live coverage of the meeting begins at 5:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span, on line at cspan.org and the free c-span radio app. this week, on the communicators, technology watcher tim woo talks about his book, the curse of bigness. >> facebook is the poster child, i think, of the curse of bigness. they got extremely large, they only cared about money and growth, they didn't take their positi responsibly and ended up being effectively hacked, instagram too, which they controlled during the 2016 election. they've kind of had this terrible effect on what passes as news, and so the social effects and the political effects of facebook are enormous. >> tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span 2. >> the new democratic coalition action fund hosted this policy

conference with several democratic members of congress to discuss the party's agenda for the current congressional session and the 2020 campaign. this is three hours and 45 minutes. >> go washington state. good afternoon. welcome to the second annual new democratic coalition policy conference. i'm susan delbene and i represent washington state's first congressional district. and this congress i also serve as the new democrat coalition's vice chair for policy. so i'm honored to host today's policy conference. we have a dynamic set of speakers from from the new dem coalition and outside experts on the range of important issues. before i do around overview of the agenda, i want to spend a few minutes telling you why i'm excited about the new dems the opportunity to be policy leaders in the democratic party and in

congress. the new democrat coalition is made up of our forward-thinking democrats who are committed to pro-economic growth, pro-innovation, and fiscally responsible policies. new democrats are a solutions oriented coalition, seeking to bridge the gap between left and right. by challenging party san approaches to governing. we don't say government is the problem nor that government is the solution to all problems. our approach is to say let's make government work better. let's reinvent it for the 21st century. we believe every american should have the opportunity to succeed. the 2018 elections brought us a wave of freshmen democrats led by new freshmen backed candidates. 33 of the 40 house seat s picked up were led by new dems. this congress, swelling our ranks to the highest levels ever

at 101 members. this makes us the largest ideological house democratic caucus. we make up 40% of the entire house democratic caucus. we have freshmen all stars like lizzie fletcher and slotkin who will speak today, mikey sherrill who serves on the leadership team, all stars like my neighbor in the state of washington, dr. kim shrier and many more who are responsible for democrats getting the majority in the house. our strength is not just in our numbers, but also our ideas. many of which you're going to hear about later today. to promote these ideas, we launched eight new policy task forces this congress. the task forces are led by new dem issue area experts in order to develop policies to help americans get ahead in a changing economy and help make america more secure. we're working to offer bold ideas and innovative solutions

to many important issues on topics like technology, climate change, health care, infrastructure, trade, housing the future of work, national security and more. in addition to our task forces, we are well represented on key congressional committees. the new democrat coalition worked hard to promote our members for key committee assignments and we were successful in securing at least 40% of the seats on all the exclusive committees and have greater representation on many of the national security committees like armed services and intelligence. we're excited to work with all members on these committees to advance a forward looking agenda for our country. because the american people gave democrats the majority with the expectation that we'd actually get some work done to make their lives better. that's what we're going to talk about today and we have an exciting agenda.

in a few minutes, new chair dem derrick helmer will give remarks on the state of the new democrat coalition. then leading health care policy experts on how we achieve the goal of universal coverage. following that panel, we'll hear presentations from new dem leaders on housing, trade, and future of work policy. followed by another panel discussion moderated by scott peters on climate change and after the climate change panel, we'll hear another series of presentations from new dem leaders on national security, infrastructure, and technology policy. that will lead into a panel discussion that i'll moderate on digital privacy. joining us after that discussion conclude our program will be senator michael bennett who will participate in a fireside chat with derrick killmer about how we build durable policy solutions. we hope all of you in the audience and watching around the world on the live stream will enjoy and participate in the conversation today.

there are many pressing issues that demand leaders in washington to work together to solve. at our core, new dems are here to make a difference and get things done and we look forward to continuing to do that important work together. with that, i have the distinct honor to introduce my colleague and neighbor back home, the chairman of the new democrat coalition, derek kilmer. derrick took over the lead of the new democrat coalition this congress as democrats took control of the house. under his leadership we have already made a significant impact on the agenda and the priorities for the democratic majority. the coalition secured rules reforms to make the house more open and transparent, returning legislating to a robust committee process. as a member of the ways and means committee our process sest has been robust. the speaker trusting his ability to build consensus among democrats and republicans asked derrick to lead the committee to

modernize congress established in the rules reforms. and just to make sure that he stayed focus on the task at hand, she asked me to keep an eye on him and appointed me as a member of the committee as well. when he isn't thinking about how to make the house work better, he's thinking about ways to make our economy work better, keep our nation secure through innovative ideas around life-long learning, economic development, cyber security, and countless other efforts. without further ado, let's cue the nickelback and welcome our chairman, derrick killmer. ♪ >> what's that? i am told with the mic that is not in my ear, actually, that in an attempt to boost congress' popularity, one of the first acts derrick took is to ban nickelback from being played in either washington. there's a whole nickelback story you can learn about later.

join me in welcoming our chairman, derek killmer. ♪ she's in love with him ♪ can't find a better man >> let's give it up for susan delbene. good job, susan. good afternoon, everybody. thanks for joining us for our second annual policy conference. i'm derrick killmer. i have the honor of chairing the new dems this congress. we're excited you decided to spend the day with us, for those participating on facebook, hello, facebook viewers. we're excited to hear more about our innovative solutions and bold ideas. a lot has changed since i stood here a year ago addressing this crowd at our first ever new dem policy conference. most notably, democrats are now in the majority in the house of representatives. today i'm proud that the new democrat coalition put us there. we are now 101 members strong, including 40 freshmen members.

the last cycle alone, 33 of the 40 freshmen who flipped districts from red to blue were new dem endorsed candidates. we're the largest ideological coalition in the house and it's the largest our coalition has ever been. it's safe to say that the state of the new democratic coalition is strong, we have an amazing team on the field, ready to tackle issues and get things done to make people's lives better, and to be clear, i quite literally me literally mean tackle. one of our new members is a former nfl linebacker. in spite of the excitement around our new majority, we have big challenges facing our country. today i want to talk about some of those challenges and our efforts to rise to the occasion to create more opportunities for the american people. let's talk trends. first, we're in the midst of rapid economic change. the combination of automation and globalization, the mobility of capital, these are

extraordinary opportunities to make lives better and conquer big problems but they are massively disruptive. think about this, my first job was at west side video, a video store, for the younger people in the audience we used to have these things called video stores. that store no longer exists. by and large video stores no longer exist. the words be kind and please rewind mean nothing to my daughters because they live in this world of itunes and netflix and youtube. for me at a video store on demand was being able to pull a video out of the return bin before it got put on the shelf that was on demand. when i was a kid i lived in a small town called port angeles, my dad was a photographer, we would go to kits camera on first street, my dad would buy a lot of kodak supplies. it doesn't exist anymore. at its peak, kodak employed 160,000 people in this country. it now employs 4% of that. everyone has a camera on his or

her phone. that economic transformation has changed our lives, made things more convenient, opened up new avenues for information, for entertainment and put near infinite amounts of information and content at our fingertips. it's certainly made things more productive. and there are certainly some cities that are thriving in this changing economy. the new economy is working in some places for some people. these forces are enormously disruptive, and they created some challenges too. that leads me to a second trend. that is the geographic institution of the economy. and economic opportunity. in my home state of washington we feel some of that. seattle is cooking to the point that it has a growth challenge manifested by traffic congestion and a lack of affordable housing. there are still parts of my state including in my district where the recovery has not come the way it wanted to and those areas we still have a jobs challenge. in too many areas, including parts of the district i

