Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20150921

Kind of the easy and exciting part because theyre easy to mark. Then on a daytoday basis, you need to create systems and infrastructure that allow to be incorporated and allows you to be able to run the country. Those are the pieces, in terms of breaking them down, thats where the sbresing part of the discussion takes place. Thank you. Weve come to the end of our time together and i have been enriched by the comments here and i hope we can continue to have this discussion. I would encourage anyone here to reach out to a panelist. Just to ifis in general or engage with us on twitter or any other medium and wed be happy to discuss Youth Engagement with you. So, just in closing, id like to offer many thanks so jackson lees office, without whose support, this event would not have been possible. Id like to thank the panelists for agreeing to be a part of this discussion. Thank you. And finally, id like to thank everyone in the room for taking time out of that you are but di schedules to attend. Your comments contributed to a lively discussion here and hopefully, it will be fruitful in the future for all of us in our work in Youth Engagement, whether here in the u. S. , abroad, policy or prak tigs ner side. Thanks very much and have a wonderful day. Vermont center and 2016 president ial candidate Bernie Sanders was in New Hampshire over the weekend including a stop at a ton hall meeting in seabrook. More than 600 people from three states attended. You can watch his comments tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. The popes visit to the u. S. Cspan has live coverage from washington, d. C. , the first stop on the popes tour tuesday afternoon beginning at 3 45, were live with the president and mrs. Obama to greet the pontiff. Wednesday morning on cspan, cspan radio and cspan. Org, the welcoming ceremony as the obamas officially welcome him to the white house. Live coverage begins at 8 45 eastern later, the mass and can nonization. Thursday morning at 8 30, cspans coverage begins from capitol hill becoming the first uppontiff to address a joint meeting of congress. Friday morning at 10 00, live coverage from new york as the pope speaks to the United Nations General Assembly and at 11 30, the pontiff will hold a multireligious service at the 9 11 museum and world trade center. Follow cspans coverage of the popes historic trip to the u. S. Live on tv or online at cspan. Org. Awl campaign long, cspan takes you on the road to the white house. Unfiltered access to the candidates, at town hall me meetings, news conference, rallies and speeches. Comments by twitter, facebook and phone and every campaign we cover is available on our website at cspan. Org. Representatives from wisconsin and michigan talked about new right to work laws. And how theyve been implemented in their states. The Heritage Foundation hosted the discussion which focused on this is an hour. A hot topic of debate recently has been right to work laws. These laws that require rather or prevent workers from being required to pay union dues. This is something wisconsin recently passed a few years earlier, michigan, my home state, surprising many. Very historic. And theres a lot of controversy over what these do, so weve published new research out today analyzing the fact of right to work laws on wages and to discuss, we have chris, whos a state senator in the wisconsin legislature. As was the author of the wisconsin right to work law. Vincent, the director of labor policy for the Mackinaw Center in michigan. We will be discussing the effect of right to work on wages. Ill be presenting this research, theb then the senator and will be discussing how right to work has affected the two most recent states who have enacted it. You can see weve got up here some poll from the Gallup Organization and this is fairly consistent with their historical polling. You can go back to the 1950s and find numbers similar to this. Americans believe in Free Association. Whether or not you support the National Rifle association, local kiwanis, americans believe if you want to join, youve got that right, but you shouldnt be forced to join. Youd be hard pressed to find many nra members even in the nra is hard at work defending their rights. Most americans agree with this principle. Many, many union advocates and supporters do not. This has had effects on public policy. Despite the fact almost three quarters of americans believe dues ought to be voluntary, but ought not be fired for deciding to run for a union. Only about half the country has this. And the natural question would be why is that . A democracy, reflect the feel fooelings of the public, through their elected representatives. Why is it that they are not going along with what their constituents are supporting. In missouri, fwhooirng to be voting in a few weeks whether or not the override the law. New mexico, across the country, were seeing ledge islator, some like senator, i have voted for right to work, but others say this is a bad idea and the core argument is that basically, right to work laws lower wages. This is a figure put out by the Economic Policy institute. It is a left wing think tank. Most dont realize its a union backed think tank. Richard trumka is the chair of the board of directors. They have nine other Union President s on their board of directors, but the Economic Policy institute has put out a number of of studies showing that in states where intensity dropped the most, wage growth was slowest and studies like this, theyre quick to acknowledge a points, you cant just say wages are different in right to work states. Youve got different demographic make ups, different educational make ups, especially different costs of living, so you cant make this apples to oranges comparison. This is evidence thats been submitted before congress. Theyve submitted it before basically this study. Before state legislature testimony. I know the senator heard similar numbers when he was being asked to vote right to work in wisconsin and what they basically show is you can more or less interpret these numbers if you can see them as percentage point changes. 13 lower wages in right to work states. Account for demographic and individual labor market type variables like your education, your age, things like that, which we would expect younger workers tend to make less and more educated workers tend to make more. The gap falls down to 9 , then throw in the third and fourth column, two different pressures of the states living cost. The unions have made this point time and time geng, they claim wages are about 3 lower in right to work states. This, to me, has been a per swative argument. Thats why weve got a major reason why weve got about half the country hasnt passed these right to work laws. Generally, we believe in Free Association, but unions, pass right to work, fewer Union Members and the economic side effects that hurt everyone. Therefore, while we formally believe in Free Association, well say were going to force you to pay union dues. Now, that is something that i as an economist find very strange conclusion. The wii all the phers i read treats unions is labor monopoly. They try to operate as a monopoly that, gain control of the supply of labor, get everyone in and when they can do that, they can control the supply of labor driving up its price, but the higher price gets passed on to consumers, the higher wages, the others pay for it and because consumer rs paying higher prices, a, the consumers are worse off and b, theyre selling fewer goods and services, so more get pushed into the nonworking sector. The losses to the economy, you might have gains on the inside of the union, but overall trk economys worse off. The claim youre lowering average wages is disinnocent to my ears. On top of that, Union Membership has not been doing the best in recent decades. Its down consistently and so, they dont have that in labor markets where they have a monopoly. So how do you get this, the states with right to work laws, have worse wages. I and a few others have taken a look at this. This is actually, 1979 Union Membership. It seems like the states would have the largest drop in Union Membership since the 1970s or the states that had a largest drop and those are the states that had the slowest composition right. That doesnt quite fit in with the story the Economic Policy is telling. Well, it turns out nea lot lowe employment. And so, the start of simplistic story that we showed you before, actually turns out to be a lot more nuanced and less favorable to the unions than what the Economic Policy institute put out. I thought professional standards, you share your data with anyone who asks, they wouldnt share. So i couldnt replicate what they did because they werent willing to share. Well, we share your data and code, they just stopped responding to me, but i wanted to replicate, they did use broadly speaking source they made some adjustments to, so i used the same source and one of the key things youve got to take account of is living costs because you can remember from that map, pretty much the entire south is right to work. We can debate how you discuss kentucky and missouri, but the entire south is right to work and the entire northeast is not. Well, it costs a whole lot more to live in new york city or boston than it does to live in shreveport, louisiana or in nashville, tennessee. A dollar is going to buy you more in a lot of these right to work states and this chart shows it. The gray bar in the middle is basically average living costs. Weve ranked states from lowest living cost to highest. The states at the top being the highest. On the other side, you can see which are the right to work and which are not. Theres only one right to work state with living costs above. Thats virginia. All other 24 are below average living costs and conversely, as you can see, new york, california, massachusetts, hawaii, the states with above average costs, they have forced union dues and one of the findings economists have made is that wages track one for one living costs. Once you control for skills and abilities, and any sort of local amenities like weather that might cause people to want to live near you or the beach, once you account for those, wages move one for one with living costs, so, the average new yorker might have 13 higher wages r, but theyre not getting 13 more goods and service ises. Actually making the same as the average american once you account for the fact that rent in new york city is really, really, really high. So, this turns out to make a major effect on the analysis. So, what we can do here, ill summarize, i wont ask you to strain your eyes to save it. The first four columns are replicated and these numbers here, ive converted them to percentage points, so straight answers. We got close to what they did. Fairly close. Then you have a look, they didnt talk about this when they were, in their appendix, its revealed. Their cost of living accounts for three quarters of the difference in living costs. If living costs go up 10 , wages are only 7. 