- [voiceover] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by: mfi foundation. improving the quality of life within our community. also, by hillco partners. a texas government affairs consultancy. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. - hi, i'm evan smith. he's a 2016 democratic presidential candidate who formerly served as the governor of maryland and the mayor of baltimore. he's martin o'malley. this is overheard. (upbeat music) (applause) - [voiceover] let's be honest, is this about the ability to learn or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly? how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa and-- - you could say that he'd made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it. you know, you saw a problem and over time took it on and-- let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak. are you gonna run for president? i think i just got an f from you actually. (applause) (upbeat music)

- governor o'malley, welcome. - hey, good to be back. - nice to see you sir, - thank you. - is this the race you wanted to run? is it going the way you wanted it to go? - i've got 'em right where i want 'em. - is that right, you do. (laughter) - no. - no place to go but up. a friend of mine said, "you know if they hatold y" and i had been traveling arou lteni tpe. i ring the phrase over and over again throughout the country, "new leadership and getting things done." and so a friend of mine said, "if they had told you a year before "that there'd only be three of you now "left in this race "and described the status of the other two candidates, "you'd be saying to yourself, "'i've got to get into this race.'" so i truly believe that there is a tremendous generational yearning for change in our country. and i believe that americans want a leader with a new perspective and with a track record of pulling people together to get things done, not a leader that will take us back to divisive ideologies, not a polarizing figure from our past, but someone who, as a mayor, as a governor,

has a track record of getting progressive things done rather than just talking about them. so i feel like this race for president really just began on our side once they finally let us start having debates. - right and if you go back and look at the previous cycles, there's a famous twitter feed now that tells you who was leading on this day in previous cycles. it doesn't look like the eventual nominees in most cases in either party. - yeah, that's true. one of the rules of, and rules can always be broken, so this could be the first time it ever turns out that the polls in november look like caucus night. but i don't think so. and we've seen many-- - lot of time left. - we've seen many examples of that. yeah, in iowa, the first contest for the caucuses. that jj dinner last week was really the turning point where we start heading into compare and contrast. we're done with the introduction of the candidates and now caucus-goers need to decide-- - let's sample the products. - right, and now they expect us to explain why we would be better for our country, in these times, than the other candidates. - and we're going to spend our time

for the next little while doing that, but you mentioned divisive ideology d polarizing figure from our past. are you speaking about anybody in particular? - yeah, i'm talking about bernie sanders and i'm talking about hillary clinton. - subtle, very good. (laughter) - both of whom i respect. but i'd like you just to kind of imagine in this very divided, polarized time that we've been going through as a nation, which of the three of us has the best shot at pulling people together as president of the-- - and has a record of doing that. - and has a record of doing it. there were things we got done in our state, some of which we would have only accomplished with some republican votes. and so i don't believe that republicans are my enemies, as secretary clinton said in the first debate. republicans aren't our enemies. they're our neighbors. they're our friends, or sometimes our uncles. they're the person that shows up when you dial 911 and need a paramedic right away. - but as a practical matter, governor, the way the government is constructed, you can't get things done, today especially, without republicans. - that's true. and while it is also true that congress

never remains permanent. there's always a new congress. it is true that in order to come out of these divided times, we need some fresher, more large-minded thinking about the truth that we're all in this together and we have to help each other, especially to accomplish some pretty basic things, like getting wages to go up again now that this recovery is under way. - we sat together on this stage three years ago almost to the day. it was right after president obama had been reelected, mid-november of 2012 and asked you-- - that was a tough reelection. - it was a tough reelection. and you expressed some relief at the result and you were happy for the future and what it said about the country, and we'll come back to those themes in a second. but at the end of the interview, i said to you "okay now 2012 is over, let's talk about 2016. "there were murmurs out here that "martin o'malley may be thinking about "running for president. "are you considering it?" and you allowed us how time to see if that works itself out. i asked you about hillary clinton specifically back then. went back and watched this yesterday. i said, "what about secretary clinton?" you said, "i think she's a really good person. "i think she'd be a really good president. "i supported her back in '08." you didn't say, "i won't run if she runs." but you were quite complimentary.

