And it was the kennedy brothers, all of them were having spaghetti, getting involved in that excitement, this whole race, got a whole state involved, really did. It was the turning point and not just for them but for us. The state director of the administration under the kennedy administration, my dad, our car, john kennedy road, we were proud of that, 1958 convertible chevrolet, i remember it very big and powerful. John kennedy wrote in fact, my dad told us all about taking him around and uncle jimmy would travel with him all the time, the president , at that time senator kennedy, share stories with us. I will involve once removed in the heart of it because i knew when they chased one here is a rather, what they did, how the person was such a regular person. Coming from a complete different culture if you will. Host the 50th anniversary of his assassination, do you remember that morning . Guest it was afternoon, i had come off of lunch, we were going into english class. I was a junior in high school. Just got my drivers license in august, so just walked into a class and my teacher walked in, i will never forget it, mr. Matthews was one of our coaches on the Football Team and he said the president has been shot. My first reaction was come on, quit kidding. He said i am not kidding, it is serious. The president has just been assassinated and you all need to go home. Immediately we all be lined home. My grandfather, never saw him work for anything. My grandfather was there. My father, uncle jimmy, working for the kennedys, everybody was there. And just out of the clear my grandfather said we have to go to washington. You know me, i volunteered to drive. Popov had a big old 58 cadillac and we all piled in. My uncle jimmy, poppa and my cousins in his car, we drove to washington, my sister was living in arlington so we got here and my grandfather says i have to go to the castle. He stands in line all night long to pay homage to the president. The will kids, if you ever see pictures on pennsylvania avenue you will see kids hanging in the trees, it was probably a us. I remember when black jack, john john and all of them came by the casket, so many. When i visited my sister i would go to the grave and say a little prayer. It was easy to walk to the cemetery and the president s grave was right there in the eternal flame was there and i said a little prayer, blessed myself and went on and one day i am going there and security was everywhere. I thought something had happened. It became more than my crowd, everybody walking on the face of it. And to these visits it happened a few years after the assassination. Host did we change as the country after his assassination . Guest in my eyes we did, as the 16yearold junior in high school i didnt feel as safe as i had before. I grew up in the most peaceful time the country has probably ever seen, after world war ii. So after that up until vietnam, the korean war escape, i was too young to realize what was going on, but very easy, good time in america and all of a sudden, it was shattered. We had that and in a few years we had Martin Luther king and the country was really it really wasnt as cohesive, lets put it that way. It was a different place out there. Host you mention your parents and the businesses that they ran. By parents, my father, my grandparents came from italy and immigrated in 1900. My father, the name was man seen up. My mother was from czechoslovakia. Her parents, they were both born secondgeneration. They were born here. Both parents migrated to america. Both live in the coal fields six miles apart. Both of them had Little Grocery stores. Bose grandparents. Poppa and joe. My father when he got out of the service in 46 started a little Furniture Store besides the pros restore and so we grew up in the retail business. Retail politics is simply knowing who your customer is and making sure they are satisfied. Give them a product with good value and great service. You live and die by the satisfaction of your customer. I took the same approach to government when i went into. I had been in business off and on, i learned this. They are the ones, my mother and father and grandparents and my aunts and uncles, the thing people dont know is we live in an area that we have tracks on one, the Railroad Tracks where the cold came out of the coal mines and the creek, buffalo creek. All of us little kids living in between that when the train, my grandmother went insane thinking something was going to happen so we had to guard the tracks, we jumped the train and road the train to town. She had never known that, drove her crazy. The train provided the lead for the flyers, sinkers for our fishing line and everything, the cold but fell off of the towel, people heeded their house so that is what we lived with. My grandmother was the one woman social program. If anybody needed a place to stay a came to her. She made us conscious of our social responsibility by white washing the basement, keeping it clean, she had a shower and bath room, didnt have much but she shared and we have all the different people who would ride the rails and the 50s. A lot of people were still riding a rails if you know what i mean and we had names for everybody, peg leg peg and willie. Host what was your name . Guest we had nicknames for everybody. She would give them 3 rules and they have to be sober and you had to stay sober, many little kids here. I will feed you, take care of you but you cant swear, you