Young Americas Foundation conference in washington. They heard from Vice President pence this morning. Hearing next from senator josh hawley. Live coverage on cspan. Organized interests, crime, and anyone who would threaten the reaction of wellbeing of missourians. Into thousand two, senator hawley graduated from yale university. He moved back home to missouri with his wife where they became the proud parents of two of two sons. Asator hawley is recognized one of the nations leading constitutional lawyers. He has litigated at the Supreme Court of the United States, the federal courts of appeals, and in the state court, fighting for the peoples liberties. He previously fought obamacare at the Supreme Court and won as one of the lead attorneys in the landmark hobby lobby case. Senator hawley has taken on big opioid manufacturers, has cracked down on Human Trafficking in missouri, and has stood up to big tech, launching investigations of the most cap powerful companies in the world, google and facebook, to protect missourians, their data, and the first amendment. On the hawley serves Senate Committees on the judiciary, armed services, homeland security, and governmental affairs, small business, and entrepreneurship, and the special committee on aging. Please join me in welcoming the youngest senator in america, senator hawley. [applause] thank you. thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. It is great to be here with a room full of thoughtful and serious and young and energetic folks. [applause] sen. Hawley a little bit of a difference from a difference from my day job in the United States senate. I am 39 years old this year. That is about the age that people start looking for things to make them feel young again. You know what im talking about . Maybe you have older brothers, sisters. Now you know why at 309i decided to run for the United States senate, where the average age is dead. [laughter] sen. Hawley i found out when i got elected to the senate, i got sworn in, they gave us a pin we are supposed to wear, it goes up here on my lapel, the nifty thing about it is a life alert a life alert button. How many of you have ever been to a lubys cafeteria . Not very many. What is going on . Come over to the senate. The Senate Dining room is actually a lubys cafeteria. All right. It is great to be here with you today, and it is great to be here to talk about the future of the country, and to be looking out at all of you who represent the future of the country. I was elected as the youngest senator in america. All i can say is i hope to be able to serve long enough to see the beginning of the 21st century. I will tell you what i mean by that. It has been 19 years since the 20th century ended. 19 years. Is it too much to ask that the 21st century actually be allowed to begin . Because our politics and our rhetoric, and too much of what goes on in this town and capitol hill, my goodness, you could close your eyes and you may as well be in the 1970s or the 1980s. The political establishments of both parties have become so all stuff id, it is like we are trapped in amber and meanwhile, the needs of the country have gone forward. If the 2016 election was about anything, it was about the American People saying the political establishments have failed, the old politics has failed, it is time for something new. And that is what we are here for. [laughter] [cheering] [applause] [cheering] sen. Hawley heres the problem. While the Political Class here has been rehearsing and rehashing the same old debates with the same old rhetoric from decades past, before you were born, before i was born, while that has been happening, the Political Class has drifted into a consensus with other elements of the Leadership Class across this country. A consensus that has too often let down that people who sent me here, to have let down the people who built this country, let down the people who defend america. I call them the Great America middle. The middle of our society. The people who wake up every day, go to work, were called all day, come home to their family, read to their kids at night, thankful for their blessings. The kind of people who donate out of their gas money every month to help needy families who live half a world away. People they will never meet. The kind of people who i suspect you know, in the kind of places where you grew up. These are the people who for too long have been neglected and overlooked and his interest have not been spoken for in this town or in our politics. In our Political Class, it has drifted into a consensus that has several principles that i bet you will recognize, because i know it is the conventional wisdom on most of our College Campuses today. The reigning consensus, the conventional wisdom of the leadership elite in this country tells us that things like patriotism are dangerous. Patriotismphasis on and nationalism and the good things about america, that that is narrowminded. That that can even be bigoted. That it is a too narrow of a focus. The same consensus as we need to pursue and embrace economic globalization and economic integration at all cost, open markets, open borders, open trade, open everything, no matter whether it is good for America National security or for American Families or for American Workers, or for american principles. These are the same people who told us we need to have open immigration at whatever levels so that we can have more labor in the country that unfortunately drives down prices, drives down wages for working americans. These are the same people who want to you on your College Campuses to make sure you do not say anything that offends anybody, for heaven sake. To