represent, our top export is young people. our state's not unique in that regard. the economic innovation group, a bipartisan policy group, broke down the nation by zip codes and ranked them from the most prosperous to the most distressed. here's what they found, they found from 2011 to 2015 the 20% most prosperous zip codes saw half of our nation's new jobs and 57% of net new businesses. the 20% least prosperous zip codes where one in six americans live, contain fewer jobs and fewer businesses. not only since 2011 but since 2000. so what does that mean for us? well the new dems believe we are at a sputnik moment and we must renew a national mission that's focused on economic opportunity and american competitiveness around ensure no matter what zip code you live in you have the opportunity to earn a good living. we believe our job is to create

more economic opportunity for more people in more places. so how do we get that done? politicians from across the political spectrum have made great hay by making it seem like the answers are simple. if you've got a challenge they have a bumper sticker from demonizing trade or immigrants to suggesting the solution rests in eliminating government entirely or relying entirely on government, some suggest that this should solely be a debate about redistribution of our economic pie rather than how we grow the pie and ensure that everyone, everywhere, has a shot at getting a slice. as a recovering economic development professional i wish i could say there's a silver bullet to economic growth. i don't think that's true. i think it's more complicated and like silver buck shot. a bunch of stuff we have to do. and what excites me is that we are engaging on those challenges. we are stepping up with innovative solutions because we want people to be able to

navigate economic change rather than be victims of it. it's why the new democrats have a task force focused on the future of work. we have a bunch of new dems that are pushing to strengthen k-12 and expand access to post-secondary education, broaden our financial aid programs, new dems focusing on a system of affordable benefits, that given the disruption i spoke of earlier, the days of someone graduating school, getting a job and having that job for 30 to 40 years are probably over. and we've got to empower workers to navigate that. it's why i introduced a bill called lifelong learning accounts, that would be optional and portable and tax advantaged like a health savings account or 401(k) but around skills. beyond that, the new dems know that when we make smart investments in infrastructure it doesn't just put people to work now, it lays the foundation for economic growth over the long haul and we have a task force focussed on that.

i'm admittedly reticent to do a deep dive into infrastructure policy. not always the sexiest topic for folks who just ate lunch. infrastructure stems from a latin word structure, meaning structure, and inframeaning boring. but it really matters. according to the american society of civil engineers, our nation's infrastructure graded out last year at a d-plus. quick show of hands, how many of you drove here today either on a highway where there was traffic congestion or a road where there were potholes? listen, there are parts of the district i represent where the speed limit signs are only there for nostalgic purposes and the new dems are pushing for congress to actually get to work on this. and when we talk about infrastructure, that discussion needs to include broadband. i represent a district that's not far from microsoft and amazon and some amazing technology companies. yet, the district i represent ranks in the bottom 20% of tcou when it comes to high-speed internet.

i was meeting with a tribal chairman in my district how are you doing? he said you want the good or bad news? tell me the good news. >> he said every one of our high school seniors graduated this year. that's fantastic. what's the bad news? >> for the first time the state of washington is going to require our students to take the state mandated exam on the internet. we don't have high-speed internet. we timed it. it took a minute and 44 seconds to get to the next page. that's not going to work. we're going bus our kids to a school they've never been to or a town they've never been. this is worse than not being able to watch the latest season of "stranger things" on netflix. imagine trying to start a new business or someone who wants to be able to take that test or apply it to college or if you just want to see if the kids on "stranger things" make it out of the upside down you should be able to access the internet. third, the new dems understand that there are global forces where the united states can either take the lead or as we've seen

too often with this current administration, sit on the sidelines. take climate change, for example, the new dems understand this is an existential threat that requires action. the new dems believe in science. we believe the u.s. should join the community of nations and take bold action to address climate change. we acknowledge if we address this challenge wisely we can create new economic opportunities, we can create new industries and new jobs and we can save this planet. it's why we have a task force driving innovative ideas on this. take trade, the new dems want to make sure that trade policies enable us to export american products not american jobs. we understand that trade is going to happen. it can happen with no rules, with rules that are set by china, or the united states can be active and engaged in setting high standards that protect workers and the environment and intellectual property and other priorities. we want those rules to protect america's interests so prosperity can happen here rather than some place else.

new dems aren't focused on protecting people from foreign competition. we're focused on ensure americans can defeat foreign competition. we want americans to prosper. we embrace an ethic similar to a sign on the economic development organization that i used to work in that said we are competing with everyone, everywhere, every day forever. now finally, the new dems understand our capacity to address these challenges is hamstrung by the current state of our politics. our nation can't continue this dysfunction. because the reality is our competitors overseas are not messing around with government shutdowns and sequestration and some of the partisan friv volty you see in this town. the new dems believe our country is more competitive and more capable of progress against these big challenges when all oars in the water in the same direction rather than beating each other other the heads. i confess that approach doesn't always make the new dems viral

sensations on social media. it's not catnip for cable news. i joke that if i had a new demerolly on the steps of the united states capital i would yell what do we want? everyone would yell a comprehensive approach to job creation that includes infrastructure and smarter approach to taxes and trade. when do we want it and everyone would yell we're willing to work in a collaborative way to bring people together. our approach is what the american people are asking for and it's what these challenges demand. famous faith leader once said, optimism is the belief that things will get better. but hope is the belief that together we can make things better. this past year the new dems were there to help support candidates from the very beginning so that they could come here to make things better for the american people. we saw extraordinary people win and join our coalition and the common denominator among all of these people is that they're here to get things done. that gives me hope. i get hope from the fact that

new dems are making a difference in the new majority. our coalition was active and engaged and provided content for hr 1, a political reform bill. last week in response to a letter sent by coalition members house leadership introduced legislation to lower health insurance premiums and strengthen protections for people with preexisting conditions and reverse attacks on our health care system. that gives me hope. let me end with this, last week i ran into someone from my state who has been vocal about exploring an independent run for the presidency. here's what i told him. i told him that we have a coalition in congress, 101 members strong, that have the courageous honesty to say that we are for private sector job growth well, are supportive of getting a handle on our nation's long-term fiscal challenge, we are willing to work across the aisle and we are democrats. we are new democrats because we are a group trying to look at old problems through a new lens.