cant drink and you have got to work. Set a good example. I thought people had nothing but they live by rules, you had to do something. Poppa said no work know each. I understood that very well. When i see people go down and out, do something, but some people need a little bit of help. I saw young girls got pregnant out of wedlock and left her house because their parents threw her out. I came home after school and i would see her having lunch with the mother who sent her daughter out and the daughter was living with her and she had them back together, went back home and had a little baby, most productive kid in the world. I have seen it all. I am who i am because of where i am from and the Environmental Law Group in. Host you ran for governor, lost in the primary. Talk about customer service. What did you learn . I dont think i did a good enough job explaining who i was and what the state could be and how we were going to change the state and i come from business and would be for labor and i grew up in a labor town when everyone worked in the minds but didnt project it properly. When it was over i knew one thing. I never lost a race before that so my son was studying with me. I will never forget, we won a lot, honored to be serving people and they have a lot of confidence. It is not going to go well. We are not going to win this. Is easy to win. Now you have to show a little class. I watch people walk out and want to blame everybody. Theres only one persons name on the ballot and that is yours and if you cant take blame for whatever went wrong and i never blamed a soul for not voting for me. I blame me for not selling the ideas i had for the state. All lost that election and after that i did all i could. Now i will go back and get back in business and enjoy my private life, my wife and three children and grandchildren, with all that, i was enjoying that and i got pulled back in and how i got pulled back in was some of the people who worked against me defeated me in 96, we think we made a mistake. We would like to work with you and i said fine. I want to work with you too and i will make more mistakes than you. Host let me ask about your uncle who was killed in 1968 in a mining accident. As governor you had two significant accidents at upper branch, what did you take away from your personal experience . Guest in january, three weeks later we had two miners, basically the same scenario. Two a big branch where we lost so many wonderful miners. Only thing i knew, i said this before, no one gives you an annual when you become governor. You rely on everything you ever experience you ever had, everything you learned and you rely on it. You dug deep into your words so the thing i knew, i remember a flashback to 1968 i was 21 years of age, uncle john, my mothers younger brother, very close to us. He borrowed my gun to go hunting before he got killed in the mines and he slipped and fell, a 12 gauge shotgun. He put some scratches on, uncle john felt so bad, i will get that fixed, dont worry about it. Have the same gun with the same scratches. Everyone sat at the store waiting for news, news didnt come. Sometimes they sat for a day and never heard a thing. To me that is really what is hurtful and cruel and always thought if i was ever in a position to give relief to people there are ways to do it and information was one. It might not be a lot of new things to tell you but i will tell you something every couple hours. We are doing everything we can and anything you heard, any questions you ask i will find out because i am at the command center, i can find out and i want you to have the effect. I wont talk to the present july talk to the families so i learned that basically from watching my mother and my aunt and the agony they went through not knowing anything and they heard the mine was going to be sealed, entombing of my uncle and all that because it was so dangerous. I learned from that and figured there was a way and i knew one thing. Families depend on that paycheck and if i could do anything as governor i will sit down with the people who are the owners of the mines and say i will ask you to do one thing, make sure they never miss a paycheck, make sure they dont miss the paycheck. If you want to compound the problems we have now this family cant take care of itself through this most difficult time until we get this straightened out. You have to continue a paycheck as if nothing happened. I knew that. That was part of our way of life. They need that. They have to take care of the families themselves. Some of those things came back because of my experiences living in the coal fields, you could have never learned that. No one could have taught it to you unless you lived it. Host is it safer today to be a minor . Guest absolutely and we are getting safer. If you cant find it safe dont mind. But you have to empower the minors. You dont have enough never have enough inspectors, you can have all the laws and rules in the world but if you dont have a company, if you dont have, i will use the word consult, they are very big in my area, has taken the approach, if one person sees an unsafe situation they cant pull the plug and shut the mine down. Other situations where person tried to stop a shift or shut mine down they would be fired or threatened of losing their job. That is what we had to change. That has to be changed and i think it has. Miners, kept them protected. I want them to let me know about unsafe conditions, they