I only said there are certain things he believed do. First, if youre running out of money, people would rob the agencies and accounts so it is not noticeable to the average public. When that runs out they will make cuts within government. They will cut back in late people off. And the last thing they want to do is raise taxes because then somebody has messed up. That is what they believe. So basically what you have to do is look at the wholistic approach. And then you say well, this we can afford in this we cannot. Everybody is afraid to talk about taxes. You look now and we cannot even agree on the definition of revenue. That is hard to believe. You would think we cut the taxes, right . If we got rid of the junk in the box all the give away and the problems that ever lobbiest has been able to get it tax provision put in for the special Interest Groups here it with all that being said, that is a tremendous drawl on the revenue. No one ever says how much is that cost . When you introduce them, how does that cost . There is no question ive been a big simpson supporter. I thought the president missed a golden opportunity to make a bipartisan effort and tweak it the way he wanted to. Basically, we had a threepronged approach that we fix this. You think your revenue and you take care of everything. In your household and your is this, if you get your revenue under control you are in great shape. When you are dont when you dont, you are behind the eight ball and my grandfather used to say that indebtedness tax expenditures have the same budgetary affect as spending increases. We know about the charitable deductions, Corporate Tax elections, we dont always appreciate the cost of the tax expenditures. We can start the process of overhauling the process and not harm businesses were our own constituents. I will introduce legislation to allow congress and the omb to include tax expenditures and budget materials. The same way that discretion three spending and mandatory spending our line items in the proposals and reviews today. They will have to take them the same we do as appropriations. I was want to know the actions we took were working and if we needed to amend or improve them. In washington it feels like everything every time we do something it is something that needed to be done. We never acknowledge we made a mistake. It didnt work. If that is the case, why do they need us to come back . We fixed everything if we are that good. What if we didnt the reason i , think our Founding Fathers had us coming back is to make justice. I made a mistake. It didnt work out. The information i got was wrong. We will fix this. That is what i am trying to say. In washington, it is no different than back home in West Virginia. I have always told people if i got something wrong, i made a mistake and i can fix it. It didnt work out that way. So lets go back and correct it. One way to address this is to reform the regulatory system. I am introduce legislation to reestablish the office of technology assessment. Up until 1995, this office provided non partisan information to congress on cost benefit analysis on regulations and regulatory changes. Currently the only source for this information is the White House Office of information and regulatory affairs. It should not come from the White House Office for us to make decisions in congress. Congress needs their own system for retrospective review with existing ways to identify various regulations and terms. There are common sense bills out there to help identify ways for the government to work more efficiently. Last congress i introduced the duplication elimination act to make it easier for congress to eliminate duplication and overlap. The bill would require the president to submit a proposal, and send a joint resolution to congress each year on how to carry out recommendations outlined in the Government Accountability office. Some years ago it be 300 300 400 billion in cuts. Within 90 days of the goas report the president must provide congress with a draft proposal and report explaining which are excluded and why they are not included. Why did you pick some, but not take the recommendation to consolidate. And give us your reasoning for doing that. Make it transparent so we understand. We think that would work well. Both chambers of Congress Must vote proposals in ten days. And any dollars achieved must be used for deficit reduction. We we are not making an attempt and no one is worried about an 18 trillion deficit. This is a winwin deal. It gets rid of government waste and holds the government accountable for unnecessarily and unacceptable redundancy. We are starting to see a glimmer of hope and that is one reason i decided to stay in the senate. If it was about personal politics and not public politics i would be out of here. Public service is truly what it refers to. It is public. I looked at it from the standpoint that i have dont have the same feeling i have one governor to come here. I feel like i probably Something Back home. I left the state in better shape than i received it. I dont feel like i have a congress enough here. I see changes the dont feel good enough about doing something. I feel there is more to be done. I feel like i can make a difference and we can make your more of a difference. We are debating legislation and working on a minute and i feel there is more work to do. I know the Campaign Season is ramping up and we are likely to see negative ads all over. Im hopeful that some of my colleagues will join me in the pledge ive taken. I would love to see everyone sign. I took a pledge that said why doesnt this place work . And i said let me give you the scenario. Human nature is this. It is hard to say no to your friends. It is truly hard. With that we have no relationship and not many friendships. And i will work with you. I said on top of that, every day i come to work they expect me to make phone calls and raise money so that can be spent against our colleagues. I am a democrat and they expect me to go on the trail and campaign against a republican. They expect all of my republican colleagues and friends to do the