To deal with below 18 meters. Will Prime Minister provide interim advice about risk prioritization and will he also extend the safety fund for 18 meters. We will leave this program at this point puking watch it in its entirety on our website cspan. Org. We take in at the virtual discussion on governing priorities for the next president. Live coverage on cspan2. At this moment in our nations history it will point the way forward for our country and offer a vision for how to revitalize our nation in a postpandemic world. Aei soto americas leaders navigate our nations as tort challenges throughout the course of this year your call that many challenges still lie ahead, aei is wellpositioned to meet these headon by supplying the visionary thinking and actionable policy solutions that our nation needs the aei scholar will promote free people and free markets, increased economic and social mobility, revitalize constitutional order, bolster american civil life and promote americas leadership in the world. On behalf of all of us that 80 i thank you for your support that makes our vital work possible here in the spirit of Irving Kristol who loved his country and believe in the power of ideas, i know that together we can build an even stronger, more resilient and more prosperous america for our generation and for those to come. Thank thank you, dan. Good afternoon, everyone. Im robert doar, speaking to you live from aei headquarters in washington, d. C. On behalf of the entire aei Community Welcome to our annual Irving Kristol award lecture. We would like to thank all of our generous friends who supported this years event including the chevron corporation, exxon mobil, Liberty Mutual and the peter g. Peterson foundation. All of us i could not be happier to honor our dear friend and esteemed colleague the henry chair and political economy doctor nicholas eberstadt. In the four decade since nick first came to us, he at eighth i have grown together in so many ways the access they did a five nick has influenced and shaped the institutes work and today the excellent, the breadth and community of his work stand as great reflections of her most dearly held values. The Irving Kristol award its highest honor given by aei. We named this award in honor of Irving Kristol because he believed in the endurance of American Values and the Eventual Success of the american experiment. Irving was an intellectual anchor of the conservative community picky as Vice President and he mentored a generation of young conservatives. He was also an different ideas that are at the heart of aei. Human dignity, free enterprise, order, liberty for all. Back in the darkest days of the cold war irving were still a young publisher. His magazines were barely profitable and with much of the world under the iron grip of communism and the soviet union and china it wouldve been hard to see how irving could play a major role in the fight for free enterprise. And yet armed with these little magazines, he never lost hope. A Firm Believer in the power of ideas, irving was steadfast in his conviction that with a circulation of a few hundred you could change the world. Today, our values are under attack. That is true. But like a irving, i am an who believes that aeis ideas provide the roadmap for a confident, humane and flourishing america. These ideas will not only indoor, they will prevail. Endured. One reason for my confidence is todays honoree. Since joining aei nick has been one of our most productive and influential scholars. He has changed that we think about issues as diverse as poverty, world hunger, Global Health at the security challenges of the korean peninsula. Nick has been here so long it sometimes feel like hes been here his entire life but thats not true and i have proof. Here in the upper lefthand corner is a young nick lighting up with this Football Team at the Berkeley School in new york. Until about all of you that it gives me some joy to know that before nick turned his attention to the great issues of our time, he spent a little time on the gridiron blocking and tackling and maybe even throwing a forward pass. And here, looking especially dashing, is a senior picture from exeter. The records tell us that nick was, not surprisingly, Student Council president , president of the Economics Club and the winner of the highest award in german and history. Sadly, he didnt continue his football exploits. Nick is a scholar with a moral compass. He is a demographer who never forgot that demography is not the study of human population. It is the study of human people and that is been the driving force of his careers work. Over the years nick has had little time for those who dismiss the innate human inclinations of freedom. Instead he has defended with both academic and moral clarity the emitter can experiment most value. His work is imbued with a deeply self concern for the wellbeing of the most needy among us. In the 1990s nick became a strong critic of chinas one child policy. Not only because he felt it was bad for chinas economy and politics but because it was morally wrong. This speaks to a deeper courage that underlie all of next work. Nick is ever been afraid to defy conventional wisdom. If the evidence leads into conclusion that cassano chose to grid, no fight to daunting. His intellectual rigor example files the very best qualities of our institute. Nick has always said that people are our greatest assets. And if thats true, Nick Eberstadt is aeis greatest asset. Nick is also