewels in the most precise -- and the most prestigious. for most americans far more important is the role of community colleges. i am encouraged by what chicago is doing to try to unite local employers and local community colleges.

wouldn't it be great? wouldn't it be great if the local employers seven two or three years this is the cup -- this is the stove you will have. kids to go to community college and know they did a good job in those areas, they're guaranteed are at a high probability of getting a job. the firms get training and a skilled workforce and the workers get higher degree of reliance than what they are studying. this is exactly what chicago is doing and i will be watching and adding many people will be watching carefully how that turns out. it is exactly the kind of thing that i think has to be happening between the business community and local community colleges across the country. thank you. [applause] the final thing has to do with pushing even harder for value

and health care. i the most american workers don't realize how much their take-home pay is being reduced by the health-care costs that businesses face. the trajectory on health care costs, were they to improve take-home pay could rise more as a result. over the next five or 10 years we are on the cusp of a significant revolution i think that is possible in health care. it would involve information technology changing the way that providers incentivized. i think united health and other insurers are doing a lot of useful things in moving toward bundled pennants and episodic payments and other payments methodology is that move away from just paying for each particular service.

that whole effort will not succeed unless the people who are in charge of selecting health plans and provide health -- health care for their workers are forcefully behind it. i would urge you to read things and be exposed to things from a different point of view and continued to press as chicago is doing on community colleges and put your weight behind the effort to get more value out of care. that will ultimately prove beneficial for you but also for the workers across america. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much for a fascinating speech. we've got many interesting questions and we only have

about 15 minutes to get through them. we will get through as many as we can. let me first ask you -- how much further can these trends go? how much more can quality rise? how much longer can the medium work because income stagnate stacks what can you do is a business to promote help in that world. >> it depends on what you mean by inequality. i suspect these forces have widened a big gap between the 90th percentile and 50th. i'm going forward basis, i now think it will continue. i think the 90th percentile, is going to be affected by the forces of globalization and technological change. in a way that has not been salian for the future of the economic landscape over the past two or three decades. inequality will not continue rising there.

what is happening to the typical college graduate as opposed to someone right in the middle, i am not sure it will continue. alan blinder like to ask his students -- who do they think will earn more in the united states in 20 years a very qualified plumber or a run-of- the-mill engineer? she has been surprised to hear that often more than half of the students picked the plumber. to the extent that the engineer skills are easier to digitize, that may not be wrong. >> i guess you would interpret that answer as make yachts. [laughter] >> things that are delivered in person or involve non-tradable services involving different

dynamics than the tradeable sector. >> there are now out data mining software that could do a better job at econometric analysis than we used to be a team of economists 10 or 15 years ago. it is not only journalists who are threatened by technology. >> encouraging -- [laughter] another thing you mentioned is the falling labor share of the economy. you say more is going to capitol and less is going to labor. is that something that can continue? how can you get businesses to invest this huge amount of capital they have building up on their balance sheets as a result?

>> let's address that question. i think you will see -- there has been a fair amount of growth in investment at the short end the stuff that depreciate rapidly. in equipment and software, that has been growing over the past couple of years at double-digit rates. any of the longer lasting firms have hunkered down and that is happened across the developing world. that fact suggests that a big part of this is sluggish growth, why invest a lot of the demand for your product is not growing rapidly and a lot of macroeconomic on certainty that the world is in on certain place right now. that would make sense that if you're being driven by concern

about the how will the world will turn out, in the shorter- term investments but not longer- term ones. >> beyond the budget issues, it the bush tax cuts and dividends and capital gains expires the spending sequester goes into effect until that happens what does it do to the economy? >> all that would be something like 4% of gdp fiscal contraction occurring at a time when i doubt the economy will be fully back on its feet. that would not be a good outcome. some deal will have to be done. i don't really see given what i was mentioning about the by mobil congress, and exactly how the deal happens. i suspect we will have to wait to the election and see how it

turns out and a lot of people in late november will be scrambling to figure out how a deal could come together. no one wants an economy that is still not fully back on its feet to be hit with an immediate fiscal contraction of 5% of gdp. that would be highly undesirable. >> is it possible to do it in six weeks? >> i would be willing to bet that in order to get a deal done in the divided government scenario, you will either need short-term extensions to buy some time for like two months or we will actually have to go over the cliff let this stuff expire in order to force people to gather -- together.

this year and next year will be lots of drama, one way or another. >> there was a recent book call "confidence man" which portrays your role in the fiscal stimulus as being the apartment. your the anti-stimulus man. what is your response? >> i think i'm call them especially tragic figure. [laughter] i think there are a whole variety of traps that one can fall into in terms of missing important distinctions. i have long been in favor of a couple stimulus approach as i just mentioned earlier in which you provide more stimulus now but you couple it with long-term deficit reductions. i think that is the right policy response and i think it is the right legislative strategy.

the debate being described in these articles actually was between the couple the stimulus or should we do and naked spending? support for the couple the stimulus is reported as being anti-stamp stimulus which i don't understand. that treatment and others are often a sense of missing that very important point. it was the only thing that had any chance of making any progress with congress. at that time in late 2009, we are coming up against another increase. the thought that you could go out with a stimulus-only bill and no reductions and hope to raise the debt limit strikes me as not even planetary.

>> where do you invest your personal wealth? [laughter] >> i am in diversified low-cost index funds which are mostly global but are disproportionately waited to my home country for no reason i can justify other than that feels safer. >> what are some ways to reduce health-care costs in the u.s.? >> there are four different approaches to reducing health- care costs. you can reduce prices and reduce how much you pay doctors and hospitals and so on. that is a very blunt and quickly effective tool but it is only a blunt and quickly effective tool. it is not a long-term solution.

if all you did was ratchet down prices in medicare and did not address the underlying quantity of services provided, you would create access problems for medicare beneficiaries and affect incentives. you cannot bludgeon this through and have a long-term solution. the great debate is how you get at the quantity of services provided. one approach is the consumer- driven approach which correctly observes that people don't often have that much scan in the game meant that had more cost sharing, they would be better consumers of health care. that can help. the evidence from the ranch experiment and some experiments --the rand experiment suggests

there is a benefit in reducing costs. it is often not as big as you would think. most of the consumer-driven approach is still provide a very deep third-party insurance against high costs. most health-care costs are in those high-cost cases. take medicare beneficiary and return by cost and the top 25% consume 80% of the costs. another category that could work in concert is providing on -- is working with provider value. why is it some providers deliver health care in one way or another? that is changing the information flow and involves changing the financial incentives.

there is a series of changes. one thing that has not been remarked upon is over the past two or three years, there has been a huge deceleration in health-care costs in the commercial space and especially medicare. it has been going on for roughly three years. it is disproportionate to medicare as opposed to the commercial space. i am on the board at mount sinai in new york and i was intrigued by the slowdown in medicare spending. i asked late last year that medicare revenue was only up 3% and that's the reason for that. they said inpatient hospice care has been flat and the answer to that was the number re- admissions that has gone way

down. the reason for that is that they had put in a screen that you look like you are in high-risk they will put a team of doctors and nurses on you and it is working. if you want to know what is wrong with the financial incentives in our health system, the program is working and no one would voluntarily want to be readmitted to the hospital. they don't know if they concur -- if they can afford to continue this because the resources are expensive. the hospital loses the revenue on the readmission. >> say what i mean about him being good on health care? this will be the last question. the euros on debt crisis, how will that affect the u.s.? how concerned are you that it

could really do us harm? >> there are multiple languages. one is a direct export linkage something like 20%-25% of u.s. exports go to europe. the direct impact of that channel is not massive. the second linkage his financial contagion in the european banking system in affecting the u.s. financial system. that looks increasingly less likely because the european central bank has stepped in forcefully to backstop the financial institutions by providing three-year liquidity to them and also because u.s. financial institutions have had enough time and are trying visit -- vigorously to insulate them as sells as much as possible. you're left with the third one which is the hardest to calibrate. it involves underlying

uncertainty that there is some it to exports some rest of in direct linkages for the financial system and more generally, we don't know how this will turn out. i spend a lot of time talking to borg and ceo's and you hear -- talking to boards and ceo's and they say the macro uncertainty is causing them to hold back. that involves the european debt crisis. >> thank you very much indeed. be kind to us under blue paper. thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> hours on and michigan hold the republican presidential primaries next tuesday. candida and few former u.s.

representative rick santorum is speaking to the republican party. he will be speaking momentarily along with arizona state senator and republican national party committee co-chairman. >> can you come up and give this a few words of wisdom? senator santorum. [applause] ♪ >> thank you. thank you very much. ♪

thank you. thank you ariz.. ona. ♪ thank you for the penn state fight song. thank you for that wonderful introduction, mr. chairman of bank of for the wonderful reception. it is wonderful to be here. with my wife karen and three of our children and we are spending a couple of days -- i wish they were rest and relaxation but thank you for making us here -- feel welcome to the sun valley. it is great to be here and to talk to you about big things.

this election is about big things. i am excited to be traveling around this country talking about a positive message of what we will do to replace the man and a party and the movement that is grinding this country into the ground economically and every other way possible, that is threatening our security whether it is at the border or overseas. we need someone who will pay a positive vision for america someone who believes in the goodness of the american people and the greatness of the free enterprise system, not make government control and i'm here to deliver that message to arizona and the rest of the country. [applause] i am excited to be here in arizona with good friends include my chairman in arizona has helped us out. he is a former congressman from california. he and i go way back.

we were elected to congress to gather and report -- was part of a group called the gang of seven. you hear a lot of talk about who is the insider and the outsider of this race. it is fascinating that here is a guide that is from outside of washington who is not a senator or congressman but someone who was actually inside washington who was an outsider when he was inside. the have any question about that, ask frank riggs. we came to congress and we shook things up. we went there and expose the scandal after scandal bipartisan scandals. republicans and democrats were doing things to undermine the credibility of washington, d.c. and the institution. they had a funny bank that was allowing members of congress to

kite checks and have loans on the back of the taxpayers. we had members of congress who were using their stamping privileges to make money at the house post office. a group of freshmen went there and found out that this practice has been known for a long time. there was a report every two years but it took courage, it took a group of young folks young members who stood up and said we don't care about the pressure from the establishment in washington. we don't care that the leaders and those who have sway over your committee assignments and all the other things that in ballparks -- that involve perks. we will do what is right for the american people and we stood up and expose that scandal and there were a lot of reasons for the victory of 1994. one of the principal reasons was

that we exposed broad corruption in congress after 40 years of democratic control prepared. we had the courage to stand up inside the institutions and make the changes that were necessary. that is what we need again in washington, d.c. [applause] your senator john kyl is a good friend. john and i came to the united states senate and we were in the senate but unlike some folks who criticize people who get elected and try to do things, we actually went there and made a difference inside the institution. john and i co-authored a change in the rules of the united states senate among the republicans. for the first time in the history of the senate, we imposed term limits on members of leadership and committee

chairman. john and i were the co-authors of that and we fought our own senior members. on the republican side and we fought for what we knew was right which is to make sure that power is not concentrated to very few people. we were successful and those term limits survive today on the republican side going in there not being one of the crowd not being part of the establishment shaking things up and making a difference -- that is the record i have. it is a record not just on reforms within the congress but it is a record of reforms within the united states senate and the congress to cut spending. i will match my record. you see all these commercials that rick santorum is a big spender but they have never once talked about how i voted for any increase or an appropriation

bill because i never did. i've always voted to cut appropriations. they never talked about the voting for a tax increase because i never did. in 16 years of public life. i voted many times to reduce taxes by step up and voted for smaller government, lower taxes less regulation, the things we need desperately in this country and not provided leadership in a very important areas. [applause] the leadership is where the problem is in washington, d.c. today. when i was born, a 60% of the federal budget was spent in defense. today it is 17%. some people would have to believe, even some republican candidates, would have to believe that the problem in our country debt and deficit is defense spending. they need to go back and take arithmetic class is again.

