Transcripts For CSPAN2 2017 Western Governors Assocation Winter Meeting - Labor Secretary... 20180125

2017 winter meeting at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in phoenix. In this next portion, labor secretary alexander costa delivers the keynote speech. He talks about labor trends in Western States in ways that governors can partner with each other and the federal government to create more jobs. This is 45 minutes. We have a very, very special guest to address this audience and engage with the governors and to introduce that gas, i am happy to recognize our chairman, the honorable dennis after. Before i introduce our guest, secretary acosta, id like to talk about the Workforce Development initiative that i began as chair of wga. All of us face the challenge of preparing our citizens for work place that looked a little bit different than they did when i started my working career with my parents or grandparents did, certainly. At four workshops this past fall, Workforce Development initiative brought together policymakers, business leaders, educators and others are working to create more opportunity and strengthen our economy in sharing best practices and discussing common challenges, essentially learning from each other what we could do to address workforce challenges. In every Western State is grappling with this. I know from conversations with my fellow governors, they will identified this as a problem that we face. And the work has enabled us to identify some common themes such as increasing career Awareness Among our young people so as they are making choices about the academic pathways to follow, they have a sense of which pathways lead to Economic Opportunities and Job Opportunities and which pathways maybe lead to less opportunities, fewer of those opportunities. Theyve also helped us identify workbased learning opportunities as an especially good way to learn the skills that one needs to succeed in the career of choice. The initiative we started is going to continue this winter with webinars that will build on topics that were discussed at the workshops and they will also have other opportunities for participants to continue to engage and inform that first year report that will be issued at the wga meeting next june but weve got a short video here now that talks about the progress of the initiatives so lets take a look at that video. [music] our system is really not working for so many of our young people. They are either not getting through high school or if they graduate from high school, they are not pursuing any Postsecondary Education to train themselves for the workforce, and if they do enter some postsecondary, they are often taling to complete. They end up with debt, and up with a burden but no skill or credential that can make them valuable to employers who are seeking employees. [music] given this information, one of the things we know is we need to tell our High Schoolers take some kind of skills training, some kind of Postsecondary Education is essential if you want to be successful, and the world of work. If you want to have something to offer employers that is of value to them. Good production jim, very good. [applause] that opening guy wasnt that good. Theres probably not a better person to discuss Workforce Development issues that our next speaker, the us secretary of labor, alexander acosta. He embodies the American Dream through hard work and determination, hes come a long way from his double beginnings as the son of cuban refugees. Hes a First Generation College graduate, turning undergraduate degrees in law degrees harvard university. His impressive resume includes working at the law clerk for Justice Samuel alito junior at the us court of appeals. Teaching at George Mason Universitys Antonin Scalia school of law. Serving as a member of the National Labor relations board, working as the us attorney for the Southern District of florida and serving as the dean of the Florida International University School of law. College of law, excuse me. That breath of Life Experience served as an Excellent Foundation for his current job as United States secretary of labor, where he works to foster, promote and develop the welfare of wage earners, job seekers and retirees of the United States. Its an enormous responsibility, secretary acosta manages 7000 federal workers charged with this task across our nation. I was pleased when secretary acosta came to south dakota for the first of our four workshops and ive been impressed with his commitment to working on behalf of todays labor force and for his vision for the workforce of tomorrow so please welcome our guest speaker, secretary alexander acosta, the us secretary of labor. [applause] thank you for the introduction and thank you for the invitation to join you again. As some of you know, governor new guard has been very active in the workforce front. He serves as the department of labors top force on apprenticeships and i was so pleased to see this opening video. Weve been working so hard to foster apprenticeships and what we are calling in and driven education, education that focuses on providing the skills of the workplace is demanding. And i like to say that technology has changed so much. The iphone didnt exist 10 years ago. Technology needs to change. The workforce is changing. Word processors have taken over typewriters. The skills of today are not the same skills as yesterday, yet if you look at education, education has not kept pace and its so important that education keep pace as governor do guard is very much a leader in this effort. I wanted to take this opportunity today however to talk about a different topic. And i wanted to introduce it by really taking advantage of things out here in the west because the west holds a very special place in the hearts and minds of americans and you know, internationally, the west frames the way so many people see america. The old cowboy movies and whatnot has in a lot of ways determined a vision of america. So how to convey that . If you can go back to Theodore Roosevelt and when he gave a speech at the dakota territory, he said the people in coming years will witness the power and glory of this country