holder today participated in the national action network's annual commission where he spoke about race and the system. he dresses voter fraud in the importance of a holding -- up holding section five. he also spoke about the trayvon martin shooting and said his department would conduct a thorough review. [applause] >> thank you for being here this morning. we are excited about beginning our convention and also being here in our nation's capital. we are very pleased that the attorney general is with us this morning and we will be happy to have him be presented to you. first, let me bring the founder and president of the national

action network. there are no words that can really say enough about what rev. dr. al sharpton has done in building the national action network and in building a movement for social justice across the united states. not only does he starred in that capacity as president and founder of the network, maybe now enjoy him every evening on politics nation on msnbc. the rev. dr. al sharpton. [applause] >> thank you. thank you, and good morning. certainly we are very happy for all of you who have come, some are still coming from the

breakfast meeting, but we adjusted the schedule because we are honored to open our convention with a man that heads the criminal justice system of this country. let me say in introducing the attorney-general or older, since his becoming attorney general, we have worked with campbell and the justice department, not only in our interest in civil rights cases, but in the case of of andence in our communities gang violence. we are equally committed to dealing with civil rights and violence and with gang violence and young people. we have found an open door to those discussions and partnerships under his heading of that department since then have been in office.

we have enjoyed his being with us last year as were other cabinet members and the president and others who worked in our anti-pilots' efforts. stand-up, wherever you are. she had some of the young people who work around the country on that, took pictures with the attorney general and night have great pride, showing they can meet with the attorney general, because clearly we want a spirit in our community where we look up to people that do the right thing, rather than glorify those that do the wrong thing. i am honored to bring to the attorney general of the united states, the first speaker at our convention here this year, and a native new yorker, for you people who were unfortunate enough to be born other places.

attorney general eric holder. [applause] >> thank you. good morning. new york is in the house, folks. more specifically, queens, new york is in the house. conlon, -- come on, we don't have any mets haters. i'm especially grateful for your prayers, and your partnership and friendship and your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless, to shine a light on the problems we must solve and the promises we must fail. it is a privilege to join with you, reverend richardson, and so

many distinguished religious leaders, committed activist and concerned citizens and kicking off the 14th and a condition of the national i'm honored to be included in this gathering once again and i bring greetings from a friend of mine, president obama. [applause] each april, this convention provides what i think it is an important opportunity, not only to reflect all lessons of dr. king's extraordinary life, but also to consider where we are as a nation, examine our values and priorities, and take stock of our progress and take responsibility for the work that remains before us. although 44 years have passed since our nation first lord the loss of dr. king, it is clear that his experience lives on. his enduring contributions have allowed me to stand as our nation's first african-american

attorney general and to serve alongside our first african american president. [applause] the dream that he shared on the national mall that now has a memorial to his honor, including the creation of the national action network more than two decades ago. since then, this organization's leaders, members, and supporters have been on the front lines of our nation's fight for security, opportunity, and justice for all. today this war goes on in your demand that those in power and in your aspirations for those in need. it goes on in your efforts to safeguard civil rights, to ensure voting rights, to expand learning and employment opportunities, to achieve fairness in our immigration and synod in policies and to prevent and combat violence and

crime, especially among our young people. on each of these fronts, you are carrying on and carrying forward the work of a leader who i believe does stand as america's greatest drum major for justice, a man of action and of faith, and his example continues to guide us in his words still have the power to comfort each of us, especially in moments of difficulty in consequence. dr. king was no stranger to such moments. throughout his life, and most famously on the eve of his death as he delivered the legendary mountaintop speech that would be his final sermon, reverend king asked himself when, if given the choice of any period in time, he would choose to be alive. this question began with a journey through the ages, and each stop, whether mount olympus or ancient rome, lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation call or roosevelt calling fear

only fear itself, dr. king asked himself what era would he choose to experience and to help shape. its own, he ultimately decided. he explained that happiness comes from embracing the blessings and burdens and opportunities of living in times of unprecedented -- unprecedented and even heartbreaking choice. only when it is a dark enough can you see the stars. today, once again, it is dark enough. despite the extraordinary progress that has marked the last four decades and transformed our entire society, the unfortunate fact is that in 2012, our nation's long struggle to overcome injustice, to eliminate disparity, to break longstanding divisions, and to eradicate bonds have not yet ended. what we have not yet reached the promised land, i believe that

today, going forward, we can see the stars. we can see them in the courage and commitment of ordinary people nationwide, all ages, nations, and backgrounds, who refused to allow fear and frustration to divide the american people, who continue to fight for the safety and civil rights of all, and who in recent weeks, in the wake of a tragedy that we are struggling to understand, have called not just for answers and for justice, but also for stability and unity and for a national discourse that is productive, and worthy of both our forebears' and our children. this conversation is critical. must be consistently elevated an advance, and not just in times of crisis. after all, our nation will be defined and its future will be determined by the support that we provide, the doors that we open for our young people, and by the steps that we take, not only to keep them safe, but also

to stamp out the root causes of violence, discrimination, disparity, and division. these efforts could not be more important or more urgent, and as we will discuss this week, that is especially true in african- american communities. just consider the fact that even though overall, national crime rates are at historic lows, today the leading cause of death for young black men age 15-24 is homicide. on average, 16 young people are murdered every day in our nation. how can our nation risk losing so many of tomorrow's leaders, teachers, artists, scientists, attorneys, and pastors? the answer is that we cannot. and now that many of you are rightly concerned about the recent shooting deaths of 17- year-old trayvon martin, a young man whose future has been lost to the ages. the department justice launched

an investigation into this incident, which remains open at this time, and prevent me from talking in detail about this matter. i can tell you that in recent weeks, justice department officials, and the u.s. district attorney have traveled to sanford, fla., to meet with the martin family, the community and local authorities. the fbi is assisting local law enforcement officials, and representatives from the community relations service, the justice department peacemakers are continued to meet with civil rights leaders, law enforcement officers, and area residents to address and help alleviate community tensions. we are communicating closely with local, state and federal representatives and officials. in all these discussions, we are listening carefully to concerns and emphasizing if the department will conduct a thorough and independent review of the evidence.

although i cannot share where our current efforts will lead us from here, i can assure you that in this investigation and in all cases we will examine facts and the loss. if we find evidence of a potential federal, civil rights crime, we will take appropriate action. at every step, the facts and the law will guide us forward. i also can make another promise that every level of today's just disbarment, preventing in combating youth violence and victimization is and will continue to be a top priority. as our nation's attorney general, and also as the father of three teenagers, i am determined to make the progress our young people need and that they deserve. i am proud that under this administration, the justice department has made an historic commitment to protecting the safety and the potential of all our children. in fact, for the first time in history, the department is directing significant resources

for the express purpose of reducing child exposure to violence and raising awareness of its ramifications for departments landmark initiative that are launched in 2010, along with our national forum on youth violence prevention. we are working alongside key stakeholders to develop and implement strategies for reducing violence. we are advancing scientific inquiry on its causes and working for ways to counter its negative impact. we are making much-needed investments in youth mentoring programs as well as juvenile justice and reentry initiatives. we are working with the department of education as well a state, local, and community leaders and stakeholders to dismantle the school's -- school to prison pipeline, and to ensure that our schools are eight ways to opportunity and not into points to our criminal

justice system. beyond these efforts, we are working in a range of other innovative ways to ensure fairness and expand opportunities, from successfully advocating for the elimination of the unfair and unjust sitting disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses to launch a new department wide diversity management initiative. i am especially proud of the steps we have taken to restore and reinvigorate the civil rights issues and ensure that in our workplaces, military bases, and in our housing lending markets and schools and places of worship, in our immigrant community, the rights of all americans. over the last three years, the civil rights division has of more criminal civil-rights cases than ever before, including record numbers of police misconduct, hate crimes, and human trafficking cases.

as our filing in settlements made clear, the civil rights division is aggressively and successfully working to combat the continuing racial segregation in schools and discriminatory practices in our housing and lending markets. last year, the division's fair lending unit settled or filed a record number of cases, including a $335 million settlement, the largest in our history. to help financial institutions accountable for discriminatory practices directed at african and hispanic americans. [applause] in recent months, the division's voting section has taken crucial steps to ensure the integrity, independence, and transparency of the voting rights act. in south carolina, florida, and in texas, we will continue to oppose discriminatory practices

while also vigorously defending section 5 of the voting rights act against challenges to its constitutionality. let me be very clear. this administration will do whatever is necessary to ensure the continued viability of the voting rights act, our nation's most important civil rights statute. [applause] as dr. king so often pointed out, in this great country, the ability of all eligible citizens to participate in and have a voice in the work of government is not a privilege, it is a right. and protecting the right to vote, insuring meaningful access, and combating discrimination must be viewed not only as a legal issue but as a moral imperative. this means that we must support

policies and get modernizing our voting system, and ensuring that all eligible citizens have access to complete, accurate, and understandable information about where, when, and how they can cast a ballot, and preventing and punishing fraudulent voting practices. also demands that we engage in a thoughtful and fruitful dialogue about where we should target our efforts -- true full dialogue. we might begin -- fruitful dialogue. we might begin by insisting that instances of voter for all our repair. there for studies by organizations like the republican national lawyers association have affirmed disappeared in the instance of voter fraud is unacceptable and will not be tolerated by the department of justice. there is no dispute on this issue. there is no reason that we

should allow it to distract us from our collective responsibility to ensure that our democracy is a strong, fair, and inclusive as possible. let me be clear once again. what ever reason might be advanced, this department of justice will oppose any effort to disenfranchise american citizens. [applause] but achieving this goal cannot be the role government alone. we will continue to need your help, your expertise, your dedication, and your partnership. while i'm optimistic about the path we are on and place we will arrive, i cannot begin of the road ahead will be an easy one. many obstacles lie before us. there are dark skies overhead. but if history is any guide, and i believe that it is, positive changes frequently the consequence of unfavorable, not favorable circumstances.

progress oftentimes is the product of darkness, not the light. remember, it was social frustration and moral obligation that brought an end to slavery and segregation, that secured voting rights for women and civil rights for all, that provide health care to our seniors and our poor, and guaranteed decent wages for our workers. it was economic turmoil that brought us the progressive era and the new deal, and it was a civil war that inspired the correction of our constitution and the reconstruction of our union. today, despite current challenges, we must find ways to renew the sacred bonds of citizenship, and we must reaffirm the principle that for more than two centuries have kept the great american experiment in motion. that does not mean that on every issue, we will always agree. in this country, there will continue to be competing visions about how our government should move forward, and there must always be room for discussion, for debate, and for improvement.

that is what the democratic process is all about, creating space for the awful exchange of ideas, and creating opportunities to advance the progress that we hold dear. that is our charge, and this is our look moment -- this is our moment. so let us seize the chance before us. [applause] let us rise to the challenges of our time, and in the spirit of dr. king, let us signal to the world that in america today, the pursuit of a more perfect union is on. the march toward the promised land goes on, and the belief that not merely that we shall overcome, but that we will come together as a nation, continues to push just four. may god continue to bless our journey, and may god continue to bless the united states of america. thank you. [applause]

>> attorney general holder. >> during his remarks, the attorney general reference to the shooting death of trigon martin -- trayvon martin in florida. george zimmerman was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. in court, the charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. -- in florida, the charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. live on c-span thursday, international monetary fund managing director christine lagarde is at the brookings institution. she will discuss the imf agenda and give our assessment of the global economy. that gets underway at 11:00 a.m. eastern. later in the afternoon, afghanistan's minister of defense and interior talks about the training of the afghan army and police force, as well as counter-terrorism efforts. that begins at 2:30 eastern here

on c-span. in a rare public appearance tuesday, 43rd president george w. bush said any move to raise taxes would discourage economic wrote, echoing the words of congressional republican leaders. he said increasing taxes on high-income ours were hurt job growth. mr. bush spoke at an event hosted by his owner george w. bush institute. he is followed by new jersey gov. chris kristy, who talked about efforts to balance the budget and cut taxes in his state. [applause] >> thank you very much for those very kind words, and thank everyone for making today possible. this meeting could not be more timely, and even though i tried

to do something in 2000, obviously did not work, which is why i am doing the introducing today. but it is a great honor, and we should recall that president bush's two tax cuts, particularly the big one in 2003. many people today do not remember that president bush inherited a faltering economy when he came into office. the economy was falling into recession in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble bursting, but for some reason he did not feel the need to remind us of it for eight years. president bush understood that taxes are a price and a burden, not just a means of raising revenue. that is a profound insight. when you lower the tax burden on people trying to do good things like productive work, you get more of those good things.

president bush also understood that economic numbers represent real people, that the purpose of positive, pro-growth tax reform is to give people the opportunity, as abraham lincoln put it, to improve their lot in life. this focus on people is a distinguishing characteristic of president bush. we all know presidents must make decisions that can mean harming desperate people, most obviously our men and women in uniform. walt president bush never hesitated to make these necessary but awful decisions, he never let himself get the casualty numbers involved human beings and their families. like lincoln, president bush spent considerable time visiting the wounded and their families, and does so to this day. a great historian said about lincoln something that applies to president bush.

he said "lincoln was moved by the wounded and dying man, moved as no one in a place of power can afford to be. for him, it was impossible to drift into the habitual callousness of the sort of official bum the that sees man only as pawns to be shifted here and there and expanded at the will of others." president bush also shares a fundamental similarity with harry truman. truman's cold war policies marked a profound right with the american tradition, particularly after the isolationism of the 1930's. never before had america played such a consistent an active role in the world as it did under truman. choosing to respond to the moral threat of soviet communism and expansionism, truman had to innovate and navigate with no playbook to go by. he was really operating in the dark. no wonder that dean acheson

entitled his memoirs "present at the creation." so, too, did president bush faces situation without precedent, without established principles and rules, post 9/11. winston churchill, when britain by synopses a long after the fall of france, expected each day's to see nazi paratroopers descending from the skies as a prelude to invasion. after 9/11, we all expected follow-on attacks of terror. those paratroopers never did come to britain. bank fully, while george w. bush was in office, a second 9/11 did not happen. leadership counts. like harry truman, president bush rose to the occasion. both administrations faced their share of mistakes and setbacks and bitter controversy. one example underscores president bush of the ability to

rise to the occasion. by 2006, the war in iraq was going very badly. people were counseling, get out, cut your losses. against fierce opposition enhance skepticism and criticism, president bush forced a fundamental shift in strategy. the change worked. the war in iraq was 1 when he left office. as was said of harry truman in the cold war, so, too, it must be set of george w. bush in the war against terror. he was right on the big ones. ladies and gentlemen, the 43rd president of the united states. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you very much, steve. overly generous in your comments. i appreciate it.

i appreciate you all coming. i appreciate our sponsors. i want to thank not only steve and forbes media, also the u.s. chamber. i appreciate all governors being here. -- our governors being here. i am looking for to hearing. i want to thank my old friend, henry kissinger. good to see you, dr. kissinger. thank you for your time. i appreciate those who serve on our board. i appreciate our supporters. thank you for helping get this conference going. we are proud to host the conference. it is a part of our mission to enlightened and achieve results. -- to enlighten and achieve results.

i went to the facility the other day, and it is and also building on right campus. robert starr is a world-class architecture. he has done a fantastic job -- robert stern. the gardens are going to be beautiful. i look forward to the opening in april 2013. the bush center is comprised of three parts. one is the library and archives. it will have over 4 million photos. we will have tens of thousands of boxes of materials and hundreds of millions of e- , all stored and assorted at some point in time so it can be analyzed by historians. the museum will really be about presidential decision making. frankly, it will not last if it is only about me.

it is going to be about principles and how you make decisions. it will be interesting. for example, we have a piece of the world trade center that will remind people of that fateful day. here is a lesson, by the way. a live, you will be dealt a hand to do not want to play. -- in life. the question is, how do you play it? then there's the institute. when you get out of office -- it is kind of a daunting feeling. you have served, giving it your all, and all a sudden you have some years ahead. i have decided to stay out of the limelight. i have had plenty of the limelight. i don't think it is good for our country to undermine our president, and i do not intend to do so. i do intend to remain involved in areas i'm interested in. so the bush institute is an

opportunity to be engaged in public policy in a positive light. the building is not open, but our institute is. every day, our scholars and directors come to work to advance this mission. how do we promote freedom? and how we honor traditional values, timeless values? our programs are designed, i think you will see, or if you study our institute, our programs are designed with clear goals in mind. we want people who contribute to our institute to know that we are going to achieve positive results that have any effect on our country and on the world. in order to have a prosperous and more free america, we have to have an education system that works. so the bush center is part of the reform movement that insists upon accountability as the key to educational excellence.

one of the things we are doing is focusing on one of the key components of educational excellence. that is how to better recruit and train our nation's principles. we believe that all human life is precious, and now that we have a calling to help -- know that we have a calling to help save lives in the pit -- in the developed world. i believe we are better people when we start the admonition, to whom much is given, much is required. we have started what is called a pink ribbon-red ribbon campaign. that is to diagnose and treat trochanter on the continent of africa. we have assembled a group of public and private partners, and we are getting after it, with measurable results. we believe that all freedom is universal. in other words, we strongly believe in the concept of the

universality of freedom. deep in everybody's all is a desire to be free. -- be in everybody's soul is a desire to be free. we recently announced a one of the kind bedew one-of-a-kind bush, a freedom archive where dissidents, political prisoners, heroic figures in the march to freedom, their stories will be stored and made available over the internet. i think it is important to record heroic figures like that dalai lama as a reminder to our fellow citizens that we cannot become isolationists and hope for a peaceful tomorrow. it is in our interest to support those who are willing to take risks for freedom. it sends a signal to those on the front line of the freedom movement that the united states hears them. if your interested, you ought to

go to our website. think you'll find it interesting, and a good contribution to the foundation for peace. we believe women will lead the democracy movement in the middle east. we have invited egyptian women to come to the country to see out civil societies developed in our own society, to introduce them to mentors, and to send them back, encouraged and full of confidence that they have support here in the united states to take on the tough task of helping democracy advance. one of the goals we have established for the women is for them to set up a women's network across egypt to provide solace, comfort, and strength, as they remind the men of egypt that egypt needs a society that is listed, that democracy yields

peace. we are advancing freedom by supporting our patriots and veterans. we have what we call the military service initiative which spotlights non- governmental organizations. we are giving money to these n.g.o.'s, a new dawn of the money is being well spent or not. we are going to help you understand that it is. it was an unbelievably interesting experience. it was inconvenient to have to stop at some stop what coming over here, but i guess i miss that. the be some stoplights -- to stop at some stoplight. the bush institute gives us an opportunity to reply, as best we can, our vets. i'm taking a bunch of vets

mountain bike riding in palo duro canyon. i do not like being beaten on a mountain bike ride bought a one legged veteran, but it is likely to happen. [laughter] it is the right to say we love you and we honor you and we thank you. finally, we believe in free enterprise at the bush institute. we believe our economy can be more robust and therefore provide better opportunities for our citizens. we believe that one of the clearest expression of freedom is that the aggregate demand of our citizens determine that which is produced. we believe that government is important, but we believe that government ought to trust the people, the collective wisdom of the people. we trust people when it comes to spending their money.