are afraid of their job, we had to change that whole attitude and i think we have and we are doing things to make it safer but the bottom line is we have some of the best miners in the world. We really do. The salt of the earth, as patriotic as our veterans and i say that with all respect for our veterans because most of our miners are veterans. They look at mining as what theyre doing for this country and the energy they provide for this country. If it wasnt for the mines and the miners you wouldnt have the economy, we would not have the country we have today. We wouldnt be the greatest economy in the world. They were able to give us affordable dependable Reliable Energy and the thing i have a hard time in washington is making people understand coal is still part of a mix. Is the largest part of the energy mix. Work with me, not against the. Dont make it more difficult. Help me find the technology that we can continue to clean up the environment. We have done more in the last two decades than ever in history as we can even do more. We would like to think we have a partner and right now in west region u we think we are working, the government is working against us and i think they are too. I am trying to keep every door open to work with them but i wont sit back and they not know what we do and how hard we do it and how much we provide for this country and the poll that makes the best cooking the world from West Virginia. We have the heavy lifting and we dont mind that. We are good workers. We will do the heavy lifting but we would like someone to recognize and appreciate this. Host you have been in washington a couple years. Is the senate what you expected . Is washington what you thought was going to be . Guest absolutely not. I guess i looked at it through the eyes of what i saw of robert byrd and his reference for this Great Institution and i would have thought when the chips were down it was always Country First, state second, politics third. I would have always thought that. What i do see is 100 good people in the senate, i really do, there is nobody i dont like. I like everybody and try to get along with everybody. But i do see, i would question some motives and reasons, the purpose of your service. I go back to john kennedy and keep thinking i watched the speech on television, 13 years old, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. It is our country, we own it. The constitution says we the people. You have to take ownership, take care of it, like owning a car, change the oil, routine maintenance, it seems we have a country where people are saying ask not what your country did you but what you can do to it. That is a long way in 50 years. I want to get back. We are still the greatest country on earth. All the problems we have we can fix, economically, we can fix all of this. But we have to put our Country First began. It is about this great country. This country does well. Might be blood going to do well and i am here, how i can serve retail government, how do i serve my customers, constituents and everybody in the great state of West Virginia. Host what is next for you . Guest what i would like to get done is get finances in order. My grandfather, one time, 11 years old, i said i just saw charlie, what a beautiful person, a great guy. Probably the nicest person you ever met. He would give you the shirt off his back. I said he would. Charlie doesnt have an extra church to give you. Didnt plan well in of. To any livingyearold kid talking about bursting your bubble. He said i will tell you one thing. If youre inclined to help keep yourself strong, not just mentally or physically but financially. Talk is cheap. You want to help somebody, give them something so can i have 5 . No problem. No problem. Heres a shovel, take care of it. I will be right back. Dont worry, 50 , pick me up. He had it down so i am thinking financially i take the oath of office and standing on the Capitol Steps in a cold january of 2005 and my grandfather is in front of me. Keep yourself strong financially. I knew my state was, i knew we could be. I put all my efforts, had a big mandate, i use every bit of capital, two things you dont waste in politics, you dont waste a mandate and you dont waste a crisis. Make something good out of it. I had a great mandate and i was determined to fix the finances of our state and we did do that. I with my Administration Working hard with a great support of legislator, friends of mine, we work hard and turned to finances, went through to the recession better than most any state in the nation. One of the top three state in the nation, never cut back education or laid teachers off or cut back on any programs for children or seniors, expanded programs for people in need because we were financially strong. 