The Ricochet Podcast - 2015 National Review Ideas Summit: Conversation with Gov. Bobby Jindal and Heather Higgins, Independent Women’s Voice

Episode Date: May 2, 2015

In this conversation with Gov. Bobby Jindal and Heather Higgins, Independent Women’s Voice. Governor Jindal hammered President Obama today over his threats to veto legislation demanding transparency and the inclusion of anti-terror pledges in the Iranian nuclear deal, saying he “wish[es] Obama would negotiate with Iran as hard as he’s negotiating with the U.S. Senate.”... Source

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Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie Just briefly, I'm Heather Higgins. I run Independent Women's Voice and chair Independent Women's Forum. The governor has a far more illustrious resume than mine. He's not only a Rhodes Scholar who worked, I think, at McKinsey, was it? That's right.

But then was a congressman and he worked for Tommy Thompson at HHS in the George Bush years. He became the first ever Indian American governor elected in 2007 in the wonderful state of Louisiana and then had a just landslide victory in 2011. He is now term limited, so who knows what he might do next? It's such a question. But let me start with sort of something to set the tone. When you were looking back on your years as a governor, what is the policy idea that you implemented of which you are most proud? And what is the thing that you have not yet been able to accomplish yet as a policy idea that you think will be most impactful and most important? Well, first of all, thank you, Heather, and thank you all for being here.

I want to thank National Review for hosting us. I know folks have traveled from across the country as well as we've got some folks from here in D.C. It is a great question. I'm in my eighth year now, and it is at the end of my second term. You do start thinking about which policies will have the greatest impact going forward. If I had to pick one, because our overarching promise to the people of Louisiana

was that we would make Louisiana a better place, the best place to raise a family, to create good-paying jobs, we pursued a host of policies. If I had to pick one that's going to have the longest-term impact, I would say it would have to be statewide school choice. And we fought for that. Thank you. We fought for that every single year since I've been governor. In 2008, we started in New Orleans

with a citywide scholarship program. We then took it statewide in 2012. And every single year, we've expanded that. What does that mean? Why is that so important? Well, to me, what school choice means is the dollars follow the child instead of making the child follow the dollar. Every child learns differently. In New Orleans, over 90% of our children are in charter schools, highest percentage of any city in the country. In five years, post Katrina, we doubled the percentage of children that were doing reading and math on grade level. So to all the skeptics that tell you it'll take a generation to improve education, I'm here to tell you children only grow up once. They only have one chance to get a great education,

but it's not just charter schools. So we also have the scholarship program where parents can choose to send their kids to private schools or parochial schools or dual enrollment programs or online programs. We also have traditional public schools. We have school choice and we also have course choice. You can start your day in a public school and you can take private courses through the day and the dollars follow the child so you can take it from a private course provider in person or online again. The reason this is so powerful, we all say we believe in equality of educational opportunity in America. It's not the reality. The truth is if you live in a zip code where you happen to live in a nice neighborhood with wealthy families,

chances are your public schools are really good or your parents can afford to send you to great schools. If you, however, live in a poor zip code, chances are that you're probably trapped in a failing public school. And that's not right. It's not right for an aspirational society. It's not right for a society that prides itself on equality. It's also not an opportunity, but it's also not right for a self-governing republic, where we need the next generation of children to be able to grow up and make good decisions for themselves and for others. I will say this. It is a politically contentious issue, and I'm thrilled to see other states be pursuing this as well.

The teacher unions were at least honest in Louisiana. One of their leaders came out during this fight and said that parents don't have a clue when it comes to making choices for their kids. I want you to think about it. Think about how offensive that is. But that really summarizes the views of the left. They don't think we,

as American people, are smart enough to buy our own health insurance, to choose our own schools, to have Second Amendment rights, to have religious liberty rights. If you live in New York City, to drink a big gulp, you just don't have, you're not smart enough to exercise those rights and freedoms. Final thing I'll say about this fight is that we had to fight Eric Holder in federal court to preserve school choice, even though about 90% of the kids are minority kids. These are kids that would otherwise be going to C, D, or F public schools. They use the laws designed to protect vulnerable kids to try to stop us from doing this. We also, I also will say, we faced teacher unions who led protests, recalls. It got so bad, we used to tell my kids, we have young kids,

we used to tell our kids all those protests were just parades for daddy. We said, that's why they got daddy's picture out there on the placards. Now they're old enough, I don't think they believe that anymore. But it is worth doing, and it is something that I think we need to see happen across more of the country in terms of the issue that I wish we had gotten more traction on. So I made a commitment to our people, we wouldn't raise taxes, period, as long as I'm government. We haven't. We've reduced the size of government 26%.

We have cut our budget $9 billion. We've got 30,000 fewer state employees than the day I started. And we've got a robust private sector economy. But I also tried. So we haven't raised taxes. We did the largest income tax cut in our state's history, but a couple of years ago I tried to get rid of the income tax altogether. And I was expecting the opposition from some of the Democrats in the legislature. I was more surprised by the opposition of some of the Republicans.

