As some of you heard me say, some guest my have to depart earlier. Chairman walden is here, and rob simms. This is chairman waldens fourth visit and thank you for coming back and bringing mr. Simms with you. I will talk about representative waldens family coming by wagon train in 1845 in order to get as many questions. That is it for the biographical portion and now to the ground rules. We are on the record, no live bloging, tweeting, no filing of any kind while the breck breakfast is underway to give us time to listen to the guest. It is likely we will beending well before the 9 30 usual stop time. To help you resist the selfie urge we will email pictures to the reporters after the breakfast. If you would like to ask a question do the traditional thing and send a subtle, nonthreatening signal and i will call on one and all in the time we have available. We will start with letting the guests make opening comments and set the stage and go to questions after that. Thank you for coming. Appreciate it. What i should say on a tragic morning with a number of colleagues not here because of the events in dallas. Thank you, david. It is an honor and privilege to be back with you, many who i see on the hill and in the speakers cloak room. Thank you for letting me share a few comments and take your questions. I want to start with hoping we are keeping in your prayers. I pray we can come together as a country and address the issues of the violence effectively. I want to clarify one thing david said, he said my family came by wagon train and i want to point out it was my ancestors that came in 1845. Not my own family. This is an interesting election here and i would like to set the stage by going backwards a couple cycles and then take it today. If you go back to the 2010 election it was a wave year and referendum on a president and a party that had total, complete control cluing 60 votes in the senate at one point. The American People thought there was no check and balance, no break on the system, that we are traditionally acustomed to. Up rose this ground swell of grassroots support to make a difference and change and stop things in washington from the run away train they were on. That produced the biggest republican majority in the house since world war ii. In the 2012 cycle, you had kind of a balancing out because you had, not a referendum only taking place in the house election, but a president ial election cycle as well. The senate wasnt gain by the publ public. We had a good freshman class from 2010 and redistricting took place due to the enormous numbers across the country. If not all of the members elected in 2014, earned their way into the their seats, you will see there was a bump at the end but most of us knew every game unlike 2010 when names came up and said who is that . They never stopped doing their work. We knew coming into the 2016 ele electo electorial cycle it would be different. We knew it would be different than 14. We understand that now and did then and we are a data driven organization. We have terrific recruits coming forward and open seats and challenge seat opportunities, literally from one end the count country to another. Our members have done good jobs legislatively. If you look at katko in new york he has passed 11 bills and two signed into law. My favorite headline fighting until 5 a. M. To save fort drum. When you see these legislatures coming to washington to get things done and fix a broken system and they have a lot to go home and talk about because they are doing it every day. They are working hard and running effective campaigns. Finally, when we look at the president ial Playing Field, as you know, mr. Trump was before our conference yesterday, acally which it was cordual and positive and i think many members had the opportunity to hear directly from mr. Trump for the first time and vice versa. There was kidding and jostling back and forth and people left our conference feeling better about the nominee. There is a narrative coming from the dccc that all we have to do is boost the race to be over. We see no data and efrd to indu k indicate such. I have faith in the American People and their ability to tell the difference between one person and another. If you are out doing the work the voters know you and what you are about. They will have a decision on who is best able to represent them locally. Finally when we read the 7080 seats are going to be in play it is a head scratcher to figure out where the data is staying from. So, we feel good about where we have at. We know we have competitive races we have to run. We think we are well equipped financially. Best finances we have had and on the data digital, strategic and analytic side as well. There is not a single one of these candidates i wish i could have recruited somebody else to run in their place. Thank you for coming out. The floor is yours i will just do one so we get to as many people possible in the time we have. Let me you were talking about a good meeting yesterday with mr. Trump. There was a report in politico recently that said unlike with the democrats, the dccc is in close communication with the clinton campaign, that mr. Simms says he has no contact with the president ial campaign. Let me suggest part of the difference is as you know in the president ial situation the rnc and the president ial campaign begin to merge pretty rapidly. Ryan was in the meeting and trump was complimentary and said now i know him and see what the rnc is all about. We work directly with the rnd. We know at the dnc they had fights over Bernie Sanders and the chairman and who is running what and their finances are in pretty bad shape. We have a very good communication strategy working through the rnc. But rob . What the chairman said was precisely my point in that article and with that quote which is our work, most courts align with the rcn upstairs and i would not suggest that was unusual at all particularly if you work at the lowest estates that the Trump Campaign released in the 17 or so states they expect to be most targeted. For us and the seats that are most that have been washed and our nominee and whatever controversy or anything else reported on. After the 2012 elections, chairman and his team