And it was the kennedy brothers, all of them were having spaghetti, getting involved in that excitement, this whole race, got a whole state involved, really did. It was the turning point and not just for them but for us. The state director of the administration under the kennedy administration, my dad, our car, john kennedy road, we were proud of that, 1958 convertible chevrolet, i remember it very big and powerful. John kennedy wrote in fact, my dad told us all about taking him around and uncle jimmy would travel with him all the time, the president , at that time senator kennedy, share stories with us. I will involve once removed in the heart of it because i knew when they chased one here is a rather, what they did, how the person was such a regular person. Coming from a complete different culture if you will. Host the 50th anniversary of his assassination, do you remember that morning . Guest it was afternoon, i had come off of lunch, we were going into english class. I was a junior in high school. Just got my drivers license in august, so just walked into a class and my teacher walked in, i will never forget it, mr. Matthews was one of our coaches on the Football Team and he said the president has been shot. My first reaction was come on, quit kidding. He said i am not kidding, it is serious. The president has just been assassinated and you all need to go home. Immediately we all be lined home. My grandfather, never saw him work for anything. My grandfather was there. My father, uncle jimmy, working for the kennedys, everybody was there. And just out of the clear my grandfather said we have to go to washington. You know me, i volunteered to drive. Popov had a big old 58 cadillac and we all piled in. My uncle jimmy, poppa and my cousins in his car, we drove to washington, my sister was living in arlington so we got here and my grandfather says i have to go to the castle. He stands in line all night long to pay homage to the president. The will kids, if you ever see pictures on pennsylvania avenue you will see kids hanging in the trees, it was probably a us. I remember when black jack, john john and all of them came by the casket, so many. When i visited my sister i would go to the grave and say a little prayer. It was easy to walk to the cemetery and the president s grave was right there in the eternal flame was there and i said a little prayer, blessed myself and went on and one day i am going there and security was everywhere. I thought something had happened. It became more than my crowd, everybody walking on the face of it. And to these visits it happened a few years after the assassination. Host did we change as the country after his assassination . Guest in my eyes we did, as the 16yearold junior in high school i didnt feel as safe as i had before. I grew up in the most peaceful time the country has probably ever seen, after world war ii. So after that up until vietnam, the korean war escape, i was too young to realize what was going on, but very easy, good time in america and all of a sudden, it was shattered. We had that and in a few years we had Martin Luther king and the country was really it really wasnt as cohesive, lets put it that way. It was a different place out there. Host you mention your parents and the businesses that they ran. By parents, my father, my grandparents came from italy and immigrated in 1900. My father, the name was man seen up. My mother was from czechoslovakia. Her parents, they were both born secondgeneration. They were born here. Both parents migrated to america. Both live in the coal fields six miles apart. Both of them had Little Grocery stores. Bose grandparents. Poppa and joe. My father when he got out of the service in 46 started a little Furniture Store besides the pros restore and so we grew up in the retail business. Retail politics is simply knowing who your customer is and making sure they are satisfied. Give them a product with good value and great service. You live and die by the satisfaction of your customer. I took the same approach to government when i went into. I had been in business off and on, i learned this. They are the ones, my mother and father and grandparents and my aunts and uncles, the thing people dont know is we live in an area that we have tracks on one, the Railroad Tracks where the cold came out of the coal mines and the creek, buffalo creek. All of us little kids living in between that when the train, my grandmother went insane thinking something was going to happen so we had to guard the tracks, we jumped the train and road the train to town. She had never known that, drove her crazy. The train provided the lead for the flyers, sinkers for our fishing line and everything, the cold but fell off of the towel, people heeded their house so that is what we lived with. My grandmother was the one woman social program. If anybody needed a place to stay a came to her. She made us conscious of our social responsibility by white washing the basement, keeping it clean, she had a shower and bath room, didnt have much but she shared and we have all the different people who would ride the rails and the 50s. A lot of people were still riding a rails if you know what i mean and we had names for everybody, peg leg peg and willie. Host what was your name . Guest we had nicknames for everybody. She would give them 3 rules and they have to be sober and you had to stay sober, many little kids here. I will feed you, take care of you but you cant swear, you cant drink and you have got to work. Set a good example. I thought people had nothing but they live by rules, you had to do something. Poppa said no work know each. I understood that very well. When i see people go down and out, do something, but some people need a little bit of help. I saw young girls got pregnant out of wedlock and left her house because their parents threw her out. I came home after school and i would see her having lunch with the mother who sent her daughter out and the daughter was living with her and she had them back together, went back home and had a little baby, most productive kid in the world. I have seen it all. I am who i am because of where i am from and the Environmental Law Group in. Host you ran for governor, lost in the primary. Talk about