when you go from 60% to 17%, that is not the problem. [applause] the problem is entitlements. the problem is entitlements. when i was born, less than 10% of washington spending was in entitlements. it is growing and growing and will grow dramatically more if that bill that must be repealed by the next president is enacted. obamacare. [applause] you are looking at someone from the state of pennsylvania, which i know you have had a fair number of seniors in the state but we are second in the percentage of seniors in the state of pennsylvania, second to florida and went out and took on the tough issues, medicare, medicaid, social security, welfare reform.

i was the author of the welfare reform bill in the house and managed that bill on the floor of the senate. i did so being the only time we ever eliminated a broad based federal entitlement. we did that with about 70 other programs in washington, d.c. [applause] linney to take everything from food stamps to medicaid to the housing program to education and training programs, cut them, friesen, send them to the states as there has to be a time limit and be able to give them the flexibility to do those programs at the state level. [applause] those are important things we need to do to get this debt and debt as it under control. we also have to get this economy growing. the best way to do that his be leaving in what made -- is

believing what made this country great. are we a great country? yes, we are a great country. are we a great country because we have a great and powerful federal government? no. are we a great country because we have three people that can go out and pursue their dreams and build a great and just society from the bottom of? that is really the question in this campaign. it is a question of how we will grow this economy and how we will restore our culture and how we will defend our borders and our land. would you believe in? do you believe in an all- powerful all knowing federal government or do believe that america became a great country because we were founded great on the principle of limited government particularly limited federal government and the idea

we could build a great and just society based on this concept that was given to us in our founding documents. ? there may be some tea party folks here today. i love the tea party. [applause] i want to thank the tea party for restoring knowledge and respect for this document, the constitution of united states, because without them -- [applause] without the tea party i can assure you have served many years in congress, when you bring up the constitution in a debate there would be a snicker. there is very little respect for having government live within the confines of the constitution. that is because there was a perception that it is a new day and therefore we just have to change who we are.

you saw this the other day when route to better ginsburg was asked a question whether she would recommend to a country forming that they should adopt the united states constitution as the constitution and she said no. she recommended the south african constitution. this is a supreme court justice. she said the united states constitution is antiquated. that is what the president believes. that is what the left in america believe. that is what progress is believe that this document has lived past its expiration date. and that we need something new. these old men that put this together made it hard to change so we will use the courts or in the case of president obama we will run roughshod over the constitution and do whatever we want to do which is what he did

with these recess appointments lightly and what he is doing again. this constitution is a great document. it is the operator's manual of america need to get back to it. [applause] this document by itself is insufficient. if you have a pocket constitution, most of the pocket constitutions are uprooted not just with the constitution, because the constitution without operator's manual of america, it can be a fairly dangerous document. without the other document printed with it, which is the why of america, who we are -- i

always talk about how my grandfather came to this country in 1925. from the moment he stepped here in america, she became an america. why? because america is not about ethnicity. we're all hyphenated americans. it is about something bigger, deeper more profound. america is an ideal. where does that come from? what makes this different than any other country in the world? the idea that was established in the declaration of independence. where our founders boldly boldly put forward the very foundation of roots of our country. we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, and in doubt by their creator, with certain unalienable rights among them life liberty, and the pursuit

of happiness. [applause] this is the heart of america exceptional was some. this is what makes us different. we are great country, because we believe in the power and the potential and the dignity of every human life. [applause] and we built this country with the idea that the constitution was there to protect those god- given rights, but the constitution was not there to give you rights or for the government to give you rights, but it was there to protect their rights you already have

because you are a creature of god, you are creation of god. that is the foundational principles of america, and we believe that with limited government and free people who would respect the dignity of all life, a practice of liberty to pursue happiness happiness. as john adams wrote about when he talked about the constitution that almost all the other founders wrote about they were going to put the word property in there. that was heavily debated. that was in another founding document of our country but they backed away. why? because property is about stuff and they believe america protecting america's pursuit should be more than stuff. we should not use our freedom to

pursue economic gain or comfort. that america had a higher calling calling to pursue happiness. happiness pleasure, yes, but the deeper meaning of happiness. if you look at the dictionaries at the time, it was to do what is consistent with god's will in your life. that is what happiness meant. [applause] because that's the answer to true happiness. it is not doing what you want to do. all of us have done that and our lives. all of us pursue what we want to do. we find out so often it is a hollow pleasure. doing what you ought to do should do leads to true happiness and leads to a great

and just society being built from the bottom up. our constitution was made for a moral and religious people. why? because the power of the government was supposed to be limited, and it believed in your ability, just like in the colonial days to build strong families churches, civic and community organizations. all from the local level. those institutions that made these countries to meet in the world and allowed us to remain free from government oppression. remember our founders came from a country for the rights for the team and not the people. and the king would allocate those rights. does this sound familiar to you today? that the government would give you rights since they are the holders of the rights. like the right to health care. president obama says i will give you the right to health care,

just give me your money freedom, and we will provide it for you. when the government gives your rights, they can take those rights away. [applause] when the government gives you rights, they can tell you how to exercise those rights. and so if you are person of faith, and the government says you will do things, you will provide in your insurance policies what the government tells you've you must provide whether it against -- whether it is against the teachings of your faith, when the run over the first amendment of the constitution and the media winds at first and then says there was an accommodation may. there was no accommodation made. not at all. it was a phony accommodation.

it was an accommodation men to do just that, the bite. not to accommodate sincerely- held religious beliefs, but to trample those beliefs because the government knows of best how to run your life. ladies and gentlemen, this election is about foundational things. it is about the very nature of our country. it is about liberty. it is about whether we are going to be a free people, economically. whether we will have the government under obama care and a whole host of other things. cap and trade, dodd-frank. as to what loan you will get. what light switch you could turn on. what car you will drive. what health plan you will have. what you are going to pay the doctors. all of these things are being prescribed by the government. it is crushing our economy and crushing the spirit of america.

the economy of this country is struggling. why? because americans are different from everyone else in the world. your ancestors and maybe you came here because you wanted to be free. your dna is different than the dna of those who stayed behind. i know. my grandfather came to this country and brought my dad as a boy. i have been back and visited my relatives. they are wonderful people, but they are nothing like my grandfather. there were not the man who work for 30 years and a coal mine digging coal, working hard every single day so he could provide for his son, who might someday be able to get a college education, or grandson who might be able to run for president. [applause]

when you put the yoke of government on of people who want to be freed, who have a tradition who have an ancestry of hard-working freedom-loving people who are willing to go out and fight for that, when you put that upon them, they bristle they stop. they do not like it. we do not want to be rolled. ladies and gentlemen, you have an opportunity in this election. you have an opportunity in this election that generations do not always get which is to strike a blow for free. you have an opportunity in this election to be stewards of the creeds inheritance. when our founders signed the declaration of independence they did so with this closing

phrase, we pledge our lives our fortune, and our sacred honor. why? for freedom. for freedom. and they wrote about it a lot. they knew establishing freedom at the time, right in the document was bold and courageous. it was life threatening because they knew they were declaring independence from the greatest power in the earth, maybe in the history of the world of the time. they were a ragtag country. these were wealthy men that with all sorts of things to lose, yet they were willing to sign the document to did you what we have today. who did they pledge it to? they pledged it to each other. so we do today we pledged to each other that as stewards of this great inheritance week, to

come will do what is necessary. no one is asking you to pledgor life although i think god every day there are people who do step forward, put the uniform -- put the uniform of the u.s. military on and pledged their lives every day. [applause] we're not asking you to place your fortune, although if you want to go to our website after lunch -- [laughter] gift of freedom is a great gift to give to the next generation. it is your honor at stake. will you be the generation that let the flame go out? would you be the generation that succumbed to the siren song that the government can do better for you did you can do for yourself?

will you be the generation that sat on the sidelines and watched as candidate after candidate comes up in the national media, it takes their wac add it to try to destroy them in every way possible as they ever done with every single republican candidate, and as they will between now and the election, and will use it on the sidelines and say that is not fair? or would you stand up and fight back for freedom? [applause]

you have an opportunity. your moment is coming. it is coming first a week from today. a week ago he celebrated the centennial of the state of arizona, and congratulations. happy birthday. [applause] you celebrated what you were able to build and your ancestors to build this great and now prosperous state, that like all other states is struggling right now. struggling with high rates of foreclosure and unemployment. struggling with an immigration problem that a federal government is completely in a chain of -- inattentive to under this administration. [applause] struggling, but still fighting. you can speak loudly on tuesday

that you want someone who was going to stand up and fight the insiders, by the establishment who have a track record of doing it, a track record of cutting spending and taking on the big problems of entitlement. a track record and a vision to fight against the radical islamists to threaten our country in freedom, and that of the state of israel. and [applause] someone who has a track record of standing up for the basic foundational pillars of our society. face and familith and family. [applause] i am not a manager. i'm not a visionary.

i am a guy from a steel town who grew up understanding what made this country great, and for the years i have been involved in public life have put my heart and my effort on the line. e to make this country the kind of country we all want to hand off to our children and grandchildren, something better than we all have. that is what i am asking you to do, give this fighter, someone was been fighting across the board, not just on one or two issues but has been a conservative believing in the founding principles, our real on authentic conservative who cannot just win this election, but in so doing do so based on a vision for this country that is different than the status vision

of barack obama. make it about six things, because big things that need to happen if we're going to be the generation that can say that we gave it more, we improved the united states of america we made this a greater country. we got back to the founding principles. we were able to build a strong and just economy. we are stronger internationally. we are stronger economically. back in 2008 the american public at the time of crisis went for our rock star they believed could solve their problems. someone they believed in to make a difference in their lives. this election, america will go back to what we've done in the past. we're looking for leaders not to we believe in, we're looking

for leaders to believe in you. please help us on tuesday. thank you. clot bless you. [applause] -- god bless you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012]

we will begin serving now your dinner. while we do that, we will be doing some other housekeeping things. i wanted to thank the many people who helped put together this event today. you can tell by the number of people here, the largest event here i have been too. it took a great deal of effort and volunteers to the party. they do it at no cost. none of them are paid from the state chairman down to the volunteers. they're all volunteers. there is no union fund that pays this. and so i would like to start off by thinking some key people who put this together, and i would

like you to recognize them as they call -- as their name is called. our executive director of the republican party who is back doing his job as usual after a battle with the big c. tom husband. thomas. [applause] in the event coordinator who works repeatedly with us to put these together is surely smith. are you hear any ware anywhere? thank you for everything you have done. a couple of people who have worked with putting all of the tables together, putting your

straw poll ballot together. doing the spreadsheets. famous republicans in the state of arizona, the george and shirley teagaurd. there they are. and data base and straw poll collection and ballot. george will collect the straw poll. it was a couple of assistance to go out and collect them. we at the ability to tally them here with the computers to work on. he put it all together, and he can do the whole thing. if you want to stay around, we will try to get that tallied out. a lovely lady every and into the state of texas at sheppard

airport base 25 years ago. my partner and political crime marty haney. where are you? [applause] she has taken your calls repeatedly readjusted all the table assignments, tried to work more of you in. thank you very much. our republican party event coordinator and does this for every event we have, putting the time table together, determining what the meal will be and does a very expert job of every time we assign him is in dan graham. he is one of our members at large. inwe also have people in the parking directors, ray sweeney adnnd jim alberts.

