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tv   2016 Kemp Forum  CSPAN  January 9, 2016 8:00pm-8:21pm EST

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many of us >> i haven't been directly involved in those discussions, but certainly i am aware that they are happening. john and others have spent considerable amount of time -- i cannot say to the discussions that went behind it because i was not engaged in it, but when you are dealing with an issue like climate you are not going to dismiss any avenue to address it. it is a big enough problem that it has to be addressed, but for me, i am going with what i have available and with incremental improvements and that's, in ways in which we can continue to invest. i do think there will be large controversy and any of those strategies. but, i certainly would not dismiss them until i heard them.
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that is not rather than focusing my time. >> no matter where you might be on the climate change issue, the paris negotiations really did ofvide an incredible amount momentum to the discussion come overall. i want to ask you enjoyed me for thinking the council of foreign relations and jenny mccarthy for this airy interesting discussion. -- gina mccarthy. [applause] next, republican president of candidates discussed economic issues at the jack can form in south carolina. after that, republican residual candidate donald trump at a campaign rally in iowa. >> c-span takes you to the best access to the white house. at town hall meetings, speeches, rallies, and meet and greet. we are taking a comment on twitter, facebook, and by phone. and always, every campaign event we cover is available on our website, c-span.org.
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>> several republican presidential candidates are in south carolina this weekend for a forum on poverty and economic opportunities, hosted by the jack kemp foundation. the event is being moderated by the house speaker paul ryan and south carolina senator tim scott. south carolina holds the nation's first seven presidential primary. this is about one hour and 20 minutes. >> one thing i wanted to add that tim scott forgot to ask, how many here are wisconsin badger fans?
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one person, great. she is wearing red. i wanted us to take a few moments to explain why we are here today. first though, i want to introduce some of my colleagues who traveled here who are from the house of representatives, conyers and the mulvaney, congressman rice, and congressman wilson. think for being here today. [applause] one of the reasons why i am here today is because jack camp was my mentor. and there was no one more passionate about fighting poverty than him. so that is why i think it is so fitting that the host of this forum is a foundation that bears his name. he was passionate about the american idea. well, we have been fighting a war on poverty for over 50 years now. and i don't think you can
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include anything other than this war has been a stalemate. years, trillions of dollars. yet, today, if you are born poor, you are just as likely to end up in poverty as you were 50 years ago. we have 46 million people living in poverty today. i'm not say no progress has been made, yes, some progress has been made. but when you take a look at the war on poverty, i think there is a problem, and the problem has been our strategy. most of the thinking about the war on poverty, about poverty, has been the idea that it is about deprivation, about materialism, that people just to have enough money. and so, for the past 50 years the government has created 80 different programs. we have treated poverty like they are potholes that need to be filled at. and then move on. you have an empty wallet, fill it and move on.
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silly accreted all of these programs for education, energy, health care, you name it. the catch is this, all of these programs stack up on top of each other, with no coronation among them, and we now have a safety net that is designed to catch whene falling into poverty what we really need is a safety net that is designed to help get people out of poverty. bit,f you work a little you lose a lot of benefits. and so we think we have been filling holes, but from a government's, we have been building a trap. make a little bit more, was a time, do not work. about truly fixing this problem and opening up a renaissance.
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stop measuring success in the war on poverty by measuring input, ever, hammy programs -- measure programs by results. causes, do notal simply treat the symptoms. things, i know are two number one, what i have learned. there are incredible people in this country doing this well. fighting poverty successfully. it is amazing, you will see some of it in these videos. i have learned from people just traveling the country that the ideas are out there. because poverty is not just about deprivation is that isolation. lots of different kinds of poverty, but we are isolating -- that is the one thing in common. we have to stop reinforcing this notion, i pay my taxes, this is the governments responsible the,
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they will take care of it. that does not cut it anymore. we have to reintegrate the poor. because, if isolation is the problem not just deprivation. it means people need a mentor. they need a job or a boss or a teacher. a friend, a community, a church. someone they trust, some with credibility to help them get from where they are to where they need to be. the second thing i know is that the american idea is this most beautiful idea. we are the only country founded on idea. doesondition of your birth not determine the outcome of your life. you work hard, you play by the rules, you can get ahead. you make a mistake, you can redeem yourself and build your life. that is the american idea. that is what jack kemp talked about. here is the problem. it is not true for everybody. there are a lot of people who do not believe we are there for them. that is not true at all, is it? our job is to figure out how to rebuild the american idea.
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have a conversation. a competition. what we are doing here today is starting a conversation. talking to the people aspiring to be president about their ideas. bringing attention to this issue. i want to thank you for being here today and welcome from our candidates. first i would like to welcome my friend, your senator, is senator tim scott of south carolina. [applause] and welcome from florida, governor jeb bush. [applause] retired surgeon ben carson and from new jersey governor chris christie. they told us the lineup for a photograph.
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[laughter] senator scott: thank you for being here. we are looking forward to your comments and having a robust discussion about people as well as policies. then, what a cute kick us off this morning and talk about your experience in poverty in what makes this issue important to you. dr. carson: it's critically important to me because as a kid growing up in poverty i hated poverty. some people hate rats. some people hate roaches. i hated poverty. i was absolutely certain of was born into the wrong family. [laughter] i will tell you the thing that really changed it for me.
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my mother, who had a much worse upbringing than i did growing up in rural tennessee. a huge family. got married when she was 13. tried to escape a desperate situation. they moved to detroit. she discovered my father was already married. he was a bigamist. now she had to raise us 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 accomplishment -- scientists, philosophers.
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i learned that the person who has the most to do with your life is you. it's not somebody else. it's not the environment. 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 no kid could pass up. they get points for the number of books they read and they can trade them in for prizes. 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. if we change that downstream, we
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have a profound effect of -- upstream. [applause] representative 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. this is an issue that you took on. how did you come into understanding this issue? what touched you to give an appreciation for the problem of poverty? governor bush: paul -- excuse me, mr. speaker -- i have not seen him since he became speaker. congratulations. [applause]
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governor 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 it as. it is not just economic. there are all sorts of limits to people's aspirations. 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 bureaucrats filling out forms to 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.
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to give people a chance to rise up. that was just -- in all sorts of ways i learned that. one of the ways i did it, paul, was in 1997, 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 because this little school just outside of liberty city, we basically got the parents to create the culture of the school. 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.
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they wanted discipline, respect for the teachers. they wanted to be engaged. it was an incredible experience. i will never forget, on the opening of the school, we were getting already, and we did not 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 relates to welfare reform, but more importantly, i think it is important to act on your sense of consciousness. everybody should have the right to rise up in this country. no one should put limits on their aspiration.
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if we are a society that you are stuck, if you are wealthy, you will stay there -- that is a society that will be in decline. [applause] senator 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 the federal government and dispel the notion that the federal government has all the answers for poverty? governor christie: i think most 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.
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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 my parents brought that sensitivity to the family. my dad was the first one in his family to go to college. he went at night when he was
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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 newer -- an entrepreneur. the function of the states is to look at our individual
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communities. we get an option to do that in a way that the federal 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. the state has the ability to pick and choose based on the merit of what is going on. if you leave it to the federal government -- one thing that jeb and i have learned as governors is we can really get in there
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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. it is not just me, jeb, or scott 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]

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