what's changed? - i still like secretary clinton. i don't dislike secretary clinton and i'm not running to attack secretary clinton. one of the big things that has changed was the wall street crash of 2008. and secretary-- - that was post endorsing her in '08, right? - no-- - that would have been before-- - yes, it was post endorsing her in 2008. and we still haven't delivered on the promise that we made to people that we would reign in the big banks. and one of the main divisions in this race, in terms of my perspective and secretary clinton's, is she said on the stage the other night she represented wall street. she still does represent wall street. and she alone among the three of us believe that it's okay to have these giant, mega banks, which went from controlling the equivalent of 15% of our gdp to then controlling 65% of our gdp, to still have us on the hook for them if they make bad bets. i believe and senator sanders believes that we should

be implementing a modern version of glass steel to protect our main street economy from ever being wrecked again by wall street. she does not believe that. on issues having to do with immigration, we have some differences in perspective and in outlook. i said that we should accept the central american refugee kids that were coming to our country, fleeing death gangs. she said, "send them back." before one audience, she will talk about immigration reform and the need for it. before another audience, she'll use the term "illegal immigrants" and boast about having voted to build a wall and barb wire fence. i believe the enduring symbol of our country's the statue of liberty, not the barb wire fence. i believe new american immigrants make us better in every generation. and these differences, as well as some that will play out in this next debate, i hope, and i'm confident, on foreign policy and the military adventures-- - these are not immaterial differences. - not immaterial differences. - because most people assume, governor, that you and senator sanders and secretary clinton more or less agree on the big issues.

and that really it's about, as they say in the ncaa, style points. this is not really about the substance, that it's more about the way you would approach the job. but in fact, you've identified some areas in which you all do not agree. - oh i think there's some substantive differences here. and i believe that that's what the american public is scanning the horizon to figure out-- - that's going to be the choice that is people approach, let's stay with immigration, you mentioned immigration. you have put a very big stake in the ground on immigration as an issue in this campaign. we're sitting here just a couple days after the fifth circuit swatted back at the president over executive action on deportations. you actually have said prior to this most recent court ruling, that you believe executive action is one way to deal with the deportations problem. and you had even said in anticipation of what might come, "i believe that whatever the courts say, "this is in fact a legal maneuver for presidents to use." and that you would use it as president. - i would, and i would go further than president obama has gone on this-- - talk about that. - and i believe from what i've read, i've read that the news accounts of the decision it appears to be that they're swatting it back

on a procedural issue rather than the substantive-- - but it reinforces the idea that his opponents have said all along, you know, the president overreached, that this is not the right purview for a president. - they say that about president obama all time. - they do. - i don't think that any president's ever faced a more obstructionist congress or one that feels quite as much license to act unreasonably as president obama has-- - so what makes you think this is the right way to go? - i believe that we need to call people to immigration reform not because it's something to be done for this constituency over here. i believe that it's something important for the economy of the united states. if we pass immigration reform, it will make wages go up on average $250 for the average household. why? because you're getting 11 million people, in many times off-the-books jobs, onto the open economy of the united states of america. and i believe these deportations that we're engaged in, i suppose, putting it kindly, that the thought was that if the democratic administration

was very, very hard on deportations and very, very tough on the border, that that would bring our republican brothers and sisters the most and intransigent among them back to the table and negotiate. well if that were true, that would have happened years ago because we're deporting in a mindless way and breaking up families more than we ever had before. - well in fact the numbers, governor, are such that the obama administration claims with some glee we deported more people in our time in the office than president bush did and that migrations over the border, at least at some point until recently were at near zero. - right. - right. so they actually think they've gotten the problem, or had said they had the problem under control. - yeah, i believe the, but think about each of those deportations. think about the numbers of families that have been broken up and torn up. breaking up families does not help the united states of america. it is not in the interest to the united states of america. and what works contrary to the interest of the united states of america is to detain women and children

behind barb wire fence and chain link fence for months and months on end. there are hunger strikes now in our country because of people we are interning without charge and without due process. and it's wrong. it cuts against who we are as a nation. - the opponents of the president on immigration have said, among other things, well at least president bush back in, i think it was '06, had a plan and the plan was sort of sent down to congress, up or down that was it, that this president really hasn't even put a plan forth, that he just basically leapt over the plan stage to some kind of action-- - is that true? i thought early on in his administration he had put in a comprehensive immigration reform bill. - his opponents also wished-- - i think it didn't get heard. - didn't get heard, right. - but i think he had one. - his opponents also say the better course here is to secure the border first before we discuss any of these other component parts of what might be comprehensive immigration reform. don't do this all at once, do it in pieces. - yeah that's the trap of the old thinking. the old thinking is very dual thinking. the whole world is a zero some either, or.