[applause] when you came through the door, these are your registration tables. the chairman of that was carry and andrew chris stands otanza. barbra mendall tracy ireland susan caveillier, don newton, ron carters renae taylor, terry rey. dick hays, jim lelegh dan schultz. these are people that ran your

introductory table and gave you assignments and tags when you came in. can we have a hand for the registration table, please. and [applause] we also have our sergeant of arms. you see him here every time. that is all bordeaux. - - alberto. with him is our security expert. small man. not very big man in stature. let's have a hand for the security and press team. inwe also have a crew that works

the republican committee office. these are all volunteers and work in fun city. that is headed by dan doran. is there a table of volunteers by the sun city office? thank you very much, sun city office volunteers. appreciate that. and we also had the awards committee, and that is carol turloff and leo maloney. let's here it for them. i do not know if they're sitting together or not. >>back in the rear we have a number of tables, but one is the sales table, and that is headed by ed hedges. he also runs our canteen for county

and state fairs. he has several things back there for you. one of the items he has is the program for the debate tomorrow night. these programs will be sold for $12 tomorrow, but as a special feature for the lincoln day, you can pick them up for $10 at the back table. your program to myrna you can get from ed hedges 00-- program for tomorrow night you can get from ed hedges for $10. we also have a lot of political wares. we of campaign buttons. i saw them for rick santorum and mitt romney. there may be more. there are lots of other campaign

buttons as well. stop back and pick them up. and another item, you all know who this young lady is coming jan for werebrewer. we have her book appeared to the right. as a matter of fact, each one of the autographsof them autographed. that will be a cherished item once we win in the supreme court having been led by this famous governor. be sure, if your interested, to pick up a book. one of the last things we have to tell you about is a meeting tonight sponsored by tea party 2012 called raising cain.

it is a fund-raiser for the 2012 tea party. is the at 5:30-8:30. tickets are $125. you can buy them at the door. for me give you the address. it is up 5925 north foothills drive in paradise valley. you can get that address and more details about it at the 2012 table to the left of me near the exit. and that is a fund-raiser tonight for the 2012 group. i think i have most of the house cleaning -- housekeeping chores

are done now. andi want to recognize here before we start coming our speakers. in a group of people that are not paid, but do work for the republican party in the county of maricopa. those people are your district chairman. may i have the district chairman stand, please. the district chairman from maricopa county. please stand and be recognized. the district chairman for maricopa county. please stand and be recognized. i do not know how many of them are here but there are 20 of them. thank you very much. andwe also have many other people

here that represent the republican party in various capacities. there are two parties come a women's clubs pachyderm coalition, a republican assemblies, teenage republicans college republicans, arizona right to life, and east valley prayer life alliance just to mention a few. these are the organizations behind our effort to return the government to a constitutionally-based government. now, i would like to start bringing up speakers come in the first gentleman i will introduce - and the first

gentleman i will introduce to you is famous, because he is responsible for initiating many of the legislative bills in the state house and senate over the past decade that has brought arizona to the forefront in the paramount of states' rights and back to the constitution. he is demonized by the administration, just as we have been demonized by the administration come up because we have the audacity to say we should have the borders defended, and this is the man responsible for putting that legislation forward. if we did not have the legislation, we would not have sheriff [inaudible] or attorney general warned, or any of our law enforcement people.

we would not have the lossaws they can act on. these gentlemen are responsible for bringing many of them to the forefront and getting them passed. i would like to introduce them to you our senator from arizona, famous throughout the nation and the world as a matter of fact. many of the state's legislature are asking for his advice as to how they should formulate their legislation. without any further ado, i would like senator russell pearce. are you here? [applause]

i think someone snuck in a double heights podium. i do not think russell will need that. senator russell pearce. [applause] >> what a crowd. i do not know that i have ever followed hot one of the top-tier candidates in the presidential primary. what an honor. i am grateful for many of the things that were said. on bless america and our fallen heroes.

-- god bless america and our fallen heroes. freedom is not free, and you have a republic, if you can keep it. that is what this election is about. i am fearful of my government and the intrusion of our god- given rides. liberties that cannot be touched by government come in yet they are doing it. i made a couple of notes. i am at the age where i can do without sex, but not without glasses. if you see me full those out you will know why. i want to tell you how grateful i am to stand here and look across this crowd of patriots. i know many of you very well. i am worried if the whole ceiling collapses bill hold their coca county will tilt to the left. you are the backbone of what happens here. we talk about things, and i know

we're going to be here for awhile but i am so grateful for what you have allowed us to do and arizona. we have changed the debate in washington d.c. not just in one area, multiple areas. and we lead the nation in second amendment liberties. we lead the nation in laws that protect the unborn. in[applause] we passed something congress can learn from, a constitutional budget, a balanced budget. no gimmicks, borrowing bonding. we had the largest deficit per capita in the nation yet we were able to do it, because you send us with folks that had a backbone to know what needed to be done. we eliminated affirmative

action. no longer will government be able to discriminate. your pride this business folks, we did not have any business to tell you who to hire and what to pay. that is none of the government's business, but government has no right to pick winners and losers. inso we lead in many areas. we talked about the number one issue according to polls, are unsecured border. the damage to this republic. i want to tell you what we have done in arizona, because i think it is important. i can go through all longer list of things we of done on property rights the marriage amendment. we have done some wonderful things to put in place those god-given protections our founders thought we did not to worry about once we put in place the bill of rights. i do get a little worried.

i am not a fan of the patriot act. you cannot suspend my god-given rights in good times or bad times. and you cannot take away my habeas corpus. you cannot put me in gismo just because you think i did something. i worry about that. when our founders put together the constitution, they did not does worry about bad guys, but put it together because they were worried about good guys doing bad things with good intentions. freedom is only a generation of being lost. we are at an impasse. if we do not change washington d.c. in 2012, i fear we may not be able to turn this around. liberty is being run from you.

undermining the role of lawrule of law. we better find a canada that can win that the election. and i believe we have a couple of those that rise to that level easily. i just pray we send a can of it that has a love for our founding principles, love for the freedom, our respect for the role of law. understands what you earn is yours, not the right to plunder and take it away. not buying votes with your money. we have to eliminate some of the entitlement programs. we did not get here overnight, we will not fix it overnight but it can be fixed. it starts by taking back america one state at a time. and let me just give you results, and i will be fairly brief on it. we have been in the middle of the bottle and led the parade.

i am grateful for good patriots who have stood by me and others as we of have this battle. we've been attacked by the left, accused by the left. a little bit of a badge of honor just to make it fun. world war ii pilots use to say if you're not taking flat, you are not over the target. i want to thank these folks that are in the front of the parade and not afraid to do what is right. we have changed things in arizona. let me tell you what you've done. we have been in this battle for over quarter of a century. just do what is right. and i have been in public service all my life as a deputy sheriff in chief deputy in charge. i am grateful to have served in those capacities, but what we've done the past few years is unbelievable. we have a violent crime rate that has dropped three times

that of the national average. and we have a declining prison population for the first time in the history of the state of arizona. in we of grown 70-140 inmates per month normally. it is about 2500 fewer inmates. carjacking is down. homicides have dropped 240- to 90. folks connect the dots. phoenix law enforcement association, the largest in the state of arizona made this statement in september 2011, and i will use those spectacles that i need. and since [inaudible] there has been a 30-year crime rate low.

budget cuts, policing strategies did not bring about falling crime rates. sb1070 did. when police officers were given access to tools the deterrent factor this legislation brought about was clearly instrumental in the unprecedented drop in crime. yet all of this without a single civil rights violation, not a single racial profiling complaint. actually, enforcement does work. the abundance and the left-wing media what have you believe this has been a controversial bill supported two-one across america and in arizona. tourism is up in america, not down. channel 3 needs to correct their anchors parian.

we of gone from 39 in the nation to the top six in economic recovery and job growth. we have a lot to be proud of. in but that fight is a long way from over, folks. and i am grateful to stand here and be a part of this great party. i believe the republican party is the greatest hope we have for the restoration of freedom in this nation. not a perfect party. we do not have a perfect candidate, but we have the right formula, and that is family values, limited government, less taxes, less regulation. second amendment liberties first a member rights that are under attack. folks, this is a dangerous time. i pray he will stand behind your candidates. pick the candidate you will support. go to their web site. support them.

it takes money. the obama administration will be well-funded. moveeon.org will pump money like they have never punted money before. we need you engaged. we need ever gone-loving patriot of this republic to get engaged. and make your family is out to vote. make sure we have a candidate that can beat obama and take that washington, d.c. [applause] again, i want to personally thank also -- i have worked with robert haney for some time. as think we have some of the best leadership in this party i think we've had for some time. i am talking about patriots that go from district to district and talk.

tea party groups after two-party group. i w-- tea party group. folks, i make no apology for my love of this republic. i make no apology for demanding less of my government some of not more. i make no apology for demanding your constitutional liberties be protected at all costs. i make no apology for the founding principles. i appreciate it so much -- some woman said i appreciate the constitution, founding fathers. i did not believe that is just a great document, and inspired document. i believe god had his hand in the making of america. i believe we of a sacred duty to protect it. if we do not change presidents you will have a supreme court turned upside down.

another appointment to has no respect for your constitution, no respect for those things that our founders thought for in soldiers are fighting for every day now, and hometown heroes. those in brown and blue the patrol our streets 24-7. folks, thank you. thank you for the big be take a few minutes of your time today. god bless you. may god continue to bless america. i want to tell you one quick story. i tried to teach my children about gratitude. i remember this minister who gave a rousing speech on gratitude in being great fall. then he opened it up to the congregation. if you felt compelled to come up and share something special where you felt like you have been blessed and are grateful for it please do so. as soon as he stepped up to the

podium, she starts talking. she starts talking about they just recently updated the dunes on the ponds. her husband likes to drive it as fast as he can. he had a terrible crash. she said they thought he was not want to make it up first. he crushed his scrotum. he was worried about it. did not think he was going to make it. they were worried whether he would ever be able to use it again. finally they wired it together. it looks like he was born to be ok, and it looks like his scrotum was going to be ok. so she sits down asks if anybody else. tom smith says i just need to say something. he says i just need to tell everybody the congregation in my

sweet wife, it is sternum. so, messaging is pretty important. [laughter] i want to tell you, i love this country, the republican party. and i am tired of sending folks to washington and tossing them. we need to restore constitutional liberties and not apologize for any of it. thank you, and got less. -- god bless. [applause] >> he did not use the gavel once. i would like to recognize some more people come upon surely our

elected officials and candidates. before i do that, i see it in one person here that is taking our pictures for the party, and that is marcus hewey. he does an outstanding job. stand up. and i want to thank you for taking pictures. [applause] he is a tea party member in very good with all kinds of data processing. we depend on him qoften. doug mckee is out of the u.s. senate race. he is running out for the u.s. house from cd four. if you would take knowledge that he is out of the senate race. in would like to recognize some

of our officials that are here today. excuse me if they're not in any particular order because they come in off and on, and we tried to introduce them as we can catch them. our candidates that are here that we have been aware of, congressional district 9 travis grantham. where are you? wave your hand in yellow. and there he is. inwill carden, u.s. senate. [applause] douglas wayne. [applause] congressional district 1.

a famous name coming to the surface again matt salmon. congressional district -- i do not know what congressional district you are running for. maybe you do not know either the way they're working the redistricting program. danny barney, board of supervisors candidate. [applause] here is another famous name, bill montgomery, a county attorney and candidate for reelection of county attorney. [applause] joe hoskins treasurer. [applause] i am sorry -- joe haus.