and so should the government. much of our political debate is about our balance sheet. the debt to gdp is pretty high. when you think about retirement, the overhang is daunting. we believe that in order to solve the balance sheet, first and foremost to have to grow the private sector. therefore, the focus ought to be on private sector growth. that private sector growth will yield increased revenues. with fiscal discipline, you can better solve your current account deficit and your entitlements. this year, the bush institute, this july we are publishing a book. they did not think i could read, much less write a book. [laughter] we are publishing a book called

before% solution. 21 experts, including five nobel laureates, have provided the content on how to achieve 4% growth in the private sector. we recognize this is ambitious, but most of the experts believe it is doable. i hope policy makers take time to read what the experts think. you will read about cutting wasteful spending on entitlement reform or immigration reform, increasing trade in energy policy. and of course what we are here to discuss today, which is pro- growth tax policy. what is the best tax policy to grow the private sector? the truth of the matter is, if the goal was public-sector growth, it would be a short conference. that is raise taxes. we believe the best policy is that which creates a robust private sector, so what does

that mean? first of all, it means that -- will create the jobs? 7% of jobs in america are created by small business owners. that is an interesting fact. it is one of the things that makes the country so vital. most small businesses pay tax at the individual income tax level. therefore, if you raise taxes on the so-called rich, you are really rising taxes on the job creators. if the goal is private sector growth, you have to recognize that the best way to create that road is to leave capitol in the treasuries of the job creators. secondly, if you raise taxes -- i wish there were not called the bush tax cuts. i wish there were called some

tax cuts.'s if you raise taxes, you are taking money out of the pockets of consumers. it is important for policymakers to recognize that all the doubt about taxes causes capital to stay on the sidelines. the fuel for private sector growth simply will not move. that is what we are here to discuss. i think you'll find it to be a fascinating day. i am looking forward to the discussions and looking for to during our first speaker. chris christie has caught the attention of a lot of people. we admire the courageous stand to take, and we are looking forward to hearing it today. welcome, the governor of new

jersey. [applause] >> good morning, everybody. thank you, mr. president. thank you for the invitation to be here today. i will always be proud, no matter what i talk about, in my career to say i was a proud member of the bush administration for seven years as united states attorney for the district of new jersey. i have not taken a demotion to be governor of new jersey -- i have now taken a demotion. if you don't think it is a demotion, the new loose subpoena power. -- then you lose subpoena power. i'm happy to be here this morning and talk to your little bit about our experience in new jersey. i agree with the president that

the most important thing you can do as governor for your economy is tried to institute pro-growth policies that grow the pie and are optimistic. however, optimism was a thing that was a little difficult to find in january 2010 in the state of new jersey, and here is why. eight years before i became governor, our state raised taxes and fees at the state level 115 times. in the decade before i became governor, new jersey had zero private sector jobs growth decade, a decade where we had net zero job growth in the private sector. yet in that decade before i became governor, we became a state in america that had the most government workers per square mile in their state.

that is an enormous achievement. [laughter] and one that took incredible work by eight years of three democratic governors and a fully democratic legislature. so when i came into office in those first few weeks -- the last few weeks of january 2010, you would think to yourself that the news could not get worse. i was assured by my predecessor, gov. corzine, that he was leaving me a budget -- he said to me in our first meeting post- election, on a glide path for the rest of the fiscal year. we have a different definition of the tar glide path. my second week as governor, mike chief of staff and treasure came into my office and said that if we did not cut $2.20 billion in spending in the next five weeks, that new jersey would not meet

payroll for the second pay period in march. imagine that, 60% of the fiscal year already gone the the come out the door in a $29 billion budget, and we had to find $2.20 million, not in cuts to projected growth, in money that we essentially had to sequester. had already been appropriated. it was being counted on being spent across the state in order to meet payroll. not in order to meet some lofty goal like cutting taxes. in order to meet our payroll. it was the second wealthiest a per-capita in america. it be any greater example of what happens to an economy with the state government over taxes, overspins, over barrault's, and over regulates, borrows, come to new

jersey in 2010. we were going to be unable to meet payroll in march. i had two choices. keep in mind, despite having won the election in november 29 -- 2009, the democrats retain healthy majorities in both houses of my legislature. saab is dealing with a democratic senate president, a democratic assembly speaker. we had two choices on the cuts. sit down and negotiate with the legislature, or because of new jersey's unique constitutional structure, my attorney general argued we could cut the spending through executive order. for those of you who have watched me for the last 2.5 years, if you believe i made the first choice, then you need to leave now.

[laughter] we sat in a room of the course of three weeks and went over all 2400 line items of the budget, and we cut $2.20 billion from the budget. then we asked for a joint special -- joint session. i will break it down to 30 seconds, which some people say i should have done in the first place. i said i came into office, you gave me this problem, you did nothing to fix it. i just went in my office, cut $2.20 billion in spending. here are the cuts. i signed an executive order, they are now in effect. a fixture problem, thank you very much, see you later. and we left. you can imagine the reaction to this on the floor of the state legislature after i left. the press descended on the floor and the democratic leadership had their say.

they were calling me all kinds of names. julius caesar, napoleon bonaparte, all those great leaders of the past that i admire so much. [laughter] the next day, i was coming into the state house at the same time as the senate president. the senate president in new jersey is a good guy, a friend named steve sweeney. he is from the southern part of our state. he is the president of the iron workers local in new jersey. he is a big guy like me. we came walking in together and i saw him. i tell them are read all that stuff he said about me in the newspaper. i said you turn it around. i'm going to vacate that executive order and send this down the hall and you can fix it. he said white a second, governor. no reason to overreact.

[laughter] so swiftly, within three weeks of that speech, i had to present my fiscal 2011 budget. that had a projected $11 billion deficit on a $29 billion budget. 37% deficit, the largest of any state in america. now my democratic friends opposite i was going to move in for the kill. they went back to their favorite thing, we are going to have a millionaire surcharge to help balance the budget. people mess this up. in new jersey, we already had a millionaire's tax. here is how it went. in new jersey, it said the millionaires' tax applied to everyone who made $400,000 a

year or over. that is called new jersey math. i tried to use it as a selling point early in my administration. we all aspire to be wealthy. we all aspire to success. if you are not a millionaire, but you would like to feel like one, come to new jersey. [laughter] even if you are not a millionaire, we will tax you like one. so what they are talking about now is, the millionaires' tax was 9% on everything over four hundred thousand dollars. now what they wanted was 10.75% on everything over four hundred thousand. so we had a little discussion and debate about the contents of my budget. they decided before they considered the budget ever going to pass that tax.

and so they did. there was great fanfare. steve sweeney passed the bill in the senate. he marched himself from the senate chamber down towards my office. everybody ground up, if you are lucky, had a good mother. i had one. she always taught me to be polite. i put my coat on and came out to greet the guests who were coming. he handed me the bill, and not forget what it was col. democrats always call these tax increases something else. the freedom for america act, or something like that. he came in with all the tv cameras and handed me the bill. i said wait one second. let's just sit down for a second. i sat down at a little table had there and took out a pen and i

vetoed it right there and said take it back. this is not where we are going in new jersey anymore. he said we will be back, and i said we will see. then we went ahead and proposed a budget that balances the budget without any tax increases, that cut spending, not projected growth, based on spending from the year before, by 9%. [applause] that one guy started clapping, that was about all i got on that first budget. we cut every department and state government, everyone of them. everything got cut. everyone shared in the sacrifice. they said that budget was dead on arrival. that is fine, we decided we believed, especially in this easter season, and resurrected

life. so we resurrected that budget. the democratic legislature wound up passing it almost exactly as we stinted. it did not increase taxes, did not increase the cost of government today. we cannot start pro-growth policies until you get your house in order. you have to first step up to the plate and do the difficult thing. new jersey has the highest property taxes in america. in the 10-year is before i became governor, property taxes increased 70% in 10-year. as they were passing that budget at about 2:00 a.m. the day before the constitutional deadline, i faxed them a little surprised. i called them back into session on july 1, saying we are going to consider a 2% cap on property

taxes before relief for summer vacation. so that passed by budget and then went back to their offices and down the letter and had to come back to work. but came back and said we are not doing anything. i said okay, come back on the second. that gets a little hairy because it was closer to the fourth, over the weekend. the morning of the third, spouses from all over new jersey recalling their husbands or wives in the state legislature saying listen, we are already at the jersey shore. we are waiting for you. the kids are driving me crazy. give him whatever the hell he wants and get out of there. i'm still indebted to the husbands and wives of democratic legislators all over new jersey. we came to an agreement on a permanent 2% cap on property

taxes in new jersey, and later in the year, totally reformed interest arbitration system that was driving salaries up for public-sector workers and put the same cap on arbitration awards. again, done with the democratic legislature. we had another big problem to fix thereafter. the same way that medicare, medicaid, and social security are threatening the system of health in our country, pensions and health benefit costs were threatening the health of our state's economy. in the fall of 2010 we had a $54 billion deficit in our pension fund and a $67 billion deficit in our health benefit fund. $121 billion combined. that would be four years of a

state budget just to bring that to balance. i came out in september 2010 with a pension health benefit proposal. public workers in new jersey paid nothing for their health insurance from the day that hired until the day they died. nothing for their health insurance. on pensions, we had to make significant changes. we proposed increasing the retirement age, eliminating cost-of-living adjustments until the help of the funds were back at 80% of their target find or higher. ending early retirement for political appointees and increasing the penalties for retiring early for anybody. as you can imagine -- and increase the contributions by public employees for their pensions. as you can imagine, this was extraordinarily popular. a winter put this proposal out in its first week at the

firefighters' convention in wildwood, new jersey, right on the boardwalk. 4000 firefighters at 2:00 hour friday afternoon. lunch was not solid that day, i can tell you. they were fired up and ready to go. along what from a side stage to the front of the stage, and they were booing me like crazy. mustaf had some talking points for me, and they were booing. i knew i had to do something dramatic, so i took the talking points out and are ripped them and threw them away so they could see it. it did not work, they booed more. i said come on, let it out, and they did. finally i said, you guys can do better than that, and they did. finally they exhausted themselves.

literally exhausted themselves. i sitting here is all i have to say today. know about our proposal, and i understand that you are angry and you feel betrayed and lied to. the reason you are angry and feel betrayed and lied to is because you have a right to be angry. you have been betrayed, and you have been lied to. governors of both parties have come in here in the last 20 years and promised to things they knew they could not pay for. they lied to you to get your vote, and you voted for them, and now you are angry, and i don't blame me. here is the one thing i do not get, though. why do you boo the first minute of the near and tells you that? if i have to terms, i will be gone in 2017. there is no political aside for me to come in here into this. if these reforms get past, ten- year is from now when you

retire and you can collect a pension and get health benefits for your family, you will be on the internet looking for my home address to send me a thank-you note, because i told you the truth. we did 30 town hall meetings across new jersey arguing the point that this was not just from taxpayer, we did not just pro-taxpayer, it was pro-new jersey economy and proud-union marker. believe it or not, in june 2011, with only one-third of the democrats in the senate and one- third of the democrats in the assembly, along with all the republicans, we passed that pension and benefit reform package, setting $132 billion over the next 30 years for the taxpayers of our state, and securing the future of the clinton health benefit programs for people that had been promised to.

we did that because my friend i mentioned before, steve sweeney, was courageous. he sponsored the bill and he posted bail and make sure it got the votes. scheele oliver, an african- american woman from essex county, are most democratic county in new jersey, stood up and voted for the bill, posted the bill, with only one-third of our caucus supporting it. they said they did it because they were partnering with the governor to do the right thing for the people of our state. i agree with steve, leadership does count. so now, what do we see in new jersey? we are now in the budget situation where we are not dealing with multibillion-dollar deficits. instead, i was able to propose a budget this year proposing the first income-tax cuts in new jersey enough for 15 years. 10% across the board income tax

cut. here is the amazing thing. you expected democrats to be arguing with me about it. the majority of them are saying yes, we have to cut taxes. they are just arguing about how to cut taxes. now we are just dickering over the details. what matters is, we have changed a place like new jersey to understand the very principles that the president was talking about when he stood up here a few minutes ago. if you want f you want to grow jobs in new jersey, you have to leave more money in the hands of the people who create those jobs. since i have become governor, we have created 75,000 private- sector jobs. we have cut the public sector. there are fewer public employees today than january of 2001. less government workers than 11 years ago. you have to do both.

if you want the private sector to grow, you have to take money out of the public sector. we cannot run deficits at the state levels. all of my fellow governors know that. we have the obligation to make those tough choices. we're trying to set the example for the rest of the country. if you can do it in new jersey, c'mon. come on, seriously? i will trade my right arm to be on tennessee and oklahoma. if you can do this in new jersey, you can do it anywhere. you can do it in washington, d.c., most importantly. what we need again is some leadership that is not going to take no for an answer. leadership who understands that these things happen in new jersey, not because our ideas

are right, but because we have developed relationships with the other side of the aisle that allows them to trust us. that does not happen overnight. day after day after day, you have to sit with your colleagues and convince them of the goodness of your spirit. the understanding that compromise is not a dirty word. as governors, what we know is that there is always a boulevard between compromising your principles and getting everything you want. in new jersey, i abandoned the getting everything you want thing a long time ago.

but i refuse to compromise my principles. when they want to build a tunnel through the basement of macy's and stick the new jersey taxpayers with a bill, no matter how much the administration yells and screams, you have to say no. you have to look them right in the eye and say no. you have to be willing to say no to those things that compromise your principles. there is a boulevard between getting everything you want and compromising your principles. it is our job to find a way onto the boulevard. to never forget that what we got sent into office to do was to get things done. not to send out press releases, not to just posture. i love all those things. [laughter] we cannot just do that. at the end of that, you have to find a way to make progress. the 4% solution, 4% growth is not going to be achieved if we do not deal with medicare.

it is not going to be achieved if we do not deal with medicaid. if we do not deal with social security. 4% is not going to be achieved unless we can credibly advocate for pro-growth tax policies because we have our fiscal house in order. for all of us who believe that the policies the president advocated and spoke about today are the right policies, we know that job one is to be credible with the people of our state and our country that we will be responsible stewards of the money they already sent us. i would contend to you that we are still a distance from making that case. we have a lot more work to do. a lot more work to do. in the end, for the people of my state, they do not always agree with everything i do. they certainly do not always agree with the way i say it. what they notice, i am telling

them the truth as i see it. i am not looking to be loved. i think politicians get themselves into the biggest trouble when they care more about being loved than being respected. that is why we run up these deficits. that is why we cannot say no to anything. i am loved enough at home. believe me. on occasion. [laughter] my mother told me a long time ago, if you have the choice between being loved and being respected, take respected. if you are respected, true love may happen.

she was talking about women. i think it applies to politics. if you get people to respect you, you are willing to say no, but you are also willing to listen, you are willing to stand hard on principles that you have articulated to the public, but willing to compromise when those principles will not be violated, then respect will come. even those who do not agree with me know that when i look them at the eye and tell them i will do something, i do it. regardless of the political cost. if i tell them i am not going to

do something, i won't. regardless of the political expediency. on the door of my senior staff's offices, the inside of their door, they have reprinted a headline from a new york magazine profile they did on me. the headline on this story was "the answer is no." when the lobbyists come in and they close the door to have the meeting, they say, turn around. that is from the boss. and then we can say yes to the right things. to cutting taxes, to lowering regulation, to empower the people of the state and country to be optimistic again. i have never seen a less optimistic time in my lifetime in this country. people wonder why. i think it is simple. government is telling them, stop dreaming, stop striving, we will take care of you. we are turning into a paternalistic entitlement society.

that will not just to bankrupt us financially, it will bankrupt us morally. when the american people no longer believe that this is a place where only their willingness to work hard and to act with honor and integrity and ingenuity determines their success in life, we will have a bunch of people sitting on a couch waiting for the next government check. new jersey moved in that direction. we are moving away from that direction.

i would urge all of you, the only way to fix that is by electing strong leaders in every state house across america to set the example and to set a fire underneath washington, d.c., that they will not be able to ignore. we're trying to do that every day in new jersey. we're comfortable in being judged. we will be judged on the basis of the decisions we have made and the record we have created. i hope we will be one of the flagships in the bush institute 4% growth plan because if we are, it will mean there will be more money, more hope, more aspirations in the hearts of our children and grandchildren than there are today. that is what will make the 21st century the second american century. that will allow the united states to export hope and liberty and freedom around the world, not by just saying it, but by living it every day in the way we conduct ourselves in the way we govern ourselves. mr. president, thank you for setting that example.

