apologized to the department of interior, to my employees, and to the secretary for that lapse in judgment. you know, 20-20 hindsight is often perfect. i would ask next time. >> can you talk about the effects of climate change on any specific national parks or monuments, and what can be done if anything, to address those concerns? >> i have said many times that climate change is probably the most threatening aspect to the future of the national parks. we can already see a direct affect on specific parks and i can give you an example. i was the superintendent at mountaineer national park. that cascades right outside of seattle and typically historically, if you look at records or mount rainier there is a lot of snow. usually, you would get snow in the fall and rain in the spring.

that ring which is come down on the snow like a big sponge and soak it up and then let it out through the spring. it has shifted now to snow starts, and that it converts to rein in the fall. so, you get rain on snow in the fall and you do not have enough snow packed to absorb it and it creates a flood. we had about $35 million worth of damage in about one event in the fall of mount rainier, just sweeping down one of the river valleys and wiping out a campground that had been there for 100 years. glaciers disappearing in glacier national park. predictions are they will be gone within a couple of decades. fires burning longer on either end of the season. much hotter. we can see a post fire situation with vegetation not coming back in the same way as well.

migratory species arriving earlier or later. species moving up the mountain to stay cooler. we can see effects across the system. >> if you had a magic wand or a magic at, what ever it may be. what would you ask for? rangers, scientists, money, but would you ask for? >> i would ask for public support. i think all of those things you mentioned come from public support. you know, i want the public to love their national parks. i want them to see their national parks and to feel that theeir story is represented in the national parks. if they feel that in a deep way, that will translate to funding advocacy support for our mission to be accomplished. >> before i ask the final

question, i have a few announcements. the national press club is the world's leading organization for journalists and we fight for a free press worldwide. for more information visit our website at www.press.org. i would like to remind you about some upcoming programs. on thursday, the national press club will hold its dinner to honor journalism. and then michael york will address the club. i would like to present our guest for the national traditional press club. [applause] >> i am going to give you two options for your last question. you can't walk away yet. one of the questions i know is a tough one. i will ask you out of your 400 or so units, and your favorite national park. or you have been with the park service for 40 years.

if not naming your favorite national park, but was your scariest moment and a national park? >> i love all my children, so i can't name my favorite. [laughter] >> but i will tell you a great scary moment. so i worked in alaska. if you have seen those pictures with the there's in the waterfalls -- with the bears and waterfalls, and there are only two places you can go in alaska to see that. it was late in september. i was above the falls in the river flyfishing, which i like to do. i had a fish on. i saw one of those gigantic coastal brown bears jump out of the bushes on to mike fish. i snapped my line off. that bear took a very strong

interest in me. [laughter] >> and for about the next two hours, i was probably never more than about 15 feet from the bear because it followed me through the was across the stream three or four times. i wound up swimming across the mouth of a lake, and the bear swam right behind me the entire way. and i finally got to my cabin, which was hard-sided fortunately. i sort of crashed through the door and my brother was sitting inside sitting in front of a fire, reading a book of course. i was completely soaking wet and out of breath. he said, "what happened to you?" i said, "come here, look at there."

the bear was standing on the porch. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you, director jarvis for being here. thank you for watching. thank you. we are adjourned. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> 100 years ago, president woodrow wilson signed the bill creating the national park service. today, we look back on the past century of these caretakers of america's natural and historic

treasures. the getting at 10:00 eastern and throughout the day, we take you to national parks service sites across the country, as recorded by c-span. at seven at 1 p.m. eastern, we are live from the most visited historic home, arlington house the robert e. lee memorial. join us with your phone calls as we talk with robert stanton former national park service director, and brandon b bice, who will oversee the upcoming restoration of the mansion. today, the 100th anniversary of the national park service, live from arlington house at 7:00 p.m. eastern on american historytv on c-span3. >> today, the american bar association's annual homeland security law institute considers the legal profession's role in the country's security. our live coverage begins at 8:30

eastern. later, a palestinian member talks about israeli laws and their impact on palestinian citizens. we are live from the arab center at washington, d.c. starting at 12:30, also on c-span 2. >> c-span's "washington journal," live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up this morning, the natural resources editor for "reengreen wire" will join us to discuss the 100th anniversary of the national park service. and then an interview with mike reynolds deputy director of operations for the national park service. he will talk about the national park service and the support a guess from the federal government and the public, and what issues the service faces going forward. and michael greenwich "washington post" investigative reporter and mark fis

cher will discuss their biography entitled "trump revealed. the book is a comprehensive examination of the life of the republican nominee. it was written in collaboration with over two dozen writers and editors and was published this week. "washington journal" begins live at 7:00 a.m. join the discussion. >> home of the architects of the night and 96 welfare law looks at -- of the 1996 welfare law look at the impact on families. this runs one hour in six minutes. >> welcome to the cato institute on the 20th anniversary.

i am delighted to have my audience here in person, as well as those who are joining us their television or internet. as my colleague mentioned for those who are live tweeting the event it is #welfare20th. also very happy to be joined by our panelist here, who i am going to introduce in a moment. the topic. as we know from michael tanner's opening remarks, the 1996 welfare reform law was a comprehensive overhaul of welfare law. and dramatically reshaped the federal cash and food welfare programs in the united states, specifically replacing aid to families with dependent children with temporary assistance to needy families and it had a few features which made it particularly notable.

it provided incentives to states to limit out of wedlock births, as well as to create goals about limiting teenage pregnancy among other things. critics of the welfare reform predicted that the welfare reform would drive low income families into deeper poverty and keep them there. we see a resurgence in a particular line of thought in some reason scholarshiprecent scholarships on the topic. advocates on the other hand insisted that welfare reform would move them into permanent jobs and thereby increase self financing, as well as economic mobility, and strengthen families, among other things. at the 20th anniversary of welfare reform, we are going to ask whether any of these things

actually happened. how does welfare reform live up to its promises? did it affect family structure health child achievement and individual economic independence? did it provide an adequate safety net, particularly during the last decade of economic turmoil? so, without further aado, i'm going to introduce the individuals who will answer those questions today. hold your applause to the end, if he would. i will start with heather, on my right. heather is a senior fellow in the center for labor and population at the urban institute. she is also a national panelist expert with two decades of experience conducting nonpartisan research on a wide range of programs and policies related to the well-being of children and families, including food stamps, and other supports for low income families. they also have ron on my right who is a senior fellow in the

economic studies program and codirector on the center of children's and families of the brooking institution. he is a senior consultant at the foundation. he is the author of "work over welfare," the inside story of the 1996 welfare reform law. rubber is to my left here. he is a managing editor at the american conservative, where he moved after a decade in journalism, that included stints at "national interest," "the washington times," "national review," and "real clear policy." he is also a contributor at family studies where he has written about welfare reform. finally we have scott winship. he is the fellow at the manhattaninstitute. previously he was a fellow at the brookings institution and earlier a research manager at the economic mobility project at acute-care double charitable trust. he has testified before congress on poverty and joblessness among other issues.

let's give each of our panelists a warm welcome. and then, we will turn it over to heather to start us off. [applause] heather: good morning. so, we are here to talk about welfare reform turning 20. was it a success, failure incomplete? what is turning 20 is the temporary assistance for needy families program. welfare at large is much older. but that is what i'm going to focus my comments on. so, we know that it ended the entitlement to assistance, shifted major responsibilities to states, give them a block

grant instead of entitlement funding. we know that caseloads plummeted. they had been falling shortly before reform and they fell much further afterward. we also know that employment among single mothers increased in the short time after welfare reform. but now we need to get to the questions that you raised. did welfare reform help people move from welfare to work? that improve economic self-sufficiency and mobility? did it provide an adequate safety net, especially during the recession? is it still relevant today? that is what i will talk about. i want to start with something about both the reform bid. i think it helped to shift the focus to work. the 1996 welfare reform itself came about in part because of a mismatch between the former afdc rules that limited recipient'

ability to work. and a mismatch with the changing societal mormons, in which more and more mothers working outside the home. some of the changes leading up to welfare reform started to address that issue, but both tanf and the changing societal norms solidify that pro-work focused. when i speak with welfare recipients now, i hear people say, that "i would give anything and trade all the tanf i could ever get for a stable job." the other people in the room said, "absolutely, amen." this desire to work is very clear. people recognize the benefits of work. a combination of the tanf rules a strong economy, and other factors contributed to an increase unemployment among single mothers in the early years following the implementation of tanf, although those gains were lost. the unemployment of never married mothers increased to