in its fullness in the west and if you look at the five states with the lowest employment rate , four of those five states in the nation are represented right here at this table and i as i was reading my material coming in today, i would see the employment rate in state after state. And the accomplishments of these governments and the accomplishment for the state of the last. For the most part, with a few exceptions but for the most part in terms of employment rate, its really phenomenal. And so in so many ways, the west is a great place to sort of reintroduce a very important topic andthe topic is this. The topic is job creation. So President Trump has charged me with a very simple set of priorities. Job creation, more job creation and even more job creation. Its pretty simple. We want lots of jobs, we want good jobs and we want safe jobs for all working americans. How do we get there . A few mechanisms. One is deregulation and let me take a nuanced approach to that. All regulations are not necessarily bad regulations. Common sense regulations, particularly those that help health and safety, have an important way to protecting america. Regulations that merely an act executive fiat, but could not be adopted through the legislative process or regulations that protect special interests are a very different thing. As we look at regulations, we have to be mindful of the cost and the cost benefit analysis of regulation. These costs are incredibly, incredibly high so in fiscal year 2016, federal agencies issued over 80 major rules. A major rule is a rule that has an effect on 100 million or more annually on the american economy. 100 million or more and 80 of those were issued in just one year. And so a study estimated Regulatory Compliance and the Economic Impact of federal regulation are approximately 1. 9 trillion annually. Again, let me be clear. Some regulations are important. Are very costly, but the hefty price tag is just aside because they are necessary to prevent a serious harm but we need to ask is that hefty price tag justified . Id like to say that that costliness is certainly a rationale. And a very good one. Id like to say that it shouldnt be only rationale and theres a second rationale that is important to think about that i think isparticularly appropriate to hear , and that is liberty. And that is the impact that regulations have on liberty. The word liberty appears in so many of our founding documents, the declaration of independence, constitution, ledge of allegiance. It appears in what is the spirit of the west. But if you look at documents, if you look at pools, where do you see the analysis that a rule has on liberty . The way we write rules assumes that human beings are solely economic beings and doesnt look at liberty. And id say in part thats because looking at liberty is very difficult because it requires that we have discussions about the nature of liberty, about selfgovernance, about liberty compared to the quality and safety and accountability and prosperity. In those qualitative judgments are so much harder than quantitative judgments, but they are so important and so what i like to say is that as governors, we do this work all the time. You look at rules and you look at costbenefit analysis and at a more sort of quiet, subtle level, we think about liberty and you evaluate whether rules are worthwhile. And one state issue that is important example of having a High Economic cost, of having a substantial impact on liberty and while some times necessary, is often not is the debate that is taking place over occupational licenses. So i want to talk about occupational licensing in this context. In 1950, less than one in 20 americans required a license to work. Today, more than one in four americans, almost one in three americans need in essence a permission slip to do something pretty darn simple, to just go to work and to earn a paycheck for themselves and their families. There are measurable costs associated with this license. So an economist with the Federal Reserve bank of minneapolis and university of minnesota did a study. And he estimated that consumers pay an additional 200 billion year and that the economy loses 3 million jobs every year because of occupational licenses. Brookings has done a study. Brookings estimates that the impact is higher. So we can talk about whether its 200 billion, whether its 300 billion, whether its 3 million jobs, whether its 4 million jobs but the costs are real and the costs are significant. There are people willing to work. But they cant work cause they might have moved from one state to another and they do not have the right license. So let me talk about the three ways that licensing infringes on liberty. One, a barrier to john entry, a barrier to job mobility and three, a barrier to job utilizing technology. Let me take each of those in turn. The institute of justice recently performed an indepth study of the requirements for 102 occupational licenses in the United States. In fact, there are now more than 1100 professions that require a license but they just took 102 of them. The average cost of a license is almost 300. It requires at least one exam and nearly a year of education. So in one state represented here, to be an optician, to work at a lenscrafters, you need 1000 hours of education. In another state represented here, you need zero hours of education. Studies have been done, our eyeglasses better fitted in one state than the other state . And no difference in eyeglass bidding has been found so heres the question. Is that 1000 hours about health and safety or is that about a barrier to entry . And especially for americans looking for mid skills jobs, 1000 hours of education is a real barrier to paying hundreds of dollars for a license is a real barrier. Secondly, barrier to mobility. Excessive licensing impedes the liberty of jobseekers by making it difficult to transfer skills from one state to another. Military families in particular the challenge of moving much more often than other americans, but this issue is notlimited to military families alone. I have met with military families on several occasions and this is one of the most potential issues they