customer service. What did you learn . I dont think i did a good enough job explaining who i was and what the state could be and how we were going to change the state and i come from business and would be for labor and i grew up in a labor town when everyone worked in the minds but didnt project it properly. When it was over i knew one thing. I never lost a race before that so my son was studying with me. I will never forget, we won a lot, honored to be serving people and they have a lot of confidence. It is not going to go well. We are not going to win this. Is easy to win. Now you have to show a little class. I watch people walk out and want to blame everybody. Theres only one persons name on the ballot and that is yours and if you cant take blame for whatever went wrong and i never blamed a soul for not voting for me. I blame me for not selling the ideas i had for the state. All lost that election and after that i did all i could. Now i will go back and get back in business and enjoy my private life, my wife and three children and grandchildren, with all that, i was enjoying that and i got pulled back in and how i got pulled back in was some of the people who worked against me defeated me in 96, we think we made a mistake. We would like to work with you and i said fine. I want to work with you too and i will make more mistakes than you. Host let me ask about your uncle who was killed in 1968 in a mining accident. As governor you had two significant accidents at upper branch, what did you take away from your personal experience . Guest in january, three weeks later we had two miners, basically the same scenario. Two a big branch where we lost so many wonderful miners. Only thing i knew, i said this before, no one gives you an annual when you become governor. You rely on everything you ever experience you ever had, everything you learned and you rely on it. You dug deep into your words so the thing i knew, i remember a flashback to 1968 i was 21 years of age, uncle john, my mothers younger brother, very close to us. He borrowed my gun to go hunting before he got killed in the mines and he slipped and fell, a 12 gauge shotgun. He put some scratches on, uncle john felt so bad, i will get that fixed, dont worry about it. Have the same gun with the same scratches. Everyone sat at the store waiting for news, news didnt come. Sometimes they sat for a day and never heard a thing. To me that is really what is hurtful and cruel and always thought if i was ever in a position to give relief to people there are ways to do it and information was one. It might not be a lot of new things to tell you but i will tell you something every couple hours. We are doing everything we can and anything you heard, any questions you ask i will find out because i am at the command center, i can find out and i want you to have the effect. I wont talk to the present july talk to the families so i learned that basically from watching my mother and my aunt and the agony they went through not knowing anything and they heard the mine was going to be sealed, entombing of my uncle and all that because it was so dangerous. I learned from that and figured there was a way and i knew one thing. Families depend on that paycheck and if i could do anything as governor i will sit down with the people who are the owners of the mines and say i will ask you to do one thing, make sure they never miss a paycheck, make sure they dont miss the paycheck. If you want to compound the problems we have now this family cant take care of itself through this most difficult time until we get this straightened out. You have to continue a paycheck as if nothing happened. I knew that. That was part of our way of life. They need that. They have to take care of the families themselves. Some of those things came back because of my experiences living in the coal fields, you could have never learned that. No one could have taught it to you unless you lived it. Host is it safer today to be a minor . Guest absolutely and we are getting safer. If you cant find it safe dont mind. But you have to empower the minors. You dont have enough never have enough inspectors, you can have all the laws and rules in the world but if you dont have a company, if you dont have, i will use the word consult, they are very big in my area, has taken the approach, if one person sees an unsafe situation they cant pull the plug and shut the mine down. Other situations where person tried to stop a shift or shut mine down they would be fired or threatened of losing their job. That is what we had to change. That has to be changed and i think it has. Miners, kept them protected. I want them to let me know about unsafe conditions, they are afraid of their job, we had to change that whole attitude and i think we have and we are doing things to make it safer but the bottom line is we have some of the best miners in the world. We really do. The salt of the earth, as patriotic as our veterans and i say that with all respect for our veterans because most of our miners are veterans. They look at mining as what theyre doing for this country and the energy they provide for this country. If it wasnt for the mines and the miners you wouldnt have the economy, we would not have the country we have today. We wouldnt be the greatest economy in the world. They were able to give us affordable dependable Reliable Energy and the thing i have a hard time in washington is making people understand coal is still part of a mix. Is the largest part of the energy mix. Work with me, not against the. Dont make it more difficult. Help me find the technology that we can continue to clean up the environment. We have done more in the last two decades than ever in history as we can even do more. We would like to think we have a partner and right now in west region u we think we are working, the government is working against us and i think they are too. I am trying to keep every door open to work with them but i wont sit back and they not know what we do and how hard we do it and how much we provide for this country and the poll that makes the best cooking the world from West Virginia. We have the heavy lifting and we dont mind that. We are good workers. We will do the heavy lifting but we would like someone to