same. How in the world on monday can you come to me and say lets sit down and work on this. I have a good idea. I know last week you spent money on ads against me and went to my home state and told people they should not vote for you. What makes you think i will sit down with you and work it out. I it does not make sense. It took a place i will not raise a dollar or campaign against any colleagues. I think of mexico horrible atmosphere and a horrible situation that we live in up there. If you want to know why we are so this optional and dont get along is because everybody is afraid to talk. Guilt by conversation here at they are afraid to talk and tell them what theyre working on is a could be used against them. They can see whatever they talk about coming up and add against them. We cannot campaign. Hes to be an unwritten pledge. I heard that nobody campaigned against each other before but that is not the case anymore. That is what am trying to do. There is not one colleague of mine, even the ones they disagree with, who i cannot work with and not one colleague can look at me and say joe manchin tried to take my job would. Not one here it i was told them im the bellwether person there. They bring it to me and i tell them let me talk to several my colleagues in see of it is something they can agree on. We try to find a commonality. And the governors caucus is one we work closely with. I dont believe this place is working. Senator byrd told me it did but im not going to stop fighting. I think it is well worth the fight we have in it to make this place work. We have a lot of other challenges greater than this for our country. We overcome the mall. I think we can overcome this, too. I appreciate it and i think were vanessa questions now. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible] kamarck senator manchin and senator bird were on my mind. We you have so much weve been talking to senator manchins staff for some months now about the interesting and valuable perspective that former governors bring to the United States senate. One of our ad brookings advisers here is former governor point of which from ohio. He was thrilled to hear you are doing this. He was the former ayre, governor , and senator and money left the senate we lost the champion for sensible government reform in the senate. I am proud to see senator manchin stepping into that role today. In the former governors. I am very impressed with the reform agenda he is outlined here. From process agendas like returning to bipartisan lunches in the governors caucus itself to substantive reform like including tactics miniatures in the budget process here it something we have talked about in the think tank world for a long time. It needs to be something people are grappling with lyrically to the return of the Office Technology assistance assessment. One of the future really valuable small, i think the whole thing had 90 people in it or something. Small pieces of government that was well worth its weight and somehow has gotten shocked. Chopped. I would like to open senator by asking you a sort of general question. Why is it so hard to get the United StatesCongress Interested in these commonsense nonpartisan reform issues. Manchin well, as i said in the speech, they are not sexy or something that make you want to go out and vote or write a check and help somebody. Right now they are chasing to end the vote. There is a never ending cycle. Everyone is in cycle. It is a six year cycle in the senate, to your cycle for the house, for your cycle for the president. Everyone seems to be in an election cycle. If you notice when people say outrageous things and people of responsibility you would think that doesnt make any sense at and why would you say that. The country is so divided with the 24 72 cycle that we are on overload. People do not know what to believe. Were is paranoia is just running rampant. Last thing i heard about a special forces are going to take over texas. I couldnt believe when i heard that. They said we got to have a National Guard in texas watching united date Government Special forces come in and do training. Theyve been doing it for quite some time. I just kind of nonchalantly said if you are that worried in texas about the federal government and special forces we will take them all in West Virginia because we still trust them. This is what it is gotten to it has gotten too. How do you get out of that . I dont know. I dont think Citizens United did us any favors for our country. We might talk about a wealthy individual having his own primary, and they are locating to this individual to see where his moneys going to go. Thats not how we do it back home in West Virginia, but we dont have anybody that wealthy to go after. If we did, it wouldnt be the right in. We still have limits of 1000. 1000 is the maximum you can give any candidate, and i think it works pretty well. Kamarck lets go to tax reform for a minute. The whole notion of tax expenditures many of you in this room im sure know that over the last several decades as the discretionary part of the budget has shrunk, we have legislated the tax expenditures of the f tax expenses, and tax its ministers have gone way up. Tax expenditures are also very seductive to politicians. Do you think we can break that habit . A sort of snuck in there they snuck up almost with no one knowing what is happening. Senator manchin there were people who knew what was happening, just not the general public. When i said we cannot even agree on the definition of revenue let me tell you what i mean by that. As an individual you do a budget. Know how much money is coming in, and how much you spend. You know your fixed costs your variables, and what you had to play with, and you try to stay within that balance. We do the same here. Erskine bowles 1997, basically was the author, working with the Republican Congress at that time under president clinton, and put a budget together and a tax reform that basically put us on the path, i think, of solvency. If we would have stayed under the clinton tax rates, we would have been totally debtfree as a nation by 2012. By 