say we cannot use trigger words, that we need to use trigger warnings, whatever that means. This is the elite consensus that has governed our politics now for too long. What it has produced is a politics of elite ambition. Here is what our leaders have said to the country. To what they have said Middle America for too long now. They said that if you want to go and start a tech company in silicon valley, then we are all for you. If you want to become an elite like us, go to an elite university and embrace our elite point of view in the world, if you want to put career achievement over community, if you think change is more important than tradition, if you are skeptical of things like faith and family, thats great. If that is the view you hold, we are for you and our politics will help you get there and succeed. Not to your ambition is start a tech company . But if your ambition is to work in the Family Business . What if your ambition is to raise a family in the town where you grew up . What if your ambition is to create something you can pass on to your kids . What if one of your most prized values is your love of this country and belief that we are a good and decent people who heritage whose heritage is worth celebrating . Town and then this leadership of this country for too long has said you are on your own. And you are either backwards or maybe just pathetic. But we dont have anything to say to you. And it is time for that to change. Represents, iion believe, the people of this country from the middle of our society, the backbone of the country, standing up and saying we want to be heard, we want to be respected, we want to this country to stand for the principles that it was founded on and we will do something about it. And that is our challenge now. [applause] sen. Hawley i would just say to the political establishments of this town, that as another american senator once said, the world is changing, the old era is ending, and the old ways will not do. It is a new era that we must open now, the 21st century that we must actually begin 19 years late. Late is better than never. It is time to begin the 21st century, to focus on the problems of this era, the challenges of this day to address the needs of this hour so our country can be renewed and strengthened for the century that is ahead. We need now a politics focused not on elite ambitions, we need a politics focused on renewing the strength of this country and the great middle of our society. We need a politics of National Renewal. Building that politics, i suggest to you, is the great challenge of our era and will be the challenge of your era for the years that are to come. What might that look like . It is time that we stood up to Big Government, to the people in government who think that they know better, government by experts, government by unelected administrators, government by unelected elites who are confident they know better than the American People, that they know better than the constitution, that they should be in control rather than voters. It is time we stood up and said enough of that. It is time we challenge this allegiance between Big Government and big business. For too long, some of the Biggest Companies in this country, multinational corporations, the same people who have sent jobs overseas to china, who have been happy to invest in the Chinese Market but will not invest in workers here in this country, who will not raise wages for workers here in this country, who are located in the United States, but would never say that they are an and him but they are an american company, these companies have gotten too many handouts for come from america. It is time we challenges allegiance between gave Big Government and big business. It needs to stop [applause] it needs to stop. [applause] the hawley increasingly, leaders of these multinational corporations, besides disrespecting our workers, failing to invest in our economy, then they want to come to us and tell us what our priorities ought to be as a nation. They want to tell us what we should believe on every social issue of the day and their answer to conservatives is to shut up about everything you believe and support us when we want tax breaks and other government giveaways. I think our answer should be, no longer, no how. We are for free competition in this country. We are for the free market. It is time these Big Companies who have gotten insider deals from government were actually held accountable. That begins by the way with big tech. Nobody has gotten more of a sweetheart deal from the federal government than the Big Technology companies. Facebook, google, twitter. They are treated differently than any other platforms or publishers in america. They are treated different than any other company in america. And they have gotten rich and powerful and profitable because of it. Now what are they doing . Now they are saying that they should be able to decide whether or not conservatives get to speak on their platforms. What conservative speech is acceptable and what is not. They want to censor and sit in judgment on our political speech. You know, i saw a statistic the other day, a series of academic studies, that shows that google in particular, the information flow that google controls, do you know a lot of undecided voters, their primary source of information is from Google Search . Maybe that is you, i am sure you have used Google Search to find information. A lot of undecided voters, how do they get the names . They plugin turns to Google Search. Who did they favor in the 2016 election . It was not donald trump. Google search overwhelmingly returned results in response to neutral search