protected and preserved for future generations of americans to enjoy. >> i know you haven't been able to discuss specifically how much the o.p.m. hack will cost but when director archuleta was before the hill, she talked about the need this year for a supplemental to cover a couple of costs. new software and whatever it would take to pay for some of the things raised in this breach. to what degree did the reaction on capitol hill yesterday which included many republicans and at least one prominent democrat calling for her to be fired influence the administration's calculations about the ability to get the money you're going to need to address this problem and director archuleta's ability to get that as an advocate for the administration? josh: major, i guess you raise an interesting point. i guess we can all sit here and hope that the passion and zeal

on display by some member of congress, mostly republicans, as it relates to the livelihood of the director of office of personnel and management, will be on display when it comes to protecting the identity of about 22 million americans. and if that requires additional resources, both to protect the system or to ensure that these individuals can be afforded the identity theft protection and credit monitoring that they should get, then we'll certainly look forward to the strong bipartisan support it should have. >> would the president or director come to the conclusion that it would be much harder if not impossible to have those conversations if she remained at the head of the o.p.m.? josh: i'm not aware of discussion along those lines. >> the president is expected to deliver a speech on tuesday in philadelphia to the naacp. considering the context of the moment, can you suggest to us

what the president, will he have a new message in a same way? josh: the president will focus on the need to reform and improve america's criminal justice system. at the naacp convention in philadelphia, he'll outline the unfairness in much of our criminal justice system, highlight bipartisan ideas for reform and lay out his ideas to make our country fairer, smarter and more cost effective. on wednesday, the president will travel to the choctaw nation of oklahoma to deliver remarks about expanding economic opportunity for everybody. the president will continue his focus on criminal justice reform on thursday by making the first visit by a sitting u.s. president to a federal prison, the el reno prison outside of oklahoma city. while there, the president will

meet with law enforcement officials and inmates and conduct an interview with vice for a documentary that will air in fall about the realities of the criminal justice system. that will be the focus of the president's public events next week and the speech at the naacp will be a focal point. >> that will be less about racial issues in the country the last two or three years and much more about the specific issue this policy issue of criminal justice? josh: criminal justice reform will be the focus. >> what are the administration's attitudes so far based on what it's heard in the last 48 hours between the european union and greece? you indicated earlier this week you thought there might be a landing spot. what's the assessment? josh: at this point we have seen and welcomed the proposal that was put on the table by greece. it is something that's currently being considered by their creditors. we have said for quite some time

now that the solution or the resolution to greece's financial challenges is a package of reforms and financing that will put greece back on the path of economic growth and sustainability. doing so would allow greece to remain part of europe's currency union and that's something we believe is -- or that the greek's have articulated -- >> i'm just trying to get your sense of what you think? josh: this will be something for greece and their creditors to evaluate. and we are just pleased to see that -- we're pleased to see that greece has take the step of putting forward a specific proposal. it's one their creditors have to evaluate. >> on your discussion of the president's appearance, "the washington post" is reporting on thursday the president will

commute the sentences of dozens of nonviolent offenders to call attention to his desire to see those with drug convictions and others be part of criminal justice reform. can you confirm he'll do that on thursday and how that decision will help get the reforms out of congress that he seeks rather than his critics saying he's doing something under his own authority without consulting them? josh: i don't have the additional information about next week to share at this point. i can say as a general matter, the president has used his executive authority previously to commute the sentences of nonviolent offenders and i certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility that he would use that kind of authority in the future. but i guess -- let me finish by

saying that that is certainly not a replacement for the kind of broad-based criminal justice reform that the president believes is necessary and that enjoys some bipartisan support on capitol hill. and the president is committed to working in bipartisan fashion to make progress on legislation that would do far more to bring fairness, more fairness and more justice to our criminal justice system than the president can do on his own. >> can you comment on the response to this, it's been reported they have lots of details. you can't comment on this? you know the answers. josh: well, i'm certainly not going to make any announcements about the exercise of presidential authority prior to the president making a decision to exercise that authority. >> that's never happened before? josh: i don't know if it's happened before but it's not going to happen in this instance. >> josh, let me -- even on my colleague's last day you didn't really answer his question.

