be, there's some group out there that's running an ad, they had no communication with you and they can be going down a road that we have no interest in talking about. there's always an element of surprise when it comes to a super pac, good, bad or indifferent. >> especially when there are a bunch of them. you guys had one. >> right. >> we weren't on the same page at all. >> towards the end, they finally figured out. they realized they couldn't communicate with the campaign. they can actually communicate with each other. towards the end, they started communicating with each other and that really helped. in the primary, you could say the super pac was the restore our future super pac played a big role on behalf of governor romney. remember he lost south carolina

to newt gingrich. he had ten day or so before we had to go to florida. not a lot of campaign cash at that point. this was late in the primary. we had raise and spent a lot of money. remember, you can't spend the general election money. the super pac outspent in florida by probably 10 to 1. you can say that had a big impact in the state of florida for governor romney winning florida. >> right. a lot of that was also taking out gingrich. 90% of that was negative. >> sure. >> what was the worst moment for you? was it june when you realized that spencer, in the month of may, it outraised you for may be

going the second time barack obama whole history in presidential politics? were you surprised you got beat? >> yes, it was like a punch in the gut. we're used to winning the money game. when i was invited to speak here, i was so excited to meet spencer. we figured out this money thing. it's a little bit harder this time than 2008. then when they did so amazingly well, -- we're going to have more donors. it was a good lesson. >> i think jim messina described it as a hockey stick, it's going like this and it went like that. were you confident that that was going to happen? >> yes, we were always confident that was going to happen.

they raised about $440 million the digital team. most of that was raised in the last two months of the campaign. >> wow. what was your worst moment in terms of -- was it that same period when you weren't sure -- when you couldn't use legally or general election? >> it was when i first read that president obama was going to raise a billion dollars. that, oh my goodness, we are going to be massively outspent here. there was sort of discussion, do we take public finance. what are we going to do? there was this element of this has never been done before but they said they will do it and can we match them. that was the first big moment of we can be in trouble. the other was when we were raising money in the general election before governor romney was the nominee. just to explain how that works, when you are the primary

candidate you can raise money in $2500 increments. remember we raised and spent $100 million to win the primary. the obama campaign could raise money for the primary but they didn't have a primary so they can use that money to attack governor romney and build a general election strategy. we start with a $100 million deficit basically and that money is gone and now we're in april or may. governor romney is the presumed nominee the gavel hasn't gone down at the convention. we're raising general election money but we're not allowed to spend it legally. that was a very -- >> does that mean all future republican conventions will be in june so you don't have that? >> if you can get it done in june or may for that matter, from a fundraising standpoint it would be fantastic. >> the party that usually

supports campaign finance reform opted out of the rules, starting in 2008 and you guys were kind of handcuffed by these rules that you also didn't support. you took the handcuffs off. now, there was a lot of criticism of that. do you think that the campaign contributed to the sort of just of wash in money. for 30 years we had limitations during general election campaigns when both parties accepted public financing. is it fair to say that barack obama blew up the public financing system? >> no, we just knew we would have more flexibility with the amount of money we could raise. we knew we would be able to do that because of the decision we made knowing that would likely be the case.

>> you end up being less worried about citizens united as time went on. early on it was a big concern and then when you saw that super pacs were not spending money so well on the other side, became less of concern? >> spencer is right, had they figured out earlier that they could communicate and one of them could take florida and one of them could do something else, that would have made us more concerned. it just didn't get the traction that we saw. we were able to still build the low dollar fundraising. >> is it part of it that the money, this would be for both of you, that the money raised by super pacs, only works on television? if doesn't give you edge on the ground. if somebody goes to a door and knocks and say i'm here for restore our future and they go

what is that. it doesn't translate on the ground and whatever limitations there are with tv advertising especially people time shift more and don't watch television used to. might mean the super pacs don't have much influence that we assumed a couple years ago. >> i wouldn't say tv advertising, advertising in general. to think that a super pac can take the place of a field operation from a campaign, i think it's -- you can't replace the value of somebody knocking on a door making a phone call and saying, i'm calling from the romney for president campaign or obama for america campaign, because you represent the campaign. you represent the candidate. you're exactly right. what reason do people have -- there's no brand built around a

