And by the way, youll get a pretty good b. S. Monitor as you watch this more and more, who really means what they say. The key is does the person who is running for office saying what theyre going to do, if they get elected, do they actually do it . Thats really what matters. Is it just fluff . Is it just bluster, or are they actually pushing the cause, fighting for the idea . And the last point i would say is get beyond emotion. Dont base your decisions on emotions or make your arguments based on emotion. Go deeper than that. Go to reason. Rita quinas here at georgetown, base your decisions based on reason, logic, principle, and find out if a person actually has that. If theyre taking their decisions and filtering through a set of principles that offer solutions so that theyre going in a consistent direction, so theyre not pandering or being simply a populist or simply running in circles. That, to me, is what i found is helpful when youre trying to judge whether or not a person has earned your support. Lifter 6789 all right, lets go to the students. Our first question from up here on the riser. As to all students, when you begin, please begin by telling us your name, your school, your class year, your major, where youre from. Can you keep all that straight . [laughter] youre georgetown students, you can do that. And our first one will come from the riser, a question from megan. Megan . Hi, im a second Year Graduate student in the mccourt school. Im originally from south jersey outside of philadelphia. Hi thank you so much for joining us today. Yeah. Secretary clinton and senator sanders have spent a lot of time on the campaign trail discussing student debt and College Affordability which is undoubtedly a pressing issue for many here today and you mentioned in your speech. Both of them seem to have specific proposals on how to prevent this problem from perpetuating yeah. But im not sure weve heard the same level of detail and commitment from republicans. So what are republicans going to do to seriously and in a timely manner address this problem . First, id be leery of empty promises that arent paid for. [laughter] [applause] just saying. [laughter] i havent made any promises. [laughter] honestly, look at inflation in tuition. No offense, georgetown, but [laughter] look at inflation. Its like this in health care too. What we have is a Third Party Payment system where were insulating the consumer from the price. And by the way, were just racking you up with debt. Is so how do we get at this problem . Richard vetters done some really good studies of this at ohio state university. When the government pumps money into the system, the college ends up cranking up the price and sticking you with the debt. Number one, we need more transparency. Am i getting value for my education . Do people who get this education at this institution actually get the jobs and the careers in their field . Whats the success rate of that . What do i earn after getting this . And lets have a real competition based on choice, on quality, on price and outcome. We need to do this in health care too. And those kinds of metrics we do not now have in higher education. The second point id make is we should not have nationalized the student loan industry in 2010. It has been nationalized, and now were on the hook as taxpayers for about a trillion dollars of debt. Default rates are through the roof. Look, after college i worked three jobs. I waited table, i was a fitness trainer on the weekends so i could get a little extra cash and get a free membership. They would adjust it for me to work with me to i could meet my loans. They were able to work it out with me. We have the d. Of education giving you the onesizefitsall, cookie cutter, you know, loan, and the default rates are through the roof, and taxpayers are on the hook. So get more competition in every sense of the world. More competition in student lending, more Competition Among colleges so we know theyre books, are we getting value for how tuition credit dollars, and lets break up the cartel so you can take credits from other places and apply it. Can i bring some credits from high school with a. C. T. S, can i bring a twoyear degree in, are there online alternatives, can i put together a competitive form of getting a College Tuition that isnt as costly. Look, this is i lo this college. Love this college. Its a great school. Youve had some awesome basketball teams [laughter] and its top, world class, but not everybody can afford a place like this. So how do we get this kind of an education within reach of people who have no chance of affording it . That means more competition, not less. Lets take an audience question. [applause] and ill remind you, please state your name, class, your school major, hometown and also, please, questions not comments. Thank you. My name is stevan, i am a second year mccourt student from up incorporated lake county, florida. Recently, speaker ryan, your colleague, candice miller, from michigan, had all state flags removed. This is a result of the fact that many of the Southern States have confederate symbols in them. Could you please comment on this renewed northern republican reconstruction and the aspects of the e raise your of southern symbols as well as toes thattization of southern voters by the gop . I never looked at it that way. By the way. [laughter] thats interesting. Yeah, im from wisconsin, so guilty as a northerner. [laughter] for the record, i supported her decision, and we discussed it, and i thought it was the right thing to do. Mississippi is still going to be represented because were putting the commemorative coins up for each of the states. Heres the issue, and i think nikki haley did the right thing. And we may not agree, but this symbol does insult, this symbol, i think, does more to divide this country than to unify this country. As a statements rights person states rights person, it is up to the states, but ive got to tell you if in the capitol were going to have