Voters whether their concern about political division. Watch this program in entirety on our website cspan. Org. Now to a virtual discussion on governing priorities for the next president. Live coverage on cspan2. We welcome you to the second phase of our conversation following up on Nick Eberstadts lecture about our country which has seen more than its share of challenges and unexpected turns. Next lecture will be one starting point for this and another will be the simple fact we are less than a month away from a president ial election. The winner of that election, the person who takes the oath of office will face ordinary challenges both those created by the pandemic, many of which nick just discussed and those that have been building long before and require attention and action. That person will confront unusual opportunities in this strange moment. It helps the president think about those challenges and opportunities about how to prioritize them and ai has been engaged in a special project over the last few months. Our president had the idea of asking a number of our scholars who have expertise in different policy areas to offer advice to the president who takes the oath next year before we know who thats going to be. While the Election Campaign is still roaring in the background. That means they have to think about what its like to offer not to donald trump orjoe biden but to americas present. They have to consider not the goals of a republican or democrat but the needs of the nation. Obviously they do that as aei scholars so their Core Principles are clear. They care about keeping our Society Prosperous by defending the constitution, the market economy, the integrity of its institutions but by offering advice about how the president can advance these causes before we know who will win, our scholars have had to consider what issues, what challenges, what priorities should matter most and how all americans should think about them. The result of that effort is a collection of essays called governing priorities and its being published today by pei. Find it online at priorities. Org where you can read the essays or download the entire book. It will be available in print two. Nick eberstadt speeches the first chapter, others offer the president advice about how to strengthen the economy, think about our foreignpolicy threats, revitalize our governing institutions. Approach entitlements and taxes and help our cities recover. How to think about the Administrative State and responded to the political radicalism weve seen in the streets and more. So to unpack some of that advice and think about the lessons of nicks remarks just now, im joined now for a conversation by three of the other authors of chapters in that book and three of the people who are leading apis work to strengthen our country and respond to his problems. Michael strain is director of Economic Policy at aei, Corey Shockey is director of defense policy studies and ryan streeter is director of domestic policy studies and in their own work and through the work of their scholars there helping to chart americas path forward. Were going to start with a discussion about the peculiar moment our country is facing and then open it up to all of you as well to ask questions and drive our conversation. There are two ways you can post questions for our panel. If youre watching us on the live stream you can submit your questions in the q and a box next to the live stream on the event page or else email your questions to events aei. Org, dev events at aei. Org. Corey mike and ryan, thank you for getting together and begin with i wonder if i could invite each of you to maybe reflect on some of nicks remarks and also draw out some of the elements of your own advice to the president who takes the oath next year. Theres an enormous amount for us to learn from what nick said and an enormous amount of thrust to reflect on thinking about the challenges of anybody whos crazy enough to be what want to be president of the us in 2021. Was not cheerful lets say about the immediate economic prospects of our society. Hes very worried about the capacity of the economy to recover. Thats also the subject you take up in your chapter of the new book and you offer concrete advice. How do you think about that question now given the year we had . Where does the economy stand and how should thepresident approach it next year . Thank everybody for joining this panel discussion. I would like to conceptualize where the economy has been and where its going by thinking about a journey from a depression level catastrophe to a normal, severe recession. To a weak economy and then to a healthy economy. And we were in a depression level disaster in march and april. We had the Unemployment Rate above 15 percent, properly measured closer to 20 percent. We had annual rate of gdp growth of about 1 3. The economy track by about one third. At an annual rate. Household consumption plunged , exports fell, the economy really was in terrible terrible shape. To give this some perspective , about two years for the Unemployment Rate to double from five percent to its peak of 10 percent in the Great Recession whichbegan with the 2008 financial crisis. In the pandemic recession, the Unemployment Rate increased factor of four in just two months so this was a real disaster. We have left the kind of depression phase of this episode. And we left it a lot quicker than i guess many economists thought was possible so we are now in a bad recession but we are interritory thats much more familiar. And in some ways thats a comforting place to be because again, we were in such bad shape not so long ago. I think the next president regardless of who he is needs to first and foremost avoid doing things that will make the recovery slower and that will thwart progress. So we should not be raising taxes. In the economy, we should especially not be raising the Corporate Tax rate which would hurt and worker productivity and wages. That should be item number one to avoid of the