an extraordinary mentor. Is cultivated an entire generation of scholars to carry on our important work. In that tradition following his election will be having a Panel Discussion on a new volume edited by your fall within the compiles advice for the next president ial administration from several skulls. Nick is written a chapter for the book the title restored americas promise. As many of you know we have often given this award to Prime Ministers, Supreme Court justice, spiritual leaders as well as public intellectuals. And from time to time we are lucky to be able to recognize one of our most exceptional scholars. So this is the part of the program where im supposed to puff out my chest and Say Something about how proud i am to present the Irving Kristol award to nick. But i have a better idea. A much better i get. Lets let the people who afford the closest with nick over the years do the honors. The American Enterprise institute has honored itself and its ideals are presenting the Irving Kristol award to nicholas eberstadt. Nick is joining and aei pantheon that includes Ronald Reagan, bernard lewis, thomas soul, michael novak, jeane kirkpatrick, antonin scalia, charles murray, clarence thomas, and many other great thinkers and doers. And, of course, Irving Kristol himself, a friend and mentor to nick whose brilliant insights into american politics and society shine brighter with every passing year. I couldnt be happier that Nick Eberstadt is the artery of this years Irving Kristol lecture in summit. He is so deserving of the auto and epitomizes everything that is wonderful about aei. Everything i learned from Nick Eberstadt is so eye opening, everything from the roots of american poverty to Foreign Policy copies one of the most original thinkers i have ever seen and met. Nicks work helped ignite a National Conversation from the state of the labor force america. Nick called attention to the impact of our failing culture on the welfare of working age man. Nick is a scholars scholar. Erudite, groundbreaking and deep but always accessible, never boring. Like all great Public Policy work his writing pointed to the promise of a better system than one that recognizes and rewards the dignity and longterm benefits of earned income. Nick eberstadt is a numbers guy with a moral compass as he is written, tomography is at the study of human numbers but it is the human characteristics of those numbers that define world events. Honestly, its a little unfair that god granted north korea expert, a pompous call at an renaissance man into the same body. And most important, nicks is a founder in the best way. He adores his beautiful wife, his wonderful kids, he loves and cares for his aei family as his own and he is, to put it deserving, unmentioned. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the 2020 Irving Kristol award recipient, Nick Eberstadt. Thank you, robert. This offer is also a sentimental pleasure. At aei i am what you leifer. Still enjoying enjoyed extraory privilege of serving here at 35 years and counting. My debts of affection and gratitude to irving himself are immense. Not least, i might not have met mrs. Eberstadt if he had not hired her. Mary and i are just two of the leads of aspiring writers urging without its way to encourage over his long life. Like his remarkable wife come historian gertrude, Irving Kristol is an unforgettable inspiration. I only wish everyone listening could have known them, too. Aei crystal lectures like the boyer lectures that preceded them wrestle with weight issues of the day. But its fair to say no one could have anticipated last year with this prize was awarded, the path on which we now find ourselves. So todays lecture could hardly avoid addressing our Current Crisis. Two very different paths for america lie before us at the end of the covid pandemic. One, is to a future of stagnation and division. The other is to a future of revitalization and hope, and the choice is ours to make. I am going to argue, we can grasp the future that includes National Unity and progress for all. It is entirely doable. We already pretty much know how. We just have to want it and not lose heart. My message is directed especially to younger americans, those of you who dont really remember our country before the Great Recession, before 9 11, before the spread of the new misery. You will be the ones in charge of the american experiment tomorrow, the ones who have to do most of the heavy lifting, revitalizing our nation. Like your forebearers, you will learn firsthand americas amazing capacity to amend its flaws, improve and advance. We have a record at doing this again and again and again. For almost 250 years. Your country, your fellow citizens are worthy of your unalloyed devotion, deservedly actually. Someday you will be able to tell your children why the american future is always worth the struggle. Now my lecture. America is in the midst of its greatest crisis since the second world war. The Novel Coronavirus is a pathogen with which humanity has no previous experience. When we will create a safe and effective vaccine, and how many waves of contagion will roll through our country before covid subsides are at present im answerable questions. Under the pressure of the pandemic, faultlines in a country have been painfully exposed. We enjoyed not only a socioeconomic emergency, but an explosion of anger and radicalized violence in our streets. These troubles have historical roots, problems long festering but long