5 higher. Not the 10 . Theyre not fulling controlled. They talk about it saying were accounted for living costs, but the ducks they model only explains about three quarters of the difference. Now, normally when youve got differences in purchases power across time and states, what congress will do is adjust for the differences in purchasing power, then run their analysis, usually, you run the analysis on inflation dollar, rather than the same over time. I use the same models, same variables. The only thing i did dimpbly was adjusted the wages for living costs and all of a sudden, the results disappear. So, this claim that these are awful, horrible for workers, which you hear from groups like unions, you just change from doing a more accurate reflection. Now, the next two columns there, i just break it up. In the private sector, you affect wages by using the monopoly strength and power, so in the private sector, about a lower right to work states. I would argue thats a benefit. We shouldnt be raising taxes to force the avrnl american than they themselves receive. The fact youre lowering is a good thing, but private sector, theres nothing. Includes steps and commissions. Again, no effect there. They really evaluate these studies. But what about benefits of right to work . Besides the Free Association benefits. Well, what we have here is a nice Little National experiment. Kentucky as i mentioned, has a number of counties passing right to work. How as this affected their job situation . This county, warren county, was the first county in kentucky to pass it. They passed this in december of 2014. In the next three months, almost 30 different economic projects representing 3600 jobs contacted them and told them were interested in locating you now. Now that youve gotten right to work, were interested. Since then, as of may of this year, ive heard from the bowlibowl ing Green Chamber of commerce. Thats gone up to 47 Companies Representing the 5,000 potential jobs. They represent about a 10 increase in overall employment. Projects they were not eligible for, the businesses did not want to deal with that, now, thats america. The others are just one county, maybe was something the weather or water or something, so i did the same analysis we did to wages to the unemployment rates and what it shows is when you dont account for anything, unemployment rates are about a half a percentage point lower. About a percentage point lower in right to work states. They found the same things i did and didnt want to talk about it. The scary stories about wages falling, its really a lot of smoke and mirrors. You dig under the hood and theyre not fully accountable for living costs. But we do see both anecdotely and numerically, very strong evidence on job creation. On top of that, just got the Free Associational benefits. Why should i be forced to subsidize their cooperations . I think thats a pretty powerful right to work. Im going to turn it over to two speakers to talk about the experiences theyve had and after theyve gone, well take q and a from the audience. Thank you, james. Its a pleasure to be here at the heritage. Good grief, we spend a ton of time looking at the research these guys do, so thanks for doing what you do. Thanks for inviting me to a swamp in the middle of summer. I appreciate that. Went for a run last night and before i even stepped out of the door, i think i sweat through my jogging outfit. It is the right to work thing is a big deal. Its been a big deal in wisconsin for a long time and i think what i want to do is take a little bit of time to walk you through a couple of reasons you know, why right to work in wisconsin. I want to walk you through, too, what we ran into with objections because i think that plays very well into what james has been working through with his numbers. Im a cpa by trade. Spent eight years in public accounting, the last several with arthur anderson, then i bought, owned a couple of companies, i still have that. But i jumped into politics probably about actually 2009. I started running for office, was elected in 2011 with Governor Walker came in. So, as you have seen in wisconsin, weve add some interesting things going on over the last several years. So, right to work is something we looked at right away when we came in in 2010, 2011. Were looking at an overall blueprint for how do we take wisconsin, as you look at the history of your state, progressive, we brought into existen existence, the state income tax. Weve got a new crop of citizen ledge islators who said what we need to do is slowly need to take away the concept of government is the provider to government is limited and you know, thats the Heritage Foundation is at its core, thats what you guys are about. Right to work is in the recipe for that. As you know, we started out with act ten, which was essentially right to work for the public sector. We got that, i think led the charge in the United States for what states are doing now and that was a huge, huge battle for us. But we knew it had to be done. Weve done some income tax reform over the last couple of sessions, but coming up into this session, we saw right to work. Thats the elephant in the room. We have to deal with it and so, we started actually before the session even started in okay, what is our message going to be . What things are we going to encounter . We looked at a bunch of stuff that james has done and the big driver is again, back to our blueprint, over 70 of our budget really relates to dependsy on government versus the individual. So, we knew we had to take care of this issue. This is the interest iing part about what these gentleman do. What we have to do is effectively communicate that to get the message across, so we have to take the numbers and translate it into people. We dont have a ton of time and i would have loved to have stood up and gone through this because the analysis is fascinating and we ran into the same studies, but what we had to do was take this and make it real for people. So, what we did is the first issue we ran into was, we started out by saying this is about workers freedom and this is very personal to me because when i was 19 years 08d, i worked for an Electrical Contractor and i wasnt aware of right to work or unionization. It was just, you know, i took my job, went in and the guy said heres your offer, i took it with him and went to work and the first paycheck, i had these deductions, couldnt figure out, what is is this . So, i went to the payroll person and said, hey, i think theres a mistake here, they said, no, this is your union dues and i didnt know about it. I said, well, i didnt ask to be in the union and she said, well, you have two options. You can take the deduction or you can go find another job because the state law actually says that this is the way its going to be and that just as a 19yearold, a very unpolitical 19yearold, it never sat right with me. It always bothered me and so, when i came into office, my first piece was right on the front of that thing. It was a major piece that we had to do. But its about worker freedom and it was interesting to see as we went through this, the first debate i had on npr, i think most of us lead, it wasnt with me. Came at me with worker freedom. Said youre getting government involved, an employer relationship. I kind of laughed and i said i think thats in place. If we had a true free market here, the employer would have just as much of a right to say no, im not going to have a union in my business as the employees do to unionize, but that doesnt economist and why is that . Because governments already involved. The worker freedom thing, what it ended up coming down to and we used this in the debate, too, its really not a struggle with workers. Its the union bosses. The opposite side were upset about because guess who funds campaigns . And we had the statistics for a lot of our debate opponents sitting there ready if they pulled out that card because we always hear about they always pull out the Koch Brothers and all these foundations. That always obviously are from the right. So, we had it laid out how much of their contributions dame kayembe from the unions in case we had to pull that card out. They never brought that up in the debate. Thats really the angle we came at. Worker wills make less. We used your statistics. This is interesting. To take all these numbers and again, bring it back to people, heres how we approached it. So, they brought up the argument and said you know what . In i call them forced ewan yob states, but in nonright to work state, people make more money and i said you know what . Youre absolutely right. They do. And they would kind of sit and look at me. And okay, good, we agree on something. Great. So then what i did is i had to bring it again cost