symbols, were going to have symbols that dont divide people, and thats just the way we think. [applause] all right. Our next question comes from twitter. Georgetown student is it up there . Rachel hersh who is a firstyear student from chicago, illinois [cheers and applause] packers there she is. Say hi. [laughter] rachel asks, mr. Speaker, what prompted you to reconsider your previous statements on poor people as takers . I was just wrong. [laughter] [applause] i didnt mean offense. Its, you know, obviously, im a conservative. I have a libertarian streak in me. I believe in limited government and upward mobility and opportunity. But there are people, look, my own family went through this. There are people who get knocked down in life, and they need help, and thats what communities are for. And government has a really Important Role to play in that. And to lump an entire category of people suffering into one broad brush, category, kind of like the last question we had, is wrong, i think. And and so if you do something that is wrong that misimplies, that is hurtful, instead of just trying to spin yourself out of it, just own up to it and just fess up and fix it. And thats just the way i saw it x thats why i did it and thats why i did it. [applause] just that simple. We have another question from the stage. Connor . Mr. Speaker, thank you again for being with us today. My name is congress, no im a junior in the college majoring in government, originally from barrington, illinois. Not far from janesville. So my question to you is that identify been very displayed by this years election thus far. Ill never support donald trump why is that . [laughter] in case you havent heard. But ill never support donald trump, and ted cruz does very little to appeal to me as a young voter. And so i ask you what advice or reasons for optimism could you offer to young republicans such as myself who find it very difficult to support either of the two leading candidates for our partys nomination . Well, unfortunately, this is not the first time ive had this question. [laughter] let me [laughter] all right. So as you know, im chair of the convention. I learned about this, because the speaker of the house by the way, i didnt learn about this until after i had had become speaker of the house. [laughter] im very neutral on this, i would look at the ideas. Look at the platform thats being advanced. Look at the agenda process which, by the way, we decided in the house before the election got started when we had 17 candidates. Look at what were presenting to the country before cleveland and that were going to offer to the country. Five things in our agenda. And, look, where theres Common Ground and we can get things done, do it. Thats why we did education reform, transportation reform, rewrite our customs laws. Were passing a bill this week that says the government cant just take your emails without a warrant. So were fixing things where we can find Common Ground, but there are a lot of things we dont. Look at the five things were talking about, and look at the policies, not the person necessarily. Its the policies that matter so much. How do you grow the economy . Reform the tax code . Open up energy, Regulatory Reform . What does patientcentered Health Care Look like . We dont think the Affordable Care act is working. We have to show a what we would do differently. And by the way, if we do not fix our entitlement programs from the current path to bankruptcy we are on, you will receive an inferior future. You will receive a mountain of debt that no american generation has ever received. It will guarantee your Living Standards are lower. And so our generation better fix this problem now. We helped create it. So that your generation can be free and prosperous, and you better support this is my opinion, this is in your interests support us getting on top of our budget problems. So we think we have better ideas for fighting poverty, we think we should compete in the battle of ideas and move people from welfare to work. We have welfare programs that are work replacement programs, we need them to be work encouragement programs. We think our National Security is a mess. We have to have a military that is capable of fixing that. And the last point i would say which i really believe transcends party labels is we need to restore the constitution and the article i of the constitution. What that means is the laws that we live under should be written by we through our elected representatives. Right now we dont really dont have that. This isnt just Barack Obamas fault, although hes taken this to a whole new level. Weve got this Fourth Branch of government, unelected bureaucrats writing our rules and regulations that govern our society and determine how our businesses run, how our schools work. It governs almost everything we do and, guess what . I as your member of congress have no say so over this. So our laws arent being written by us through our elected representatives. So one of the forming foundational principles of this country is that we are a selfgoverning people, we believe in selfdetermination, we believe in government by consent of the governorred. We are losing that. We have a lot of ideas for restoring that so we have a government that is accountable to us, the people. These five things Economic Growth, Entitlement Health care reform, upward mobility, welfare reform, National Security and restoring selfgovernment are ideas that i think are animating, that are necessary for saving this country and, by the way, we think it gets us on a better track. So in front of you is not just a vote for a person, a political, you know, personality. In front of you, if we do our jobs the right way, will be a choice of two paths that you will have to take. Do you want to stay on the status quo, go down the same path were on, or do you want to go in this different direction . We owe you that choice. And so thats the choice youll have far more than a personality. Republicans lose personality