i think about what she said to me when i was a years old. one sunday morning, she looked at me with that look that mothers sometimes get and she said, what you are is god's gift to you. what you make of yourself is your gift to god. those words have stayed with me every day of my life since. they seemed at that young age like a promise because i did not feel very gifted. as a young girl or a young woman. everyone else seemed more together more just with it than i was. but they also seem like a challenge to me that i needed to find my god-given gifts and i needed to use them. no matter where i have been in the world, i have learned over and over and over again whether it was in my business work or my charitable work or even my policy or political work, i have learned over and over again that everyone has god-given gifts. everyone has potential, usually

far more than they realize. sadly, frequently, much more than they ever get a chance to fulfill. and so if everyone in the world has god-given gifts and everyone in the world has potential, why is it that this country is so special? why is it that more things have been more possible for more people for more places here than anywhere else in the face of the earth? i think it is because our founders knew what my mother taught me. our founders knew that everybody has god-given gifts. our founders knew that everyone has potential, and so they founded a nation on what was quite a radical idea at the time. it is a visionary idea still and the idea was that here, you have a right to fulfillpotential. that is what they meant when they said life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. you have the right to fulfill your potential in this nation, they said, and they said, that

right and this was the radical pie -- part, that right comes from god and should not be taken away by manner government. -- man or government. [applause] there is no other nation on the face of the planet that was founded on that kind of idea. and of course, we have worked hard through our history to be a more perfect union, to make sure that that idea applied to everyone. i started my business career as a secretary. i started out in a nine person real estate firm typing in filing and answering the phones. and i have lived and worked and traveled all over the world and i know with certainty that it is only in this nation that the young woman can start out typing in filing for a nine person real estate firm and go on to become

the chief executive of the largest technology company in the world and run for the presidency of the united states. that is only possible here. a number of you are here from pennsylvania. that is where my husband, frank, is front. evan mitty -- we have been married 30 years. i started as an entry-level salesperson after i got out of the secretarial pool at at&t. my husband frank started out as a tow truck driver in a family owned auto body shop in pennsylvania -- pittsburgh pennsylvania. all you guys who love cars. i made my way up in at&t and western electric and then hewlett-packard. it is one of the reasons i appreciate my too-brief tour of turbocam. what a fantastic company this is. i love manufacturing force

because i spent a lot of time on them. you know what i find so invigorating about turbocam's manufacturing force, it is not just this incredibly missed -- sophisticated machinery, not just the innovation that is going on here, it is that every single employee that i talked to really genuinely likes working here. everyone of them talked about the opportunity they had been given, the fact this company treats them like family, that is what it is supposed to be about. here is the truth. the truth is, we have come to a place in our nation where the things that have always given people the opportunity to fulfill their potential, those things are getting crushed. we have come to a place in our nation where the potential of the people of this nation is

being crushed by the government of this nation. if you think that is a harsh statement, and it is, consider a couple of examples. a couple facts. today, we tangle people's lives up in webs of dependence. i have seen these people. i do not care what people's circumstances are. everyone has gifts, everybody has potential. everybody wants to live a life of dignity and purpose and meaning. i can -- i have seen moms with kids, they did not lack god-given gifts. they did not lack a desire to live a life of dignity or purpose or meaning. and yet, we have tangled their lives up in these webs of dependence and instead of encouraging them to move forward, we at -- we discourage them from doing so. the harder you work, the more you strive, the less you get from the government in a way that makes it really risky for you to say, let me go for that 40 hour a week job.

the truth is, if you are a single mom, you're going to earn less making $55,000 year than if you make $20,000 a year and up and on the government. what kind of incentive is that? we are sending people all the wrong way. i talked about the fact that i started in a small business. they started in a garage like hewlett-packard did. my husband started in a family body shop. it is the small businesses, the family-owned businesses, the new businesses that create opportunity for people. those family businesses create two thirds of the new jobs and the employee half the people. it has always been an entrepreneurial innovative spirit of folks, just regular people trying to make a living by building a business that has

given this economy its engine. and yet today, for the first time in u.s. history, we are now destroying more businesses than we are creating. and by the way, it is not the big as this is that are getting destroyed. it is the little ones. and you know why? because only a really big business can deal with really big government. by the time i left hewlett-packard, it was a $90 billion company. i can tell you running a $90 billion company, you can deal with big government. that nine person real estate firm cannot. what is that? that is called crony capitalism. where government gets bigger and only big business and big labor and big influence and big money the wealthy the well-connected, the powerful can deal with big government. that is where we have come to. you doubt that?

a tax code is now 70,000 pages long. i cannot tell you how many business owners i met here in new hampshire around tax time who said, my taxes are not going to be done on time because i do not understand the many more. my accountant does not understand them. this year, the irs told us they were not prepared to answer taxpayers' questions because they did not have enough money. have you ever noticed how the government always needs more money to do something important? have you ever noticed that? how is it the government keeps spending more and more, debts and deficits keep rising but when it is important, we need more money. securing the border, we name our money. reporting -- repairing roads and bridges, we need more money. why is that? i will come to that in a moment. one more example of crony capitalism. two of them, actually. dodd frank.

the community tank had nothing to do with the financial crisis. when the financial crisis hit it was fannie mae, freddie mac them at the big wall street banks there were 25 rigo tory agencies that were supposed me minding the store and none of them apparently did their job. what happened? we passed obamacare. dodd frank. i have been on vacation. all these big laws run together. what is the consequence of dodd frank? 10 banks too big to fail have become five banks too big to fail. thousands of community banks have gone out of business. why does that matter? amenity banks are where small businesses get their start. it is where families get their start. it is where innovators and entrepreneurs who made be the -- the community bank knows get their start. we are crushing the community banks. meanwhile the big wall street tanks are getting bigger. and have there been any reform of fannie mae and freddie mac

question mark no. has there been any reform of the .5 regulatory agencies that existed before the financial crisis met -- financial crisis? we have the community -- consumer protection bureau. they are looking at millions of credit card receipts to figure out if someone is being defrauded. we worry about the nsa. maybe we ought to worry about the cfpb. what is the consequence of obamacare? how many of you saw the merger between two big health insurance companies? obamacare is such a big long, obligated bill that only big business can do with that much big government. it is called crony capitalism. the drug companies helped write it and they are getting bigger.

it is a failure. whatever you thought of it originally, health insurance premiums are up over 35%, we keep putting people into medicare and medicaid your doctors are taking patients on medicare and medicaid. this is not serving people. it is serving the insurance companies and eight drug companies. -- big drug companies. why do i bring all these problems up? they're are kind of depressing. the truth is the weight of this government the ineptitude of this government, another strong word, ineptitude. how many of you read tsa fails 96% of the time? that is ineptitude. how long has the veterans administration been a stain, a shame on this nation's honor?