match the rate of childless mothers -- childless single women. but once they got in tandem, those have fallen together. that is not of thedonna pimenny's work i am quoting. i do want to take this moment to look forward from this lesson. looking ahead, i think the safety net of the future needs to change again to fit the changing nature of work. in the last 20 years, work has become even more unstable and unpredictable for low-wage earners, for both men and women. those fundamental issues need to be matched up again with our welfare reform. welfare reform, and by this again, i mean tanf did not improve economic self-sufficiency for three reasons. it reaches few needy families,

it is not effectively help people get and keep jobs, and it did not provide a safety net during the recession. let's look first at this issue about tanf reaching few needy families. we know that 1.6 million families in the average month in 2015 received tanf cash assistance, down from 4.4 million in 1996. what is 1.6 million? is that too many, not enough, the right number? >> a more useful number to look at is how many people who are poor are receiving tanf. what we see is that in 1996, 68% of poor families received cash assistance. that has fallen to 23% of poor families receiving cash assistance in 2014. the gao report showed that in the early years following tanf

from 1995 to 2005 87% of the caseload decline was because of non-participation of eligible adults. it wasn't that people had too much earnings and therefore , were no longer eligible. it was that people were eligible , but not receiving tanf. almost 40% of cases today are child only cases. when we look at the 23% of poor families receiving assistance and we see that 40% of those are child only cases, it's a pretty small piece for families things served five tanf -- for families being served by tanf. this national picture masks variations by states. there are 12 states that serve fewer than one in 10 families. for those who do receive assistance, it can be essential for making a difference in their

lives, but the benefits them out are so low that they do not bring families out of deep poverty, much less poverty. receiving tanf is not going to affect the poverty level. the cash assistance is too low. so, tanf also does not effectively help people get and keep jobs. even though there was this great focus on work and a rhetoric around work and a desire to work, the federal tanf rules especially since 2005, create incentives that limit access to key work operation activities. states have strong financial incentives to steer clients to activities that help the state meet its requirement, rather than focusing activities that are tailored to the individual needs to achieve self-sufficiency. there are very complicated requirements for states, but they drive state incentives for

state programs. they emphasize immediate work and job search, even if jobs are not available, or if the client has significant challenges, as many do. job search is a core activity. it is limited to six weeks per year. client has significant challenges, as many do. vocational training is a very important activity for helping people reach long-term self-sufficiency. it is limited to 12 months in a lifetime. a sick skills training or longer-term education and training are not allowed to count toward the state's work requirement. states have incentives to not allow those activities for their clients. this does not mean people are just languishing on tanf. people do get jobs. people leave tanf for jobs, but they are typically unstable, low-wage jobs. when they lose those jobs, they returned to tanf. research shows a large number of the people applying for tanf are doing so because they recently lost a job.

once they get jobs again, they are the same kinds of jobs they lost to get them on tanf in the first place. tanf and supporting as an unemployment insurance for very low wage workers, rather than a ladder up to self-sufficiency. self-sufficiency. other programs, especially the eitc, do support low-wage working families, but only those with earnings and neither tanf or eitc, is helping people get those earnings in the first place. and tanf did not provide a safety net during the recession. during the recession unemployment rates doubled and the number of tanf cases rose by 13%. because tanf reaches only be deeply poor families and serves less than one quarter of families in poverty, many of those struggling during the recession and may have thought they could use some cash assistance did not qualify. they were not poor enough to fight their struggles. or they may have seen that the work requirements could have been counterproductive.

what tanf did do during the recession, with some targeted funding, was offer short-term subsidized employment, which was enormously popular with businesses and clients alike. that is an experiment that we should look to again. other programs, especially snap it responded to the increased need during the recession, but not tanf. so, what has tanf been doing during the last 20 years? it has evolved from cash assistance to a broad funding stream. these numbers from hhs shall have spending has shifted away from cash assistance. if we look in 1997, that blue bar at the bottom of basic cash assistance is some new 1% of spending and in 2015 only 25% of the tanf grant and state maintenance efforts of spending,

25% went to basic assistance. 7% went to work activities. 17% went to childcare. and more than half 52%, when two other things, like state eidc's, scholarships, child protective services, although legal and worthy causes, but not what we think of as tanf and what we think of as cash assistance. if we look at that 17% that goes to childcare only 6% of that 17% goes to families who are receiving tanf cash assistance. most of it, most of the rest of it -- half of it goes to direct tanf spending on families not receiving cash assistance, or transferred to the childcare and development grant.

looking forward, it is very important that we address the shortcomings of tanf and the broader safety net because growing up poor has long-term negative consequences for children. my colleagues caroline ratcliffe, and many others, have written about the lasting consequences of child poverty. this is whether you measure it, whether it is relative or absolute, just looking at the federal poverty measure, children growing up in poverty in the united states have harder consequences. children more into poorer consequences have harder of the outcomes. the chronic stress of child poverty action alters early rain development in ways that impede their future success. harry holzer estimates the cost of child poverty is more than $500 billion each year. we cannot be ok with a temporary assistance for needy families

program that does not reach seven out of 10 poor families and is not effectively assist them in getting on their feet. i want to talk very briefly about some ideas about what we should be doing. i started to preview this earlier, but the next changes to our safety net need to recognize the changing nature of work, the unstable and unpredictable nature of low-wage work, where people get a call to say "come into work now," "oh, we don't need you." it is are difficult to have stable childcare, or to be going to school and the seeking additional training opportunities for advancement. these are real challenges for both men and women. the low wages and stagnant work ranks of men contribute to poverty among single and t wo parent households. people want to work and would

give anything to have a stable job and support their families. we need the policies and the job structures to support that. i echoed the commentd made in the introduction. we need to work together to support people's desire to work. we also still need a safety net for the times in people's lives when they cannot work, or cannot find work. going back to the growing of a poor has negative consequences for children. we cannot afford to punish parents because they are punishing their children and the rest of us as well. specific changes for tanf i would like to see our increased funding, especially during the recession, so it can be responsive. restructure those incentives to a balanced set of incentives focused on work, family, economic stability, and child willell being.

and then to look beyond tanf to fully support low income families with a full package of support. thaknnk you. [applause] >> i'm going to give two speaches. in the first one, i'm going to praise tanf. in the second one, i am going to criticize it. i regret to inform you that my criticisms are very similar to dr. han's criticisms. michael did a good job of summarizing the background and welfare reform. welfare reform was a strict set of requirements and limited by the state. there was a lot of dow at the time. that state really did remove the entitlement. they really did impose work requirements. they really did penalize people who did not work and eventually

kept people off of the roles. and as a result of that, the caseload declined by around 60% within three or four years. nothing like that in my knowledge had ever happened to a federal program. i want to talk about, how do i advance this? i want to talk about work because people at welfare, where do they go? there are studies that show 60% to 70% of them actually have work at some point in the first six months after welfare reform. so let's look at the data for the country as a whole. if you look at the left, the top of my graph is males. the next one is all females. and the next one is never married females. they were the heart of the welfare program, and i would suggest still today. they are more likely to go on welfare more than any other group. i am talking about welfare considered broadly. not just tanf, but food stamps,

etc. women who have a baby and are not married are more likely to go on welfare. you can see by looking at the never married women chart there is a huge increase in employment. these are people that actually had jobs. these moms partly as a result of welfare reform, went out and got jobs and we had a 40% increase over a four-year period, in part as a result of welfare reform, i am not contributing all of this to welfare reform. we had a fabulous economy, many of you may remember that. jobs looking for people, rather than the other way around. the other thing was tax income credit. congress f really change the incentives on welfare. -- congress really changed the incentives on welfare. you did better because you got

your income tax credit, you got the additional child tax credit, you got food stamps, so you could bill a package of benefits. a lot of people did that and that is part of why it was not just welfare reform, it was the safety and the lure of getting additional benefits that had an intact. what happened to poverty? the red line is for all children and the top two are for black children and children of single parent families. we have to focus on single parent families, especially the subgroup of single-parent families who were never married. they have by far, the highest rates of poverty. and if you look at the chart half way across, you see this big decline, which differs somewhat from what michael showed you. remember, this is a single

mothers. all children, you can see it is much lower. and for single mothers, kids in single mother families, and for black children in part because they are disproportionate. a huge decline in poverty. then of course, ironically because these families are more subject to the whims of the economy than they had been before, when unemployment rises, as it did in 2001, and with a vengeance in 2007 with the great recession, unemployment goes down. they suffer from not being able to find jobs like other americans. they are going back up again unfortunately, at eight flow rate. but we can -- unfortunately, at a slow rate. but we can expect a lot of mothers who would not have worked before will work. to me, this is the single most important impact of welfare reform and other associated factors, including reforms and federal law that we have permanently changed.