recognize and appreciate this. Host you have been in washington a couple years. Is the senate what you expected . Is washington what you thought was going to be . Guest absolutely not. I guess i looked at it through the eyes of what i saw of robert byrd and his reference for this Great Institution and i would have thought when the chips were down it was always Country First, state second, politics third. I would have always thought that. What i do see is 100 good people in the senate, i really do, there is nobody i dont like. I like everybody and try to get along with everybody. But i do see, i would question some motives and reasons, the purpose of your service. I go back to john kennedy and keep thinking i watched the speech on television, 13 years old, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. It is our country, we own it. The constitution says we the people. You have to take ownership, take care of it, like owning a car, change the oil, routine maintenance, it seems we have a country where people are saying ask not what your country did you but what you can do to it. That is a long way in 50 years. I want to get back. We are still the greatest country on earth. All the problems we have we can fix, economically, we can fix all of this. But we have to put our Country First began. It is about this great country. This country does well. Might be blood going to do well and i am here, how i can serve retail government, how do i serve my customers, constituents and everybody in the great state of West Virginia. Host what is next for you . Guest what i would like to get done is get finances in order. My grandfather, one time, 11 years old, i said i just saw charlie, what a beautiful person, a great guy. Probably the nicest person you ever met. He would give you the shirt off his back. I said he would. Charlie doesnt have an extra church to give you. Didnt plan well in of. To any livingyearold kid talking about bursting your bubble. He said i will tell you one thing. If youre inclined to help keep yourself strong, not just mentally or physically but financially. Talk is cheap. You want to help somebody, give them something so can i have 5 . No problem. No problem. Heres a shovel, take care of it. I will be right back. Dont worry, 50 , pick me up. He had it down so i am thinking financially i take the oath of office and standing on the Capitol Steps in a cold january of 2005 and my grandfather is in front of me. Keep yourself strong financially. I knew my state was, i knew we could be. I put all my efforts, had a big mandate, i use every bit of capital, two things you dont waste in politics, you dont waste a mandate and you dont waste a crisis. Make something good out of it. I had a great mandate and i was determined to fix the finances of our state and we did do that. I with my Administration Working hard with a great support of legislator, friends of mine, we work hard and turned to finances, went through to the recession better than most any state in the nation. One of the top three state in the nation, never cut back education or laid teachers off or cut back on any programs for children or seniors, expanded programs for people in need because we were financially strong. 9 come here, my number one goal, fix the finances, fix the finances, raising debts dont fix thats. Sooner or later someone has got to fix the debt. That is what i hope to achieve. I am working very hard across the aisle, talking to everybody, is there a way we can move forward and fix the debt . I became really engrossed in the bowlessimpson approach. It was the only thing i saw that was bipartisan. One of the first things i saw, state bipartisan and grew bipartisan and we couldnt get a vote. We were short of that committee. There were 18 people on it, they needed 14 and got 11 votes. Five republicans and six democrats, when was the last time on the financial direction. That is what drives me. Host your wife is here in West Virginia. What is your schedule . Guest she is president of the state board of education. She is their most of the time, gets up a week or month but she is back home and i try to go home on weekends. We will meet there and go back to charleston where our home is, my son is there and i have two daughters in pennsylvania and hourandahalf so we try as the family to get together but it is difficult. I never thought i would be this home sick. Host would your kids think of your dads provision . Guest we have a lot of conversations, they enjoy it. Host debate a lot . Guest we talk a lot. The girls are very strong, very opinionated. And all successful as business, career people, they do well and my son too. We have good conversations on social issues and it is quite a dinner party. Host is there another office you would like to hold . Guest i havent thought of that. I keep thinking i have so much work to do to figured this out. I felt good and very comfortable being governor. I was ready and prepared. I thought i was ready and prepared here. I watch senator bird, so much i need to learn and how do you get through this toxic atmosphere and how to get people to realize we are here for a purpose, that is for our country and our state, not ourselves or our political parties. I am a proud West Virginia democrat, a proud american, extremely proud, with all that being said, put it in proper context and hopefully i can convince my colleagues to do the same and figure this out. Host senator joe manchin, thank you. Now congresswoman this is the 85 minutes. Cathy mcmorris rogers. Host Cathy Mcmorris rogers, republican from Washington State, you are part of the republican leadership, do you have a voice with john boehner and leader kantor and others . Guest yes. I think it is an important voice we bring to the leadership table and sitting down with the speaker, majority leader erich kantor, kevin mccarthy, as we are strategizing what is happening on any given day and what we face a few months down the road. On the second woman to hold this position for the republicans, Deborah Pryce was conference chair earlier, and i am proud that we have four women now that are around the leadership table for the republicans and it is a different perspective, different priorities at times being a woman brings to the tab