we don't say government is the problem or that government is the solution to all problems, our solution is let's make government work better, let's reinvent it for the 21st century. let's solve some of these big challenges. we know that the anti-dote to chaos and dysfunction is competence and results. that's our focus, and that gives me hope. so i'm hoping i got you excited for the rest of this day and you're going to hear from amazing people, some industry experts, thought leaders, some of my colleagues, so thank you again for joining us and don't forget to tweet along using the #newdemsnext. with that lived tone vite up someone who always gives me hope someone who has been an outstanding leader on health care policy, foreign affairs, someone who now chairs the new dem action fund and is working every day to ensure that we hold on to these amazing new members and give them company in 2020. let's give it up from california my colleague, am y bera and his

panel. ♪ >> i don't have nickelback, but we have credence. well, health care is an exciting topic. and i say that as a doctor. neero has perfect timing as well. you know, we're coming up on the ten-year anniversary of the affordable care act. a bill that was debated intensely and passed roughly ten years ago, and continues to this day to be debated pretty intensely. with the president's announcement last week. it was framed the new democratic coalition is looking for solutions here. when we think about how you move forward, you know, we really don't think you take a piece of legislation that was landmark legislation in the affordable care act and try to blow it up,

but look for those places where you can make adjustments, where you can save lives, the marketplace. we also as a core value, hold this value that every american if they got sick, ought to be able to go see a doctor. if they get really sick, they shouldn't have that fear of going bankrupt and losing everything. we think you ought to get everyone into the system. we've also taken the approach that there are a lot of good ideas out there that are being introduced all the time. we haven't said this is a bad idea, that's a bad idea, we just think in a legislative body like congress, you should have regular order. you should go through the committee structure, through the committee process and evaluate all these ideas. what is it going to cost? is it going to displace folks? how would you implement it? over what time frame would you implement it. we're taking that approach in a thoughtful way, with that, let me introduce our panel today, and they'll take us through a lot of different ideas.

jim, what i don't -- we've got jim kessler, the executive vice president for policy at third way. as third way's executive vice president for policy, jim brings his wealth of knowledge, enthusiasm and incites to bear on issues across this policy spectrum. the middle-class prosperity to immigration, guns and entitlements. his job is to imagine the world as it's going to be and figure out how most americans concede in it. thank you for buying here. we've got neera tanden. the president and ceo for the -- also for the center for american progress action fun where she focuses on how organizations can fulfill their missions to expand

opportunities for all americans. neera has served in both the obama and clinton administrations as well as on their presidential campaigns and she's known as a health care expert. thank you for being here as well. we've also got chris jennings, the founder and president at jennings policy strategiy incorporated. an over three decades long policy veteran of the white house, congress and private sector. in 2014 he departed from his second tour of duty in the white house where he served president obama as deputy assistant to the president for health policy in coordination of health reform and also served in similar capacity in the clinton white house for nearly eight years. thank you for being with us today. as you get older you have to wear glasses and take them on and off. let's start with you, chriss. with your intimate knowledge of the affordable care act, and so forth, and the work on it and as

we approach this ten-year anniversary, where do we go next with the affordable care act? where would you like to see congress go? >> i want you to feel good because i have my own glasses too. can you hear me, guys? yes. i was asked to kind of lay the predicate for where we are, where we're going, and then i'll turn off to to the people who really know much better than i do. i often say i'm jealous of neera because she gets to pick the times when he -- >> he rarely says that, just to be clear. >> i am jealous. she gets to pick other issues in addition to health care. i'm always just labeled with health care. i will say this last election was the first election in the last five elections that i wasn't treated like a leper in most contexts. health care is making a comeback. it's a pleasure to be here with you, and it's great to have a doctor by the way on our side of the aisle. and i want to thank you for your leadership. >> three democratic doctors, in congress are all new democrat

coalition members. it's just a huge, huge asset. i think the republicans have taken the lead so we're happy to have you. i want to say that health care now, in fact, if you look at the last -- just the last cycle it really was the -- certainly one of the difference maker issues for why the democrats took over the house. i think it was predominantly driven, you have to have an honest evaluation of where that was, it's primarily driven by a fear of takeaway. fear of losing something that people value. i think health care is sort of like relationships you never really value it until you're threatened to lose it. this definitely was the case. it was a very, very realistic threat that we could lose some of the protections and that led to the house takeover. i think the other thing that we need to recognize is, the issue that drives health policy in

this country is predominantly focused around the issues of cost and complexity. the public is extremely frustrated with their out-of-pocket costs. they're frustrated with how tif cult it is to navigate the health care system. from where i sit the -- whether it's the private or public sector they're going to have to be far more responsive to this challenge or they will look for significant and radical changes. clearly the trump administration actions legislatively didn't go as far as they wanted. largely driven by a very strong unified democratic party and some very key republicans who opposed the repeal, and all except for the repeal of the individual mandate penalty, the legislation and the statute remains, but, of course, the threats also remain. the doj has been very aggressive, certainly following the texas case seriously, a meaningful threat and we have to take it quite seriously and i don't know why the president

decided to do what he did, but he certainly has unified the democrats and really reawoken the health care debate one more time. that's not the only thing they're doing to the regulatory process. we know what they're doing on junk plans, defunding health care, outreach enrollment dynamics, undermining the work that many members have done to this date. and there have been -- there's no doubt incredible successes with the affordable care act. you have 20 million more people insured, 50 million people who would have been medically underwritten without the aca, you have the elimination of the annual and lifetime caps we had in many health plans, we having can cost sharing protections for prevention, the buy-in for the kids up to 26 years old that's helped millions of people. many people in this room have children that are benefiting. i mean these are very real benefits that americans value. so let me just say this, the aca today does continue to face real challenges. one, affordability of plans.

lack of competition particularly in rural areas. we don't have enough of it. we still have over 27 million people in this country who don't have health insurance. we have many, many states who haven't expanded the medicaid program as they should. we have a very, very hostile federal government who are implementing junk plans to undermine the very marketability of these plans. so what i'm pleased about is the leadership of the house democrats just recently this last week in the heels of the justice department submission, actually unveiled unifying democratic legislation to provide additional tax credits for people above and below poverty, we have this huge population of people which in this country is $50,000 for an individual who cannot afford health care in many parts of this country, and those tax credits will go a long way to addressing it. there's a host of other provisions in this legislation

that deals with affordability. insurance policy, family, et cetera. i won't go through all the details, but very important initiative. the last message i want to make is this, it would be a mistake as my opening remarks reference to solely focus on the affordable care act. as the issue that people think of when they think of health care. they're very frustrated with the employer base coverage too. they're frustrated with their experiences of surprise medical bills. they're very frustrated with high out of pocket costs driven by prescription drug prices. if there's not a response to that, people are going to go looking for the candidates and the policy makers that can achieve those outcomes, and until we do, though, we're going to find a dynamic where we have polarization in the congress, not moving afford, we have an executive branch continuing to be hostile and federalism, states being very proactive for good and for bad purposes

because they're frustrated that federal government is not acting and we'll have a tiebreaker in the judiciary, which is not where we want to have health care legislation being done. last bit of good news for the democrats and i'll shut up and turn this over, which is the democrats are not as divided on health care as many people seem to want to believe. the media really wants to talk about this. one is that all support regarding the affordable care act consumer protections and the affordability provisions all support serious efforts to contain prescription drug costs and address medical surprise billing most support additional tax credits and subsidies to make coverage more affordable, most support protection options for people to retain their employer-based health coverage. that continues to be a fairly strong approach for most democrats. lastly i'm going to say this, all democrats in terms of the bigger debate around health

policy, recognize it will be the democratic primary that resolves any differences. so what we should be doing in the interim is doing the things we can do, whether it's bipartisan or partisan, to show where we can get things done in the short term. with that, that is my quick overview. >> thanks, chris. that was a broad overview. now, neera you've been working on health care for a long time in the center for american progress certainly came out with bold ideas as well. kind of looking back at your career, what are some of the successes that we had, but more importantly, outside of the aca, where would you like us to start focusing this congress? >> thank you, and thank you so much for having me, it's a great honor to be here. particularly with chris jennings, who i've learned so much about health care from over many years. we worked together on i think it was my first event when i was a white house staffer was on a