it is not likely to change. and now, if we look at how the system really works -- i have a chart for you to look at. this is it. this is from the congressional research service untouched by my sullied hands. white shows is over a period of years, beginning in 1987 poverty and the state of nature within single mothers, no government that ift benefits. and then we add these benefits to that, the work support benefits, the itc, and so forth. and you can see what happens to the poverty. take the last year. the poverty rate is 48% for single-parent families and as we admire benefits, it comes down step-by-step, coming down to 24%. that is a huge impact of

government in programs on poverty. so, that part of the system is working. i would argue this is the single most important way we have invented to reduce poverty. this is the best system we have. if states can get low income others to even these jobs that pay $10 an hour, unless they have a lot of kids, they can escape poverty. and at least they are where they can advance themselves in the american economy. that part of it has been good. it could be better. we could improve it, but it is pretty good. now, my criticism of welfare reform. i think i played a big role in welfare reform and we were all crazy for the states. we loved the states. there is a long story about the second veto, the states really picking up welfare reform off the couplet getting it back and

play. -- getting it back in play. first of all republicans have got to say, "we won this, it was a great reform, but 20 years later, we need to change things." state flexibility has to be changed because states are not doing what we thought they should and they are not doing what they were doing earlier. so they are spreading the money all over the place as heather showed you very good data on that. so we need to tighten up on the states. i'd republicans are going to be willing to do that. we need to do it because if states are going to be the laboratories of democracy, they should not play games and trick and affect the rules of welfare reform. they should be forced, which now turns up to me necessary to actually try and help people --

which now turns out to be necessary to actually try and help people. i do think there is a problem at the bottom. i think there are too many families in deep poverty. there are too many mothers who are not able to hold a job and raise their kids at the same time. i was a single parent for many years and it is a very challenging thing to do, especially if you have a lousy education. we need to help the group at the bottom and we are not doing it. we are just letting people be poor and in some cases, deeply poor. we could do a lot more to do that, but the federal government will not be able to do it. i think we need to go back to a lot more waivers. that is where we got welfare from an the first place. there were 43 waivers at the time we passed the welfare reform bill. almost all of them had to do with work, a limiting family size through birth control and other measures. so we need to go back to that.

we need the state six floor and ways to help the families, and we also need -- we need the states exploring ways to help the families. i think welfare reform has been at least a half success maybe a little more than that because i think it is an amazing thing. you can change the likelihood that an entire demographic group will work more, setting possibilities up for the future. but the way it is being run now i don't think it can be called successful. we need to make changes. thank you. [applause] >> good morning. first of all, i want to thank the cato institute for allowing

me to speak today. it is an honor to be alongside these respected people. i feel both flattered and intimidated. i am a journalist who knows just enough about statistics to get himself in trouble. i would like to begin by discussing a simple analysis i published that illustrates two basic truths about what happened after welfare reform. the first truth is one that was just discussed. when welfare benefits became contingent on market, a lot of people were confounded. here you can see a chart. it focuses on the children of single mothers, the demographic most affected by the law. i posted their poverty rate against the nationwide unemployment rate so we can see the nation what effect to the economy. it does not include things like food stamps and health benefits. it also does not include tax credit, most importantly the earned tax credit.

he was similarly designed to -- it was similarly designed to encourage work. even by this measure, these kids were better off after the law than before it. the blue before welfare reform passed critics passed. when the opposite happened critics said it was the economy. there are still many poor children in this country but welfare reform made it better not worse. >> it succeeded moving from welfare to work. having a job comes with its own expenses and challenges but it's the first step toward the middle class. this success is something we

can't forget even as we consider newer and more nuanced allegation that is the reform was hurtful to some. but speaking of those allegations here's another chart that is almost identical except that the poverty threshhold is divided by ten. in other words these folks would still be at or blow the povered line -- below the poverty line. the trend is reversed. after the law there was a sharp increase in kids living if families that reported very little income and this became even worse with the recession. in some ways these results are unambiguous and unis surprising. the reforms were carrot and stick. those who didn't work were cut off from cash welfare. it's hardly shocking that some people got the stick and others . robert moffet, one of the leading researchers.

but in other ways we are in very murky territory. for one thing people who virtually claim to live on no cash are sometimes not telling the truth. doesn't include noncash benefits like food stamps. this means we have to dig deeper and the picture we uncover isn't very clear at all. there is one thing everyone agrease on which is the situation looks better when you correct the data. what they don't agree on is how much better. to pick just one example from the left the center on budget and policy priorities recently reported that incomes fell for the bottom ten single mother families. in 2005, $250 in food stamps with private income. increasing food stamp benefit

helps benefits but only partially. here's the striking chart from that report. notice the steep drop between 1996 and 1997 for the poorest single mother families. but in another new paper, scott will speak next, argues that even the very poorest might not be worse off. but for now suffice it to say a lot depends on how you process the data including adjusting for inflation and putting a dollar ben fit on things. researchers don't agree whether health benefits should be accounted at all. others say it bends the data. others look at consumption. extreme poverty is very rare by this measure. we can also look at indicators of hunger which fell after welfare reform but rose during the great recession. so that's a lot of the puzzle

and they don't all fit together. but i feel comfortable saying two things. even in the snurto budget's new tenths of analysis, nine out of ten were better off, most significantly so. but the very poorest families have less thash than they used to even if they have more cash than they admit in surveys. this is a nearly unavoidable consequence. as documented in their book it is hard to get by with low cash even when you have benefits. it's tough to look for a job or make needed car repairs or buy clothes. the panel after this one is going to focus on where we go from here but i would like to briefly lay out a few lessons i think we can learn. the biggest lesson is that a work focus safety net can succeed. we have made important progress against poverty and any future reforms should be made with an

eye toward preserving that progress. i think there's also a lesson for conservatives who would like to charge full steam ahead and apply the ideas of welfare reform to other ideas as well. specifically they must grapple with the fact that those programs help to keep a lid on extreme poverty. changing those other programs would increase the incentive to give jobs even further. and work requirements have been gutted in some programs. but it could also severely punish those who don't find work. one conundrum is to find a way. early proposals for what became welfare reform included government-provided jobs flt community service is also an option one the state of maine is trying. we should keep an eye on such experiments. yet another lesson nicely explained in $2 a day, is that cash matters even when other benefits are available. this brings up the thorny

question on how to bring up cash to the poor without creating the anti-work incentives. broadly speaking there are three ways to do this. first we can make sure it's doing its job. here i will second the points made in the previous presentations. second we could rethink the pat earnlism. we make a lot of money available on the poor on the condition that we spend it the way we want them to, on food, housing, heating bills. simply converting some of this aid to cash would give them much-needed flexibility. but would also push back from the more intrusive elements ausm called the nanny state on the left and the daddy state on the right. and third we might want to consider some form of broadly available cash assistance. the idea would be to make sure that each family receives a modest amount of cash staving off extreme poverty while otherwise maintaining the incentives that made welfare

reform a success. in particular we might look at the tax credit which is popular with the left and right. right now worth up to $1,000 but not available to the poorest parents. i have suggested changing that. other conservatives including patrick brown and josh mccain have made similar proposals. a nice thing about the child tax credit that the middle class already gets it so we don't have to deal with the difficult issue of phasing it out as people earn more money. and to address concerns that the credit itself would discourage work or encourage nonmarital child bearing other benefits like food stamps could be cut back to compensate it. it's to keep people out of extreme poverty. thank you for coming. i look forward to any

questions. [applause] >> it's a pleasure to be on the panel. i want to preface my remarks by saying a couple things. one of which is when welfare passed admittedly no one cared about what i thought about policy but i was actually opposed and thought that this was going to be a disaster. and my research and that of others has led me to believe swrortsdze wise. i also personally would spend a lot more money on poor people than we currently do. the reason i'm prefacing my remarks is i'm going to tell a story that hopefully convince you that this wisdom that we have that most people were helped by welfare reform but