[laughter] >> use me however you want. [laughter] >> let me try one more time. with 22 million people who have had their identities compromised and some of the other americans who are interested in this, that the white house tell them whether or not they believe this was a failure in management. josh: jim, i think what it exposes is that there are significant challenges that are faced, not just by the federal government but by private sector entities as well. this is something that large organizations that maintain large computer networks are continually trying to address to and that is the ever evolvingthat is the ever evolving threat in cyberspace. this is a priority the president has discussed as a priority even

on those occasions when it is not landing on the front page of every newspaper. that is an indication the president recognizes how important it is and recognizes that this is a challenge. >> as this has not happened would you still be the director of opm? this is in reaction to a failure in management. josh: the office of personnel management is facing a set of urgent challenges that require a manager with a specialized set of skills and experiences. there is no doubt about that. at the same time, one of the first things the director archul eta did as they -- the office of personal management is start up grading. it is a result of those reforms that she put in place that this breach was detected in the first

place. again, given the urgent challenges they are facing right now, it is clear that a manager with a specialized set of skills and experiences is needed. those are conveniently enough, the skills and experiences that she brings to the job. we will need a permanent replacement and that is something we will start working on today. >> on iran, the iranians seem to be saying -- josh: [inaudible] >> the iranians seem to be saying that the allies p-5 plus one are not united in their request to iran;. i know you do not want to get

into details but can you tell us if there is one message coming from this group to the iranians or are there different contingencies and constituencies in this negotiating group? josh: let me answer that in a couple of ways. i do not think we are talking about when it comes to the i-5 plus one, we are talking about six different entities. the european union and several other countries. these are sovereign countries that are in view. i will point out that these negotiations would not have reached this point whether not solid unity among the u.s. and our international partners. this is the kind of unity and unanimity of opinion that did not exist when president obama took office. you recall in early 2009, iran was on the march and making significant progress toward

developing a nuclear weapon and the international community was fractured in their response, was flummoxed in terms of how to confront this urgent challenge. it is because of the leadership of the president that the international community has been united, united in imposing sanctions against iran that negotiating table, that halted iran's nuclear program and rolled it back in some key areas and had made significant progress in trying to reach a diplomatic agreement that would shut down every single pathway that iran has to a nuclear weapon and get iran to cooperate with a set of inspections that would verify their comply meant -- compliance with the agreement. that is an indication of how far we have come. and a lot of that progress, not all of it is attributable to the leadership of the president of the united states. >> back to opm for a minute.

who is in charge of making sure this does not happen? josh: there are a couple of omb initiatives that are charged with doing that. the first is what i think they are calling their cyber-sprint. this is the effort to rapidly reassess the cyber security at federal agencies across the administration. this is where they are considering offering -- authentication verification. this is where they're considering the privileged user thing i was talking about with julie, making sure they're limiting the number of privileged users and limiting the capability of those users where appropriate, monitoring activities of those privileged users to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. those kinds of commonsense steps are the kinds of things the o.m.b. is leading a review to

determine where those kinds of steps have not yet been implemented and holding agencies accountable for implementing them in short order. there's also a broader, 90-day report being convened by o.m.b. again the department -- the director of national and -- intelligence and the office of personnel management are involved in the broader, 90-kay review. they're being aided by a range of law enforcement agencies to take a broader look at a range of key policy questions that relate to information security and cybersecurity. again, that's an indication that this is a priority. the other indication i can give you is the fact that, or one example, one illustration of how this is a priority is that at the previous cabinet meeting convened by the president of the united states, cybersecurity was at the top of the agenda. this is an issue that was extensively discussed where o.m.b. talked about how they would work with d.h.s. to make sure that all the cabinet agencies were meeting their goals and were meeting deadlines when it came to, or when it comes to implementing these commonsense reforms that are critical to securing the federal, the

computer networks of the federal government. >> all these things you talk about are just in process which isn't very comforting to people who work with the federal government and see what happens to these employees, so why should they be assured? josh: because i think the other thing that we have to acknowledge and the other thing that has to be recognized here is that the technology that we're talking about is ever-evolving. it actually evolves really quickly. we need to make sure our defenses are always adapting to those challenges. that's why there's never going to be a time when anybody is going to come up here and stand at the podium and say our work on cybersecurity is finished. the day we do that we'll probably be the most vulnerable federal government networks would be. because we know our adversaries are determined, they're create i, they're innovating and capitalizing on developments to seek out and exploit new vulnerabilities. >> it almost sounds leek you feel we can't keep up? josh: no, what i'm suggesting is we have to work hard to keep up.