chip expansion event. it was actually a chip enrollment event. in the late 1990s. i would like to say that there were so many people who have health care today because of chris jensings' decades of experience in trying to ensure we get to a place where everyone is covered and he's worked on chip and also aca and a whole range of issues that have made people better off. it's great to be here and it's always a pleasure to be here with jim kessler who i also learned many things from over several decades, that started with lots of detailed information on the state of new new york. that's like sort of an inside joke. >> a long time ago. >> a certain first lady running for senate. anyway, so i would just emphasize a few points chris made, and talk about where i think the conversation is going. i think it has been a core

argument of the democratic party for decades that americans should have health care, and one of the features of the 1990s into the 2000s, and into the current moment is how to fulfill that promise. during the 1990s after the health security act, the clinton administration never gave up on health care and worked tirelessly to create the chip program which covered millions of kids. i see the aca as a fulfillment of the idea that everyone should have health care coverage and we've gotten 20 million more people covered in a country as large as ours, and this is a huge success and i have gone through as many cycles as chris jennings and it wasn't always something people were bragging about, but it is an important step that we are here. where health care is an issue in

which so many people saw a big cleavage between the parties and that is because the parties are so far away from each other. you have the trump administration trying to gut the affordable care act. despite the commentary to the contrary, they have no plan. in the absence of the affordable care act. the truth is, they didn't really have a plan for years that they certainly don't have a plan now. and democrats who are mostly on the presidential level talking about the next -- how to -- various ways to get to universal coverage. i don't want to take away from the important work and chris talked about this, the really vital work in the house that's happening right now, shoring up the aca. we remind people all the time that we need to walk and chew gum, the aca is under attack daily from the trump administration, they're doing things overtly and covertly to undermine the legislation.

democrats have to be vigilant. it's not unanimous, it's near unanimous. more for the aca. that's important for all of us to keep moving forward, which is that this is an important piece of legislation that has protected millions of people, the idea that you rip it out from its sockets is unacceptable. having said that, i do think that in the democratic primary there will be various ways -- it will be a robust discussion about what the path is and the path is to get to universal coverage over some period of time. now, i lived through as did chris, a time where health care was the central issue in a primary debate. in fact, it was amazing how many layers of discussion you could have about the policy differences between candidates back in 2008 when hillary

clinton was running against barack obama and john edwards and even after john edwards left that campaign, there was almost ad infinitum discussion on the merits of the individual mandate and a whole series of issues. i actually agree with chris that we will have a robust debate about what the next step on health care is, and i do think a lot of people recognize it, what's really animating concern is in the democratic primary, is both universal coverage and lower cost. it's not just one of those issues, it's both of those issues, and my expectation is, we've already seen candidates differentiate themselves, some candidates are embracing multiple paths, starting with an option to a plan like the one delor and jankowski has put

forward, medicare for america, which loosely based on the medicare extra plan that cap produced to medicare for all single payer. i personally expect a broad debate on the merits of maintaining the private insurance system, the merits of zero co-pays. there are big differences in a variety of these plans. we are proud of the medicare for america version of universal health care which is universal, but essentially maintains private insurance within the medicare program and also maintains an employee ability to choose but everyone else is in a juiced up medicare plan. our plan is universal, it is very bold, but i also think it gets to the twin concerns which is how to lower costs for people in the system, but also ensures that we get to universal coverage. i imagine there will be candidates who support just a

medicare option, there will be people who support our plan and many candidates who support single payer and i expect this to be a robust debate. as we have this debate we should be vigilant, my last point, we should be vigilant this is a debate in some ways is happening on just one side of the political debate because the other side of the political debate is engaged in just trying to get rid of the aca with no -- so far plan to replace it, and so we remind people every day that you have to be able to talk about both of those concerns because if the democratic primary debate is only conversation we're having people may lose sight of the fact of what the aca is under. >> thank you for that. thank you for your years of service trying to get every american opportunity. jim, let's -- neera touched on the politics of health care and certainly health care was a winning issue for democrats in

2018 and giving us the house majority. as you look at the 2020 presidential primary and general election, and you've been around politics for a long time, why don't you give us the perspective from the political side. >> great, thank you. and just want to say about this panel, this is an amazing panel of health care experts, and then you have one person on there who is -- like these are hall of famers, rock and roll hall of famers and i have like a really cool record collection. so in the -- on the expertise on health care, i'm a little bits more of a laymen. but on the politics i'm not so much of a layman. i want to build on something that chris said on this, which is chris jennings has done more on health care than just about anybody in washington, d.c., said for the first time in ten years he wasn't a leper. what that means is, democrats can win on health care and they can lose on health care.

in 2018 we won on health care and i'll go so far as to say we won the house on the health care. my team at third way, they watched every single ad that was run in red to blue districts, 92 red to blue districts between labor day and election day, 967 ads, 59% of them mentioned health care. only two ads mentioned medicare for all, by the way and those two candidates lost. so you can win on this issue, and you can lose on this issue. i think 2020, it is very possible that this election will be decided on health care. we know it's not going to be decided on the mueller report. so this election is going to be decided on more traditional topics. the economy. health care. immigration.

but health care, there's a very good chance it's going to be number one. and you have a situation where donald trump gave us this gift, a very, very dangerous gift, he really wants to repeal the affordable care act. a very, very dangerous gift, he really wants to repeal the affordable care act. he really does, as mira, said, like pull it out from the roots. he wants to use the courts to do it. but if you look from the republican point of view on this, they feel the democrats are giving them a gift. and i'll give you an example. one of the people who works for third way was at the american enterprise institute last week, which is a conservative think tank. was this on a meeting. she was there on a meeting on cybersecurity and ate lunch there.

they have a marvelous cafeteria, apparently. listens. >> really nice. >> it is actually a pantry. we have healthy snacks which i'm opposed to. so this is a big screen this apparently at aei, and there is a, it's like a montage that goes across, and she's eating lunch and there she sees a montage about medicare for all. and it's all the talking points on how you get support for this idea from the 56% where it starts at, to the 30% where it ends at when people, you know, hear criticisms of it. so my fear is, i agree with you, i think there is going to be a very, very robust debate in the primary, and this was in 2008. i wasn't involved in the 2008 primary except as an observer. the health care debate between obama and clinton was so narrow, the differences were such a small calibration of differences

that it was like they are real i had talking about the same plan with these slight differences. the differences in the plans out this now i think are much, much larger. my hope is that in this robust debate, we make sure that we say everything should be on the table. this are some fantastic plans out this to cover every single person and to make sure they don't pay too much. caps medicare extra is a terrific plan. we have a plan, universal caps costs in coverage, caps cost covers everybody. michael bennet's got a plan, with tim kaine, on medicare s. there's other plans out there. ours builds on yours, congressman berra, on automatic enrollment. but i do feel that this is going to be dicey for us. we can win or lose on this issue. and whether we win or lose on health care, i think will determine whether donald trump is a one-term president or a

