Transcripts For CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20141108 : v

CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings November 8, 2014

Book tv pots afterwards, jeff chang on the idea of racial progress. What makes us different to other species. The social 8 00, prejudice immigrants faced during the 1800s. And the 20th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. Find the television schedule. Let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. Call us. Us. Il send us a tweet. Join the conversation to read like us on facebook. Follow us on twitter. President obama held his first Cabinet Meeting since tuesday plus elections. Tuesdays elections. He discusses the new economic numbers which include privatesector jobs and the drop in the Unemployment Rate. Well, this morning we learned that in october, businesses added 209,000 new jobs. The Unemployment Rate fell again. The private sector has added 10. 6 million new jobs over the last 56 months. This is the strongest job growth that we have seen since the 1990s. All this is a testament to the hard work and resilience of the American People. They have been steady and strong digging themselves out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and what we need now to do is make sure we build on this momentum because we recognize that despite the solid growth, despite the drop in unemployment, there are still a lot of folks out there who are anxious about their futures, who are having trouble making ends meet at the end of the month or saving for the future College Education or being able to make sure that they are able to retire with dignity and respect. And so everything that we do over the next two years is designed and geared towards insuring that folks who work hard in this country are able to get ahead. Obviously we had a significant midterm election. As i said at the press conference, my attitude has been and will continue to be that good ideas dont necessarily come from Just One Party and im looking forward to seeing the leaders of both democrat and republican caucuses this afternoon. Lets have a chance to share with them both what i think we need to be doing to build on the economic momentum that we already have and make it even stronger, but im also going to be interested in listening to them in terms of areas where we think its possible to work together, whether that is putting people back to work through stronger manufacturing here in the United States and selling more to countries around the world is one of the major topics were going to be discussing during my asia trip next week, whether its figuring out how we can build on some modest new investments that we have been making in Early Childhood education, we know that works and there is strong bipartisan support around the country for some of those investments. Lets see if he we can do more. All of these issues are ones in which there is a strong possibility bipartisan cooperation as long as we set politics aside for a moment and focus on the people who actually sent us here. In the meantime, in these regular meetings that im having with my cabinet, i have been emphasizing to them from day one and will reiterate in this meeting the fact that separate and apart from legislative activity, we have the capacity to continually improve how we deliver services to the American People. A part of whats happened over a quarter to several decades is that people sometimes feel as if the federal government is distant and its not customer friendly and there is too much bureaucracy and because of the fine work of many of the members of this cabinet, what we have been able to do is start chipping away at some of the old ways of doing business and start substituting new ways of doing business to improve Customer Service but make sure the people are getting the help they need. We got the chance to welcome and have a conversation with our new secretary of veterans affairs, bob mcdonald, who is coming from the private sector, but also is coming from west point and an extraordinary legacy of service in our armed forces and what were already seeing is that bob is able to start skimming down the wait times for people in terms of appointments they need but reducing homelessness for example with our h. U. D. Secretary donovan and now castro, we decreased homelessness by 30 . A lot isnt by new legislation, its about us focusing more on these problems and managing them better and continually listening to the American People to see how we can be more helpful. So there are a lot of opportunities for us to do that here today. I think were going to take an inventory on the progress thats being made in various departments. Were also going to focus on the fact that between now and the end of the year, there is still immediate work that needs to be done. We have made progress in building the kind of Public Health infrastructure we need to deal with any eventualities with respect to ebola, its a concern domestically but most importantly, a concern internationally. Well get reports from those who have been actively involved in that fight and ron will tell us how the work we need to be doing with congress can help advance and ultimately stamp out this epidemic overseas to make sure the American People are safe. We also have some Significant National security issues. We got to make sure that our efforts against isil are probably funded. That is an opportunity for secretary of defense hagel to brief us on the progress in our campaign against isil in iraq and our work in syria of the bottom line is that as i have told my white house staff, i have shared in the past with many of my cabinet, we are extraordinarily privileged to be in a position where every single day we can have a positive impact in some way on the lives of the American People. And what i have started out on this journey with joe biden and we traveled around the country, we were constantly reminded of the hard work, the accepts of sense of community, the sense of family that exists in every pocket and every corner of this country, the same kinds of values that joe grew up on and i grew up on. And what we want to do is make sure that between now and the time that the next Administration Takes over that every single day and every Single Agency we are constantly finding ways to build on those values and to make sure that we are making this country safer and more prosperous. I know that based on the conversations i have had with this cabinet, there is no lack of enthusiasm or energy in achieving that goal. All right. