joining us this morning. guest: thank you. host: tomorrow, we will be talking politics all morning. we will be looking at the iowa caucuses and the new hampshire primary. kevin landrigan will be joining eri.as will chris galdi they are both in new hampshire. we will also speak with dennis ford. we will see you then. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

you to the best access to the white house. comment onng a twitter, facebook, and by phone. always, every campaign event we cover is available on our website, c-span.org. republican> presidential candidates are in south carolina this weekend for a form hosted by the jack kemp foundation. the event is being moderated by the house speaker paul ryan and said it tim scott. we will take you there in about 10 minutes for a discussion with mike huckabee. until then, here are jeb bush, ben carsontie, and

from this morning. [applause] >> please join me in welcoming jeb bush, ben carson, and chris christie. they told us to line up for a photograph. [laughter] >> thanks for being here. we are looking forward to your comments and having a robust discussion about people as well as politics. ben, kick this off with a discussion about poverty and

what makes this important for you. : as a kid growing up in poverty, i hated poverty. rats,ids hate cockroaches, i hated poverty. i was actually certain that i was born into the wrong family. i will tell you. the thing that really changed it had a -- my mother, who much worse upbringing than i did, growing up in rural tennessee with a huge family, got married when she was 13 tried to escape a desperate situation, they moved to detroit. she discovered that my father was already married. now, she had to raise is on her own. she, for some reason, felt that education was the key. as bad as her life was, she never felt sorry for herself. that was a good thing.

the problem is she never felt sorry for us either. there was never any excuse the go be made. she prayed for wisdom. god gave her the wisdom to turn off the tv and make us read books. when i started reading about people, i read about people of great, sm accomplishment -- .cientists, philosophers i learned that the person who has the most to do with your life is you. once i learned that, poverty did not bother me anymore. i knew i had the ability to change it. that does not mean we do not need to help each other escape it. no question about that. it is one of the reasons that my wife and i put these reading rooms all over the countries, particularly in title i schools where kids go to a school with

no library, or a poorly funded library. these reading rooms are places that can pass up. in the beginning, they do it for prices, but it is not long before it puts them on a different trajectory because 70%-80% of high school dropouts are functionally illiterate. that downstream, we have a profound effect of stream. [applause] ryan: governor bush, let me ask you -- i learned from my mentors that the only way to really know poverty is to try to walk in people's footsteps, learn from people struggling. you were governor of florida. a big, diverse state with lots of issues and challenges. how did you come into

understanding this issue? what touched you to give an appreciation for the problem of poverty? excuseor bush: paul -- me, mr. speaker -- i have not seen him since he became speaker. congratulations. [applause] bush: we share a common bond. inspired by jack kemp in the political realm and meeting bob whitsitt, not as governor, but as a person seeking knowledge and truth in the 1990's, i became sensitized to the fact that poverty is a lot more complex than what the smart people in washington describe iit as. it is not just economic. how you deal with it is important. compassion is not measured by how much money you spend through washington through a big and

mistreated bureaucracy and send it back down to other toeaucrats filling out forms eventually get back into the community. compassion is, in the greek sense, acting on your sense of consciousness. the only way we can become a more just society is from the bottom up, where people act on their sense of consciousness together. in also the ways i've learned that. one of the ways was in 19 a seven, i set up one of the first charter schools in the state of florida. the law was passed in 1996. i helped lobby for that. with the urban league of greater miami, i set up the liberty city charter school. it was a phenomenal experience. just outsidechool of liberty city, we basically got the parents to create the culture of the school.

but they wanted work kids with uniforms. they wanted a contract where every parent had to commit to a certain number of hours. they voluntarily wanted to see this happen. we had to fight with the school district because they wanted corporal punishment. the school district said, oh my god, you can't do it. we got it. we got it done in a way that makes sense. they wanted discipline, respect for the teachers. it was an incredible experience. i will never forget, on the opening of the school, beware getting it already, -- we were did notalready, and we have a flagpole outside the school. i learned to set cement on a sunday with some friends. on monday, when school started, 90 kids with uniforms were outside, saying the pledge of allegiance. it was a phenomenal experience

for me. it is important for all of us to look at this not just from a policy point of view -- i believe in policy, ideas, i have unveiled a serious plan as it welfareto well forme will reform -- no one should put limits on their aspiration. if we are a society that you are if you are wealthy, you will stay there -- that is a society that will be in decline. scott: mr. christie, so often states are referred to as the laboratories for democracy. can you talk to us about what you think are the answers for government and dispel the notion that the federal government has all the answers for poverty? i think moststie:

people in the world are looking at our federal government, understanding that they cannot even do the basic things right, let alone things that are more complex. in reaction to what ben said, the first time i went about poverty was from both of my parents. my mom was the product of a single mother. she was the oldest child in that family. my grandfather was gone. my grandmother had to take three buses every day to go to work here at my mother had to raise her two younger siblings. they were abjectly poor, to the point where my grandmother would , for christmas, recycle the gift that she had given the year before. they had nothing. my father, the same way. his father died of cancer when my father was 15 years old and left my grandmother. in those days, there were not some of the supports that are available today. my grandmother -- both my

grandmothers were left to go out and work and the kids to work to keep a roof over their heads. both of t my parents brought tht sensitivity to the family. hisad was the first one in family to go to college. he went at night when he was working at the ice cream plant during the day. he would go at night on the g.i. bill because he served in the army. that was his only option when he graduated from high school. when your parents bring those sensitivities to you, no matter how much success they ultimately have, and my parents had some success -- my dad did. my mother stayed at home to support the family. it helps to understand everything you see as a governor, you can see a reflection of yourself.