super pac. it's simply an a.t.m. to advertise. >> when did you realize that you were going to get beaten on the ground? was that after the election that you understood how good the obama ground game was? >> for me, there was never an expectation that we would win the ground game. that wasn't the -- the obama campaign, the democratic party for years has been able to have an unbelievable ground game. what was frustrating to me what i didn't know until afterwards is that we didn't really have a good sense of what the obama campaign was actually doing on the ground. i'm fine getting beaten on the ground but i'm not okay with not having good intelligence about what the other side is doing. that's the part that was

frustrating. >> in terms of the online, in terms of the digital part, did you just feel like you got beat on that on the digital side? >> well, the obama campaign and julianna can speak to this in greater detail, did a great job bringing in talent from the digital world. i suspect if you looked at the digital department at the obama for america campaign, was a lot of people had no experience in politics but a lot of experience with the digital world. we had people that were experienced in the digital world but probably because of the association with politics. that's something that quite republican have to take a hard look at. the republican party does not completely reexamine its ability to build a digital team. they need to go to silicone valley and start going on a recruiting mission and saying what can we do to get digital

leaders involved in the republican party. we will never catch up. it's not going to be built by people that are involved in politics and have a side hobby of technology. it has to be people with an expertise in technology. >> in book i'm reading, called "the geek gap" whatever reason you guys were not able to attract the code writers and the other people under 30 understand social networking and understand analytics. when there was a proposal to do something in a bigger way, more like chicago, in boston, person making the proposal said we can't do this in boston because there are not enough republican gigs to get it done.

we'd have to have the operation in salt lake city. that was the original proposal. how do you go about closing the geek gap? >> think this is a party issue going forward. the party, i know they are doing this, that's something they're taking a hard look at. what can we actually do to close that gap. there are some things that are happening right now. i don't respect the -- represent the party so i can't speak to those specific things the party is doing. everyone is well aware of it and very focused on it. pointing out that there is a gap, i don't think it's news to anyone to the republican party. the question is what will they do about it. >> on the democratic side, is it really true that the people with no experience in politics came from the tech world in chicago, made major contribution or was

it more the people who had some experience in politics and some digital experience were the ones that you got the better performance out of? >> i think it was a combination. we have a lot of wonderful folks that we recruited from the tech world. their first love was technology and they decided to come over to politics. lot of the folks will come over to network gotv web and it was kind of interesting. as any campaign, you figure out how to work together as a team. there's the tech world, i couldn't understand them a lot of the time. but they worked together and figured it out and we're successful. a lot of them didn't come from the same backgrounds that we ultimately -- >> could you talk a little bit about the facebook targeted sharing program and how that

worked? >> they were always working on that. >> but facebook ended up being a big deal right? >> right, it was a huge deal. that's how we communicated with a lot of folks. i don't know all the detail about it. >> we're going to open this up for questions. how is this going to change in 2016? let's start on the republican side, you talk about building a different kind of model that uses the web more. does the republican party have to go through a full transition on this? or do you think four years from now, it will still mostly high network individuals? >> i think pretending it's whether republican or democrats

pretending whoever runs in 2016, the best technology is not going to create a cause for that candidate. i think that's the thing that people have to remember. the cause is built by the message. the technology simply enables that and gets people involved. that really doesn't happen until much later in the campaign. so it's two individuals decide to run for president in the primary on the democratic side, they are going to have to the build a high dollar network. if they think they're going to be able to go out and just have this digital go from a campaign to a cause and have and match the number that's julianna is talking about $66 per contributions that's not going to happen. >> it's much like a start-up. same thing is true in 2007? >> right. >> how do you think, hillary clinton or whoever is the

democratic candidate four years from now, what's the next generation on the democratic side? >> i think there will be a lot of tools. you have to have the major donors component. there are still people want to give money to see the candidate. folks that can write $30,000 checks aren't going to probably go online and give. some folks do but they rather go to a dinner and see the nominee or the candidate. but, it's smart to start the microtargetting. you have to know that information early on. that's the kind of stuff you can know and know what mode. >> do you know who george clooney fans were?