thank you for inspiring a whole new generation of conservative republican leaders who you helped to create. so many of us who sit in the state houses today are products of your leadership, your willingness to give us a chance to make a difference in our country and your administration and now to make a difference in our states and a country and in the world because of the opportunity you gave us. thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> coming up, president obama advocates for the passage of the

buffett role. the road to the white house coverage was several campaign events. ms. romney's speaks in hartford, conn. followed by newt gingrich. the three women justices of the supreme court joined the first standard de o'connor to celebrate the 30th anniversary of her confirmation to the court. >> thursday, stephen morore jois us to talk about the buffett role in tax policy. then the washington bureau chief and warren ashburton discuss their newly launched daily website. bary kluger talked about

efforts to defend the medical leave act. it airs every morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> i walked out after the iowa caucus victory in said "the game on." i know a lot of people will write. this game as a long way from over. we're going to continue to go out there and fight to make sure we defeat president obama, that we win the house back and that we take the united states senate them stand for the values that make us americans, that make as the shining city on the hill, to be a beacon for everyone. >> rick santorum ended his 2012 presidential bid. a process he began on could 2009. follow the steps he took on line

at the c-span video library with every c-span videos since 1987. >> president obama today continue to make his case for raising taxes on the wealthiest americans. his proposal would require anyone making a million dollars a year to pay of this 30's arm of their income in taxes. he said it could be renamed to the reagan role after the former president to call for a simpler and more fair tax cut. the senate is expected to take a vote on the next week. >> ladies and gentlemen, the president of united states. [applause] >> thank you. it is wonderful to see you, especially you. [laughter] oh, man, i know - having to listen to a speech. [baby crying]

it is wonderful to see you. lately we have been talking about the fundamental choice that we face as a country. we can settle for an economy where a shrinking number of people do very, very well and everybody else is struggling to get by or we can build an economy where we are rewarding hard work and responsibility, an economy where everybody has a fair shot and everybody is doing their fair share and everybody is playing by the same set of rules. the people who have joined me here today are extremely successful. they have created jobs and opportunities for thousands of americans. they are rightly proud of their success. veil of the country that made their success possible and most

importantly, they want to make sure the next generation, people coming up behind them, have the same opportunities they had. they understand that for some time now, when compared to the middle class, they have not been passed to do their fair share. they are here because they believe there is something deeply wrong and irresponsible about that. at a time when the share of national income flowing to the top 1% of people in this country has climbed to levels we have not seen since the 1920's, these same folks are paying taxes at one of the lowest rates in 50 years. in fact, one in four millionaires pays a lower tax rate than millions of hard- working middle-class households. while many millionaires to pay their fair share, some take advantage of loopholes, shelters, that let them get away with paying no income taxes whatsoever.

that is all perfectly legal under the system that we currently have. you have heard that my friend warren buffett pays a lower tax rate and his secretary because he is the one who has been pointing that out and saying we should fix it. executives who are with me today agree with him. they agree with warren buffett that this should be fixed. they have brought some of their own assistance to prove that same point. it is just plain wrong that middle-class americans pay a higher share of their income in taxes than some millionaires and billionaires. it is not that these folks are excited about the idea of paying more taxes. i have yet to meet people who just love taxes. nobody loves paying taxes. in a perfect world, nobody would have to pay taxes. we would have no deficits to pay down. school and bridges and roads and national defence and caring for our veterans would happen magically.

we would all have the money we need to make investments in the things that help us grow. investments that have always been essential to the private sector success as well, not just important to the people directly benefit from these programs but historically, those investment we have made in infrastructure, education, science, technology, transportation -- that is part of what has made us an economic superpower and it would be nice not to have to pay for them. this is the real world that we live. we have real choices and real consequences. we've got a significant deficit that will have to be closed. right now, we have significant needs it want to continue to grow this economy and compete in this 21st century hyper- competitive technologically- integrated economy. that means we cannot afford to

keep spending more money on tax cuts for wealthy americans who don't need them and were not even asking for them. it is time we did something about it. i want to emphasize that this is not simply an issue of read- distributing wealth. that is what you hear from those who object to a tax plan that is fair. this is not just about fairness. this is about growth. this is also about being able to make the investments we need to succeed and it is about we, as a country, being willing to pay for those investments and closing our deficits. that is what this is about. next week, members of congress will have a chance to vote on what we call the buffettt rule.

if you make more than $1 million per year, not if you have $1 million, but if you make more than $1 million per year, you should peg at least same percentage of your income in taxes as middle-class families. if, on the other hand, you make less than $250,000 per year like 90% of american families, your taxes should not go up. that is all there is to it. that is pretty sensible. most americans agree with me. so do most millionaires. one survey found that 2/3 of millionaires support this idea and said to nearly half of all republicans across america. we just need some of the republican politicians here in washington to get on board with where the country is. i know that some prefer to run around using the same reflexes and false claims about wanting to raise people's taxes but they won't tell you the truth. i have cut taxes for middle- class families each year i have

been in office. i have cut taxes for small business owners not once or twice but 17 times. for most of the folks in this room, taxes are lower than they have been or as low as they have been in 50 years. there are others who say this is just a gimmick. taxing millionaires and billionaires and imposing the warren buffett will not do enough to close the deficit. well, i agree. that is not all we have to do to close the deficit. the notion that does not solve the entire problem does not mean we should not do it at all. there are enough excuses for inaction in washington are we certainly don't need more excuses. the warren buffett rule is something that will get us moving in the right direction towards fairness, economic growth, it will help us close our deficit, and is more specific than anything the other side has proposed so far. if republicans in congress were truly concerned with deficits and debt, i am assuming that would not just a proposed to spend an additional $4.60 trillion on lower tax rates including an average tax cut of at least $150,000 for every millionaire in america.

they want to go in the opposite direction. they want to double down on some of the inequities that already exist in the tax code. if we are going to keep giving somebody like me were some of the people in this room, tax breaks that we don't need and we cannot afford, then one of two things happens -- either you got to borrow more money to pay down a deeper deficit or you've got to demand deeper sacrifices from the middle class and you've got to cut investments that help us grow as economies. you've got to tell seniors to pay little bit more for their medicare. you've got to tell the college students will have to trot -- charging higher interest rates under student loans. you will have to tell that working family that is scraping by the table have to do more because the wealthiest of americans are doing less. that is not right. the middle class has seen enough of this over last few

decades. we should not let that happen. we will not stop investing in the things that create real and lasting growth in this country just so folks like me can get an additional tax cut. we will not stop building first-class schools and making sure they've got science labs in them. we will not fail to make investments in basic science and research that could cure diseases that harm people or create the new technology that

ends up creating and jobs in industries that we have not seen before. in america, prosperity is not just trickled down from a wealthy few. prosperity is always -- has always been built in the bottom up, from the part of the middle class out word. it is time for congress to stand up for the middle class and make our tax is fairer by passing this warren buffett rule. i am not the first president to call for this idea that everybody has to do their fair share. one of my predecessors traveled across the country pushing for the same concept. he gave a speech where he talked about a letter he had received a wealthy executive who paid lower tax rates and his secretary and wanted to come to washington and tell congress what was wrong. so does president give another speech where he said it was crazy "that certain tax loopholes make it crazy for millionaires to pay nothing while the bus driver was paying

10% of his salary." that wild eyed socialist tax writing class warrior was ronald reagan. he thought that in america, the wealthiest should pay their fair share and he said so. i know that position might disqualify him from the republican primary these days - [laughter] but what ronald reagan was calling for them is the same thing we are calling for now, a return to basic fairness and responsibility. everybody doing their part. if it will help convince folks in congress to make the right choice, we could call up the reagan rule instead of the buffett rule. the choice is clear -- as though this kind of and i'm asking every american that agrees with me to call your member of

congress and write them an e- mail or tweet them and tell them to stop giving tax breaks to the wealthiest americans who don't meet them and are not asking for them and tell them to start asking everybody to do their fair share and play by the same rules so that every american who was willing to work hard has a chance at similar success said that we are making the investments that help this economy grow so that we are able to bring down our deficit in a fair and balanced and sensible way. tell them to pass the buffett rule. i will keep making this case across the country because i believe this rule, is consistent with those principles and those values, helps make us this remarkable place where everybody has the opportunity. each of us is only here because somebody somewhere felt responsibility not only for themselves but also for their

community and for their country. they felt a responsibility to us, to future generations, and now it is our turn to be similarly responsible. it is our turn to preserve the american dream for future generations. i want to thank those of you who are here with me today and thank everyone in the audience and want to appeal to the american people -- let's make sure we keep the pressure on congress to do the right thing. thank you very much, everybody. [applause]

>> live on c-span thursday, christine lagarde is at the burke center institution. she will discuss the imf's agenda and get our assessments. later in the afternoon, the training of the afghan army and task force. they're speaking at the center for strategic and international studies. that begins at 2:30 eastern here on c-span. >> are specific mission is to work to see that human rights remain an essential component of american foreign policy and that when we are evaluating our foreign-policy globally, a human rights can never be the only consideration.

that's the part of the dialogue. >> katrina lantos swett works for the lantos foundation for justice. >> it is the upcoming issue on whether not the u.s. congress should pass this. >> sunday night at 8:00 on c- span. >> april 15, 1912, at 1500 perished on a ship called "unsinkable. " they struck the bells three- time.

it is a warning stating that there is some object ahead. in means ahead of the ship. it does not say what kind of object. when they look out and did, he went and called down to the officer on the bridge to tell them what it is that they saw. the fawn was finally answered. the entire conversation was a what do you see? i spur, right ahead. their response was "thank you." >> is part of american history television. >> mitt romney took aim at the obama administration today, as saying the president is waging a "war on women" for his "failed

economic policies." connecticut holds a primary on april 24, at the same day as primaries in delaware, new york, pa., and rhode island. >> we welcome you here today. your campaign did not know when they called me last week what my political affiliations a word appeared in never asked me. >> i will do it now. never ask a question you don't know the answer to hear it -- the answer to. >> we feel you are uniquely qualified to solve the economic crisis we have appeared my interest as an employer of 24 people and the grandmother of 11 grandchildren i am concerned

about the next 10-30 years. and the next four years. so they did not have to worry about paying the national debt. [applause] >> hello, connecticut. i cannot think of a better place to pick up a presidential a general election campaign or our republican nominee than right here in in harbor, conn. he is carrying a message of

economic freedom, fiscal responsibility and energy independence, exactly what we need here in conn. i would like to introduce you a man that i am proud to be supporting. in the next president of the united states. >> thank you. please, we have a seat for you right there. you are in good shape. what do you think? could we put a few more people in the index re? thanks. >>out of the hallway we were just it just outside their two or 300 people out there we just for the fun of going out and speaking to them there's a very enthusiastic get interest in.

in seeing some new leadership by the the president's campaign slogan was let's hope and change. i think that's changing now to two let's hope for a change. there are so many dignitaries there. do want to introduce all that are here? all friends and new. we appreciate your joining. i have had the opportunity to meet with each of these business owners. you wonder why there behind me. we spent half an hour or so talking about their businesses. the heated them is running a business.

they do not feel the government is their ally. each of them said it would be nice of government got out of the way. i asked them to be more specific in which ways they could get out of the way. they began to go through various things that government does that makes it harder to be a woman in business or a small business in general. i hear that as i go across the country. i hear the concerns they have that the government, perhaps out of a sense of trying to help is making things worse. the one thing you have to fear is when someone comes to your door and says "i hear from the government and i am here to help." there is a recognition that what makes america and the economic engine is not government telling us how to live our lives or how to build our enterprises or grow them, but it is three people pursuing their own people in the

way they perceive a -- free people pursuing their own dreams and the way they perceive the best. [applause] i was disappointed in listening to the president as he says republicans are waging a war on women. did the real war on women is being waged by the president's failed economic policies. there -- can i borrow that? 01 if you has been these. we handed these out. these are just statistics which showed just how severe the war on women has been by virtue of the president's failed policies. this is an amazing statistic. the number of jobs lost by one at 92.30 of all the

jobs lost during the obama years have been lost by women. the presence as i did not cause this recession. that is true. he made it worse and made it last longer. because of last a long year, more women lost jobs. 92.3% of the people who lost jobs have been women. his failures have her women. what president has the worst record on female labor force recognition? barack obama. we have gone back 20 years. the progress that was made of more women getting into the workforce has been stepped back 20 years. under president obama, 858,000 more women are out of work. 858,000 more women are out of work. the total female unemployment rate has gone from 7% to 8.1% in

march 2012. this president has failed america's women. finding ex-president, i will go to work to get american women good jobs, rising incomes, and growing businesses. thank you. thank you. the president's failure for women is not just a statistical anomaly. these are real people and wrote families after being hurt. let me tell you which policies hurt. one was borrowing $787 billion and adding that to the deficit and using that not to create private sector jobs but to protect government. ns back to get america'

work. he passed the dodd/frank. it does anyone think dodd frank made easier for loans and tax the banks have become bigger appeared there the too big to fail banks. -- bigger. did they are the too big to fail banks. they're having a hard time under dodd/frank. i spoke to one head of a large new york centered bank. he said we have hundreds of lawyers implementing dodd/frank. hundreds of lawyers. banks cannot afford hundreds of lawyers. it has caused the loan sector to build back. then there was the president's labor policies. everything from trying to force unions and to businesses that neither the employees or employers wanted and then the national labor relations board saying if you are a right to work state, you cannot have a

factory from boeing scared the dickens out of a lot of employers. you have employers worried about gasoline prices. one women described to me the fact that they have a business that has how many gallons a day? 300 gallons a day. a penny a gallon savings or not help a lot when you have 300 gallons a day that you are buying. why are they so high? the speculators make an investment as to what they think the future price of gasoline will be. as a look at the future, and they look at what the president is doing today. he has cut back by half the number of licenses and permits the are provided on public plans to drill for oil. he held off on drilling in the gulf.

he is not drilling in anwar. fuel is being held up because of the epa. if we want to get america working again, we're going to have to have a president that will get american energy secure. cut back on its trade policies that makes it harder for us to go into new markets, a crackdown on china and. we will have a president that will finely balanced the budget. the other day the president said sunday i agree with.

it happens every now and then. he said this will be a defining election. i agree. there are pretty dramatic differences. his vision for america is a european style social welfare state where he promises bigger checks and government to everybody. my vision is a land that is free and filled with opportunities. if you're looking for a bigger check from government, he is your guy. if you're looking for more freedom and opportunity, rising incomes, a bright future for your kids, vote for me. i will get that job done for the american people. you have been standing long enough. he can go off. i just want to say a couple of things. i have had the privilege over the last year of going across

the country and meeting with people like these women here and then women of all backgrounds and interests. i am more optimistic than ever. i am afraid if all you did was watch the evening news, you might conclude things are getting worse and worse. he might feel a little skeptical about the future and cynical. my own view is that is wrong. as the meat the people of -- as you meet people in the news, there typically not good. i get to meet every day americans who are going to work, entrepreneurs of various kinds. one of the women here indicated that she and her husband have a service station. did not work.tatios

they changed it. they went into a car wash business. it is doing well. we are invented, creative people. if something is not working, we make something elsewhere. that is how the whole economy works. the liberals have this idea that a few smart bureaucrats can guided the whole economy, tell us how to run our enterprises. they can pick the winners and losers. they can give them $500 million. they can do a better job than individuals pursuing their own ideas. they can let the marketplace determine which will succeed and fail. these guys the government works. they are wrong. it is not a larger government trying to guide our lives. it is freedom and opportunity,

allowing individuals to pursue happiness. that is how the founders intended it appeared i believe founders were both inspired and brilliant. they said the creature had in doubt as with their right. among those rights were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. do not forget we are free to pursue happiness as we choose. there is the ability to choose our cars and light. those freedoms brought freedoms for hundreds of years. that built the most powerful economy in the world. sometimes people say "how, europeans have such a lower standard of living?" they have a 50's are higher income. why is that? the dna of humanity is the same.

those principles, freedom, opportunity. when government intrude on those thedoms, it killmakes it powerhouse it is. i want to restore america to the nation it was. this president will do in his campaign anything he can to deflect from his record. what i'm going to have to do every day is bring him back to his record. the policies of this administration have led to 92% of the people losing their jobs.

when he says there is a war on women, let him know it is a wage rise economic policy. those policies do not work. ronald reagan used to say effectively that it is not that liberals are ignorant. it is that what they know is wrong. i do not think the president is a bad guy. i just think his political philosophy is entirely wrong. it is hurting the american people. is that the harder for our economy to recover. i want to return to the principles of our founding. they strengthen our economy. they give us hope for the future. they make sure that children will have the future we hope. i love the people of america.

we are the greatest nation in the history of the earth. it is time for us to stop apologizing for success. we will never apologize for success abroad. i would want to thank these women are standing here and spending some time with me. i think them for the fact that they are business owners and managers. i appreciate what you do. i appreciate the work of the american people. as you're fighting to make this enterprise more successful, you are lifting our economy and making it easier for us to care for our seniors.

been makes this nation what is. i appreciate the work you're doing. i will solicit your help. i need your help to get elected. multipleu to vote times. the only way you can do that legally is by talking to your friends and asking them to vote for me. we have always known that there is something very special about america. what makes it special is different to some of us. it is special to all of us. there's always been a time that you stand a little straighter and taller. we have they get no one else in the world has. we know that this nation has done more to free other people from tyranny. other nations have adopted those things. they have lifted people from poverty. we have done more to let people

out of poverty. it is an extraordinary land we live in. we are not at a critical time. we are at a defining time. are we going to turn left and become like europe? are we going to restore the principles amatas who we are. that is a vision for america. bring back freedom and opportunity. stop attacking fellow americans. stop trying to define us. i will unite this country to make sure we remain,. thank you so much. thank you. quacks connecticut is one of seven states holding a republican primary. rick santorum dropping out of the race on tuesday.

the three remaining candidates are competing for the delegates. coming up this friday comment mitt romney and newt gingrich will address the national rifle association meeting in st. louis. other speakers include rick santorum and erick kanter, rick perry, and scott walker. what live coverage beginning at 2:00 p.m. eastern friday on c- span, cspan.org, and you can follow it on c-span radio. >> newt gingrich also posted a town hall meeting focusing his remarks on reforming social security. the event took place in dover delaware. he said he is committed to staying in the race until the convention. he currently trails mitt romney in the delegate count. delaware is among the five states holding its primary on april 24.