how long have we not been serving our veterans? how long has government been getting bigger? how long has every agency gotten more money every year? the truth is that has been going on for decades. every government agency has gotten bigger every year for almost 50 years now. under republicans and democrats alike. the veterans administration has been a stain on our nations honor for at least two decades. the irs has been a problem. how long has the border been insecure? how long have politicians been talking about it? how long, how often have we talked about tax reform and yet it never happens? the point is, 82% of the american people now believe that there is a professional, political class and washington d.c. comprised of republicans and democrats alike people who have been in politics other lives were more interested in the preservation of their power

to my position, and privileged than on getting the job done. i agree with them. [applause] i agree with them and that is why i i am -- why i am running for the presidency of the united states. when did we get used to the idea that only professional politicians can hold office in our nations capital? when did we settle for that idea? ours was intended to be a citizen government by, for, the people. they have to step forward and serve in the public interest for time. -- a time. [applause] i think this election is going to be about anything's. -- many things. this will be about lifting the

weight of government off of the potential of the people of this nation. i think this election is going to be about making sure that we lead once again in the world which i will talk about in a moment. i think fundamentally, this election is about leadership. let me define for you what leadership is. leadership is not about position or power or title or prestige or the size of your office or the size of your airplane. leadership is also not management. you know what managers are? managers are people who do the best they can within the existing system. managers do not challenge the status quo. they accept the status quo. leaders challenge the status quo. in fact, it is leadership's most important job to challenge the status quote, not to accept what

is there because it has been there for a long time and the highest calling of leadership is to unlock potential in others. every leader makes enemies. it is why people do not need sometimes. when i was at hewlett-packard, i let that company through a very difficult time. six years. .com bust. the nasdaq is only now recovering after all this time to the dot-com bust. tough call center be made and yet in that six years, we doubled the size of the company from $44 billion to almost $90 billion. we quadrupled its growth rate. we tripled its innovation to 11 patent today. we could -- quadrupled the cash flow. we went from lagging behind in every market to leading in every product category. i got fired in a boardroom

brawl, proving that when leaders challenge the status quo, you make enemies. it is what happens. sometimes, for people who have been in politics all their lives, sometimes it is easier to go along to get along. to talk about things. isn't it interesting however time and election season rolls around, suddenly all these great ideas come out? let secure the border. let's reform entitlements. all these great ideas and yet somehow, they do not ever happen because they will not happen. unless the status quo truly gets challenged. let me tell you one of the ways i would challenge the status quo and i think it is high time. i would go to the american people on a regular basis to engage citizens once again in the process of their government and ask you key questions. for example, i might go into the oval office and sake, do you think it is important where our

money is being spent? please take out your smart phone, press one for yes and two for no. [applause] before --do you think it is ok that you can sit in a federal government job and watch pornography all day long and are in the same pay, pension and benefits as someone trying to do a good job? press one for yes, two for no. you know why that kind of citizen pressure works? because politicians respond to pressure. remember when the scandal of the v.a. in arizona burst onto the front page because people were outraged area they was -- outraged. within three short weeks congress had passed a bipartisan bill area the fastest timeframe they had ever done anything. you could fire the top 400 senior executives of the v.a. and president obama signed it

into law like that. it was a tremendous breakthrough. the first time. only one has been fired. i think that is kind of a good idea. another question i might ask you , do you think we ought to be able to fire senior executives in the federal government who are not doing their jobs? press one for yes, two for now. [applause] -- for no. every problem we have can be solved. these are not rocket science problems. they require common sense. they require leadership. a require citizenship. we need to go to zero-based budgeting so we know where our money is being spent. we need to tactile fundamental reform at laces like the v.a.. i would take 10 veterans and put them in a room and tell us how you want to be served. they would, with a better blueprint for the future of that agency than all the bureaucrats put together could. [applause]

and nowhere is leadership more -- we need leadership to unlock the potential of this nation once again. we need readership to fundamentally reform the federal government so that it is no longer so inept, so wasteful, so abusive, so corrupt. those are all very strong words. but every year, we get report after report after report of hundreds and hundreds of aliens of dollars of fraud, waste abuse, corruption in the federal government, and what happens? nothing. we need leadership to change that. we need leadership in the world because the world is a very dangerous place. it is a tragic place when we are not leading. let me tell you a couple things i would do. first of all, it is true that i know more world leaders on the states today than anyone running with the possible exception of hillary clinton. only i did not do photo ops.

i had meetings. i had a meeting this close to vladimir putin. i have sat in bb netanyahu's office or the chinese leadership or the saudi leadership, africa europe asia, the middle east, i have met these people. i have been in their countries. our allies do not know whether they can count on us. our adversaries know they do not need to pay attention to us. the first phone call would be to bibi netanyahu to let him know that the u.s. will always stand with the state of israel. [applause] and that phone call is important in and of itself because i can remember sitting in his office five years ago in a private meeting while he talked to me about iran and their nuclear

ambitions and then walking down the hall to speak to the head of mossad about the same. it also is a symbol. that phone call is a symbol to every ally we have is even our allies who disagree strongly with israel on many things wonder, when the u.s. treats israel this way, how much is my friendship with the u.s. worth? the second phone call would be the supreme leader of iran. he would arguably not take my phone call but he would get the message. i do not care what deal secretary john kerry cuts or what president obama signs. until you open every new year facility, every uranium enrichment facility, we will make it as difficult as possible for you to move money around the global financial system. we can do that. we do not need anybody's permission to do that. [applause] i would not call vladimir putin.

we have spent way too much time talking to vladimir putin and his foreign minister. i would begin rebuilding the sixth fleet and the missile defense shield programs, i would conduct aggressive military exercises in the baltic state and i would arm ukrainians and vladimir putin would get the message. [applause] in those phone calls and acts are important as well. every adversary or would-be adversary we have, whether it is china or russia or iran or someone else would say, may be u.s. is going to lead again. and make no mistake. we must have the strongest will it on the face of the planet and everybody has to know it which means we have to invest in our military. [applause]

and finally, i would call a camp david summit, not to talk our air of allies into a bad deal with iran. i would call it to speak to our arab allies about what they need from us to fight isis. they know this is their fight. i do not know how many of you have been watching the news but egypt is fighting isis. our allies in the region have asked us are specific things that we have not provided them. the king of jordan has asked us for bombs and materiel. we have not provided that. the egyptians have asked us to share intelligence. the saudi's and the kurds have asked us, there are a series of things that these allies in the region who know this is their fight want from us, we are not providing them, and so we would have a camp david summit and decide together how best to defeat this evil as it must be defeated. -- because it must he defeated. [applause]

i will rep appear in a mad because i want to take your questions. one of the things that -- i will wrap up here in a minute because i want to take your questions. i am doing a lot of interviews that not everyone will do. and so i got asked an interesting question when i was here in new hampshire, on national television, for the first in the nation summit. the question was, did i think that woman's hormones prevented her from serving in the oval office is to mark -- oval office? so ladies, this is a test area can you think of a single instance in which a man's judgment has been clouded by hormones? [laughter] [applause] any ata all?