9 come here, my number one goal, fix the finances, fix the finances, raising debts dont fix thats. Sooner or later someone has got to fix the debt. That is what i hope to achieve. I am working very hard across the aisle, talking to everybody, is there a way we can move forward and fix the debt . I became really engrossed in the bowlessimpson approach. It was the only thing i saw that was bipartisan. One of the first things i saw, state bipartisan and grew bipartisan and we couldnt get a vote. We were short of that committee. There were 18 people on it, they needed 14 and got 11 votes. Five republicans and six democrats, when was the last time on the financial direction. That is what drives me. Host your wife is here in West Virginia. What is your schedule . Guest she is president of the state board of education. She is their most of the time, gets up a week or month but she is back home and i try to go home on weekends. We will meet there and go back to charleston where our home is, my son is there and i have two daughters in pennsylvania and hourandahalf so we try as the family to get together but it is difficult. I never thought i would be this home sick. Host would your kids think of your dads provision . Guest we have a lot of conversations, they enjoy it. Host debate a lot . Guest we talk a lot. The girls are very strong, very opinionated. And all successful as business, career people, they do well and my son too. We have good conversations on social issues and it is quite a dinner party. Host is there another office you would like to hold . Guest i havent thought of that. I keep thinking i have so much work to do to figured this out. I felt good and very comfortable being governor. I was ready and prepared. I thought i was ready and prepared here. I watch senator bird, so much i need to learn and how do you get through this toxic atmosphere and how to get people to realize we are here for a purpose, that is for our country and our state, not ourselves or our political parties. I am a proud West Virginia democrat, a proud american, extremely proud, with all that being said, put it in proper context and hopefully i can convince my colleagues to do the same and figure this out. Host senator joe manchin, thank you. Now congresswoman this is the 85 minutes. Cathy mcmorris rogers. Host Cathy Mcmorris rogers, republican from Washington State, you are part of the republican leadership, do you have a voice with john boehner and leader kantor and others . Guest yes. I think it is an important voice we bring to the leadership table and sitting down with the speaker, majority leader erich kantor, kevin mccarthy, as we are strategizing what is happening on any given day and what we face a few months down the road. On the second woman to hold this position for the republicans, Deborah Pryce was conference chair earlier, and i am proud that we have four women now that are around the leadership table for the republicans and it is a different perspective, different priorities at times being a woman brings to the tableland i do believe i am heard and my input is valued that i presented around a table. Host why politics . Why did you run for the state house in washington and Later Congress . I am one of those kids that when i was in high school wasnt sure what i wanted to do, what i wanted to major in and my dad had always had an interest in politics. He ran for office in his 20s, ran for county commissioner and lost but he dabbled in politics and had grown up at least watching campaigns from afar, but out of college i got involved in a Family Friends campaign for the state house in washington, our home. That was my entry into politics and what i learned was that first of all this was somebody i could believe in, get excited about supporting and when he won his grace and offered me a job, it was a way in which i could make a difference for my community and the people we were representing in olympiad at the time and i found a lot of fulfillment in that and purpose in being a part of something bigger than me. I wasnt expecting to run for office. I really imagined myself maybe being more behindthescenes but soon after that our state senator retired and my boss was appointed to fill the seat in the senate and he encouraged me to consider the appointment for the state house seat. So kind of got in the back door but it was a great opportunity for me and i mustered up all the courage that i had and said i am going to go for this and once i got the appointment committed to being the best representative i could be for the people of northEastern Washington. Host when did your family moved to Washington State . We move to Washington State when i was a junior in high school. Both sides of my family have deep roots in the pacific northwest. They came to the northwest in the oregon trail and my moms family was in the Timber Industry and my dads family was in agriculture. I have grown up involved in agriculture. My family owned an orchard and fruit stand in washington where we raise carries, peaches, a perk cots, and it was where i really learned a good work ethic, had the experience of working alongside my brother and my parents in building that business and the success of that business. It was a great experience for me. My dad has a High School Education and my mom had a scholarship to go to oregon state and dropped out as a freshman when her dad passed away. And i am grateful for the sacrifice my parents made sell i could go to college and my brother could go to college and have an opportunity for a better life. Host are they still alive . Guest they are. They sold our orchard and divorced but they are both in spoke pain spokane. Neither of us imagine one day kathy would be serving in congress. It has been an amazing course of the events that led me to this experience but it also reinforced in my mind that the American Dream is alive and in america you can be anything you want to be and i have lived that. When i was going to college, as long as i can remember my parents had been saving money so i could go to school. I sold them at the fair, you saved those dollars to go to college one day. Working my way through