-- haus hauskins. keitherh russell. [applause] representative joe blake here? -- jeff blake. are you here? jeff blake. [inaudible] trent, stand up and take about. in [applause] -- take a bow. representative david swank air. are you here? -- david swanker.

don't know where he is. he is here somewhere. he is politicing in the back. >> of course i am. >> jim wayne phenix city council. he is in the back, too. inall to my right. in [inaudible] board of supervisors. and drew off to my left. ok let's get one of our stars law enforcement stars, and he is famous throughout the state country and throughout the nation. world famous, if not the

universes's sheriff. we have a great deal of gratitude to offer this gentleman for his years of service and law enforcement, and he continues to do the battle, come attack from all corners particularly the obama administration for daring to defend the citizens of arizona. i would like for you to come up and give us a few words of encouragement and in light men. thank you. [applause] if they will not listen to you tap them on the head. and[applause] >> thank you. thank you.

and it is good to be with a friendly crowd. anyway, and think you for inviting me. thank you for the great work the county is doing and the state. i had the pleasure of meeting all of the candidates running for office in private. i just met senators santorum for 20 minutes and private and had a nice talk. one thing that impressed me with him is he is going at it from grassroots people. he understands that people are the bosses. i take that very serious also. it is the people that a let youelect you, and it's great to have the

people behind you. that is what keeps me going. i do have people taking shots at me. not literally so far, but when you're doing your job, sometimes you cannot make everybody happy. the elected sheriff is a very honorable position. a constitutional office. i take it very serious. you must always elect a person law-enforcement personnel official as your share f. very important. now going back to my 50 years of law enforcement or almost 20 years as your share of, i will say the senator mentioned about

his grandfather coming here from another country. i do not think he said its italy. my mother and father came here illegally from italy -- legally from italy. [applause] my father worked very hard at a grocery business. i used to deliver groceries. all of oil. everyone says you do not with your age, and that is because i drank the olive oil. i served as director of mexico city turkey, a middle east as the head of the u.s. drug enforcement. every time i came back to the united states, i kissed the ground. this is the greatest country in the world. [applause] i take my oath very seriously

and i'd always did that in my 32 years with the federal government. many years with the department of justice, but i take my oath serious. i feel when you take an oath, you must comply with the oath of office, so sometimes i get a little troubled by following that oath of office. once again come of being elected makes a big difference. i cannot be fired, except from the people. i have a lot of organizations that want me to resign. that is never going to happen in a million years. and i am not going to go into who those organizations are, but it seems to be all democrats. i do not know of that is a coincidence or what, emanating from the white house and down. the legal immigration laws work

laws passed by the state legislature. all i am doing is enforcing those laws. [applause] i am pretty proud of the fact -- sometimes i wonder why this sheriff's office is the only law enforcement agency and forcing those. it makes you wonder sometimes. i have to think bill montgomery for prosecuting these cases. [applause] it russell pearce and the people at the legislature to pass the laws. i cannot enforce the laws if i have no laws. so because i am enforcing the laws, i have the department of justice zeroing in on me which is ok. you do not see me losing any here. i am not going to surrender.

they want to take over the sheriff's office, put me under some receivership. they will not do that with an elected sheriff. i am not a chief of police, i am an elected sheriff. [applause] i had about 250 t partyea party people signed a petition. they came to me and asked their share of to investigate obama and the birth certificate. so what should i do? throw it in the wastebasket or forget it like everybody else in this country has done? once again i take my elected sheriffs that is very seriously. when the people ask me to do something, i tried to do it regardless of the repercussions

politics and the media. so on march 1, i will have a press conference and reveal what we found out during that investigation. and [applause] and i do not have press conferences just to get my name on television. when i have a press conference, i talk about something. so that is coming. i let people know it. it is not a secret. when i took this mission on, i took it on to possibly be able to clear the president. i was doing him a favor. we will see what happens. i will just go public on what we found out on march 1.

i have them coming from all different directions. i know the president mentioned me three months ago at the white house. it was not nice, but that is all right. he has a right to do that. we have to make sure that we regardless of who the candidate is get behind that person and do what we can to get a new president in the united states. that is very simple. [applause] sometimes people say, "how do you put up with this? you are not a young guy any more." i am a senior citizen. sometimes they put in the paper my age now. i do not know what that means.

i do not know what age has to do with it, but that is okay. does not bother me. i know what i can do. my wife of 55 years supports me. that is important to get a spouse to support you. without her support, i may have a little problem, but as i say she has never complained never nagged. maybe that is why i stay married so long. never see my wife. in fact, she used to start my car until a guy did put a bomb in my car. i do get a lot of threats. i got one today, but that is the way the ball bounces. that comes with the territory. but to keep our morale up, i

need all of you to support me, the people of maricopa county. i know i could say i do not need this job which i do not. i do not want to be a governor, which i do not. i just want to continue fighting for you and our county, our state, and our country to do whatever i can to make it a better place in my little old way of doing things. [applause] and see what happens. i have to thank the president -- i know i did this on national tv, and they thought i was flipping my late -- laid -- lid when i thanked the president on the illegal immigration thing. the only thing i thank him for was going public and saying that

they are not going to deport 300,000 people. i do not believe in that, but i thank him for bringing it back on the table. since he did that, every candidate is now talking about illegal immigration. they wanted it to go away but now, they are talking about it. i want to thank you, mr. president, for putting it back on the table so everybody can discuss it again and put it as part of the campaign to become president of the united states. i do not usually thank the president, but i am now. but i do not agree with the policy. i do not agree with many of the policies not only related to illegal immigration, but other aspects. one way you can improve the problems with mexico -- and i served there four years -- is build up the economy -- do other things too, so maybe they do

not have to come here -- the majority do come to work, although we lock them up in the workplace because they have stolen it's and everything else and should not be here anyway. the president should be thanking me. every time we rate a place, we remove illegal aliens. that makes another opening for u.s. citizens. how come the president does not find me for doing what i can for the economy? i never get an its tanks from the white house. that is okay. does not bother me. at all. -- i never get any thanks from the white house. once again, thank you. we have good candidates running for president. they are all nice people. i have met with them in my office or other areas, and i'm impressed with -- their mission is to defend our country to make this a better country. they all have great ideas, so it

will be up to the voters to decide who the candidate will be for president. i hope all of you get involved, make your choice. at the end of this campaign, then you will back up whoever becomes the nominee. i know you will do that. once again, thank you. thank you, mr. chairman, for inviting me here and for giving me a few moments to speak. [applause] >> thank you sheriff. a couple more politicians, a

candidate that i failed to recognize earlier -- he has been traveling around the state, i know, many meetings. van the radio man. there he is. stand up, take a vow. candidate for u.s. senate. i think attorney general horn is here also. tom, are you here? where are you? [applause] i had him on the list of attending. also, gaby mercer. where are you? there she is. [applause] she is running against the candidate who is most famous for saying "boycott arizona. boycott my own state." so we wish you the best in that race. also david, are you here?

candidate for congress, david bushman. there he is in the back. thank you. andy, are you here, board of supervisors? [applause] at this time, i would like to introduce one of our key people in the republican party in the state of arizona. he is by name bruce-. he is a national committeeman for the state of arizona -- he is by name bruce ash. he is also the chairman of the rules committee for the upcoming convention in florida. he is a very important man to us in that capacity, and he is going to introduce the co- chairman of the republican party.

that is sandra day, but bruce has worked with her -- sharon, i'm sorry. i said sandra. i cannot stop that. it is important i have my wife here all the time to correct me. i'm sure all the husbands out there are very grateful for their lives that are able to correct so quickly and so rapidly and so precisely. it is sharon day. bruce, come on up. thank you very much for the service you render to the republican party. [applause] >> good afternoon. thank you, chairman. thanks for the opportunity to introduce a friend of mine and a friend i think all of you will enjoy listening to. do i need that closer or further away? closer? jesus, okay.

it is my honor to introduce the co-chair of the republican national committee sharon day. i'm proud to serve as sharons colleague at the rc where she is well respected by her peers as a leader. sharon was called upon as a ballot counter for brouwer county in the ultra important recount effort and was later named by governor bush to serve on the committee for election reform in florida. she and her husband larry have built several successful businesses. they have two great sons who have produced five

grandchildren, who are the source of the enormous pride for the day family. sharon has been a pc for over 20 years and is one of us. forbidding titles for just a second. sharon is a grass-roots activist. after serving as rnc party secretary, sharon was elected by our members to serve as co-chair in 2011. sharon has been a tireless fund- raiser for the gop. as you will see, wherever sharon dagos, she lights up the room as she will do today. sharon is a conservative who believes in free markets, less spending, smaller government, and she knows that that means more freedom. sharon de is working 24/7 on our behalf, just like us, to make barack obama a one-term

president. [applause] please give a warm maricopa county welcome to the rnc co- chair, sharon deay of florida. [applause] >> what an honor to be with you. many a day -- anyway, i want to thank you for inviting me. what a wonderful opportunity to be with my fellow conservatives, fellow republicans and arizona republicans all across the state. i want to thank rob for putting all this together. if you have never been a chairman, you know it is a thankless job, a hard job, so i ask you to join me in giving him huge applause for what he does for this county.

it is wonderful to be in a state with a strong woman governor, and i kind of like that figure in the face. i kind of go in for it big. you have got to be very proud of her energy and efforts and strong values. also you should be proud and pleased to serve and have represent you on your committee your committee folks. bruce, who was mentioned. he is the chairman of the rules committee for the entire committee, not just for the convention. you have sharon, who serves as parliamentarians on the national committee answers every meeting to make sure we go forward in the right direction and do our call to orders in the right form. you have tom, it branded chairman that has in short time become one of the well-respected members on our committee. absolutely. and you may not even know this,

but you actually have four national committee members. because right here in your city in your proud city, you have an extra committee representative in jan larimer, who i would ask to stand, who was a previous cochair. she lives here part-time and is here today. she is also the co-chairman on the convention for the republican convention in tampa. you guys are so lucky and so blessed you have four, not just three. i looked at jan brewer as she stood on the tarmac and waved that finger, and i like to believe she was not talking about what was said in the book. i like your, that was said earlier, she was saying "one more year." i would like to add to it, if i had been there i would say "mr. president, you are going home. you are going back to chicago

illinois in a falling 787 built in charleston, south carolina, despite you and eric holder that think you have the right to tell a business where they can build a new start up business. we know he is not going to win arizona. we know you were going to do everything you can to make sure he does go home. like me, you know this has probably been the most failed administration that we have ever seen. i mean let's get real -- did we ever think there would be to present a worse than jimmy carter? no, but we now know that there is that possibility. but today as we look at this great event, and we look at, again, presidents month -- yesterday was presidents' day -- and we look at the president's that our proud party has had and we look at what the democrat

party comes up with -- we look at on our side -- again abraham lincoln -- he was our first president elected to the grand old party. we were born of a party that believe all men are created equal, that believed that slavery was wrong, a man that stood up for a country that said a country divided cannot stand. he thought it was right for every man every woman, and every child to be able to live their lives with those god-given rights that were our gift to mankind. you look at that. you look at ronald reagan, another prime republican president. [applause] oh, absolutely. who protected us in a time when communism was gaining strength to stand up toted tell, and stood firmly to say "bring down

that wall." -- to stand up to zero to topiary the wall came down an east and west got to unite, once again, family to family and friend to friend. now you look on the other side. jimmy carter. no. barack obama. big know. big know. -- big no. look at what we have accomplished as a party and look at what they have accomplished as a party, and we know that our presidents and our party are in the right direction. arizona is one of the most beautiful places in the country. while you have a lot of desert, i come from a part of the world has a lot of water. i'm from florida. i will tell you how we are dissimilar, we are similar. we are similar in our values. we are similar in the things that matter to us. we are similar in we are going to do everything we can to make sure that barack obama is a one-

term president. together, we are going to make sure that we take back the senate. because we are going to help mr. obama. as he talks about repeatedly that do nothing congress -- well, we know which one is the do nothing congress. it is the senate. it is not the house. the house has sent 30 bills to the senate to try to help our economy, grow our jobs, and do what we need to do to become a stronger country, and not one of those bills have seen the light of day thanks to the senate that is controlled by harry reid and the democrat party. this do nothing congress, that he says -- again, not republicans, but democrats -- have not passed a budget in 1028 days. can you run your businesses without a budget?

nope. can you run your households without a budget? no but if you listen to the spokesman for barack obama, he says it is really not that big a deal not to have a budget. well, we are going to show them how big a deal it is to have a budget. we are going to show mr. obama exactly how big it is to live within your means. we are going to show mr. obama exactly what it means to talk about cutting that deficit cutting that spending, and making sure that every man and every woman that wants to have a job has an opportunity for one. as we look at we go forward and again, we look at what we have to do, we know the work we have to do. we know the responsibility we have to the next generation. because when i look out at this room and i look out that each of you, we know that the responsibility that sits on our shoulders is to be -- we can be

the first generation that leaves america and a last-place -- in a last place with less opportunities than we had ourselves, or we can stop this president from another four years. we can stop the senate from gaining power and continuing to do what it does, stopping our ability to pass our laws and pass our budget, or we can sit back and let them continue. we can send more republicans to congress so that we can help those individuals that we sent in 2010, and i think you agree for the first time in a very, very long time, we had the opportunity to see those new congressman talked about cutting spending, talk about stopping raising the deficit, talk about living within a budget situation for the first time. they were our barrier to try to

help us as we go forward. the current president -- let's be honest -- he is not a united. he is a divider. he is not an individual that believes that our best days are in front of us. he is an individual that thanks "i want to take from you to give to you." he is someone who has built his entire administration on the fact that if i can take from you and give to you, i have divided the country by class warfare." he sees not a country built on aspirations. he sees a country built on government control in our lives. we know again our presidents -- lincoln -- he was a leader. he was a united. we look at ronald reagan. he was someone that ended the cold war.