including the oval office. hillary clinton must not be president of these united states. [applause] but not because she is a woman. hillary clinton must not be resident of these united states because she is not trustworthy or transparent. because she lacks a track record of leadership, and because the policies she will pursue will continue to crush the potential of this nation. but make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen. we better have a nominee who will throw every punch there is at hillary clinton, and it would help if she did not get to run on being the first woman president. [applause]

we do not need a professional politician to be president of the united states. we have tried that for quite a long time. what we need i think is someone who understands how the economy actually works, so that we can get it going and growing again. we need someone who understands how the world works and who is in the world so that we can stand with our allies and confront our adversaries. we need someone who understands how bureaucracies work, because our federal government has become one giant, bloated, unaccountable, unresponsive, in-depth bureaucracy. we need unders -- someone who needs technology because it is a tool. it can reengage citizens in the process of their government and it is a weapon that is being used against us right now. most importantly of all, we need

someone who understands what leadership is, that is not an achievement, that is not a position, that it is not a title. it is not a big office. leadership's job is to challenge the status quo and leadership's highest calling is to unlock potential in others and now, we need a leader in the oval office who to gather with the citizens of this great nation will unlock the potential of this great nation once again. and so every single day, i told you i think about my mom and i do and my dad. every single day as well, i think about two of the most powerful symbols of our nation's democracy because i think they tell us what we must be. and those two symbols aren't lady liberty and lady justice. so picture for a moment in your mind lady liberty. she stands tall and strong, which is what america must

always be. she is clear eyed and resolute. she does not shield her eyes from the realities of the world. she faces outward into the world, which is the way america must always face, and she holds her torch high, because she knows she is a beacon of hope in a very troubled world. and lady justice. lady justice holds the sword in one hand because she is a fighter. she is a warrior. for the values in the principles that have made this nation great, she holds a scale in the other hand with that scale, she is reminding us that all of us are equal in the eyes of god and therefore, all of us must be equal in the eyes of the law and government, powerful and powerless alike. and she wears a blindfold, and i think with that blindfold, she says to us that in this nation, in this, the 21st century, it must be true.

it can be true. it does not matter what you look like. it does not matter who you are. and it does not matter who your sick -- what your circumstances. it does not matter how you start here in this nation. every american's life can be filled, must be filled with the possibilities that come from their god-given gifts with liberty and justice for all. god bless you, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] thank you so much. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> carly will take a few

questions. here is alex. raise your hand, alex will come over to you. if it is taking more than a minute to ask the question, it is a speech alex go to it. >> we'll start with the woman in red. >> welcome to barrington, we're so grateful for you to be here today. our country has trillions and trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities, medicare, medicaid social security. how would you address that? >> so you know there are all kinds of actually pretty good ideas about how to reform those entitlements entitlements. but honestly speaking i won't start there because i don't think people trust that government can do that because

government isn't doing much of anything else right. so i would start by getting government's house in order first with some of the things that i described. i would start with zero based budgeting. let's know where every dollar is being spent in every single agency. let's force every agency to justify every program, every single year and if it can't be just identified and not meeting its metricses and goals we don't do it anymore. somebody in iowa said to me reagan repealed the 55 mile an hour speed limit. all this time -- so the point is we never roll anything back. i would make sure we have a senior executive service where performance actually matters.

i would make sure all those hundreds and hundreds of billion dollars of fraud get dealt with. i'd make sure we do the basics like serving our veterans and securing the border and answering taxpayer questions and making sure the ts a is competent. let's get our house in order. and then we can look at all the great ideas there are foreign tightment reform. but when we turn it around and everybody starts talking about entitlement reform you notice no one talks about it unless it's political season, right? dead silence from washington unless it's political season. then we've gotten our house in order then let's tackle all the great ideas and engage the american people. remember that one for yes and two or no. honestly technology gives us the opportunity to talk directly and not to listen to posters. to actually ask people.

how do we get the youth involved in our side of the argument because there are a lot of talk on uts but i wanted to hear your response. >> well, it's such a great question. first you could sign up for the college republicans. there's the president of new hampshire college republican right there. you have to make an argument and listen to the other side. first, i would encourage you as you probably already do since you asked the question to talk to people your age. but of course every problem we're talking about here rest most heavily on your shoulders,

it does. whether it's unfunded liabilities or title reforms that won't make it or government that's completely inept as compared to the life you live in your smart device. every single one of these problems that stem from this out of control government rest more heavily with your contemporaries than with most of the people in this room. i think it starts with a conversation like that. one of the conversation starters i find works is that students are understandably very concerned about student debt. so when i'm with young people i say, do you know that the national government nationalized the student loan industry? did you know that there used to be a competitive student loan

industry where banks had to compete for your business you and know how competition work. prices go down and you have more choices. anded federal government nationalized the whole system and the national government decides what the interest rates should be and the interest rates they're charging you on your loan are maybe four times the rate that the federal government pays on its own debt does that strike you as fair? no, it doesn't strike you as fair. and then you might reference what people experience every day with technology. it's probably the most hyper competitive industry in the world. as a result what happens? you get better prices, higher quality and more value year after year after year. so maybe ought to inject a little more competition back in the student loan industry. it's a way of starting the conversation that most don't know. imagine the cynicism when we have national political figures. hillary clinton among them, president obama who say to young

people wow, student loan debt is a real problem and we the government have taken it over totally and we decide what the interest rates are and we are going to talk about for giving you all your debt. doesn't that strike you as cynical? unbelievably cynical. so i'm glad that i just asks that question and you talked about student debt because i'm here to talk about student debt as well. here in new hampshire we have the highest student defendant out of all the states in new hampshire and recent college graduate got some student debt but i'm having a lot of problems finding affordable housing and so as i'm looking for places to live i'm finding that i'm very limited because of my student debt. it's limiting me in the future.

so i wonder how can or what would you do to make housing more affordable for students like me with debt? >> well, i appreciate you bringing up that issue because actually it's quite an issue with young people and also quite an issue with seniors, people who are living on a fixed income who find it more and more difficult to afford housing. i don't have a silver bullet answer to the president of the united states will do this. but what i do believe is that we need to have the conversation just as we did about student debt in general. if you want greater abundance and lower prices you need to lift the regulatory burden and

yet we make it hard, really hard. what i would say is keep bringing up thattish skpaou it needs to be a debatish skpaou needs to be a campaign issue. we are so we theed to think about what we can do to lift the burden off that industry. thank you. i teach in the state of virginia

who has its own draconian testing and democracy. what role do you see playing in education if any? >> so here's some data the department of education has gotten bigger for 50 years and the quality of education has gotten worse. what do common people conclude from that? a bigger department of education has nothing to do with the quality of education in this country. it doesn't. common core, let's just start with that. really bad idea. you know, there are some people who will say to you, well, common core is just a set of standards. it's not a heavy handed bureaucratic central program from washington, d.c. it's just a set of standards.