kind of plausible sets of items. We should not be doing things that will slow the process adjustment. We are going to get to a healthy economy going to need from some industries to strike, or other industries to expand. In order for that to happen were going to need workers in capital to flow from the shrinking industries to the expanding industries. For example we dont need as many Movie Theater workers as we used to that we likely need more amazon delivery drivers so we should be not doing things to kind of gum up the works of that reallocation process and im worried that some of the policies might push us in that direction. And in addition to not doing things wrong and not getting in the way we need to continue to provide support to businesses and support to households so theres a lot we should do, a lot we should do the next president is going to have isa handful. Corey, in the economic sphere as mike suggests this is a moment of intense urgency and focus. In World Affairs its a little less clear exactly where to focus and in some ways this pandemic has put International Relations on hold but its also exacerbated some very Serious Problems that we face. After the president in 2021 about americas role in the world and the challenges of running our foreignpolicy. First and foremost, until we have a Pandemic Recovery plan, that americans are going to feel comfortable and confident with , theyre not going to careabout what else is happening in the world. And so the first thing at present needs to do and any party needs to do is have a plan that reassures americans that the future is manageable for them. To them caring about chinese aggressiveness. Before china started on the border with india. There degradations in the south china sea. Concerned about what russia and turkey are doing. These are all important questions Americas National security challenges for Americas National security. For a totally understandable reason americans arent going to care until the major thing that has destructed all of our lives. Is front and center in american policy. Also looming longerterm concerns that because of the pandemic were not going to be paying attention to. For most is getting americas longterm sustainable footing. Thats not an argument against pandemic stimulus spending. Absolutely not. But its an argument that by 2024, americas debt service is going to be larger than the Defense Budget. And its if not addressed over time,its going to crowd out all discretionary spending. Including the defense and Foreign Policy spending. And what needs to be done is put our debt service, our debt on a longerterm trajectory sustainable. Its going to require small choices now and in normas choices if we dont deal with it pretty soon. So those kind of longerterm challenges, thinking about how to iron out our policy for managing a rising and aggressivechina. Making better use of our alliance relationships. Those things are longerterm challenges but were also only a few good choices away from the United States being vital and vibrant in its defense and Foreign Policy. Ryan, in reflecting a littlebit about what nick said , our domestic policies these days often breaks down along the lines of what seem like culture, identity, but then in many ways its also a line of city and country which ithink was implicit somewhat in nicks remarks and in his focus. You devote a lot of attention to the situation of workingclass people in Rural America in some ways in suburban america. You argue in your own chapter of the governing priority selection that we need also to think about the revitalization of the cities without which a broader american revitalization isnt really possible and maybe especially for conservative its important to understand the ways in which cities are actually central to american vitality. How would you approach that question now if you were advising the president in 2021. Thank you all and its good to be with you and corey and mike here in my heartfelt congratulations to my colleagues Nick Eberstadt today. A great honor. Its important to think about our economy and our society also geographically and in an age of resurgent populism, when grievance politics is also kind of hot, its a be not popular to talk about the importance of cities but the ones that they just really are essential to our economy and to our culture. And about one percent of counties in america account for a third of gdp and about the fifth of our population. The vast majority of patents are produced in urban areas as well as a lot of entrepreneurial activity. Cities will continue to be important and its not especially helpful right now i think in metropolitan america against the heartland america. Rather i think we need to find ways to bring them together in meaningful ways and ill have something to say about that in a minute area so i think its important to note right now when theres been a lot of commentary about people fleeing the citys right now, especially in the pandemic and in the wake of urban unrest at the cities dont often talk about. New york, chicago, los angeles. People have been leavingthe cities for quite a while anyway. The situation that was gone through the summer over the last few months has probably accelerated that in a limited survey data that we have when people are moving during this era, its for the usual reasons. Jobs, family, opportunity and a lot of people have been moving away from these cities for some time. Where have they been going to mark at what i look at in my chapters to say that whenyou look at where people are moving to , you can start to derive the basic workings of a policy agenda for cities Going Forward. People have been leaving these large cities, the famous ones where movies are made for some time or places that are more affordable , places that have more reliable infrastructure, better schools and provide the kind of safety that people are often looking for and i find the three leg and stool at urban theorist joel compton writes about his helpful here. That