face. Every time a military family moves , the spouse faces a very difficult question. Break apart the family unit or give up your career. I met with one spouse who is an attorney. Where she was told she might be able to get a job at the grocery store. Ive met with spouses that are teachers that have to start at the bottom of the pay scale each and every time and i met with spouses that have just given up looking for work , because they figure i cant get a license in the other state. And again, this is not limited to military families. When a family moves for a job, they face the same issue. When a family thinks should i just take up and move, the economy is booming in that state, the jobsarent necessarily here. They face that issue. We all think that geographic mobility is higher today than it once was. In fact, the data tells me the exact opposite. That families are not moving and i would argue that one of the reasons that they dont move is that the regulatory state makes it difficult because if you dont know if you can get a job, you worked hard to have your profession. Youve worked hard for your license and if you have to start all over again, your family unit is going to have a discussion before you move. Third, id say that it changes the liberty particularly with respect to exercising professions and work online. So consider the example of medicine. Allowing medical professionals to monitor their patients using modern technology is a good thing. However, one state recently amended its laws to require facetoface consultations or telemedicine providers in an attempt to bar Telemedicine Services from serving patients and doctors offices. Heres the question. Many of the state represented here have potentially rural areas. To confront the challenge of rural hospitals that are closing down. Do we really want to require only facetoface consultations or do we want to say that where medical judgment deems it appropriate, telemedicine 80 a partial solution. Two rural hospitals closing down, to the difficulty of getting healthcare to rural areas. So my point is this. Some regulations are necessary. Obviously, when youre talking about medicine, health and safety isimportant and its important to have licensing requirements. But 1100 professions, i recently read that one state not represented here now requires a license of one adoption. Kendall became concerned because technology now allows for individuals in this group to in an air bmv setting, perhaps known that you are willing to dog sit in a respect for the weekend. And so this one city now requires a license to dog sit. So as i understand it, you dont need a license to babysit, but you do need a license to dog sit. Enough said. So again, occupational licensing is certainly sometimes important but if licenses are unnecessary, eliminate them. If they are needed, streamlined and and if they are honored by one state, please for the sake of those 3 million or 4 million individuals, that have given up practicing their profession, if they are honored by one state, i would argue this is a Great Association and a great group of people to work together, because in the west, the governors have a tradition of working together. Consider monitoring them with reciprocity in your home state though i appreciate the opportunity to be here, to deliver this message and let me say in closing, rapping back to where i started, governor du gard and the western governors done so much on the apprenticeship front, on the workforce front and im honored and im excitedto work with all of you. Our Unemployment Rate nationally is 4. 1 percent, yet we have 6. 1 million open jobs. American job creators want to hire an american jobseekers want to work and the largest challenge that we face is connecting those job creators and the 6. 1 million open jobs with the jobseekers. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. [applause] mister secretary, you have time for some questions . Any questions from any of the governors . John. I just add, a lot of what governor du gard and as someone whos been working around the Apprenticeship Program, she needs to pull us back towards a skillsbased discussion i think is the ultimate, that the destination so we went through i think 25,500 rules and regulations and included in that was a lot of licensing and we were able to get at least for the military folks when they move in to the state of colorado, we have a large military facilities, theirspouses are automatically , they get to come and go to work immediately. When we went through that, there was a tremendous resistance again iv status quo forces and again, you only need one public, someone who suffered some consequence as a result, someone been poorly trained to get a couple newspaper articles but you know, some of the large parts of this is looking at how many positions do we have that we need College Degrees for . And i think what dennis, what weve all been working towards, weve begun doing that in the state of colorado and trying to look through why are we requiring College Degrees for these jobs and how many of them really are a function of what they learned in college or some level of training and skills we want to make sure that they have acclimated. That might be another place to emphasize this systemic, i guess youd call it the acceleration of connecting people with their skills to the jobs that where they are needed. Thank you for the comments and i couldnt agree more. I was in your state and visited, was it reo technologies, and they had a really fascinating, this is a very High Tech Company that does very high grade mirrors and lenses, if i recall correctly and what was amazing was that there were probably 17 and 18 and 19yearolds working there. Over the summer. And i remember taking to them and they said this is amazing. My friends are playing nintendo and im here earning a paycheck and learning a skill as a summer job. This was part of an Apprenticeship Program sponsored and had been organized by the state around sort of high tech manufacturing. And it was in conjunction with the School System and they were learning so much. One of the things we are looking at on the task force that governor dugard is on