contests anyway, we always do. [laughter] weve learned that lesson the hard way. But we win ideas contests, and this is what we want to have as an ideas contest. Raise your gaze and look at the horizon that were trying to paint and look at the agenda that were offering you so that the people of this country get to choose which path we take. [applause] lets go to the next question from the audience. Hello, speaker ryan. My name is michael. Im a junior at the college studying government and economics much like you did, and im from just outside of phoenix, arizona. Actually building off your answer to connors question about choosing between two paths and seeing what consent of the governed looks like, that happens a lot at the state level. In my state of arizona where republicans control the governorship and both houses and many other states across the country, probably most infamously kansas, weve seen some of your ideas put to the test, where government is getting off the peoples backs. Yet teachers are leaving arizona in droves, kansas republicans arent seeing the economy grown, in fact, theyre almost in open revolt against their governor. How can you ask me to support some of these ideas nationally when i look back at my state or many other states where you have the political will and opportunity to enact this path, and it doesnt seem to be working . [applause] well, you know, i know Sam Brownback well, and i know that theyve had a pretty impressive Business Development growth, but let me tell you the answer to your question from our perspective at the federal level. Lets just take taxes, for example. We are taxing ourselveses, our businesses at a much, much higher rate than our foreign competitors are taxing theirs. Overseas which where i come from means Lake Superior [laughter] the canadians are taxing all their businesses 159 . Company 15 . Companies are taxed at 35 . Successful Small Businesses are taxed as high as 44. 6 . We are killing ourselves. This is why all these businesses are leaving and going overseas or Foreign Companies are buying u. S. Businesses. So, yes, we have to get our tax rates down. Its so important for american competitiveness, for jobs, for capital to stay here, for businesses to stay headquartered here that we get our tax rates down. I think we can make a very successful case for this philosophy, but the point i would say is because we believe in limited government doesnt mean we believe in no government. We want government to be effective at what it does. We dont want government to stretch itself beyond where it should be, and that means we in our communities, in our school, in our businesses, we make more decisions for ourselves and we solve problems ourselves organically, from the bottom up in an open economy instead of government making these command and control decisions. We have learned that command and control economies, as well intended as they may be, leads to cronyism, lethargy, bureaucracy, it slows things down, it stopped upward mobility. And so that is why i would argue for a very limited government that helps our american workers, our businesses be more competitive. And so, yes, i think we need to lower tax rates. And by the way, with the kind of deficits and debt we have, you better hope to we get our spending under control, because youre going to get hit with a debt thats just crazy. One more point. We have run the federal government for the last 60 years im rounding here we have run the federal government for 60 year at about 20 of gdp. 20 cents out of every dollar made in america goes to the federal government. Around the time my kids are my age, well take 40 cents out of every dollar made in america just to run this government at that time. I asked the Congressional Budget Office a number of years ago what will the income tax rates have to be on that next generation when my kids are having my grandkids, their children . They said the lowest tax rate for lower income people which is right now 15 , its got to go to 25 . Middle income tax rates goes to 66 , and the top tax rate, the one that all those successful Small Businesses pay would have to go to 88 . And then they said this could have some negative effects on the economy at that time. [laughter] the point im trying to make is its not as if were standing still here. We are heading in the wrong direction. Were on the wrong path. Making american businesses and our economy less and less and less competitive which means fewer jobs, slower Economic Growth, less takehome pay, less economic security. So we do have to limit our government so we can focus it on what its supposed to do and do it well and, yes, these theories do work. When we lower tax rates, especially in this global competition, it helps. It works. It is successful. Maybe its the difference between federal and state government, but we are in a Global Economy whether we like it or not, and we better be globally competitive, and i would argue on a lot of fronts that were not. [applause] lets take another question from the stage. Will . Hi. Im will sigh mobs, im simons, im a senior at the college, and im from briar cliff, new york. Westchester county. My question is many young people worry about Climate Change and its potential negative impacts, yet Many Americans especially those in the fossil fuel industry also worry about the negative economic consequences right, right. From Climate Changerelated policies. So how do politicians decide whether to prioritize the worries of a middleaged worker at a coal plant who may lose his job or the worries of individuals like us and our children who will have to deal with the negative consequences of Climate Change much more severely . I think you set the question up well. So do we have to, do we have to be forced into a tradeoff between the two . I would like to think we dont have to do that. We dont have to trade one for the other. We dont have to trade our prosperity today or the economic anxiety of a middleaged worker for a better enviro