And the pushback we got was twofold. One, it was that, well, if we're going to do all this work on tax reform, if it ends up with more money for government to spend, then it's worth doing. And I said, no, this is not about raising money for government. This is about growing the private sector economy. They felt like it wasn't worth, and we had instead Republicans were trying to, some Republicans, not all, they were trying to push tax increases at the time. The second thing that we encountered, and I think this is true in D.C. as well,

in Louisiana, we have got some of the lowest taxes in the country. We're about fifth lowest in combined state-local, depending on how you measure it, state-local tax burden. But we have very high rates and we have very high credits and rebates. So as one example, we rebate about 90% of our corporate income tax, we give it back. You know, at that point, why collect it? You know, why are we going to the trouble of collecting all these taxes? But the problem is everybody's against, everybody's against credits and rebates unless it's theirs. So everybody's for a lower, flatter tax code without, you know, all these carve-outs, except their their carve outs aren't special.

See, everybody else's are special interests, but when you start trying to touch theirs, then that's a different story. And so I regret, I'm glad we cut the income tax. I would have liked to have gotten rid of it altogether. I think it would have made us even more competitive. We're right next door to Texas. We're not that far from Florida. So even though our taxes are very low, I don't think many, a lot of folks who are outside

of our state don't get beyond the sticker price. They see the high rates, they don't read the fine print that he get it rebated. And you shouldn't have to bother with all the paperwork to get the rebate back. Why not just get rid of the tax altogether? My warning to the Republican Party is we've got to be careful. We're historically not the party of big government. We cannot become the party of big business either. And it's not okay for us to say to the Democrats, we don't like it when you favor special interests, but it's okay when we do it for people we like. So we made some progress. I would have liked to have seen us gone even further there.

Well, Milton Friedman always made the point that the enemies of freedom were not just government but business. That's right. Because in that pursuit of interest, if you harness it to the power of government to either prevent competition or to give preference, you have, in effect, limited markets in a significant way. So to that end, if you had your druthers, how would you go about overcoming the problem of the special interest? And we have a corporate and personal tax system that I think you would argue is not conducive to American prosperity. How would you go about changing those?

And the other thing that we never talk about, but probably is a great problem, is the regulatory leviathan that has been unleashed. It operates on the precautionary principle. It is incredibly inhibitive of growth and opportunity, and yet it is perceived as being well-intentioned, and if you are opposed to it, then you want more death, right, in the perspective of the left. So what would be your approaches for handling those challenges writ large? Because you only have three minutes. And those are both great questions. Let's start with the regulatory side and come back to tax side. And having served at HHS, you're right, I had the privilege of working there for a couple of years.

I saw this firsthand. Whether under Republican or Democratic presidents, the temptation is for the cabinet officials, they're parachuted in. You have a handful of political appointees, agencies that may have thousands of employees that were there before you got there and are going to be there long after you're gone. And the danger is that for many political appointees, the temptation is to go native. Instead of being there to proselytize on behalf of the president's agenda, the temptation is to go and start defending the turf and the bureaucracy. When I was at McKinsey, there was a saying, if a CEO buys an $800 hammer, everything starts looking like a nail because you want to start using the power. So if you spend a lot of money on something, you want to use it.

If you have a large bureaucracy, you have a lot of power, the temptation is to want to use it. I think the answer on the regulatory overreach is more than just electing. I don't want to elect conservative Republicans, but I think we need to make fundamental structural changes. So, for example, let's actually shrink the size of these agencies, their funding, their powers. Look at the Department of Education. There's a debate now over No Child Left Behind, the reauthorization of the ESEA Act. I think No Child Left Behind was a mistake in the first place, but in the reauthorization, even the Republican bills are much too incremental. If we really want to shrink the Federal Department of Education, governors today complain that Arne Duncan is using the power of the federal government

to try to coerce us, at least this Republican, not every Republican, this Republican governor argues he's using the powers under the No Child Left Behind waivers, the Race to the Top grants, and these other strings to try to coerce us in a common core and other policies we don't want to do. But the temptation would be there for a Republican Secretary of the Department of Education. So I think that in a reauthorization, we should say the Department of Education should be focused on deregulation. It should be focused on transparency. It should be focused on true civil rights, not what they try to do to Louisiana

against school choice. And that's it. They spend billions of dollars, for example, on teacher quality programs that have no measurable impact on teacher quality. Either cut the funding or block grant it to states, but don't continue these programs. Title I dollars should be not only portable, but divisible. Portable to private schools or wherever the parents choose to send their children, but divisible by courses. And the same with the other wraparound services. The same thing is true of the EPA. The same thing is true of so many of these agencies. So first, we have to shrink statutorily the size and the power and the authority of these agencies. Secondly, I think there needs to be mandatory cost-benefit analysis on these regulations by a third party. Third, I think any

regulation with a significant impact, whether you say it's, you know, whether it's $100 million, whatever the threshold is, has to go to an explicit vote of Congress. Fourth, we need to stop these sue and settle practices, where these agencies will fund the groups that sue them, then they go and settle out of court, and then they claim, well, look, we were forced in the settlement to do what they really wanted to do in the first place. So if we're going to roll back the regulatory burdens, I think it takes structural changes, but you're exactly right. As a governor, I can tell you we have seen the impact. For example, the EPA is one of the biggest threats to private sector job creation through regulatory overreach.

