One of the big issues is going to be the funding, the fact that there is an additional 3. 2 billion for defense that is not matched. Thehe days are dwindling, house will get to their final passage on friday. What about the senate, what is action . Table for that should be sometime next week. Theyre considering the cr, then trying to get out of town. Action . This is the defense reporter for the washington examiner. She is also on twitter. Thank you for your update. Thank you. In the on cspan, a conversation about the future of the conservative movement, then, the house passed a bill that changes the doddfrank financial bill. Also, we hear from president elect donald trump, who traveled to cincinnati, ohio to think supporters. Supporters. Cspans washington journal live every day with the news and policy issues that impact you. Friday morning, Congressional Mental Health Caucus cochair representative tim murphy will discuss Mental Health legislation and the state of Mental Health care funding. And, Appropriations Committee member Matt Cartwright talks aboutabout the democrats politil agenda under president elect trump, and efforts to increase Party Support among bluecollar workers. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal at 7 00 eastern friday. Join the discussion. Next, a conversation about next, a conversation about the future of the conservative movement. We will hear from the incoming house of the senate committee, congressman mark walker, and bill flores. The American Enterprise institute hosted this event. The moderator is arthur brooks. Is good afternoon everybody. Good afternoon to those joining us live. I am delighted to welcome all of you to the Republican Committee and leadership change over of then. We have are to guess before you today. Representative bill flores and mark walker. We will talk today about the Republican Study Committee and the plan for the future. Please join me in welcoming our guests. [applause] as things generally are these days, we have an audience here at headquarters and a larger audience watching us here, not live, but some i live over the internet. Usot of people are joining by livestream today and we will be opening up for questions and answers. Tiny bit ofo a housekeeping. If youre watching us on livestream and want to join in on the conversation, the way you the browserheir is to go to the website and enter the code events. Also, i wanted to welcome our viewers on cspan. Thank you for joining us. I have been looking for to this event because this is something that we have done a lot of times and it is a relationship we truly cherish. The Republican State Committee has been a force of intellectual ideas, a moral force in the u. S. House of representatives for a long time. And certainly since i have been in washington, d. C. , its done incredibly impressive work. The rnc has 170 members. Its the majority of the majority in the house, and it impacts major policy. It has in the last few congresses and it really promises to do even more in the coming years given the political , whirlwinds we have seen in washington, d. C. They have had a productive and very special relationship. This is the third time we have hosted this conversation between the outgoing and incoming chairman. Let me introduce the outgoing and incoming chairman briefly before we turn to the meat of the event. The current rnc chairman is representative bill flores, who represents the 17th district of texas. Hes on my far left here. If not idealogically, at least geographically. Lets leave it geographically. Mr. Brooks congressman flores was elected to congress in 2010 in the epic year of 2010, which is really the beginning of major changes in Party Politics in, around the country, and was elected as rnc chairman in 2014. Before that, he spent 30 years in the oil and gas business in texas. The incoming rnc chairman for the next congress is representative mark walker from the sixth district of north carolina. Mark and i have gotten to know each other from a series of Communications Seminars we have been doing on the hill, which is a lovely thing for me. I am enjoying it a lot. He was elected to congress recently, in 2014, and has had a rocketlike assent, heading up the rnc in the beginning of his second term. Before he was in politics, he worked as a pastor. Before ministry, he worked in business and finance. Hes done a lot for the pocketbook and soul of a lot of americans and now in politics. Two weeks ago, he was elected by his colleagues to chair the rnc. I want to congratulate you on that. We couldnt be happier. A few things we want to do in todays conversation. I want to start off by asking a few questions of outgoing chair flores and then a few questions for the incoming chairman, and then well open it up to discussion with the rest of you, and finally, well take some live and virtual questions and discussion and finish up by 4 00. So lets start with you. Representative flores, you have been the chairman for the last two years of president obamas presidency. We didnt know where the country was going. We all got a little surprise in the last election, its fair to say. One of the few elections where both people on the left and right were equally surprised by how things turned out. One of the key lessons, some of the Key Takeaways in politics, im not a washington guy. I am from the real washington, seattle, washington. But i have not lived here most of my career. The remarkable thing i find is so many politicians, they interpret victories as permanent and defeats as permanent. This election tells us that those who saw the permanent realignment of american politics in 2008 as permanently to the left are wrong. Were wrong, and those who see this as a Permanent Victory for the Republican Party are probably wrong, too. We should never treat any political victories or defeats as permanent. Lets talk about what you have seen over the last few years. Whats your assessment looking back over the