>> hello. i of the republican president here at wesley college. i am the chair of the delaware students. it is on 236 campuses across the country. i urge you to get involved and to get on there. it is newt.org/students. i am also the chief staff of the student government association. i would like to introduce to you the former united states -- the former speaker of the united states house of representatives and republican candidates for presidential election, the honorable newt gingrich. 2 >> thank you, you did good. >> thank you very much.

thank you for coming out this evening and for giving us an opportunity to talk about ideas and to be in a setting where it is totally appropriate to talk about ideas. with the main reasons i decided to run for president is we have a tremendous challenge in trying to develop a generation of ideas. our system is a remarkably resistant to new information. it automatically shifts over to talk about any thing else. as ashley asked today about when i was speaker. a reporter went off on my hair. he's been the whole article talking about my hair. from the standpoint of being a liberal, maybe that was less dangerous than talking about my ideas. it is literally that kind of

politics. if you look at what i thought was a totally artificial fight over contraception and you look at how much total news coverage from january 7 when george stephanopoulos started to 3.5 months was spent on this, then you compare it to how much serious conversation has there been about saving social security tax how much sears conversation has there been about the reliance on saudis for oil. one of the major regionreasons i decided to run, if you are young person let me give you an example. if you are a young person under the current deficit spending pattern, just to pay interest on the deck you will inherit, you will not have gotten any of the goods and services. you will just get the debt.

the politicians will have spent the money and taking care of your parents and grandparents. you will go to work. it is like having a credit card. you'll just pay the interest payments appeared in your working life time, you will pay $300,000 in taxes. just to pay interest on the debt. that means you will have bought a house. it'll be a house for politicians. it not be a house for you. you go down a series of steps. this is the weakest since the great depression. you are going to end up in a world where it is harder to get a job which will have higher gasoline rates. it will be less disposable income. your taxes will be higher. this will lead you less money to pay off your student loans.

in that contest -- context, what will your options b? having a long-term conversation actually matters the most to people who are currently young. you will live the long-term experience. over time, you can achieve things that you cannot achieve in week or month. in 1983, we tried to solve social security. we ended up selling it in the usual washington method, pain. did they raised taxes. the cut benefits. it is double pane. it is the opposite of free enterprise for your supposed to get more for your money. you will now give up more money for fewer benefits. in 1980.opted

today we would have $16 trillion in savings account. that is the power of building up over time. this is not a theory. chile exist. is a real country. if you can go look at wikipedia and google. you can see the reports. the average worker in chile will retire with two to three times as much money as they would have gotten from the traditional system. they have a provision that says if you drop below the minimum payment, the government will make up the difference. they have written zero checks. there never had one single person fall below that line. what happens tax here is how it works. how many of you went to work at

15 years of age and pager for social security check? how many of you went to work at 16? 2/3 this audience was either i 15 or 16 paying social security. the way the system would work, the taxes to parttwo parts. your share would go into a savings account you control. the employers par would go into paying for the traditional system. just taking the part you paid at 15 or 16, on average people will work probably at least a 70 in your generation. that means you have compound interest building up every single year. it is amazing how powerful it

is. from day one year starting to build up your state. this is a key difference. if you die we before your benefits, everything you pay goes to the government. in a savings account model, the money is yours. if something happens to you it belongs to your family. it created an estate. the power of the system is such that the estimate is we will have eliminated 50% of the welk and inequality in the united states. every single worker who took the savings account would be savored investor. we literally would have raised

the bottom dramatically by having that many more people have saved money that would be building up interest their whole lifetime. if you build up -- i said there the $16 trillion. but to 1983 and today. each you build up that kind of money in savings, you increase the growth of the economy. a now have all this capital to invest. the estimate is at the end of the next generation you would have about a $7 trillion bigger economy. that is about 57 bigger. you end up saving your own money, becoming wealthier toward your retirement in a bigger economy with better jobs which gives even more income toward your own requirement. you begin a virtuous circle.

this gives you the opportunity to control your own life. remember if you have a personal savings account, congress does not have any reason to tell you what you are doing. you want to work until you are 60? you retire at 60. you want to work to you are 80? you will retire at 80. there is no control because it is your money. he never have a president say what obama said in july. it is not his check it increases your personal freedom. it increases your personal control over your own money. it gives you dramatically more money and does so in a way that grows a bigger economy. while reducing income and wealth

inequality to make a country fair, not by lowering the top, but by raising the bottom. one last example. this is all real. the principal group in des moines, iowa, alactually joined- runs the chilean system. i met with the vice-president, who is a chilean. today, 32 years after they began the program, at 72% of the economy is represented by the savings. they have so much savings that it is equivalent to 72% of the annual economy. it is so big they now allow chileans to invest outside the country because there are not enough opportunities to invest in chile. imagine a world where instead of borrowing from the chinese our savings pool was so massive that we invested in every conceivable american investment and we have extra money left

over to invest elsewhere, because we have that much savings. that is what is happening. the first thing i want to be the number people here with is you really want to look at this. i believe the system can be made voluntary you do not want to join it, stay in the current system. the official actuary for the social security estimated that you make it voluntary, between 95% to 97% of the young people would take the new program. because the difference in the out-year payment is so massive that you have to be foolish not to take it. you can actually have a voluntary program. four people currently on social security, i would eliminate social security's connection to the budget. i will take it off budget where was in 1967 and say, look like

you have $2 -- $2 trillion, $400 billion being held hostage. i would say the first claim would be to eliminate the social security check and that would eliminate any threat. you could actually protect the current generation on social security, while giving their grandchildren a chance to re dramatically more powerful model. the last point i'm making about social security is very simple, for those who rely on the current structure. getting back to riffle employment economy -- to a full employment economy is the best step you can take to extending social security. if we had a fully employed economy, we would have millions working that are currently unemployed. the real unemployment number is massively bigger than 8%, because we have had more -- so

many drop out. when i left the speakership, were down to 4.2% unemployment. if you got back to that level of unemployment, you would have so many more people working. they would be paying so much more into the social security trust fund. you would basically be investing four additional years of stability in the fund. and -- for additional years of stability in the fund. it is very hard to keep things stable if you have massive unemployment. because you do not have enough people paying taxes in the system. that is true for medicare as well as social security. it is also true if you want to get to a balanced budget. the number one step is to get people back to work, because when you take them off of unemployment and off of food stamps and off of public housing and off of medicaid and put them back to work paying taxes, you have increased government revenue baltic -- decrease in

government spending. -- while decreasing government spending. it is no accident that surpluses came when we have low unemployment. controlled spending, revenue will come in as people go to work. the only balanced budgets in your lifetime came during the time that i was speaker. it came because we consciously set out to balance the budget. which gets me to my second topic. in addition to your generation having opportunity to have a personal soldiers security savings account, which i think is very important for your long- term future, i think we need an american energy independence plan. i think it relates directly to the younger generation. we need it, first of all, for national security reasons. if we had energy independence, no future president would ever again out to a saudi king.

it is very, very important that we get to a position where we are dealing with the middle east from a position of strength, not weakness. [applause] and i also suggest to all viewpoints -- take for example, what the iranians are doing. they are threatening to close the strait of hormuz. it has about one of every 5 barrels of oil in the world. today, the guarantor of the street remaining open is the u.s. navy and air force. but in the long run, if we can develop energy independence, we can say to europe, india, china, japan that we are fine. we produce enough energy and oil for ourselves. they have a problem and they need to figure out what they are going to do to keep open the strait of hormuz.

it will be a much healthier world if other midlevel powers were doing their fair share and not relying on the u.s. and to do that, you've got to get to american energy independence so that we are not faced with a crisis every time the saudis or the iraqis or the iranians decide to reduce oil production. there is another side effect to going quilt -- energy independence, and that is, jobs. north dakota is the preeminent new example of oil being produced in the u.s. we have new drilling technology and it lets us reach out in north dakota and we are now producing a tremendous increase in oil. the numbers are actually pretty breathtaking. 15 years ago, we thought there were about 150 million barrels of oil in north dakota. today, we think there are 24 billion barrels of oil.

that is how big the increase has been. and the people who have developed it believe that another -- in another generation, we may have technology to go even deeper, in which case we think there could be 500 billion barrels of oil. what happens when you start discovering oil on the scale? the unemployment rate in north dakota is a 5%. and that -- 3.5% there are 16,000 to 18,000 jobs that they cannot fill. because the people over here that are unemployed do not have the right skills. one of my proposals is that we modernize the unemployment compensation program by attaching to it a training program or garment. if you sign up for unemployment compensation, you also signed up for a business training program, so during the time that we are paying the money you are actually learning something. and we do not pay people for

doing nothing. [applause] if it you think about it, 99 weeks of unemployment cannot that is enough to earn an associate degree. think about giving someone money for 99 weeks and did not ask breaking. if you really -- verses if you really need 99 weeks, we expect you to earn an associate degree. i think you would see it -- a drop-off in unemployment compensation. but we do need a constant retraining program because we will have new industries, new technologies, new opportunities, and you cannot leave the work force behind. it is not just enough to have the numerous eri. yahtzee other work force trained to use it. -- have the new machinery. you have to have the work force trained to use it. i would set a goal to have gas prices down to $2.50 or less.

about a month ago, the president are very sensitive to this because i talked about it for about three weeks. his pollsters apparently came into him and said, this is really dangerous. he made a series of speeches in which he talked about the oil problem and the price of gasoline. they would be great speeches for you to study just in terms of logic and the underlying structure of the speech. he says, drilling is not the solution. and then he proposes a solution. does anyone here remember what it was? algae. so, we went and we wentalgae. and it is true, we have research under way to have the equivalent

of oil through algae and in 10 years, we may have a commercially viable solution. and it is estimated to be somewhere between $400 a barrel and $800 a barrel. it is just like solyndra. they have five major solar powered plants that have gone bankrupt. if i come to your local gas station and say, i have a solution for the price of gasoline. is algae-based fuel, and it is only $40 a gallon. i do not think anyone is going to buy it. this is where you get into problems. but what was intellectually fascinating about the president's speech was he made his big emphasis that drilling did not work. two pages later he started talking about natural gas.

this is one of the great revolutions of our lifetime. in the year 2000 compliant -- in the year 2000, we had about a seven-year supply of natural gas. we were making plans to bring in liquefied natural gas from the middle east. we were going to build these huge, very expensive ports to contain this and bring in in specialized ships. and new technology, which is drilling. and with the new technology we discovered natural gas and jail. we now have an estimated 125- year supply. we went from a seven-year supply to 125-year supply. but we went there with drilling. i was in mississippi at this point, and we went out and found a drilling rig. and we did a youtube video to

try to point out to the president that you do not get natural gas from algae. you get if from drilling. this has a huge implication because one of the counter arguments is, you cannot tell me what the price of gasoline will be. and right, you cannot. but you can tell directions. under obama, the direction is no. someone came out saying that gasoline had risen more under president obama than it did under carter, who was the last record holder. are you going to get it down or get it to go up? let me give you history, not theory. when we began developing natural gas, the amount we produced since 2008 has gone up 11%. when you have an increased supply -- this is standard economic theory. if you have an increased supply, the odds are, what will happen

to price? it will go down. that is the theory. what is the history? in 2008, natural gas was at $7 a unit. it is today at $2.50 a unit. -- $2.05 a unit. that would be down, right? from drilling. what would happen if oil had a comparable decline? oh, gasoline would be $1.13, not $2.15. -- $2.50. i'm being very cautious. when was the last time gasoline was $1.13? it was when i was speaker. what was it when obama was sworn in? it was $1.89. the newspapers promptly go to the economy is bad. first, the economy is still bad. gasoline prices have gone up,

but the economy is not dramatically better. but here as an historian, here is a fact. under ronald reagan we created 16 million new jobs. and under jimmy carter -- and without jimmy carter's destructive gasoline policy, gas prices went down. prices went down while jobs were going out. -- going up. some of you are too young to remember this. jimmy carter, who was the last person to be truly committed to big government intervention, no matter how stupid. in all fairness to bill clinton, he was committed to big government, but not to where it was really stupid. he had enough common sense coming out of jürgen -- out of arkansas that had survived by to yell -- going to yell at he

understood summit this stuff. for those of you wrote are younger, i'm not exaggerating. you had a government young enough -- dumb enough to decide that the way they were going to fix gasoline is they were going to require people to buy every other day based on the last number of their license plate. a good friend of mine reminded me that he was 39 year. and he when to -- every morning, his father gave him his screwdriver -- [laughter] -- and sent him out back to make sure that the car that needed gasoline have the right license plate. i developed from that a theory of liberalism and conservatism.

if you are told that the government has adopted a regulation is so dumb that we are training 13-year-olds on how to cheat and use it, we should drop the regulation. your conservative. but if i tell you the same story and you say, that is proof that we need a license plate police at every gas station, then you're a liberal. [laughter] i want to just let this seat, because there are two parts i want to describe. one is that our ideology to avoid reality. we have the entire record of the carter and reagan years. we know the history. and we know that government interference lead to a scarcity, rising costs, and did not work. we know that the very first

executive order that reagan signed the regulated gasoline. every liberal things that price is going to go up and within six months, the price -- the prices crashed. the market worked. people went out and started producing a lot more gasoline. you would think that the answer to america having energy independence in oil would be to open up federal land, open up offshore. and you would rapidly produce enough oil. if you produced enough oil, he would drive down the price. it is almost theoretically impossible to produce enough oil to be independent in saudi arabia and not have the -- independent of saudi arabia and not have the price go down ideology is a major hindrance. but there's a second thing that is a major hindrance. that is, a real and willingness to learn about technology. what i just told you about

involves a brand new style of drilling that has only been around for about 10 or 15 years. it is changing everything. if you go from a seven-year supply of natural gas to 125 years, if you go from it being very expensive to very cheap, these are huge changes. you now have truck stop companies that are putting in a natural gas highway so big trucks will be able to be natural gas-driven rather than diesel or gasoline. natural gas is now about $1.50 per gallon cheaper than diesel. even the president conceded in his speech that we may have six out -- 600,000 new jobs in the next decade just out of natural gas. there are tremendous opportunities to get as independent in the middle east, create millions of new jobs, lower the cost of energy both for industry so that we have more jobs and for our own cars and trucks, and do so in a way

that gives us the last big breakthrough. if we could impose discipline on washington, we could once again balance the federal budget as we did one of the speaker. -- when i was speaker. if you then said, all of the royalties, all of the oil and gas are going to go to paying for paying down the national debt. the result in north dakota is that the next generation, the potential for oil and gas royalties from the government are going to be between $16 trillion and $18 trillion. that means if you have a debt repayment fund and it all went into that fund, in a lifetime of the youngest people in this room, the u.s. would be literally debt-free. you developed your energy resources, you liberate yourself

from the middle east, you lower the cost of industry and you lower the cost of driving. you create tremendous wave of royalties for the u.s. government, and over the next 40 years you are safer, wealthier, and you have a higher standard of living and you pay off the national debt. that is where we'll leadership will be. i'll close with one last example. how many of you have ever been called by your credit card company to make sure you were the person using your car? just raise your hand. this is not a theory. credit-card companies have very sophisticated systems that monitor it in real time and analyze whether it is probably really you. american express, for example, pays 0.13% to crooks. by contrast, medicare and medicaid are people based.

over here, you have in the world of innovation gigantic expert system computers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. over here you have 95 bureaucrats with paper who are competing with crooks -- 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. bureaucrats with paper were competing with crooks with ipads. the "new york times" estimated that over 10% of all payments go to crooks. and when i say that, i do not mean someone making a marginal mistake. i mean a dentist that files 982 procedures per day. the russian mafia and los angeles in durable medical equipment. the guy in florida and was convicted of stealing $24 million, who had originally gone to prison as a cocaine dealer. he that trial and the judge is asking him questions and he said, you know, i was in jail and we all talked about it and we decided cocaine dealing with

dangerous. we can actually make more money stealing from the federal government that we can selling cocaine. and it is a lot safer. what he would do is set up a phony held company. he would build florida medicaid. they would start sending him money. and after about six months they would want to come and audit him. he would probably close the company, leave, go to another town, open up a new company and do the same thing all over again. he did this for three or four years and collected $24 million without ever doing any services, because the system is so out of sync with reality. for your generation, here is what is at stake. it sounds like a funny anecdotes. it is not. we wrote a book at the center for health transformation called ooks."ed paying the cru

we thought it would get washington's attention, but it had no impact at all. the best we could get is that -- the best estimate we could get is that fraud in medicaid and medicare is between $60 billion and $110 billion a year. that means over 10 years, $1 trillion in fraud. why does this matter? think about how much students pay back in student loans. my guess is the fraud in medicaid and medicare is as big a number. the about all of the challenges we have preserving medicare. if you are paying croaks, wouldn't the obvious first place to save money be in not being the crooks? there is enormous resistance to learning new ideas. you have an opportunity to get

to a balanced budget, which is at least $150,000 in your lifetime. you have an opportunity to have a safer country with less worry about the middle east, which dramatically lower costs for transportation while increasing the total number of jobs in the u.s. and you have the opportunity to apply technology to the government to dramatically improve the outcomes in a way that gets us to a balanced budget not by hurting the innocent, but stopping pain the crooks. all of these things are doable. they will only happen if the yen per generation decide to go into public life and they will help make this possible -- the younger generation decides to go into public life and help make this possible. we are much more prosperous and a much safer and much healthier country over the next 20 years if we deal with these things.