And this president has made it very clear if you can't get it done by passing a law, you'll do it through regulations. The temptation for Republicans is, well, if we get a Republican president, we'll use, for example, on school choice. I don't want a Republican secretary of the Department of Education forcing local school districts to pursue policies I might like. I happen to be for teacher evaluation programs. I happen to be for getting rid of tenure based on seniority. I happen to be for paying teachers and rewarding them based on student achievement. I don't want the federal Department of Education measuring and enforcing those things. I trust locals to make the best decisions, not this federal bureaucracy. When it comes to tax reform, well, I think two things. One, I also think structural reform is necessary there. So in the state of Louisiana, it takes a supermajority vote to raise taxes,

any tax. It takes a supermajority vote to grow the size of the government faster than the private sector economy. We've got a balanced budget amendment in our Constitution, so we can't borrow or spend money beyond the money we bring in. These are the structural protections that, you know, I talked about shrinking the size of government. We did that with a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate my first term because there was no choice. They knew I would veto a tax increase. They knew that they had these supermajority hurdles to try to just raise taxes or grow government. We're not going to get, I think, real discipline in D.C.

until we have structural reforms. I'm very critical of this president and his spending, but these deficits didn't only grow under a Democratic president or a Democratic Congress. We have to remember, even when Republicans had the majorities in the White House, we saw deficits, we saw growth in domestic spending. So I do think it will take structural changes. When it comes to tax reform, I think we have to be bold.

I don't think incremental tax reform is going to work. I think if we try to tinker with one or two things, the lobbyists come out, the special interest groups come out. I think it takes a comprehensive overhaul. Last time we saw it was obviously in the late 80s. I think it can happen again. And I think as Republicans, as conservatives, the way we get it done is tie it to economic growth. Make sure that people understand the reason we're doing this is that 0.2% growth is not acceptable. Now, this administration is trying to convince us 2% is the new normal.

We need to show the American people that true tax reform, along with other reforms, can be a part of robust economic recovery and growth that we historically have enjoyed as a country before. All right. Some of these are very funny. What are your thoughts on the paleo diet? Now, I've actually, here's my thoughts on this. I'm waiting for a scientist.

I've got a thought about this. I'm waiting for a scientist to give us an all-carbohydrate diet. I believe if we could eat nothing but chocolate chip cookies all day, we'd be happier, healthier. I'd be more than happy to commit to a diet like that. The only thing I'll say about a paleo diet, one of the perks of being the governor of the state of Louisiana, we have a commercial size kitchen in the residence. They cook for trustees, for troopers, for a lot of people. It's not a family-sized kitchen. So one of the things they've got in that kitchen is a bacon drawer.

Now, when I moved into the house, when my wife and I moved in, our children were six, three, and one. Those two younger children were boys. Can you imagine if you woke up every morning in your house to the smell of hot bacon, and you knew at least for the first several hours of the day, there was a drawer every day where there was hot bacon. My little boys, we're, see, now we're in the process of finding, we're buying a house next year in Baton Rouge. And I've told them there will be no bacon drawer. So they should enjoy that as long as they can. So they're not old enough to know what a paleo diet is. If they did, they would embrace and eat bacon all day if they could. As I do.

One of the questions in here is a question similar to one I was going to ask you and ties into something that's going on, in a sense, that's going on in the culture at large. If you look at Romney, he won among people who wanted leadership, who wanted new direction, who wanted competence. He lost among people who wanted somebody who cared about people like them. A lot of that goes to how Republicans talk about economics and our focus on business, et cetera. But it also goes to our responses to a whole range of things. And that, I'm not saying that this ties directly,

but we have all been minded these last several days as we watch the television, what is going on in Baltimore. And we have societal divisions now that are reminiscent of the 1960s that I don't think we've seen since then. So as you think about how we express that we care about people, but you also want to heal these rifts. What are your thoughts about how we should proceed? I think the president has done a great job, and I don't mean this as a compliment, but I think he has done a great job dividing the country. And his rhetoric and his policies for his two campaigns,

he divides us by gender, by race, by geography, by age, by income. And I don't know about you, and this is not purely the president's fault, but I'm tired of all the divisions in America. It seems to me... I gave a speech in London, and it got a lot of attention because I talked about radical Islamic terrorism, and rightfully so. But the second half of that speech said to Westerners, Western leaders, not just America, but I'll focus on America, we need to get away from this

idea of hyphenated Americans. I don't know about you, but we're not African Americans or Indian Americans or Asian Americans. We're Americans. And I'll share with you from my parents' perspective. My parents came over 40 years ago to Baton Rouge, Louisiana from India. They had never been on a plane. My kids don't 40 years ago to Baton Rouge, Louisiana from India. They had never been on a plane. My kids don't understand this. There was no internet or Google. They couldn't just go online and search. They never even met somebody who'd been to Baton Rouge and could come back to India and tell them what it was like. My mom was pregnant with me. They didn't know anybody in Louisiana, yet they got on that plane. And they got on that plane because in some ways they were coming to an idea as much as to a place.

They were coming to this idea of freedom and opportunity. They knew that there was something called the American dream. Even though they hadn't visited, they knew in their bones this was a special place. My parents loved India. They loved their heritage. But they were coming to raise Americans. If they wanted to raise their children as Indians, they would have stayed in India. And so it was very important to my parents raising us that we weren't hyphenated Americans.

We were Americans. And I think my brother and I, we've lived the American dream. All my children have lived that American dream. This is not just about the president. There's a politically correct mindset that doesn't like to describe America as a great melting pot anymore. When I was in college, I went to a very liberal college. We were told that it should be the salad bowl, not the melting pot. You know, it's somehow culturally arrogant to say that people who want to come to America should want to be Americans. I don't think that's nonsense. That's

just common sense that we're united. So that's part of it. The second part is this idea of looking at everything through the prism of race I think is damaging to our country. Treating people differently by the color of their skin is one of the dumbest and just most egregious things we can do. And I think continuing to look at everything through the prism of race is wrong. And some of these recent examples, I think it's important. Remember, it is a tragedy when somebody's child, when somebody's sibling, somebody's husband, somebody's loved one has died in all these cases.