undertook an exhaustive review of the previous election and an opportunity report was produced. One thing that was clear before any candidate announced was the rnc can no longer be in a position of gearing up and staffing up in the final four months of a president ial election. It revolutionized and revamped what the structure was going to be and how they were going to function in a four year period so when we had a nominee, whoever that nominee would be and the Democratic Campaign with president obama and outside groups spent a trumend hazard tremendous amount of money attacking him. Today, they have several hundred staff people on the ground in these targeted and swing states that have been employed by the rnc. They are fulltime staff and engaged and knocking them down. I would suggest as we continue to report about the president ial campai campaign. And we know what it takes to win a president ial campaign in todays time and environment. Do you know how many house members are going . Are you inviting them to go or telling them to stay home and campaign . I dont know the number. It is pretty significant. We havent seen a final number of those types of things. I have suspected we will get a final list next week. But as you know, for most of these cases they are done for the state delegations and the state parties, where some of the members are delegates and attending with their delegation. So i suspect we will see a finalist next week. I suspect there will be a significant number of members there. We dont advice them one way or the other advise. It is up to them. Most of us are busy at home in our districts. I listened to john mccains acceptance speech as my wife and i were going out to go camping. There was an issue they didnt want to talk about and it seems like they think this is a winning political issue now to talk about. Do you think they think anything they can create on the left with that issue will cause problems for your members . Who do you think you will be able to contrast that . It gets back district by district and each make up their own mind. It gets down to Constitutional Rights and due process. What we saw play out on the house floor and seen come forward in terms of their hash tag campaign flies in the rights of protecting everybodys rights. We need to make sure terrorists dont have access to weapons foreignists dont buy them. We need the fbi to do good. I believe 202 was the final count on the Mental Health reform legislation which has been several years in the making. It deserves a tremendous amount of credit as do many of his cosponsors on the republican side. One thing that has been lost in the gun control debate is the Mental Health component of some of these tragic incident and the changes congressman murphys bill will make could have a tremendous impact. The data shows if you have a serious Mental Health issue and are not getting help you are 15 times more likely to harm yourself or someone else with a violent act. We can make progress here. I did roundtables on this, talked to families, providers, law enforcement. This is an i area we can make a difference. Next to john slab. Looked at democrats using donald trump as their boogie man. Republicans drawing on someone as unpopular as secretary clinton is that an issue for the republicans to use . Scott garret of new jersey thought inaudible. His opponent used to work for bill clinton. That would be a unique situation where you could easily make that case. I believe it is easier to tie a democrat to Hillary Clinton than a republican to donald trump for a couple reasons. I think we would all to admit donald trump his own brand. He has not shied away from that. Hillary clinton is the democratic establishment candidate. Given what happened in the last couple weeks all of this view that a lot of us have and this transfers to a mothership here and what does that mean and who gets what appointments. You see today, the day after the Justice Department closes its investigation, the state department reopens there on ms. Clinton and staff. There is a lot there. Americans have a lot of questions and she has a long record. When you do the polling and poll in the districts we are competitive in and where the races are really going to be you find she is less poplar than donald trump. This isnt going to be an election held in a vacuum. You are spoton. There are two nominees at least. She is a drag on the party. She is more unpopular than donald trump in the competitive districts and in those districts our data show this is recent, but voters want to vote republican republican for congress. You were quoted back in december after mr. Trump came out with his proposed ban on muslims saying this isnt what we are as a party or a country, we cannot yield to this, and according to the cook political report, no relation, you said it puts certainly competitive seats in jeopardy and we will have a much more difficult time unquote. You just said that ms. Clinton is a drag. Is trump a drag . That was back in december. Nothing has happened since then. So things evolved. What we now know looking at the data is that Hillary Clinton is a bigger drag in our competitive seats than donald trump. That is not necessarily somebody can probably find a district where that is not the case. I understand that. As we look overall, this is what we are seeing. They are either equal or she is less poplar. I think part of that, too, if you look at it, and i think the National Media polls release bear this out. The independent swing voters look at talk and perform more like republicans than democrats. Even through the primary process where the narrative driven is all of the imcumbants are in trouble because these voters will come in and throw them out and there is a ground swell of outsid outsid outsid outsider ank. And the ones loosing are a reflection of redistricting changes. Not a Single Member lost because of an environment issue or outside forces working against them or things of that nature. So the trump voters are continuing to support our candidate in the district. The middle of the road voters want to vote republican on barometers like the generic ballot and they will lean in favorability showing they are there and there is emphasis