of living, if you start throwing coal out, the average persons eyes glaze over and they fall asleep. I said, have you been to chicago . Been to a starbucks in chicago . Have you said their chai tea nonfat is way more expensive there than in milwaukee or madison. Everybodys like, oh, totally, i dont even go there because its so expensive. I said, well, do you think the average worker in chicago makes more money . Theyre like, well, they have to. I said, okay, so, at the end of the day, do you understand, you have to have both pieces here . You cant just say they make more. You have to look at what their expenses is, so, i said they may have a bigger paycheck, but right to work states people have a bigger bank account. So thats what we kept coming back to. Average family, 2,000. Bigger bank account at the end of every year. Thats what really helped us win that argument. Again, we didnt get too much into the details because we didnt have the time. But it was very helpful. The loss of workforce because workers will move to other states to get paid more. This was interesting because it was a study commissioned by the unions from a local professor at a university and he used the study you referenced as kind of his support and as i read through, he made assumptions based on a couple of fact, but didnt back them up with facts. He just assumed that people would buy into his analysis and a lot of o the public did. Obviously, the media was constantly quoting saying well, youve got a pretty smart guy here and he thinks this is going to krooif workers out. We said lets look at how many of you have a lawn mower . What kind of engine . Usually a koehler or brings and stratton. Briggs and stratton, when the union won the vote, they packed up and moved to a different state. This is not good. Right to work states earn jobs and we could bring in statistics these guys put together that showed thats not the fact. But this professor tried to use the assumption that because wages were going to go down, wages were doing to decrease if you became right to work. We said no, thats not true at all. We showed that wages increase at a higher rate when youre in a right to work state. Companies want to move to right to work states because they want to pay people less. So, they were saying that sight selector, we all know who they are and what they do. This is one of almost their standard questions is are you a right to work state or not. Were going here because this is a key component to it, so, what we did is, businesses dont go to right to work states because they want to pay less. Companies go to right to work states because theres more flexibility and because their workers can be more efficient, again, we brought that back the why is that because the worker is empowered with personal liberty and with the ability to make more decision on their own redskiversus having this contrar little things, so that was another interesting argument. Right to work states are more dangerous. That was the last big one they threw out at us, so what we did pulled a lot of workers comp data from nonright to work states, right to work states and again, me being a cpa, i created the spread sheet myself and had a blast doing it, but i couldnt show that to my colleagues because their eyes glaze over. But we showed that the numbers proof out that actually, in right to work state, there were fewer incidences and accidents an i know you referenced that, too, in what you said. So, those were the things we ran into. Again, we always had to bring it back to people. What does it mean for the person. We look at the democrats, as a republican, the democrats are so effective because they take it to people. The impact on wisconsin, this is pretty new, but we are able to see some immediate things, it was frit cool, the day after we passed right to work, i got a call from the cfo of a company and they own a conglomeration of company, 14, 15 companies and he said, chris, i just wanted you to know, because you guys passed right to work, weve been kind of waiting in the wings, but were moving one of our Manufacturing Companies from minnesota to wisconsin. We just wanted to make sure you knew this because this is a big deal for companies. We had another company, at badger meter with Governor Walker, but he said we were going to look at moving 100 employees to another state because they were a right to work state. Wed have more flexibility, but we are going to keep those employees here and they looked at expanding, too, then a constituent of mine, last week, he said, hey, chris, wonder federal government next week, you could come do another Ribbon Cutting for an expansion were doing. This guy, i knocked his door for the first time in 2010, he chewed on me for about 45 minutes to an hour about how terrible wisconsin was with the Business Climate and how we just werent listening to business owners. I said, dick, give it some time. Trust me on this one. Weve got a different crop of people coming in here. Were going to make changesand they instead of moving operations to kentucky, they have grown in the state of wisconsin. And ive been to two Ribbon Cuttings now for expansions there, so Proof Positive that what were doing is working. Interesting enough, i actually have this week, ive got some ledge islators from missouri coming out to talk to me about hey, kind of walk us through why you guys did what you did and help us understand better so that we can make an informative stigs on what to do with this veto. Wisconsin business virm, this is pretty cool, too. Weve always been ranked in the middle, lower middle tier or the bottom tier constantly. Just where weve been for the last decade. The cool one for us is manpower. Manpower does a study on finding a job. We are now number four. Were the fourth best state for finding a job. That is powerful. We dont have a jobs issue anymore in wisconsin. We have a worker issue. Finding workers, which is a really neat transition from four, five years ago when i took office. We have a worker issue. Thats a different subject. As you know, wisconsin is a heavy manufacturing state and southeastern wisconsin, kind of the milwaukee, wakashaw, pretty much the milwaukee region, we were just named, we had the highest growth in manufacturing jobs of any metro area in the United States. In the last year. And its because of things weve been doing and we can definitely attribute that to right to work. That was a piece of the puzzle that has really helped us, so very strong evidence just from on the ground. People, businesses. And people who are getting jobs, too. These are good paying jobs. That right to work is good for state. I think its good for the nation as a whole. Because again, it get back to the individual liberty and freedom of a person to choose. If they want to associate or not with us. So, thats what i have. And wisconsin always 46 , so were below the National Average. Doing great there. Hi, im the director of labor policy out of michigan. James, heritage, thank you so much for the invitation to come speak and for everybody else in the audience, youve heard from the economist. From the cpa. Now, you get to hear from the lawyer. So, i dont know if thats a good thing or a bad thing. Before i go on, lets just do a real quick definition of what is right to work. Right to work simply means a union cant get a worker fired for not paying them. Doesnt affect collective bargaining in any other way. Workers, unions, they can still negotiate with their employer over wage, hours, working conditions. Anything they could negotiate over before right to work they could negotiate over rilgt to work. They simply cant say you have to pay us or youre going to lose your job. Let me tell you what was going on in michigan from about 2000 to 2010, give or take. It was michigans last decade. We had some of the highest unemployment in the country. We lost over 860,000 payroll jobs during that period. Our wages for falling. Between 2001 and 2012, wages in michigan fell by almost 2500 a year inflation adjusting. Rest of the country, wages went up by almost 3,000. We were losing population. There was a saying in michigan, last one in michigan turn out the lights. Some people really took that to heart. I move d in 2012 right at the unions were putting a ballot measure on the november 2012 ballot to amend the institution. To allow Union Collective bargaining agreements to an effective veto legislation. They were going to give collective bargaining agreements, the power of the institution and civics 101, you have a institutional amendment, you have a piece of legislation, which wins . The constitutional amendment. So, its against this backdrop that i moved and i was an optimist. I knew michigan would be coming back. Im moving, taking this new job, moving my soon to be wife out here. Im buying a home. I hope stuff works out, especially with this proposal, too. Well, it did. Voters took one look at that and it went down by 15 points. They said no. That eventually led to the conversation on right to work and in december 2012, michigan, the state with the fifth highest membership rate, the birthplace of the uaw, long considered a labor stronghold, finally gave workers the freedom to choose. And the effect was felt almost immediately. The next month, senator was talking about sight selectors. Sight selection magazine published there should be a significant increase in the number of projects michigan receives because they are no longer being eliminated in the early stages of sernls. Now, weve heard about right to work and population growth. Higher population growth in the right to work states, you have higher wage growth. Lower employment, more jobs. At its core, right to work is is about freedom and when creators look at states, the first things is right to work is is a check box. Does it have a right to work law or not . Now, if the state has a horrible regulatory Business Climate, if they have incredibly high taxes, chances are jobs probably arent going there. But if they have a competitive tax climate, if they have competitive regulatory environment, then jobs are going to be attractive. Without the check box, most sights wont look. Past, do you have worker freedom or not . Well, so what happened . Well, michigan, unemployment, went down. Led the nation. By almost ten points. Since june 2009. Were now at 5. 