either you do this first or i'm not going to do that. the truth is, and i've had a lot of experience, the hold time i was mayor and as governor, i was elected by my republican and democratic colleagues in both organizations to be one of their two leaders on homeland security. you have to protect the borders, and you also have to implement a sensible system of comprehensive immigration reform, which gets me to one other big difference here. i mean, both secretary clinton and senator sanders had an opportunity to pass comprehensive immigration reform when they were in the united states senate under george w. bush. and neither of them really stepped up to the plate to get that done. so i think this is a big issue. and if you talk to younger people, if you wanna know where our country's going, talk to young people under 30. you'll rarely find them bashing immigrants like donald trump. and in their words, in their language, the word "foreign" has almost become an antique word. - this is a generational difference.

- this is the generational-- - for the young people. you mentioned the time you spent as governor of maryland. let me go to crime as an issue. so as governor of maryland among other things, you saw violent crime rates in the state go down. - drug them down. - passed significant-- - barometric pressure. - no it was done not passively, but actively on your part. - very actively. - you worked to pass, successfully pass, the kind of gun legislation that doesn't even really get a hearing these days at the federal level. assault weapons banned, background checks. you also got the state, not the first try or the second try, but eventually you got a ban on the death penalty. - yeah we repealed the death penalty. - [smith] in the state of maryland. - only with some republican votes. - so is this an agenda on criminal justice policy that is sell-able to the rest of the country. - oh i believe it is. and i have put forward a new agenda for criminal justice reform and it's informed by a lot of hard experience, you know. when i ran for mayor of baltimore in 1999, it was not because our city was doing well. they were doing whole movies, tv series, about how violent our city was.

the attitude in our city politically was last person out turn off the lights. and against that backdrop, i ran for mayor. i brought people together, not over democratic and republican divisions, but if you wanna talk about divisions, try discussing public safety given our legacy of slavery and racism in america and how intertwined that is with law enforcement. but we, nonetheless, brought people together, did a lot more on drug treatment, did a lot more to roll back the open-air drug markets, and we put our city on a path for the biggest crime reduction of any major city in america over the next 10 years. but the search for the things that work and the things that don't did not stop just because we got the, started saving lives and getting the numbers moving in the right direction 'cause we never, you know sometimes people say, "you have any regrets?" yeah, my biggest regret is i couldn't have done more. i mean it was a very, very stubborn problem. and so as governor, we did, i was able to do more. we cut juvenile homicides in half 'cause we controlled our department of juvenile justice,

used parole and probation and the application of big data so that we zeroed in on the truly repeat predators and front-loaded the supervision. we passed the comprehensive gun safety legislation that you mentioned. i decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana and restored voting rights to 52,000 people, and we were able to reduce our incarceration rate to 20 year lows. - but come back, governor, to the question i asked. are these things, which were achievable through hard work and working across party lines at the state level, given the politics of the country now, the make-up of congress, and the likely make-up of congress if you were to be elected president. the polling nationally shows that the public overwhelmingly supports a ban on assault weapons, a ban on high-capacity magazines, and some form of increased background checks for gun sales. and yet that poll result not withstanding, there's been no action on those priorities even after incident and incident and incident over the last number of years. - yeah the nra has this, you know, the nra's kinda set up at the pass.

and sadly in our case, the passes are once representative house of representatives. and our congress, they have a lot of muscle. in fact, senator sanders voted to give immunity to gun manufacturers. - one difference between the two of you-- - they're pretty stark points. - is on guns. you know, we're sitting here in the state of texas where people consider the second amendment really to be the first amendment, right? the second amendment is enough of an argument for a lot of things in the area of gun rights. you know, no gun legislature, we're gonna do the second amendment trumps everything else. so what do you say to people, you'd have to be president of the entire country, including a lot of people who are gun owners and hunters and you know, what do you say to those people when they say, "this guy wants to take my guns away." - the nra told all of their members the same thing in maryland. we have rural areas in our state, large rural areas, the eastern shore, maryland, western maryland, southern maryland, and the nra was saying that "the governor wants to take away your guns, "the governor wants to take away your guns."