is moving away from the traditional degree toward a series of stackable credentials. If you look at the data, you will see that kids will Start College and not finish. And most colleges are now judging time to graduation by six years, not four. So for your degrees is judged by six years and for a little more than half will finish. So the question is, is there only one way of educating or can you have a series of shorter, stackable credentials individuals can earn while they are working . In this type of Apprenticeship Program, while theyre working at reo, they can take classes and earn stackable credentials and is there a way of working with Community Colleges and others to provide skills training, skills education . That is, you know, acquired over a series of years rather than, you are either working or in school and that sort of binary mode of education. I think thats so important because a lot of times you do not need a degree, you just need the skills and lets recognize that. So thank you. Governor bullock. Thank you so much for being here. It means a lot to all of us as we grapple with workforce issues. Picking up on the stackable credentials, one of the things in workbased learning apprenticeships, its been exciting from my perspective, to increase our registered apprentices 30 percent last five years. I know, a go through programs are making 20,000 more than the average wage in montana. I also know as we look all the way back in 2011, 86 percent are still working right therein my state. Trying to be creative with the credentials and saying what are our needs, we started 15 new Apprenticeship Programs just in the healthcare field in the last two years alone and tried to further incentivize it so that now, our employers get a tax credit for every apprentice a higher and twice the amount if theyre hired, so something that we really look at as a possibility to go forward to address many of the Workforce Needs that we have and also not do it in a way where we are requiring somebody at a twoyear college to get a twoyear degree but to get those industry recognized credentials that are so important. Were making a lot of games and just in the last handful of years the idea of an apprenticeship at one time was sort of this crusty thought. It must be a welder. We have more than 1000 apprentices in the field. Im a little concerned because i think it was one of those Task Force Meeting that you said this whole registered apprenticeship, that system isnt necessarily working as it should and we may need to make a different apprenticeship system. Id like to hear more about that because my only concern is that we are making sure that folks have those credentials that then if they want to leave montana, made habit and then were ensuring theres some standards of quality that what they are learning is going to be the skills that both employers need andthey need to advance their careers. This is an important question let me answer the narrow question and then maybe the more wrongone , the broader question. Registered Apprenticeship Programs exist and will continue. And its fully supported. One of the issues with the registered Apprenticeship Program is that of number of job creators, a number of large corporations and Larger Industries find that the registration process is cumbersome. Often you have to register and call 50 states. You also have to register with the da in all 50 states so thats 100 registrations. You then have to register with the department of labor, there are reporting requirements of the department of labor. By the time you are done there is a large barrier to setting this up. Going back to the point i made about regulation, if someone wants to set something up at a national base, the registered apprenticeship model is a very difficult model. Alongside it, what were looking to do is create a different model and it would proceed as follows. Take pharmacy techs as an example. If you look at pharmacy across the nation, youve got three, four, 85 large pharmacies that really dominate the market and the majority of states. Off the top of my head i would say cbs, rite aid, walgreens are certainly three of those top five. If they come together and they say we are going to create a set ofcredentials for pharmacy techs , pharmacy tech apprenticeship level i, level ii, level iii and level iv. It then might be possible for the western Governors University to offer the Online Education associated with those four levels. It might then be possible for those three companies to open up that credential and across it in that apprenticeship process for their employees and to do so on a National Level where you got quality, where you got affordability from company to company and the state to state and where you can set that up in a way that is very different from the apprenticeships that are currently happening, whether its montana or colorado because they are nationally recognized and portable and so we are looking to provide options and opportunities, if you look in the building trades, the building trade has a really interesting model. You have a waiver Management Partnership between the unions and management where a portion of everyones paycheck goes to training and they spend nearly 1 billion a year on privatesector money. I have 1600 different facilities across the nation, and they have high quality but they also have synchronicity from state to state. This is a great idea and we want to empower a variety of options without taking away from the registered model. We also want to make it possible for the industry to come together on a large scale and create affordability from state to state. Requested and a great answer, thank you. Governor herbert. Thank you mister chairman, thank you secretary, we are honored to have you here and thank you for your service. My question really has to do with a more esoteric issue. Its a little harder to define, i expect. I am reminded as you were speaking and as i talked with governor and looper about this issue , i had a job one time where i was a young man, the fellow who hired me said i hope gary that your due how is equal to your knowhow. Knowhow being defined as skills, the education i had, the