3 . Unfortunately, wisconsins still beating us, but we have a lot to offer. You guys are used to that. No comment. Well, the next closest to us was the right to wrk state of indiana, which had a sixpoint drop. In may, in may alone, michigan added 6,000 manufacturing jobs. And up to that point, it was almost 13,000 for the year. Indiana, a right to work neighbor, and in 2000 that month, 5,000 for the year, you can contrast that with you know, i will go ahead and say forced unionism, the forced union ism state of illinois which lost 2,000. Right to work states gaining these jobs, the forced unionism states that are losing. Remember, i told you i was a little nervous about just a little nervous, about buying a home, relocating my life to michigan. Well, that gamble paid off. Right now, Michigan Home values have grown, the seventh highest in the country in the last five years. From personal experience, my home value has skyrocketed. Since i bought it in 2012. Things are going well in michigan. Wages, wages are going up. From march 2013 when the right to work law took effect until early 2015, michigan earnings have gone up by 5. 4 . Compare that to the National Average at 3. 7. Oklahoma, which passed right to work earlier in 2000s, the year that went into effect before it was 539 was the average pay per week. By the end of 2002 after right to work, it went up to 551. In 2012, it was 801 is per week. In indiana before they passed right to work in 2001, average weekly wages was 774. By the end of 2012, after they passeded right to work, average wages were 793. So much for right to work lowering wages or right to work for less. So, weve heard where they got it. Its cool. Senator was talking about starbucks. I grew up in new york city. Do you know how much rent is for the average apartment in new york city . Its about 3400 a month. You can get a shoe box apartment, not even a one bedroom, a studio apartment costs you 2,000 a month in new york city. You get a decent house in alabama, the mortgage on average, the right to work state of alabama, 800 a month. Puts things in perspective of why those workers in new york are getting paid more. The dollar does not nearly go as far. Well, james nemesis, epi, just released their 2015 Family Budget calculator. And they went through and according to their calculations, went through several metropolitian areas and estimated how much a typical family would need to spend on rent, food, the bare basics. All ten of their most expensive cities are inforced unionism states. Thats the group saying well, workers arent making more. Their own data is showing them that when you calculate it correctly,s its because it costs more. When you factor in that cost of living, workers in right to work states are making about 4 more. Makes the unions ill say pause when they hear this. Is that right to work can actually make unions stronger. Right to work means that unions cant take their own membership for granted. They cant force them to pay, so they have the prove their worth to the membership. They have to compute. Competition can make you stronger. Last year, indiana tied for the number one state of adding new Union Members. Last year, they added 50,000 new members. Michigan lost some. And the forced states beat the right to work states last year. In new Union Members. Go back a couple of years and see that it goes back and forth. Some years, right to work states actually outpace nonright to work states or forced unionism states as far as new Union Members. Now, now, i can just spout numbers, but i dont want you to take my word for it. I want to read you some quotes. This is something i never understood, that people think right to work hurts unions. To me, it helps them. You dont have to belong if you dont want to, so if i go to an organizing drive, you koent have to belong versus if you get 50 of you, then all have to belong whether you leicht or not. I dont even like the way that sounds. Anybody know who said that . Gary casteel, the uaws current secretary treasurer. In michigan, the aflcio president said we dont know what to expect. We can continue to explain why membership is of value. Same thing. Same sentiment from the membership director of the states largest union, the Teachers Union. Have we to increase our effort and hes talking about communicating with his members. Sure, we have and were stronger because of it. Now, i like to say theyre taking these sentiments to heart. I think some are, some arent. We have run into a fu speed bumps with worker freedom in michigan. First of which was that the law was passed in december of 2012, but didnt take effect until march of 2013. So, during that period, unions were able to extend contracts, in some case, up to ten years. A decade. Of forced unionism because the right to work law did not affect you arent contracts. They also established windows. That workers could only exercise the right to work rights during certain times of year. For the Teachers Union, the month of the august, which we just passed. And the one that sprang up on this this career year year is we had the Teachers Union again, used to accept resignations to their general mock. In june, they put a nondescript disclaimer on their website and said they will no longer be accepting says nations to their mailbox and would only accept it to a thu mailbox. Not coincidentally, the of resignatio resignations historically. Mailbox was p. O. Box 51 at the local post office, which you can make illusions to area 51 all you want. At the end of the day as the unions try whatever they can to get around the right to work law, we are seeing more jobs in michigan. Were seeing higher home values. Were seeing more population growth. And the attitude in the wolverine state is optimistic. We are optimistic about the future. Thank you very much. All right. Weve got some time for questions. Is there someone with a microphone . The gentleman in the back, if youll stand up when you have your questions and state your name and affiliation. My name is connor wolf. My question is regards to the averages of all the right to work states. Upon passing right to work law, do we see wages change in that case . Could this be a control for future reports . Its the kind of thing that both the folks from the left and myself on the right and academic economists basically say we expect the effect to basically, itll take many years to play itself out. The way you want expect right to work effect wages is on the labor side. Similarly, the Union Argument is that your weakening the power of unions, so they cant get us good contracts and putting downward pressure. In both cases, this is something that is going to take place over a number of years. I was quite surprised to see the numbers. It was a very strong response from that county. But its something at a statewide level that you would expect to play itself out over a number of years. Yeah, lets wait a few years. I think five years from now well be able to look back and actually get some numbers and take a look, but its not something youd expect to have an effect the next month or two months later. I dont know if either of you want to comment on that. Connor, i can send you some of the numbers and some of the average Weekly Earnings for oklahoma and indiana. We havent done wisconsin yet, because it is still pretty new. Like i said, michigan is far outpacing the National Average for wage growth. At the end of the day, when you look at it, the tag line of workers will make less after right to work is passed is simply untrue just by looking at the last three right to work states after they passed the law. Can you hear me . Im an attorney here in town. Its been stated that a lot of large corporations are very lukewarm to right to work laws because theyd rather negotiate with one union than with 10,000 or 20,000 employees and that they see right to work laws as disruptive of labor peace and therefore are very unhelpful in getting these laws enacted in other states. Is that a correct statement of fact or is that myth . Well, right to work wouldnt have any effect on the number of unions theyre negotiating with. The only thing right to work effects is whether or not youre forced to pay dues. The size of the bargaining unit thats an entirely different question. We dont lobby. We put out research on these issues. But to the extent that you have an effect of big unionized companies not wanting right to work, it may be right to work puts more pressure on their unions. Its a captive audience they can tax and raise the dues. If youre in ohio or pennsylvania, basically if you arent willing to switch jobs, they can raise your dues and you have to pay up and they dont have a lot of pressure to deliver highquality services. I mean, in theory the Union Officers are elected in these elections, but theyre heavily slanted into the incumbents. Its passed from father to son. It may be with right to work in the option of exit where the workers can decide if theyre not seeing value, theyre going to go elsewhere that the unions feel more pressure to actually deliver something at the negotiating table. We actually its interesting you brought that up. We did not hear that. We had some larger corporations who are unionized. They did come to us. They said publicly we have to be careful here because we have our work force. Obviously, the work force, the union work force, is not in favor of right to work because of what theyre told from the union bosses. Its going to decimate them. But the reality was they said, just so you know, we cant come out publicly