we know what we have to do to make sure that the next president of the united states is a proud republican. we know what we have to do to stop the decline of our country and the decline in our faith and belief in ourselves. we have a president that goes to foreign countries and makes comments to other leaders and says that republicans have gotten a little soft and a little lazy. do you think you are a little soft? do you think americans have become a little lazy? no, or do we think that a president has killed every opportunity that he can to increase jobs for american citizens? i can tell you we very proudly stand with any candidate that comes out of this primary. we are working hard to make sure that we are there and we are

united. in our fourth quarter, we raise more money than the democrat national party with a sitting president and control of the senate. we raised $27 million. they raised $23 million. we just had the best -- absolutely. we just had the best off-year fund-raising ever, and we have left no stone unturned. as i am here today, my our chairman is in my home state raising money and meeting with donors. we reduced our debt substantially. in fact, we are in the black. we have now $23 million cash in the bank. [applause] with that $23 million, we are committed to tell you that when there is a candidate, that we will take those funds and immediately write a check of $20

million to give that candidate so unlike the last time when arizona's son john mccain was trying to raise money and the democrats were allowed to define who he was as a candidate -- we are not going to let that happen to the next candidate. we're going to make sure that the bonds are in place, the tools are in place to make sure that one of these individuals is the next president of the united states. [applause] we have the greatest communications team and the greatest research team we have ever seen. they are building what we are calling proudly the book. what we are doing is researching on a daily basis everything this president does, everything is president promises, and everything that this president does not deliver. again, when we have a candidate that candidate will not have to go out and research and find his own information on this. we will be able to give him

these tools, and we are going to hold mr. barack obama accountable for his failed promises his broken promises his failed administration, and his overreaching government intrusion into our lives. [applause] but we cannot do it alone at the rnc. and, and bruce and sharon and jan cannot do it alone. we need all of you to help us, and i tell you and i mean it from the bottom of my heart -- i'm not here today and you are not here today because we love our party. we are here today because we love our country. [applause] because we know we are the last opportunity to stop in what has been done to this country in the

previous four years as we go forward. so i'm going to ask you to give everything you can in the next days ahead to make sure that we elect your local candidates, those individuals that are putting themselves out there on your behalf to make sure that barack obama does not serve another day after january, to make sure that we can do everything that we can do to make that difference because if we do that -- if we do that effort every second of every day give up our time, if we think we have given every penny that we have to give, all the money we have to give to our candidates and party and we find 50 cents more in our pocket, we reach in and give it to our candidate. if we do that, we will make a difference, and we will stop the damage that has been done and take back this country.

sit together, you and i -- we have as president reagan once said -- we had a rendezvous with destiny. well -- will that run it will be one of great success, of the next generation having an opportunity for all the things that we have had in our lives for us to go forward in aspiration? and as ronald reagan always sought the best of america, the best of our days were ahead of us -- are we going to step back and not give all that we can and then wonder what would have been? no, we are not going to do that. this is our call to action. this is our call to arms at this time in our lives. together, we are going to knock on doors. we are going to put the suns in the arts. we are going to make the phone calls. we are going to raise the money. we're going to do everything we

possibly can because this is our responsibility for the next generation, and together, you and i will make the difference. you and i will send barack obama back to illinois. you and i will take back the senate, and you and i will turn this country back into, with strong leadership, the exceptional america that we know that it was before this president was elected, what it will be again because our brightest days are ahead of us. i know many of you in this room have different candidates that you are supporting, and i'm going to ask you -- no matter who that candidate may be, no matter who you work your heart out to come out of the primary, when it is over, grieve for 24

hours -- grieve for 24 hours for what you thought could be and may not be, but what we know will be when we elect a republican as the next president of the united states of america theory together, you and i will save america. together, you and i will elect the next republican of the united states of america as our president, and together, you and i will continue the exceptional in some of this proud country we love, this proud country we call america. god bless each of you. god bless america. god bless our proud military men and women. thank you for all you do. [applause] and >> rick santorum spoke to this group earlier. you'll be able to see his speech

earlier. he was the only candidate in arizona today, although all of them will be in the state tomorrow for the republican candidate debate. mitt romney today is in michigan. he held a town hall meeting at a toolmaking company in shelby township. newt gingrich in oklahoma spoke this morning to the state legislature in oklahoma city. ron paul, no public appearances today. the week from today, arizona and michigan have their primaries. march is full of primaries and caucuses as well. you can follow the election coverage at our web site, c- span.org. you'll find video of the candidate events including the one we just showed you with rick santorum in arizona. also, read what the candidates are saying. a program update tonight here on

c-span -- a look at u.s. power in the 21st century. this is from the world economic forum and it begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern news this afternoon that the supreme court has added another 30 minutes to the upcoming argument over the new health care law. the sessions will now spend six hours over three days in late march. the justices today set aside 30 more minutes, 90 minutes overall, for discussion of the effect on the health care case of a federal law intended to make tax collections run smoothly. c-span has sent a request to the court asking to televise those arguments, but we have received no response yet. other media outlets have asked as well. if the request is denied, c-span has requested that audio of the oral arguments be made public when the arguments are over. we will keep you posted. the hudson institute recently hosted a discussion on whether think tanks have become too political.

analysts include the presidents of the progressive policy institute and the center for american progress in washington, d.c. in its response to comments by a hudson institute senior fellow who says american think tanks are becoming less focused on developing policy. this is about two hours. >> ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. welcome to the hudson institute and this panel discussion on the topic -- i think it is becoming too political? the session is sponsored by hudson's bradley center for philanthropy and civic renewal. i am a fellow here at hudson and was for many years previously president of the american enterprise institute. so the subject is one of great interest to me.

if i think there is something to add or i like something that someone else has said and what to say it myself. the text for our discussion it is an article in the current winter issue of national affairs entitled "devaluing the think tanks." the author is a senior fellow at hudson. he went to cornell and got a ph.d. in american civilization at the university of texas at austin in the bush 43 administration. he served in a succession of positions at the white house, including deputy director and acting assistant to the president for domestic policy and head of the domestic policy council. toward the end of the administration he was appointed deputy secretary of health and human services.

during his checkered career, he has been at the following think tanks, in addition to hudson -- aei claremont, the potomac institute, the american action institute, heritage, and the institute for humane studies. after he speaks, we will hear from our three panelists in the following order. first, neera tanden -- she is the president of the center for american progress and a counselor to its affiliate the center for american progress action fund. she was among those who founded c.a.p. in 2003. she served as legislative director for senator hillary clinton and was a senior official on her senate campaign in 2000. before that, she served in the clinton white house.

she was a director of domestic policy issues on the obama-biden campaign. in the early years of president obama's term, she was senior adviser on health policy issues to health and human services secretary and was a prominent member of the team that put together the obama administration's health care proposal. next, we will hear from michael frank, vice president of government studies at the health care condition and is in that capacity in charge of heritage's foundation with congress and the white house. michael attended yale and georgetown law school. he worked in the office of national drug policy in the george h. w. bush administration. he has worked on the hill for -- he was communications director

for richard armey when he was the majority leader. finally, we will hear from will marshall. will was co-founder of the democratic leadership council in 1985, and when it created the progressive policy institute in 1989, he was its founder and has been its president continuously since then. he is a graduate of the university of virginia. he has worked for the governor of north carolina, jim hunt, and other politicians at the statehouse. he and ppi have been closely associated over the years meeting many -- with many new democrat, a leading moderate democrat initiatives, with bill clinton, both before and during

his terms as president. so i will with that turn the lectern over to tevi troy. >> thanks, chris. for that nice introduction. i just read david brooks' book the social animal, and there's a section where he talks about an intersection not far from here and he says there is a think tank on every corner, and he calls it the most boring intersection in america. [laughter] not only do i take issue with that depiction, but i would say that the full room here and the c-span cameras and everything else indicates that there is something about think tanks that means that other people disagree and people find think tanks very

interesting. i would like to thank two people who share this view with me. one of them is the ceo of hudson. ken a couple of months ago in a speech was talking about his tenure as a ph.d. student at harvard, and he said the it was not until he left academia to come to hudson institute that he felt a real with of academic freedom. so -- and he has brought that notion and that sense here hudson where the scholars are allowed to do research and encouraged to do research and go wherever the research may take them. on that point, i would add that can never saw a draft of my article or any indications that i was writing the article before it appeared. i know that is not the case in every think tank, but i think that is laudable about hudson. the second person i want to thank is standing in the back.

yuval is the editor of national affairs, and he worked for me at the domestic policy council, and he was the single best memo writer on my staff. i knew that when he wrote a memo, i would not have to do very much editing to it, so it was put at the bottom up -- at the bottom of a pile of memo's i would have to go through. i'm glad he has found a profession that suits his skill. he was not only willing but eager to publish this piece. national affairs is the kind of magazine that lets you have this sort of argument, to develop an argument that takes 3000 or 4000 or more words to layout a point and really have an examination of an issue, rather than try to cram everything into a 800-word of bed. i do not think it would have been possible in this case. i know that with the internet, anyone can write 4000 words and put it up anywhere, but "national affairs" is a

blackboard that allows you to not only write the words, but also gives a reading by senior government officials members of congress -- i know that paul ryan is a fan of the magazine -- also journalists, opinion makers, and think tanks. with that in mind, i got a call from a friend of mine who was a heritage a few days before the piece came out, and he said he saw scholars reading the piece so intently that they were walking into walls. i was flattered by the but from my perspective, that is the ideal think-tank scholar someone so focused on the research that they are somewhat oblivious to the world around them. for many years, that was kind of the perception of think tank people, sort of policy nerds who were just focused on the policy. but over time, i think, and i argue in the peace, there has been more of a move towards politics in think tanks.

i had a flash of insight about this in 2009, not long after president obama won reelection. i was seeing a series of articles about republican attempts to kind of win back the sentiments of the voters and to do it via the creation of new think tanks. it reminded me of something i had read long ago, a joke about the jimmy carter foreign policy. the joke was that the carter foreign policy was "lose a country, gain and ethnic restaurants." indeed, this was a trend that had taken place in washington in the late 1970's when you saw the development of an iranian restaurant and afghani restaurant and vietnamese restaurant. there was a sense that we were not doing well in the cold war, but we were doing better on the cuisine front. when it comes to think tanks adapted this line to lose an election, gain a think tank. what we have seen over the last

30 years -- there has been this intersecting consistent series of party professionals looking at an electoral law and saying, "you know, we have really got to adjust to the situation. let's go create our own think tank to respond to recent electoral loss." many of these have come in response to the heritage foundation. heritage is sort of the great white whale of think tanks. it came up in the 1970's and was very successful very early, got a lot of attention, and people from both parties have been trying to either imitate it or adapt its methods to suit their own purposes ever since. heritage itself did not come about in response to an electoral defeat, but it did come out as a result of a legislative defeat. there was a vote on the long forgotten supersonic transport. the people lost the book got a paper from the american enterprise institute a few days after the vote in congress, and

two staffers in congress who saw this said, "this would have been a helpful papers have a few days ago when we had this book." so these two staffers called aei and asked what the paper did not come out before the vote, and they were told famously, "well, we do not want to affect the vote in congress." which seemed to be somewhat shortsighted and seemed to them somewhat shortsighted as well. with this encouragement, they went out and created heritage foundation, which was specifically created to be able to write memos and papers that congressmen and senators could read on the way from the rayburn building where the hard building on their way to the capital in preparation for a vote -- or the hart building. heritage succeeded not only with capital but also spectacularly with the reagan administration.