And we shouldn't forget that. We also shouldn't forget that in the vast majority and thousands of other instances of police, law enforcement are doing their jobs every day, running towards danger, not away from it, and it never makes the news. And we never hear on the front pages of the news. On these specific instances, obviously, we need to let the criminal justice system work and let the facts be investigated and explored. But when it comes to unifying our country, and specifically when it comes to Republicans and conservatives talking to people who may not have voted for us in the last election, may not have voted for us in a while, let the Democrats divide us in a special interest. We should be speaking to the universal aspirations.

I believe every mom and dad out there wants their children to have a better education, have a better paying job, to be able to live the American dream like my parents wanted for me. I'll tell you just real quickly, you know, we talked about school choice earlier. So there was a school in New Orleans East where I had gone to visit with a lot of the kids, used the scholarship program to come to this school. There were a lot of, it's in a neighborhood that's largely African American and a lot of Vietnamese families live there as well. And so when I was there, a mom came up to me and she was thanking me for this. And this is the was there, a mom came up to me, and she was thanking me for this. And this is the New Orleans East is near, it's not the Ninth Ward, but it's a part of

New Orleans that was hit by Hurricane Katrina. There's been a lot of damage, and a lot of families are rebuilding there. And they've got some middle-class families and all kinds of different families that live there. And this mom came to me, and basically, the long story short was she said she was grateful that her child had a chance to use her scholarship to go to this school, this parochial school that I was visiting, and said, with tears in her eyes, this was the first time her child had brought home homework. And this mom herself had gotten pregnant as a teenager. Her mom had gotten pregnant as a teenager. She was working multiple jobs so that her daughter would have a better quality of life. She simply didn't want her daughter, in so many words, to make the same decisions she had made.

She wanted her daughter to do even better. Same thing my parents wanted for me. Now, I suspect if you looked up the voting precinct she came from, they probably vote 99% Democratic. I'm pretty sure she didn't vote for me. If she voted for me, it probably was by mistake. It was probably one of those boxes where she didn't mean to hit that box. But an aspirational society is not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. That's an American issue. And as conservatives and Republicans, we need to stop thinking we need to be cheap Democrats. We need to

stop thinking we need to pander. Let's go fight for every single vote by showing that our policies work for everybody. And our policies are good for everybody's sons and daughters to help them get a better education, a better job, more affordable health care, a better quality of life. Let's go make that argument. Let the other side be the party that tries to divide us. That's so true. We always think that there's just this uniform block of victimization

and entitlement on the other side, but we have done some work, for example, doing focus groups in New Orleans among entirely African-American women. And while they, if you ask them questions that have a political label on them, Republican, Democrat, conservative, fall into the worst of the stereotypes about antipathy for anything Republican or conservative. If you talk about policy issues, divorced from that, they're highly conservative. They think that the one good thing that Republicans did was stopping the constant extension of unemployment benefits because they saw that destroying the work incentive

in their own communities. They are uniformly opposed to increasing the minimum wage because they view that, and they were making very sophisticated economic arguments about how that was going to raise their costs more than it was going to benefit them, and how it was going to be giving money to people who didn't know how to handle the money before they actually had worked their way up to that, and how it was not going to help people who didn't have a job.

In fact, it was going to make it harder for them to get jobs. There's a level of awareness and sophistication among even people whom we, particularly the left, would like to think of as incapable of making their own decisions that actually calls for that. But unfortunately, the reason they said that they never voted for a Republican is that they believed that Republicans didn't care about them. And even though they knew that the positions that the left took, like those of Mary Landrieu, like extending unemployment benefits, were counterproductive, they believed that they were done because they cared about them. So examining that, how we come across, how we talk, whether we sound Reagan-esque or whether we sound like corporatists, is going to be very, very important.

Here's another one that I just love. Would Bobby Jindal please consider becoming governor of California? Yeah, I will say this. As a true Federalist, I am considering a job that could have an impact on California. It's not the governor of California, but I will say this. As a true Federalist, sometimes you have to let states live with the consequences of their bad choices for a little while. And I had hoped, and maybe this was too naive, I had hoped that Jerry Brown in his most recent incarnation would have the political courage to take on some of the tougher choices and issues. Now, obviously, I didn't support him when he was running for either of his terms, but I was hopeful, and that just hasn't proven to be the case.

Going back to the previous question real quickly, I will say this, too. Sometimes the Republican Party, we fall in the trap of talking about shrinking government for the sake of shrinking government, and we talk about austerity for the sake of austerity, or we fall in the trap, and I'm guilty of this, we'll talk about things in such abstract numbers we don't connect it to the average person. So we talk about $18 trillion of this. We'll talk about things in such abstract numbers, we don't connect it to the average person. So we talk about $18 trillion of debt. We talk about the federal government spending upwards of 22, 24% of GDP. And people's eyes glaze over. They look at us and, what does that mean to my life? In Louisiana, Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one by voter registration.

We won two overwhelming victories. My last one, we won every single parish. We call them parishes, not counties. And I don't think everybody in Louisiana woke up and decided that they're all Republicans, or they didn't all wake up and decided that they all like or agree with me when it comes to cutting government. I suspect, if you ask them, a lot of them probably think we cut too much. But the point we made to them was that we were focused on creating the conditions for a strong private sector economy. So, for example, in Louisiana, for 25 years in a row, we've had more kids, more people leave our state than move into our state.