that is why i would love for you to vote for me in the primary. i will put in a brief commercial. i will be the only newt gingrich on the ballot. [laughter] i would like to toss it open for questions. we have microphones here. >> you were sitting in exactly the night -- the right place. clever of you. >> i kind of plant that. -- planned it that. what are your thoughts on iran and north korea as far as nuclear technology? >> i think we have to worry about a couple of things. a good friend of mine who is michael author for novels, bill fortune, wrote a remarkable book called "one second after," which is a novel about the impact in a small town in north carolina of

an electromagnetic pulse attack. it is a very sophisticated system that is sort of like a giant lightning strike. any of you ever have lightning knocked out the television or an appliance, imagine this tremendous amount of a trustee that will literally knocked out generating stations. -- amount of electricity that will literally knocked out generating stations. i worry that north korea is developing that kind of weapon. the catastrophic impact is very real. if you have a rocket big enough to put something in orbit, you have a ballistic missile. you can decide -- disguise it and say it is just for science, but they have tested an icbm. it is very dangerous. the north korean regime is dangerous because it is unpredictable, and also because

they will sooner or later sell stuff. we know a couple of years ago that the israelis destroyed a north korean facility in syria, which they had sold to syrians. i am concerned about north korea. with iran, it is a different problem. the iranian dictatorship has been so clear about its desire to destroy israel that you have to take very seriously that possibility. and i do not see how you can ask an israeli prime minister of the risk of a second holocaust. if you look at the tremendous loss of jewish life in world war ii where some 7 million jews were killed, and you start saying to yourself, if you were the prime minister of a very tiny country with three or four nuclear weapons and there is a risk of another holocaust amapola -- holocaust, what steps would you take? i think they will simply not run the risk. i could never ask them not to do

it because you have a dictator in iran, ahmadinejad, this has publicly that he will erase them from the face of the earth. it has been my experience that when dictators say things like that, believe them. these guys are really dangerous. i'm really worried about barack obama cutting our dramatic -- our military dramatically, which i think will really expose the united states. [applause] we have to be very worried about unilaterally disarming in a dangerous world. yes, ma'am? >> when we talk about american independence on energy, why it -- is it that we as a nation -- and you also said, we focus on oil independence. why can't we focus on both oil and alternative energy resources? why can we focus on the short term fix of maybe drilling in

north dakota to lower gas prices, but with the long-term goal being alternative energy independence? why is it only american oil independence? >> if you go to newt.org i have an entire section on alternative energy. i am for alternative energy. i voted for those in 1979 as a freshman. the fact is, technologically, they're still dramatically more expensive. if you're trying to move a vehicle around -- we are right at the edge of hydrogen fuel cells, which made come in in the not too distant future. you could have a natural gas vehicle as opposed to oil-based vehicles. but also any time in the next 10 years, the vast majority of vehicles will use gasoline. that is just a fact. you're talking about a huge amount of cars and trucks that will use diesel or gasoline.

i am very much for alternative fuels, but i will warn you that they all tend to be much more expensive. there's a reason fossil fuels have been dominant. it is because they are cheap. we do not know the breakthrough in battery technology yet. it is very hard to get an electric car that does any substantial distance. that is why you find people looking at this. i am all for research and i'm for research into biofuels. as a model, algae is part of the future, but not part of the present. i would say that about a wide range of these alternatives. >> most students get financial aid and student loans. what is your plan for the student loans that is apparently going to bust and the worst than the -- worse than the housing market. >> it is not going to bust and lets students decide not to pay

it. i'd think we're on the right -- unless students decide not to pay it. addi we're on a wrong track right now students are more money and take longer to get through school. ironically, students who work get through school faster than the students who do not work in school. then they get out of school and they realize they have to pay back all that they borrowed. this is a real challenge. i want to increase economic growth so you can get a job, and i want to lower the price of gasoline to you can afford to pay off your student loan. if i can do those two things, you're probably going to have to pay off your student loan. my advice is to borrow as little as you can and get through as quickly as you can. the college of the ozarks is a fascinating work city college, which can only go to if you need testudinate, and they do not

have any. -- need student aid and they do not have any. they have to work 40 hours a week in the summer. when they built the new library, all the actual labor was done by students. it is a very interesting model and designed as an alternative for a very inexpensive education. >> my name is rose. i'm a candidate for the united states house of representatives from the state of delaware. how do you feel about fighting wars for other countries and bringing home our troops? >> if we fight a war, we should fight for the united states, not other countries. i would look at places we do not need to be and bring people home. i would be against the ron paul

approach of bringing everybody home. we have lots of interest around the world and i think we want to sustain our capacity and impact around the world, but there are a lot of bases we do not need around the world anymore. i would like to see and overseas brat based review before we have another domestic braque. >> i'm teaching at the university of delaware main campus, although i'm not only an adjunct faculty member. but in my building of about 200 faculty, i would say i am one of two non-liberals. [laughter] i am wondering if you would be allowed to speak on the main campus. legally, of course you would be. but i'm not so sure they would not make up some excuse about security or something.

>> why don't we test it out? i'm coming back next week. [applause] let me say first of all, i think you just proved what diversity means if you're on the left. [applause] i'm sure senator bernini and others -- of course, senator beldini is a graduate of this fine institution, therefore he has a deep commitment to education [applause] and senator lawson is right there. we have three state senators who i'm sure would be happy to share an interest. i would be happy to go to the main campus. my hunch is -- this is my experience in general. i have been to harvard and lots of places. overwhelmingly, they're

sufficiently curious. having a conservative who write books is such a novelty to them that it is like having a giraffe at the county fair. they show up for the spectacle. as a general rule, we get a fairly decent response. we will try to work it out to come to the campus. it will be a lot of fun. >> i'm a freshman year at wesley. my question is, how would you go about bringing back jobs that are going to international companies? >> i would do a couple of things. that is a very important and powerful question. it all goes back to reagan creating 16 million new jobs and working with the speaker -- as the speaker with bill clinton to create millions more jobs. it breaks into three big part, i think. taxes, regulation, and energy. i've already talked about energy.

you would literally create several million new jobs out of eight -- energy program, and by driving down the cost of energy, you create additional manufacturing jobs and to lower the cost of living, thereby making the u.s. more competitive. on taxes, a zero capital gains tax so you have hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into the u.s. with companies opening of new factories and lodging onto the ownership. the second is, to have 100% expensing so that you have all of the equipment getting hot -- getting written off in one year, so you are in the position to have the most modern work force in the world with the most modern equipment. and i try that back into the unemployment training. you constantly have the most up- to-date equipment and workers to be the most modern country in the world. third, making as one of the least expensive -- us one of the

least expensive companies in the world -- countries in the world for corporate taxes. currently, we're the third highest. fourth, i would abolish the death tax. i did it is profoundly wrong to punish a family for having worked and saved the entire lifetime. and i think it is wrong to have the undertaker and the irs the same week. and i want successful businesses to focus on growing and creating jobs, not hiding from the irs. and finally, i am for a flat tax option. this is something to do with hong kong. you can take the current code, current deductions, current way of doing things or you can have a percentage. this is what i earn, ip 15%. liberals balance the budget by saying you we have to balance your taxes to catch up with barack obama's credit card. my model is, tell me what the

revenue is. i will now shrink the credit card to meet the revenue. it is a fundamentally different model. [applause] on deregulation, i will give you five quick examples -- one, zero repeal obamacare. overnight, you will create jobs. no. 2, repeal the doctrine bill. it is crippling -- the dog-franc bill. it is crippling businesses. 3, repealed sarbanes oxley, which is crippling business in the u.s.. i would replace the revenue replacement agency with common sense and to innovation and working with an entrepreneur is to develop better solutions. and i would modernize the fda to sell its job would be to be in the laboratory, learning at science, and accelerating medicine to the patient and not

blocking it. i would like american health products to be the most modern and most effective in the world. that would create hundreds of thousands of high-value jobs in the u.s. those are the steps i would take in this economy. >> my name is michael. i'm currently secretary of the student government association here at westy college. i have a two-part question. my first question is, how would you go about increasing the allocation for students that want to go to college in terms of the federal funds for students that want to attend private colleges such as was the college? and also, the students that is just graduating college, what would you do to increase the job

population? >> i started in college by the secretary of my freshman class. this is going to be the beginning of a great career for you. [applause] let me say first of all, i wish all of you would take a serious look at this college of the ozarks model. i would like to see if we could not turned a fairly significant amount of students into a work study program. he would not have to pay back because he would be working and earning it. my experience is that students who work learn to discipline their time and actually do very well because they get up in the morning knowing they have to get this stuff done. i would be more comfortable with more aid coming in the form of a work study program rather than more loans or just plain grants. second, the job creation program, my theory is simple. if we get back to where we were

when i left office, which is 4.2% unemployment, every graduate is going to have a job almost overnight. at 4.2% unemployment, people are hunting for folks to higher. the problem is, the president seems to keep trying to find small solutions to a big problem. get the economy growing so rapidly that it absorbs all of the americans wanting to work. the energy plan would create millions of new jobs pretty rapidly. >> you were part of a balanced budget. how would you employ maybe zero based budgeting, holding government agencies accountable, and the whole use the money or lose it? >> with the young lady joining you, you all are the last questions, ok? i think it is a good idea.

ironically, is something jimmy carter tried to implement in the 1970's. what we do today is a, i'm already spending $1 million on this, so if i spend any less than $1 million i feel really bad. and by the way the current budget goes, i'm actions was to spend more. imagine if your kids came in and said, have a new model for lots. i would like to get $10 a month, plus $5 a month extra every month. every month that he did not give me at least $5 extra you're cutting my allowance. and you say, you got $10 a month last month and i can give you $11, this month and it is an increase. and you say, no, you are cutting out $4.

the political science department ought to dig into this. the absence of serious intellectual effort to understand how destructive the federal budgeting rules are cripple our ability to get to a balanced budget. there is no reason to use a current services budget. it guarantees permanent up for placing pressure. we ought to say an increase is in increase. a decrease is any decrease -- is a decrease. then you do not have to fight over the particulars, but at least you are talking about an increase. paul ryan used it in his budget and i think it's a pretty good phrase. the same as on the tax side. many years ago, a senator said if we take a 100% tax rate, how much money would we get? and they came back and said, the total u.s. income last year -- i

making a number of -- was $600 billion. therefore, we would make $600 billion. and he said, if you think we would take -- your telling me that you think if we take one under% of people's income that they would work? -- 100% of people's income that they would work? that was that model. and they were wrong. it is a very sophisticated, but really important principle that we ought to go back to, which is to go to a reality-based budget. look at every single item and ask, why are we doing it? as opposed to, we are going to keep doing what we are already doing, and now let's add to -- $10. and the first question is, why are we still doing it? peter drucker use tuesday, the real test is to ask yourself the following -- if you were not already doing it, why would you

start? and if you wouldn't do it, why would you start? i find useful in life, but particularly useful in the federal budget. >> thank you for taking my question. considering the saudis have become somewhat hostile trading partners, is there anything wrong with saying, if you raise oil prices, we are going to raise the prices of f-16's and other parts. and have you spoken with senator santorum? >> we have been swapping cause, but have not gotten on the line yet. -- swapping phone calls, but have not gotten on the line yet. the first thing is you have to create so much american oil that you do not care. otherwise, the saudis will find a have a production problem and will will jump to $150 per barrel. and it would say, oh, we would like to solve it, but we cannot

quite get around to doing that until you do what we want. this is bipartisan, both democrat and republican, they treat the saudis very cautiously. remember, you had virtually all the people involved in 9/11 were saudis. and the washington establishment did not want to think about that because it was scary. what they should have said is, this is proof positive we better have an american energy plan. if the president's speech the week after 9/11 had been, we're going to go to an american energy independence plan, we would be in a different world today. >> devon jones, gratz tooten here. thank you for coming. i have a question. obviously, our government spending is out of control. reducing government spending should be?

environmental policy and such? it is a hot topic in class. >> i am very much in favor of a healthy environment. i taught environmental studies. i talk on the second earth day. when i was teaching , the kindtal studies of the river in downtown cleveland -- cuyohoga river in downtown cleveland caught fire. yadier river so polluted that it catches fire, there is something wrong. i care about endangered species. i am a zoo fanatic. you have a fine small zoo and south of euan salsbury you have a very fine small zoo. i care about the red wolf in north carolina, i care about making sure the elephant survived. that will require resources, but also requires using common

sense. i would be happy to say that part of our foreign aid is contingent upon the use of national parks. you go back to the turn of the 19th century, 20th century. we had almost wiped out the buffalo. we had heard at one time of 15 million, 20 million buffalo. we liked them all out. when the audubon society first got started, birds were being wiped out because of their fathers. women's hats were being filled with bird feathers. i'm glad people intervened and found ways to preserve species. i do not want to see a planet where we say, in the interests of the economy let's run over everything. i also think there has to be some level of common sense. when it turns out a subspecies of squirrel -- not a species,

but a subspecies of scroll on the non-blocks the development of an astrological observatory -- on a mountain blocks the development of an astrological observatory for five years, is this serious or is this bureaucracy run amok? some common sense has to be applied. i do not know if i help your class at all. [laughter] >> i am not old enough to vote yet, but i wonder what your take is on the state of public schools. >> first got it you're going to vote for me, i wish you were old enough to vote. [laughter] what is my take on public schools? >> the fate. >> the fate in public schools. my view is that we ought to teach american history accurately. [applause]

if you teach american history accurately, you get to our founding document, the declaration of independence. and it's as we hold these truths to be self evident. -- it says we hold these truths to be self-evident. they should then pick up on the fact that it says we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. what do you think a man by our creator? and meeting their inalienable, meaning nothing can come between you and your god. if you get a chance to go to the lincoln memorial, one of the things you should do for your own education and really feel america is read the gettysburg address. it is very short. maybe 289 words. read it slowly, which is how lincoln read it. "one nation, under god" comes from the gettysburg address. he personally wrote it at the

podium while looking at the first national cemetery at gettysburg. and he wrote that just before he spoke. but then turn around and on the other wall is the second inaugural, arch, 1865. -- march, 1865. 702 words, 14 references to god, two quotations from the bible. lincoln is a man who enters the war as a rational person, believing in the law. his great speech at cooper union was 7200 words long and is entirely rational. 600,000 dead americans, more than all the other wars be caught -- combined. for years of brutal war. -- four years of brutal war. and he writes the most religious

inaugural address in history. i do not know how teachers can teach him as secular. it is just not true. read his second inaugural. you can google it. it is astonishing. it is one of the great speeches of american history. i do not think we have to get into a sense of faith as a catholic verses baptist, or catholic verses and jewish. the idea is, you cannot understand america if you eliminate got from our history. [applause] -- eliminate god from our history. [applause] i'm very grateful to wesley college for letting me be here today. the students are really terrific. and i would appreciate any of you help me over the next few weeks. i think we have an historic

chance here in this primary. >> delaware is one of several states holding its republican primary on april 24, joining connecticut, pennsylvania, and reilich. with rick santorum dropping out on the race tuesday, the two candidates will be seeking the delegates at stake in the contest. the national rifle association is holding a conference on friday. watch live coverage beginning at 2:00 p.m. eastern friday on c-span c-span.org. , and you can also follow it on c-span radio. >> i walked out after the iowa caucus victory and said, came on. i know a lot of folks are going to write "game over," but this

game is long from over. we will continue to go out there and make sure we fight to defeat president barack obama, that we when house back, and the -- we win the house back, and the senate, and we make is the shining city on the hill, to be a beacon for everybody for freedom around the world. >> and with that announcement, rick santorum ended his 2012 presidential bid. he began the process in 2009. all of the steps he took on the road to the white house online at disease brought -- c-span library with programs back to 1987. >> coming up tonight on c-span, the woman justices of the supreme court gather to pay tribute to sandra day o'connor. later, remarks from attorney- general eric holder speaking about race and east -- and the criminal-justice system. and former president george bush

talks about the economy and tax policy, followed by governor chris christie on his efforts to balance the budget in new jersey. tuesday on "washington journal" stephen more "wall street journal" editorial board member joins us to talk about the presidential proposals, but that rule, and tax policy. -- a buffet rule, and tax policy. then howard kurtz and lord ashburton discuss the use of social media in the presidential campaign. and barry clyburn, author of "a life undone" talks about the family leave act to cover bereavement. "washington journal" begins every morning at 7:00 a.m. >> our specific issue is to work to make sure that human rights

remain an essential component of american foreign policy, and that when we are evaluating our foreign policy moves globally, human rights can never be the only consideration, but it has to be part of the dialogue. >> katrina lantos swesat is the president of the lantos foundation. >> lumley abandoned -- when we abandoned human rights, whether or not we are born to stay on record saying that human-rights matter, the matter in russia, the matter in china. >> supreme court justices ruth

bader ginsberg, sonia sotomayor, and alain mcgagin -- elena kagan. justice o'connor was nominated by president reagan in 1981 and confirmed in the senate with a vote of 99-0, becoming the first woman to serve on the court. she stepped down in 2006 after serving for 25 years. >> pretty thing. i'm greg yoseph, president of the historical society and i'm delighted to welcome you to the society's celebration of the 30th anniversary of the first term of justice sandra day o'connor on the u.s. supreme court. [applause] we are deeply honored to have with us this evening justice o'connor, justice ruth bader ginsburg, justice sota -- sonia

sotomayor, and justice elaine at cater -- elena kagan. this is the first time that four of them are together for a program and we're extremely grateful that they have done so in joining in the celebration. we also want to thank jim deaf from the freedom forum for making the space available to us this evening. long prior to being ceo at freedom forum, he was with the historical society gain back to being administrative assistant to chief justice rehnquist and before that chief justice burger. i also want to thank frank jones for his generous donation this evening. he was the distinguished president from 2002-08, and only because of illness is not with us this evening. our panel consists of the four women who to date have served on the u.s. supreme court.

even to summarized each of their careers would take far too long, so i will be brief. justice sandra day o'connor was nominated to the court by president ronald reagan on july 7, 1981, and she was confirmed by the senate on september 22, 1981 to succeed justice potter stewart. she served the next 24 years and she retired on january 31, 2006. justice ruth bader ginsburg was appointed to the court by president william clinton on june 14, 1993 and appointed and confirmed by the senate and assume her role on august 10, 1993. the justice sonya sotomayor was appointed by president barack obama on may 26, 2009 and assumed her position on august 8, 2009.

the following year, justice elena kagan was appointed to court by president barack obama on may 10, 2010 and assumed her position on august 7, 2010. we are honored and grateful to bring all of you together to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the ground-breaking tenure as it began of justice sandra day o'connor. i would ask everyone to turn off cell phones and blackberries. i would turn the program over to jim. >> thank you very much. we are delighted that the supreme court historical society is having the celebration of justice o'connor's 38 anniversary of for appointment to the supreme court here at the theater in the museum. we are very honored to have justice o'connor with us. we are pleased that justices ginsberg, sotomayor york, and justice kagan are with us on this very special night.

it is special because it is the fourth anniversary of the opening of the museum. we could not have done better to celebrate that. we do not have a quorum, but we have enough to grant [unintelligible] [laughter] i do not know if there is anything you might want to consider. we will move on to questions. justice o'connor, your nomination as the first woman to serve on the supreme court of the united states 30 years ago was certainly historic. it was also a very closely- guarded secret. there are memoirs of them hiding you and a clandestine 9 meeting at dupont circle. >> he wanted to get me down to the white house to meet with the president. he had asked me to come back and meet with some of the president's closest advisers, which i did.

he had rented hotel space some place downtown so that we could meet that day. the members of this cabinet, several of them, had come and were able to ask questions. at the end of the day, he said, "and the president would like to see you at the white house this afternoon." i had never been to the white house. i did not know where it was. i said, "where it is it?" [laughter] he said, "i will ask my secretary to pick you up. she has an old green chevrolet. she will pick you up on dupont circle. -- dupont circle." >> i had a meeting at dupont circle. i went out to dupont circle and waited. here came that old green carpet the secretary drove me to the white house.

we were admitted and made our way in due course to the oval office. it is so small. it is a shock to get in there. you say, oh my gosh. this is the white house? it is this tiny oval place. [laughter] we sat down and talk. it was very pleasant brigid he was very -- it was very pleasant. he was very pleasant to talk to. that is how it all started. >> we see list been merged -- lists emerge. the you think it is more difficult to keep the secret for who is being considered? >> i have been touring the museum today. i do not think you can keep any secrets in washington. it is impossible. >> it was it a goal of yours to become a justice? >> heavens, no. goodness, no. it's certainly was not.

i was not sure what i ought to do. it is all right to be the first to do something, but i did not want to be the last one of the supreme court. [laughter] >> thank goodness for that. [applause] >> if i did a lousy job, it would take a long time to get another one. it made me very nervous. >> when did you first think about it? >> when he sent ken starr and some other people to arizona to talk to me. they would not say what it was far. it could have been some cabinet post or something like that. they would not tell me. we had some nice visits, but they did a lot of homework out there. they had gone through all my papers. i had served in all three branches of arizona's

government. i had a big paper trail they had to go true, i guess. >> who were your role models? >> for what? [laughter] >> you were a trailblazer. you were a role model for everyone else. justice ginsberg, where were you in your career when justice o'connor was appointed? did it have any special meaning for you at that point in your career? >> it was a moment -- one of those few in life where you know exactly where you were. i had been on a recent visit. i was driving home. i turn on the news and they said sandra day o'connor. i was about to scream.

no one would hear me. [laughter] then i found out what i could about this great lady, including the impression she made on ken starr. i knew she had been head of the senate in arizona. you had been to a conference on federalism at william and mary. >> yes, and i have gone there are a couple of meetings with people from the british isles, lawyers and judges -- remember those? warren burger initiated it. >> i have gone to a couple of those. but i certainly was not well known in the judicial community.