if you got to where you got to with government, you want to make sure you can do everything you can to give those young people an opportunity to achieve whatever they want to achieve, whatever their dream is. whether it is to be a governor, a neurosurgeon, and onto for entrepreneur. the function of the states is to look at our individual communities. we get an option to do that in a federal the gover government can't. what we are doing and camden is setting up not only charter schools but renaissance schools, we are reforming the police. the high school graduation rate has increased. those kids are not graduate from highs. now they have a chance to achieve things educationally that they would have never had a chance to achieve before campton.

that is not the same solution for the city of newark. bigger city, more complex, we have to get in there with different tools. to state has the ability pick and choose based on the merit of what is going on. if you leave it to the federal one thing that jeb and i have learned as governors is we can really get in there and pick and choose the right tools to use depending on the challenge of the city. i think that is why the government should be empowering the states much more than they are to make these choices. the president does not trust us. , or scottjust me, jeb walker. he does not even trust him and credit governors to make choices. that is a mistake. it is not helping those who we are looking to lift up. [applause] representative ryan: if we gave

out trophies to people who fought against all odds, and lead by example, and showed us how to beat poverty, you would win the lombardi trophy -- the greatest trophy of football. mr. carson: really? [laughter] ryan: you did it. you are beautiful example of overcoming ever see an od -- .dversity and odds now you are aspiring to be president. looking at the federal government, what is it that the federal government is doing that is hurting or putting barriers in front of more than carson's carsons of america? what would you go at right away,

those barriers that may prevent more than carson's -- ben carsons from materializing tamara? it really started in the 1920's with the wilson administration, insinuating everyone's lives. but is having got to the 1960's, by the time we got to the 1960's, the government said weibel eliminate poverty, the war on poverty, this great society. how did that work? onhave 10 times more people food stamps, more broken homes, incarceration. everything is not only worse, it is much worse. that is not to say that the sayingent is evil, it is

that they sometimes overstep their boundaries in terms of what they think they should do. maybe they should read the constitution. i think that would be helpful. [applause] carson: maybe they did read the constitution. they read the preamble and it talks about the duties of government. it says to promote the general welfare. they probably thought that meant put everyone on welfare. obviously, it means to create the right kind of atmosphere for people. i believe that the real answer for poverty is not government, but the private sector. that is the reason that i have indicated that one of the ways to jumpstart the private sector than $1.2 that more trillion that is overseas in terms of corporate money that is not being brought back because

we have the highest corporate world.e in the developed what i would propose is a six month hiatus for that money to be repatriated with no taxes process,r, and in the require that 10% of it be used in enterprises and to create jobs for people who are unemployed and on welfare. you want to talk about the stimulus? that would be the biggest stimulus since the new deal, and would not cost the taxpayers one penny. that is low hanging fruit, things that we can do. what happens is the business, the corporations start thinking once again about how we invest in the people around us. we need to get business, industry, academia, churches, all involved in creating the right kind of atmosphere and helping people around them.

i have been involved in a lot of nonprofits. particularly, right to life organizations who create these homes and atmospheres for women who have gotten pregnant. when a woman gets pregnant out of wedlock, particularly in inner-city, her education typically ends. that child is four times more likely to end up in poverty and end up in the welfare system or the penal system which hurts us as a society. they help that woman and provide child care for her so she can get her ged, get her associate's degree, get her bachelor's degree. she can learn to take care of he herself. that is how you break cycles of poverty. that is not done by the government. you can put people in places to teach that woman that you are , that jesusing

christ died for you, and you are a worthy individual or you don't get to hear that when it is a government organization. those are the kinds of things that will help us build the fabric of our society. once again. it is our duty. we are our brothers keepers. [applause] senator scott: jeb, in the last few days, you rolled out a new plan on expanding opportunities. you want to explain the main points of your plan? governor bush: first, i think what we should do is not just talk about the lebanese of theocracy, but mean i -- laboratories of democracy, but mean it, do it. people are stuck, they are stuck in poverty. the notion of some that somehow

they want to be there is totally ridiculous, wrong. we will never win elections with that. we will become a minority party. i know people in this room do not believe that. if you start with the premise that the state, if they got the chance to do in the unique ways, each community would hav do it. the state-federal relationship would be focused on outcomes -- how may people are getting in poverty, not how many people are staying in it. right now, you measure the poverty programs by how many .eople are on the rolls we have to turn that around. secondly, we have to have one income eligibility requirement. when i travel around, i see a lot of people not receiving government assistance, but they are one paycheck away