with their mantra, they created a job bank for people interested in joining the reagan administration. it also created a famous book called "mandate for leadership," which included many of the policies that were eventually adopted by the reagan administration. democrats look and decided they had to respond, and their response was to try to build the party to the right or toward the center, and thus was created the democratic leadership council. the idea behind the dlc, which is a more political organization and not a think tank, was to try to move the party leaders in one direction. they realized that one way to do this was to have a think tank, a

non-taxable organization. so progressive policy institute were marshall worked and still works, was created in order to help come up with ideas for what later became the clinton administration, some of the very good ideas that came out there for reinventing government, and they were adopted by the administration. the clinton success in turn meant that there was a republican defeat. after the 1992 election you had republicans asking what they would do, and a couple of new think tanks were born out of that loss peer the project for republican future, and empower america. both of these were saying "how are we going to respond to the new clinton administration? prf in particular used the cutting technology of facts to distribute memos around the capital, and this was really groundbreaking stuff. one of these memos written about the clinton health care bill was

credit would sort of bucking up republican congressman to oppose the clinton health-care proposal, and eventually, the proposal was defeated. in 2000, as we all know, republicans won the white house again, and democrats were on the search for a new think tank, and they brought about the idea of c.a.p., which was designed to be a more political organization, very focused on media. it has been merely cutting edge in terms of new media. a political organization and a think tank, and it has in turn led many republicans to think about what they will do to respond, and i know there is the american action forum, which is in response to that. heritage responded by creating the heritage action for america so heritage has its side organization, and you recently

saw the saw thebill krystal started, and they did not even have the think tank part of the so you see this back and forth and this back-and-forth kind of raises two concerns in my mind. one is that there is sort of an original sin in their conception meaning that they are founded as explicitly political organizations, and if so, they will have a political lens with which they viewed things and a political perspective, and that will color what they do. the second thing is the notion that talk about in the title of the peace and throughout the piece called the devaluation of the think tank. just as the weimar regime printed more and more currency to try to get out of their economic problems, if you have more and more think tanks and some of them are seen as explicitly political that may devalue the work of the less political think tank. i must say, even though i'm somewhat critical in the article, i am a fan of the think

tank enterprise, and i want to what some of the initiatives that have come out of think tanks over the years, whether it is brookings coming up with the marshall plan theaei working on -- or aei working on deregulation. i think these have been good things, and i like when you have think tanks that are able to get beyond the political and have real ids -- real ideas that can help us get through some of our political difficulties. the hope is that we would have more policy oriented and less political organizations of the future. i want to conclude by talking about the reactions i have gotten. one was from the left. i expected to get some criticism, but in fact, i have gone mostly praise because, my interpretation anyway, it seems like people on the left seat think tanks as this republican or conservative advantage, so anything that takes think tanks down a notch is probably helpful from their perspective.

from the right, many people see this as a criticism of c.a.p., and they say you are taking on a political organization that frightens republicans. i do not think either was my intent although i do have talked about the political nature. those are the types of responses i have gotten but i must say the absolute most frequent response as i have gotten have been from people who work for think tanks that were not mentioned in the article and they all say "great article. why did you not mention us?" i think that encapsulates where we are today, with the tanks are beyond the notion of worry about criticism but much more interested in publicity. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. i'm really pleased to be here

because as a person will help start c.a.p. almost eight years ago, and i worked on our mission statement and our mission papers, and i can say what those papers were really about which is there is a war of ideas in the country, and sometimes it feels more like a war, but it is always about ideas. that was important to our founding and continues to be important. if you have read the article c.a.p. is i would say a central focus. i would just say a few things about the overall arguments in the peace and then maybe talk just a little bit about c.a.p. as the title denotes the question really is -- has the

plethora of think tanks devalued the currency of think tanks? my own view of that is that in fact, think tanks have only grown in importance, and their role has only grown. i would say what we are proudest of is not our ability to change the conversation through communication and discussion of ideas. what we are proudest of is our ability to change the country through the ideas we have put forward, and they are absolutely true that organizations like heritage organizationsaei -- heritage and aei have done that in the past, and we have looked on and praised those efforts. ours is an organization that has an ideology but at its core our focus is to solve the country and the world challenges. when we have done that and done it most effectively, we have but

ideas out that have pushed the parties -- we have put it is out that have pushed the parties to look at issues afresh. two issues that we consider hallmarks of our success is first at a time when many democrats would not talk about the iraq war, let alone ending it in 2007, c.a.p. was the first mainstream organization to put forward a detailed plan of how did end the war in iraq and the forces to afghanistan. that became the hallmark of what every democratic candidate did and ultimately, the plan for what president obama did. similarly, in 2005, after kerry's defeat, democrats would not talk about universal health care.

c.a.p. was a mainstream organization that put forward a plan that had a universal health care model built on the system we have. the framework of that plan was ultimately adopted in massachusetts and ultimately adopted by the president. so, i think one criticism i have of the piece is that it does not focus on the ideas put forward, but focuses on the communication structure and resources and communications and we are proud of those -- that investment we have made because, as people who have been in government, and a lot of the folks at this table know, it is important to communicate your ideas. but you cannot win a war of ideas and you cannot change the country and the debate on discussion and discussion with communications alone. most important issue, the most important element is to have good policy proposals and that

is the fountain of good communications, and c.a.p. understood that from the beginning. our c3 focuses on economic policy, domestic policy, and national security, and each of those came to work every day to solve the challenges the country has. we are proud of the work we have done to put ideas forward that have become law. most recently, it is we have put forward on a competitiveness agency and a competitiveness council have been adopted by the administration, in particular, it is about job creation have been adopted, but our goal is not to amplify what democrats are saying. our goal is to put ideas forward that political leaders feel compelled to take up. i think the central lesson we have learned from think tanks

who are engaged in the space and have been engaged in this space for a long time is that essentially, when there are good ideas out there, political leaders will often gravitate towards them. we have seen role models of this across the spectrum, both from the right and from the left. i am happy to engage on specific issues around the article, but i think the central issue is that we should not think that ideology is in opposition to ideas. c.a.p. is what i call pan- progressive. there are ideas we have that are centers and ideas we have that are considered more liberal. we have senior fellows like matt miller, but is pretty centrist and has argued for a third party, and we have ideas from others that are very liberal on many issues. when we first got started, our focus was on insuring that there

is a good debate on these issues, and that we are engaging in the debate and encouraging that debate, and the most important way to do that is to continually put out help the proposals and ideas with the focus being have to make the best possible changes for the country. thanks very much. [applause] >> thank you. >> good afternoon, and thank you for the invitation to be here today. congratulations on writing a piece that got a lot of tongues wagging all look round town -- all around town. i think today's event is evidence of that. i'm going to challenge the title of the panel -- are think tanks to political? maybe it is better -- are think tanks to influential or to relevant in many ways? the reason i say that is that

political in this context, has to be looked at in a broader context of what is happening in american politics over the last few decades. we have seen a steady increasing, and now it is probably near perfect alignment of ideology and partisanship. if you go on capitol hill and talk to a member who is very conservative you have a 95% chance oregon greater that that person has an r after their name. the same is true if you talk to someone who is a probable. there are very few allies now in either party. what i would cite to back that up is the terrific piece about a year ago in "national journal" that looked at the latest scorecard, evaluating the ideology of members of congress. they do a very detailed analysis of roll call votes. they did about 150 votes in three categories -- economic social, international issues.

they have been doing this for a long time. in 1982, the most liberal republican in the senate -- there were 58 senators in between the most liberal senator and the most conservative republican. and then over 30 years there were zero between the most conservative democrat and the most liberal republican. there is almost no little left in that regard in the congress anymore. so a lot of times, if you have an ideological point of view, you have a coherent world view that is either conservative or liberal, it is easily confused especially in the media that it

is partisan in nature, when it is really rooted in a coherent set of principles, which takes me to my next point, which is i think, a test for every think tank, whether the think tank is willing to criticize the books they usually agree with when they're saints suddenly become a center on some given issue. or do you pull your punches? and if you pull your punches and refrain from criticizing, then i think you had veered into the category of being political being partisan, and not being an actual think-tank rooted in a coherent world view, coherent set of ideas. that also holds true when one of your normal enemies says something you think is pretty profound and smart. you should be able to embrace them even if it is something you do not feel innately comfortable doing. on the marketing side, partly what is at the root of the article is the sense that think

tanks have migrated from institutions where there are these boys be headed intellectuals that spend a lot of time thinking big box and writing profound books and then publish it and go on to the next project and then the next project, and maybe the book they write gets a few good reviews and then starts to collect a lot of dust on somebody shelf, to a model where you have academics writing papers and studies and so on, and then they are handed over at the appropriate time when even the most technical painstakingly time consuming idea is suddenly ripen or when the political debate on capitol hill makes the idea relevant. suddenly they are handed over to a marketing department. maybe it is a marketing department gets to capitol hill. talk to lawmakers and committee staff and leadership staff and legislative directors about the idea. imagine that. then, they get turned over to a department that handles communications with the broadcast media, the print

media, social media, and suddenly, these ideas, whether it is welfare reform or the findings of the index of cultural dependency or economic freedom like we do -- suddenly they are in the public realm being discussed, getting invited on shows to talk about in the media, and they are relevant people, right? not just academics in some back room growing pale from the work they do. i think there is nothing wrong in aggressively marketing the product to have put together. you can do both things. you can take a long time to develop something complicated and think through the permutation, and have murder boards, and basically have a system where they can let an idea come to the right kind of ripening and have aggressive marketing at the appropriate time. i think the test is whether the marketing efforts ultimately

relate back to the marketing problems -- marketing products the think tank contributes. you want to have a coherent view. is it ok for a think tank to want to have a coherent world view? that may imply that some of the papers and studies go through some kind of process internally. we find at heritage a lot of times, you have an issue. we cover a broad spectrum of issues. almost every major issue on capitol hill has relevance to us. the cut across disciplines. a lot of times you want to be writing something on health care or trade and make against the interests, values and thinking of some other analysts in another area. if you have an export issue that traders concerned about military capabilities, you want

to put free trade guys in the same room with military authorities to figure out the best way to go forward. you do want to have that kind of cross pollination. immigration triggers every issue i can think of. you do not want to have one paper saying one thing in one paper saying another. that is a threshold question. that is something think tanks want to address. sometimes it is ok to have multiple voices on the same issue, contradictory points of view, the thousand flowers bloom philosophy. we like having a coherent philosophy. that is a judgment call, but it is nevertheless pretty important. the last thing is, a part of what is going on here is driven by some changes in the law related to lobbying. it is something called the lobbying disclosure act that is a parallel legal framework that does cause some institutions to want to rethink how they operate, especially on capitol hill.

we spend a lot of time talking to cover individuals under that law about legislation. even pointy headed discussions about the effect of a bill on something. you need to be invited up to the hill by a professional council or committee to talk about it. that starts to count as a consultation, and if you spend more than 20% of your time doing that kind of work then technically you are a lobbyist, even if you are a public intellectual trying to educate members about what they are about to vote on. some organizations do not want to be labeled lobbyists. maybe what to think about that law and have a category for people like cap, people in this room who have intellectual value in a unique way to the public policy process and not taint them with that designation.

that is a consideration that had a lot to do with where we were going a couple of years back when we decided to create heritage action for america. we wanted to keep our policy experts from having to register as lobbyists. that is a consideration that some organizations confront. with that, i will turn it over to will. thank you again for the invitation. [applause] >> first, thank you to us and for organizing this conversation. to my friend bill who always manages to ask provocative questions worth debating. i had a similar reaction. of course think tanks are political. the raison d'etre of a think tank is to influence the

political outcomes. there is nothing wrong with that. that is why we are in business. i think the real question you want to debate is has marketing overtaken idea generation and policy innovation and somehow debase the currency of analysis that think tanks offer. i will try to offer a few comments on that by adding to the evolutionary scheme that is offered in the article. there has been an obvious trend away from the brookings institution model of the think tank. this is an academy on the potomac, along corridors filled with ph.d. s. it is an institution that always stood aloof from the political process. and yet, i think we do not want to overstate the degree of scholarship at any think tank.

every intellectual has a party line. and nothing but high regard for my friends at the brookings institute, but that is connected to a real commitment to scholarship, to data driven analysis that provides the empirical and evidentiary basis for policy proposals that come out of that place. they set a very high standard. i think there have been some declines in a standard we have seen as the think tank market place expands. there was a point in the 1970's when there was the great rise of the conservative think tanks heritage leading the way, but qaeda and others. -- cato and others. i would say that heritage taught us how to market.