the only trouble with that argument is this, if anyone who understands understands understands about your understands understands -- bureaucracies only know one way and they're all in the middle of common core because it impacts their business. they want to make sure they can influence the rules. that too is called coney capitalism. what do we know that's most important for a child's education. what do you know as a teacher? you know the most important thing is a good teacher standing in front of the classroom and an involved pairrent. so that means we have to give parents as many choices as possible whether it's home schooling or charter or parochial schools or vouchers, we need to give parents as many

choices as possible. democrats are on the wrong side of this issue. and i will never forget the head of the chicago public teacher's union when they were striking in chicago a couple of years ago, the issue was accountability in the classroom and the head of the teacher's union said this, we cannot be held accountable for the performance of students in our classroom because too many of them are poor and come from broken families. so what was she saying? if you're poor and you come from a broken family you don't have gifts, you don't have potential. you can't learn. shame on her. that is not what we believe and when democrats say we'll shut down vouchers and charters what they are doing? they are befriending a special interest group called the teacher's unions and depriving

children of chances. so we're going to give every parent a chance so every child has a every parent a chance so every child has a chance. >> a lot of new hampshire is pro second amendment. you mention the the governor just today knocked down a new great law that would have gone into effect, but that just went down today unfortunately. you mentioned government is often heavy happenednded. how do you feel about the second amendment. how would you deal with that? >> well, i'm pro.

my husband is a gun owner. i'm not a great shot but i could defend my home or my family if i had to. what's interesting to me is this is always about ideology. this horrible heinous crime we just saw in south carolina and of course politicians rush to talk begun control and yet south carolina has in place some of the toughest gun control laws in the nation. they have in place many of the things that the president and his party has advocating forward and they did not prevent this horrible crime. and that's true over and over again. the places where you see the toughest gun laws have the most gun crime. let's enforce the laws we have and let us defend the second amendment. it's pretty simple to me.

so i believe that with the last question because i want to have a chance to shake as many hands as possible, thank you so much for your warm welcome. when i started this campaign there were a lot of people who said it couldn't be done. and i knew it could be because i have a lot of faith in people. i have a lot of faith in people. and i know a lot of you agree with me and so many people across generational lines, gender lines, party lines so many people are paying attention and saying, we need to do better than this. every wound we have can be healed. every problem can be solved. what it's going to take now is leadership and citizenship. but truly we have everything we

need. we have the potential of the people of the greatest nation on the face of the planet. help me support me, talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors go to karly for president.com. go to karly for america.com. together we can take our government back and make sure that this will be the greatest century for the greatest nation on the face of the planet. thank you so much, laidsdies and gentlemen. god bless you all. >> g.o.p. presidential candidate dr. ben carson spoke earlier this week in bedford, new hampshire. it was hosted by the new hampshire and took questions from the audience on social security education and immigration. this is just under an hour. >> good afternoon. we are pleased to co-sponsor

today's special lunchtime installment of politics and we'd like to welcome dr. ben carson and his lovely wife candy to new england. it's the home and the frequently the first stop for a storied primary and new hampshire's tried and tested political process. i'd like to thank the students that are here. for those of you who have not attended you may not know that the students run the institute of politics so they do everything from schedule these events to deal with advanced teams and media so i'd like to thank our students who are here in attendance here today. today we welcome dr. ben carson. dr. carson was born and raised and detroit, michigan and took a

little bit of a did he tour to new england when he attended yale university as an undergraduate. he returned to michigan to attend medical school at the university of michigan. and then came back to the east coast to complete a residency at john hopkins university medical center in baltimore. and then went on it a long and successful career at hopkins as a pediatric neuro surgeon. over the course of his 29 years as director of pediatric neuro surgery, he took some of the most challenging pediatric cases and saved or improved the lives of hundreds of children. in 1987, he made history when he performed the first successful separation of conjoined twins at the head. in addition to his work in the o.r., dr. carson also founded the carson scholars fund. since 1994, the fund has awarded

over 7500 scholarships to young people of all backgrounds in recognition have exceptional academic and humanitarian achievement which is extraordinary. thank you for that. dr. carson's remarkable medical career and philanthropic efforts have won him a variety of awards and recognition over the years. in 2008, president george w. bush awarded him the presidential medal of freedom, our nation's highest civilian honor. dr. carson is also an accomplished author, having published eight books, including his autobiography "gifted hands" and two "new york times" best sellers. his next venture is politics. in may, dr. carson announced his candidacy for the 2016 republican presidential nomination. on the campaign trail, he has

called for adding a balanced budget amendment to the constitution and for comprehensive tax reform that will simply identify the tax code and make it more fair. he has spoken out against the affordable care act and called for improving our public education to more local control and less federal government involvement. we're delighted he could join us today for politics and eggs and i would like to also congratulate him and candy on their 40th wedding anniversary yesterday. dr. ben carson. thank you so much. i'm absolutely delighted, candy and i to be here in new hampshire in the summertime. what a beautiful place it is. and i had an opportunity to meet so many wonderful people. people have asked me on many

occasions after such a long and illustrious medical career why would you get into politics? my answer is, i don't want to get into politics. but i do want to do something to heal this country. you know my entire professional life centered around trying to give children a chance and i had the privilege of operating on around 15,000 people. so i get to see patients almost everywhere i go which is really kind of cool. i was in indiana and one of the fathers of one of the patients that i operated on introduced me and told the poignant story of how his little 3-year-old had developed what was considered an

inoperable brain tumor. they almost gave up on him when they found me. we were able to do that operation and now she's 29 years old, married and has a family. those are wonderful occasions and then i was in kentucky a few months ago and ran into a young man i had operated on when he was a baby. had done an operation called a hemisphereectomy which we remove half the brain and he graduated number one in his class in college with half a brain. that's the real reason i'm running. i want to set up an institute in washington and do hemisphereectomies in washington. maybe they'll become starter and do smart things. but it's such a wonderful privilege to intervene in people's lives and make a

difference. i was also blessed to encounter a lot of situations where there was a lot of controversy. i had a chance to really the brunt of controversy. about 70 of the babies used to die because their brain stems were being compressed by bone at the base of the skull. what people would try to go in and fix it it was so tight that they frequently had severe complications with either further neurological damage or death. i remember being in the first conference and after the world

experts got up to speak it it came my or death. i rememberturn. i talked about new technique that we developed about decompressing these children safely. they were outraged. they said, you think you can do everything. they said if you leave them alone only 7% will die and it went on and on. i came back to hop kin's and i continued to do the operation anyway. there were complaints to the dean and president of the hospital and the departmental chairman, carson's crazy. what's he doing? and even maryland medical society and finally got up to the a m a. by that time i had done enough cases that we were actually able to reveal the data. not a single patient had die in a disease where they died if you didn't do anything. the nice thing about medicine is data actually means something. people actually do things based

on evidence. it's one of the reasons that we have gone and medicine from the last turn of the century when the average age of death is 47 to now when average of death is about 80. it's because of the tremendous advances that have been made because people actually are able to incull indicate the knowledge and the data into the making of decisions. unfortunately that doesn't work in politics. people really don't care what the data shows. they just sort of double down on their issues. for instance, you look at the war on poverty that started in the sixties with johnson, the great society programs and how that was going to eliminate poverty and we spent $19 trillion in the effort. what did we get for it? ten times more people on food stamps.