2012. We had teen of tax cuts that came. Two wars unfunded. It started crumbling from there. I told democrats if they want to blame her publicans, go right ahead. They are at fault. I tell republicans if they want to blame democrats, go ahead. We are all at all. If you cannot agree on revenue that means when you get a tax code this is where all siphon simpson took a threepronged approach you have to look at everything. Everybody has to take a little bit of a haircut to get this thing back in place, but no one is willing to sacrifice a vote for that or a bad ad on tv against you, and i think what we got to do is get a bunch of senators who are thinking about retiring who could care less about getting reelected and say they will sacrifice themselves and be the ones to fix this thing for the next generation. Weve done tax reform about every 17 years. We have not done major tax reform since 1986. I tell my republican friends who have taken the note new tax pledge i say i understand its going to be hard. How are we going to pay down 18 trillion if we dont have revenue . If i reduce the tax corporate got to get rid of a lot of the junk, a love the credits, and a lot of the offsets, and a lot of goodies written over the years. These go away. At the end of the day, we spin off 1 trillion. Dynamic growth is going to happen. When you have confidence theres a fair system. When you know the system is fair and you know you know youre treated fair, the sky is the limit. With that being said, how did you spend the trillion . I talked to my republican friends i tell them why dont you take this position we have a Global Competitive rate in personal and corporations, ok . Cannot had money, cannot go offshore. We have to pay here. We do that, and now we have money coming in. Given that we reduce the rate. A few friends will say the rate was 39. 6 , but i have a lot of offsets, so theyre paying now more now at 33 them before. That might be true. 60 since of every new dollar that came and went to debt reduction. That would continue until we get to 65 of debt to gdp, which is manageable. Its what all economists tell you is manageable. The other . 40 goes to infrastructure bank, only can be used for infrastructure of the united gates of america. Nowhere else. Thats it. Rebuild america. You have cash flow into the bank. Its an 80 20 match coming off of that and . 60 off of every dollar goes to debt reduction. Republicans have held democrats feet to the fire you cannot expand entitlement programs, and we were able to his democrats put a fair system then and dedicate towards getting rid of our debt. And you can have a balanced budget in 10, 15 years. When you talk about retiring senators, it reminds me of the famous movie of a blink and that was just out of Abraham Lincoln where he was counting of votes to pass the 13th amendment, and the first thing he did was found everyone who was getting ready to retire. Senator manchin i want to encourage that. Kamarck thats right. We have a great audience here. A couple of questions before the senator leaves. They who you are, please. I with policy at his website inside sources. They are to glasgow came to washington and outlined a different policy agenda than the one you just outlined mayor deblasio. Why are he and senators like Elizabeth Warren wrong to advocate a more progressive or liberal agenda . What do you think is the future of the Democratic Party if it goes down that path . Senator manchin they are not wrong. The interest loophole is the biggest one we have. It should be that way. We agree on that. Minimal wage im for raising minimum wage. I think it should be indexed. I think a lot of things should be indexed once we get them back to where they should be. Minimum wage from that standpoint is not going to raise the middle class. We will not be able to. We are ready to pass on the largest trade deal one of the largest trade deals in the history of this country. If we do that without looking at what we are doing and understanding what has happened hindsight is 20 20. Go back to 1992. My little state of West Virginia lost 31,000 jobs since nafta. Its hard for me to go home and say, guess what . This is going to be different. Where a lot of our jobs were lost was in the inner cities. We had a lot of things going on. We lost all that. Its become rampant with crime and unemployment. How are we better off . The other thing is that you have not heard anyone on the campaign trail talking about it. Theres not one of us in this room that is not know someone who has not had a Prescription Drug problem. It is rampant. We cannot find people who are clean enough to work. Our education is not pushing them to get skill sets where they can pete where they can compete. Im fine. I can look at a progressive. I can look at a very conservative, but somewhere in between, youve got to you know, i said this im not right on every issue, but im not wrong on every issue. Ive got something to contribute. When mayor deblasio came, god bless them. We want to hear all your ideas. Elizabeth warren is a good friend of mine. We teamed up on a lot of amendments together and trying to put some balance to this thing, but on the other hand, you cannot chastise everybody that is out there investing, out there trying to get a return on investment, out there willing to take a risk. We just got to make sure that we can continue for this system of ours this unbelievable system of ours. The economy we have is 18 trillion. Doses want to it is china 10 trillion. Everything all the everything falls off from there. It tells you we are the big people. We are the superpower. We have a super power. But we should protect some of the jobs we have here and grow some jobs. Thats the problem. This a lot of things i will agree and a lot of things where i might disagree, but i always try to find the balance because i have been able to talk to the people from the far left and our right and tell them that it sounds good but if it does not make sense, i cannot sell it back home. Kamarck right here, yes. Thats ok. Well get ready. John hey, how are you . Im just hereby myself. I was just wondering