talent i brought to the table and do how being how much are you going to work . Are you going to have a good work ethic and be productive as an employee . And i wonder, john and i were talking about this, are we in a stage in our society where we are getting a little bit on the entitlement mentality . Entitled to fill in the blank versus im going to go out there and earn my own way , put on my bootstraps, those kind of things and i know thats a serious debate. As we look at the labor supply of america, whats your assessment . How are we doing on our due how compared to our knowhow . I talked about education in different ways to get skills and all but do we have to work ethic that our grandparents or greatgrandparents had or we are a little more lazy . I think all these issues are related and ill convey a story. In my prior job i met a young man that really wanted to be a Police Officer and he graduated high school and the officer said go to college and major in criminal justice and thats how you become a Police Officer. He went to college and he took out loans and he wasnt quite sure how to become a Police Officer but he continued to study criminal justice and then he graduated and he ended up as a security guard. And he was really, really disappointed. And i would argue that he had a high level of knowhow, but perhaps the due how, to use your terms, wasnt particularly high because after taking out a whole bunch of loans and studying for probably more than four years, really running into that issue when it comes to applying for a job, its so disheartening. And so heres what i said in the context of the story. Many colleges have study abroad. And you certainly learn a lot of technical stuff, but when you go to study abroad, you also learn about life area and one of the younger appointees in my office told me about a professor at sea where he spent a semester at sea and he learned a whole lot about the world and a whole lot about facts of life. So if you have a semester abroad. Why cant you have a semester at sea . Then why cant you do that for credit. Anyone who says you learn less by spending a semester at the police academy, and you learn by spending a semester in college has not been at the academy because you learn a lot about law but also a lot about solutions and a lot of humans. And if we were to expose our young men and women in war two what it means to work , the excitement of the job, he really wanted to be a Police Officer. But by the time, you know, he started applying, that was kind of gone. One last example, i was at a education facility for i believe it was carpenters. And i came across, i was walking and i grew up in miami and i was talking about when hurricane andrew hit, how quite literally blew away but talking about everything. And then i noticed this book. On the table that was teaching them about roofing and it was open up and it was opened up to a page and it had serious math and trigonometry and you know, the carpenters were working it all out. So heres the other point ill make. How much of what we teach is taught in the concept of theory rather than practice . If you Teach High School math in the context of carpentry, a lot of people may get that may not get if you teach it out of the book. And so, i know this as in law school, a lot of kids that dont like the classroom but they go on and when they do a clinical course, theylove the law. And they love to argue so i think part of the due how comes from are we not exposing them to the interesting parts of their job early enough . Governor bergen and then governor walker. Thanks for being here and your last answer really made a great case for experiential learning and maybe that will tie in to this next question but as a country we are facing 1. 1 trillion of student debt. All of us up here at the head table have got University Systems that are producing graduates and consuming big chunks of our budget and yet weve got the 6. 1 million jobs that are available. You im sure had a chance to talk to board of regents, board of trustees, University President s and faculty as part of your work. What advice do you get them about we retooling and reinventing Higher Education to help close the job gap in america. And thats the question, one and number two is with this 1. 1 trillion, of federal Student Loans backing, do we have an education bubble occurring right now the same way we had a housing bubble in 2008. These are the questions, let me take then in turn. I had spoken to the board of regents. Ive spoken to the National Association of public universities and you know, its interesting. I had the opportunity to the board of regents and the president s of all the state universities in one large state. And ill tell you what i told them. This particular state was doing really really well. Of the 10 largest states, they had the second highest Graduation Rate which is great. 67 percent of students that started at a State University in this particular state graduated within six years, two thirds. Second highest in the nation of the large states. Of those 67 percent, about another two thirds and at this time we served 64, i could be off by a percentage or two. 64 percent found a job that paid 25,000 or more. Or went on to get another degree within a year. And again, it so happens that this is number two in the nation for placement for large state universities. But if you do some quick math, at this point, the second best in the nation means that less than half the students that Start College finish within six years and get a job that pays 25,000 or more that even gives them a fighting chance of paying off their debt. The second piece of data, universities when i talk about this and i wont put all of you on the spot but i would say how many students do you have a university of colorado, the university of montana, south dakota, i could go down the line and im willing to bet that every person here with no within a fair amount how many. How much money is raised. Again, very helpful. Ask yourself how many of those students graduate within six years. You know . How many of those students that graduate get a job, do you know . We are in a position that we look at Higher Education