The only state in the South that suffered from out-migration for 25 continuous years. So one of my overarching campaign themes was, if you vote for me, I'll make the tough choices so we can bring our kids back. And I had a lot of voters that hadn't voted for a Republican that said, you know what, I'm a grandmother, and it pains me. I don't get to see my grandchildren grow up. I don't get to see them play soccer. I don't get to go to the school plays.

I'm not a part of their lives. I see them at Christmas. I see them once or twice a year. Everybody in Louisiana has a story like that or knows somebody like that, knows somebody whose children are now living in Atlanta or Houston or Dallas. And that resonated with people. And to this day, voters in Louisiana will tell you, you know what, maybe he cuts too much, or maybe he, you know, but he is bringing our kids back.

For seven years in a row, we've had in-migration. The government, you know, the economy is growing. We said we're not going to measure prosperity by the government. We're going to measure prosperity by how people are doing in the real world. So I think at the national level, where I think voters are today is after six and a half, after seven years, they've seen this president's policies don't work. You don't need a bunch of numbers to tell. They just know that.

Their kids are still living on their couch after school. They can't pay back their student loans. Health care premiums didn't get cut $2,500. All the things we were told were going to happen didn't happen. And I think they're open to conservatives making their case. That doesn't mean they automatically vote Republican, but I think that the real opportunity for us is to show that our ideas are better. The danger, the trap for us is if we simply become the anti-Obama party.

We don't have to relitigate the past. We have to show people going forward our ideas do work, they are better, they've worked in states where they've been implemented, and they'll work for our country as well. And I think people are open for that message. I don't think the American people are jealous people. I think one of the mistakes this president's made is he's tried to appeal to our worst selves. He's tried to say to us, look at those people over there that are successful. They must have cheated you. They must have broken the rules. Their success is hurting you. I don't think that's who we are as a people. I think we're an aspirational people.

I also don't think as a people we're pessimistic people. I don't think we look around saying naturally that, well, we can't compete with China anymore. Our best days are behind us. And yet I think that is increasingly the danger that the American, that we have a generation that forgets the American dream. So I think as conservatives, we've got to go make that positive case to every voter that tomorrow can be better than today. And it's not rocket science. We just have to get back to the ideas of growth and opportunity. We have to move away from the sense that a larger, more expensive, more intrusive government is the answer to every problem. The one good thing this president's done, he has proven that progressivism doesn't work. He has proven that government isn't the answer to every

problem. And Obamacare is exhibit A, but there are about 20 other examples we can point to as well. Right. You're so correct because we forget context. We talk all the time about cutting, shrinking, smaller government, all words which if you don't understand the framing of that, which for all of us unspoken is that leads to a better life for everybody, what people hear is that you don't care about providing essential services and you don't care if people go without insurance, et cetera, and you are planning on just being indifferent to that

because all you care about is saving money. Money is not a value. And the first thing we need to always lead with is the aspirational message that applies to all Americans. So before we leave this, you had said at one point that demography should not be destiny. That applies, obviously, to a large – we just had a panel earlier this morning talking about the challenges of race and immigration, among other things Texas versus California with assimilation and the intentional division of culture as opposed to the inclusion in culture and how you got different results. We have no immigration bill that has passed.

This may be a good thing or it may be a bad thing for Republicans, and I'm curious of your take on that and also what you would propose ought to be done. Look, I think our immigration system is exactly backwards. Now, what do I mean by that? We've got an immigration system where we've got a low wall and a narrow gate. And what we really need is the opposite. We need an immigration system with a high wall and a broader gate. An immigration policy can either make a country stronger or weaker. And right now we are not pursuing immigration policies that can make our country stronger. I don't think we need a comprehensive bill from the Congress. I don't think we need another 1,000-page bill.

I think that right now what the federal government needs to do quite simply is secure the border, period. They just need to do that. And it's not hard. This is a lack of will. It's not an incredibly complicated challenge to get done. And there are a lot of reasons that needs to be done. And I won't belabor them. I will say I went to the border myself last year, and it was not at all what I expected. Anybody that's not been down there, not been to the Rio Grande, we saw it by water, by air, by foot. I honestly thought based on all the images,

you know, you read about it and you hear about all the money they've spent. You think, well, certainly people must be sneaking across the border. They must be waiting until nightfall. They must be... I saw three groups come across that border in broad daylight. One of them, there was a dam between Texas and Mexico, and there's, on top of that man-made structure,

there's a fence with barbed wire. We saw a group walking across, and we thought for certain that at least the fence would slow them down. It had the wire on top of it. It's a pretty tall fence. They get to the gate and they swing it wide open. It's not even locked. I'm not even sure what the point is of having that gate, that fence up there. What's the point of the barbed wire if the gate stays open? So first we need to secure the border. Now, what do I mean by, that's the high walls. What do I mean by the gate? The reality is, is that legal immigration can make our country stronger.

And right now, we allow people into this country, we educate them, and we kick them out of our country. How in the world does that make sense? We kick them out of our country to compete against us. I think that legal, we need to increase the amount of people we allow here legally. We need to do it in a way that makes our economy and our country stronger. A part of that is insisting on assimilation and integration. What do I mean by that? First of all, just common sense. Those that want to be Americans, that should be a prerequisite.