>> you can probably get to that without all the analysis. we didn't know that for that george clooney event. i went and it was great. >> they had a section of the campaign called the dave -- cave. can the cave figure out who will be more interested in invitations. it was getting closer to that. it was more when we started how folks wanted to be communicated with. >> i think we're at the part of the program where we can take some questions. >> first in the case of super

pacs will there be a conflict of interest when the campaigns tap into the same donor base. shifting after the election, recently the "new york times" reported that new -- organizing for action is having a direct million dollar mark and mr. jay carney addressed with a couple press meetings. any of you like to comment on that. not from a specific case but hypothetical sense. how is the former campaign money machine being operated in terms of access or policy making? >> we're still in the process of putting it together. we're still working on that. we're still working on it.

>> you stated you believe in c4s. if you were going to raise this kind of money, it should be all be disclosed. >> we won't be taking money from lobbyist or pacs. >> if c4, how do you know whether you're taking money from lobbyist or pacs? >> we'll do a vet for them. >> just sort of decode this a little bit, c4, technically you don't have to disclose your donors. where is the transparency in that? >> well, technically, you don't have to put on your website who our donors are and we did that too. we're still in the phases of figuring all of that out. i know this is lame answer but that's what we're doing >> on the super pac question for

you, in terms of competition for donors, there's a limit what somebody can give to the campaign. what we would always tell donors, they should max out their entire contribution to the romney campaign and the party before engaging in any discussion with super pacs. i'm sure that there are plenty of people that donated to the super pac that didn't end up giving to the campaign but i would imagine that's a pretty small slice of people. gow to the imagine if -- you got to imagine if somebody gave $100,000 to a super pac to support governor romney, chances are it's a big supporter and believe in the campaign and therefore also contribute to the campaign. super pacs were created for people to give above and beyond to the campaign finance laws. >> we know what the democrats think about this. after the 2012 election, how comfortable are you with the

fact that both your presidential candidate and vice presidential candidate went to kissed the ring of sheldon adelson. it came out the other day his company, the sands corporation, admitting in filings with the securities and exchange commission that they violated the foreign corrupt act and engaging in bribery overseas. aren't there some real problems for society when you have billionaires who can essentially give unlimited amounts of money. he gave over $100 million to those super pacs. isn't that troubling for you at all? >> you have to separate the issue, saying somebody who is a donor has admit something to the security and exchange commission, it's unfair to say that the campaign shouldn't associate with that individual

when we're not told that information ahead of time. we do a very good job of vetting all the contribution. every bundler every time we go to someone's home, we do research to make sure to know if there's anything there that can possibly embarrass the campaign. with thousands of people serving as bundler and donors, you're going to end up taking a contribution from someone who may openly have to refund. >> i guess the larger question i'm trying to get at over here is whether there's any -- the republican party is going through a lot of reassessments now. even though you had good standards for who can give and you vetted them carefully. enormous, you -- nonetheless,

you had four or five billionaires giving unthinkable amount of money. >> so did the democrats. >> i don't think we had anybody at that level. >> do you have anybody that gave more than $10 million? not this time but in 2004, george soros gave a huge amount of money. i'm going to get more cosmic issue here whether this is good for democracy or not on other side? >> the law is the law. right now with the citizens united, the law says an individual can basically write unlimited check to a super pac

527 organization. it would require a conversation from both sides, republicans and democrats saying what should the law be going forward as it relates to campaign finance. should it be people can give unlimited amount with complete disclosure. can there be campaign limits and no super pac? that's in discussion i think both sides have to have. you can't just say republicans are the party of big money where we're going to get people writing million dollar checks. that happens on both sides of the aisle. there's plenty of data to show that. i would be open for discussion with both parties saying what actually works going forward. i would be in favor of complete disclosure. it happens with the unions as well. the idea that the democratic party can raise hundreds of millions of dollars from unions with little to no disclosure, is

no difference than somebody writing a large check. >> anything else? >> hi, my long term goal is to work for the gop in the next presidential race in 2016 as part of the a political communications team. i have a question. i started out in the collegiate debate how to frame issues. coming back from there, i interned for the romney campaign with dan rutherford as well as did a recent internship in london. i find myself loss on what steps i need to take next to be involved in presidential race. given both of your extent experience in politics, what would you advise me as my next few steps request >> lot of people want to know