two-term president. >> jim, thank you for that. and thanks for giving the plug to auto enrollment as well. >> can i say one thing in response and i really agree with a lot of what jim has said, i think we do need to navigate two things, in the primary, to say these things out loud, i think this is an impulse and a healthy impulse to get to universal coverage and the way i think of that, the aca contributed to that, why should you throw out the aca, that's not the way i think about it, it is a reasonable impulse for people to think that in the industrialized problem, it is a problem that people in the united states still, there are many millions of people who still don't have coverage. i completely hear what you're saying about the potency of this issue, and truly the potency is, as chris said, people fear what they lose, you know, and health

care is not like energy policy, or even financial regulatory reform. every human being is in some way a health care expert and they think of the health care system, they are thinking of the most personal decisions you're making, the care of a child, the care of a parent, so it is much more engrossing, to people. i do think we have to navigate these two issues, which is to try to get a system where people are covered. that lowers health care costs. i also think it is important that this will be people who are kind of attacking the motives, of people who have a different plan than say medicare for all plan, and we have to guard again that as well. so i agree with jim, who i'm reading into, when you say the debate was pretty narrow, the debate was pretty narrow, and pretty policy-based in 2008, in part because there was a lot of energy about making sure that the candidates stayed on policy, instead of personal attacks and i think we have to think of all

of those issues. but i'm hoping the primary can navigate a bold idea that produces universal coverage that still doesn't fall into, you know, the two-year campaign that's going to be run against certain versions of the health care plan. >> you know, chris, i'm going to toss a question to you. mira framed something, there is a democratic side to this debate, where we're debating the policy, but there is that republican piece that's missing. from your perspective, and some would argue that the affordable care act was actually based on a lot of conservative principles, from your perspective, how do you engage that republican side? what can we do? where is the republican thought

on health care? >> well, first of all, i noted today that, which is ironic, that mitt romney is now joining the gang of ex-senators who are going to be developing the republican alternative bill which is sort of an interesting dynamic which was it was the foundation of the affordable care act, came out of massachusetts, and governor romney. so what goes around, comes around. maybe that's encouraging. we'll see. i'm a little bit dubious. you know, president trump seems to look at everything sort of a personal thing and number one, if it was obama, it must be bad. that's point one. and point two, i campaigned against this, and he feels that he has to do something, and he has a republican party who is pretty much still fairly aligned with him.

i will tell you, where they're not aligned is what he just did. they don't want to reengage the health care debate. there is not one issue they would like to talk less in health care other than to jim's point, for good or for bad, what they want to apply to the democrat, their vision of the democratic's vision, which is they want to scare people into thinking socialism is around the country, and rationing, and the usual rhetoric that we have heard by the way, for every single point. you could have an incremental plan and they would call it that. okay? one thing i do want to say is if they're smart, they will understand, they may not care as much as about coverage as the democratic party does, they do care about cost and complexity, because if you're human being, you're frustrated with the health care system. so that is probably an area where there's some, places where one can go if you can show them why it makes some sense. and the last thing i'll say and i just want to talk about the democratic party, which is yes, unfortunately, we have the primary, and people are going to be trying to define differences, and there are going to be more differences this time around

than 2008, but i think fundamentally, where there is a great deal of agreement, is they're frustrated with the private sector's inability to constrain costs, and there has been a failure, and we have to be left, right, indifferent, we can't pretend that that's not the case, so i think generally what people are looking at is looking at medicare as a leverage tool for negotiating better prices. now, it may be an option. not mandate. not medicare for all. it may be a choice. and that's what nira's plan does, that's what your plan does, it is all about choices and options but it is about looking at ways we can leverage costs and more affordability, because i think there is another thing that new democrats stand for, they don't want to address all affordability issues through the approach of just provide more subsidies and tax credits. they will want to have to deal with affordability issues and

interventions and there is one way to do that. >> can i just say one additional answer to chris's great answer, mine this is always a hard issue, with health care, which is it is always hard to divorce from politics, because this were, cap put out a report, in the summer of 2017, about actual bipartisan ideas, this were some actual ideas, and the senate version around reinsurance and other things, and essentially the republicans were willing to stabilize the insurance markets under their version of a bill, and then senator collins talked about taking those steps themselves, separate and apart, and then that's just gone away from the republican argument, because even though they had ideas, that would stabilize and essentially lower the prices of, lower cost notice exchanges, they adopted those ideas for their own plan, to basically, you know, mostly get the aca, when it came to people reaching out to them, democratic senators

reaching out saying let's do those ideas, you just voted for them, there hasn't been that receptivity which is the same basic argument of what happened with the aca itself. it was the aca, that mitt romney supported and then ran for president and then attacked it. i think that has been what is frustrated and a one of the reasons that is fueling the push to go bolder in some ways because the attempt in health care to work, within a bipartisan way, has been met mostly with brushback or silence on the republican side. so that is why a lot of people are saying let's not, that this is a fool's gold, let's come up with our plan that makes the most sense, and then move it to the country. >> i'm going to ask jim a quick question, but for the audience, we're going to take some questions from the audience, so think about what questions you might have for these three

health care experts. jim, i didn't really hear from chris or nera, the republican idea for how we move forward on health care. based on your opening comments then, it looks like on the political side in the campaign, it is going to be a negative campaign saying here is what the democrats are going to do. do you frame what their arguments are going to be on the tv? >> i think there is a narrow way that donald trump gets re-elected. but it's not an impossible way to get re-elected. and health care would be a part of it. the argument would go something like this. the economy's going fine. we're not at war. you know, we haven't invaded venezuela. or north korea. yet. but you know, we haven't. and boy, those democrats look really, really far left, especially on health care. that's the argument that they make, and they say like, you know, i don't like the tweets, i don't like the way he acts, i don't like his behavior, but the

sky didn't fall, and i'm worried about that gal or that guy who is the democratic nominee, they seem to have gone off the rails. and they'll use health care as one of the proof points. if they can. i don't think the republicans are going to have a plan that will be sellable to the american people. i can't remember the last time they had a health care plan that was really, that you could sell to the american people. they basically, they only win by scaring you about democrats. and by basically looking out there and saying well, the economy is going well enough, things are going okay. so i think that's their strategy. they will have a fig leaf plan,

some kind of a catastrophic type thing, and and maybe a few patches that they'll keep from the affordable care act, but i think it is basically trying to win this game by defining democrats as too far off the mainstream. >> i will say, i mean i think the challenge we have in this is that, and i, you know, i think we may agree on a lot of things on health care, but think one of the challenges we have in the primary with it is that republicans ran against barack obama as a socialist. even though he -- and i take the point you'd make, or imagine the point you would make, it is very different in a campaign when you have proof points or don't have proof points but i think what we may all experience or challenge in a primary, given they ran, mine the argument goes, whatever you say, they're going to say you're a socialist, and raising taxes on the middle class, and et cetera, et cetera. so regardless, you're going to get the attack.

so you should have a bold plan. that's a little bit the argument i think that's actually going on amongst candidates and you see it in the approaches of some candidates and the approaches of other candidates and i think these issues are basically all a way to talk about what the electoral path to victory is. and they will get debated as others will as well. >> let me ask you this. don't you think medicare extra is a bold plan? >> i would absolutely agree medicare extra is a bold plan. >> i read your plan. it is a bold plan. and i will do some bragging. there are ways, cost cap, and universal coverage, it is a bold man. >> yes. >> this are lots of bold, interesting, pragmatic, progressive, doable ways to get to universal coverage, and to cap costs, you've got a great idea, i think we've got a great idea, we build off of your great

idea. so i worry that in these debates, these ideas that we have are shunted off as not being really bold for something that i think really can't, has kind of a glass jar, medicare for all to me, like, you know, i understand why people like it, but i also feel like, you hit it with one blow and it is like mike tyson knocking you out. >> i hear that. i hear that and again, it is much more fun for the media to talk about the extraordinary differences between the parties.