successful cities have always been animated by commerce. They provided safety and projected power and also have had a strong of place. And i think people are generally for these things when you look over the last 10 years, the Fastest Growing cities in america by population , its places like seattle. Austin, denver, charlotte. The fort worth, these are places where people are moving for some of the reasons i just talked about. Just raw numbers over the past decade san antonio has added more population than los angeles has and fort worth has added more than new york has. People are looking for the kind of facility, safety, affordability and mix of opportunity those places bring. Its worth noting as people move from one place to another there not moving from one large city like new york to a place like nashville or austin. Theyre also moving from outlying counties near metropolitan areas so we have this phenomenon where people are leaving more dysfunctional places or better functioning city and also people leaving more stagnating places in the hinterlands for cities as well. And they generally tend to be moving to these places that provide that mix of basics that a lot of these places get right. Whatever their politics might be, its worth noting that the top 10 destinations for millennial movers over the past few years have been half of the states where those places have been our people without income tax so people are making decisionsfor these very basic reasons. And its worth pointing that out because weve seen this growth in urban dysfunction, particularly in strongholds of progressivism is our city and over the last generation been a big shift when you look at the situations of inequality in our cities so if you go back to 1980 and you look at the 15 most unequal cities in america only two major metros make the list. That would be places that have over 1 million people, new orleans and orlando and the other on smaller metropolitan areas and today the most unequal cities measured by the gap between the 90th and 10th percentile you see that allthe familiar faces on the left. San jose, sanfrancisco, los angeles, new york , washington dc. Weve seen this move toward greater inequality in classrooms out away from what might have been explained more by race even a generation ago and its in these places are particularly strong hold of progressivism and making more of an ideological observation and a partisan one there because a lot of the cities people are moving to our government by democrats but they have more political competition usually at the state and sometimes local level. Its on the seminars ideological setting for more practical policies like making housing more affordable to track people to those places. There is an interesting gauge of political competition that i should mention no is that there has been a partisan shift in the last years which is worth pointing out area when you look at the top 20 metro areas i relation right now, you have 16 mayors for democrats of those cities, three are republicans and one for an independent. Those same 20 cities in 1995 had 10 republicans and 10 democrats so youve seen a political shift of republicans away from cities and more dominance by democrats. And that is probably related to why we seen i think the better days of even conservatives depending on cities being a while ago when you look back to the half of the 1990s and you think between 1991 and 1996, you had a really the last time we had a wave of domestic policy for him like this. We have the introduction of the first voucher program. Public housing reform on a massive scale. The introduction of Community Policing as kind of a National Project and then of course welfare reform in 1996. These were done by democrats, these reforms were pushed by mayors and governors of both parties. But it was a time when i think the political competition of the day actually produced some good ideas so i talk about what maybe some of those ideas might look like Going Forward and i think theres a real need for policymakers to be thinking about what that means for cities and i get into that in my chapter and in this affordability can come from is a big deal. It really the responsibility for it the inequality we see in the cities i mentioned is because of local dynamics and the kind of urban overlords of those places and even a strong proponent of federalism like myself would now embrace certain federal policies in that regard in terms of tying federal funds to the ways in which cities for freeing up their hiring policies so we can have more housing and better prices. I think we need to relearn the lessons of committee policing. This is the time to accelerate school reform. I know everyones tired of having the kids at home and want them back in school this is a time where micro schooling, hybrid schooling, new ideas like giving charters to teachers within public schools, this is a time for education in our city to match the diversity and complexity of cities and i put out a few other kind of blue sky ideas like using the charter city concept him ethically to create more possibility for cities to address a wide range of concerns in ways that are better for their growth and safety and then also the idea of introducing new Regional Strategies to connect kind of outlying areas to their metropolitan center. So all to say i think theres a lot of hope in our cities that we havent been seeing lately because of all the problems and all the unrest that we have to read people are showing that cities are places by the way theyre moving to them. Weve been focusing on whats wrong with some of the cities that have been on fire and the places where we seen protests that have been hit hard by the virus. But when what we havent been spending a lot of time doing is looking at those places where people have gone and theres a lot thats right in those places, a lot that helps us understand that people wanttheir leaders in their country and i think we can build a good policy agenda. The next president in