that. how do you get into this game? >> what i would do is try to get on a campaign for 2014. that's the great thing about campaigns. i've been doing it for a long time. i'm old. the great thing about it, i started out fundraising when i was 22. you get a promotion, if you're get at it, you get a promotion every two years. i would say get involved with a campaign this cycle. you can do something for 2013 and you can go do a senate race may be in 2014. then you would be somebody i would think any of the republican candidates would want to pick up for 2016 because of the experience you would have gained in the past few years. >> i agree with that. i think picking a candidate and picking one early is the advice i would give you. a lot of folks say, i don't want to pick the wrong one. i want to make sure i'm with the

winning ticket. regardless, pick someone who you believe will be the best person for the job and the great thing about campaign you find a lot of young people are given responsibility well beyond their years. if you do a good job for that candidate, you will take on more and more responsibility but don't wait around to try to figure out who the actual nominee is going to be. pick someone early. at the end of the day that person doesn't win the nomination, you will be the top of the list. i look at people we hired at the romney campaign, we had a lot of people who worked on other campaigns in the primary. don't worry about whether that person will be the nominee. pick a candidate who you believe in and go to work for them. >> i would agree to that. i was in d.c. in 2006. i helped democratic senate campaign committee when we took back the majority. then senator obama said to me, if i do this, you will go with

me right. i said sure. that right there, i decided to go with obama over clinton. before i even asked any of the questions, what was your biggest fundraiserrer. i got this lady out in san diego who raised me $35,000. i'm like great. i'm going up against the clinton machine who had a database of 20,000 names in it, not e-mail addresses. i really believed he would be the best democratic nominee and hopefully president. i did that and it's been a fun ride. i would agree with you definitely. >> i had not had any experience on a political campaign but to reinforce that point, i joined governor romney working for him at the olympics in salt lake city. i'm going to run for governor massachusetts, would you come out and work on my campaign. i had no interest in politics at that point.

i said no, i'm not interested. i've got a job in new york. i told my wife, she said are you nuts, tell him we're moving to boston. we moved to boston, three years later, he asked me to be his national finance director for the campaign. when i moved to boston, i had no idea what finance fundraising was. pick someone you believe in. >> how cold were you at -- how old were you at that point? when you started with him when you first went to boston? >> 23. >> then you became finance director at what age? >> i guess i was 26. i was 22 when i first left >> wow, that's pretty amazing. >> i like to come back to a question that was covered you think it may be even covered even more. that's the issue of funding from

smaller donors that really can't start until the nominee is the presumed nominee. yet that funding is much more effective in terms of advertising what it buys terms of grassroots. both parties are going to be in that situation in 2016 with the primaries. knowing what you know about how this works, what can a candidate do or how can the party somehow get things going before people really are willing to step up? even if the conventions are in july or i can't quite that, earlier, there's going to be this big problem after that where small donations are going to be particularly important. mr.zwick, you faced this after the republican convention. advertising had to go quiet there for a period which was

kind of a critical period during the democratic convention and soon after that. any thoughts that either of you have about how that can be handled? >> can we straighten out a cup of the facts. you weren't under any limitations at the democratic convention? it was after the republican convention. you could have advertised as much as you wanted any time after the republican convention is just your plan was to do more of it late in september and october? >> that's right. >> the limitations that the law provide around high donors not small donors. if you have a small donor base, none of these limitations apply. so called people maxed out in the primaries that their dollars can't be used until general

election right? >> [indiscernible]. >> the republican party used to have a bigger donor base in the 1990's. >> what you need is time to build that up as the presumed nominee. i don't want to put allly blame on the party. you have to point out the fact that having 20 debates and having 10 candidates on the stage, everyday that you go on prevents someone from emerging as the leader of the party. i'm talking about the republican party here. people are waiting to get involved. once people knew governor romney was the presumed nominee, that's when the low dollar checks started to come in. as long as we have 20 debates and this drawn out republican primary process, we will suffer from got -- not getting the smaller dollar contribution. >> we'll run into that in 2016. that happened with the 2008 race

for us as well. senator obama was a different candidate than a lot of your typical candidates. >> you don't think there's any chance in the next four years to get any kind of new rules that may be empowers small donors? change the rules in way that benefits democracy? >> that would be great. >> there are a lot of localities that have matching programs now and including in some republican areas like arizona that are very popular at the local level. is that something that we can hope for? >> it would be great. i don't see that happening between now and the next presidential race.