ignored. Washington has responded to the pandemic with an unprecedented peacetime mobilization of national resources. Congress has authorized trillions of dollars in spending to support distressed businesses and households, and the Federal Reserve system has committed trillions more, with no into yet in sight. In relation to National Income todays state outlays for the covid crisis are comparable to our geek defense effort in world war ii. Just as in the second world war, we are now embarked upon an enormous expansion of government reach in public debt. Eventually we will achieve our National Objective in the struggle against covid19. Victory in world war ii was followed by Rapid Military demobilization and wholesale dismantling of wartime economic controls. But what of the postpandemic era . How will we demobilize the super welfare state hastily thrown together to prop up shaky businesses and cover shortfalls in personal income . How will we renew Economic Growth so we might among other things cope with our vastly increased public debt . If we simply muddle through, were likely to model into a nightmare, an american future defined by a new socio corporate welfare state, the stagnant politicized economy and the Financial Dependence upon officialdom, both elected and otherwise. In such a future, democracy would be degraded, freedoms lost, divisions inflamed, tomorrows promise squandered. When we settle to such a future, we would be the americans who chose against exceptionalism. We decided that being just another sluggish, demoralized social democracy was good enough for us and for posterity. To steer away from this grave danger we need a very different vision of the future. Such a vision for the a rapid and orderly held down for more silent mobilization of the u. S. Government and its central bank. But simply restoring the precovid status quo antiis not held many of us would be willing to die on. That was a world where the American Dream was already faltering. Where too Many Americans especially younger americans were mired in a previously unfamiliar new misery. As a look beyond covid, we have the opportunity to repair americas prepandemic flaws. We should be seeking a social and economic revitalization of our nation, a bold and thorough overhaul of our public and private ways to spark a dynamic upswing and progress for everyone. Division, the design should be prosperity for all. This can be done and a revitalized america is a prize worth fighting for. Lets start with the longrun implications of the Current Crisis. The bad news is that the pandemic has made the task of revitalizing our nation more difficult. But the good news is its also made the need for such revitalization more difficult to ignore. To prevent collapse of the u. S. Economy and Financial Systems during the nationwide covid lockdown, washington unleashed a tidal wave of public resources. With the economy in free fall, the impulse to act urgently and go big was surely the right call. Yet urgency also met at the single largest state surge in americas history was necessarily improvised. Characterize not only by the intended consequences but unintended. Government transfers now account for much more of the American Family budget than ever before. And will continue to for an indefinite duration. Since the covid indy, public debt is soaring. To what heights is still anyones guess. It will certainly exceed world war ii debt ratios soon and additional rounds of deficit spending may still lie in store. The Congressional Budget Office just projected that the federal debt would be almost twice the size of the u. S. Economy by 2050. 2. 5 times the prepandemic ratio. Apart from japan virtually no country on earth grapples with such a debt burden today. Or in japan in the moment. However, the full dimensions of the governments new role in u. S. Economic life were not revealed by fiscal numbers alone. Of those overlooked the colossal budget item import not only in magnitude but in nature. At the behest of congress and the treasury department, our Federal Reserve system has crossed the rubicon with its new pandemic rescue mandates, the fed readies to the role of managing and even micromanaging the American Economy through credit allocation, potentially lending vast sums that only to Financial Institutions but also directly to firms that judge suitable for government support. The fed already dominates markets for u. S. Treasury debt and mortgage debt as a result of previous lesser crises. Its by no means inconceivable the Current Crisis will propel it to a comparably dominant position in domestic commercial credit. These dramatic estimations of our economy, remember, are the intended consequences of our pandemic measures but host of unintended consequences are also embedded in these policies. They pose direct risk to American Freedom and prosperity the longer the measures remain in force. Consider the special 600 a week pandemic Unemployment Benefits. These came on top of existing Unemployment Benefits regardless of ones wealth or income. The year before the crisis, about onethird of all jobs in the u. S. Were paying less than that 600 a week. When added to regular Unemployment Benefits this push payments for the job was above the median wage level, 36 of the 50 states. Welcome to a world job market which all men and women can get an above average salary, so long as they do not work. One study estimated spending by pandemic unemployment recipients was 10 higher after the onset of the crisis and befo