more poverty and welfare crime and incarceration, out of wedlock birth and broken families and everything that was of wedlock birth and broken families and everything that was supposed to get better is not only worse, it's much worse. what do people do in the political world? a lot of them they look at that data and they say that has uncharacterized so many of the things that have happened in our society. and that's one of the reasons that i did feel that i needed to get into this. i wasn't particularly excited about it but after the prayer breakfast in 2013 and so many people started clamoring for me

do it and i thought that was ridiculous. i thought like most people you got to be a politician to do that. as i started listening to people and noticing the clamoring was getting getting louder and louder. and broadening, i was particularly touched by the number of elderly people now they felt a little bit of encouragement. i heard that so many times and younger people who were so concerned about not only their future but the future of their children and what i've

discovered a lot of people in our nation actually do have common sense and values and principals that are more traditional and are the very ones to allow this nation to rise from nowhere to the pinnacle of the world in record time. but they've become timid and afraid to express themselves. because if you express yourself our nation actually do and your opinion is different than what the mainstream has put out, they'll find some name to call you. or your job will be messed with or your family will be messed w all kinds of things that have kind of discouraged people from really speaking out. and it's one of the reasons i'm such a vociferous opponent of

political correctness. because there are a lot of people who gave their fortunes and lives so that we could have freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of religion in this country and all of those things are gradually being eroded by political correctness. and as we giveaway our values and principals for political correctness we're spiralling downward and not moving upward. and there are a lot of people who feel that. i think really the issue is going to be how do we get people to once again have the courage to stand up for what they believe in. and speak up tore what they believe in and engage in simple conversation. even if they disagree with each other about thing of the isn't that the way that you make progress? you don't make progress by getting into separate corners

and hurling hang grenades at each other and that's what we do now. i'm always a little amused when i read an article and i go to the comment section. you don't have to give more than five five comments down before people start commenting on each other. it's sad to see what's happening in our society. it's one of the things i'm most concerned about in our nation, the divisiveness. the war on women which doesn't exist. the racial wars who don't exist. but there are those who try to make it into a big deal when in fact you put together they're

going to have conflicts period, end of story. taking police officers like everybody else will occasionally make mistakes. plumbers make mistakes and electricians make people are not really stopping to analyze it. why is it so dangerous? the class warfare. the religious warfare. why is it so important? because we have radical jihadists who want to destroy us. i think they are sitting there and weighing things. they are saying should we destroy them or should we wait

and let them destroy themselves? that is probably a pretty tough choice for them. we have got to be smarter than that. we have got to stop fighting each other, recognize that we, the american people, are not each other's enemies. the enemies are those who are attempting to divide us. unless we recognize that, they are going to be successful. now, the other thing that i think is likely to destroy us is our incredible fiscal irresponsibility. it is beyond belief what we are doing. thomas jefferson said is -- it is your moral -- it is immoral to pass debt onto the next generation. we all talk about the $18.4 trillion national debt. i am not minimizing that.

that is a lot of money. that we are passing on to the next generation. if we try to pay that back at a rate of $10 million per day, you are talking over 5000 years. we are putting that on the backs of our young people. that's the good news because it is actually much worse than that. the fiscal gap is what we need to be concerned about. politicians will not talk about the fiscal gap. it is too frightening to talk about and they know that perhaps they might be somewhat responsible for some of it. since i am not a politician, i can talk about it. what it is is those fiscal liabilities that we have unfunded liabilities going forward, social security medicare medicaid, all of the

cabinet programs, all the money that is owed for those versus the revenues that can be expected from taxes and other sources. those two numbers should be identical if you are fiscally responsible or at least close to identical. if they are not, a gap forms. a fiscal gap. our fiscal gap right now sits at $211 trillion. that is an unimaginable amount of money. the only reason we can't sustain that level of debt is because we can print money with a reserve currency. we are doing that at a very irresponsible -- in a very irresponsible way. what if we had no way to hide it? what would happen then? i guarantee you if greece had

the ability to print money, they would continue to do so. they would be in just as much trouble if not more than they are in now, they just wouldn't know it. they would be going along and merrily having fun and breaking plates and what have you. we are in that situation on steroids. the position of reserve currency generally goes with the number one economy in the world which we were from the 1870's until last year when we got passed up by china. they can't be the reserve currency for one reason. their banking system is in shambles. i hate to wish anything bad on anybody, but we are so lucky that their banking system is in shambles. some of you probably know the

financial markets and know there is something called the asian international investment bank which china infused with $100 billion last week. and which some of our other allies are getting involved in. it will take a few years for it to all shore up but they are already making noises about the u.s. dollar not being the reserve currency. what are we doing? continuing to expand our deficits. this is a very dangerous situation. i have to tell you, if i were in charge and i wanted to destroy america, you know what i would do? i would create division among the people in every way that i possibly could. gender race, income, religion, age, every division i could make, i would drive a wedge in

and have the people at each other's throats. then i would drive the debt to a level that is unimaginable and clearly unsustainable and unsupportable. then i would deteriorate the military. while our enemies were growing. that is what i would do. i'm not saying anything about anybody else. if there are any coincidences to what is going on now, purely coincidental. but think about these things. we have to think about what is going on because our country was designed with the people at the pinnacle. it was designed of, four, and by the people. the government was there to facilitate life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness for the people, not the ruler. that is one of the reasons that i am such a strenuous opponent of affordable care act. not because i don't want people to have good health care, just the opposite. i want them to have excellent health care and i want everyone to have it. but the reason that i am such a strenuous opponent of it is because it turns the whole concept of a nation of, four, and by the people on its head and you have a government now saying, i don't care what you people think, this is what we are doing and we are shoving it down your throats. if you don't like it, too bad. that is antithetical to all the founding principles of this nation, and if we the people accept it, it will not be the end. they will continue to do such things. that coupled with some of the deleterious effects of that act

for instance, the employee mandate. what has that been to the spirit of america? it used to be, when you started a business, you were so excited that you called your mom and told her. the next are you had 20 employees and then 30, and then 40. but you don't want to hit 50 because it kicks in. all of a sudden, big consequences. for the very spine of the american economy, small business, we are putting that kind of damper on it. there is no excuse for a policy that depresses the development of something that is responsible for 60% of all jobs in america. these things are being foisted on us and the average person is more interested in who is on

dancing with the stars or who is playing soccer. this is a problem. it's a huge problem for us. we have to deal with it. we can deal with it. for instance, in terms of health care there are logical solutions that don't require someone else to control the health care. that is why i have advocated for health savings accounts from the day you are born until the day you die and you can pass it on at the time of death. we use the same dollars to pay for it that we use to take care of routine health care now. the interesting thing is you give people the ability to shift money in their health savings account within their family. let's say dad is $500 short for a special scan. his wife, aunts sister, grandfather, anyone can -- anyone in the family can give it

to them. it makes every family virtually their own insurance company. it makes you concerned about each other. if apple joe is smoking like a chimney, everyone is going to say uncle joe, put that figure it down. -- put that cigarette down. but the cost of your insurance drops precipitously because 80 or more percent will come through your hsa. that's like having a homeowners policy with a large deductible which is a very different animal than a homeowners policy where you want everything covered. if you can buy that insurance across state lines voila! that takes care of the majority of people. but the logical question is, what about the indigent?