past two years of what you have done and how youre thinking about it . How do you sum it up . Mr. Flores let me say this. I think if you look at the macro environment we started with, we started the 114th congress with some headwinds in front of us. First of all, if you remember, the president s first state of the union after he got reelected was he was going to bypass congress. He said the statement, i have a pen and a phone. So that set the theme for the last four years of his presidency. And he followed through with that threat. So he largely viewed the constitution as irrelevant, and congress as an inconvenience. Thats the way he behaved in the last 4 years. We had to deal with that. That ultimately worked to our benefit because the American People rejected that style of leadership. With that said, thats the environment we were living with, with the rnc. We did have a majority in the house, a majority in the senate. The Senate Majority you couldnt tell if we were in the majority of not because it was hard to tell who was controlling the agenda over there. So the rnc had to maintain a clear, thoughtful, conservative course moving forward, and i think we did a pretty good job of that in the 114th congress. We set two of the most aspirational, transformational rnc budgets we ever passed and created a framework of task forces to be able to provide the conservative substance for what became the speakers a better way agenda. When speaker ryan became speaker, and he talked about setting a new path for the country, we decided, look, were the conservative majority in the house. Lets set that. Lets take ownership of that. We created six task forces and dealt with National Security, fiscal responsibility, economic empowerment, particularly those who serve as the permanent underclass, folks of poverty in this country, better ways to deal with that, with tax reform, health care reform, with restoring our limited constitutional form of government. And we took all those on. And we created a series of white papers for the speaker to use or for the house task forces to use. And they ultimately formed 70 , 80 of whats in a better way. If you take that one step further to the president ial race, Donald Trumps make America Great again, it really has most of this embedded in it. He articulated it in a manner that is a lot different than i would do it, definitely different than mike pence did, but he was saying essentially the same things in terms of lets get america back on the right set of rails. I feel it the rnc played a part in the transformation of government that weve had over the last few weeks. Now, history will determine whether that is the case or not. I just read a headline before i headed over today, saying the Democratic Party is dead. I think most of us in this room would like to say that is true. But if it is going to be dead, it is not up to us to keep it that way. Direction, the wrong and we have seen that in the past you saw republicans stray in the you saw republicans 1970s, stray away from their Core Principles during the bush 43 presidency. If we stray away, then that will provide the Democratic Party to come back. We have to stay thoughtful to the core values we espoused in the last election that gave us a unified government. I feel confident under marks leadership were going to do that. We set the framework and mark is exactly the right person to lead us forward. Mr. Brooks what would you say are the biggest headwinds you faced over the past two years . Well, first of all you had a senate how do i say this carefully . [laughter] mr. Flores lets just put it this way. Mr. Brooks were not on tv, or anything. Mr. Flores let me say this. The American People make decisions in the elections and they really do not care what the rules are a peer, they do not care about this inside washington stuff. When they say drain the swamp, they mean drain the swamp. They dont care if theres a 60vote threshold in the senate or not. They want to get things done. The biggest impediment we had over the last couple years, we had an out of control executive branch, and when you actually dig into the constitution, we have a limited set of remedies to deal with that. If you dont have a senate thats willing to go ahead and use the majority in an effective manner to help you out with that. So if you want to change the behavior of the executive branch, change the way you allocate dollars. But that means you have to pass an appropriations bill, and the senate only passed one or two appropriations bills. If you want to change the direction of the executive branch, then youve got to work youve got to find a way to pass legislation that puts the president on notice that hes going to wrong direction. We had difficulty doing that. We were frenetic in the house. You saw how productive we were in the house, but we couldnt really get that all the way through the article i branch, and that was what was frustrating to many of us as conservatives in this country. Mr. Brooks i can imagine a situation in which that is not entirely ameliorating, the tension going forward, particularly when theres a president , and who knows what the tension is going to be between conservatives and the white house itself. It is going to be a big adventure. That leads me to my next question, is what advice have you been getting that you can tell us here in public to mark . Mr. Flores first of all, i dont think i need to give very much advice to mark because mark is just wired right already. I hate to use that terminology, but i havent told him that, but hes going to get the big head on this either. But you know, mark at his core is fundamentally conservative and hes a great leader. I think hes got all the tools in place. I guess the advice i would give to mark is the advice i would give to any conservative. That is remember, if were , fighting each other, were not fighting the enemies of the hard working americans in the country who are suffering. We always