this was a think tank that had a strong emphasis on marketing in the service of political philosophy. and frankly, ppi, when we launched in the mid-1980s looked that example and tried to emulate it. we were pushing a point of view on government philosophy, not a party, but as is often the case, we look at elected officials as the audience for these products. when ideas were developed at ppi and we threw them into the political arena, what we lived for was to see a candidate to embrace this idea and run with, and to validate it in the broader media community and the chattering class in general. this is a large part of the definition of success for a think tank. to me, the best rationale for all of this think tankery is to be able to inject new ideas into the political debate.

we talked about charter schools national service, and things that have become the law of the land. and they would not have arisen within the framework of the institutional party or from the interest groups that are part of every party is infrastructure, or the affiliated experts who invest so much in the status quo in the givens of a policy framework or system. our biggest battles have been with the experts. they know how to tweak something that manifestly is not working.

what i want to look at now is what has happened in more recent times, particularly in response to the intense polarization of the last decade. we sought two developments and they go in opposite directions. one was the advent of the bipartisan think tank or the think tanks of ambiguous in geological profile.

these think tanks are -- ideological profile. these think tanks are in some sense a reaction to the rise of partisanship in washington. it is a smart business model. it appeals to funders who do not want to take sides in the washington wars or tarred with the brush of being on one side or the other. this thinktank model has advantages. you get a wide hearing. you are not immediately shut out of the debate. on the other hand, it is a little harder to be original or innovative when you have constructed yourself to push for consensus. the other kind of think tank we saw proliferate in the last decade is the marketing think tanks. they are really think tanks that have added strong message development arms. maybe less of a pretense of objectivity. they wear their partisan leanings on their sleeves a little bit more. they have brought in the war room mentality, the desire to win the 247 news cycle.

to play in the blogosphere hour by hour, not just day-by-day. they provide fodder to the proliferation of cable tv talking heads and video talk- show hosts. i think this model of think tank really was based on two things. the first was a theory particularly on the left, that republicans and conservatives had done a much better job of setting the terms of policy debates for a generation and had built up this powerful echo chamber of newspapers, think tanks, cable-tv, again, a talk- show hosts and so forth. so that every time a conservative columnist or congressperson offered an idea it was immediately taken up and amplified powerfully by this echo chamber, what we call the vast right-wing conspiracy on our side. there was a great deal of envy among liberals about this and

grudging admiration for how it worked. i think there was a sense that there needed to be a countervailing infrastructure on the progressive side to better offset it. this led to big claims. it is a football. it could lead you to intellectual complacency. the ideas are not what is killing us, it is our about messaging -- bad messaging. there is no question that in today's world the need to have both. sound ideas and the ability to communicate them effectively. and there is branding, framing messaging, the kind of alchemy that everybody is looking for. the equivalent of the death

sentence -- death tax, which was a highly effective way of stopping debate about the estate tax. trying to get around political obstacles in this domain is something i think we all need to be looking out for. the other catalyst was something we do not much talk about, mccain-fine gold. -- mccain feingold. this law passed in 2002, limiting contributions to political parties. it helped divert the flow of money to outside spending groups, super pacs, think tanks, media matters, monitoring the truthfulness of various cable news outlets. you've seen this kind of calculation by monied interests, rich individuals and civilians in this country that

you might be able to achieve the political outcomes you want better by bypassing these old party structures and finding your own way to slug it out in the political arena. maybe the question we should be asking is it if the proliferation of think tanks is weakening the party is as mediators of the political debates, and if so, is that a good thing or a bad thing? we're also seeing the blurring of the line between think tanks, the policy advocation -- policy innovation and advocacy that they do, and lobbying. many think tanks of either develop their own -- many lobbyists of either develop their own internal research shops or farmed out the work to think tanks.

lobbying is becoming more sophisticated game. it is not just golf outings anymore. you have to go in with a lucid case for the position that you are trying to get some member to adopt. we are seeing the kind of work lobbyists want done, citing the other important question we need to be asking is if think tanks are becoming too mercenary. we know who is funding what and who is carrying whose water. the final thing i want to say from my point of view, maybe the proliferation of think tanks is debasing the currency of what they produce, but you can usually tell quality in any marketplace. this is an open, dynamic

entrepreneurial marketplace with limited barriers to entry. there is independent analysis that is not just pushing a party line or agenda. the capacity for surprise, to be unpredictable, these are things that one should look for and evaluate in think tanks. my guess is that those who pass a certain level of intellectual rigor are going to beat -- analytical rigor are going to be in this for the long haul and we will see the others fall by the wayside. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much, will and all of you. i want to say a few words speaking as a member of the old school think tankery. i have in mind brookings rand, hudson, ati, hoover.

i care a lot about the research that they do because i believe that back in that earlier era they were responsible for important innovation in the organization of creative intellectual activity, and that it is important to sustain what they achieved in this new and different era we are in today. it is true that some of them a special aei and hoover were conservative, and they attracted people who were politically conservative, brilliant intellectuals is essentially an welcomed on the campuses because of their political views, but that obscures something i think was more important in the creation of the think tank, and it covers

those such as brookings, rand and hudson that have less of a philosophical bent at their founding spirit and that is that they created -- that the think tank they created was distinctive in two ways. first, the research was done from some common philosophical premise is, more or less explicit. in any event, research that was being done was much more purposeful. it had a practical into it. it was not just the there a toss of university research. secondly, -- veritas of university research. secondly, and this was a point that our founder emphasized with great force, that when one is thinking seriously about applied policy questions, one has to take into account the

enormous uncertainty and ambiguity of government action and of the extreme political contentiousness that surrounds every decision made in this world of uncertainty that one is in when one is in the government. so, at the think tanks, we are working with out the simplifying assumptions and the explanatory things that are the hallmark of academic research, and we are attending to -- attempting to come up with usable knowledge that can be used toward practical political ends. we are not simply coming up with knowledge. we are trying to achieve something practically.

this was new. we are not simply trying to expand the total of human knowledge. i know from my years of managing a think-tank that maintaining it requires a complicated balancing act. the people who can do this research must be very knowledgeable, realistic about politics, but being too close to being in politics itself is dangerous. i often wooded by is especially younger people that were interested in policy -- would advise, especially younger people that were interested in policy, that you have to spend some time in government. you simply cannot know how terrible, how difficult, how unbelievably fast you have to make decisions, you cannot know by hearing about it. you have to do it. at the same time, i always made

a point of having people and aei who had no interest in going into government. herman said a lot of work for the defense department -- did a lot of work for the defense department. i am quite confident that he never held a position in government and the idea would have been quite laughable. we had people who had worked in politics and in government but we also had many people, and people that did much of our most important work, a lead never been in politics. they were students -- who had never been in politics. they were students of politics. they understood the difficulties of the political world, but they had no ambition to be part of politics. i do not think that those of us who are adherence to the old school or part of the old school of think tanks ought to feel threatened.

we certainly should not look down our nose at the newer groups that have come along and are operating much closer to the edge of political action. it is a free country, in any event, still a relatively free come tree -- free country where the first amendment is concerned. people are welcome to adopt different strategies in the kind of things we do. at the same time, i do believe that there are trade marks and an emphasis on marketing come a communication skills and -- there are trade-offs, and an emphasis on marketing and communication skills does have its cost. i want to distinguish -- the title today involves being too

political. i want to talk about two types of political. the older think tanks have worked out a political doctrine and distinguished that from partisan politics. let me bring in the cato institute and talk about heritage. heritage not only got -- out flankedaei by being much better at marketing, but it also was explicitly a conservative movement institute. it did have something close to official positions. the research they did always had to come out and show how it fit into the conservative movement.

it set itself up as the article of what the conservative movement -- oracle of what the conservative movement stood for and was attempting to achieve. it is and was a movement organization. the qaeda institute is a credo organizations -- cato institute is a credo organization. they belong to the libertarian creed. everything they do fits into that. it emphasizes the virtues of libertarianism, and all of its work fits into that template. when you move that close to having a and doctrine, you're going to sacrifice something in it the research that you do. intellectual work cannot have too much of a hierarchy where work has to be filtered and filtered before it can come out. i think that cato heritage,

those that have much more of a sense of philosophical purpose i think they have achieved some very important things. i think preaching to the choir is important. i think showing a research fits into a particular set of views that are organized in the political world is extremely valuable. i think -- i know that they have enormous -- the competition was very useful for us. it increased our marketing were substantially. i do not think we will ever marketings as well as heritage does, but i also do not think heritage will ever create as original, arresting research as we do. so there is a tradeoff there. i'm frankly and certain of the terms of that trade off. i can see -- on certain of the terms of that trade off. i can see -- uncertain of the terms of that trade off.

because i can see some cases today where institutions are doing -- i mean heritage and kato have both done distinguished, or original research. there is no denying that. i am particularly impressed by a foundation that is not mentioned, the reason foundation in los angeles. recent -- reason is the home of bob pool, who does the most original research on surface transportation and airline security. amazingly good work. he is the leading expert in the country. he does tremendous original work. people across the spectrum look to him as an authoritative source. at the same time, he has produced what seems to me the most successful example of new media communications, reason tv which also has the advantage of being completely hilarious.

its viewership dominates everybody up here at the panel everything we are doing. so reason has somehow been able to combine the original research with marketing to a very admirable degree. and think that when one moves beyond a set of political doctrines or ideology to some immediate partisan politics, one it is getting into very dangerous territory. several people, i think michael especially, emphasized that heritage and cato never hesitate to criticize. heritage in the reagan in ministration was a firm critic of ronald reagan. in many cases, where he was string as a matter of practical necessity from conservatives -- straying as a matter of practical necessity from conservative doctrine.

cato is of course critical of everybody all the time. [laughter] it used to infuriate me during the bush administration that people would sometimes described aei as the cat's paw of the bush administration. we had many people serving in that administration, but if you look at our work on a day-to- day basis, it was extremely critical. we never pulled punches. one of my jobs was to field angry telephone calls and letters from -- i will not say home, but very senior people in the ministration who were furious about what we were doing. when you get too close to partisan politics in our business, the suspicion arises that your work is simply being tailored to those who want to acquire and maintain power. and that is a very very dangerous thing.

i think that cap in its early years has wandered too far in that direction. i am not certain of this, but i would be very surprised -- i do not know the case where cap has been strongly critical of anything the obama administration has done. >> i would be happy to provide you with examples. >> i will give you a chance. when you visit their web site, they talk about their research. the positions do not seem to me -- they are very much like the white house website. they are very much on message. i think that is a great danger. we had two examples of work they have done. both were during the bush

administration when they were in opposition. it is fun to be in opposition. you know, you have a lot of independence. when your friends are on the inside, that is a real test of your independence. i am interested to hear what she says in response. she gave a couple of examples of how the work is becoming more variegated. reputation is everything in this business. i am not the only person that has this impression of cap. i expect that cap must know this and that they will evolve into a greater degree of independence overtime. my big concerns are these two. these institutions are hard to sustain, and sustaining the kind of research that i described briefly at the beginning is very, very difficult. my big concerns are not so much that we have all of these new people coming in on the left and the right, but first of all the changes in our politics to

to changes in the media communications technology, have, let me put it this way they have created such a premium on creating the appearance that our problems have clear simple solutions and that the only reason we have not adopted them is the venality and skulduggery of people on the other side. the wrongness of our political rhetoric is pretty remarkable. we have the democratic national committee saying that republicans want to bring back racial segregation in america. the rhetoric in the political world has become so heated and in many cases irresponsible. i think it is something that if you are trying to think with

some disinterestedness, you have to keep some distance. secondly, so many of the think tanks have come to washington. it really has become a hot house. los angeles has the reason foundation, a claremont nearby. there is the manhattan institute. the madison center at princeton. these are independent sources of criticism and thought, but i think it is very important -- i think it is risky that there are so many think tanks in this political hothouse of washington where it could become more and more difficult to sustain the really, really important work that we do. i just want to say that the ambition of being able to think about politics, about how we can achieve solutions that are compatible with the

contentiousness of our politics the diversity of our political community, is enormously important. i do not think it is bombast. i think the work we do is tremendously important so that those of us in think tanks on the left, on the right, have to realize that our purpose is not to be in politics, not to go along for the ride, but to improve our respective parties and to improve the political system as a whole. if we keep that in mind, that is our best protection. so, those are my thoughts, and we are now going to turn to the panel, and i am going to -- i think we will start with mira because i think he wanted to say something and i threw down a

little bit of a gauntlet. [applause] >> let me say a few things about progressive nor conservative orthodoxy, because i think michael mentioned the importance of being able to criticize your friends, and i think that is important, but it is also real important to be able to put out ideas that are not in the "mainstream." an important element of think tanks is to be able to put out ideas that political leaders are too timid and the political process is too timid to respond to, and create that base that allows them to adopt those ideas. that has been a central part of our mission. so, i think that like yourself i have received numerous calls from the obama administration when we have said things that are ferry critical.