they are networking. how do we fund their hsa? medicaid. the annual medicaid budget is four to five hundred billion dollars per year. $5,000 for each man, woman, and child on medicaid. what can you buy with that? they can all be in a boutique practice and you still have a couple thousand dollars to buy catastrophic insurance. there is enough money to do that. i'm not saying that is what we should do. if we can fashion a reasonable program for them, it would work much better than what we are doing now. some people in washington, their automatic response is poor

people would not have the ability to manage a health savings account. i guarantee you that is what they would say. they think they are stupid. they think they're all like them. they are not. the fact of the matter is, they said that about food stamps too. they said they wouldn't be able to manage them. they would go out and buy porterhouse steak the first five days and a six they would be in the corner begging for food. did that happen? no. they learned to make it last throughout the month and they will learn how to use health savings accounts. we have to simplify them and make them just like bank account with not a whole bunch of bureaucrats involved. that is easy enough. here is a wonderful thing. joe has a diabetic foot ulcer. he is going to learn very quickly not to go to the emergency room to get it taken care of where it costs five

times more than it would in the clinic. he is going to go to the clinic where not only do they take care of it, but they say now joe let's get your diabetes under control so you are not back here in three weeks with another problem. a whole other level of savings begins to be achieved. we start looking at preventive measures for health care because chronic disease, particularly amongst the underserved costs a norm us amounts of money. if we have a much better mechanism taking care of it, that is going to achieve a lot of -- a lot for us in society. any program that we add to make -- advocate should be things that we move towards -- that move people towards independence. that should always be our measuring stick. i the same token, when it comes to our economy, recognize that we have the most powerful dynamic economic engine the world has ever seen.

that's what propelled us so quickly to the pinnacle of the world. we had an environment that encourages entrepreneurial risk-taking and capital investment. that does not exist anymore. now, there are trillions of dollars on the sideline but nobody is too anxious to pour it into a system where you don't know what is going to happen. we have to bring some stability back. we have to get rid of the enormous amount of regulatory oversight. this is america. this is not cuba or russia. this is america. where people are allowed to do things on their own. the government is there to facilitate. not to manage every aspect of our lives. this is not to say that i'm antigovernment. this is not to say that i'm anti-regulation. regulations are necessary. our founders said that no government or regulation would

be necessary if men were angels. but men are not angels. neither are women. and they knew that. therefore, we have to have the appropriate number of regulations in place to deal with greed and taking advantage of other people. but we have gone way beyond that point at this stage of the game. i was speaking to the american bakers association at their annual convention a few months ago and i asked the leadership, are you guys having any problems with regulations? they laughed. they said that's all they have been talking about in that conference. it is affecting nearly every aspect of our society and it doesn't need to. the other thing that is really cramping our style is the taxation system. it is an absurd taxation system. 80,000 pages of tax regulations. it's ridiculous.

what i have advocated is something very simple, very proportional. i get my ideal from the bible. i will admit great it seems like god is a pretty fair person. he asked for a tie. he wanted everything proportional. if you make $10 billion, you pay one billion. if you make $10, you pay one dollar and you get the same rights and privileges. what could be more fair than that? the difference is you also have to get rid of all the loopholes and inductions. some people get alarmed when they hear that. they say, but my mortgage deduction i can't make it without that. they haven't thought this through because the amount of money you are saving is much greater than your mortgage deduction. there are some who say

charitable deductions will disappear. churches will vanish. do they know anything about american history? do they realize that people gave just as much before 1913 when federal income tax was imposed as they did before? do people actually realize the generous nature of americans? do people know that america was the impetus for socialism? the europeans looked over here and saw the fords and the kellogg's and carnegie's, rockefellers, they said as people have too much money. you have to have an overarching government that receives all the funds and then equitably redistribute that. have you ever heard that before? that is what's known as socialism. what they didn't know about those americans that i just named and many others like them is that unlike the robber barons

of europe who just gathered money into themselves and pass it down from generation to generation, they built the infrastructure of our country. the transcontinental railroad. the seaports. the textile mills and factories. the mechanism to develop the most dynamic and powerful middle-class the world has ever seen which rapidly propelled us to the pinnacle of the world. that is where the strength is in our middle class, which is being decimated by many of our policies today. this is what we have got to begun -- begin to think about if we are ever going to solve this problem. i can go on for a long time talking about financial policy and maybe somebody has some questions on that which i'm very happy to answer. i'm happy to answer any questions on foreign policy. a lot of people say, but you are a neurosurgeon, you couldn't possibly know anything about foreign policy. what imbeciles to say something like that. if you have a brain and you have

the ability to talk to people and you have the ability to listen and you have the ability to read, you can learn stuff. believe me. [laughter] i just find it fascinating particularly the people who come to me and say how can you even be thinking about politics? you are a doctor. what if i decide that i want to go into the operating room and become a neurosurgeon? i can't do that. they are right about that. but the fact of the matter is that that question demonstrates very little understanding of the complexity of something like nora surgery. you have to know -- neurosurgery . you have to know not just concepts, but details about a gazillion different things. i can take somebody off the street who is very smart and i can very quickly fill them in on

a lot of major concepts, particularly if they are wise and smart. that is what the founders of our nation understood. that is why they created a government and a constitution that could be handled by citizen statesman, people who were intelligent, who were able to gather information, but it was not designed, quite frankly, for a political class. if all it required was political experience, there are a lot of people who have been in washington for decades whose name i could give but i will be kind, i don't think you would want them to tie your shoes. it requires more than that. there are lots of people in our country that i have met in all kinds of fields who i would feel much more comfortable making decisions for me than some of

the people that i see in washington dc. that's not to say all of them are bad. some of them are good people with good intentions. my point being, that is not the only mechanism that can give you wisdom, experience, and the ability to solve problems. having said that, let me open it up for questions. [applause] >> we do have time for a few questions. >> we gave you some good weather here. one of the things, if you look in the future, about social security. if the things go on as they are going on, we are going to run out of money in about 17 or 18 years. what specific things do you have

in mind that you would like to put forward to correct that and to make social security a viable alternative? dr. carson: thank you for asking that question. it is something i have thought about carefully. there is no question that it looks like a ponzi scheme right now. we can fix it. there are about 20% of americans who could easily get by without their social security checks. many people like that in this room. what i would propose is that we allow people to opt out of receiving their social security payments in lieu of a tax credit. they get the tax credit, they don't get a check, but they get the tax credit. a still get the benefit of it without us having to go into the pot which is already severely strained. i predict that about 20% of people will take advantage of

that. if that is true, then that would automatically stabilize the system which now gives us time to begin to gradually increase the age of retirement. remembering, when we put that system into place, the average age of death with 63. now, we are looking at 80. we have not made any adjustments. it is unfair to make adjustments, i believe, to people who are 55 years or older because they don't have enough time to do it needs to be done. or people who are younger than that, i think there is time. it is a gradual adjustment. many of the people i have talked to have said we don't have to do anything radical like they did in italy. the move to their age up tremendously and cut the benefits by 40% in order to get back in line. the longer we wait, the more drastic the need will be to do it. we do it very gradually over the