right now there's plenty of evidence to indicate that there's a lot more work to be done to keep up. >> there are a lot of proposals out there by the federal government but the region senators, virginia, maryland eleanor holmes norton is here are proposing far beyond what was proposed yesterday, three years of monitoring that there be a lifetime of honor -- of monitoring of identity protection, and $5 million in identity theft insurance. is that something the president would get behind? josh: we have not taken a close look at that proposal as of yet. obviously at o.p.m. they are developing the suite of identity theft protection and credit monitoring services that could be provided to those individuals whose information may have been breached. or compromised.

but at this point, that's something they're still working to develop. we'll obviously consider the proposal that has been put forward to congress. >> the president of the national federation of federal employees has expressed concern that the original breach, which was 4.2 million people, that the government was already struggling to keep up with that and expressed his worries that how could they possibly then keep up with something that's nearly five times as big? will there be anything that goes out officially between now and the time you're able to identify exactly who all the people are and get those letters out advising federal workers what's going on, what you're doing, how this will all unfold? josh: there is a website that's already been established. i believe it's at opm.gov/cybersecurity. this is where individuals who believe they may have had their data compromised, individuals who may have applied far background check. these -- that information about what steps they can take right now is information that o.p.m. has made available.

but there will be additional communications that will be shared with those individuals once we have more information at our fingertips and have more granular knowledge we can then use to determine who exactly is at risk and make sure they get the information and protection they need. >> finally, given what's happened, i realize it's very soon after this was announced, it's only be been a few days the president has had this, but has there been any discussion of something beyond o.m.b., something that's a particular person, like the buck stops here, who is in charge of federal government cybersecurity? josh: this has been a challenge in a lot of ways. this is the essence of another debate that is on going and not moving fast enough in congress. one of the challenges in confronting cybersecurity vulnerabilities is the seam that

exists between private sector computer security professionals and law enforcement and national security professionals in the public sector. one of the most important things we can do to improve cybersecurity both in the public and private sector is to streamline communication between law enforcement and national security officials and leaders in the private sector. the president put forward very specific legislation to congress more than six months ago that the congress hasn't passed yet. this should not be something that gets bogged down in partisan politics. this should be a place where democrats and republicans should be able to work together and we haven't seen congress do that yet in a way that's brought a bill to the president's desk. so that's certainly one way we could address one of the themes you've identified. the other thing the administration has sought to do is to try to benefit from the

extensive capabilities and knowledge that exists in the private sector. and we have seen a number of computer security experts join the federal government to try to lend a hand not just to this effort that's under way at o.p.m. but also to address some of the broader policy challenges that exist across the federal government and we certainly are going to do everything we can to continue to ebb sure that those individuals have an opportunity to serve their country and serve in the federal government and help us confront this very significant challenge. >> since you brought up congress, let me ask a react i question, i was looking at the o.p.m. i.c. report from last month, there are a lot of things they're develop, they're in process of. among the findings, o.p.m. didn't maintain a comprehensive inventory of servers. how did it get to this point? josh: i guess for an update in terms of where they are, i'd

refer you to o.p.m. the other challenge that director archuleta acknowledged at the beginning of her service is that the office of personnel management had to maintain a lot of legacy systems. these in some cases were even outdated computer networks. and securing them against modern threats is a significant challenge. and i do think it raises questions about proper levels of funding. it raises questions about something we've discussed in this room before, which is the procurement system that's in place when the government purchases information technology. that sometimes the cumbersome system of government i.t. procurement leads to such a protected process that by the time the purchase is made the software being purchased is, if not obsolete, at least out of date. and trying to reform and improve those systems and make them more efficient is something that beth culvert has been working on at

o.m.b. i think that makes her a good choice to be acting direct or of -- director of o.p.m. but it's clear there are significant challenges and despite the intense focus and expertise being leveraged to address the situation, i don't expect that this is a situation that will be resolved -- resolved next week or next month. these are longer-term challenges that require sustained focus and we're certainly mindful of not just how big the challenge is right now but also as i was saying earlier, we're mindful of how this is a threat that's continually evolving. it's going to require an adaptive process to make sure we're doing everything necessity -- necessity to safeguard our computer system. >> staying on opm for second. is it apple store just to come here culvert to archuleta question?