so i pulled the hunting permits of everybody that was registered to hunt in our state and i wrote to them myself and i said, "thank you for being hunters. "thank you for paying your permitting and licensing fee." "without that, we couldn't preserve our open spaces. "now let me tell you about the falsehoods and the lies "the nra is telling you." and by the time we got done passing the bill, and it wasn't easy, hallways were jammed, traffic around state circle was shut down by the numbers of people that were flowing in there. but by the time we got it done, they didn't even bother to send it to popular referendum, which they could've done to overturn it because we had grown such a broad consensus by-- - right, you won the argument. - we won the argument. and nobody in maryland to this day has lost their ability to hunt or take their kids out and teach them how to hunt. - despite everything that they say going in. - despite everything they said going in. - let me ask you about entitlement reform and specifically on social security. this is another area where you have sought to differentiate yourself from secretary clinton in particular.

you have doubled down on social security, on the promise of social security. you've said, "we won't entertain an increase "in the eligibility age for social security." you want to increase benefits, not reduce them. and you've called into question her commitment to protecting social security. talk about what you believe and why you doubt what she believes. - sure, for my part, there was a time when we were all told, not too long ago, like retirement is a three-legged stool. remember this argument? - yeah. - your personal savings, your pension from your employer, and then the third part of the stool is social security. well now that stool has one leg and it's social security for a whole lot of people. so i believe that by scrapping the cap on incomes above $265,000, that we can expand social security benefits on average $65 a month and in fact, we can increase them by larger amounts for poor people. - how are you gonna pay for it? - by scrapping the cap on incomes above $265,000. - that will be sufficient? - that will be sufficient. let me give you one other thing though that even further extends the life of social security,

which most people do not talk about, and that is also comprehensive immigration reform, getting more people on the books, paying in also expands social security. - so are the rending of garments over the future of social security, you know, the concern that somehow this is a system that is gonna collapse under its own weight or that we can't afford after a certain number of years to maintain this system we have? are those concerns legitimate? or is it scare tactics? - i believe that it's overblown and i believe it's scare tactics. there's things we need to do, as we have in evergeneration, to make sure that social security delivers on its promise. and i've proposed that, in other words we stop taxing dollars above $118,000. i said people should start paying in again to social security once they reach $265,000. but no, this notion that that's the entitlement that's hurting our country is wrong. there is one huge entitlement though that is hurting our country. - and that is? - and that is the entitlement that the super wealthy

among us feel to pay a far lower rate of taxes in their income and also on capital gains. - again three years-- - and that's something we can no longer afford-- - three years ago when you were here we talked about that and you were quite straightforward about your belief that we should raise taxes on the wealthiest in this country. the president of course had campaigned in 2012 and was reelected having said himself we gotta raise taxes on the wealthy. it's hard to run for election when somebody can point to you as he wants to raise your taxes. and you go, "yeah, i do." or at least in some parts of the, so how do you rebut this tax and spend democrat thing. that has been a sufficient branding to hurt people running at the national level for many cycles. - and when i ran for reelection in maryland, let me back up. i ran for election, i inherited a $1.7 billion deficit on about a $20 billion operating fund. and we had to pull people together to do a lot of unpopular things. one of which was to ask the top 14% of us to pay more. another one was to ask all of us to pay another penny on the sales tax. but for that--

- well, it was a representative government and then i had to go back and justify it at reelection when i ran against the same republican incumbent governor who i had defeated. and instead of winning by 7% as we did the first time, we won by 14% the second time because i made the argument that look, in the meantime, we have made our public schools the number one public schools in america, a distinction we held five years in a row. we went four years in a row without a pennies increase to college tuition. and the u.s. chamber of commerce, which hardly ever says nice things about democratic governors anywhere, named us the number one state in america for innovation and entrepreneurship. we had a better rate of job creation coming out of the recession than virginia or pennsylvania, who are mostly trying to cut their way to prosperity. no great people ever cut their way to prosperity or gave their kids a better future by weakening their country or their state. so that was the argument i made and people seemed to listen. that doesn't mean anybody liked paying more in taxes,