need, when you decide that my conservative bill is better than your conservative bill instead of working together to figure out how to make it a common conservative bill or a common , conservative thing, then that energy youre spending on doing that takes away from being able to achieve the objective. Of getting a thoughtful, conservative solution across the finish line and on the president s desk and in the law so you can improve the lives of hardworking American Families. Thats the advice i give him. Make sure were very careful to not let our rnc conservatives fight among each other. Make sure they have always got the north star out there to go out and try to touch all the time. Mr. Brooks factionization can be a problem, usually is a problem, and what can we do about that . Im going to turn it over to mark walker here for a second. A couple things you dont know about mark that i just learned myself. Hes a trumpet player, which i respect as a french horn player. It is important that we all be brass players, i believe. Also, is this right that you have an elvis impression that is well known on the hill . Mr. Walker i cannot confirm or deny this point. Mr. Brooks lets see if well try to do this one next time when youre the outgoing chairman, ill get you liquored up and see what we can do with that. What do you see right now . You have been around, a member of rnc and you know your way around the hill plenty well at this point. What are your Top Priorities for the Republican Study Committee as the next chairman . Mr. Walker its interesting how those have grown exponentially in the last 30 days. As a body, we have moved from trying to work hard to throw legislation against the wall and hope that it sticks as opposed to say listen, we have a chance to push forward policy and really laws that impact many generations. A couple of those things that come to my mind is tax reform. How many decades have we been talking about tax reform . This administration has added another 8,000 pages of tax code regulations. Were closing in on 75,000 pages now. Small businesses that get into the crosshairs of the irs do not have a chance. To lay that out, we have ideas and keep higher education, charitable giving, but also something thats part of the american dream, Mortgage Interest Rate reduction. I think thats something thats a huge win that the American People have been clamoring for some time. Obviously, without getting too much into a talking the repeal of obamacare. Point,and budget reconciliation. This is an opportunity to sink our teeth into it quickly and early on. The reason why i think its so important of what we do with the repeal, i we want to make sure i know there are arguments we have a standard here. We have a chance to really go out of after the heart of obamacare, even under reconciliation, a 51majority threshold. I think those priorities are something we need to partner. Hopefully partner with the whole conference to get done early on in the spring. Mr. Brooks terrific. It sounds like youre going to be pretty busy. Do you think you can, in doing that, in fighting against factionalization, you can grow the size of the rsc and bring in a lot of people, factionalization ordinarily occurs when the other side is in the white house and you might be able to bring people together on more of a common theme. Do you think growing rsc is the way to do it . Mr. Walker i think it is a byproduct of it. It is not my first, instinctive goal. I think that if we do our job, whether it is business, politics, ministry, you do your job and it fluctuates by itself as opposed to our artificially trying to get people in. Sorry to jump in on this. The rsc is not effective because of its size. Its effective because of the members that it has. And the ideas that they put forth, and how theyre willing to advocate for those ideas. Not only at home among their constituents but here among their colleagues. Here among the outside groups on the media and so forth. So the rsc, today its at 178 members. I am not sure if that is really the right size. Maybe a smaller rsc would be possibly more effective. Mr. Brooks we recommend price rationing here at aei. I guess what i am trying to say is that the size of rsc is not the important issue here. I think mark hit it on the head. If we develop the right policies, the right strategies, then well have the right people as members get the right thing done. Mr. Brooks terrific. Now, rsc has traditionally been known as the conservative thinking coalition on the republican side of the house. But not very Many Americans a lot of people in this room are pretty sophisticated in this house factions that exist in the house, factions not in a bad way but the fact there are different brands of the Republican Party on the house side. Do the score card for the viewers at home at this point. They hear about the Republican Study Committee, republicans who are in leadership, and then the Freedom Caucus, just sort of talk us through the different brands of republicanism these days on the house side. You want to start, mark . Mr. Walker what we are focused on is effective conservativism. Rsc. Theres no reason we cant attract leadership, tuesday group members, as well as the house caucus. We have a bleed over from several of the groups even though were the largest and historically conservative caucus. I have challenged however long were privileged to serve here, whether it is 10 or 20 years can , you look back and say, was it simply about winning the argument or was it about making a difference . Are there measured marks of success where you have moved the needle forward . I think that consists of three things. One, the right policy. Two, the right approach, and three, the right voice. What i mean by the right voice. If you go back in business, in marketing some of you may have worked in that arena, a product can sometimes reach what they call a maturity stage. People are walking past it on the shelf at the grocery