course of about 25 or 30 years and we can sustain the system. not only that, but remember, once we have intelligent people dealing with economic issues there is going to be money. keep in mind that our economy grew at an average rate of 3.3% from 1850 until 2000. from 2001 to 2014, a group at a rate of one point 8%. the last quarter was actually negative. the things we have in place are not conducive to growth. if you make a friendly environment for business again america will take off again because we are full of people who are creative and to our hard-working and who will make the opportunities. when that happens, the doors will open up for many other people that romney characterized as the 47%. i can tell you, a lot of those

people are hard-working people who believe in america. all they want is an opportunity. >> welcome to new hampshire. my question is, we had to deal with an unfortunate incident in san francisco over the last couple of days where a young lady was shot by an illegal who was deported over five times. my question is two-pronged. number one, what would be the president carson plan in terms of dealing with immigration. the second part is, how will you deal with these cities who are becoming sanctuaries to these violating federal law. dr. carson: no thank you very cities. that's easy. -- no sanctuary cities. that's easy. i spoke at the national association for latino elected and appointed officials a few weeks ago in las vegas. i was the only candidate who

went there. i told them, i am going to tell you the same thing i tell everybody else. of course, they wanted me to say , we are going to make everybody here citizens and everything is going to be great. that i'm not going to say that. do we have an illegal immigration problem? absolutely. all of this stuff about trump what we really should be talking about is how do we solve the illegal immigration problem, not the words that donald trump used which were perhaps, a little inflammatory. i learned that several months ago two tone my rhetoric down so that people could actually hear what i'm saying. there were some people who focus on the words and can hear what you're saying. that's why you haven't heard me doing that much lately because i want people to hear what i am saying. in order to fix the illegal immigration problem, you have to seal the borders.

all of them. north, south, east, west oceanic borders. which is doable with electronic devices, drones, a whole host of things. we are not just talking about fences and walls. that is old school. part two is that you have to turn off this "did -- that dispenses the goodies. if there is nothing for them to come here for, i think that will stop the flow. what are you going to do with the existing ones? i would provide an opportunity for them to become guest workers. they have to get registered, they have to enroll in a back tax program, they have to pay their taxes going forward. now, they don't have to live in the shadows and we don't decimate the farming industry. that is very important. now, the other part of this is,

we send out billions of dollars a year in foreign aid. sometimes to countries that don't like us very much. to buy their friendship. guess what? we don't have billions of dollars to send out to anybody anymore. we have these in honest debts. we can't keep lending money. however, a great example, he look at the country of cameroon in africa right now. some american companies have gone over there to help develop their millions of acres of incredibly fertile land. they are coming back with booming crops and making great profits off of them. at the same time, they are improving the economy in cameroon improving the infrastructure, making jobs, teaching those people ag techniques. it's fantastic. that's exactly what we should be doing in honduras, el salvador, mexico, letting our companies facilitating them going over

there, not giving taxpayer money, and let our companies through their ingenuity make money over there and help develop those infrastructures so that those people don't feel the need to come here. that would be more consistent with the character of america. >> the new england console just released a report saying that the business community can't find a skilled workers that it needs and the administration just came out and said we should have free community college with a 65 billion dollar investment. i'm wondering your thoughts about access to higher education. dr. carson: first of all, poor people in our country can already go to community college on grants. it already exists and has existed for a long time. people who are not poor can also go to community college.

it's a four letter word, what they need to do is call -- we do not have to be giving them something. they can work for it. i am not so sure poor people cannot work for it. not to say i do not think education is important. education is vital. it can not to be the same thing for everybody. we have to have a variety of mechanisms for people to get education. we also have to recognize there is a real problem with our colleges and universities right now. as the lacing -- escalating tuition going crazy. kids are coming out with the debts that are crazy. the universities no you accepted the kid and they can get a government loan. those loan rates are not 3% or

2%, they are 4%, 5%, 6% 8% and accumulates rapidly. what i would suggest is we make the colleges and universities responsive for the interest 80 was a huge change in a hurry and they would constrain their expenses and find other ways for kids to get the money in terms of jobs. and they would make more grants available. but because we cannot continue to have that kind of escalation, untenable. and also we need to reintroduce into high schools the kind of vocational training that will give us the plumbers, the electricians who in many cases make more money than people who go to college. and give people other options. make all of the options

available. we need to take advantage of technology. we have fallen behind significantly particularly in stem areas. and we have computer programs that can look at the way that solve out of her problems and based on how they solve, it knows what they know and can tutor them. the same a good out of her teacher can do but a teacher can only do a one student at a time. the computer can do it for a whole school, a whole city. and the available virtual classrooms to put the best teachers in front of a million students at a time. those are but kinds of things that make a difference. the department of education which is way overbloated, 4400 employees with average compensation of 130 $5,000 can be toned down. we can make them responsible for monitoring particularly our institutions of higher education

for extreme political bias. if it exists, let's cut out federal funding. i think you would see in exodus from those universities of the radicals who do not believe in america. i would monitor on both sides, right and left. universities should be place where people can go and discuss everything and learn about everything. that is how we develop the kind of leaders we need in this country, not ideologues. i see one back there. >> hi. [indiscernible] how would your administration deal with the relationship between environmental security and economic security? dr. carson: excellent question. environmental, economic, energy security. this country has been blessed with an enormous energy resources area i think it is unbelievable what we possess.

but, we are not able to use it as we should on the geopolitical scale because these archaic energy rules put in place in the 1970's when we had an energy crisis. they are still in place. all of our reservoirs are full. no place to go with it. and i believe the environmental protection agency should not to be abolished. but it's mission should be changed to work with the business, industry, and academia to find the cleanest most environmentally friendly way to develop our enormous energy resources. we have so much in natural gas it would last us for 1000 years. we have the ability to liquefy gas to get rid of those energy bands. we can export it. we can make europe dependent on us for energy and limit the

influence of vladimir putin who has great expansionist ideas. that is what we should be thinking about how should we use it? we can use the revenues from the energy to work on renewable clean energy sources. you know, we have a tendency to allow everything to be a battle. fossil fuels versus green energy . let's fight each other to the death. it it does not have to be a death. we can use want to expand at the other because we will need new energy sources for let's do it in an intelligent way that does not damage us economically that may drive down our national debt. and at the same time help us on the whole geopolitical scale doing things in a proactive way rather than always reacting. all right, thank you. [applause]

>> dr. carson: on the thank you for spending part of your day with us. safe travels to you. >> our roads to the white house coverage continues on monday. hillary clinton outlined her economic agenda and is a new school in new york. whereas that at 10:00 a.m. on seas and print also monday, scott walker expected to announce whether he is running for president from the expo center in wisconsin. live coverage of beginning at 6:15 p.m. on c-span 3. >> on "first lady's," we learn about lucretia garfield. lucretia garfield, was an

educated woman and a believer in women's rights. when her husband, president james garfield was assassinated, she returned to ohio and made their home into an early version of a presidential library. chester arthur, it would work becomes president -- a widower because president and his sister-in-law but comes first lady. she establishes etiquette that is used by white house ladies for decades. c-span's original series "first lady's" examine the women and their influence on the white house from martha washington to michelle obama. sundays at 8:00 p.m. on american history tv on c-span 3. >> the ceremony in south carolina removing the commit -- and the confederate flag. a discussion on islamic

extremism in the middle east and south asia. after that, press secretary josh earnest talks with reporters about the resignation of the office of personnel management director and other news of the day. >> with the crowd chanting "usa" highway patrol officers removed the confederate flag that flew over the state house. governor nikki haley was in attendance. she signed the bill into law on thursday to remove the flag. with her family members of the 90 was shot and killed inside of a historic african-american church. this is about 10 minutes.