but if you look at most of the candidates they're all embracing bold visions, but their actual execution i would tell you is much closer to your two approaches. many of them, when they ask question, what are the implications, maybe we could

phase, in maybe we could do this, maybe we could do a buy-in first. i guess i really counsel democrats not to play into this divisive dynamic, because my view is this will be taken care of, the primary, these members, elected leaders, they hear the context of what they can market and what they can't market. they're not going to be dumb. i think in the end of the day, we will find a democratic primary winner that is, that proposes a very bold vision that is something we all can be behind, and will not be as vulnerable as you fear. that's my view. >> i think it is going to be, i mean given the lawsuit, i think democrats will and should campaign on trump trying to take 20 million people's health care away. and raise costs for, and take

pre-existing conditions away. we did run a campaign, i shouldn't say we, democratic house members, democratic senate candidates, democratic governors, ran campaigns across the country on health care, and pre-existing conditioning. and had an argument that the republicans party wanted to take away protections and pre-existing condition, raise your health care costs and drop 20 million people of coverage, and truthfully, like health care people voted, people's views of the parties were a 20% advantage for democrats. and when people were voting on health care, they were voting for democrats. so i 100% agree with jim, that this is, and chris, that this has been an opening. and it is very simple. donald trump has tried to get

rid of the aca. tried to take people's health care away. and is trying to take protections of pre-existing conditions away. which are protections for over 100 million people. >> which by the way is the primary threat right now to health care. right? i mean we have a court case, it is real, it could occur, and it will be live throughout next year, most likely, and it will be part of the election cycle, and the media will play that as more real than the next debate on big health reform. so yes, i'm a little bit more confident that we'll be able to carry that off. >> i will call it and say they are sabotage, we are stability, security, and savings on health care. >> this you go. there's the political messaging. we've got time for one more question from the audience. and short of that, maybe we'll give each of you a question then from me. we touched on coverage a lot, and had a conversation on coverage and cost is a big issue and maybe one or two ideas on something that you think could be done on costs in this congress. >> this this congress? >> well, maybe the next congress. >> well, in this house? >> we could do this house. if you want like, i mean you just did mark up a prescription drug cost containment set of policies, it was unanimous, by unanimous vote, it was on this issue called create, and pay for delay, which eliminates barriers to competition.

which shows you that you can have a pathway. i will tell you, i wouldn't overpromise the impact of those policies. but they do illustrate the possibility to work collaboratively on that, and i would also also the issue of pay for, excuse me, surprise medical bills is another one. but and i would work on those two. i think you have a possibility to get something done, and pass and enact into law. i would also be a little bit more aggressive though on cost containment, particularly on drugs, because the truth is, that we're going to face a dynamic, i mean this might be not completely everyone agrees with this in this room, i don't know, but the future of pharmacological interventions will be single source drugs with little or no competition, and we can, we can eliminate barriers but this is no competition, this is no competition, and if

they're pricing the products too much, we're going to have to find different ways to intervene, and i would certainly, i know the speaker is working with you and others to look at creative ways to do that. >> i will be really quick. i would agree that pharma is a big challenge and if you actually look at what is increasing costs for everyone in the system, pharmaceutical costs are a driving force of that. it is not the only cost. but it is a driving force of that. and i do think pharma was a big issue in the midterm elections also. and it really crossed two issues. what you're paying in your health care costs but it was also a critique of the political system in washington in which we do seem to have a system that works pretty well for the companies, and less well for the consumers. we do live in a very upside down world, where the united states consumer is paying for both the national institutes of health, which are a big financial boon in some ways, a research boon, and financial boon, to the global pharmaceutical system, and experiencing the highest

costs as consumers. and i just don't think that's sustainable. and one of the rines why candidate trump used pharma as a way to differentiate himself from everyone else and i think we might need to recognize that candidates and president trump unite. >> all great suggestions. i would just add more value-based health care, pay for performance, and trying to institute out-of-pocket cost caps across the board no matter where you get your insurance, whether you get it from your employer, whether you get it from the exchange. >> well, great. i want to thank the panel and we can give chris and nera and greg a great round of applause. >> and let me go ahead and

introduce the next moderator. who is our chair emeritus jim himes from the great state of connecticut, jim, if you want to come up. >> thank you. thank you, everybody. it is a delight for me to see such a great turnout to this policy conference. we move now to presentations by members of the new democratic task forces, and i'll just tell you very quickly, a lot of the work, a lot of the policy work that happens with the new democrats happens through these task forces, looking back when i was chairman, just in the last congress, it was these task forces that developed the policy ideas, that ultimately found their way into legislation. so i'm delighted you are going to have a chance to hear from these three members. as well as by the way, provide feedback. part of the point of today is to make sure you have an opportunity as experts in a variety of different fields, to offer feedback, not just on the substance of what we're talking

about but, and i don't know if this has come up today but it is one of my personal bug-a-boos but on how we convey these ideas which are the right ideas and the good ideas but sometimes challenging to convey to the public in a political context because they're often technocratic ideas so one of the challenges we face in the new democratic coalition, those of us who migrate to the center, is how do we compete with messaging that in some cases is much more emotional, and much more black and white, and much more good/evil, so you're going to hear from some real subject matter experts today who do as good of a job as any in terms of conveying the ideas we have. we want to hear you both on those ideas how to best convey, so they take on the kind of political momentum that they deserve. let me start with a couple of introductions. they are going to come up here as a group and present for roughly three minutes each.

let me start with my friend denny heck of washington who organized and co-chaired the coalition's housing task force in the last congress, and is leading it again in this congress. he did wonderful work in diagnosing what the challenges are around our housing environment, in this country, in the last congress, and you i know now he is working very hard in coming up with the solutions. and i used to be an affordable housing guy and les, one of the ways to create opportunity is to make sure people can move to places of opportunity and of course that's a huge challenge today. denny, thanks for joining us. representative lizzy fletcher is new to the congress and the new democratic coalition but already making a big impact on a number of issues including trade because she serves as co-chair of the coalition's trade task force. i don't need to tell you that trade policy has always been a difficult subject, not just in the congress, but within the democratic caucus. and so we're delighted to have

lizzy here to talk about what she sees happening on that, in this context, on that task force. and then finally, bill foster, needs no real introduction, but he helped me organize the future of work task force in the last congress and continues to co-chair in this congress. a scientific and a businessman professionally and we're fortunate to have his intellect applied to this, probably one of the bigger of all of the problems we face in the coming decades. i'm excited to hear from each of these co-chair, for roughly three minutes, update on what it is they're thinking about and doing. and then we'll have an opportunity to, i hope for some discussion prior to moving on to the digital privacy panel. denny, let's start with you. >> well, thank you, jim. first i want to acknowledge i have two outstanding co-chairs of the house task force, ben