there was a group tat bottom that was hurt, that there's much less to that argument than i think people believe these days. so before moving on i also want to acknowledge i think welfare has been success i think it's important acknowledging, i think ron has probably done more than -- very few people have done as much to reduce childport in the united states than ron -- poverty than ron has. so congratulations. ok. so because i'm worried about being able to get through this and my time, i'm basically going to blow through a couple slides. my basic case is going to be that welfare reform reduced dependence on cash welfare reduced work among single mothers, reduced child poverty, and therefore welfare reform's

lessons should be extended to other safety net program and should be accompanied by other strategies. most of this is going to be charts. i sort of speak in charts for better or worse. so welfare reform reduced depndance on cash welfare. this is a chart i updated on a paper i did with christopher in 40e. what you're seeing is between 1906 and 2014, the number of families getting cash welfare expressed per 100 single mother families. ok? and what you see there is just this dramatic unprecedented decline that actually starts in 1995. in the chart you can see where state waivers began in 1993. but truly just an unprecedented decline in the welfare rules. now, how much of that was due to welfare reform versus other things? there's a literature on this

that is mostly based on models and on some level we'll never know. but the literature sort of imply that is the combination of welfare reform and declining real welfare benefits, which is part of welfare reform, they could have had the block grant increased with inflation every year. that combination's more important than the earned income tax credit at reducing the roles in both probably more important than the labor market over time. ok. a few charts on welfare reform and how it affected work amongst single mother. some will be repetitive of things we have seen before. so in this chart, the top line just shows the percentage of single mothers who worked at any time during the year. this is from a study by the congressional research service. and you can see that it rose starting in 1993, peaks in 2000 falls thereafter but remains above the rereform

levels. similarly, la donna has found that employment among single mothers without high school diploma increased from about 45% in 1991 to 65% in 1999. then it fell. but it was still 55% in 2012. so it rose and it stays higher. now to be clear it doesn't mean that what welfare reform did was make states do all these clever creative things to make their families more employable. the main thing that welfare reform did is it convinced a lot of people not to apply for welfare in the first place and to try to find work instead or to leave on their own volition because they could sort of see the writing on the wall. so i do think that one weakness with the current reform -- or with the current laws that it hasn't been that innovative in terms of helping people build their skills. but on the other hand you don't need that to reduce poverty. it turns out a lot of people

were employable. this was a big debate when the bill passed i think what's clearly been seen since is that there were jobs out there and a lot of people were able to take them and benefit from them. ok. a couple more charts on work. this is from heather of the washington center for equitable growth. i want you to look at the green line first, which is the trend in work for unmarried women with children. you can see clearly that increase in the 90s followed by a smaller decline. compare that against the blue line is single women without children. the fuscia line is married women without children. and even among married mothers this line at the bottom you can see it rises and it plateaus. so this is pretty good evidence that the policy changes of the 90s in combination really causally caused work to

increase. and then again the literature on this how much was due to welfare reform. broadly speaking the combination -- so the earned income tax credit is jemly found to be the most important factor in increasing work and then the combination about as important as the strengthening of the labor market during the 1990s. ok. and then finally this is a chart i think ron updated in his presentation but just shows you that there was a bigger boost among never married mothers around the same period. ok. so now i'm getting into self-promotion as part of making my case. i have a paper that came out today called poverty after welfare reform in which i'm basically looking at trends over time. and starting out just with child poverty i think this is probably the most controversial -- the most uncontroversial

part of the story. because you've heard it from other people. even if you look at the red line at the top by the official measure of cash income, welfare reform is poverty child poverty is lower today than it was in 1996. now, what i do in the paper is to make various improvements to this measure. the orange line adds noncash benefits. that's mostly food stamps but also includes housing subsidies, school lunches and breakfasts, energy subsidies. that lowers the levels more. it actually makes the trends look a little worse. the third line adds taxes. and it is adding income for this group for the most part because of refundable tax credits. the blue line combines cohabitting couples. the official measure basically treats married couples as one unit, combines their incomes,

takes into account that this family is realizing savings by living together. but it doesn't do that where cohabitting couples which has risen over time and you can see what happens to poverty there. now by that measure, stops at that fourth line shows child poverty in 2014 was at a historic low. lower than it's ever been before. the next two adjustments are more controversial. i spend a lot of time on the paper to arguing my case. but even if you don't buy my case for these last two things line four indicates child poverty low irthan it's ever been. the green line uses a better inflation adjustment than what's used in the official measure. that's a very controversial point. i think on the 30th anniversary everyone is going to be using the one that i use. read appendix 1 in the paper if

you're inclined to disagree appendix 2 -- i think. and then the purple line adds health benefits. this for some reason is also controversial and i would agree that how you value health benefits is not entirely clear. but it is entirely clear that health benefits have value to poor people. otherwise we wouldn't have medicaid. we wouldn't have expanded health insurance so much over the last 20 years. what i did was to take basically the amount that employers or the federal government spends on these benefits per family and take a 75% discount from that. so it adds about $200 a month to families who have those health benefits. you can see what happens. the trend keeps going down. this last line crects for the fact that income is underreported in household surveys. partially correct. it corrects the fact that benefits are unreported. it doesn't account for the fact that earnings and other private

sources are underreported as well. this ends up being a huge deal. kathy who as a scholar i recommend a ton, made her name in the 90s with a book that basically showed that women on cash welfare assistance could not get by on that money alone. sand the way that they made ends meet is that they had other source that is they generally wouldn't have reported. the household surveys to government officials. in fact, that extra money that they typically wouldn't have reported was about -- would have raised their income about 40% more than their income with food stamps and housing benefits included in there. so in some ways you can think of this final line ought to be even lower. now, whether the decline in poverty should be steeper i think is an open question. but that line only partly crects for this problem.

ok quickly, this is to show you i'm not selling you snake oil. the top three lines are from my estimates from the congressional research service and from economists. you can see those line up really well although they measure poverty differently. the green line is also from meyer an sullivan. and this is unique because they're looking at consumption rather than income. they argue very convincingly, and i devote a couple appendixes to this. it's less of an issue for consumption. and they find a steeper drop in poverty with this green line. that orange line there is the final line that i showed you here line 7. and you can see it lines up very well with their measuring. in fact, theirs drops a little more suggesting that if you

correct it for all underreporting of income you would see even better trend than i show. also, there's a line in there from -- i don't know if there's a line -- from the columbia research. so moving on. now we're at deep child poverty. so deep poverty is being under half of the poverty line. so it's a group in more hardship. and there's more controversy at this point about whether that has risen or declined. the basic message that i want to give is whatever changes there have been have been very small. if you look at the purple line which combines all of my improvements then deep poverty among kids was lower in 2013 than it was in 1996. it nudges up a little bit in 2014. that's still lower than 1995. 1997. but basically the real take-home is that very few children thankfully, are in deep poverty.

line number 7 crects or partially crects for this underreporting. and it finds actually the center on budget and policy priorities was the first to identify this. the trend looks a little worse there. but we're talking about an increase of 1.1% in 1996 where that dash line is to 1.7% in 2012. income has grown since then. so it's i'm guessing that the line would look better if we had more up-to-date numbers. can't guarantee it. the basic story is there hasn't been much change over time. and we saw the huge declines in overall child poverty. so you've got this great development along with what looks to be like not much harm done. ok. and then finally, this is a chart that shows the share of kids living in $2 a day poverty. this was the claim in the book by kathy eden and luke schafer that the number of kids living on $2 a day had increased over

time. as you can see first of all, if you look down again the purple line, little more volatility in these lines because there are fewer people in the sample. but again the 2013 line about the same as 1996. it jags up in 2014. i'm not sure how seriously to take that. even if you take it seriously it's not much change. and when you correct for underreporting of benefits you get these lines at the bottom that basically show you no kid lives on $2 a day in the united states. there are household children who generally do not show up and we don't know what the trend is in homelessness. i devote some time in my paper to that as well. in 2012 one in 15 children was living in extreme poverty. and this doesn't include corrections for private reporting. so the other point i want to

make, they make a big deal about cash being different than noncash difference, which is an important point in some regards. but even if you believe that red line is somehow true, which you should not that rise started in the 1970s. so to blame welfare reform on this is not quite clear that we ought to be doing that. it also increases among groups that were unaffected by welfare reform such as the elderly childless households. married college graduates saw a rise in $2 a day poverty, if you believe the numbers. my basic message is you should not believe those numbers. ok. i'm going to end there. my time is up. i can talk more about changes in reform in q&a if we get to that. thank you. [applause]