to back us, but we think this is going to be a good thing for our company and our workers, so thats what we heard from the large corporations. Hi. Im sasha from voice of america. How does the right to work law effect Government Employee unions since Government Employee union is now the majority of the Union Membership . Sure. A typical right to work law in wisconsin was a little bit different, so we dont talk about act 10. The senator can speak to that more authoritatively. It simply says a union cant get a worker fired whether it is private sector or public sector. The union cant go in and say that this person has to pay us or they have to lose their job, and thats all right to work does in both public and private. Government workers, depending on the Civil Service laws or anything ancillary, can negotiate over wages, hours e and working conditions same as they can in the private sector. But as far as the difference, for a typical right to work law there really is none. The effect i found in my study was there were different wage effects for the government and the private sector. The reason behind this might be the government unions are intensely political organizations because they can do something that the private sectors cant do. They can elect their own boss. If they can elect a friendly politician, the unions can control both sides of the negotiating table. The politicians may be more interested in paying off someone who is a major contributor into their campaign not necessarily in dollars but in terms of boots on the ground and activism. The department of labor puts online a lot of unions are required to fill out these Financial Disclosure forms. If you look at the government unions, a lot of these government unions, at least those who are subject to these reports, are spending a 1 4 to a 1 3 of their budgets on politics. A huge portion of their budget goes to politics and lobbying expenditures because it gives them something the private sector unions cant get. They can directly control who they negotiate against and get a sweetheart contract. Theres pretty good evidence that workers wont pay dues if they have these laws. I do find that that as an effect on the numbers. About 3 to 5 lower wages in the government sector. In the private sector, there was nothing. Just nothing. The numbers were basically negative. 1 to. 5 across the different specifications. While the formal mechanism of right to work applies the same to government and private sector, they do have differential impacts in those two sectors. I think we have time for one more question. Thank you, everyone, for coming. Thank you. [ applause ] tonight on cspan 3 a look at taiwans upcoming general election, then a discussion on turkeys political system and relations with the u. S. Later a house subcommittee on plans to combat campus sexual assaults. Taiwan has its general elections scheduled for mid january. A group of Political Science professors recently talked about taiwans political system, past election results, and how this next election might impact with relations with china. This runs an hour and 20 minutes. Thank you very much. My name is richard bush. Im the director of the center for east asian policy studies at the brookings institution, and on behalf of brookings, were very pleased to be cosponsoring this program. We had a program that we did together back in may, i think, and for that one brookings had the Home Field Advantage and now ciss has the Home Field Advantage. Id like to thank all our friends at csis for the outstanding job they did in preparing the home field. I think our first panel was an excellent discussion of issues of high policy, and we had two outstanding presenters and one outstanding moderator. We got into some discussion due to bonnies insistence of domestic issues, which is good. This session is not about policy. Policies are important, but theres more to elections than the respective views of the candidates, and so what we want to look at in this panel is in effect the horse race. Even though president ma, whose name means horse, is not running this time, theres a lot of bad elections that is very important to the outcome and effects the way people vote but dont have that much to do with the policy positions. For example, the quality and charisma of the candidates, the Party Identification of voters and how that shapes who they vote for, the larger balance of ideological sentiment that exists in society, contextual factors like the public approval of the party and the leader in power, whether or not that leader is running for reelection, the state of the economy at the time that people go to cast their vote, the state of the democracys external relations, and, i think, extremely important are organizational and mobilizational issues. How capable are the competing parties at getting out their own message, fighting to control the agenda, and on election day getting their supporters to the polling place . Doesnt matter if you if your party has broad support in society if you cant get your guys to vote. Youre not necessarily going to win. So this is the general scope of this panel, and i think each panelist is going to talk about these issues in different ways. Were very fortunate to have three outstanding presenters. David brown, i think we all know. Hes hes a professor who follows taiwan politics very closely. Dr. Rich and dr. Yunhan chu. So our first presenter is david brown. Dave, do you want to stand up . Thank you, richard, for that introduction and thank you brookings and csis for inviting me to participate in this panel. As richard said, im a professor at csis. Thats the capacity at which im speaking. Im at sometimes misrepresented in the taiwan press as for speaking for someone else. Im not. Im speaking on my behalf. Anyways, it seems very clear in the information thats been presented already that taiwan politics, which has gone through the last quarter century some dramatic shifts in political power, is in the process of going through another one. This process started with the 91 local elections. That seems to be carrying over into the president ial and legislative elections that will be taking place. Ive been asked to talk a little bit about the campaigns, so let me do that. On the one hand, the dpp is a nominated candidate. She is a sophisticated personality with experience in both government and politics, the chairman of her party, and she is running with a united party behind her, and her campaign is proceeding, it seems to me, smoothly with very few mistakes. On the other side of the green blue political divide in taiwan, the campaign is not going so well. It is running into repeated issues and problems and does not seem to have adjusted very well to correct for those things. And as it stands now, the knt party, the leading party on the blue side, has a candidate who is polling between 15 and 20 . How did they end up in that situation . I think there are a number of steps in that process. One is the natural person to be the candidate for the kmt, the party chairman, has chosen not to run. Instead he set up a process, a sort of primary process within the party, which would be based upon conducting a Public Opinion poll to see who should be the partys candidate. None of the main figures in the party chose to stand for election and perhaps for wise reasons. The one candidate that emerged at the end was a relatively less wellknown personality in taiwan, who has recently been the deputy seek of the legislative uon. Before the Public Opinion poll to determine whether if she would qualify to be the Party Candidate was held, the party did not arrange any time when she would present her platform to the public. And so when the voters that were polled, not the voters, the people who were polled reacted to her, what were they reacting to . They were reacting to her personal story which is quite compelling and interesting, and they were reacting to personality as an outspoken and atypical kmt politician. When the poll was conducted, she surprised many people, including myself, and got a 46 support rate, which was well beyond the threshold that the party had set for a potential candidate. Shortly afterward, however, her poll numbers began to collapse. Why . Because the more the public learned about her policy, the less attractive she appeared. She laid out, as has been said, the core of her platform was on Cross Strait Relations, and she said she wanted to move beyond mas one country interpretation to reach an agreement with beijing on one china common understanding, and she said she wanted to open political talks with the eventual goal of having a peace agreement. Not a new idea, but one that ma had handled very carefully. She was putting it back on the agenda. I think the more people learned about that aspect of her policy the more rapidly her numbers slipped. And as they slipped, the kmt party was moving towards its congress in july and voices began to appear that maybe the party ought to rethink who its candidate was and find a more attractive candidate. Well, none was available because once again eric chu, i think, reiterated that he was not going to run and he managed to pull the congress together to the extent that they unanimously adopted her as a candidate. Her campaign has not gone well. Just two weeks ago she announced she was going to have a pause in that campaign. It took everyone by surprise. She was going to meditate about the future, decide how to proceed. Three days later she came back and she essentially said im on the right path. Im going to continue the campaign the way it was, and ill do my best on behalf of the party. Her poll numbers have remained in the 15 to 20 range. This led to another figure entering the race, james sung. Many of you will remember he was a kmt, very successful kmt politics, who in the year 2000 ran as an independent, almost won. Afterwards formed a new party. And has participated in the 2004 and 2012 