mcadams who of course was the mayor of salt lake county and worked a great deal in this space and katie hill, who was the executive director of a very large nonprofit. so what we're going to be doing is building on the work as jim indicated, that we conducted in the last two years. and the principle thesis, or conclusion of our work, is that prices and rents are rising faster than wages, and construction is not keeping up with demand. thus yielding approximately 1.5 million or more shortage in the housing space. this is a problem. this is a problem for households. this is a problem for america's economy. it is a problem for america's households and families, because the truth of the matter is, in the last 50 years, the single largest increase in household expenses is not health care, as you might conclude. it is housing. that's masked by those of us who are in the same house for a long period of time but in fact, in the last 50 years that's the largest increase. secondly home ownership is declining. that is a problem. home ownership is the number one way the average american builds

network and provides for the rye tirement security. it is a problem for the american economy because there is a huge multiplier effect of housing construction and we aren't just optimizing this in any way shape or form. we are holding back the growth of the economy. now, our conclusion, additionally, was that there are three or four reasons that this is happening. one is that zoning and land use restrictions are inhibiting the provision of housing adequate to meet demand. second is, construction financing, kind of fell off the table, after the great recession. and has never fully recovered. thirdly, we believe that there is a labor shortage, either now, or into the future, and it is not keeping up with demand. so this are a lot of reasons that we are getting into this problem. now, i'm one that happens to believe that we're entering a two-year period of time during which we are going to be able to have some serious policy discussions about creating more housing units. there's lots of stuff flying around. gse reform. the administration's made very clear they want to do gse

reform. efforts to help the homelessness. last week in the financial services committee on which jim and i sit, and bill, we passed a $13 billion massible moonshot in homelessness bill. this week we have hearings on rural housing. we will in this two year period of time have lots of conversations about infrastructure which you cannot have without bringing into it the issue of housing. and lastly, we may be very well revisiting the tax reform legislation that passed, several provisions of which actually hurts the creation of housing units. the state and local tax provision. limit, capping the value of your home. no longer making home equity loans tax deductible, the interest on them. lots of ways we might get back

to the issue of housing creation. so i'm optimistic. i think it is important and i'm excited because we're actually finally going to be taking this issue up in some degree reflecting the importance that is to all of us. >> great. >> thanks, jim. and thanks, denny. it is so interesting, one of the things, all of these task forces are interesting and of course i was listening because i'm in houston, the city of no zoning to hear about your conclusions of about no zoning but houston is a history with no zoning and is a city that is very dependent on trade, so i'm very excited to be co-chairing the trade task force and i too have co-chairs as well, representative ron k ine, rick larson and gregory meeks my co-chairs along with five other members on the task force, and of course, trade is a

big topic right now, certainly as we look at what is happen welcome the usmca and the tariffs, those are discussions that are constant, in my own district, and really kind of looking at the trump administration's effect on what has been kind of the order for a long time. and of course, we didn't get here by accident. we've had really seven decades of trade policy after world war two, that have led us to a position where we really have an international economic system that is framed around american institutions, priorities, and values, and right now, we're seeing a new reality in the trump administration, with protectionist trade strategy, as it unwinds our position in the global economy. so we believe that seeding our leadership in the global economy will negatively impact job, agriculture, manufacturing, and our economic and geopolitical standing for years to come. so we are very interested in crafting policy that maintains our position as a global leader.

and of course, the new dem coalition, even though i'm new to it, i know that the new dems have been really the center of gravity and leadership on trade for a long time. and that this is the group that people have come to, of both parties, for policy ideas, looking at trade issues, and certainly, where i'm from, i think it is a great place for working together, across the aisles, and i can think of no more bipartisan issue in my district right now than the threat of not being able to import avocados in houston. you can make sure that democrats and republicans agree that we all want guacamole. so it is a great opportunity, i think, for all of us to work together, and to address these. but the biggest issue is that the task force is committed to focusing on, is maintaining our position as a global leader, and supporting smart trade policy that benefits american workers, businesses, farmers, and consumers, learning the lessons from past trade deals, and making sure that we are updating, outdated agreements, and that we are strengthening our global relationships, and that we're promoting a competitive work force. and those things really need to be our priorities. at the same time, we're very focused on reining in the tariffs.

that is something that i hear about more than just about anything when i go home and talk to folks in the district that there is a huge impact from the tariffs, so trying to come up approaches that will rein in some of the unilateral actions that the administration has been taking in terms of tariff policy and really continuing to set the rules for the global economy and making sure that we're championing the economy of the future. >> well, thank you, jim, for your introduction, and thank you also for your work as the chair of the new dems last congress, to bring the future work to the forefront of the discussion and showcase the leadership of the new democratic coalition on this issue. i'm excited that we're going to be building on the work from last year. including our economic opportunity agenda, a future that works, together with my three other co-chairs, reps lisa blunt rochester, haily stevens and chris papas and our 17 additional task force members which is maybe an indication of how this issue has moved to the forefront.

we live in a period of innovation and economic disruption that's created enormous opportunities for some. but a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety for others. the future of work and technological job displacement has been gone if sort of a fringe issue for few of us to one of a plain stream issue that is on the lips of virtually every presidential candidate. we often discuss the future of work and that future is happening now. we are her experiencing the pressures and the changing nature of work in our daily lives. we see the economic strain from automation, globalization, the widening skills and opportunity gap, and outdated institutions and regulation, and uneven economic opportunity. but automation and artificial intelligence are rapidly rising to the top of the list. we're starting to see the first mass deployments of ai and robotics and food service. hospitality industry. health care. and financial services. and many other areas.

job displacement is moving rapidly up market as well. that's one of the things we're going to be looking at this session of congress. it is no secret that technology is advancing at a rate far, that is far outpaced congress's ability to keep up just in the last two years, the number of adversarial networks to have photo realistic avatars, video you cannot tell from a human has allowed companies to deploy photo realistic avatars for people with financial advice but also allowed people to, but also allowed people to develop deep fakes that threaten to disrupt our politics. the way we interact with the world today will be unrecognizable for many of us who have begun our careers and it is not going to slow down. through the future of work task force, but democrat new

determines have explored ways to expand our educational opportunities and reform hiring practices to shows the skills and opportunity gaps and make learning a lifelong enterprise. we also explored ways to expand and modernize the social safety net to catch all workers and help them adapt to the changing nature of work. and we are keenly interested in exploring options to empower workers and spur innovation and entrepreneurship. as new dems, our members are uniquely positioned to tackle this problem. this congress, amongst the future of work co-chairs as well, we have a restaurant entrepreneur, the former delaware secretary hhs, and obama administration alum who helped save the auto industry and ran a work force development initiative and bringing under the rear, a stage lighting manufacturer and ph.d. physicist. we represent districts and accompanying large cities and suburbs and rural areas, former manufacturing boom towns. our constituents are on the front lines of changing nature of work and to tackle this problem we are going to need to bring everyone to the cage, labor, business community,

educators and colleges across the aisle, to search for solution and to seize the opportunity from change, rather than to allow it to flatten us. it is an important thing. and i'm happy that, to be one of the co-chairs leading the work on it. thank you. >> bill, thank you. and because my colleagues are as disciplined as they, are it is four to five minutes before we start the privacy panel, and this isn't actually on the agenda but i feel very strongly about it. in the house, requesting permission to do one minute speech, the chair will now entertain feedback, thoughts, ideas, questions, that don't go longer than 45 seconds. got a few minutes before the privacy panel. yes, in the back. >> first off, thank you for your leadership on trade and specifically on the issue of rolling back tariffs. i think i speak for most folks and saying we really appreciate it. as far as the overlooking trade