> the justice sotomayor, where were you in your career. >> almost at the beginning. my second year after graduating from law school in the da's office in manhattan. i remember having conversations at lunch time in that awful cafeteria, talking about how long it would take far women to be appointed to the supreme court. there were bets being taken whether it would happen in our lifetime or not. so the unlikelihood, or the fact it was something we were not sure, the speakes how historic it became. only two years later, sandra was appointed. >> what did it mean to you at that time in your career? >> there were no women on the

supreme court or the supreme -- or the court of appeals in my state in new york. most large law forms at the time were a few hundred lawyers. there were a few of them that had no women lawyers whatsoever. for us, during my time at law school, the doors were opening, but they were very small openings. so the idea that this barrier had been reached so quickly was sort of an inspiration. certainly that opportunities are bused -- for us. elaine and i followed shortly after. >> this was fabulous -- all of these women on the forum. [applause]

>> ruth, when president reagan was campaigning to be president, he did not think he was doing too well with the female votes. he started making statements about "if i am is elected president, i would like to put a qualified woman on the supreme court." he made enough of those statements, but then about four months after he became president, justice stewart retired. he was faced with what to do. [laughter] >> he was a man of his word. >> he was. >> justice kagan, where were you in your career when justice o'connor was appointed? >> i was a few years shy of going to law school. [laughter] >> but even i knew enough to be impressed. i had just graduated from college. i remember the announcement.

what a stunning thing. what did it have a particular meaning to you? >> i was thinking about it. it was one of the things i was mulling over. i remember the announcement. i was very inspired by it. >> work for justice marshall and justice o'connor was on the bench. did that have particular meaning to you? >> she was a formidable person. even a clerk knew what a formidable justice o'connor was. >> did you tell your joked about the [unintelligible] >> here is my justice o'connor joke. herice o'connor -- one of achievements on the courts is she founded a group.

she liked to have a women clerks come. i failed to come to the exercise group. [laughter] that is the story. [laughter] i used to play basketball instead. one day i tore something in my leg playing basketball. i was on crutches for a few weeks. the day after it happened, i was on crutches on, walking down the hallway, and justice o'connor was walking the other way. she said, "what happened?" i said i tore whatever i tore playing basketball. she sadly shook her head and said, "it would not have happened in exercise group." [laughter] >> i am sure that is true.

>> sandra encouraged me to attend the class, but it was a o'clock in the morning. i am a night person. >> i told you the same thing. >> i have not done too well and getting them to class. i still have my class. i went this morning, as a matter of fact, at 8:00 a.m., and it was good. that really mattered to me. in all the years i was in arizona, i had an early-morning exercise class. >> if you were a trailblazer in many ways. that exercise class at the supreme court was one of the first in that regard. what are you doing for exercise now? >> i go to my exercise class. what do you mean? >> do you play golf? >> once in awhile. i am not very good.

>> how do you enroll in that? maybe it is in less. how do you invest in your exercise group? >> i got justice breyer in there a few times, but he did not want to be the only man. if you would join, midweek to get it going again. >> president reagan assigned your nomination on august 19, 1981. you were confirmed by the senate on september 21, 1981 by a vote of 99-0. you took your oath on september 25, 1981. we have seen remarkable changes in the appointment and confirmation processes. do you have any observations about the current state of the nomination process? >> if it is less likely to be a 99-0. it seems to be a little more controversy than there was at that time. at the time i went on, it was

expected that whoever was the incumbent president would fill the vacancy on the court. if you did not have horns and look to frightening, they would confirm the nomination. i think it has changed a little bit since then, i am sorry to say. >> justice ginsburg, you have had more recent experience. do you have any observations to make now? you are safe. you are on the court. >> it was a much different process far sonya and elana. i was a beneficiary of the senate judiciary committee's embarrassment over the nomination of justice thomas. there were women of the civil --

on the judiciary committee. my hearing -- it was rather dull. the vote was not 99, but it was close. 96-2. justice breyer was also in that atmosphere. 1993-1994, we were truly bipartisan. hatch was my biggest supporter on the committee. i wish we could get back to the way it was in those years. >> what about your experience? >> i think what we have fallen prey to is the public's expectation that there are answers to every question, that a hearing will be a place where this prospective judge will say yay or nay to whatever social

issue. i think that so long as that expectation continues to be fed by both the pundits who examine our records for how we are going to vote, that we are never going to satisfy anybody with the system as it currently exist. the reality is that what you are attempting to do is get clear answers to how we will rule on cases coming before the court -- i think it would be non judicious and if you have a nominee who says this is the way i am voting. it would suggest this person is coming in with a made up mind and an unwillingness to listen. having said that, i at least found that my personal meetings

with the senators were very civil by in large. to that extent, it was easier to deal with the sort of public grilling that i received, knowing that it was each of us playing our role. for purposes i wish were different because it did become sort of role-playing i do not know if we are going to be able to satisfy people so long as the expectation of what they are expecting remains to be seen. >> there is no doubt that we experienced a different process from the two of you. i remember at one point during the process, people were asking me what i thought of all the things justice ginsberg is being -- out justice ginsberg wrote. is it not enough that i have to answer for? i wish there were more -- there

was more bipartisanship in the current process. with that said, i do agree with justice sotomayor -- the senators of both political parties treated me fairly and respectfully. it is a shame it has come to a pass where republicans feel as though they cannot vote for the nominee the democratic president and a vice versa. >> this may be more of an issue with the appellate and district courts, but do you think it would be helpful if the senate imposed a role on itself to vote up or down on the nominee because some of the appellate and district court nominees strive for over a year in the nomination process. >> i think it is a problem for the courts of appeals and the districts. sonya, you have experience with

that. >> it was nothing it was just a couple of months for both of us. >> the supreme court nominee is going to be short. it is one to be top priority and it will go through in a matter of weeks. but it is still the case and has been for some time that you can be nominated to a court of appeals and wait months. >> i had a thing for the district court as well. it is terribly long. >> if they would set a time limit on themselves, and vote up or down, move on, and that would be helpful. justice o'connor, you arrived at the court, i recall, in an atmosphere of civility. justice powell and others.

it continues to this day. justice thomas spoke last week at the university of kentucky, which won the national basketball championship. [laughter] >> you noticed? >> any comment that he has never heard a harsh word or on kind word spoken in conference with the conference in which the nine justices meet? how important is civility in the work of the court? >> it is a small group of nine. i think it is exceedingly important that everyone be polite, kind, and pleasant to each other. i think that is vital. you have to disagree on the merits, but you can disagree agreeably. i think that is very important. the court does well on that

score, i think. >> how is it preserved when there is turnover on the court? someone with the historical society has written in a book, "court watchers," that justice white gave you his chambers manual. are there other ways -- divide >> i never knew there was a manual. -- >> i never knew there was a manual. it was the internal operating manual within his chambers. he said it to me and said, "do not open this until you are confirmed." if you are confirmed, maybe it will be of a little help. my first thought was to update it.

>> there are wonderful traditions at the court and stability in recent times has been a strong attributes. do you think the other branches of government should emulate it? is that possible? is there a different structure? >> you just have nine members on the court. it is a small institution. they live and work in quarters that caused them to see each other frequently. i think it is very, very important that relations remain cordial and friendly and thoughtful. i think they have. i think we are lucky. >> there was a time when the senate was known as a "gentleman's club." >> that is gone. [laughter] she must have let it go at the

core. >> if justice ginsberg will remember the other day we were having this conversation about why there is more civility in more recent times on the court then perhaps in its earlier history. do you remember what you said, ruth? perhaps you do not. you said it is because we have --d women for the last zero - [laughter] that is especially true for justice o'connor. we had a tradition on the court where we ate lunch together after we hear arguments and have conference. it ends up being 10-12 times a month. justice thomas once told me that if ever you went a couple of days without going, justice o'connor would appear on the doorstep and say, "clarence, why are you not there? it is lunch time per "you

encouraged everybody cooper dissipate in those kinds of communal activities. i think that is very important. >> i do, too. >> and justice ginsburg, was justice o'connor's presence on the bench -- on the bench good for you? >> yes. my adviser, my big sister. she told me a little bit, just enough for me to get by in the early days. i had a problem when the chief named a finalist. legend was the junior justice [unintelligible] >> that is right. >> the court was divided six- career. i went to sandra the thinking that she could persuade her

friend to revise the economy. she said, "ruth, just do it." [laughter] that is really our attitude towards life. she just does what needs to be done. >> justice o'connor, when you're on the court together, you were called justice o'connor on one occasion and advocates seldom seemed to confuse the justice scalia at. what you think that is the case on your joint tenures? >> the time to be confused would have been justice souter and

justice breyer. "they look something alike. that could have confused people. >> i take you were wonderful, justice ginsburg. >> there were some misstatements up there. i remember one of my former law clerks make a mistake. he knew [laughter] . they get so nervous up there, anything can happen. >> out there was the attorney general, there with a law professor -- >> it was a tense time for the advocates. they get up there and are so concerned about anything, that anything can flip out. >> your comment about justices souter and breyer reminds me of a story justice souter wrote about dinner one evening downtown. someone came up and said, "justice breyer, i think you are

the greatest justice on the court. i really admire your work. can you tell me who is your favorite justice on the court?" [laughter] justice souter said, "by far, the greatest into light on the court is justice souter." [laughter] >> you know the story about the national association of women's reception after my appointment. they put on a t-shirt that read "i am sandra, not ruth." >> i once saw an argument where the lawyer confused two women. i think it was when you were on the court. i think it may have been justice ginsberg and justice sotomayor who are confused. 20 minutes later, they confused two men on the court.

i take it was purposeful. i think he realized he had done it once and darned if he was not going to do it again with the gender neutrality. [laughter] >> we have not been confused -- the three of us have not been confused. >> i think we have once. i think it was you and i. i am told you cannot always hear were the voices are coming from. >> what were your biggest challenges in joining the court? you probably had different kinds of challenges. being theconnor, you trailblazer -- divine >> the write opinions that not only deal with the issues, but in a way that is useful and will be long lasting. that is a challenge. it really is.

many of these issues are issues that are ones for the lower courts that have been in total disagreement, sometimes for a long time. things that matter or are important or the court would not have taken them. you have to put down on paper permanently the test you are going to apply and see how it works. that is a challenge every single time you really want to do it well. you will not know until many years have gone by how well you have succeeded. you cannot tell instantly. far me, opinion writing was not new because i had been on the d.c. circuit far several years. i had no idea the supreme court

deals with so many 11th our applications -- 11th hour applications. >> justice sotomayor -- >> it was walking into a continuously running competition. i cannot say how many conferences might first year a justice would explain his and sometimes her position and i thought that that explanation would be coming out of left field. justice stevens, or sometimes breyer -- whator prio are they talking about?

i certainly had not anticipated being part. that went on frequently. i remember the first time when justice taken came in when she leaned over and said, "what are they talking about?" there was some sense of satisfaction that after one year i could explain some things. that is the way it is when you are working with the same eight people. it is a long running conversation at times. at moments, coming into the middle of that, can be like that. >> a justice brennan said he had been on the court for a couple of decades. the king about -- u.s. seen all these -- the thing about serving so long, you have seen all these issues before.

the ongoing conversation, that is a very astute conversation. -- observation. justice kagan, you are a veteran now. are there still challenges? are you adjusting? >> everyday is a challenge. i had never been a judge before. just figuring out the mechanics of the job -- i have for clerks. what do i do with them? what is the best process for drafting an opinion? when do i read the briefs? a day before? a week before? i a sort of figured out the process. . i continue by trial and error. i try to figure out what works for me. >> has serving as solicitor general help define that helpful? >> hugely helpful. you look at the court from eight different vantage point.

sometimes i think the job does not really changed at all. as solicitor general, my life was spent trying to persuade nine people. >> justice o'connor and justice ginsburg, you both are the only females on the court during a period of time. you both expressed hope for another female appointee during those times. it may be obvious, and obviously it should be, but why is it so important to our country and the court? >> maybe you have not noticed, but i think 51 percent sign-52% of the population are female. -- 51%-52% of the population are female. [applause]

i think they notice when politics are dominated by one sex. people care about that, and they should. i think that is part of the deal. >> when you joined the court in 1981, the court heard 184 cases that term. they heard 82 cases last year. >> is that not amazing? it just shows you are not working. [laughter] >> as they would say in kentucky, -- >> it was a devastating amount of work. you had to go through all of the petitions. that was news for me. i could not do it quickly. that was hard. then to have so many opinions as to deal with.

very challenging. >> i still worked long and to the night. i do not think the job is any easier sp. i think one thing has been reduced substantially -- in the old days when you were hearing cases, you would get terribly fast opinions where someone would announce the report. i think with fewer cases, there is less of that. >> yes, from external observation, i will tell you the opinions are crisper, cleaner, and easier to understand these days. it is probably better for the court. there are several theories as to

why the court is hearing fewer cases. everything from a cure conflicts among the circuits to -- i guess my question is, are there mechanical reasons internal to the court as to why there are fewer cases? >> i would be interested in hearing that. i am not sure why the number of cases the court is granting are fewer. i think the number of petitions are still high. >> there is an increase, actually. that is the problem. one reason justices are working just as hard, you have to research the petitions. over 8000 a year. >> i am not quite sure how you managed that number of hearings. >> i am not sure, either. >> i know because i have looked

at many of the studies and the discussions about why the court is taking a lesser numbers now. i was not sure of any reason as being at the reason. even be part of it now, i think the court purposely -- i do not think we look at the number and say we cannot take more than x this year, so we will turn this case down because it adds to much to my work load. i can only speak for myself, but i am very conscious of that. a lot of those cases i read from years before, the court was not even reaching the issue because there were vehicle problems they

were addressing and resolving instead of reaching the substantive questions. >> until 1988, there were still many must pass decide cases -- must-decide cases. the jurisdiction was mandatory. for civil rights advocates in those days, it was a great thing. you could go to a three-judge court and challenge a concert -- challenge a statute as unconstitutional. you could go to the supreme court on appeal, skipping over the court of appeals. nowadays we have not -- >> that must be part of the

reason. there has to be several reasons the numbers have dropped. that could be. >> the current court appears to be more active in questioning from the bench than some earlier courts. statistics have been gathered in that regard. is it a different manner of judging? is a personality-driven? i know you do not disclose what goes on inside the core's conferences, but does that add to -- court's properties, but does that add to the initiative to add -- ask more questions from the bench? how would you explain the increase in the number of questions from the bench during oral arguments? >> maybe women ask more questions, i do not know. what do you think?