>> thank you to our guests. we're going to move into a q&a period now. so i'm going to start us off i was actually fascinated by some of the research that scott showed us and went through some of those slides. and one of the questions that i have maybe for scott and also for others on the panel is how much of what we see in the differences and the -- some of the poverty measures such as unemployment or case load are actually due to welfare reform. and when we're looking at some of these population survase how much are due to underlying factors which are moving some of those variables around. i would love for scott to weigh in and then anyone else who is interested. >> so i think we have a better sense of how much during the 90s was due to reform versus due to the economy. and so the i think research that i cited there was that essentially the reform itself

combined with the decline in real benefits. so as welfare became less valuable fewer people got on it. together was at least as important as the expansion of the earned income tax credit both of which were more important than the decline in the unemployment rate overall during that period. since then i don't think -- at least i don't know of a lot of research has tried to distinguish between those different strands. the percent of single moms receiving tanive has declined fairly steadily even after 2000 when the economy was doing well, when it was not doing well. so that suggests that probably the reforms have played a pretty big role. >> thank you. ron and heather, is there anything that we're missing here in this picture as we look at some of the sort of poverty indicators that are moving? are there other components or motivators that we are not talking about here today which are influencing those things?

>> i think when we look at the charts that show -- if you look at cash income, this is the poverty level. if you look at adding these benefits it's a lower level. i think what those show is that government programs are working. when you add those things you have fewer and fewer people who are poor. when you get down to the very bottom and you're looking at the families who are supposedly living on $2 a day, less than $2 a day, and they say you really can't survive on that and there are these unreported sources of income. i think we have to think about what that really means. if someone is selling plasma, if someone is selling sex if they're doubling up with family that doesn't mean they're ok. it doesn't mean that they're not poor. >> thank you. i appreciate it.

we are going to move into an audience q&a now. so if you have a question, please raise your hand. i'll call on you. and wait for the microphone. please keep your questions nice and concise. and also end them with a questionmark. thank you. we'll start on the left, in the middle. >> thank you. i just wanted to ask you a version of the same question i asked michael tanner before. afdc was ended because one way or the other it wasn't working. now we have tanif and we have a bunch of other programs in kind programs. we also have the eitc, of course. providing for the poor and the low income families.

now, if these programs are still aimed at eliminating poverty, do you see a punkuation mark for these programs? or do you see them as a perennial part of our economy? and before i leave that question, what i would like you to do, if you see this as a perennial -- a permanent institution, are there other ways to provide these? in other words is there another way to provide income redistribution down through these programs? thank you. >> i think it's pretty clear that as a society we've chosen noncash benefits and tax

credits for the working poor as the way that we want to try to reduce and prevent poverty in the united states. that's probably not going away any time soon. i think roberts' point about why not just give everybody cash is attractive in a lot of ways. the concern and the reason why we don't do that is policy makers are concerned about what people actually spend the money on. but i mean if you think people know best what they need then giving them cash instead makes a lot of sense. it also makes the poverty statistics easier to interpret. so for that reason alone i might be interested in experimenting with it. >> i think there's a danger though in emphasizing cash too much because it's easy to count. americans can see it. and they will see how big the welfare state is much clearer

than under the current system. it's much easier to say we need to give food to babies and health care to babies and housing and so forth. i think over time if we converted more of those programs to cash total spending would probably fall. now, i'll bet there's people in this room who think that's a good idea because it has in creased dramatically over time. but i think that's a consequence of it. i think the key is to get as many people as possible to work. in 1996 when we passed welfare reform you take all the people in poverty who weren't on the disability program and even some of those. and there were a lot of people in there. this was the essence of the debate in congress. there were a lot of people in there that could support themselves. you needed to change the system to get them to do it. and that's what welfare reform did. and as scott shows, mine show, congressional research service, work is up, poverty is down.

that's the headline. now the question is, how do we get more people out of that group? it's a much smaller group now. you would think that logically there are more people with problems barriers to employment, not necessarily disabilities but depressed poor transportation living in an area where there aren't many jobs and so forth. and that is the part that government could really help on. that is why i think we need to have more waivers by the states to give them a chance to explore other ways that they can do it. and i think we ought to have strong work requirements in any other welfare programs. >> right there in the back. in the middle. >> to what extent have people moved from tan if to social?

which i understand has gone up over ten times in the last decade. so i think the question is how much are individuals substituting other programs for tanive? >> well, no it's about -- especially ssi supplemental security income. and it's true. and i know for a fact -- i've talked to a number of people in the states, that they make a bigger effort than they did in the past to get people on ssi. if people whose welfare and are dependent they try to get them on ssi because the benefit is 100% federal although many states supplement the benefit. so that's a motivation to do it. if you look at the ssi roles they have grown over time. not by a factor of ten but they've grown over time. and if you look at health surveys there's almost no evidence that americans are less healthy they have more disability or more days where they can't work o and so forth. so this is entirely something generated by the way we do the program and a lot of people want to change it. however, we had a golden chance

last year because the program's run out of money and the congress had to do something. what a great opportunity to at the very least try experiments with helping these people work. just like welfare reform. and instead of doing that they just took money out of the social security trust fund and put it in the ssi trust fund. it's going to be very difficult to because a lot of people feel sorry for disabled people and they forget the issue of whether they really are disabled. that's the pointed many people are making we have too many who are not truly disabled. >> i think this does get to the important point of the incentives and the differences in the incentives in those programs. if there are people who are truly disabled then it wouldn't be appropriate for them to be in tanif long term. but at the same time, work can

be very valuable even for someone who is disabled but can still -- is not completely disabled to the extent of their ability working can be useful for them. so i think when we have these really clear lines if you're on tanif if you're ossi. that doesn't fit the realities. >> in the front. >> thank you. could you speak to the issue of the impact of technology on job availability. and the controversy now where people believe that technology will perhaps dramatically reduce the number of jobs available and how will welfare reform or whatever technique you want to use apply in the context where there may not be jobs available for people who truly want to work?

>> well, i mean, i think first of all it's important to recognize that the argument that there's weak demand for labor out there is exactly the argument that i and people who are opposed to the welfare reform bill in 1996 made. the idea was these folks all want to work but the economy isn't producing jobs for them. it's going to be a disaster. and i think that was shown not to be true. there's actually a lot of debate about technological unemployment and whether technological change is really going to reduce employment in the future. but to the extent that it does, it's going to do so because it's going to make things cheaper. so everything that we buy will become a lot cheaper. in fact, people won't have to work as much as we work today for the same standard of living. so a big zrop in demand for labor in the future. doesn't have to be a lot more unemployment than we have today. it could be a 30-hour workweek

instead of a 40-hour workweek as the standard. it could be retiring at 55 instead of later. so i think it remains to be seen. but it also doesn't show up in the data yet in terms of product tift growth. we would like to see more productivity growth than what we've had. >> thank you. nobody has mentioned the underground economy in the discussions that we had writing a book on welfare we encounterrd a lot of people who were trading baby sitting for car repairs, people who were house cleaning in exchange for meals. there's a lot of that going on

out there. and i wonder if any of the charts since this income is almost certainly never measured in any of the surveys if any of the charts take that into account. because i think there's probably a lot more of that than plasma selling. and people can do quite reasonably well with it under some circumstances. >> this is one of the reasons that consumption measures, poverty measures based on consumption rather than on earnings or income are superior in many respects. this is one of thefment because if they earn the money presumably they spend it and it's reported in surveys. they may be underrepresented in surveys so you don't get a good measure. but that's another reason that consumption is a better measure. >> absolutely. and i think it's also the case that sort of the more severe you get in terms of who you're looking at, severe hardship, a lot of these kind of ideas break down.

what is income? i looked into the research showing that, for instance, the number of people who get food stamps and don't have any other -- don't have any cash income that that's gone up. again, i think for reasons i give in the report, there are reasons to question that. but if you actually look at the report from the u.s. department of agriculture they interviewed people and it turns out that a lot of them are doing odd jobs. a lot of them are getting benefits from other programs. if you're asking someone the kinds of income that you get are sort of scattered enough it's difficult to actually account for them. so it's not just that they have steady work and just are lying about it.