We shouldn't, and you're right, in Europe they do have this problem. You've got second, third generation immigrants that don't consider themselves fully European. They don't consider themselves, whether it's French or German or British, and that's a problem. Historically, America has been very strong in that we don't care if you've been here five minutes or a hundred years, you can join our military, you can start a business, you can be an entrepreneur, you're an American. And we mustn't lose sight of that. So there's nothing wrong with saying we only want you in our country if you want to be an American. There's nothing wrong with saying we only want you in our country if you want to be an American. There's nothing wrong with saying English is our language.

There's nothing wrong with saying we're going to teach American exceptionalism in civics and American history, not this idea of victimhood or grievances that we hear so often from our current administration. I think it's not complicated if we have the political will to do what's good for our country, but I go back to that original premise. Immigration, people talk about immigration in terms of being compassionate, and that's a wonderful thing. But a good immigration policy

is not just good for the people that it's coming, it's also good for our country. And so I'm for a high wall and a broader gate than we've got today. But for what I want Congress to do today, what I want the federal government to do today is to secure the border. And I will say this on a personal note. My parents came over 40 years ago to Louisiana. They spoke English, but

I'll be honest, my dad's got a pretty thick accent and had an even thicker accent over 40 years ago. And they found nothing but acceptance and open arms. My dad got his first job calling through the Yellow Pages, and he was hired sight unseen by a guy at a railroad company. And this is what he told his new boss. He told his new boss as soon as he got his job, that's great. He was told he could start on Monday morning. He told his new boss, I don't have a car. I don't have a driver's license. You're going to have to pick me up on the way to work Monday morning. And what I love about that story is contrary to what folks might tell you, that the reality is that that boss was so taken by his desire to work, he was happy to go pick him up on Monday morning. My parents have lived the American dream. This is

a great, great place. And I know this president loves to criticize America, and he loves to tell us about all the faults. And we're not perfect. We're a human society. We'll never be perfect. But this is the best country in the history of the world. I wouldn't trade it with all our problems with anybody else. This is an incredible, welcoming, and strong country, and we shouldn't lose sight of that. But anyway, bottom line is a high wall and a broad gate. Not right now what we've got, which is a low wall and a narrow gate. One more quick question on this before we move in our remaining few minutes to a couple of other topics. Governor Walker has said that the wages of American workers should

be the first consideration in legal immigration policy. How do you feel about that? Look, obviously, an immigration policy has got to make our economy and our country stronger. I just, I mean, and I won't put words in Scott's mouth, but it obviously makes sense to me. An immigration policy can make your country stronger if done properly. And right now, I think that we've got to crack down on, we've got to secure the border. And after we've done that, we can do other reforms. I do think we need to increase the numbers of people coming in through the front door, through the gate, through legal immigration. And I think that can be a very good thing for our country. I think it can

be done in a way that strengthens our country. And one of the dumbest things we do right now are the number of folks with advanced degrees we kick out, the people that we educate here and kick out to go compete against us. Let me switch to foreign policy and starting with the Corker-Menendez bill, which from my lay perspective stands the Constitution on its head. It takes it from requiring 67 votes from the Senate to ratify the president's treaty to Congress needing 67 votes to override the treaty. And I'm curious what you think about first the Corker bill and then how you would approach the problem of both a nuclear Iran as well as things like ISIS.

Well, a few things. One, I wish the president would negotiate with Iran as hard as he's negotiating with the U.S. Senate. I mean, it's amazing. He is so tough for the United States Senate, gives away everything to Iran. And you look at some of the amendments that the administration says,

oh, no, if this passes, we're going to veto the bill. So God forbid the United States Senate should say that we're not doing a deal with Iran unless they renounce terrorism against the United States, our allies, and others. God forbid that the United States Senate should put an amendment that says, oh, by the way, there's no deal with Iran unless they recognize the right of Israel to exist. I mean, you would think it would be common sense before we do any kind of deal with a country that's on the verge of becoming a nuclear power, we might want to say, you know what, maybe it would be a good thing if it wasn't their leaders aren't over there chanting death to America. I mean, it is amazing to me the opposition to these commonsensical amendments.

I was complimenting Jim Garrity behind in the green room saying that he did a great piece. I don't know how many people saw it this morning talking about one of the proposed amendments was actually just to put the president's own fact sheet into the deal, saying that sanctions won't be removed immediately, but rather will be dependent on Iran actually fulfilling the term. This was in the president's own fact sheet. So how about an amendment that actually just says what the president himself said was in the deal? And that's apparently, well, we can't do that either. I am very, very, very worried about the potential deal this president is about to negotiate or is negotiating with Iran. The reality is that a nuclear-armed Iran would be the worst foreign policy legacy this president would

leave. It is simply not an acceptable outcome. It is not only an existential threat to Europe and to Israel, but also to the United States. I think any plausible deal, not just a good deal, but plausible deal has to have at least these components. It needs to say, and by the way, the president used to be for these things before he was against them. So this isn't some just right-wing ideology. Not that there's anything wrong with right-wing ideology, but it's not just right-wing ideology. Number one, the United Nations and others have all been on record saying Iran should not have enrichment capability. They didn't pass those resolutions saying, well, it will be 6,000 centrifuges.