did archuleta lack a specific set of skills and experiences and if she did, why was she in the jump to begin with especially if culvert seems to have the skills and experiences? josh: there are significant and urgent challenges that require a manager with a set of specialized skills and experiences like those skills and experiences that ms. culvert has. the fact that director archuleta was an effective director of opm because she did strengthen the use of evidence-based practices and data to drive human capital strategies, she led development of place looks ability programs, she prioritized their health care of federal government employees, she developed and fermented strategies to include -- increased diversity and even though she does not have a particular expertise when it

comes to cyber security, she did commence a review of cyber security and the publication of cyber security reforms that opm that led to the eventual detection of the intrusion that we are now discussing. again, the president accepted the directors resignation today and decided that ms. colbert -- culvert is the person to lead the office of personnel management. that should not diminish the service of director archuleta. she came to the white house and offered her resignation in person this morning. >> is there a mechanism for a country or group of actors that did reach the opm? josh: for a long time, this is a significant policy question. there were concerns that had been raised that there was not an effective mechanism for

responding to these kinds of incidents. because the executive action the president announced he designated authority to the secretary of treasury to impose financial sanctions against individuals or entities that carry out nefarious cyber activity or benefit from it. that does mean the president and the secretary of treasury do have new tools they can use to either respond to these incidents and to make clear how seriously the u.s. considers these kinds of breaches. that said, i do not want to suggest that there is anything in the works to prepare that kind of response to this particular situation. as we talked about in this room as it relates to other situations, we also often do not talk about in advance about the possible use of financial sanctions. principally because it could allow the individuals or

entities that are being sanctioned to take steps that would allow them to evade that county. i do not want to speculate possible responses but it is true that the president and the secretary of the treasury now have new authorities they can use to respond to these kinds of situations because of the executive actions the president announced. >> on the naacp speech, is the president of the opinion that restoring voting rights for felons is a good idea? josh: this is something that will be discussed in the context of criminal justice reform and there is a strong argument that some have made about how once an individual has paid their debt to society that those voting rights should be restored. i know there are -- there is bipartisan support for policy like that. >> that is something the president would -- support? josh: we cancer only get an answer on that. >> russia is the biggest threat

to the u.s. and -- in his opinion and this is a man who you said yesterday obviously spent a lot of time thinking about these issues. he also said it is not necessarily conclusive among national six became that they feel the same way but i am curious even his experience and given the trust the president has placed in him and the belief in his skill set, doesn't not make sense that his opinion carries a great deal of weight and the president should consider it strongly. josh: the president certainly will. we're hopeful that placed -- taste on general dunford's years of experience and his extensive experience that he will be confirmed in bipartisan fashion by the u.s. senate and once general dunford joins the team if he is confirmed i am confident that his views and opinions and insight

inexperience will factor heavily in the president's decision making when it comes to national security. the president has other distinguished members that have opinions that are worth listening to. >> you knew that mitt romney agreed that russia is the number one threat. was mitt right, or was the general wrong? josh: you would have to ask them. as i mentioned yesterday, i am not aware of any sort of specific or comprehensive analysis that has been done by the president's national security team that arrived at that conclusion but obviously, when dealing with russia particularly in the last couple of years since the election when we have seen russia start to ramp up destabilizing activities in ukraine, we have been mindful about the threat and the president has laid an important leading role in presenting a

united up front in confronting russia for their destabilizing activities. >> following up on kevin's question on opm, when do you expect ms. culvert will accomplish your goal? josh: she will be responsible for implementing many of the reforms that opm has announced in the last couple of days. i referred to opm for a more apprehensive set of those reforms. there is an effort underway at opm to draw on experts inside the federal government but also security experts outside the federal government. as a management expert, i would expect she would be well-positioned to bring that expertise from a variety of sources together. to focus it on the significant challenges that are being a spy opm right now and trying to move

out quickly to implement many of the reforms that they suggest. >> the press secretary said opm does not have a contractor -- [indiscernible] that they promised to the individual [indiscernible] have they found one yet? josh: the information i have this morning is the latest as well. once they have entered into a contract this they will begin the steps of notifying individuals of the protections that are available to them. i am sure will have conversation with all of you about that as well. >> is the white house concerned they do not yet have a contractor for these 21 million people are smart -- 21 million people? josh: i will give you the last

one and we will go to the week ahead. >> can you tell us what is the president thinking at this time on what does he believe the consequences will be of no final deal is reached at this stage estimate him-- -- this stage? josh: as it relates to the iran talks, i will not speculate about possible outcomes at this point. one thing i will remind you is the administration has indicated that all the options remain on the table for ensuring that iran is not a attaining a nuclear weapon. what we are pursuing is a diplomatic opportunity that exists. i do not have any scheduling announcements as it relates to the president's travel. i believe the embassy opening is scheduled for the third week in july.