based on input and not output. And this is, does that not mean we dont want to teach lifelong learners . That technology is changing. Very rapidly, so we need lifelong learners but we also need accountability. So im not aware of any industry that judges itself based on inventory coming in the door. They asked how much inventory goes out the door and then you know, is it actually purchased . Right . So why are the metrics for Higher Education based on enrollment rather than graduation . Or rather than jobs . And i think if you think about that, that starts, can inform the conversation about some of the issues that we are looking at in Higher Education and whether there are, whether there is room for different types of education, whether its a series of stackable credentials or others, because the student debt is going incredibly high. And im going to sort of wrap around to the way we judge Higher Education. Because the really interesting part of Higher Education is the ranking system. One of the largest components of ranking is not how well the university is doing, but how much it spends. And in the case of law school, for example, the more you spend, the higher your ranking. If you look at the uscs writing, the more expensive you are, the more you spend person, the higher your ranking is going to be. So this has to do with the incentive structure and is there incentives to keep tuition down or are there incentives to increase tuition so you can have more facilities, so you can go up in your ranking system. Because if you are judged by input and judged by total revenue and not output, then you just want to maximize your revenue. We have time for one last question. Thank you for being here today, i wanted to acknowledge the career and Technical Education opportunities we had in alaska and what that has done or our Graduation Rates. Out of the schools we have for career and Technical Education a waiting list to get it in Graduation Rates in the mid to upper 90 percent and they go out of the school into a job opportunity so whether its construction, medical, media, culinary and they just have a lot so i have a big belief that if you teach themsomething to do they have something to do so thats whats happening. What im hoping is on a state level weve taken our Education Department and Labor Department and sort of not blended them but said how can they be complementary . That Success Model i know is done in other states as well but its been a significant improvement to our education or Graduation Rates and they just see a reason for what they are doing. I know that on a federal level youve been supported that and i want to thank you for that but just to acknowledge theres more that can be done on a federal level recognizing the merits of the career and Technical Education piece, theres a lot of focus on folks being prepared to go to college and thats a wonderful thing and those that come out of the career and technical schools, some will go on to law school or medical school and lets not inhibit them but its more things on the menu if you will or those that may not be wanting to go in that direction but they want to be able to make a good living. So thank you for what youve done and i want to set that as an example thank you for those comments and let me make a few observations. First, we have asked for flexibility for the governors. My view is alaska is very different than colorado. And the sense that we only budget line, my perspective is to the extent i have an authority to give flexibility to move the money around, that flexibility should be the governors and to the state. I dont have all the flexibility in congress but if i have it, my policy is to provide. Related to that, i think whether its this year or in future years, we need to start thinking about education as one continuum because right now we think college, community college, workforce education. And we are setting up these artificial distinctions that i think are unnecessary, that imply that one is better than the other and that artificially skew choice. And so to me, if you have 1000 stem jobs that you enjoy, that is a good thing area whether that was a pain after going to law school or whether that was obtained because you went to culinary school, the question should be do you have a standing job that you enjoy and as we look at Funding Sources and work force programs, and even in high schools as we are offering dualenrollment opportunities , having these artificial distinctions, i believe is unhelpful and to the extent that i can be an advocate for enriching that, im glad to do. Lets thank our outstanding speaker for his help today. [applause] President Trump is in switzerland for the World Economic forum. Today he met with british Prime Minister theresa may and tweeted this picture of his meeting with israeli Prime Ministerbenjamin netanyahu. He will give a speech tomorrow at 8 am and you can watch your live on cspan2. The president of the United States. [applause] tuesday night President Donald Trump gives his first state of the Union Address to congress and the nation. Join cspan for a preview of the nation at the eastern and then a state of the union speech live at nine p. M. Following the speech the democratic response. We will hear your reactions and comments from members of congress. President trumps date of the Union Address, tuesday july cspan. Listen live with the free, available for ondemand desktop phone or tablet at cspan. Org. Come near. At the moment i described at the time, i decided as a bizarre moment. I was surprised when the called me over but hes the president of the United States and youre in the oval office if he says who are you, come over here, you sort of dont really ask much. , journalist and former rde washington correspondent catrina perry talks about covering President Trump and his supporters for the irish media during and after the 2016 residential election. Her book in america. The famous forum has three words, its incredibly evocative and it does what it says on the pin. He knows what hes talking about unless hes playing on their species built on islam and by taking these horrible people that live there, replacing it with better pe