They said, no, they shouldn't have this enrichment capability. Secondly, their enriched stockpiles need to be exported to another country. Third, there needs to be anytime, anywhere inspections, not just this idea that we can go in when they want with the warning. We're not allowed to go to military sites. Fourth, there can be no pathway to a plutonium device. Fifth, they do have to renounce both terrorism and recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. And I think that, sixth, we can only talk about lifting sanctions after these other conditions are met. It shouldn't be that we're giving away the sanctions today. When you look at what the president's on the verge of doing, by giving up

the international consensus towards sanctions and saying, oh, don't worry, there's a snapback provision. Well, good luck going back to the United Nations and getting the Russians and the Europeans and everybody else back on board once they're doing business with Iran. Why in the world are we going to reward them? When I worry about this administration's approach to Iran, and you asked about ISIS and the radical Islamic terrorist threat as well, I think this administration's desire to get a deal with Iran has infected their foreign policy from the beginning. You heard it in his inaugural speech back in 2009. You saw it in his reluctance

to encourage the Green Revolution. You see it, I think, in this administration's reluctance to take on Assad directly in the failed red line threat, as well as our lack of commitment to actually removing Syria's government, replacing Syria's government, because it is an Iranian proxy, a satellite state. You see it, I believe, in our reluctance to really push Putin hard to keep him out of the Ukraine. And I think all this could be. I mean, some of this there's not direct evidence, but I think it could be all connected to an overarching desire to get a deal with Iran. And what has that gotten us?

So Iran is in Yemen. Iran is now their influence is surging in Iraq. Their influence is surging in Syria and in Lebanon. Our allies in the region no longer know if they can trust America. So you've got the Sunni kingdoms, the Sunni countries. You've got the Saudis, the Egyptians, and others skeptical about America. So the message we're sending to our friends is you can't trust us. The message we're sending to our enemies is there's no need to fear us.

I mean, think about the takeaway message. If you've watched our foreign policy the last seven years, if you want a concession from America, you should be our enemy. If you want to be treated poorly, you should try to be our friend. Talk to the Canadians about the Keystone Pipeline, how great it is to stand with America time and time again. Ask them how you get treated. Here's my real worry about an Iranian deal.

It's not just the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is bad enough, and we cannot allow that to ever become a reality, but it doesn't stop there. I worry this deal starts a nuclear, or accelerates a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. I suspect the Saudis already have an agreement to be able to buy the technology from Pakistan. I don't know how in the world America is going to stop first the Saudis, then the Egyptians, then Turkey. So you think about the legacy of this deal could end up being multiple countries in the Middle East with nuclear capabilities. Talk about a destabilized region and situation for his successors. Also, he can have a legacy. At least he had a moment of clarity and honesty. I think it

was on NPR when he admitted the breakthrough time for Iran would be virtually none under this agreement, under what they're allowing him. As one wag put it, it may have been a national review, they've got the most heavily militarily fortified medical isotope research facility in the world in Iran. I mean, their claims just aren't believable. I mean, the claims are what they claim. And I'll close with this. Look, this is a regime, not only has been explicit in their hatred for Israel and their hostility towards us,

this is a regime that time after time has broken their word. Whether it was UN sanctions and binding votes, whether it was a nonproliferation treaty, it's almost like we're Charlie Brown, it's almost like where Charlie Brown, this administration is like Charlie Brown and Lucy in the football. You know, we keep, for whatever reason, they believe she's not going to move the football again. For whatever reason, he's got more confidence

in the government of Iran. I'll just say this. I wish he was as tough with Iran as he was on the U.S. Senate. I think they need to adopt these amendments. I think they need to make these bills. Ron Johnson, to your point about why flipping it from 67 votes to approve it to the other way around, well, it's going to take 67 votes to disapprove it. Ron Johnson's got an amendment that would try to address that as well. I think they should have an open and robust debate on

this is an important issue. The Senate can make time to have an open and robust debate on these amendments. And if senators really want to go and vote against it, if senators really think it's okay for Iran to sponsor terrorism or okay for Iran not to recognize the state of Israel, I want to hear them make that argument. And I want to hear them – I want to see them take that vote. And I think it's ridiculous for the White House to threaten a veto over – to meet – what are, to me, common sense amendments trying to salvage what is a very, very bad deal for the United States, for world stability. I think that, I want to praise Senator Cotton.

I know that he's been criticized by the Iranian government. I want to praise him for his letter. I was happy to sign on to his letter saying that no, no, especially if this deal doesn't get approved like a treaty or by Congress, no deal should be considered binding on the next. The President can't have it both ways. He can't say, well, I don't want Congress to approve it, but it is going to be binding on the next President.

You can't have it both ways. So I want to praise Senator Cotton for sending that letter and standing up to a very bad deal. We only have a few minutes, so I've saved your favorite subject for last. You last year came out with a plan on Obamacare. It's very important to have a replace plan if we are ever going to actually achieve repeal, because there's a cohort of people in this country who understand the need for repeal, but there's an even larger slug that say, but there's nothing else, and we don't believe that replace is real. And until we've got credit, we credibly believe that there's an alternative.

Why would we get rid of what we're dependent on because we didn't like what we had before? Although some of them may now like it better. But in the interim, we have the King versus Burwell decision that's coming down from the Supreme Court. For those of you who are not familiar with that, the King v. Burwell decision is the one that is trying to stop the IRS taking it upon itself to totally turn on its head what the language of the Affordable Care Act explicitly says. They had carrots and sticks in there to try and persuade states to create state exchanges. And one of those carrots was the handing out of subsidies to people were a state to form a state exchange. When not enough did, and also when some constitutional issues were raised about this, the IRS decided on its own ipse dixit to rewrite what that law meant and subject the federal exchanges to the same taxes, mandates, penalties, and subsidies.