in that context and not just a direct line from the president ial election down to the congressional level. John . Thank you, dave. Mr. Chairman, you and rob speak forcefully about there being no there there and the incumbents thinking donald trump is the boogie man. Let me point out a couple things that increasingly the incumbent republicans who we never looked at before are vulnerable. Darryl isa now has a strong opponent in a state where the field poll show last week Hillary Clinton leading donald trump by 30 percentage points. In new york, two upstate races where republicans retired, the nominees on paper should be shoe ins. They are having to work hard. Are you spending more on incumbent retention this year than previous cycles . We have 247 members today and number of retireees. Tled only make sense to spend more on the incumbents. We have offensive opportunities as well. You know, jack martin taking the steve israel seat. That is a real possible win for us. Jack is in this third term as the state senate and comes from the more democratic part of that district. I think it is a net zero pvi or maybe one point. Jack is a great recruit and candidate. Chris gibsons race was expensive for chris and he was the incumbent to hold that. When he retired i wasnt particularly happy. In this job you dont want nearly any of your members to reti retire. We are pleased with john faso. He won in the primary and is well positioned to hold that seat. Chris gibson was campaigning on three parades in the fourth of july. They will do it together. With the isa seat in particular you had other dynamics at play. A democratic president ial primary in california that at least going into the final days was still competitive, there is a College Population in mr. Isas district in san diego that i think you could say was feeling the burn. And mr. Trump had lost out the republican nomination. We didnt have that going into the primary. Going into the general election, mr. Isa is i think sitting on about 4 million and i think he is engaged in running a real campaign. If the democrats want to make a run at mr. Isa in that district with his position and with his campaign i would say good luck to them. Just an update. I think you have several dynamics. New york 22 is a swingy seat that mr. Hannah had held for several cycles. You have a dynamic with an independent candidate who is in the process of qualifying to be on the ballot. He is going to be on an independent ballot line. We have to see what the ballot looks like and what that means going forward. Do we know more about time . Francine from the monitor is next. Thanks for coming. I would like to ask you about what is going on with support for tea party type Freedom Caucus candidates. My understanding is they will be going we will be loosing some of those members in congress, somewhere i read by about a third because of retirement. And i dont know if that is accurate. But i average we are loosing a significant number because of retirement. So my question is what is the outlook look like for that wing of the party and the elections coming up and what happened to the political fervor around voters . Trump has done everything and it is like whatever happened to these people . What is going on in that wing of the party . Our job is to maintain the majority, grow the majority, make sure paul ryan comes back as speaker, or we have a republican speaker. I dont divide up how that works based on which caucus you are part of within our conference. We have the tuesday group people, clinton caucus, unaffiliated people. We just look at the races we need to be part of to elect are republican. I dont have the data you are asking. There were times where cook clawson being active and maybe a few others. I think john said six. I dont know and ibmost of those districts, by the way, there would be solid republican districts. What is your sense of the political ferver that was so strong . Where is it now . I dont think if is at t2010 level. I think in part because you no longer have a run away barack obama, nancy pelosi, harry reid washington. There are checks and balances. So you dont have the same energy of make them stop. This is where you got obamacare. And wait until the premiums are finalized on november first. I am seeing carriers pull out on the individual markets and rates not more than double digits but mid double digits. There is a lot going on. That energy is still there. Some is paying out for mr. Trump or mr. Cruz or others. And i think that energy will not be denied at the ballot box in the fall. They will turn out. The questions i have is what do the Bernie Sanders thinks about the kids working hard and they win a state and ms. Clinton gets more delegates because the system is rigged. It is interesting to see where the energy plays up. All the evidence shows ticket splitting has been in a decline. In wisconsin, where my newspaper is, it is basically vanished. Where Hillary Clinton is the drag, or donald trump is the drag, doesnt it make it more difficult than it would have been in the past to overcome that . Do you factor that into your calculus . We do analysis district by district. The data publically available is more nationalized. So we drove down district by district, race by race, and look at where the swing voters are and what they are concerned about. Lets take a district like wisconsin eight where it is open and donald trump numbers are bad consistently in the polling and state. In the district you have an outgoing republican member who is outspokingly critical of donald trump. It seems like there is a potential for a top of the ticket and a drag for them. We have 26 seats defending the cycle won by president obama in 08 and 12. That shows they are splitting the ticket. The state of wisconsin a perfect example. I dont believe it has gone republican in a president ial cycle since 1988 and that would include speaker ryans district. Right. He carried all of those districts because of the composition of the districts even though obama won statewide. I believe barack obama won speaker ryans district. So, demonstrating ticket splitting. All of the districts are carried by romney and the republicans won at the house. If you are suggesting that don