i do not have any scheduled updates. let's go to the week ahead and you can get sorted on your weekend. on monday, the president will deliver remarks on the conference on aging. the white house has held a conference on aging each decade to identify advance actions to improve the quality of life for older americans. this year marks the 50th anniversary of medicare, medicaid, and the older americans act as well as the 80th anniversary of social security. the conference is an opportunity to recognize the importance of these key programs while bringing together older americans, caregivers government officials, members of the public, business leaders and community leaders to discuss the issues that will help escape -- shape the landscape for the older americans and explore policy solutions to address them. on tuesday the president will travel to philadelphia to deliver remarks at the naacp's

106th anniversary. and he will deliver the choctaw nation and deliver remarks on economic opportunity. he will spend the night in oklahoma. the president on thursday will continue his focus on criminal justice reform by making the first visit by a sitting president to a federal present. the el reno federal correctional institution located just outside oklahoma city. as i mentioned earlier, the president will meet with law enforcement issues and inmates and conduct an interview for a vice documentary that will interview in the fall about the realities of the prison system. i would expect the president will return to washington on thursday night. the schedule is up in the air for friday but we will get you details by that -- on that by next week.

>> [indiscernible] josh: have a great weekend. >> [indiscernible] josh: this friday and saturday? i do not have anything at this point. thank. have a good weekend. -- thanks. have a good weekend. >> next, republican presidential candidate carly fiorina at an event in new hampshire followed by new hampshire and eggs event with dr. ben carson. then a discussion on the influence of islamic extremism in the middle east and

south asia. on newsmakers, new york representative steve israel, chair of the democratic policy and communications committee talks about democratic priorities for congress, the status of the budget and appropriation bills, the possibility of a shutdown, the iran nuclear negotiations and 2016 campaign politics. newsmakers, sunday at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> conservative pollstart kristen anderson on the millennial generation and how the political parties are buying or this voting bloc. >> when you take a look at where people's eyeballs are going, use the people were focused on the television. political advertising were very clinically focused. technology has changed so now if you look into a room, what are

they looking at? they are looking at their phones. for folks in the political world who want to reach the next generation or just into the future understand what the future of political advertising is going to look like, whatever the latest name is -- candy crust may be fading in popularity but there is always something new popping up. finding ways to get your message in front of people. it is really important where they are paying attention. >> sunday night at 8:00 east and pacific -- eastern and pacific. >> former hewlett packard ceo and current gop presidential candidate carly fiorina spoke monday at a town hall at turbo cam international and barrington, new hampshire. the event was announced by the stafford county republican committee. she made some remarks before taking questions from the audience. this is about 45 minutes.

[applause] ms. fiorina: thank you so much. thank you for that warm welcome. thank you so much for that warm welcome. it is great to be back in new hampshire. did everybody have a great fourth of july holiday? great. it is always good to pause and think about the truly extraordinary nature of this great nation which is why you are all here. it is why i am running for president. i got a little bit of time off with my family on the beach which was wonderful. so we spent it, my husband with my daughter and son-in-law and two granddaughters. every, look at the two of them i -- he reminds me why i am doing this. before i get into all of that, i

want to tell you some think special about the young woman who introduced me. how wonderful to have a young woman like that say that she admires and respects me, that gives me a lot of energy and motivation. one of the things may be that this community should know about abigail is she lost her mother last night from pancreatic cancer. so please keep her and her mother in your prayers. but how extraordinary that this young woman would be out here today and when she came up to me to have her photo taken, she said, i'm going to help you, so god bless you, abigail. [applause] i lost my mother -- 17 years ago now. but there is not a day that goes

by that i do not think about my mom. 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 fulfill your potential. 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 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 >> dr. ben carson spoke at new hampshire and hosted by the new hampshire politics. he talked about the scope responsibility and health care and took questions from the audience on social security, education, and immigration. this is just under one hour.

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.