we do have a progressive viewpoint, so the items we have criticized loudly are the universe of things that heritage, if not applauded has not announced. usually the center for american progress will be in the cover of the new york times when we are critical. immigration reform climate legislation, our scholars have views on what policies should be adopted and a share them with the paper. numerous times i have received angry phone calls from the administration and i say what i always say which is that we are an independent think tank and we have views on policy and they are not going to always a line with the obama administration. we have put forward thoughts on

social security, reforms that would change the benefit structure in a way. we have a longstanding relationship on education reform with the u.s. chamber of commerce and aei itself around teacher pay and the importance of reforming teacher pay. and i will say that i think too often we need a distinction between older organizations and the things they have done and the newer crop of organizations because i think some of the issues raised are true in a variety of organizations. the center for american progress has never fired or let go a person because of ideological in coherence with the organization. that has happened and aei.

we have a wide variety of thinking that goes from the center to the very left. one way we thought it was critical for the center for american progress was -- to be creative was to have a debate on ideas. i do not read every report. we do not have a team that reads every report. we do choose when we have teams that have different views to let them put them out. i believe at the end of the day that ideas are the most important things. we believe in it and we have a view of being progressive, so we try not to be doctrinaire.

when the facts change around policy, we knowledge that we were wrong, on occasion. we want to put ideas front and center. that is the most critical element. >> first want to thank all the panelists for there really thoughtful remarks. i really appreciate the responses. there is a danger to having a moderator who knows more about the subjects than all the panelists because he has been at it longer. the best known person on the panel is usually the least prepared. that is not the case in this instance where chris is obviously prepared. i agree with the comment at think tanks have become more important than ever. i think it is possible that in the future think tanks will continue to be more important and more political.

i think there is a danger in the increased politicization of think tanks. i do not have a problem with think tanks having a political point of view or having marketing arms, although to the question of whether think tanks have become too oriented in marketing, when you talk about the scholar to marketer ratio, you know there is a different focus on different characters in think tanks. there is a field to the papers that makes them feel like they are defending one side or beating the drum a little too hard. it is sort of like a comment about pornography at the supreme court, you know it when you see it.

you can tell when think tanks are banging the drum little too hard for one spectrum or another. that is something you see, and reputation is important to the business and reputations are developed over time. there was a comment about newer think tanks versus older. most think tanks have evolved over time and made changes. some of the things i talked about in the peace happen to older think tanks as well. this is not just young whippersnappers i am talking to today. i want to address how think tanks live to have their ideas embraced. the question is, will they be? i have talked to people in the obama administration who have expressed that if you are inside

the bush administration and the heritage administration praises your policy, people will say, do you have another think tank you can cite? same thing if cap supports the obama administration. for the most part, i think that there is a marketing opportunity, a growth opportunity for a bipartisan think tanks. i do not think the current bipartisan think tanks have hit that note right. from my perspective, they seem to be liberal organizations for the most part but say they have conservative people on board. one think tank i talked to has their own ratio of how many conservatives they can have versus the majority of liberals that they do have.

think tank lobbying is something a couple of people have mentioned to me. i want to close by talking about the threshold question. are you going to allow people to have differing points of view within the think tank or are you going to have a party line? heritage takes the perspective they do that there should be one position and that you are potentially damaging to the organization if you have a different perspective on trade policy or military policy or what not. i agree there is a threshold question, but i would be on the other side of the threshold. my first boss at aei was chris and i did take his advice and go into government, because it

does give you a different perspective on how things work. but aei was infamous for having people who conservative, republican, and known to have the same philosophies, but would have knocked down drag out articles with different points of view. there was no one thing you cannot do this, you cannot say that or that one person's argument about free trade was better than the other. i think it is important to make a think tank the kind of organization that is well respected on both sides of the aisle. >> thank you again for the panel. i do want to add that when we have our cross pollination internal discussions, when those issues to arise, most time in benefits of the analysts who,

no matter what their original discipline as, because they tend to see angles and aspects of their own work and they may not appreciate it until they hear what the national security aspect might be or how the immigration debate causes the guys from the free market economy to compare notes. and is there a way to reconcile those values consistent with a conservative mine said? heritage for longtime adhered to the whole being the sum of -- being greater than the sum of its parts. the ending i will mention is that in terms of the politic -- the other thing i will mention is that in terms of the politicization, some things are

done for the end result. i will give you an example. this past year, i traveled to do some panel discussions before some republican presidential debates. the whole point of that was to invite journalists covering the debate and activists from think tanks in those states, to basically try to convince them to cover substance, to not succumb to the temptation to let gotcha questions or the horse race aspect of the presidential race trump what was really important. we were trying to inject ourselves into the political process to try to pull them out of the worst features of that

process and elevate what we thought was important. ultimately, that led to a debate in washington that focused on foreign policy that a lot of people thought was the most substantive out of the what 5000 debates they have had so far. >> we're talking about things that are happening in the think-tank world. it is really a microcosm of what is happening in the political world in general. i guess the good question is what obligation to think tanks have to push back against the tribalism, the lack of

communication between the two sides. can we defend reality? we have to. otherwise, why are we in this business? we were talking about the sorting out. our think tank's going to be drawn into the partisan theatre that is washington? a friend of mine in congress called a low-rated reality tv show. can think tanks pushed against the strong ballistic dynamics? can the ground the debate in reality? can we defend the reality principle in political debates? i think the answer is we have to oral swire we in this business? . -- or else why are we in this business? there is a debate we see in congress and in the country, on the campaign trail, that is abstracted from the actual details of policy. i saw this strikingly during the great debate over obamacare, the affordable care act. i was listening to the opposition, and i did not hear an argument about the health care bill. i heard an argument against a government takeover of health care.

why do its constituent parts add up to some illegal or improper expansion of federal power? conservative think tanks make a strong point that they are not republican think tanks but they are trying to inform and raise the quality of thought in the conservative movement. you have some work to do. just as progress of think tanks have to do on our side in pushing back against the things we are often asked to just legitimate and ratify without analysis. >> we're going to open up the conversation to questions and discussion from the whole audience. we have plenty of time 40 minutes to devote to it, if people have that much to say.

as most of you know, c-span is with us today. i would like to ask after i call on you if you could please wait until the roving microphone arrives and then introduce yourself briefly before asking your question. >> hi, i am dug five here at the hudson institute. -- doug fife here at the hudson institute. one has the impression that there is a lot of money behind pretty much any position on any major issue. i am curious if somebody has some facts about the amount of money that goes into different think tanks. there were some comments made about think tank's been a

conservative -- think tanks being a conservative preserve. is that really true? would one say the resources are spread evenly between left and right or does one side have a particular advantage in the funding of this kind of public policy research? >> i will give you an example. i would argue that depending on the policy area, especially something like health care the balance of resources is heavily weighted to left of center research. at one. our health care team was looking at the resources available to commonwealth fund, robert wood johnson foundation kaiser foundation. the turnout papers every day that are very detailed.

they fund researchers at great expense to do detailed analysis of every aspect of the health care system, and they are injected right into the public policy process. are they think tanks or not? research matters, and they have a big effect on the public policy debate. and they felt that the few guys and gals on the right turning out much fewer papers and much fewer resources to bear on the process -- we felt that some of the huge entities out there that we cannot think of as paintings are worth considering when answering -- as think tanks are worth considering when answering that question. >> i would not consider them particularly partisan. or radiological. -- is the logical. if you look at the organizations that are the subject of this analysis, ppi and cap are the only multi-issue ideologically associated organizations on the left.

on the right, there is heritage, aei, cato. our budgets are dwarfed by their budgets. in terms of institutions that work across issues national security as well as domestic policy and economic policy, i think if you did that level of analysis you would see that the left or center-left is -- remains outgunned. but i hear the point that some organizations on particular issues have a big role as well. >> i have not had to raise

money for a think tank so i am not on the front lines of the money raising side. there has been a lot of talk over the years about how many of the top delegations are skewed to the left. there are only a few resources organizations that helped create the conservative movement in think tanks. there was a time that it was pretty clear that the left was outgunned intellectually in the 1970's and 1980's when the conservative think tanks were in their ascendancy. that is because conservatives felt they were not welcomed on campuses. these think tanks provided an opportunity for conservative intellectuals. the left has worked hard to try to catch up, but there certainly was the initial area where conservatives had the advantage.

i do want to say something about health care, which is something i follow pretty carefully. i would agree with you that there are some people who did take the name calling approach in the health care debate, but you really had some smart, substantive people who did take a look at the bill and went piece by piece, not ideologically, but factor by factor. one of those people is in this room. i would not condemn all conservative health care analyst. >> during the floor debate, there were times when even u.s. senators were substantive. [laughter] hatch and john gorman -- jon cornyn tried to educate their colleagues. there were serious matters considered. it was not all just rhetoric.

but will pick point in general -- there is a lot of talk that the 30,000 foot level and not much analysis at the ground level. >> but about political practice -- >> my point is there were moments in the debates where there were substantive issues that got debated. >> they were brief moments but they were moments. [laughter] >> in answer to dugs question, one always thinks of the competition, rather of a different ideologies are different organization -- the other guys always have the most money. i think it is different in marketing and communications, but when it comes to the core work doing original, important research, i think the resource constraint is human-resources as

opposed to financial resources. i never felt in all of my -- i look around at all of the think tanks on both sides of the aisle. it seems to me the tough thing is finding people that have the unusual mix of abilities who are unwilling -- who are willing to donate their careers to this thing. if you confine the people, it is never difficult to find the money. >> steve hayward? >> this may be in a bit awkward. having taken after your brother two years ago i risk starting a family feud by taking after you. but i want to launch a missile for you to respond to or join the pilots. it seemed to me there are two problems with the premise of your argument and the subtext which emerges from the premise of this volume. are think tanks the coming to political? there is an empirical problem and a theoretical problem.

empirically, we live in a time when everything is more politicized, even school lunches in north carolina or a super bowl car commercial, not the first that has become a matter of political controversy. if there were a way of doing a rigorous quantitative analysis in society, i would not be surprised to find think tanks lagged other trends in society. i do not think we can get it in a way that would be recognized, so we have to go with a theoretical problem. a slight paraphrase of churchill, who said the distinction between politics and policy diminishes as the point of view is raised. at the summit, he said true politics and policy are one. i do not think this is sustainable. the proof of that would be mayor laguardia, who said there is no republican way to pave a street and no democratic way to pave a street.

there is a difference. for example the heritage foundation could put out a paper saying the best way to pave the roads is to privatize it and contract out the weight indiana has done. there could be another paper saying that is penny wise and pound foolish. it should stay a public sector function. cap could side with public employee unions. that is easy to do. do they stand on their own possible points of view? the second is the marketing. in the old days, we had an argument and it would take a month for a back and forth between top and heritage to pay out in letters to the editor. it would all be kind of genteel. today, we can have 15 rounds of that argument by lunchtime. is this a bad thing?

take the issue this week. all the news this week is high gas prices. do we want a world where the news media are taking their talking points and themes from the american petroleum institute and the sierra club, and the politicians on capitol hill? or should the think tank's be in the middle of that every day? it seems to me that is not a bad thing. what is the problem? i do not actually see one. >> a first of all with my brother, i think this is less to imagine. i think i can handle it. i am for progress. i like to see better technology. i like to see more outlets for think tank riders to be out there and say things.