school i worked at mcdonalds, in the drivethrough, and always had housekeeping duty when i was at school which is not everyones favorite but that is what i did for a 31 2 years when i was in college and worked a variety of other jobs so that i could go to school and i have seen in my own life with a difference that made and the opportunities, went on and had my nba from the university of washington, took out Student Loans to do that, some of the Student Loans we have been debating in congress recently. I am still paying off those Student Loans but i am grateful that this is a country where no matter who you are or where you come from you can come here, you can pursue your dreams, work hard and really see what you can do with your life. Host or twitter account, tweeting pictures including one in mcdonalds uniform. How old were you . I was in college. Was a summer job i had at that point in mcdonalds in carville, washington. It would be 1986, my freshman year in college. Host you are one of the top ten republicans to follow on twitter. How often do you tweet . Guest my goal is to do it once a day, it is a combined effort between my staff and myself. So it is sometimes there are i find that it is really beneficial for me to see in the course of a day i can easily check my twitter on my blackberry and get a sense of what the hot topics are and what is on peoples mind that what their reaction is to what is going on in congress. I have enjoyed the social media and ability to have a realtime conversation with people that i represent as well as others fled into what is going on on capitol hill. Host before you had the seat, speaker of the house tom foley. Do you have any interest serving as House Speaker . Guest i am here to be the best representative i can be for the people of Eastern Washington. John boehner is doing a great job as speaker and he has my support. I didnt run for congress thinking is that i would never be in leadership and i am here because my colleagues encourage me to run for leadership. People back home will remember that tom foley was speaker and that i am in leadership and they will ask that question but my focus is to be the best representative i can be for the people represent. Host some time down the road the opportunity arises would you be interested . Guest that is hard for me to say. Is always a balancing act. I am a mom too. Taken into consideration the demands of having two kids and the third on the way and my responsibilities on capitol hill, those are all decisions you have to make at any given time despite what is best for you as well as your family. Host you are the first woman in congress to have a baby twice. Your son coal with Downs Syndrome. Guest i was single when i was elected to congress. For me, the best thing that has happened since i was elected to congress was meeting brian rogers and getting married and becoming a wife and imam and our oldest was born with Downs Syndrome. Isnt would you expect. Isnt what you dream. But i sit here today and i am a better person because of coal and what he has taught me. I am a better legislator. He has given me a whole new passion for what i do on capitol hill. Host how so . Guest when you first get the news is the most difficult news you receive as a parent. I look back on it now all and i was immediately welcomed by the disabilities community. People all across this country who have been through similar experiences and reached out and said it is going to be okay. That meant everything to us at that point and having different people contact me, but i quickly decided, first of all, we are going to do everything we can to maximize coles development. We want to see what he can be so you go to work, learn everything you can about down syndrome or whatever disability it may be, then i quickly became grateful for so many who walked the path before me and the opportunities and the resources that are available today that werent available that long ago. Think about early intervention, early education, all of the equipment we have made through the individuals with disabilities act for education, so that now actual burn with disabilities are in the classroom, k12 and i as a parent am so grateful for those who have fought so that now cole will have more opportunities and as a member of congress it makes me think that it is my turn to carry that baton and continue to work for more opportunities. Tremendous progress, but there is more to be done and whether it is the transition to adulthood and employment and individuals living, independent living, there is more that needs to be done in that area. Between 70 to 80 of those with disabilities are unemployed. Many of them have a lot to offer. And would like to be employed. I am working a lot of addressing those barriers to employment, working with that is another thing. Cole open the doors for me, relationships that i would never have had otherwise, across the aisle, house and senate. When he was born, Eunice Kennedy shriver calls and says you need to get cole into best buddies and Special Olympics when he gets old enough and come over and have a cup of tea with teddy one of these days so we can sit down and talk about these issues and i would have never had the opportunities to build these relationships or understand these issues in the way that i do if it hadnt been for cole. Host as imam were you nervous when you were pregnant the second time . Guest sure. Yes. You give a lot of fog to what might happen, but