Policy issues that impact you. Coming up, wall street journals reporter stephanie armour and amy goldstein. We will look at Health Care Changes under the Trump Administration and a republican led congress. Former administrator for the center for medicare and medicaid services. And former administrator for the administration, we will discuss the future of medicare and medicaid. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal, live at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on monday morning. Join the discussion. Tomorrow, a look at the challenges for the incoming Trump Administration. Andncludes josh fulton staffers from the george w. Bush and obama administrations. That is at 3 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. , documentary contest is installed is in full swing. We are asking students what is the most important issue for the new president and congress to address in 2017 . Winner for herr documentary, help for homeless heroes. Fortner and producer, we covered the issue of Homeless Veterans on the streets of orange county, california. We decided these people who fought for our country and the fact they are now living on the streets, not handling not having family was not ok. We decided we are going to talk about this issue with in our community and we decided to make a cspan documentary. I encourage all seniors in put school and juniors to to use this platform to speak your voice, to say that your. Eneration deserves to be heard there is a better place to speak these issues. My advice for the students who are on the fence of doing this documentary is to really look into your community and see what is affecting those around you, because those are the ones you see the most. If there is an issue that you see happen on the street, that is probably where you can start. Be a part of the documentary because you want to be a voice for your community. Thank you, ashley. If you want more information on our studentcam documentary contest, go to our website. New York University school of law hosted a forum on the u. S. Political system and this panel debate whether a third party can succeed in a twoparty system. This is an hour. Good morning. On behalf of my supremely talented and collegial codirector of the nyu law schools legislative and regulatory process clinic, i want to welcome you to the inaugural session of the forum. The program today, a new political system promises to be very interesting and perhaps a bit provocative. This forum would not be possible without the generous support of Sidley Austin. It gives me great pleasure to introduce the cohead of their litigation practice and one of the firms national cochairs of its recruiting committee. Of particular significance to us, john is an active alumnus of the nyu law school. John. [applause] john thank you, sally. Sidley is thrilled to support the form which will be a robust negotiation a robust discussion involving the role of the state, local parties. Were honored to welcome Vice President biden today and thank him for agreeing to provide his insights as our keynote speaker. We are positive that todays forum should prove to be interesting, informative and enlightening on these and other subjects exploring whether we are on the vanguard of a new political system. A deepis a firm with tradition of Public Service and has been a destination for lawyers who have served throughout the government. Two of our partners will be moderating two of todays panels. Both have served in the u. S. Government. Rick is a member of congress and in the department of commerce. Several of our partners were important to ensuring that the forum move forward today and those are they have served at the highest level of the executive branch. Other prominent alumni who have served in the federal government under democratic and republican administrations, one of whom is president obama who was a Summer Associate in our Chicago Office years ago. As was the first lady who was an associate there as well. We are grateful for the hard work they put in and they have done a fabulous and outstanding job. In addition we are grateful to dean morrison for his support and vision for sidley and the to come together and make this forum a reality. We also wish to thank in advance terrific panelists without whom the forum should not be a success. Sidley has a wonderful relationship with nyu law. I am an alumnus and nearly 100 lawyers in a firm including 35 in our firm including 35 partners. Sidley is proud to partner with nyu and we know we can make a valuable contribution to the dialogue involving american democracy, citizen engagement, and Public Service. Over sidleys 150 year history, a fundamental tenet of our firm has been to honor and support the rule of law in this great democracy. The forum is an example of our continuing commitment to do so and we are very proud to be part of it. Thank you. [applause] let the program began. Assembles onpanel the stage, i want to introduce my introductions and the introductions will be brief because the full biographies are listed in your program which you should have received at the Registration Table which remain out there. We are going to hold our panels to roughly 50 minutes and allow 10 minutes for time for questions from audience members. We have students assembled on the rails on both sides with cards and pens. You have a thought, you raise a hand and one will come and send this to you and we will be able to ask those questions. It is wonderful to have rick here. He was a member of the u. S. House of representatives for 28 years where he