to some extent the way people at the bottom get income isn't like the way the rest of us get income. >> a couple more and then we'll wrap up. on the right. >> when you were talking about the second half of your remarks that tanf was not working out as well as it possibly could have. at the end you were blaming a lot of that on the states. could you be more specific about how states are negatively affecting and what are the motivation for if the states doing that? is it a requirement from the federal government to meet for them to get money opposed to solving the question of poverty? >> two points. one, based on the actual data which was shown up here that the states are spending a huge amount of their money on things other than the two most important goals of the welfare

reform, which was cash assistance and work. and hopefully reducing cash assistance and increasing work. and back before welfare reform or in the early days of welfare reform, states spent most of their tanf dollars on those two things. now, even with a generous accounting you can see great charts on the center of the budget -- on the website center on budget policy priorities. much less on those two activities. for example, the state spent tanf dollars on college education, on child protection programs, for which we already give the states. so they're not spending on what they should. i would have much tighter controls and i would try to get the states to spend their dollars, their tanf dollars on either work or cash welfare. and then you saw the also in the charts that the states are

goifing a much lower percentage of poor single mothers a cash benefit. and that is why the figure has increased. unless you know how to make it go away by running a calculater. and by the way, even if it hasn't increased, people at the bottom who are desperate needs help. so that's what they should be focusing dollars on. second thing. more speculative. my own vision was that once people got in the workforce, once single mothers got in the workforce, they would discover that they like working and that life is better when they earn their own money. and that's by and large happening. so the next thing is they would try to figure out ways to make more money. so they would get training go to night school do things lots of people do to make sure

they're making $20 or $30 an hour rather than $10 or $12. that has not happened. and that is where the states could really come in. if they're the laboratories of democracy they should figure this out. we do have good studies showing that some kinds of training especially focused on fairly short-term training, focused on jorks available and the local economy have had major impacts on employment and on hourly wages. so that's the kind of thing the states ought to be doing instead of draining all the money and spending it on something else. >> one last question. do you want to wait for the mic? >> good morning. i'm a freelance journalist. due to the influx or rumors up to 1 million syrians coming in to all the states, what kind of

effect will that have? >> i couldn't hear. >> the question about immigration and refugees coming in. we just couldn't hear. maybe restate. >> syrians are coming in here. how will that affect your poverty reform? >> the question is about immigration and how that will impact poverty programs. will it strain the system? do we need more? >> tanf is not available to recent immigrants. there's a five-year limit five-year time limit of being in a country legally before you can qualify. so there's -- there's not an immediate threat to the -- people coming on and getting on the rolls. there are other government programs designed to assist

refugees directly. and then there's a longer term issue of how people come in and find their footing, what will happen. but as far as tanf is concerned, someone who arrives right away is not eligible for federal tanf funds. >> ok. great. with that we're going to close up. thank you all for being here. and a warm thank you to our panelists for the inciteful discussion. [applause] we'll take a break and then we'll move to the second panel. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016]

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>> democratic presidential nominee hillary clinton campaigns in reno, nevada today. we'll bring you her remarks live at 3:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> 10 years ago president road row wilson signed the bill creating the national park service. today we look back on the past centuries. beginning at 10:00 eastern and throughout the day we take you to national park service sites across the country as recorded by c-span.

today the 100th anniversary of the national park service live from arlington house at 7:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span-3. >> now a look at the challenges ahead for the united kingdom. after the vote to withdraw from the european union. from the heritage foundation, this is an hour, 20 minutes.

>> thank you for joining us today. i just want to take the opportunity to remind everyone in house to turn off cell phones and for anyone watching on line you're welcome to submit questions by e mailing. hosting today's program is ted senior research fellow in the margaret thatcher center for freedom. also an adjuveraget professer of strategic studies at john hopkins university school of advanced international studies. a graduate of grun el college, earned a master of arts and master of philosophy and his degree from yale university. relevant to today's discussion the subject of his thesis entitled from empire to europe, material interests national

identities and the british policy towards european integration 1956 to 1963. with that i will hand it over. >> thanks very much. it is a pleasure to welcome you all to the heritage foundation here today. with this panel on brexit the next step. about three months ago several of us with here for a very similar panel on brexit. then the possibility that britain might leave the eu was just that, just a possibility. today, however, it is a fact. and behind me on the screens you will see how heritage reacted to the vote on the morning of june 24th by flying the union jack on top of the heritage foundation along the stars and stripes. on behalf of the heritage foundation, especially the margaret thatcher center for freedom where i work i would like to congratulate everyone

who play add part in that victory. but of course brexit is not yet a fact. the leave campaign that won the referendum but as of today britain is still in the european union. the vote was in one sense the culmination of a very long campaign but in another sense it was just the start of the process. and we're here today to talk about that process. now, since the voted on june 23rd i observed one thing. if there's anything that people like to do is tell stories. and since june 23rd people in the u.s. and of course people in britain have been telling stories about brexit. before the vote i joked that brexit was likely to become the new global warming. in other words, it would end up being blamed for everything that went wrong in the world and in your personal life. first, there came a quick spade of stories about how brexit was causing the british economy to tank. but as the guardian -- the guardion -- reported yesterday morning, indicators defy bre

brexit fierce. the economy isn't collapsing. if anything in fact it's booming. but the much more persistent story is how it's a backlash against globalization. it's funny but i don't see britains to travel less, eating less, raising tariffs or using the internet less or quiting nato, the u.n., or any other international organization. what i do see, however, is british groups standing side by side as one of the new brigades in poland and astonia. the left and the ignorant seem incapable of recognizing that brexit wasn't a vote against globalization. it was a vote against specific policies and actions undertaken by various british governments and the e.u. that were extremely unpopular. brexit does, however, herald the end of an era in history -- the end of the era that began in the late 1950s when britain

began to enter a decline. for britain after about 1959 europe wasn't about broadening its horizons. europe was about believing that britain's horizons were narrowing. believing that britain's problems began at home and europe on the whole was better governed. over the course of the last decade that belief, always wildly exaggerated, stopped making any sense at all. i think everyone on this panel, myself included, has been a critic of various british governments since 1997. but governmental performance is after all relative. would you rather have britain's terrorism problems or france's terrorism problems? would you rather have italy's debt or britain's debt? would you rather have greece's currency or would you rather have the pound sterling? would you rather have germany's migrant problems or britain's? for britain, europe moved from

being answer answer to a problem to simply being a problem. now, of course bureaucrats don't see it that way. for them to answer to any problem is always the same. more europe. just two days ago our european commission president famous for his comment that when it's important you have u to lie, asserted that national borders are the worst thing ever. really. in this world of sin, slavery, and american swimmers in rio, national borders are the worst thing ever? that's an exaggeration, i think. i can promise you that although it is a low bar everyone on this panel today has a much tighter grasp on reality. today we're glad to welcome four speakers here after which we'll do some q&a. our first speaker competitive enterprise institute vice president of strategy focuses on financial regulation, employment, and immigration regulation, and free market

environmentalism. he's widely published and is the author of several books. also a visiting fellow at the u.k. adam smith institute, board member of the taxpayers alliance, and an advisory board member of the young britains foundation. before coming to cei directer of research for the cufrpblt department of transport received his nba from university of london and ma from oxford. our next speaker is directer of the association and victorious better out campaign. widely published including excellent ees say is future is bright, the future is global. both a bitish and swiss citizens and holds a first class degree from university of york and master's degrees from both city university of london and waric business school. with ian he is the coauthor of

cutting the knot a roadmap for british exit which won a 10,000 pound award in london in 2014 as part of their brexit prize competition. today, speaking here at heritage to launch the revised version o of that prize-winning esace which i believe is now available on line or will be very shortly. our commentator today is marion. the editor of human progress.org and senior policy analyst at cato institute. a common theme among our panelists, extensively published with major articles in leading publicications. he received his bamplet from the university of the whit waters rond in south africa and his phd from international relations from the university of andrews in great britain. finally, we're glad to welcome dr. victoria coats.