yet the odds, you look at the odds based on your age first of all and i was told that because we had one child with Downs Syndrome which is a duplicate twentyfirst chromosome, also the most common chromosome abnormality. There are a lot of chromosome abnormalities. Included we didnt want to look back one day and say we wish we would have gone ahead and tried to have more children. Because we both love being parents and we want that in our lives and we decided we were going to go ahead, knowing the risk and have a second and now grace blossom was born in 2010 and she is doing really well and we have number 3 expected this year and it is a tremendous blessing in our lives and cole and grace get along great. I can already see where cole is having a very positive impact on grace and shes having a very impact on him. It is good. Host your district is in Washington State. You are a mother, wife, representative, part of the leadership. How do you juggle it all . Guest a whole team of people, i might be out front. Tremendous support of my husband, he has retired from the navy, never been married, never been a dad, dreaming of that happening in his life. He didnt necessarily imagine living in washington d. C. Being mr. Mom, but he is embracing this at this time in our lives and i couldnt ask for more support from brian. Host how did you meet him . Guest i met him at a campaign barbeque. The summer after i was elected to congress his sister had worked on my campaign and she invited him to this campaign barbecue to introduce him to another volunteer daughter and at the end of the evening he said i think i would like to meet kathy. That is how we match. Then we just started corresponding. Our first date was at the Naval Academy. He is unable academy grad and invited me for a floor of the Naval Academy. I was on the Armed Services committee and he thought i should see the Naval Academy and go to a football game. The great special blessing that whole relationship. Aronson sisters and brother in spokane, they offer a lot of support when we are home and a great team. A great staff and thousands of supporters that i have. It is a whole bunch of people that make it possible for me to do this. A challenges i fave son any given day are not different from millions of working moms. Mine might be more highprofile. Wanting to be a good mom and a good wife, also demand for the job, sometimes you handle it better than other days. The people that make it possible for me to do what i am doing here on capitol hill as well as have a tremendous blessing of being a mom to these great kid. Host often you get back to the district and how do you maximize flight time between here and Washington State . Guest that flight time is nighttime. Arrest of the hours and the week quite often others have dibs for those hours so i have really come to enjoy the flight. Seven or eight hour trip from washington d. C. To spokane, theres no direct flight so i have to fly some place and get to spokane but it is quiet time, time for me to do some reading, catch up on notes that i want to write or just have time to myself so i enjoy that time. So i get home, it varies in the course of the year but i would take two or three times a month and we have a least once a month district work period where we can go home for an entire week and i maximize those days, get the district, have a large district and ten counties, a lot to get around the district. We are making it work. At the beginning, brian would travel back and forth with me and even after cole was born we tried having them in spokane and die was going back and forth every weekend, which was a long trip to make every week and i found i was tired and still have limited time with the family. I find that it is working better to have the family based here in washington d. C. Where i can go home some evenings and be with them and we have our time together in the mornings and some weekends, and travel around that. And their spending times with the family and get around the district. Every member of congress has to decide how best to organize that. Host let me ask some policy issues. Leader in the Republican Party, the party doesnt need to be more moderate but more moderate. Give specifics. Guest i dont believe that the Republican Party needs to change what it stands for, the principles and values that we believe in as republicans. They are long standing but i do think the republicans have to do a better job of connecting our policy positions with how people live in the twentyfirst century and also using twentyfirst Century Communication tools. The days of issuing a First Release or raising lots of money and going on tv to do television ads, that isnt connecting as much. We talked a little bit earlier about social me and the 2008 election when president obama was able to create this network of 12, thirteen million people, that was a real wakeup call to me and we have Seen Technology has revolutionized so many areas of our lives, it has also revolutionized the way members of congress, representatives connect, republicans need to embrace these tools that we have for communication. When i first ran for leadership, and was focused on bringing the republicans into the twentyfirst century as it related to social me adia and wn i was first elected thirty of our members were today we have 95 and members still using pagers rather than converting to the blackberry or smart phones. They made that transition. Members that