this is 20 minutes. >> what happened? [indiscernible] >> not going to compare to when i knocked the sign down. ok, let's do it. ok, so we're going to start now. hi, i'm bob wiener, i'm the news makers committee of the national press club's event coordinator for this wonderful event today. welcome to the national press club, the world's leading organization for journalists and where news happens. today, we welcome an old friend, congressman jim clyburn, the house assistant minority leader who will discuss governing and the issues in the post-midterm's environment.

congressman clyburn was just elected by the democratic caucus as the assistant minority leader, again, for how many times now, jim? third time, great. president barack obama has said congressman clyburn is one of the handful of people who when they speak, the entire congress listens. he is one of the democratic caucus' primary liaisons to the white house. he plays a prominent role in messaging and outreach. he's the nation's highest ranking african-american member of congress. he represents the sixth district of south carolina. when he came to congress in 1993, he was elected co-president of his freshman class and rose through the leadership ranks rapidly. he was elected chairman of the congressional black caucus in 1999 and built a reputation as a leader and consensus builder. he was elected house democratic caucus house chair in a three-way race and three years later was unanimously elected chair of the democratic caucus. when democrats regained the

majority in 2006, he was elevated to house majority whip. he waw elected president of his naacp youth chapter when he was 12 years old, helped organize many demonstrations and marches in college, and met his wife emily in jail during one of his incarcerations. i hope you'll tell us more on that story. well, c-span and others have asked what news will be made. in addition to governing and the issues in the post-midterms environment, jim will, of course, answer the questions about what is going to happen on the immigration order, the health care law, will it be tweaked, will it stay, what will happen to it? will there be a shutdown threat, government financial threat, and impeachments? and why did the democrats lose and what's the prognosis for the future? so i would like to introduce, all in the space of an hour, i would like to introduce my wife, pat, who puts up with all of

this organizing work that we do, dr. patricia byrd, rebecca vanderlin. she'll take the mike to the audience so they'll be able to answer questions because we promised c-span would we have the audience miked so we will. florian, evan, joseph, and our new intern, autumn kelly. ok, and i want to thank your staff, jim. your scheduling staff and patrick devlin, your communications director. and so we will get under way. jim will present a speech. he'll talk for we're going to make it 15 minutes so he can get a couple questions in. take it away. >> thank you very much, bob. pat, thank you for your long friendship. bob and i go back to our young democrat days. when both of us had hair. and i was 40 pounds smaller. he kept his weight.

i -- the bell just rang, so we're going to truncate that quite a bit. so i'm not going to get into the speech i was planning. let me take first the more current thing, immigration. we did have a dinner with the president last night. and we discussed the executive order that is going to be issued, signed some time tonight or tomorrow. he will spockeak to the nation tonight about it. to discuss exactly what it's all about. now, many of you may know that i have for several years now been urging the president to use his executive authority to deal with immigration, as well as with the

debt limit. you may recall, the deal of the debt limit was something i didn't particularly like. i didn't like it being held up. the country being threatened. and i thought that he should use his executive authority. now, there are a lot of people who debate whether or not that's beyond the law, and we have been hearing all these discussions, even this morning. about the lawlessness. let me tell you something. when abraham lincoln issued the emancipation promlication, he was going beyond the law because