terms overwhelmingly returned results for what . Hillary clinton and the clinton campaign. Flu Google Search overwhelmingly favored leftleaning and liberal news outlets and disfavored actively conservative leaning and conservative and libertarian news outlets. They exercise enormous power over the information that we consume, over our channels of communication with each other, and yet, their answer to us is, we want to give get all of government benefits, we want to get all of the special privileges and we do not want to be accountable. I think it is time to stand up and say that is not going to happen anymore. It is time we held them accountable, stood up for the first amendment, and it is time we stop censorship by these Big Companies and say that conservative speech is valuable speech and conservatives ought to be able to speak in our society openly, in public, and without reprisal. [applause] sen. Hawley same is true on our campuses. I know this has got to be something you face on your campuses, all across america. College campuses are trying to regulate speech. Trying to shut down speech that they disagree with. This is the kind of censorship we have not seen in this country in decades, maybe we have never seen it in a concerted form. It is time that we as conservative said that our speech and our views are just as valuable and just as legitimate as any other side. You know what . We are committed to the first amendment. There was a time in this country when the left said that they were the great defenders of the first amendment, and at least he could count on them if they discrete they disagreed on our views, they could defend our right to speak. Im afraid that is not true anymore today. Im afraid youre experiencing audit on your College Campuses. It is time we demand of these colleges and universities, especially those that receive federal money, taxpayer money, that they abide by the first amendment. That they do not disfavor students who are conservatives or libertarians. That they do not disfavor students of faith about allowing real and open and honest debate so our Constitutional Values and principles can be expressed and enacted and go forward. I want to say to you that you have such a vital role to play in this. Your courage, your willingness to challenge the status quo on campus, your willingness to engage in debate, to force tough conversations, to engage in new dialogue, it is absolutely vital. If there is one thing i can say, it is be of good courage. Dont be silenced. Dont stand down. Dont be intimidated. Because the future of this country, quite literally depends on your willingness to stand up and to be heard and to make your views known. Keep after it. Keep doing it. The future of the country depends on you. Let me also say give yourselves a round of applause [applause]. A round of applause. [applause] sen. Hawley politics focused on the Great American middle, a politics focused on National Renewal has to be serious about the challenges that we face abroad. Im thinking especially the challenge we face from china. Lets be honest, china has for decades now stolen our jobs, spied on our people, ripped off our technologies. They have attempted to build their middleclass on the backs of our middleclass and worse than that, they have attempted to build their military on the backs of the United States middleclass. Im sorry to say, they have enjoyed pretty fair success. We are now facing a challenge from china that is going to be perhaps the greatest Foreign Policy challenge of the 21st century. It is not just the National Security challenge, it is an economic challenge as well. We need a policy in this country, we need a politics in this country that is focused on getting good paying jobs here, on returning investment here, on promoting worker productivity here, on Getting Better wages for our workers here. On actually building things in this country again and making things in this country again. We have a problem if we live in a world where you have to get an expensive fouryear degree and may be a graduate degree on top of that just to get a decent job and be able to support a family. That is not a future that includes most americans. That is not a future that will keep america strong. That is not a future that will allow us to compete with our foreign competitors and triumph in the 21st century. We need to pursue policies that renew and strengthen the middle of our society and the heart of our economy. That means standing up to trade ceders like china, stopping there attempt bringing back jobs from overseas, it means creating new jobs in the places where americans live because you should not have to move to a megacity somewhere in order to get a job on which you can support a family and build a community. These are the key challenges of this entry. And they are the key challenges around which a new politics of National Renewal must be built. I will just say this to you enclosing, the challenges we face are very significant. And the politics of washington, d. C. Are very broken. But having said all that, im very optimistic. One of the reasons im optimistic is because of you, and because im from the middle of our country, the middle of our society. I know the people who go to work every day and provide for their families and run those Family Businesses and volunteer in their churches and support our local schools and serve in the pta. The people i suspect who raised you, the kind of people you want to be. I know them. And i can say with total confidence that in the heart of our society, american strength has not failed. American Leadership Class for too long has failed. The american Political Class for too