chaired the subcommittee on communications and the internet. He currently chairs the Government Strategy practice in the Sidley Austin washington office. All set . Go. Thank you. It is a privilege to take part in the forum this morning. I want to say a word of welcome to everyone in the audience, to our first panel which focuses on the role of the Political Parties. The november election certainly defied the expectations of many. And by almost all accounts, it was a seismic political event, but what are its invocations what are its implications for the future of our Political Parties. What role do they play at a time when super pacs are prominent and major funders of the candidates directly without Party Intervention . Are the parties stronger or weaker than they have been historically . Is the situation ripe at this point for the emergence of a Third Political party . How have past reforms work . Reforms worked . Would future reforms strengthen parties and with a country to a stronger democracy . Are the parties at risk of losing aspects of their constituency . In order to answer these and other questions, we are joined today by a truly distinguished panel. I will say a word of introduction about each of them at the outset. Ben ginsberg is a partner at jones day and a former National Counsel to the bushcheney and the romney president ial campaigns. He is currently counsel to the republican Governors Association. We are joined also by richard hill does, professional of constitutional law at nyu. He is a litigator and a widely read other on legal and policy issues concerning this the structure of democratic institutions. His acclaimed casebook, the law of the rocker c, legal structure the law of democracy, legal structure of the political process launched an entirely new field of study in law schools across the country. We are joined by david keating, executive director of the club for growth. He previously served as executive Vice President of the National Taxpayers union and executive director of americans for fair taxation. He is also known as the man who invented the super pacs. The full bios are bound into the are found in the program and if you would like to learn more i would invite you to read them. It has been suggested that donald trump whose positions crossed Traditional Party lines, part of his platform evolves from republican principles, part from democratic principles, part are pretty much his own is truly perhaps the First Independent american president. He energized his own following. He largely financed his own campaign for the nomination. He staged a hostile takeover of one of the Major Political parties. Ben ginsberg, is that an accurate description of what happened . And i will expand the question by asking, did the Democratic Party also come close to a hostile takeover by Bernie Sanders and his supporters . And what are the implications of these very unusual events for the future of elliptical parties . Future of Political Parties . Ben that is fine if that is where you would like to start. I think donald trump has succeeded in triangulating all the party alignments. It is tough to know what the base of the party is, what the core constituencies are. I take a little bit of exception to the assumption in the question, if you look at the way donald trump has named his first 15 cabinet people, which is a fairly traditional act. You have three generals in National Security positions. We are perceived as the party of the billionaires although we can argue with that. You have seven or eight people who are people with who are loyalists to donald trump and have Movement Conservative credentials. That looks like a traditional government at least in the first 15 of the 660 people who need to be nominated by the senate. But just to make one other point. I do think in this political cycle, the Party Structure splintered a lot more than it has in the past. You are seeing an evolutionary period that started in the 2004 election where the Party Structures are much more diffuse. It is much tougher to have principled governing coalitions in the congress. I think you have senate and House Campaign committees that take care of u. S. Senators and u. S. House people. You have a Governors Association and attorney generals association. It is not the democratic and Republican National committees who are the core political boots on the ground, money to the candidate, tv ads on the air that they were prior to the passage of mccain. Mccainfeingold. You do have a changing structure. Cooks your view of whether this was a major hostile takeover of this your view of whether was a major hostile takeover of a major Political Party. The larger framework within which i was where then which i would situate what is going on, we are seeing what i view as the political fragmentation of american democracy. Not just american democracy, of democracies around the world. What i mean by political fragmentation is that the traditional sources that organized governance and organize the political process, and election, had their power and their authority diffused in various ways. It has been diffused externally. We have seen tremendous diffusion of power away from the parties to these outside groups. There has also been an internal diffusion of power within the parties in the sense that the Party Leadership no longer has the kind of control over the members that the leadership once had. Individual members of congress are much more independent entrepreneurs than they used to be. That is how i view donald trump and Bernie Sanders. I view them as independent, free