have been here for many years recognizing that they need to change. I remember jerry lewis, congressman out of los angeles, he described it as the difference between when we went from radio to television, the same kind of communication transition that is going done today where people get their news, interact personally and professionally, communication is very different, digital so we need to use those tools. After the election, i concluded that it wasnt about the republicans needing to moderate but we need to modernize. Part of it is on the communications side and that is where my focus is on a Leadership Team. I am charged with the communication strategy for republicans in the house. A lot of our work has been on taking our message to every corner and engage in people from every walk of life, every Demographic Group and we start organizing meet ups as republicans on capitol hill sit down with millennial from around the country and talk about issues that are on their minds and listen and have a dialogue with them. We have done that with vietnamese americans, koreanamericans, hispanics. Another one coming up with indian americans, to build relationships and as republicans to talk with people from all different backgrounds as to what is on their mind and to hear from them. And that was one of the takeaways from the election that a lot of people didnt think the republicans cared about them. That is pretty fundamental. We have been doing more of that. And using Digital Tools to take our message to every corner and highlighting the talent in our conference. We are younger than democrats on average in the house, years on average younger than the democrats, our Leadership Team is 16 years on average younger than the democrats. Most people think of the republicans now, we are the party of the old, rich, white guys, when in reality you look at who the young people are, the republicans, we have women and hispanics, we need to present a broader face and really demonstrate to people in this country that republicans represent them and there are republicans in office that represent them. Part of it is the communications side. The other part is on these issues in particular where we need to do a better job making sure that when we are talking about balancing the budget in ten years. That is the goal that we have and we are challenging our friends on the other side of the aisle and the senate and the administration to join us in the to balance the budget in ten years but take it to the next step. Is now why is it important to seniors . Why is that important to recent College Grads . Why is it important to hardworking American Families . In my mind that is when i say that is part of modernizing. It is really talking about issues in terms that people in 2013 can relate to it and around the Kitchen Table in their homes, as to what our priorities are, what our vision is for this country, the aspirational goals we have for every american. Host as an institution is Congress Working . Is the house working the way you expected it to be . Hart Senate Office building guest there is room for improvement. People recognize this is a difficult time for the country. We have difficulty issues that we face. When you look at congress from an outsiders perspective you think it is pretty simple. The house is supposed to pass its bill, the senate is supposed to pass its bills and you go to Conference Committee and started out and put it on the president s desk and in reality you see that that isnt the way that it has been working most recently. It is too much of congress right now is based on crisis management, we just go from one crisis to another. Host how do you fix it . Guest that is where i really appreciated john boehner and the leadership that he has brought in the house. When he became speaker, one of his goals was to restore the institution itself and return to what he called regular order, then it is to restore how the institution is supposed to operate and he was the Committee Chairman so he understood the Important Role that committees have in this process and so as simple as it may sound it is important that a bill start in the committee and you have the hearings and have the debate and republicans and democrats have the opportunity to offer the amendment and through that process actually get a better outcome than if it is all done in the Speakers Office with a small group so john boehner has really wanted to empower the chairman and encourage them, you need to take the lead on these issues, put together the legislation. When it comes to the floor it is up to you. The days of this bill is ready to go, mr. Speaker, you need to come up with the votes, are over. Having said all of that you have to figure out how to get to 218 and that is where the leadership, what i have seen right now is in the house, is up to us, to be figuring out how do we find that sweet spot for the 218 members that are willing to support a particular bill to move forward and that has to be in conjunction with leadership and the committee. Host you have been in the minority and now youre in the majority. Why is there such gridlock . Are the two party is not talking to each other . Guest i think for the republicans in the majority right now, we believe that this is a critical time economically for the country. We have got to get people back to work. The fact the we have the lowest Work Force Participation rate since 1978 is unacceptable, we are on the wrong