[laughter] >> i think it was on the rise before there were three. >> law professors. that has got to be it. >> it is very much a matter of -- matter of individual style. a justice came to see me and said, "i want to give you some advice given to me by justice blackmun. do not ask any questions because if you do not ask many questions, you will -- if you do ask many questions, you will ask many foolish ones. [laughter] >> that is good advice. what did you say? >> and was disappointed that i did not take his advice. [laughter] >> we hear a phrase now that

washington is broken and the observation is usually made about the legislative process, which appears to be at an impasse on many difficult issues -- even the budget is difficult to pass. that is a phrase that has never been used to apply to the judiciary, to my knowledge. why do you think the judiciaries works relatively well by comparison to the other branches? is it because you make decisions and not avoid them or kick them down the road? how would you explain the differences? >> one thing is we do not set our own agendas and we do not have an initiating role. we are a totally reactive institution.

we say this is the -- we do not say this is the year we will take care of the fourth amendment. i think that is part of it. we do not have a platform. we do not have an agenda to put forward. we are reacting to the issues people bring to the court. >> i think we have to explain our reasons and not just in a cursory fashion. i think, justice o'connor, you wrote something about this awhile back. almost every judge has an internal need or drive. you do not want to be arbitrary yourself. i think that makes us in some ways less reactive to what is happening outside of our core room and to the legal issues we

are watching it develop -- our court room and to the legal issues we are watching and considering. >> what would you say the attributes are of a good judge, a good justice? what advice would you give the young women and young men in the audience who might aspire to be a judge or justice someday? >> you have to think clearly, be reasonable and rational, write well, and just have a sense of fairness, i think. all of those qualities come in, and others as well, but it is a challenging job to be an appellate court judge. -- an appellate court judge and

to try to explain well the reasons for everything you do. that is very challenging. >> i asked justice o'connor if she had a role model and she rightly pointed out, in her own way, that she was a trailblazer. but i will ask you -- who was your role model? how important is it to young women today to see you on the bench at the supreme court? >> sandra and i come from the era when women were simply not judges and very few of them were lawyers. 2%-3%. >> if that. >> there was no title vii. judges were up front in saying

there were not interested. the change has been enormous. >> i could not get a judge -- get a job when i got out of law school. >> i mentioned it to this year before, justice ginsburg, one of my best friends had you for a course in law school and said you're the best professor they had ever had. [applause] >> he was not in any of justice kagan's classes. [laughter] >> that is right. i do not know anybody who went to harvard. [laughter] >> it is so important, and i think we all agree, to see you on the bench. you are an inspiration, not just to my daughter, but to my sons.

the way you go about your work is wonderful for the country. there are a couple of other questions. justice o'connor, you have a said you work with civic education, which you now have dedicated to the most important work of your life -- i tried to debate you on that. >> there is so much discussion in public venues about the judicial branch of government and activist judges. i used to take it was a judge who would get up and go to work in the morning, but people have other ideas about activist judges. my criticism -- and it seemed to me it was primarily a lack of understanding by many people about the role of the judicial branch. of course they have to decide

questions we do not like and which were not there, but it is not the judges of bringing these things. i really thought we needed to enhance the education of young people about how our government works. the reason we got public schools initially in this country was with the argument we had to teach young people how our government works, about the system the framers developed, how it all works, and how people can interact within the system. we were finding that barely 66% could name the three branches of government, much less say what they do the percentages of people who understand how the system works are so small a and there is a real job to do. we had a conference at

georgetown law school and had wonderful people participate they talked about the problem and it really did boil down, i think, to lack of education. i got some people together and we started eight website called icivic.org, geared at middle schoolers. we did it with games because young people that age spend 40% hours a week behind a screen, whether it is television and/or computer. i only needed about one hour a week. we developed some games with the help of some wonderful teachers who knew what principles needed to be included in something for that age group on the subject. we succeeded in producing a fabulous website. i spent a lot of time trying to

get it in use. we have people in all 50 states. we are getting about 5 million hits a day. that is not nearly enough, but it is a good start. it is taking effect and it is very effective. >> that is wonderful. we are going to devote a lot of time here at the museum to civic education and outreach programs and would love to work with you on that. quite good. >> i have to ask, when you walk in the building, there is a tablet in the front -- the first amendment of our constitution. we had a visitor visiting with a friend of mine. he was from russia. he walked to the building and observed some of the exhibits. he said, "we have free speech and free press in russia, but the difference here is you are free after you speak." [laughter] that was a rather profound

observation, but there is a very substantial reason for that. it is an independent judiciary that protect us -- protect our first amendment rights, our bill of rights, and distinguishes us from others. do any of you have observations about the importance of that in our system of government? >> it is very fragile -- one thing is very fragile. a cartoon after the revolutionary war shows some tories being hauled off. the caption is "freedom of -- liberty to speak for those who speak of liberty." it was not until the last century that the first amendment became a major item on the

supreme court docket. in the beginning, the performance was nothing to rave about. orld war i caes were at -- cases where people were being charged to offenses -- charged with offenses related to what they were saying about the country's political situation. it is in part due to separate the great justices. -- do to some pretty great justices. >> i think we would all agree that the country is far better off that all of you have served and are serving on the supreme court of the united states. we are very grateful and honored

for you to be with us here this evening in celebration of justice o'connor's appointment to the supreme court. thank you for being here. >> please, join me in welcoming of justice o'connor, ginsberg, sotomayor, and kagan. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] is lovely.t >> we look forward to partnering together again. i also want to thank those of you who are members of the supreme court historical society for your support that helped put on programs like this ad to tell you it is not too late. supremecourthistory.org. there is a reception in the

atrium. with that, we are adjourned. [applause] >> coming up, attorney general eric holder. after that, former president george w. bush. he will address the current economy and tax policy. also, republican governor chris christie and his efforts to balance the budget in new jersey. president obama discusses the buffet role. it would require millionaires out to pay more and come in -- income in taxes. >> thursday, international monetary fund managing director, christine the guard, will

discuss the imf's agenda and defer assessment of the global economy. that is at 11:30 eastern. later in the afternoon, afghanistan's ministers of defense and interior talk about training the afghan army and police force. they are speaking at the center for strategic and international studies at 2:30 eastern here on c-span. >> i walked out after the iowa caucus victory and said "game on." i know a lot of folks said "game over." at this game is a long way from over. we will continue to go out there and fight to make sure we defeat president barack obama, the house back, when the united states senate, and we support the values that make us the shining city on a

hill. >> with that announcement, rick santorum ended his 2012 provincial bed, a process the former president -- former pennsylvania senator began in 2009. follow the steps he took on line at the c-span video library with every c-span program from 90 -- since -- eli >> at nearly 1500 paris on the ship called "unsinkable." >> once the lookout bells were sounded, they strut the rebels three times, which is a warning saying there is some object ahead. at the not mean dead ahead. it does not tell what type of object. we went to a telephone net and called down to the officer to tell them what it is that they saw.

when the phone was answered, the entire conversation was "what do you see?" the response was, "i spured dead ahead." >> sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern, part of american history tv this weekend on c-span3. >> attorney general eric holder today participated in the national action network's annual convention. he spoke about race in the criminal justice system. during his remarks, he addressed voter fraud. the attorney general also talked-about the trayvon martin shooting and promised his department would conduct a thorough and independent review. [applause] >> good morning, everyone. thank you for being here this morning. we are all excited about our

convention and for being here in our nation's capitol. we are also very very pleased the attorney general is with us this morning. we will be happy to have him be presented to you. first, let me bring the founder and president of the national action network. there are no words that can really say enough about what dr. al sharpton has done in building the national action network and in building a network for social justice across these united states. not only does he served in that capacity a president and founder of the network, of course many of you enjoy him every evening on politics and nation on msnbc.

[applause] >> thank you. thank you, and good morning. certainly we are very happy for all of you who have come, some are still coming from the breakfast meeting, but we adjusted the schedule because we are honored to open our convention with a man that heads the criminal justice system of this country. let me say in introducing the attorney-general or older, since his becoming attorney general, we have worked with campbell and the justice department, not only in our

interest in civil rights cases, but in the case of of violence in our communities and gang violence. we are equally committed to dealing with civil rights and violence and with gang violence and young people. we have found an open door to those discussions and partnerships under his heading of that department since then have been in office. we have enjoyed his being with us last year as were other cabinet members and the president and others who worked in our anti-pilots' efforts. -- the anti-violins efforts. stand-up, wherever you are. she had some of the young people who work around the country on that, took pictures with the attorney general and

night have because clearly we want a spirit up to people that do the right thing, rather than glorify those that do the wrong thing. i am honored to bring to the attorney general of the united states, the first speaker at our convention here this year, and a native new yorker, for you people who were unfortunate attorney general eric holder. [applause] >> thank you. good morning. new york is in the house, folks. [laughter] more specifically, queens, new york is in the house. let's go, mets. come on, we don't have any mets haters. thank you very much, reverend al.

i appreciate your kind words. i'm especially grateful for your prayers, and your partnership and friendship and your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless, to shine a light on the problems we must solve and the promises we must fail. -- fill. it is a privilege to join with you, reverend richardson, and so many distinguished religious leaders, committed activist and concerned citizens and kicking off the 14th and a condition of -- the annual convention. the national i'm honored to be included in this gathering once again and i bring greetings from a friend of mine, president obama. [applause] each april, this convention provides what i think it is an important opportunity, not only to reflect all lessons of dr. king's extraordinary life, but also to consider where we are as a nation, examine our values

and priorities, and take stock of our progress and take responsibility for the work that remains before us. although 44 years have passed since our nation first lord the loss of dr. king, it is clear that his experience lives on. his enduring contributions have allowed me to stand as our nation's first african-american attorney general and to serve alongside our first african american president. [applause] the dream that he shared on the national mall that now has a memorial to his honor, including the creation of the national action network more than two decades ago. since then, this organization's leaders, members, and supporters have been on the front lines of our nation's fight for security, opportunity, and justice for all.

today this war goes on in your demand that those in power and in your aspirations for those in need. it goes on in your efforts to safeguard civil rights, to ensure voting rights, to expand learning and employment opportunities, to achieve fairness in our immigration and synod in policies and to prevent and combat violence and crime, especially among our young people. on each of these fronts, you are carrying on and carrying forward the work of a leader who i believe does stand as america's greatest drum major for justice, a man of action and of faith, and his example continues to guide us in his words still have the power to comfort each of us, especially in moments of difficulty in consequence. dr. king was no stranger to such moments. throughout his life, and most

famously on the eve of his death as he delivered the legendary mountaintop speech that would be his final sermon, reverend king asked himself when, if given the choice of any period in time, he would choose to be alive. this question began with a journey through the ages, and each stop, whether mount olympus or ancient rome, lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation call or roosevelt calling fear only fear itself, dr. king asked to experience and to help shape. its own, he ultimately decided. he explained that happiness comes from embracing the blessings and burdens and opportunities of living in times of unprecedented -- unprecedented and even heartbreaking choice. only when it is a dark enough can you see the stars. today, once again, it is dark

enough. despite the extraordinary progress that has marked the last four decades and the unfortunate fact is that in 2012, our nation's long struggle to overcome injustice, to eliminate disparity, to break longstanding divisions, and to eradicate bonds have not yet ended. today, going forward, we can see the stars. we can see them in the courage and commitment of ordinary people nationwide, all ages, nations, and backgrounds, who refused to allow fear and frustration to divide the american people, who continue to fight for the safety and civil rights of all, and who in recent weeks, in the wake of a tragedy that we are struggling to understand, have called not just for answers and for justice, but also for stability and unity and for a national discourse that is productive, and worthy of both our forebears' and our children.

this conversation is critical. must be consistently elevated an advance, and not just in times of crisis. after all, our nation will be defined and its future will be determined by the support that we provide, the doors that we open for our young people, and by the steps that we take, not only to keep them safe, but also to stamp out the root causes of violence, discrimination, disparity, and division. these efforts could not be more important or more urgent, and as we will discuss this week, that is especially true in african-american communities. just consider the fact that even though overall, national crime today the leading cause of death for young black men age 15-24 is homicide. on average, 16 young people are murdered every day in our nation. how can our nation risk losing

so many of tomorrow's leaders, teachers, artists, scientists, attorneys, and pastors? the answer is that we cannot. and now that many of you are rightly concerned about the recent shooting deaths of 17- year-old trayvon martin, a young man whose future has been lost to the ages. as most of you know, three weeks ago, the department justice launched an investigation into this incident, which remains open at this time, and prevent me from talking in detail about this matter. however, i can tell you that in recent weeks, justice department officials, and the u.s. district attorney have traveled to sanford, fla., to meet with the martin family, the community and local authorities. the fbi is assisting local law enforcement officials, and representatives from the community relations service, the justice department

peacemakers are continued to meet with civil rights leaders, law enforcement officers, and area residents to address and help alleviate community tensions. we are communicating closely with local, state and federal representatives and officials. in all these discussions, we are listening carefully to concerns and emphasizing if the department will conduct a thorough and independent review of the evidence. now, although i cannot share where our current efforts will lead us from here, i can assure you that in this investigation and in all cases we will examine facts and the loss. -- law. if we find evidence of a potential federal, civil rights crime, we will take appropriate action. at every step, the facts and the law will guide us forward. i also can make another promise that every level of today's just disbarment, preventing in -- and combating youth violence and victimization is and will

continue to be a top priority. as our nation's attorney general, and also as the father of three teenagers, i am determined to make the progress our young people need and that they deserve. i am proud that under this administration, the justice department has made an historic commitment to protecting the safety and the potential of all our children. in fact, for the first time in history, the department is directing significant resources for the express purpose of reducing child exposure to violence and raising awareness of its ramifications for departments landmark initiative that are launched in 2010, along with our national forum on youth violence prevention. we are working alongside key stakeholders to develop and implement strategies for reducing violence. we are advancing scientific inquiry on its causes and working for ways to counter its negative impact. we are making much-needed investments in youth mentoring programs as well as juvenile justice and reentry initiatives.

we are working with the department of education as well a state, local, and community leaders and stakeholders to dismantle the school to prison pipeline, and to ensure that our schools are gateways to opportunity and not entry points to our criminal justice system. >> that is right. [applause] >> beyond these efforts, we are working in a range of other innovative ways to ensure fairness and expand opportunities, from successfully advocating for the elimination of the unfair and unjust sitting -- 100 to 1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses to launch a new department wide diversity management initiative. and, of course, i am especially proud of the steps we have taken to restore and reinvigorate the civil rights issues and ensure that in our workplaces, military bases, and in our housing

lending markets and schools and places of worship, in our immigrant community, the rights of all americans. -- americans are protected. [applause] over the last three years, the civil rights division has of more criminal civil-rights cases than ever before, including record numbers of police misconduct, hate crimes, and human trafficking cases. as our filing in settlements made clear, the civil rights division is aggressively and successfully working to combat the continuing racial segregation in schools and discriminatory practices in our housing and lending markets. in fact, last year, the division's fair lending unit settled or filed a record number of cases, including a $335 million settlement, the largest in our history. to help financial institutions -- to hold financial institutions accountable for discriminatory practices directed at african and hispanic americans. [applause]

in recent months, the division's voting section has taken crucial steps to ensure the integrity, independence, and transparency of the voting rights act. in south carolina, florida, and in texas, we will continue to oppose discriminatory practices while also vigorously defending section 5 of the voting rights act against challenges to its constitutionality. let me be very clear. this administration will do whatever is necessary to ensure the continued viability of the voting rights act, our nation's most important civil rights statute. [applause] as dr. king so often pointed out, in this great country, the

ability of all eligible citizens to participate in and have a voice in the work of government is not a privilege, it is a right. >> that is right, that is right. [applause] >> and protecting the right to vote, insuring meaningful access, and combating discrimination must be viewed not only as a legal issue but as a moral imperative. this means that we must support policies and get modernizing our -- aimed at modernizing our voting system, and ensuring that all eligible citizens have access to complete, accurate, and understandable information about where, when, and how they can cast a ballot, and preventing and punishing fraudulent voting practices. also demands that we engage in a thoughtful and truthful dialogue about where we should target our efforts. we might begin by insisting that instances of voter fraud are addressed.

there for studies by organizations like the republican national lawyers association have affirmed disappeared in the instance of voter fraud is unacceptable and will not be tolerated by the department of justice. issue. there is no reason that we should allow it to distract us from our collective our democracy is a strong, fair, and inclusive as possible. let me be clear once again. what ever reason might be advanced, this department of justice will oppose any effort to disenfranchise american citizens. [applause] but achieving this goal cannot be the role government alone. we will continue to need your

help, your expertise, your dedication, and your partnership. while i'm optimistic about the path we are on and place we will arrive, i cannot begin of the road ahead will be an easy one. many obstacles lie before us. there are dark skies overhead. but if history is any guide, and i believe that it is, positive changes frequently the consequence of unfavorable, not favorable circumstances. progress oftentimes is the product of darkness, not the light. remember, it was social frustration and moral obligation that brought an end to slavery and segregation, that secured voting rights for women and civil rights for all, that provide health care to our seniors and our poor, and guaranteed decent wages for our workers. it was economic turmoil that brought us the progressive era and the new deal, and it was a civil war that inspired the correction of our constitution and the reconstruction of our union. today, despite current

challenges, we must find ways to renew the sacred bonds of citizenship, and we must reaffirm the principle that for more than two centuries have kept the great american experiment in motion. that does not mean that on every issue, we will always agree. in this country, there will continue to be competing visions about how our government should move forward, and there must always be room for discussion, for debate, and for improvement. >> that is right. that is right. >> that is what the democratic process is all about, creating space for the awful exchange of ideas, and creating opportunities to advance the progress that we hold dear. that is our charge, and this is our moment. so let us seize the chance before us. [applause] let us rise to the challenges of our time, and in the spirit of dr. king, let us signal to the world that in america today, the pursuit of a more perfect

union is on. -- lives on. the march toward the promised land goes on, and the belief that not merely that we shall overcome, but that we will come together as a nation, continues to push just four. may god continue to bless our journey, and may god continue to bless the united states of america. thank you. [applause] >> attorney general holder. >> during his remarks, the attorney general reference to the shooting death of trayvon martin in florida. wednesday afternoon, the state's attorney's office had announced george zimmerman was arrested who shot and killed trayvon murder and charged with second- degree murder. in florida, the charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> all right, we will get started. we have quite, quite, quite a panel of attorneys here for this panel this morning. my name again is michael party. i am the general counsel to the national network, and it is an honor and privilege i have to, i do not want to say moderate this panel, but i will simply be introducing other panelists.

each of them will make a brief statement, probably no more than five minutes, because we are a little tight on time, of course, but the reason why we want to do that of course is because we want to leave some time for you to have an opportunity to at least ask a question or two of this very distinguished and very practiced panel. the topic that we gave out to the panelists is the state of criminal justice in america, and, of course, that is a mouthful. but we have practitioners here to intersect with the criminal justice system every day, and certainly within their remarks, they will be able to focus on a piece of that, but we all know we strive for equality under the law and whether we are talking about trayvon martin, whether we are in the neighborhood, dealing with stop and frisk, or frankly

whether we are defending public officials who have been accused of some miss b or another, it is a challenge. many have seen the criticisms that america incarcerates more people pretty much than any other industrial nation. another issue with regard to what it is we choose to charge people with in our criminal justice system and how that plays out, and at the end of the day, it is the challenges that individuals face when confronted with the criminal justice system, so we hope to touch on some of that this morning. again, i want to thank and give a big hand initially to everybody on the panel, and then i will take the time to introduce. [applause] all right. i will go in the order that they are sitting. from my left. so to my immediate left is the door well as junior. he is a partner at a law firm.