agents. Sanders is an independent, never was a member of the Democratic Party, is not a member of the Democratic Party. Trump was a republican, a democrat until about 10 minutes ago and then decided it was advantageous to run as a republican. The parties have become so hollowed out that it is possible for free agents to capture the party label for their own purposes and agendas. I think that has happened for two general reasons. One is institutional changes we have made. Particularly with respect to the nomination process for choosing the candidates. We have completely taken that process since the 1970s out of the hands of the parties. We have stripped the parties of any meaningful role whatsoever. In that process, when we went with a system of pure primary dominated or populist election processes for choosing the nominee. Surprise, surprise when you shift the nomination process to one that is a populist controlled process, through the primaries you are going to get much more populist kinds of candidates. Finding it easier to emerge from that process. There are other changes institutionally we have made. The second set of changes are cultural and technological changes which we are aware of. The Communications Revolution and the Technology Revolution have undermined the authority of all sorts of organizations whether it is the parties, churches, academic institutions, corporations, it is now possible to bypass the traditional organizational structures. That is why people like ted cruz and liz warren, one year into the senate become two of the most powerful figures in the parties in a way that was inconceivable for someone like lyndon johnson, as powerful as he was, in our politics in the past. It is possible for people to find their National Constituencies through social media, to raise money through the technology that is available, and free themselves from the traditional sources of control that the party has exerted and the traditional support the parties provided. What were saying is this what we are seeing is this political fragmentation that empowers lots of individual actors, strips the mediating institutions like the parties of a significant role. And somewhat inevitably, is going to be fueling more extremism and more polarization. Lets take off from one of the points you mentioned. The fact that with super pacs directly funding candidates and otherates looking to sources outside the party. David keating, do you believe that the parties are relevant as funders . That has been a traditional role of parties. How damaging is it to the Political Parties that perhaps that role is eclipsed to a significant extent by external Funding Sources . And do you think parties perhaps have been weakened by virtue of the fact that candidates can now so directly communicate with voters on their own. I am reminded of this to trumps twitter following of Something Like 48 Million People that gets that gives him instant access to a very large part of the electorate. What is the effect of those changes on Political Parties . I will see if i can remember all of the questions. For president of the center competitive politics. I used to work at the club for growth a number of years ago. And then also i wanted to make sure that it is clear to people, super pacs can not directly fund candidates. They are independent groups only. They cannot coordinate with the candidates or the parties. There is a long list of roles that i am sure ben and i could give a seminar on those someday if the player interested. These are independent groups. They are people getting together with other people and talking to voters and urging them to vote for or against particular candidates. I think on the previous question, i agree with virtually everything that rick and ben have said. In terms of the individual members, congress, and candidates they have always been to some degree entrepreneurs. Otherwise they would not gotten elected in the first place, but i agree that changes in Campaign Finance laws and the advent of media and the atomization of media has made it even more likely that these candidates can emerge and spring out of nowhere. In terms of the parties, i do not think the right approach is to somehow blame independent groups. These are groups of citizens to groups of citizens after all. The real problem is that the Campaign Finance laws have undercut the ability of parties to organize americans and speak out together. If you look at especially, the Democratic Party is hurting right now in a big way. You look at their bench at the state level, the state legislative level, the gubernatorial positions they hold, and it has been a wipeout in over the last eight years. One of the big factors i think that is hurting parties that people do not talk about very often is the incredible complexity of the Campaign Finance laws, especially on state parties. Much of the political activity of state parties now has to struggle, not only under state laws and regulations which are obviously bad in many places, but the federal laws. A lot of the state parties are crushed by regulation. I think we have got to simplify Campaign Finance regulation in a big way. The extent we can lift contribution limits, maybe take them off altogether on Political Parties, that would be much more important. That is a much better way to go than trying to figure out how to push down independent groups. Ben ginsburg, lets continue that discussion. What do you see being very constructive in terms of change in the law that would make the funding of campaigns by the parties more effective . For example