path, and we need to stand firm on policies that are going to get this economy growing and you hear us talking about the importance of tax reform, the importance of balancing the budget in ten years, the importance of spending reform, spending reductions before raising the debt ceiling. And yet there is resistance. On the other side of the aisle you have president obama right now saying raise the debt ceiling with no conditions. Just a clean vote to raise the debt ceiling. The reason we find ourselves in gridlock is because that is never going to happen. That is never going to be acceptable to the republicans just to raise the debt ceiling without there being some conditions attached to that and even president obama when he was senator, u. S. Senator said it was irresponsible for us to continue to add to these the deficit, have these, add to the debt, have these record deficits. We need to take action and yet it is a lot easier to talked about what needs to be done versus actually do the hard work of getting it done so the reason that we find ourselves where we are right now, because these are politically difficult decisions that we have to make. It means that we are not going to be able to just continue the current pact that america hth t been spending beyond its means paula for many years. We cant continue down this path. It is impacting our economy, our military, our readiness, impact our children and the country ago to inherit, whether america is going to be strong. The reason it is difficult right now is these are difficult decisions we have to make. Forming programs and reducing spending at the federal level. It needs to happen. There is a tugofwar right now between what is politically popular versus what is what really needs to happen. Host some quick item is a. This location, part of the original capital, your office. Guest this wall right here is used to be part of the outside wall of the original capital and when they expanded the capital in the mid 1850s and 60s this was all added on when they added on the house and senate wing so it is special to have a great view of the mall looking western Washington State. Host your bio says you have a passion for history. If you could talk to somebody in american history, who would that be . Guest right now i think it would be george washington. I have so admired him and talk about important leadership that he brought at a difficult time for this country, he was someone who was highly regarded, steady as you go type of hand. And didnt necessarily seek, that people that we need you, we need your leadership at this time. Those were difficult decisions they were making. They didnt always agree. Very passionate debates. Sometimes with your friends and allies and sometimes with others pulling in a different direction so there are parallels. I would love to sit down and talk with george washington. And to hear him just share both what they are facing when they were founding this country and the perspective he could give us today would be especially helpful. Host would he recognize congress the way it is today . Guest i hope so. In some ways i dont think our Founding Fathers ever imagined the legislative branch would be necessarily as weak as i see it right now. They set it up so the legislative branch would be the most powerful branch within the three branches of government but the struggles between the branches of government, between the executive branch and the Judicial Branch and the legislative branch and their foresight to knows that you want to have the balance of power, dont want to have one person in charge, want to separate power and have checks and balances, it was so why ise and served an Important Role the legislative branch needs to stand up. Host you get a chance to read . Guest it depends. I go through spurts. Host what i you reading now . Guest i picked up Peggy Noonans book on what ive thought of the revolution which was her time in the white house in the Ronald Reagan almost done with that one and i am enjoying reading. That and my baby name book which i read almost every night the dan nugent up with baby names. Host no decision yet. Guest no. Host what is next for you . Any desire to Seek Higher Office . Someone said you might run for president. Leadership in the house for u. S. Senate . Guest we will see. I am honored to be representing the people of Eastern Washington in congress. I dont have any plans to be running for any of those other offices. I am honored to be here. I am committed to working hard. Being the best representative i can be for the people of washington, working with my colleagues around the leadership table to provide important leadership for the republicans in the house. Hopefully providing some vision and clarity as to where we want to take the country moving forward. Host rep Cathy Mcmorris rogers, thank you very much for your time. Doctor and astrophysicists neil digressed tyson on americas call for scientists and engineers. As nasas future goes so does that of america. If nasa is healthy, then you dont need a program to convince people that science and engineering is good to do because they will see it written large on the peer. There will be calls for injured years to help us go ice fishing on europa where there is an ocean of water that has been liquid for billions of years. We will dig through the soil of mars and look for life. That will get the best biologists. With that the nasa portfolio today . Has biology, chemistry,