national security advisor to senator ted cruz. she received her bamplet from trinity college, the one in connecticut. her master's from williams college. and her phd from the university of pennsylvania. after blogging on foreign policy in the early 2000s under a pseudonym, she worked for former secretary of defense donald rumsfeld on his memoirs before becoming an adviser to former texas governor rick perry and then to senator cruz. earlier this year she published david's sling. so let me turn it over to this extremely accomplished and diversed panel for their comments after which we'll take questions. ian. >> thank you, ted, for that gracious introduction. i should clarify for the record that i was not directer of research as her majesty's.

i was a lowly executive officer in her majesty's department of transport. but it is a delight to be back at heritage today and to share the platform with my excellent coauthor roary and with marianne and victoria. today rory and i are releasing the updates to our 2014 iea brexit prize runner up submission entitled cutting the gordian knot. it's called that for a very good reason. the gordian knot for those unfamiliar was a fabled knot in the city in asia miner so complex that no one could unravel it. in many ways that is the perfect analogy for the situation in which britain now finds itself. for 40 years it has indwind itself more and more into the tangle of institution laws and regulations that is called the european union. now the british people have spoken.

they want out. her majesty's government finds itself having to unentangle that knot but this time there is no alexander to slice it open with one swish of the sword. neither rory nor i i tend to discuss the merits of brexit tate. that was discussion was for the campaign period and it has now been settled by the vote of the british people. talk about parliamentary and sovereignty challenges, but the reality is that the british people were given the choice and chose brexit. it will happen. that is not to say that brexit could not prove to be a disaster. it could if her majesty's government makes all the wrong decisions. a britain that shuts off shop against the rest of the world and retreats into some idea of splendid isolation will surely be a poorer place. every principal free market comics tells us that.

there are forces in british politics that want to return us to the economic conditions of the 1970s. and although those of us old enough to remember those conditions could tell them that they are stark raving mad for wanteding that, they are unlikely to listen. that is why roary and i believe that it is important that the new ministry and administrators to set out quickly the vision of an open welcoming britain one founded on well established principals of free trade and free enterprise that will attract investment from and do business on favorable terms with the entire world. not just a little corner of it called europe. so what do we think needs to be done? how can her majesty's government cut that knot and set out on the road towards becoming a successful exi as britain was in the olympics? first, we believe that her majesty's government has to invoke article 50 of the eu

treaties as a matter of international law. to go ahead and start unilaterally making new deals while still a member of the e.u. by its own rules would be a serious breach of the vienna convention and would make britain a pariah. but we must be certain what this means. it will mean according to article 50 itself, the end of the application of the treaties and the protocols there to in the state concern from that point on. it is an irrevocable step. it is imperative that her majesty's government has its ducks in the row before it takes this step. when her majesty government invokes article 50, the u.k. and the european council will negotiate the terms of the exit not the commission, although the commission may act on behalf of the council but the responsibility is given to the european council. and that will almost certainly include the phasing out of the application of eu programs to the u.k., the status of trade

arrangement for third parties and the status of u.k. and eu nationals resident in the other jurisdictions. yet simply negotiating does not mean that the deal is binding. article 50 requires the consent of the e.u. parliament to any deal. while the council is likely to be pragmatic because it is composed of the governments of member states with a lot to lose in the event of a bad deal the parliament may prove more political in its approach and could even prove vindictive. in that sense, the u.k. and the eu are stuck in a classic prisoner's dilemma. there are political reasons why each side might prefer to see the other sink but a better outcome will occur if they cooperate. let's hope the leasheds realize this and the u.k. leaders aren't tempted to ignore the realities on the ground. turning back to what her majesty's government must do to start pulling on the strings of

this gordyan knot the first thing domestically will be the repeal of the various acts of parliament that have entrenched the treat ears of the european union into british law. yet that is really just the first string. the bulk of the knot is made up of the huge number of laws and regulations primary and secondary legislation that have been encoded into british law as a result of the treaties and eu directives. the trouble is that repealing the entire lot, as desirable as that may sound at first hearing, is probably neither feasible nor desirable. plenty of it would have been encoded anyway. perhaps in a different form. and some of it representeds commitments to global terms of regulation. moreover, there has been the common practice of gold plating of regulations whereby regulations have been made more onerous. some have suggested that parliament should look at all

of these together and propose a great repeal bill or something similar. this would swamp all other parliamentary activity thanks to the sheer volume of the laws concerned. we don't actually know how many eu related laws there are. but between 1998 and 2004, germany incorporated 750 directives and 18,187 regulations into its legal code just in those six years. many of those were truly miner, for instance relating to specific weights and measures but that underscores that parliament cannot hope to deal with all of them at once. nor can we leave it up to government to partners. i am a refugee from the british civil service and i know how it works. civil servants are perennial victims, seen and unseen problems. but they have interest groups lobbying them all the time pushing the effects of a regulation in front of their eyes. but they rarely consider the

unseen effects of the dispersed costs of a regulation around the country. i would wager that it's best up to government departments we would see less than 5% of regulation repealed. that's why we need to look to a different model. and i suggest that should be the successful model the united states has for successfully depoliticizing the contentious issue. the basis realignment and closure commission. the bases commission, or brac, has a model whereby it takes decisions to close down military bases out of the hands of congress. the commission looks at the issue, holds hearings, and then presents a package of closures to congress for an up or down vote. congress can either accept their decision or will reject it. they can't amend it. so i think we need something similar with regulatory reduction in the u.k. so that is why we have proposed

setting up a royal commission of regulatory reduction, target of say reducing regulation by 25% which would provide massive benefits to the u.k. economy and presenting a package of reforms to parliament for action as a whole. by these means we suspect the u.k. could start reducing its regulations substantially within five years of brexit. the bench for nonregulations could go and the regulations of values could be kept despite the lobbying. one final word is important. another thing her majesty's government will have to decide very quickly is whether or not to apply for membership of the european economic area, associate membership by membership of the european trade area like switzerland or go it alone. many have described leaving the eea as the doomsday scenario and even respectable free

market think tanks suggest that the membership is an acceptable solution. i even thought so briefly myself but then rory administered the smelling salts and i put myself together. it's unacceptable for reasons first brings with it a significant degree of regulation. certainly britain will be outside of the common agricultural and fisheries policy and will regain control of its waters. plenty of regulation will continue to apply. and this time the u.k. will actually be without a seat at the table negotiating the terms. 24 relates to the second problem. the eu has a democratic deficit which was a major concern of the voters. this will be made even worse by the u.k. just being a member of the eea. and third, the eu is very likely to insist on free movement of people as a nonnegotiable aspect. it is getting talked with switzerland over this issue.

there is an exception for lichtenstein in the treaties but that is a particularly small straw to grasp. britain is not lichtenstein however much i wish it was. the two main motivating factors behind the vote we know was a desire to take control of britain's laws and borders. the eea may be many options but it is not brexit in these terms. on the eu side britain's membership wouldn't be brexit either. the european parliament has received advice that the correct way to achieve any amembership would be treaty change not the use of article 50. for the eu brexit has to mean brexit as well. article 50 ends all application of the treaties not just some of them. it is meant as a deterrent to exit and cannot be treated cavalierly. so brexit must mean brexit.

britain must leave the e.u. entirely. that is the road that presents the greatest dangers but it also in our view presents the greatest opportunity. and now roary will describe some of those opportunities. [applause] >> well, thank you very much. and thank you also to the heritage foundation for inviting me and ian to speak today about our plan, cutting the zpwordian knot. it is the second time we have written such a plan. the first time as ian laid out, was for the institute of economic affairs two years ago. and once a former british prime minister said a week was a long time in politics i think we can agree two years is a long time. and what have we achieved in that time? what i think we need to talk about now is the opportunity that the united kingdom has in embracing brexit.