elections without being on a winning ticket. He has always considered himself fully qualified to be president. And i think he saw this, and i respect james sung. And im not criticizing him on this. Im just saying that he is a man who has great experience and hes understood himself that way. And so at 73 he probably concluded that this was his last chance. So because youngs numbers were so low and the kmt party was not well organized, lets put it that way, he jumped into the race, and its now a threeway race. And in this threeway race, the outcome is not what you would expect that taiwans poll numbers have been largely a combinatn of james sung and chu. The outcome of that race, i think, is quite predictable. Since richard told me not to talk too much about policies, i will dropout of my talk, the part i was going say about that and shift to the legislative area on the election. In some ways thats the more interesting and the more consequential point. Can the dpp win a clear majority in the ly either alone or with the support of a live parties and i dont know what the outcome is going be. There are many who predict the goal of a dpp victory is within grasp. Here again, i think you see a difference in the way the two parties are running their ly campaigns. The dpp seems to be well organized, is methodically going through the process of identifying good candidates and constituencies where it can win. It is leaving a little bit of space for others in areas where it might not win on its own but where it could support other parties with the hope that they would win. These parties, the ones that they have been working most closely with are the tsu and the new phenomenon, new power party formed by activists who are involved in the Sunflower Movement and earlier student activities. So theyre doing well. The fallout from the president ial campaign has had a very negative effect on the kmts campaign for the ly. As soon as madam hungs platform became better known, candidates who might have run for election on the kmt ticket had decided in some instances not to run because shes at the head of the central ticket. Others have left the party to join the pfp and several have amalgamated into a new party which is based around the candidate in shinzu who had the largest electoral support in the last ly elections. So the kmt side is, again, badly divided and its prospects, i think, are poor and really do open the possibility that the dpp with allies could win a majority. The ly election is also interesting because, as i said, you have new parties participating that have not participated before. The kmt side of the spectrum is not a new phenomenon, but i think certainly the new power party and the coalition thats emerged between the green party and the social Democratic Party are interesting phenomena of people trying to take advantage of the environment created by sunflower student movement, the demand for more openness, the success of chu running as an independent in taipei with dpp support of opening up the possibility that these smaller parties could succeed. Listening to people in taiwan who know these issues better than i do, it seems that there is a possibility that the new power party may pass 5 threshold in the party list part of the ly election, and gain some seats in that way and conceivably even win in one or another constituency with dpp support. So this is, i think, a very interesting new phenomenon. Do i have time to say a few words about about the prc, because that is really interesting . At the beginning of the campaign, maybe eight, nine months ago speaking with taiwan experts from china, you would sometimes hear that oh, National Level elections in taiwan are different than local elections and therefore there is a possibility that the kmt might do well in the elections in january of 2016. I do not hear that kind of analysis any longer. It leads me to believe that thoughtful people in beijing understand that they are going to be confronted with a dpp government and possibly a dpp controlled legislature. What has beijing been saying during the campaign . I think its a mixture of what i would call hard messages and soft messages and thats a phenomena weve seen before in the way beijing has dealt with taiwan at a time when its not clear what is the best policy on the way forward. Some of the hard messages, i think, were the comments that had been referred to by xi jinping in march and may of this year, and the fact that they have conducted some military exercises that have been interpreted as aimed at sending a message related to the election and the softer message is, in part, also xi jinping because his comments have been, i would say, not always clear just what he was saying. There have been times when he talked about the importance of unswervingly maintaining continuity in the Peaceful Development of Cross Strait Relations, which has a certain soft message in it, and thats the way he spoke to liang jong when she was in he was in beijing recently. And i think the way they have dealt with taipei mayor shows a certain flexibility on issues which would not apply directly to the dpp because the dpp is different than an independent mayoral candidate with no background, no history of relations like the dpp has, but it showed in my mind as was said a certain a flexibility on beijings side. So, i am left a little uncertain. I think on the longer term, when taiwan won and not in a mode of trying to influence things but of having to deal with a new situation, beijing will be confronted with many difficult choices. One of them basically is are they going to stick with the Peaceful Development policy, or shift to a much more military focused coercive policy . I dont know the answer to that question. In part because i dont know that i fully understand a man who is going to make the decisions on that which is xi jinping. But my personal bet is that they will move to find a way to try to keep the Peaceful Development policy going but with many adjustments to that policy. Why do i think it will be a difficult set of decisions for them . Its because i see them on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, they will want to show that elected a government that does not accept the 92 consensus or the idea that taiwan and the mainland are both part of one china, which is xi jinpings core requirement, has to have some costs. They will have to deal with that government differently than they dealt with cho. To the extent that they do things that are seen as punishing to taiwan, they undermine their longterm goal of having a successful Peaceful Development policy leading in the direction of some form of the integration in the future. So i think they face great difficulties and i will leave it at that. Thank you very much. [ applause ] thank you very much, dave. Now we have tim rich. Good morning. I would like to structure my talk today around into two broad sections. One, placing the 2016 president ial election into more of a comparative framework, and the second part focusing on the legislative end, which has received considerably less attention but will likely be much more competitive. Im a comparativist at heart. Most of my discussion is on taiwan, japan more broadly. One thing that sets this president ial election apart in taiwan is the likelihood they will elect the first female president. This is not unusual in asia. In fact if you look over the period from 1945 to 2014 there have been 11 female president s or Prime Ministers elected in asia. The side note here is all 11 were either the children of a former leader, the wife, the widow, et cetera of a former leader, former president , former Prime Minister or a member of a democracy movement. Hung would be the first without this familial ties. To put in contrast, the other female president s and Prime Ministers since 1945, only three of them outside of asia had these familial ties. Some examples for example in asia, park geunhye. Shes also unmarried and when she ran for the national assembly, which was a major issue. She said she was married. She was married to her country. That sort of died off later. Another point much comparison with taiwan is theres arguably greater opportunities for women in lower level elections and thus for legislative elections and thus president ial elections than in other countries in the region. Part of this is party quotas, part of this is ease of access at lower levels. Frankly in terms of legislatures only scandinavian countries on average have more women in the legislatures among democracies, stable democracies, the philippines is the only country within east asia, Southeast Asia that has a similar percentage of women in the legislature as compared to taiwan. Another area that i like to go is to compare the 2016 election here with some initially superficial similarities to the 2000 election. Some of these are patently obvious, so bear with me. Three candidates including james sung again, pushing the election towards the dpp. I think we could agree the kmt did not run their strongest candidate. Arguably to avoid the sacrificial lam this year. Arguably, others could be put in the same place. There was real potential for them to finish third. Heres where the comparison with 2000 should end. The pan blue split handed the election to the dpp whereas they led in every other poll in the election in 2016. Less of a focus on Cross Strait Relations since 2000 if anything its an undue influence in the 2016 election. I dont expect recent attention to the 92 consensus to change that election focus in the long term. Another point that i think has been largely overlooked is james sungs motivations are different between 2000 and 2016. I would argue his rationale for entering 16 is similar to entering 12 and thats to bolster his party. However hes a more viable candidate than in 2012. A reminder he only received 2. 