>> right. >> thank you for coming. i have a question about the smallest campaign that you ever were a part of? do you remember which one that is? i don't know the answer. >> probably my own when i ran for student class president. my freshman year. i didn't win. i didn't have to raise any money for that either. >> i guess the first campaign you were raising money for a statewide office or a representative in the house. what's the difference between beyond just scale, what are the differences between those types of races? >> well, when i first started fundraising the internet had not been invented. it was all phone calls. i worked for lieutenant governor mark from pennsylvania and then

the mare of d.c. it was making phone calls for eight hours a day. that's how you did it back in the day. you will print invitations and do stuffing parties at night and mail out hard invitations to invite people to the event. it was crazy. >> what do you think it is that makes you want to do something that most people hate doing raising money? >> i think it's kind of fun. it's black and white. if you were having an event tonight, you can say people will not come. we will not make our goal because of that. you can make the excuses but with the dollar figure it's black and white. if the goal is $10,000, you raised $8500, you didn't reach your goal. it's all about figure out how to

make your goal. >> i would agree, on a political campaign, everyone wants to be and thinks they're the strategist. every donor believes they got the idea that's going win the race. nobody comes to offer a lot of ideas for fundraising. great thing about fundraising, you can measure it. we had a saying in -- i had a thing on my wall that said, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. we like to measure everything that we did in the finance shop. it's harder to measure things when there's an election day so far out. every month we were able to measure fundraising. how we were doing versus the obama campaign. we had daily metrics every morning with every one of our state directors and they to report in much money they had in hand that day.

i loved that and you can measure it and you're adding real value to the campaign along the way. you want to get involved with a political campaign, now it sound like i'm doing a commercialtor a fundraiser, go show the campaign that you're willing to help raise money and you will be welcomed with open arms. >> i fully agree with that. >> how do you think rahm emanuel got his start? isn't that the way he got started >> he is a great fundraiser. phenomenal. >> anybody else have a question? i want to double check on your age. i'm still blown away by it. how old are you now? >> 33. >> don't ask me jonathan. >> i'm retiring from politics >> until you run right? >> there will not be a race here. >> it is interesting,

fundraiserring is a way that most people think about that most people don't want to do. for those trying to get involved in politics, if you have the talent for it or the stomach for it, it can be pretty good way into the game. tell us a little bit about mitt romney's future since you know him pretty well. he just did an interview. he's going to speak at cpac. what do you think his role in the republican party going forward? >> let me first say that working for governor romney while the outcome wasn't what i and many others hoped it would be, it was an honor and privilege to work for that man. he is a man of decency be he's a man of integrity and that's what attracted me to governor romney and his family. i would not have dedicated the amount of time and the years that i did. this isn't what i do.

raising money for political campaigns isn't what i thought what i be doing. i did this because i believed in mitt romney and the person i thought would be a great president. when you lose a campaign particularly for president, there are aren't a lot of case studies. you can't look and say, well, what if someone that is not current an office holder that already built a very successful career and then loses the presidency go and do next? it's not go back to the senate, it'll not go -- it's not go back and be governor. i can tell he's not going to go away. we spent close a billion dollars building a cause and almost half

the country turned out and supported his candidacy. there's got to be something there. you haven't seen the end of mitt romney. >> take us back to election night a little bit. it's not that dramatic on the democratic side. you all were surprised that you lost. why were you surprised? why did that happen? >> i was surprised depends on what point of the election night going into election day, i had spent five days on the road with governor romney campaigning all over the country. when you show up and you see 50 and 60,000 people coming together at the end of a campaign, you can't help but feel the momentum is moving in

your favor and you're going to win. some of the people would say the polling was off. it's not that we made up in our minds, we had polling that told us that things looked -- >> let me interrupt you on that for a second, is it right the polling models used 2004 results and 2010 results did not include the 2008? >> that may be right for some. our internal models used -- >> you sure? >> yes. >> one of the