ian and ted talked just now about the potential roads heads and the potential pittfalls the united kingdom could potentially fall into. i want to, like ian, address some key points. and i think we are never shy in the past two years to address the challenging questions and certainly with the project still on our back we were very keen to press the positive of brexit. indeed this also goes to policy areas such as immigration, agriculture, and inward investment. and what we want to do in this particular report is to lay out the british government what steps they can take to harness the potential and maximize the potential for britain in this world. immigration was a particularly

start anda contentious issue. it remains so today. but the united kingdom voted to take back control. that doesn't mean just take back control with a few safeguard measures here and there administered on the prospect of renewal. it actually means defining a system that fits the united kingdom by the united kingdom for the united kingdom. and to this we say there are benefits in what we term a tariff system, an immigration tariff system. now, over the course of many years brexit campaigns have been called many things. indeed, they have been called so many things i don't think ten minutes gives me enough time to relay at least part of them. but what we propose and what other people have proposed in a nationality neutral immigration system is by no means the

racist card that our opposition and our opponents have tried to cast us as. the idea of an imgration tariff however, we believe has a massive benefit in alleviating the burdensome regulation that a state-sponsored tariff -- state-sponsored point system might generate. indeed, we also believe that the system as administered in our plan will allow for net benefit to take into account the skills and the income generated from the highest skills individuals that come to the united kingdom. ultimately we want to generate the assistance where the best people from around the world want to come to britain can come to britain and finds their home in the united kingdom.

i think this lays out a plan without the stains sponsored burden that other proposed nationality neutral plans might generate. >> whether it be countries around the world none.u. and e.u. there are siggets improvements that can be made and generated through a free market approach. now, what ian and i have done is looked at these approaches, looked at other countries who have administered a protectionist measure and actually seen the limitations of such approaches in comparison to one guiding light. and that guiding light is the new zealand. the new zealand option has laid out the way the united kingdom

should proceed with regards to agriculture. it is a free market approach that has embraced globalism, has embraced free market, and embraced innovation and change. ever since the 1980s when the new zealand government said no, the new zealand farming sector has thrived. it hasn't just thrived because of the innovation that's been generation from it. it thrives because new zealand as a country has reached out to new markets and embraced new potential. as a result, new zealand's stock index has populated roughly 10% of its agricultural firms. indeed, agriculture has been so successful it is one of the top two industries in new zealand. and with the united kingdom branding power on the world stage i believe that such things as british beef newly introduced into the united states and indeed other such

materials can have a great branding prowess on the global stage. so the big one. investment. it is through project fear we were told that it would finish. effectively foreign investment would die on the brexit vote. well the opposite has been true. two months to the day that britain voted to leave the european union there have been 54 separate deals accumulating roughly 38 billion u.s. dollars. now, that to me does not seem like a slippery slope. indeed, i think it's something to embrace. and in this plan cutting the gordian knot i think the united kingdom if it embraces a global free market approach can generate more for the companies and the globally orientated ind

industries within the united kingdom and to the benefit of both its people and its trading partners. one final thought on that. because trading partners is key in this particular realm. we have friends in the united kingdom around the world. this is something that the campaigns during the actual e.u. referendum was putting on the table. we have friends around the world and far from the isolationist position that some of the remaining indeed advocated we believe that the united kingdom through maximizing its global potential through financial sectors and elsewhere can become a greater trading nation and indeed to utter the words of winston churchill embrace the open sea. as a result, ladies and gentlemen, i commend the cutting the gordion knot publicication and its revised

version, and as ian said you can download it. thank you very much. thanks to all of you. let me first congratulate ian and rory on a thoughtful and informative paper. i am particularly grateful for the authors for their valiant effort in finally explaining to me the difference between the european council, the council of the european union and the council of europe, which are all different. and if you can grasp the distinction between the three then particle physics should be a walk in the park. but joking aside the paper does provide an excellent

service in outlining the different challenges that britain faces in extra kating itself from the eu and the options before british lawmakers in meeting tose challenges. now, i have known ian for many years and i'm happy to report that we see eye to eye on most things. and as such i don't have any serious disagreements with the paper which are combaced on clear and time-tested free market principles. that of course is also a risk for most people including european and british decision makers to not see the world through the prism of free market economics and may pursue policies that will not result in further liberalization of the british economy or optimal results for the british people. in fact, the possibility of backsliding on economic liberalization was always in my view the best argument raised

by some thoughtful libertarian and conservative critics of brexit. put differently, all the good suggestions that ian and roary offer in terms of policy reform after brexit may go unheeded. and yet, i firmly believe that brexit was a risk worth taking. centralization of power in brussels just as centralization of power in washington increases the risk of systemic failure. if wrong policy is enforced for everyone, be it the euro in the e.u. or very high federal corporate tax rate here in the united states, then everyone will suffer the negative consequences of bag foreign policy decisions. and that is why competition is better. unfortunately, the concept just as the concept of state powers here in the united states has

been tossed aside in favor of more decisionmaking at the center. there's a strong case for maximum policy autonomy of the smallest possible territorial units and jurisdictions which are much better suited to react in a timely fashion to rapidly challenging circumstances in a highly competitive global economy. as opposed to relying on large couple ber some units which suffer from competing preferences and collective action problems. a free trade deal between the e.u. and canada which for example, is held up by of all places romania. and so, yes, britain may opt for policies but that too will be a useful lesson for other countries, whether they are happy in the e.u. or whether

they are thinking about leaving the e.u. whatever happens in the u.k. the e.u. will probably never be the same. i think that there is a likelihood that we have seen the coming and going of what one might call the peak eu. prior to june 23rd referendum on british membership of the e.u. british voters were subjected to a barrage of warnings and dire criticismims about what would happen to the british economy and people if britain left. experts, foreign and domestic, predicted recession. and urged voters to remain. britain they argued would be isolated and it might even, so the argument went, lose its seat on the united nations security council. and then the british people voted to leave the e.u. and the response was by and large mild and measured. to everybody's surprise much of

the blame for the british withdrawal from the e.u. was placed on the head of the bureaucrats in brussels. for example, the astonian president said that the behavior had been aobamaable. the foreign minister whose name i will not attempt to pronounce said that the european institution starts to admit they made a mistake and that at least a part of the european leadership should stand aside. the prime minister said the british people have reacted to european policy and that nobody has the right to be angry with the british voters. the czech foreign minister said that it was not the right man for the job and that somebody in the e.u. should be thinking about quiting. the hnggarne prime minister blamed brexit on the e.u. inept tude in handling the mass immigration crisis. and together the countries called for the e.u. executive

to be reend in. now, consider the engine of european integration. france and germany. only a week after brexit the french finance minister stated that everything will be on the table when negsshating with the british. implying that britain would be offered if it wanted to membership of the single market on terms acceptable to the british electorate. i personally agree that that shouldn't in fact be an option. the republican party canled date for french presidency has called for new balance of power between brussels and the member states. german ministers have advocated for the trimming of the powers of the commission. so why did that happen? well great britain may be leaving the e.u. but it has not

fallen off the edge of the earth. the country still remains the fifth largest and the fifth largest military power. it is in the interest of all of its trading partners that britain is safely anchored in an international economic system. in or out of the e.u. britain will still be a recipient of 10% or rather germany will still account for 10% of the british imports and france will account for 6% of british imports. similarly, in or out of nato britain remains an important military power and the second most important member of nato. as such, central european countries especially in poland and also the baltics will do whatever is necessary in order to keep britain happy in order to deter from vladmir putin's russia. national interests of the european countries differ greatly.

former commune communist countries for example are much more fearful of russia than say france or portugal. but the national interests of the e.u. member states do intersect in one crucial way. they all want a good post brexit relationship with britain. some have want it for commercial reasons some for reasons of national defense. put simply, national government s face incentives that are different to the incentives faced by bureaucrats. the chief objective of the latter is the pursuit of an ever closer union and they appear to be willing to punish those who make the achievement of their goal more difficult. but national identities of the european states have been separately and often in competition with one another for hundreds sometimes thousands of years. concome tantly, pan european does not exist. the vast majority of the

european peoples for them being european remains a geographicle, not a political distinction. that is, because people's identities are not formed at least in europe by attachments to abtract principles of liberty, equality, fraternt and such. but by cultural religious historicle and linguistic ties. in conclusion, the reactions of the european states to the outcome of the british referendum on eu membership clearly shows that the national interests and consequently the nation state remains the basic motivation and basic building blocks of international relations and of european relations and likely to remain so. thank you very much. [applause]

>> thank you for these fascinating perspectives. i don't want to take a lot of time this january because i'm really here to learn. congress has been in session only briefly since brexit took place. they're coming back to work in two weeks. run for your lives. so this will be a real opportunity for us to explore some ideas as both historian of -- and a practitioner of democracy i'm acutely conscious, particularly in recent months of the challenges that democracy presents. but at the same time, it's been wonderful to see a very positive example of democracy in action and what we very much want to explore on the hill is the opportunity that this presents to us. and as ian was talking about the gordyan knot, i w