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. The president also met with congressional leaders from both parties today at the white house and made these brief remarks before the start of the lunch. While i want to thank the leadership of both of the house and the senate for being here for this lunch postelection. As i said the other night, obviously the public has had a good night and i congratulated Mitch Mcconnell and Speaker Boehner for running very strong campaigns. As i also said the day after the election, what we have seen now for a number of cycles is that the American People just want to see work done here in washington. I think theyre frustrated by the gridlock. They would like to see more cooperation and i think all of us have the responsibility, me in particular, to try to make that happen. And so this gives us a Good Opportunity to explore where we can make progress on behalf of the people who sent us here. The good news is today we saw another good set of jobs numbers. We now have had 56 consecutive months of job growth, up more than 10. 6 million jobs have been created and the Unemployment Rate now is down to 5. 8 . So business is out there investing, hiring. The Economic Indicators are going in the right direction. As i travel to asia for the g20 summit, im going to be able to say we have created more jobs here in the United States than every other advanced country combined and they notice that were doing something right here, but what we also know is that the American People are still anxious about their futures and that means that what we can do together to ensure that young people can afford college, what we can do together to rebuild our infrastructure so that were competitive Going Forward. What we can do together to make sure we have a tax system that is fair and simple and unleashes the dynamism of the economy. What we can could together to keep the progress we have been making in reducing the deficit while still making the investments we need to grow. Those are where im interested in hearing and sharing ideas. I am committed to both Speaker Boehner and leader mcconnell is that i am not going to judge ideas based on whether theyre democrat or republican, im going to be judging them based on whether or not they work. Im confident that they want to produce results as well on behalf of the American People. So i appreciate their graciousness in coming here and im very much looking forward to giving them some updates on progress weve been making on issues like ebola and isil. There are some specific work that has to get done the next several weeks before the new congress commences and my hope is that even as we enter it into a new congress, the Previous Congress has the opportunity to still make progress on a whole bunch of fronts and im confident we can get that done. So thank you, again. Appreciate it. Youre going to be the first to find out, major, along with everybody else. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. President obama has chosen a federal prosecutor in new york to become the next attorney general. U. S. Attorneyis a who attended harvard. She would replace eric holder as the head of the justice department. She would be the first africanamerican to hold the post. We will have live coverage tomorrow. The chair of the Republican National committee is hoping the operations and fundraising that helped you gop takeover congress will continue as they look ahead to 2016. He spoke for an hour at the Christian Science monitors Breakfast Series in washington, d. C. Ok, folks, here we go. Thanks for coming, im dave cook from the monitor, our guest this morning is chairman of the Republican National committee. His last visit with the group was in march of this year and we thank him for coming back. Our guest has had a lifelong interest in politics, according to a profile jeff wrote for the times, he was the selfappointed Campaign Manager for Ronald Reagans president ial bid at Pleasant Prairie Elementary School in wisconsin. Jeff will have to tell us, yeah, it was it was true. It was a great profile anyway, jeff. He went on to earn his bachelors degree from the university of wisconsin white water. He worked as a Committee Staffer in the wisconsin legs la tour before moving to warmer climbs to continue his education earning a law degree from the university of miami. After several clerkships, he practiced corporate law, ran unsuccessfully for the Wisconsin Senate and in 2007 was elected chairman of the Wisconsin Republican party, the youngest person ever to hold that job. In 2009 he became general counsel of the Republican National committee and in january of 2011 became r. N. C. Chair. He was reelected in january of 2013. The chairman and his wife sally have two young children. Thus endeth the biographical part of the program. Now the recitation of ground rules. As always, were on the record here. Please no live blogging or tweeting and in short no filing of any kind while the breakfast is underway to give us