in 2010, the national law journal named him one of the decade's most influential attorneys. i am sure many of you have seen his work, have watched him as he defended some of the most high- profile people across this country, and some friends in times of need, and we appreciate him being with us this morning. thank you. [applause] next to him is laura murphy, the director of the legislative office of the american civil liberties union, and, again, what can be said of where this nation would be without the aclu, and thank you for joining us this morning. [applause] next to her is e. christy

cunningham. -- christi cunningham. she has been the author of many items, their race road -- say that -- there you go. the rise of a identity politics, so give her a hand, and we are happy. [applause] to have her with us. and next to an attorney -- attorney cunningham, and the rise of identity politics. so give her a hand. president of the united states, barack obama. thank you. [applause] billy martin is a long time

practitioner. he has represented people like monica lewinsky. with thrilled to have you us today also. [applause] finally, we have glenn martin. he is with the fortune society of new york city. the fortune society interacts with many of the individuals who come into contact with the criminal justice system. once again, let's give all of our panelists a big hand. [applause] >> in no particular order, but because of time constraints, i

will ask dr. opaltree to start. >> good morning, everybody. it is such a pleasure being in this great city once again into here are attorney-general talk about some of the issues he is concerned about. i have to run shortly and i will be back tomorrow as well for the conference. but wanted to say a few words. in 1978, i graduated from harvard law school and i had a long position with my mother. i said, mom, i'm not coming back to california. she frowned upon that and said okay. i said, i am going to go to washington, d.c. she said, that is a long wayi said, i will be a public defender. thing that you are protecting the public from all of these ray

burris and criminals and murders. i have to say that, as much success as we have as lawyers defending people, it amazes me that, from 19 '70s to the 21st century, we have quadrupled the number of people who are in our prisons, more than any other place in the world. it makes me even more disappointed that the one voice all of us have heard is not here today. some of you may or may not know my dear friend and big brother to me john peyton passed away just a month ago. he would of been on the panel. these remarks are obviously dedicated to him.

we were going to talk about the issue of guilty. i was good to talk about the issue of trade on martin. -- of trayvon martin. i am very pleased that the attorney general and his office is doing an independent investigation, but we have to tell the truth about what happened. trayvon martin is dead because of what he was wearing and his color. century. we keep thinking of mississippi, alabama, south carolina, north carolina. this was in florida. he was where he had a right to be, where his parents were trying to protect him. and then to see this happen, it calls for all of us to rethink the criminal justice system. no matter what happens, we cannot bring trayvon martinand we cannot say that at 17 his life was finished because we

don't know what he could have been if he had not instructed. -- if he had not been struck dead. we have to always think about the trayvons. he is now voiceless and we have to be his voice. if we talk about reforming the criminal justice system, we have to talk about what happens to a kid who is young, who is black gated community and dies at the hands of someone else who thought he was a drug dealer, who thought he was high, who thought he was weird. he was just a 17-year-old black male like so many in our community. if we're talking about bringing justice into the criminal justice system, we have to save the trayvons of the 21st -- of the 21st century.

man to use the "standard round" and see if it -- "stand your ground" and see if it works. it is giving people power they should not have. it is creating an episode of targeting certain individuals. it re-entered garretts issues of racial profiling. -- it reinvigorate issues of racial profiling been anyone of us could have been that young man. the color of our skin and what we're wearing is the only thing that makes the difference. profiling is one of the major injustices' of the criminal justice system. as i take my seat, these

analysts will talk about some of the things -- let me just say this to the attorney general. i'm so glad that we reduce the 100-1. it should be 1-1. we should go all the way. not just 18-1. that is a partial success. treating people fairly and equally in the criminal justice system, we have to look at that. it is a problem in our criminal we have to look at people or in jail for nonviolent drug use, not selling. we have to put justice back into the criminal justice system because it has been lost and dropped. it is up to us to put justice back in the criminal justice system and i hope that we can do that.

[applause] all of you for coming to this national action network convention. i am the director of the washington legislative office of the aclu and i have spent my entire 36 year career being a civil liberties advocate, a civil rights advocate and a criminal justice for former. -- criminal-justice reformer. i want to tell you a little story.

my great-grandfather john murphy started the afro-american newspaper in 1892. it was one of the largest continuously running newspapers in the nation. and the reason and the afro came about was because we wanted to chronicle the great problem of lynching and violence throughout america. and that problem of violence against african-americans is as much a part of american history as trayvon martin is. i also come from a family of lawyers, but i am not an attorney. i supervise attorneys. and thurgood marshall sued the university of maryland law school so that my father could become a lawyer in baltimore, maryland and later become a judge. so all around the dinner table, we have talked about how the criminal justice singled out particular. i am the mother of a 22-year- old son. i have had to teach completely

different protocols than his white classmates been i feel like i could be mrs. martin, there by the grace of god. i live in a neighborhood, a development, that has gone from a mostly black to the mostly white in the 16 years i have lived there. five years ago, when my son was in boarding school, there were neighborhood that had to send an e-mail to my neighbors saying, please, do not call the police man in the neighborhood wearing a hoodie. that is my son and he lives in the neighborhood. trayvon martin affects all of us and it affects me personally. i am not satisfied with a rally. i am not satisfied with the

protests. the question is, why are we going to do about it. i am here to tell you that next week, for the first time in over a decade, the senate judiciary committee is having a hearing on racial profiling, right here in washington, d.c. i need you all to come back. we need to pack that hearing room on april 17 at 10:00 a.m. in room 226 of the dirksen senate office building and we need to be there for trade bond because there is legislation that has been wallowing in congress. it is called the end of racial profiling act. we must insist that congress pass the end racial profiling at.

it would ban racial profiling and law enforcement. it would mandate a training on racial profiling part of the history of the trayvon martin tragedy is that the stanford police department has a history of mistreating african- americans. there has to be a study of whether there is a history of racial profiling. investigating over 19 police getting back to the end racial profiling act, we have to condition federal funding and local police department on the fact that these officers get training, that they valve not to violate people's constitutional rights. we have a disease in america where it is open season on stopping an arresting african-

americans and latinos. but there is something i have to tell you. the problem is not just in black and white. since the events of 9/11, the problem is also with moslem arabs and south asians. they have to worry about flying want black. -- while black. we still have to worry about walking and talking while black. the problem is that the border of our nation with latinos who are american citizens and who are being deported because of the color of their skin. so the problem of racial profiling has calcified and we must demand that congress passed the end racial profiling act. the other thing that we must do and we cannot ended unless we vote -- let me just say this. it is very fine that we passed the act that reduces the disparity between crack and powder cocaine.

but we couldn't even get all of the democrats on the senate judiciary committee to reduce the disparity. asked senator schumer where he -- ask senator sure where he was on that issue. -- senator schumer where he was on that issue. so i am saying to you, unless we pass that hearing room next week, they will not get the message. all right? the other thing we need to do -- and i wish to the attorney general could have stayed for questions, because i would have asked him this question -- mr. attorney general, why are you allowing guidance on the use of race in federal law enforcement that was written by attorney general john ashcroft in the updated? we need to demand that federal law enforcement officers be commanded. he can do this with a stroke of his pen. he does not need legislation for this. and lastly, we need more resources for the attorney

general civil rights division and special investigations division. under the bush administration, that division was starved. we must demand that congress give full federal funding to the a at civil rights division because we know that there are more than 19 police departments that engage in racial profiling. do. you can get me started and i can get really upset about this, but i want to be known as a leader who is about solutions. and i want us to understand this but it is not just a black and white problem. i want to say to all white americans. when law enforcement uses race

as a factor to determine or to predict criminality, they are being incompetent. because race is not a predictor of criminality. we don't offend as people of color any more than white people do. but we are prosecuted more. we are incarcerated more. we are demonized more. so the community is not safe if law enforcement is using sleazy tactics like let's get all the black people or let's get all the muslim people. that's like me saying let's arrest all of the catholic people because they oppose abortion and some abortion clinics get bombed. that is not american justice. we don't investigate people because of their religion, because of their national origin, because of their skin color. i have three handouts and i will ask my three aclu colleagues to come forward.

let me tell you what these handouts are. one is a description of the end racial profiling act. the second is a press release announcing the hearing. the who, what, when, where, and why. the third are the frightening and overwhelming statistics about incarceration in america. we have 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners. what kind of an america is that? we have more overincarceration, which is a national aclu party, then we had in the 1970's. if we wanted to go back in to the incarceration level of the 1970's, we would have to remove four out of every five prisoners from jail. four out of every five would

have to be returned to the streets to go back to those levels of incarceration. and what changed that? the war on drugs. and the war on drugs is a war on people of color. and we have to end that war on drugs, which is 41 years old. it has not reduced people dependency on drugs. and when you have people like george will concerned, raising the question whether we have to continue the war on drugs, we will not solve this as people of color alone. we have to build bridges with republicans and democrats, the way we build bridges to pass the for sentencing act that president obama signed into law. so i hope you'll take these three documents. they are very simple. take them with you. we have to live true to what nan stands for. it is not the national procrastination network. it is the national action

network. so help us take action. thank you very much. [applause] >> gallaraga. it is nothing like what she said about throwing down the gauntlet, because a lot of this will fall on your shoulders. >> there are always those who have been in the background of the national action network and have been one of those that help and guided and lent a hand when needed. we also want to say thank you for being here and thank you for those years of friendship. ted wells. [applause] >> i live in new york now, but i am a d.c. boy. i was born here.

i went to coolidge high school. when i was growing up in d.c., it was a segregated city and there's no confusion that we were in the middle of a struggle for civil rights. a lot of people don't remember the five school districts that was part of the brown v. board of education case. the sea was widely segregated. -- d.c. was widely segregated. after the brown decision was issued. it was supposed to be integrated schools. but most of the white folks moved out of the city. by the time i got to coolidge, it was all black. but there's no confusion about the struggle. no confusion at all. the problem we have today is that a lot people don't even realize there is a struggle. about we live today in a post- racial society.

they want to say, because barack obama is the president of the united states, because eric holder is the attorney general of the united states, then there are no problems. race is not an issue anymore. that is the thing i'm most afraid of, that you have a whole generation of people, some black, some white, who are totally confused about the state of racial fears in this country. if you look at any factor that measures the quality of life, black folks are in crisis. and the educational system is a mess. employment, we under-employed. if you look at housing, we have been hit by this recession by the subprime crisis more than any other group.

if you look at the criminal justice system, we have more african-american males incarcerated than anytime in the history of this country. it is a crisis and if you look at the plight of the black male who has the unfortunate luck to become part of the criminal justice system, that person, once he goes into the system -- and i do not care how many years he goes in -- it goes in one year, six months, his life is basically destroyed. [applause] it is not just about reducing the crack cocaine numbers so that a young black man only serves four years instead of 10 years. if he goes in at all, in this society, i can tell you right now -- he cannot vote. that is taken away from him. he will not be able to get a job. he cannot get a job.

now they have programs -- you can add even getting to certain have a criminal record. -- you cannot even get into certain housing projects because you have a criminal record. you have to understand that this is a national crisis in terms of black males and an increasing number of black women. it started out as a male issue, but it has broadened. this really is a crisis of both black males and females in terms of going into this criminal justice system. it scars you for life. and has ramifications far beyond the people that goes in. that families. there have brothers. they have sisters appeared i have a daughter. she is looking for a black man to marry and brothers are in jail. i want you to understand thatbut part of the biggest fear i have is this notion that there is no crisis.

we will not be able to solve this issue just with people from the action network, just with black folks. we have to have a national dialogue about this issue. if the number of people in prison, in terms of the proportion to their representation of the population, if white folks were in prison in the same proportion as black folks, it would be a national dialogue. and we need that dialogue. but again, everybody has to realize, as great as the is that we have the attorney general come speak to us today, there are a lot of people who are trying to use the fact that they are in office as an excuse not to address these issues. and anybody that talks about this post-racial society, it is a sham. it is a scam. ok?

what we have to do is make sure -- i know i am preaching to the choir here -- but we have to go out and talk to others and make sure that we can have this dialogue. unless we can change the numbers -- and we will not do it in an the gap between the crack cocaine issues -- unless we can really stop putting so many black men and women into the prison system, we will not be able to get off this. i will tell you one thing. i was born in 1950. i was raised in this city. people are no different today than they were in 1950. people did not go to jail like that when i was coming up. people did not suddenly get bad. this war on drugs resulted in a quadrupling of the number of black males and females in the prison system. these people are no different today than when i was coming up. yet you have a systematic regime that makes sure that a

certain proportion of our community and imprisoned. and once you're in prison, it is like the new slavery. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. next, we will have billy martin. in new york, when they said billy martin, you think of the former manager of the yankees. but he is a slugger in his own right. attorneybilly martin. [applause] >> de morning. -- good morning. after listening to the attorney general and these panelists, if strong. [laughter]

that is not often do in this subject. as it does not have to do on the subject. i have a different background than most of our panelists. my differences that i grew up poor. a group in pittsburgh, pennsylvania. in 1969, -- first, i am one of eight children and the only one to go to college and graduate from college. i came to d.c. in 1969. i was telling my wife, who has her own show on npr, that trayvon martin happened to me when i was 17 years old. vigilantes' stopped me and another black friend of mine, a couple of white guys. a group of black guys had been up his younger brother and had beaten him up pretty badly.

they had run and left. we were going to get a haircut, walking down the street, a car pulls up, and we thought there were asking for directions. me and my buddy walkover and a shotgun comes out of the window. and he said, which one of you niggers shot my brother? and i was gone. something said to me, don't run. i will be left right here. do not run. so we stopped. the guy was in the car bleeding. and he thought, is that them? i thought in my mind, what if he had said yes? i had an interest in being ai wanted to go to school and do good things. when i came out of law school, i or to the sec. the security exchange commission.

but when i graduated in 1973, they were not hiring. so i went to the da's office, the only job that was offered to me when i graduated from the university of cincinnati. it was a position in the d.a.'s office in cincinnati could i thought, i can do this. as a people, we have to understand that we cannot ridicule and point fingers at those of our community who work within the criminal justice system. you need people on the inside. you need people who understand that system. we need judges who have come through the system. and we need people to understand what the system is like from the outside, what is like from the inside. so my background is one of people who decided to understand what that system is from the inside. fast forward, i joined the u.s. attorney's office here in d.c. and i rose quickly. of the 500 lawyers that they have running here in the u.s.

attorney's office, i was no. 3. so i was chief of operations here in d.c. and set a lot of policy. [applause] thank you. set a lot of policy and understand a lot of policy. when i was running that office, if someone came in with something that was usable, a usable amounts of cocaine, they would come in, and we would say, "throw it out and dismiss the charges." so when 10 talks about all these people who were not charged, no, they were not charged, because prosecutors used discretion in not charging. so when we talk about the issue we are going to talk about, the state of the criminal justice system in america, the system is the same now as it was 50 years ago. it is a system. the difference is we now know

how to address this system. we now know how to demand that the system deal with us, and we can make real change. i have thought about trayvon martin, and i thought about that night. now, for years, when the crack cocaine wars broke out in d.c., i was asked to start a unit in d.c., and i started that, and i cannot imagine from the inside of the criminal-justice system the facts of this case where a homicide detective tells me there is a guy who was following this kid did was in a car who was told not to get out of the car, who got out of the car, who chased the kid down, who had a gun, who shot the kid, the kid died, and the man claims self- defense. i cannot imagine -- [applause]

under any circumstances in somebody were presenting that to me as a screening prosecutor had you do not say arrest him. and you say arrest them because it is not the duty of the police officer to solve that crime on the street. what is the state of criminal justice in america? we still have people. the system is ok. the laws are there. the laws should be for all of us. but we still have people interpreting those laws. that is what our problem is. because when that police officer decided that, oh, this guy this kid was beating you up, that was his racial views coming out, and that should never have happened. how do we make these changes? it used to be that we would hire more black police officers, but

i can tell you that is not the answer, and i think we all agreed it does not matter who is implementing and interpreting those laws. somebody has to have justice in the heart and understanding of what equal justice means, and, ladies and gentlemen, when we talk about the state of criminal justice in america, i think we have a system that we can make work, and i will tell you why. you have heard the numbers are people that talk about the incarceration. when i go into any jail, and ted does what i do. we represent white collar people. we do some civil litigation, and we represent some gangbangers. we represent criminal people who do criminal things. ted, have you ever represented a guilty person? neither have i. [laughter] every now and then, you will ask

somebody, "what happened?" and they tell you what they did. can you believe it. if they can prove it, make the system work. ladies and gentlemen, the one thing i want to walk away saying to you today is that we do need to reform our criminal justice system so that there are more checks and balances, so that we take away the ability of one individual to be able to direct this case. a state's attorney down in florida decided we are not going to do that, and that is when the system fails. one thing, you hear people say under no circumstance, if that was a black kid who shot a white man, do we really want the state -- scales of justice to be blindfolded? we really want the law to be

enforced in a color blind system. we are going to talk today, and one of the things that i am going to be very, very comfortable saying to you is that when i go to visit a client or a prospective client who is walked up, -- locked up, and i walked in the jail, and i do not see anything but black males, it troubles my heart. i, too, and the father of a young black kid, a young black male, and i have had to learn to say to my kids, shot up at times, even though you are right. we want you to survive, and we should not have to do that. if there is one theme that we should all agree with today, living in america as a black male, as a black male, you are one word, one bad mood from being arrested or shot, and we

should not nevis system that allows that. thank you. [laughter] [applause] -- [applause] >> all right, we are certainly giving you a lot to think about and that will guide your participation. we have more speakers. a professor at the university, prof. cunningham. [applause] >> good morning. first, i would like to give honor to god. this is an amazing opportunity. i am very grateful to be able to be here to speak with you about these important issues. i also want to thank the national action network for bringing this convention together at this important time and for the work that they are doing. i have to tell you, i am a law professor on leave, b