but at the end of my time, the average taxes paid by a maryland family were the same at the end of my administration as they were at the beginning. - despite the increase. - with the exception that wealthier people paid more. - so president martin o'malley will raise taxes. - i will do everything in my power to restore the investments in our country that makes our country stronger. and the clearest way i see to do that, maybe other people have better ideas. i don't understand, nor does warren buffett, why he's paying a lower rate of taxes than his secretary. - could you get a tax increase for the wealthy through a republican congress? - i think if we campaign on it properly in the course of this general election, we can build the popular support and the understanding to make it happen. the republican party since reagan has been very good at whenever, at making sure that whenever people, whenever we hear the word "taxes" everyone assumes that's coming out of their pocket. but the numbers of people that pay that much, much lower capital gains rate

is a relatively small number, but it represents a whole lot of money. ben carson was fond of saying, "you can't put a high enough tax on the very wealthy "in our country to make up for the debt." well actually ben, you can. (laughter) and it's called math. - and you're the guy to do it? - and i'm the guy to do it. - you're the guy to do it. is this another area of differentiation between you and your fellow democratic candidates? do you all see the world the same way on taxes? - no, it's clearly a differentiation i believe with secretary clinton. the furthest i've heard her go is talking about that relatively small carried interest loophole for hedge fund managers. - so again, this is a choice between you and her on this issue. - and i usually hear her, you know, talking about more tax cuts and tax cuts will make you strong. - is president obama an asset for the democratic nominee eventually? you know, every election is ostensibly about the next four to eight years, but really it's about the last four to eight years. so you're gonna be running coming out of eight years of president obama.

unusual for the same party to keep the white house for a third four-year term. is he an asset? do you run on his record? - yeah. we have to run on his record. and he is an asset. and i would be proud to run on his record. the number, no president came in with higher hopes, higher expectations, or a bigger map on the problems. and he saved us from plunging into a second great depression. we've now created 65 months in a row of positive job growth. and along the way, extended healthcare coverage to most all americans. and so all of those are positive things to run on and we would make a mistake, i agree with vice president biden on this, we would make a mistake if we failed to run on the progress made of these last eight years. our great challenge though is this, we have to own that good news, but we also have to own the remaining problem and the bad news, which is that 70% of us are earning the same or less than we were 12 years ago. and that's not the way our economy

or our country's supposed to work. and it's why, despite the progress, that people generally are more pessimistic about whether or not their kids are going to enjoy fuller lives with more opportunity than they were even four years ago because they extrapolate out, what if my income continues to go down even as i work harder? and that's why our party is the party that has to own the progress we've made, acknowledge the truth of our reality today, and put forward the ideas on restoring wage and labor policies back to the center of our economic choices that will make wages go up for all american families. - we have about a minute and a half left. stipulating everything you just said, i look back at the last seven years, we seem to have gone from yes we can to make america red again though. 12 governors, 13 senators, 69 members of the u.s. house, more than 900 state legislative seats have gone from democrat to republican in the last seven years. yeah, the democrats control the white house, but increasingly republicans control the country. how do you make that argument to this country after seven years? - the republican party have been very disciplined

in their strategy to take back state legislatures, to take back governors' offices. we, on the other hand, i don't know exactly why, are a bit stuck inside the beltway of washington when it comes to party building. we act as if if the whole ball game is congress. and it's a big part of it, but if you lose democratic governors, i mean, and president obama's after his first two years, we did not protect the democratic governor's races like we should have. and on the eve of redistricting, we went from having 30 out of 50 to having 20 out of 50. - and not only that affects congress because if they control redistricting, then they control congress. and in fact-- - saddled with a very obstructionist congress for the next 10 years. all of us did. - well we're a little bit away from the first votes being cast. as they say, the only poll that matters is election day. - that's right. - [smith] well good luck, governor, thank you for being here. - thank you. - good to see you. governor martin o'malley. (applause) thank you. (applause) - [voiceover] we'd love to have you join us in the studio. visit our website at klru.org/overheard

to find invitations to interviews, q&a's with out audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes. - for a relatively small amount of money compared to how much our federal budget is, we could have publicly financed congressional campaigns. and the other good news on this redistricting front, is the supreme court has said, "bipartisan redistricting commissions "are constitutional and a good way to go." - [voiceover] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by: mfi foundation. improving the quality of life within our community. also, by hillco partners. a texas government affairs consultancy. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. (upbeat melody)