time to actually listen to what the guest says. There is no embargo when the session ends. To help you resist that relentless selfie urge, we will email several pictures of the session to all of the reporters here as soon as the breakfast ends. As regular attendees know, if you would like to ask a question, please do the traditional thing and send me a subtle nonthreatening signal and ill call on one and all in the time available. One other thing, we strive to operate in a strictly nonpartisan fashion. Let me note, we have invited his counterpart at d. N. C. To have breakfast with us and hope shell accept soon. We ask our guest to make opening comments and move to questions around the table. For that, thanks for doing it, sir. Thank you, i want to get to your questions quickly. I just have a few comments to make before we open it up. Number one, tuesdays election was a big night. It was a wave election and we didnt squeak by. We won by a large margin and i remember when i was here in march, if you remember that, i said it was going to be a tsunami and obviously some people thought that that was kind of an irresponsible or overly excited type of comment to make, but the wave, we didnt think it was inevitable, as recently as last week, democrats were predicting they would hold the senate. I think we have had a handout going around with some of those quotes for everybody. After tuesday, though, democrats are changing their tune. Now theyre telling you that the wave was so big that even the best ground game couldnt overcome it. Thats not analysis, thats really just a lame excuse. All of you know it, the reason theyre playing up the wave is that they dont want to admit that republicans actually beat them at their own game. So number two, if we had not seen if we had not been laser focused on turning out low propensity voters in states like iowa and colorado, we would have not been victorious. The ground game mattered. Our unprecedented investment in data mattered. Ill admit that the democrats ground game was bigger and more expensive. Ours was smarter, targeted, more efficient and ultimately more effective. We made important gains across demographic groups because we believe that Voter Engagement works. Lets talk about hispanic outreach. Look at georgia. David perdue won 42 of the hispanic vote, nathan beal had 47 . The africanamerican voters, look at john casic in ohio, 26 of the black vote, asian americans, exit polls show that republicans won 49 of the asian vote. In 2012, it was 26 . And when it comes to female voters, a few things, first see how cory gardner handed the attacks from mark udall. Greg abbott in texas beat wendy davis among women voters as well. Finally people asked me what the takeaway of the election is. I think its that the republicans were given an opportunity to lead at every level, local, state, and federal. In the senate, we had a decisive win obviously across the board and it was clear that it was a defeat for harry reids dysfunctional leadership and the barack obama agenda. Harry reids refusal to allow votes in the senate in order to protect incumbents backfired and actually it insured their defeat. In the senate it was a night of important firsts for the Republican Party. Johnny ernst because the first female combat veteran in the senate and the first woman in congress from iowa. Tom cotton will be the youngest member of the senate. Shelly Moore Capital is the first woman elected to the senate from west virginia. Tim scott becomes the first africanamerican elected to both the house and the senate. In the house, we have a majority bigger than most of us have seen in our lifetimes. Were proud to see mea love in utah, will herd in texas 23 and elyse stepanik in new york who will become the youngest woman ever elected to congress. The governors races across america affirmed the leadership of conservative republicans across the country and in the bluest of blue states they rejected the democrats. In maryland, in massachusetts, and in illinois, even the president s home state where he campaigned vigorously elected a republican. I think that kind of tells you how big this victory was. It wasnt just a rejection of barack obama and everyone connected to barack obama. It was also the acceptance of conservative Republican Leadership across the board in these states. Republicans now control more state legislative chambers, 69 out of 99 and hold on to more legislative seats than at any point in the history of our nation. Not only is that important for putting in place the right policies of the state level, it also means that were going to have a much deeper bench for future congressional and senate races. Ultimately this was all a direct rejection of the obama agenda, but as you all know, president obama said very clearly and he went out of his way and i think it was also perturbed by the strategy adopted by democrats across the board when he declared continuously that his policies were on the ballot and the voters were in response very clear as well that they want nothing to do with the policies of barack obama and when Hillary Clinton and bill clinton tried to come in for the last 60 days to be the face of the democratic party, that didnt do anything to move the dial either. These were the president s candidates and they were also the clintons candidates and they lost. Remember the clintons were campaigning hard. They couldnt save their candidates even in blue states. I think in arkansas, tom cotton was declared the winner at about 8 01 by the associated press. After wednesdays press conference, im not sure that the president got the message. He was dismissive, he was flip and this isnt the first time the president has told us he would be bipartisan, so its hard to take him at his word wh

© 2025 Vimarsana