77 of the vote in 2012. Other sort of clear differences between 2000, 2016, the dpp candidate is not painted as the one thats extreme but hung is playing this role largely because of her positions on Cross Strait Relations. Shes not appealing to the sort of blue base but the deep blue. The growth in taiwanese identification even if just looking since president cho took office, 20 growth of those who consider themselves taiwanese as opposed to chinese or both. And which tends to be overlooked still early enough although highly unlikely for a pan blue coordination over the president ial candidate. Its still theoretically possible that one of the candidates will drop out, although thats highly unlikely. My expectations for the president ial election are no different than almost anyone elses. I see the 91 elections have energized the dpp. Antisentiment may not necessarily translate into prodpp sentiment. However, short of a scandal or an outside shortterm event seems poised to win. A sort of followup to this is that the third person coming in, a catalyst for internal reforms especially in terms of recruitment, something i brought up before today is not the question of why didnt eric cho run but why are there not other eric chos ready to one. Now shifting to the legislative election. Heres where more attention needs to be placed. Where sung favored to win the election, the balance in the legislation is less certain. I expect this to be a much more competitive race than 2008, t f 2012. But i do not expect it to necessarily end in a dpp majority. In both cases in 2008 and 2012 the Pan Blue Coalition obtained super majorities. 75 of the seats in 2008, 69 of the seats in 2012. The dpp currently have 40 seats in a 113 seat legislature. They need 17 seats for a majority on their own. I would argue that the structure of the legislative u. N. , especially after having the seats, having the seats in half starting in 2008, have created Structural Conditions that make it difficult for a dpp majority. You have apportionment of district boundaries that benefit the blue camp more than the green camp since each traditional county or municipality gets one seat. That means places get one seat. Another place could be underrepresented. Even assuming a national shift that means in terms of proportional representational seats, the dpp could at best pick up two or three seats there. The shift they would need would be in competitive districts elections. A shift of 2 or 3 would bring them closer to the number of seats that they need. But this also assumes that smaller progressive parties like the npp and the tsu dont gain ground. It means coordinating with them in some of these districts. They may benefit for that matter if the pfp runs a larger slate of district candidates than they have announced so far. And what i see are a handful of key select districts that make it more probable that the dpp will come close to that majority on their own, that would be several districts and a few others that traditionally lean light blue, but i think 17 is really pushing it, frankly. My current prediction, and i hate making election predictions because my track record is not good i was very happy as a graduate student to predict the 2004 president ial election. But that was a coin flip. Im sticking to it. It was planned. My current prediction is there will be a slight, slight pan blue majority in the legislature. What i mean by that by a one or two seat majority not the 75 seat, 69 seats. This largely, of course, depends on the level of both blue and green coordination of the four party list seats but most importantly district seats. Lets take one step back here. Lets assume im wrong. As my wife says im often wrong. What would a unified government look like if the dpp wins the president ial election and the legislative u. N. . This would be the first time that the dpp has ever been close to a majority in the legislative u. N. I dont see that this would galvanize the party to push towards a more independence oriented sentiment. I think as many have already stated, the expectation would be a maintenance of the status quo although the particulars of this may be defined slightly different. I do think, however, its a chance for the dpp to move the party and show what it can do, for example, on social issues, on social welfare, on social inequali inequality, and on areas of this nature. One other point and this is not a salient point in the current election but the dpp does have an official stance supporting the legalization of samesex marriage. The rest are ambiguous at best on this issue. Supporters are more supportive of samesex marriage than dpp supporters. Marginally. Marginally. Why . I dont really have an answer for that right now. What i expect if the dpp do win in both areas youll see these subtle shifts for future debates on issue of social policy not so much of issues on cross strait issues and ill wrap up there. Thank you very much. [ applause ] thank you very much, tim. And thanks to both of you for paying so much attention to the race. Yunhan . Okay. Good morning. Thank you youall for coming to this conference. Its difficult to prepare my remarks, knowing in advance ill be the third speaker of this panel. But i just tried to focus on a few points and try not to repeat what dave and tim has already said. I think its probably useful to offer you kind of a historical perspective. Remember that this is not the first time taiwan entered the president ial race, neither is james sung. If you look back, you know, what happened four years ago, at that time this is the poll figure that you can collect, you know, during july and august, roughly in the same state that are current in comparing years right now. And at that point you can tell that actually james sung, he posed a formidable challenge in this threeway race. Im sorry, i pushed the wrong button. This is the one. 2011. Okay. This is during the july and august of four years ago, and james sung is at one point get as much as 18 support in the threeway race in july, and i list all the what i consider established polling agencies. There are some little known group that might pop up oftentimes for the purpose of disinformation. Not offering much credible sources. And then the taiwan actually in the running, just slightly behind ma for support in june and july for quite sometime. And in the end, obviously, i think tim mentioned, you know, earlier that sung won only 2. 7. A threeway race will eventually end up as a twoway race. Okay. Whether this scenario will repeat itself, well obviously hard to say. This time, you know, the pan blue voter will feel very confused unlike last time. Ma was clearly winnable, electable candidate. In the end the pan blue voter simply abandoned sung and switched to ma to avoid an easy victory for taiwan. Tais is much stronger candidate than last time. Ma is a stronger candidate. Tais support hovers around, can be as high as 46 ever recorded. Sometimes can be as low as 34. So undecided voter also fluctuate from one point to another. What she suggests actually a sizable portion of our electorate. Their move is quite volatile. It manifests through this fluctuation. And that makes the pan blue voter even more confused, especially when they try to pick which one is more winnable between sung and yingwen. At one point, in a threeway race get as much as almost 30 , but sometimes its light like 12 or 13 . So this is what has happened july and august. Or if ma eventually the pan blue voter can identify a clear cut runoff. That will shape the scenario and dynamic of this election in a very significant way. I think a very important point is that tai is a much more stronger candidate than she was in 2011, and the reason, you know, is that the widespread disenchantment with the kmt and the ma administration, which alleviates some anxiety among the middleclass voter and some states, and kmt suffered from internal feud in setting an agenda in cyberspace and the media world. And tai should be reckoned with. I believe her campaign is best financed, best organized since 1996 in which they won the election by a very convincing landslide. And this is not wellknown here. Actually tsai in the last four years as a fourth time candidate for the 2016 has actually built up a very robust and elaborate gra Grassroots Support Organization in a way not before for the dpp. Last time she was quite frustra frustrated, but she had to rely on the faction. Not the local faction but within the dpp theres the new faction. Everyone has their faction. So they have to she could really have, you know, a firm grip on the Grassroots Organization work, but this time she learn her lesson. She established more than 800 friend of local chapters throughout taiwan and also there are more than 1,000 groups, you know, to own the line, the social media. So thats why i know she searched on the very top in the early stage of the campaign. So this is the most interesting question whether this will be going to be replay of 2012 or 2000. Obviously i agree with tim its very likely to be a replay of 2000 rather than a replay of 2012. So under that scenario the pan blue voter will be torn between hung and sung and could not make up their mind towards the very end. Under that scene, dpp will benefit notoriously from tais election. And that deals kmt with a humiliating loss. But another probability scenario in which hung and sung emerge in the next two or three months as the more clear cut runoff and that might trigger a massive scale of voting pong among the pan blue voter. So in that case both the credential in the president ial races will become more competitive as a result. In that scenario, you know, probably would not in any way undermine the prospect of tai winning the election in my mind. Now, obviously we should pay more attention to ly. And this is one scenario based on the Taiwan Future of change. This is a website. And this is you know, the first pie chart is the current distribution. So dpd 40. And peoples third party, two seats. Tsu