>> there was certainly an assumption there that data, the turnout model wouldn't be overly accurate. but to say it wasn't used is not accurate. >> but it was so off. you're in business and you know that sort of wishful thinking can really cloud judgment. where were skeptics? was there anybody in the campaign who willing to say, you know, our internal polls are at

odds. you saw some movement in the polls at the end of the race based on hurricane sandy. would that have changed the outcome, i'm not suggesting that. there were events towards the end of the campaign you can look to. if someone from the romney campaign say i knew we will lose because of the data, they were lying to you. the fact is, i thought we were going to win. >> at what time in the evening did you realize that you weren't going to win? >> when virginia -- first florida was looking much closer

than we thought. folks in florida, said we will win florida. that created some pause for all of us. but when virginia was taking so long, if you ask me at that moment, i wouldn't have said we were going to win. i wasn't prepared to give up at that point. >> when karl rove came on, did that give you new hope. >> no. i heard the numbers from ohio. he may have called president obama when that was happening. >> there was an hour after that before it was a concession -- >> there was some confusion in ohio and colorado.

we said, let's be certain. when it was clear that -- >> it was clear governor romney was more rational about the whole thing? some people were saying let's hold out. he was saying, we lost. >> one thing about governor romney he is, by definition a very data driven rational thinker. you won't see him get -- he doesn't make decisions by emotion. clearly there were people that didn't want to admit this is over. governor romney always one to look at the data and let the data make the decision. >> this is one of the things that anybody has any other questions, jump in any time -- this is one of the thing that interest me the most. you describe himself a data driven and numbers guy, could

you make an argument there was this role reversal in 2012. it was the obama campaign that ran a bain campaign where everything was data driven. everything was about the metrics. the romney campaign seeing big crowds, feeling big sense of momentum, ran essentially a hope that people want change campaign and they ran the more kind of a facts rather than data. >> i don't think it was fair to say there was not data on the romney campaign. there were plenty of data and we were measuring plenty of things. we may have had the wrong data and made decisions based on wrong data and changing demographics and using old models to look at that. certainly made decisions based

on data. our polling information that had us winning was wrong. the data was still there. >> give us a little insight into how democrats kind of got their act together? they used to be so much worse at politics than republicans. if you go back to 1984 when president bush was reelected and they ran a better get out the vote operation. it's true that the democrats had george soros and think couldn't get over the finish line. what changed in the dna in the democratic party that got them to get their act together? >> we started earlier. jim messina our campaign manager -- fundraising is what we do.

everyday we see where we are. but the whole campaign was doing that. mitch, stewart, jeremy, everyday they say how many phone calls we made. we hear it every morning with our senior staff. it mattered and think we started measuring the one on one contact very early. we started in 2007 and 2008 and carried over some of it into the d.n.c. >> that was a brilliant thing about the obama campaign, much of that activity never ended. it continued and governor romney became the nominee at the convention but he was really the presumed nominee probably in april or may. you really have a five year period to build up and to use this data versus a six month

period of time. this is where i think a conversation has to take place and hopefully the republican party, think the republican party did a good job of getting themselves out of debt and being able to have an infrastructure ready to go for governor romney. there was no real data. there was nothing -- other than being able to get people to write larger check, it wasn't available available for us as a party. the obama campaign had five years to build this one, which was brilliant insight and thinking on their part. >> was there a sense at the end that the primaries forced romney too far to the right and that was hard to get back to the center? >> he'd already run before, maybe he hadn't run in 2008, you can say than he gone through the primary process in 2008. >> on immigration, he did an interview the other night, he

said, we didn't reach out enough to minorities. he painted himself in a corner on immigration during the primaries. >> well, when you have ten candidates standing up on stage and in order to make news, one candidate raises his or her hand to try so move the entire party further to the right, that dynamic is only going to grind out the primary process and push everybody further to the right. it would have been great if during the primary, the republican leaders would have said, here is the republican party's position on immigration as opposed to letting 20 different candidates up there all voice a position and move each other further right. >> i think on that note, we are going to bring this terrific unbelievably enlightening conversation to a close.

so i am there documentary, frank look at theason ji social impact of poverty on the u.s. they are third prize winners and this year's c-span's student can contest. >> frequently called the most cosmopolitan city of in midwest , detroit stands at the threshold of a bright new future. one rich with the promise of fulfillment area 1965.t was since then, things have drastically change. now the city is facing numerous complications such as inadequate education, high crime rate and excessive unemployment. >> the most pressing issue is

one that affects detroit and america as a whole. it is also the one most often ignored. poverty. >> the poor are getting poorer and sooner than later the middle class will not exist. is the new american norm. >> may national poverty rate is over 15%. 50 million people living in substandard conditions. it is facing its highest level of poverty since 1963. how can the obama administration save america from this untold crisis? fixed poverty. poverty. >> we hear this word of the time, but what does it really mean? we need to take a look at its implications for people and for society. it is when the individual is unable to secure an life's necessities.