That has been challenged. And when the court holds, if the court holds for the plaintiffs, as one hopes they will, you'll have millions and millions of people in these up to 37 states, depending on how you want to count the ones who never started state exchanges, those who started and failed as state exchanges. So 34 to 37. Being freed from the individual mandate and the employer mandate, effectively. But you will also have anywhere between 6 and 9 million people who lose their subsidies. And so discussion is now floating about what one should do. Obviously, the left is going to want to have a few simple words that says federal exchanges are treated

the same as state exchanges and be blaming Republicans and the Supreme Court for anybody who's lost their subsidies and why won't they do this simple fix. What would be your advice? And also, you are vice chair of the Republican Governors Association. All those governors who are not as lucky as you to be term limited and have reelections, they are going to have a population and a real problem on their hands, particularly because Obamacare, as written, drastically raises the cost of insurance. So what is the counsel that you would give about the appropriate response were we to get a good king holding to try and cement that decision as opposed to having states flip back to choosing to create state exchanges?

Sure. Great question. Several things. One, and I do hope the Supreme Court rules the way that it ought, that the law means what it says. I mean, I know this president likes to think that he can just go around the Constitution and the law, but this really is yet another egregious example where they're just making things up. If they do that, my counsel to governors would be absolutely do not set up a state exchange because not only do the subsidies go away, the mandates, for the most part, go away. And I authored an analysis showing that what that means is hundreds of billions of dollars in reductions in spending, tens of billions of dollars reductions in terms of a tax cut by the individual and employer mandate going away in these up to 37 states.

But now you're exactly right. If this were to happen in today's situation, the president would simply stand up, and he will find a sympathetic case in several of them. He'll find a woman on dialysis, a young man on chemotherapy, and say, these people are getting life-saving treatments thanks to my legislation, and now because of the court's ruling, and because of these cold-hearted

Republicans, they're going to lose access to this medical care. Why won't they just pass this? Either he'll try to pass a very simple bill to, quote, fix this, or they will go to states and say, why don't we just pretend it's a state exchange? We'll sign it over to you, and you can just go to states and say, why don't we just pretend it's a state exchange? We'll sign it over to you, and you can just call it a state exchange, even though we've already funded it. I mean, it's not beyond them to go around the law yet again. That's why my second

piece of advice is I think it's so important for Congress today, not tomorrow, not after the court's ruling, but today, to vote on a replacement bill for Obamacare. It's great that we're all for repealing. We need to repeal it, but we need to show what we would do differently. And I put out a very detailed plan. It's got 16 points. And when I say repeal it, I mean get rid of all the tax increases, get rid of all the new spending, and start over. Some plans want to keep some of the tax increases, want to keep some of the spending. And I think that's a mistake. I think under Obamacare, a real repeal plan cannot create a new entitlement program where we can't afford the one we've got. We cannot keep the tax increases.

We cannot keep the spending increases. We've got $18 trillion of debt. And one of the political arguments you hear from folks is, well, now that they've given away subsidies, we can't have a program as a replacement unless we cover exactly as many people, unless we do as much as they do. Folks, if we accept that as a given, if we've got a new floor of dependency, if we have said every time a liberal president expands dependency, we can never reduce it, we can never go back, we might as well give up. Because then there's no point in having a second political party.

At that point, we're just cheaper Democrats. There's really no real philosophical difference between the two parties. The election last year wasn't just about getting Senator McConnell a nicer office. I mean, when I was listening to TV ads in red, blue, and purple states, what I heard candidate after candidate say was, elect me, vote for me, once we get the majority, we're going to repeal Obamacare. I didn't see in the fine print, and I don't think I missed it, I didn't see the fine print saying, elect me and we'll just get rid of the easy parts of Obamacare, because it's too hard to get rid of all of it. Obamacare was very unpopular. It's one of the main reasons we've got

the majority in the Senate. Now it's time for us to do something with it. You've got to admire the tenacity of the left. So Hillary Clinton tries to, with Hillary care, this massive government expansion in the early 90s, loses. They lose the House and the Senate shortly thereafter. For 16, 17 years, they've continued to fight. They didn't just walk away from this. Now, I don't agree with what they're trying to do. Ultimately, they want to get to a single-payer system. But I admire their tenacity. We need to be willing to fight just as hard for freedom on our side. I think this president, if you told him seven years ago, you're going to lose the House and then later the Senate, and you won't be able to do cap-and-trade or card check, if you do Obamacare, would have

still pushed for it. Because it has been the largest expansion from the left side. It's the largest expansion of government in a very long time. We put forward a plan. It's a multifaceted plan that lowers costs, what the president said he was going to do originally. We do it by going to a standard tax deduction when it comes to the treatment of health care spending. We do it through voluntary purchasing pools, not only through the employer. We do it through cross-state purchase of insurance. We do it through tort reform. We do it through incentives for wellness and health savings and medical savings accounts. We do it through premium support in Medicare as

well as reforms into Medicaid to give states more flexibility as well as accountability. Independent estimates are that we would cover over 9 million people as well as reduce average premiums for a family by $5,000 versus where we are today. But we preserve choice and competition in the health care system. We lower costs. We protect the vulnerable, those with preexisting conditions, those priced out of the individual market, and we give patients choice and portability. There are other plans.

The RFC has a plan. Other people have plans. The bottom line is Republicans need to be the party for something, not just against something. Let's not be for Obamacare lite. Let's not be cheaper Democrats. Let's go pass our own version of health care reform. Let's do it today. Let's show the American people we know how to govern.

By doing it, we'll earn the right to get the White House back in 2016. Thank you.