three. Theres one little known party set up just recently by a former kmt ly member. That was very interesting acronym, kmt and then some independent. And according to the Taiwan Future of change, it will become mental image of current seat distribution. So it is likely that the dpp can get as many as 63. That also means a clear majority in ly. And the kmt might end up with only 43, a very substantial setback. The third party may get as many as five. The tsu might disappear. The only new party that might get a very small foothold could be the new power, but according to a lot of poll figures, including the Taiwan Future of change, its very unlikely that the new power will get will be able to get to walk across the 5 threshold for the party list. So this is one scenario. Another scenario which suggests that, you know, that sorry, let me see. Scenario one. Under this scenario, i will argue that tai will become the most powerful president. Okay. The reason this action will also trigger a generation shift in dpp leadership is that leadership will be completed. That means that the existing infection will become weakened. The position will be much better. Tai, her position will be much better. Under that scenario, i predict the executive branch will regain the control over the legislative agenda, which is not the case for most of time under mas presidency. Another significant change that might happen to ly is the system and scheme centered around the speaker, mainly speaker one, will be curtailed if not dissolved. So this is a very specific development in terms of politics. Actually since they won, ma has to live with a copresident , who is speaker one and who is not a friend of the president. So under this scenario the ascendance of the legislative power, which has taken place under speaker one, will be arrested, if not reversed. However, i wouldnt rule out this scenario completely under which the dpp couldnt win the majority outright. And actually, the first party might turn out to be the critical swing in there. Why . The kmt might do slightly better than the first scenario. If thats the case, i will predict that tai will be pressured into forming a Coalition Government most likely sign up peoples first party. Under this narrative, this party will become a critical voting block that can make or break the dpps control and make or break the legislative agenda. And they could retain the cohesion and avoid breaking up. Also under this scenario, the ly might become very mercurial. It is hard to say, even the pfp in the beginning it was hard to say whether the dpp will last. Can they survive a litmus test over policy . Its very difficult to predict. And under this scenario i think the dpp government will be haunted by its mirror image in the sense the kmt will revenge with some disruptions with the legislature. Something we are all familiar with over the last eight years. And then let me use some Political Science benchmarks to evaluate the importance of this coming election, whether this is 2016 election will become a critical election for taiwans electoral politics. Usually you can apply these four criteria, okay. And i would say the election is important election for lot of reasons. Although it probably the first criteria is, you know, whether this election would trigger a major Party Realignment and reconfiguration in the party system. I will actually say unlikely that taiwan will remain twoparty system plus, you know, one, you know, a minor party. And its questionable whether tsai can survive. And the new power despite the Media Attention probably, you know, will get a very, very small portion of seats. You know, theyre not significant a significant third party. So that is probably a first criteria there, but it will not apply here. However, it will introduce a restructuring of the relationship, as i just mentioned, which is very important to the daytoday operation of our government system. And also i think it will accelerate generational parties. Because it will be last battle, obviously. And to what extent this will reelection define the partys parameter of competition or even change the underlined image . To some extent. But i still think the identity irks will stay as a dominant cleavage for sometime to come. Although distribution issue, how they got the wide income gaps, things like that. That will get attention among the young voter. My last point is about, okay, what kind of challenge awaits our next president . I have to say, i wouldnt envy the job of our next president. A whole list of full array of daunting challenge await our next president. Economic challenge. You know . The slide, visible slide in our international competitiveness. Whether we can sustain the growth momentum. Its going to be a huge challenge. And we are facing an unfavorable demographic trend, just like japan. Asia in very low reproduction rate. And the next president will have to face a huge tradeoff between growth in the environment, whether the government can guarantee a reliable supply of water and power. With the Nuclear Power plant, moth balled. Probably not going to run in the future. And we have the huge mismatch in the labor market. We have too many College Graduate without marketable skill. And also we are facing brain drain. A lot of people with skill and transportable assets. They actually might be attractive in hong kong, singapore and shanghai. Not to mention the widening income gap which, you know, make a lot of Younger Generation frustrated and feel deprive and the challenge of government itself is quite i would say, quite serious. The government as a whole have to deal with the deteriorating fiscal health. And also taiwan have the, you know, the phenomenon what i would call the hypocrisy if i call fukuyamas new term. We have witnessed the proliferation of the many single issue groups. Strong minded and botched a bit with any chance for compromise. For example the semiconductor. They want to make it the latest expansion in the park. The whole project was held up for many years because of one group in the region want to protect the old trees. Okay . And on that issue alone, okay, the whole important multibillion project has been held up. And finally, obviously, we have to handle an external challenge. In taiwan we have to navigate very carefully when this competition between quite and china, you know, heat up. And we have to worry about our status in the regional process ge integration, whether we can get membership in tpp. And theres the modulation issue. Especially for dpps president , it might be very pressing and a challenge. The next dpp president might face this dilemma. Accepting one china and enduring the backlash from the green camp or facing diplomatic setbecome and major rupture in economic exchange. So my prediction is that it will be very brief. I stop right here. Thank you for your attention. [ applause ] thanks to each of you for outstanding presentations. You have covered a lot of ground and have covered all the right issues and even some i didnt think about. We have a half hour. Im sure you have lots of questions. I have lots of questions but im not going to take up your time. Because we want to hear from you. The ground rules are, once i recognize you, wait for a mike, identify yourself, designate to whom you want to pose the question and keep your question brief. These are very smart people. You dont have to give a paragraph for them to understand the question. Just one sentence will do. So who has the first question . Yes, mike. We have had some speculation about how the prc might react to the results. Is there any way of divining how the prc reacts just to the fact of this process . That you have the most vibrant democracy in asia, a lot of changes in power, tourists, Business People travel from the mainland to taiwan. Theres at least some media seepage into the country. How do they react to this democratic process going on so close to them . Anyone want to speak to that . Go ahead. I think its frightening to them. When their citizens travel for tourism, one of the things you frequently things you hear is they want to stay home to watch all the talk shows, political debate shows. There are six or seven channels that are running these almost continuously. And this is something that they are very interested in. I think they have also been shocked by the potency of the sunflower student movement. And a similarity to that. It bears to the Umbrella Movement in hong kong. And that these are things that for a government that is paranoid about its maintenance of political control in its own society, i think these are very disturbing phenomena. Anything in addition . Well, i think for both the policymaker in beijing, and also, for the general public, this is a very predictable election. So i dont see the outcome to come as a surprise to any audience in Mainland China because this popular opinion poll has, you know, primed, you know, the potential audience for a long, long time. But obviously, people like xi jinping and his senior staff, once they get elected, they will go back to the drawing board on how they will continue this peace and development strategy, or they will revisit the assumption of their past policy. I think this is obviously what creates a hard choice for the beijing leaders. A couple of additional points. First of all, i think its actually good that this election will not have not be a surprise in its results. If there is a surprise, it sort of tends to create more of a reaction. I would also say that i think fundamentally chinas leaders and the ccp worry in a system like this, a relatively new democracy, it is very easy for demogogic politicians cannot reflect the will of the people or what they think it will be and makes it unpredictable and difficult to manage. Next question . Yes, right there. Yes . I started to expected outcome is recuring within the structure, affecting the International Relations or it is more characterized as