>> you're not able to provide for your basic needs, such as housing, food, warmth in a cold climate. >> people experiencing poverty face a plethora of complications. homelessness, health problems, a lack of hope. does come in varying degrees. america's standard of living is rising. many luxuries are argue the becoming necessities. >> cell phones. they used to be such a luxury. now they are a necessity in many respects. if you have to call on a job, call to make a doctors appointment, you need the cell phone. implications for society as well. those who are poor are often

unable to contribute and must rely on others to support them. >> the entire society suffers when there is poverty. people that are poor are not producing. >> crime is an issue that complements poverty. rather than legitimate they look income, for a legitimate sources of income. >> he poverty crime rate rose 11% from 20 10 to 2011. it is the highest in decades. and is the morale of the country. you have a generation that will not do as well as their parents. >> the first step is controlling poverty. the official measure comes from the u.s. census bureau. but this is based on outdated thresholds and is far from

perfect. >> and is a ruler you can use and has been around for a long time. it has some the problems. >> it fails to account for tactic -- factors such as is essentially takes into account everything and presents a more realistic each of the situation. it showsg the stm, the poverty rate is even higher than expected area >> poverty comes in multiple forms. >> poverty happens when major life things happen. let's say you get a divorce or have a major medical issue. you are stumbling. those are the times that send

people into poverty. then you have chronic poverty. you don't graduate from high school. he will never get a job that will pay decently. or you graduate that don't have a lot of skills. thatth the knowledge poverty is multifaceted, it is clear there is more than one answer to our question. >> temporary property is relatively easy to fix. government intervention is what really makes a difference in the short run. and thetly, poverty recession. many lost their jobs. medicaid cans and help people overcome the bumps in the road they may face. chapter eight and can put people back on the right track. these programs have some major drawbacks in the current state. >> in the government hands out stuff, it is not good for the

government or the individual. parteeds dependency on the of the individual. >> from a monetary standpoint, welfare is severely inefficient. over $15 trillion have been spent and resulted in negligible change in the poverty rate. >> expenses to the poor have increased by 375%. getting any bang for our welfare buck. whatever programs we are using are not effective. there needs to be some other molds that the government can to get rid of property. >> long-term poverty is more deeply rooted. those suffering from chronic poverty must face a vicious cycle. being born into it, unable to find a job and passing these down to the neck generation. -- next generation. >> the key to fixing the issue

is fixing education. empower the next generation to list themselves from the crutches of operating. -- poverty. >> i am convinced that with the right tech of education and some new tools i can aid the people in poverty that they can start to get them selves out. >> america has an obligation to you to make sure you are getting the best education possible. making sure you get that will take all of us working hard and working hand-in-hand. >> dear mr. president, almost half a century ago lyndon b. johnson sending nation down a certain pack. we transformed into the land of opportunity and prosperity into a land of operating -- poverty. poverty is a real element of modern america. >> we are deeply aware of the issues that impact our

surrounding communities. living in metro detroit has exposed us to poverty. we ask that you focus more attention on this issue. during our darkest moments we must focus to see the light area america is going through tough times. only time will tell what you will do. sincerely, too concerned american citizens. >> you can find this video and the other winning documentaries on student cam. work -- student cam.org. ask john kerry meets with south korea's foreign mr.. after the meeting they will meet with reporters at the state department. that is on c-span two at 4:20. at 4:30 on c-span, you will hear but china's economy and environment from henry paulson.

>> in a few moments, a look at today's headlines live on "washington journal." elijah cummings speaks at the national press club about gun trafficking. , the nra releases a report about preventing gun violence in schools. asa hutchinson will present the report from the nra. this week a federal appeals court hears arguments in a lawsuit over whether transportation security administration procedures protect against unreasonable searches. michael krautes, nish on his newspaper's on partisanship in the u.s. senate. and i look at the infrastrue