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>> usa today reporter alan geomet talks about immigration policies and the sanctuary cities. clifford and matthew, cofounder of the truman national security project examine several of the for policy situations facing the obama administration including iran and the nuclear program and efforts to defeat the islamic state in syria. we will take your calls a you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. "washington journal" live every day at 7:00 on c-span. >> a discussion on ideologies and expanding the rest of isis,

al qaeda, and other terrorist groups and in u.s. and global efforts to counter these groups. from the heritage foundation, this is about 90 minutes. >> good afternoon. welcome to the heritage foundation. of course welcome those who join us on our heritage.org website as well as the c-span network. we remind everyone online and on the network that questions or comments can be sent to us at any time, simply emailing speaker@heritage.org. we will of course post the program on the heritage home page following today's activities. and the last task for those in-house is to please check that cell phones have been silent as a courtesy to our speakers as well as those recording the event. hosting our discussion today is lisa, who is our senior

research fellow for south asia and our asian studies center. she focuses on america's economic security and political relationships, specifically with pakistan, india afghanistan and the other nations of south asia. she's served on the senate foreign relations committee and been a senior advisor in the state department south asia bureau, served at the central intelligence agency as a political analyst on south asia and for a period of four years was also in the political officer to the beamsies in islam bad and new delhi -- islamabad and new delhi. please join me in welcoming lisa curtis. lisa. [applause] lisa: thank you, john, and thank you all for joining us today for the program. a view from the front lines of islamist u.s. is, perspectives on terrorism -- insurgency, perspectives on terrorism and the middle east and asia.

terrorists massacred 3 tourists in tunisia, attacked a factory in southern france, beheading the owner, and conducted a suicide attack at a kuwaiti shi'ite mosque, killing 25. while these event mace not have been directly connected they're indicative of the pervasiveness of the terror threat that we face today. the most immediate threat stems from the rise of the islamic state in iraq and syria. and the phenomena of foreign fighters in which muslims from around the world are flocking to syria to fight with the islamic state. the state department terrorism report that was released in april highlighted the fact that there were 16,000 foreign fighters from over 90 countries that had joined in the fight in syria. exceeding the rate of foreign fighters that had gone to afghanistan, pakistan, iraq, yemen and somalia in the last 20 years. and although the u.s. has

degraded core al qaeda leadership in pakistan's tribal areas, we still face an al qaeda threat. it has evolved, we face more of a threat from al qaeda affiliates throughout the middle east and north africa. and here i would like to note a heritage foundation publication from four years ago titled "a counterterrorism strategy for the next wave" which drew attention to this evolution of al qaeda. and this report came out at a time when the white house was trying to down play the global terrorist threat and diverting resources from that fight. so in that report we call on the administration to step up the fight, to be proactive and develop a strategy that matched the evolving strategy of the terrorists. one major question is what does the rise of isis mean for the future of al qaeda? what is the impact on u.s.

policy given that these groups share the same deadly anti-west ideology? for now they're competing for ideological influence and financial resources. but is it possible that they might merge in the future? or will one subsume the other? so the answer -- to answer these questions and discuss other important issues, we have a very distinguished panel of experts with us today. first, we have dr. sebastian. he currently serves as the major general matthew c. horner distinguished chair of military theory at the marine corps university. previously, he was a associate dean of congressional affairs in relation to the special operations community at the national defense university. a graduate of the university of london and former fellow at harvard's kennedy school of government he's an associate fellow with so com's joint university and an adjunct professor with georgetown university. he's also a regular instructer

with the special warfare center and school in fort bragg and for the f.b.i.'s counterterrorism division as well. he's tested before congress and he's also briefed on several occasions the c.i.a., odni and nctc. then we have ms. sara carter. sara's an award-winning investigative reporter whose storied have ranged from national security and terrorism to ground breaking immigration coverage. formerly with the los angeles news group the wyoming and the washington examiner, she spent the past year working along the southwest border covering national security for the hit tv documentary "for the record." she's now a senior reporter with american media institute. sara spent more than seven months in afghanistan and pakistan since 2008. she has won awards for her work on afghan women and children addicted to opium in afghanistan and she's also imbeded with u.s. troops on afghanistan's border with pakistan as well as traveled to

pakistan's tribal areas with the pakistan army. she's the recipient of two national headliner awards, one for a story on a child born into the mexican mafia, and another for a multiple part series called beyond borders that involves ground breaking investigations on immigration and national security. our third panelist, last but not least ms. catherine zimmerman. catherine's a research fellow at the american enterprise institute and she's the lead analyst on al qaeda for a.e.i.'s critical threats project. her work is focused on the al qaeda network, particularly al qaeda in the arabian peninsula and al-shabab, which is al qaeda's affiliate in somalia. ms. zimmer-mass -- ms. zimmerman has testified before congress about the threats emanating from al qaeda and she's briefed members of congress, their staff and members of the defense community. so with that i'm going to turn the floor over to our first speaker, dr. gorka.

[applause] dr. gorka: good morning ladies and gentlemen, or good afternoon. it's a real pleasure to be back here at heritage, an institution that's always a real pleasure to speak at. today, for truth in lending, i'm not going to address the topic. because i'm not coming back from the front lines. this was advertised as an assessment from the front lines. i'm going to tell you what the people who have been to the front lines have told me. i work very closely, as you heard, with our green berets, members of the intelligence community and our marines. and i'm going to report to you a very abbreviated summary of special -- especially of the work that we've been doing for uusoc.

in the last two years we've supported commanding general charles cleveland whose just retired as the commander of the green berets, and we've compiled two reports on the use of irregular warfare by groups like isis, but also a nation state actor such as iran and russia. and also a very in depth study on the central gravity of isis. i'm going to talk to you very briefly about those reports and also the doctrine, the strategy that isis is following on the ground today. so what is the current threat environment? the current threat environment is a very, very ugly one. whether you are a christian girl in nigeria, kidnapped against your will because of what you believe whether you are aia zitty hounded up a mountain topped by isis or someone somewhere in syria and iraq who got on the wrong side of isis and had to be crucified or whether you're one of these poor wretches who was decapitated recently or the

unfortunate lieutenant of the royal air force. this is your reality. and it isn't just, of course, a reality thousands of miles away with all the current cases that the f.b.i. director has admitted we are investigating in america. this is very much a threat to the united states as well. so, let's go straight to the analysis of isis. this is the report that we have compiled for general cleveland. if you want to have a copy, we have permission to release this now. you will see my email at the end of my presentation and we'll be glad to share this with you. what's the baseline analysis? the baseline analysis, this is all unclassified, is very simply based upon four metrics, isis is much more dangerous than al qaeda. i am not going to tell you a.q. is dead. far from it. far from it. i'm very glad we have somebody here to talk about a.q. but isis is a graduate-le