agenda, we get the white house back, do you think this is any potential for new trade agreements that include aspects like exporting green policies abroad, helping lock in environmental protections in other countries? >> well, i do think that, that's something that we will talk about on the task force, and what sort of, right now, there is a lot of focus on what is currently happening and the rollback but looking forward, i do think with the united states to be positioned as a net exporter of energy, and of course, being from houston, and from texas, i'm keenly aware of that. but understand that our trade agreements have the potential to really have environment impacts and encourage policies and practices and bring us in line with the rest of the planet and the paris climate accord, there are a lot of things that we can and should be doing to look and how to make sure that our energy future is something we are also

sharing those value through our trade agreements. >> other feedback, question, comments? two minutes before the privacy panel. okay. people need to get some coffee. nothing else? okay. we will move on. i will thank the task force. thank you very much. and as you guys go down, i will welcome to the stage, the moderator, for our privacy panel, my good friend and colleague susan dell benny, there is probably nobody in the coalition better equipped to moderate this subject of digital privacy, susan as many of you know, had an extensive career with a large technology company, and since she has come to washington, has really spent a lot of time about, working to find that balance between protect can the privacy rights of individuals, and of course, allowing for an innovative digital future. so susan, welcome to the stage. ♪

>> we need a washington state music representation. so thank you, jim. thanks everyone. we are starting early. i'm so excited. i want to ask my panelists, will come up, and take a seat. and i want to really talk about how important i think it is for us to talk about digital privacy, data privacy, today. it is a concern that americans face every day. we know we've seen people's expectations for privacy really be impacted by what companies have decided to do, from what has happened with facebook and cambridge analytica, all the way through people are really concerned about what happens to their data, and how they get to be in charge of it. and so this is a critical moment we're facing. this is a global issue. something that we've seen others kind of start to take a lead on, with the general data protection regulation in europe, gdpr. but we need to be moving here, in the united states, on policy. i recently introduced the

information transparency and personal data control act. really to make sure that we have policy that gives people control over their most sensitive information. and making sure also that we have an enforcement mechanism in the u.s. government for enforcing those rules. and under my legislation, privacy would be the default. but we also need to be a leader from a federal standpoint, in the global community, so that we are really helping drive global standards. and if we don't figure out kind of what our policy is going to be, it is going to be harder for us to set those global standards. so we are an undeniable leader in technology innovation and we should be on policy as well. so that's why i think this conversation is so important, and so timely right now. so first, i'd like to briefly introduce our panelists. i will go slightly out of order,

since we have you set up this way arron cooper, arron serves a the vice president of global policy, the software alliance, in his role, he leads bsa's global policy team and contributes to the advancement of bsa member policies, around the world that affect the development of emerging policies including data privacy, cyber security, intellectual property and trade. mr. cooper joined bsa in february 2016 as vice president of strategic policy initiatives. he previously served as the chief counsel for intellectual property and anti-trust law. for chairman patrick leahy, on the u.s. senate judiciary committee. and most recently, mr. cooper was of counsel at covington and burling. where he provided strategic counseling and policy advice on a broad range of technology issues. he has testified before congress and is a frequent speaker on data privacy and security, intellectual property, trade, and other issues important to the software industry. and mr. cooper, thank you for being here with us today next, right here on my left is gigi

sewn, distinguished fellow at georgetown law institute for law and policy, and benton senior fellow. she is one of the nation's leading public advocates for open, affordable and democratic communications networks. for 30 years, gigi has worked across the country to defend and preserve the fundamental competition and innovative policies that have made broadband internet access more ubiquitous, competitive, affordable, open, and protective for user privacy. most recently, she was on open society foundations leadership and government fellow, and a mosilla fellow. >> from 2013 to 2016, she was counselor to the former chairman of the fcc, tom wheeler. she advised the chairman on a wide range of issues of internet, telecommunication and

media, representing the chairman and the fcc in a variety of public forums around the country as well as serving as the primary liaison between the chairman's office and outside stakeholders so thank you you for being with us here today. >> and daniel castro, who is vice president of the information technology and innovation foundation. known as itif. and director of itif's center for data innovation. mr. kester writes and speaks on a variety of issues related to information technology and net policy including privacy, security, intellectual property, internet governance, e-government and accessibility for people with disabilities. in 2013, mr. castro was named to fed scoop's list of the top 25 most influential people under 40, in government and tech. and in 2015, u.s. secretary of commerce ken pritzker appointed cass stroh to the commerce data advisory council. castro previously worked as an

i.t. analyst as the government accountability office where he audited i.t. security and management controls at various government agencies. in addition, m castro was a visiting scientist at the software engineers institute in pittsburgh, pennsylvania, where he developed virtual training simulations to provide clients with hands-on training of the latest information security tools. thank you for being here us with today, daniel. so with such knowledgeable panelists, i know this will be interesting conversation. and we have a lot of work to do so let me kick it off with you aaron, what protections do you think need to be included in a federal privacy law? >> well, first of all, thank you very much for having me and i apologize my ceo, victoria espinosa was wanting to be here, she had a family emergency so i appreciate you taking me as a

substitute. we, if the software industry's perspective, we think it is really important, that this be a strong comprehensive federal privacy law that's clear, that's enforceable, and that helps regain customer trust. i think it has to be strong enough that it is worthy of a national standard, and i think it is important that the debate around federal privacy law not be about pre-emption but be about establishing the right level of privacy protection across the country. thank you for your legislation, which i think starts that dialogue in a really positive, constructive, direction. i think what you said at the outset here today, about making sure that the u.s. is taking a

leadership position on privacy is really important. and your legislation sets that out. we think that there are three things that are really important for federal privacy legislation. first of all, it is important that consumers have the right to know what data is being collected about them, and they have the right to control it. that begins with companies, providing consumers with information about what categories of information is being collected. who it is being shared with, how it is being used, so that consumers can then have real effective control over how that data is used, and they can say no when they don't want that to be used. it also means that in some areas, such as financial

information, medical information, it might be appropriate to have opt-in consent as your legislation does and i think that is a really important aspect as well. and third, it means that customers have a federal right to access their data, to correct their data, to delete their data, to get a copy of their data, and i think that's, those are important customer rights that should be set at the federal level. second, it means that there need to be strong obligations on companies. companies need to act responsibly. they need to safeguard against privacy risks. that includes data breach, it includes inappropriate use of data, data being used for inappropriate purposes. and we think it is important that congress provide clarity about what companies obligations are, had is a distinction between controlling data and processing data. your legislation sets that out. as different standards, and it

and i also want to say we agree on an awful lot and that is a pretty good start when you have industry and public policy folks agreeing. i think the 2016 fcc broadband privacy rules provide a really good template. these rules were adopted toward the end of 2016. the administration changed. congress repealed the rules under the congressional review act. it is quite unfortunate. and barely, by the way. by only five votes in the house. and people were really outraged about that. even though the rules had never gone into effect. because it was the first aggressive, now, it would have just applied to internet service providers bit i think the template could apply across the board around not only to technology companies but companies of all kinds and people were outraged because this is a sort of thought that people don't care about their privacy. and and in fact, polls show the opposite. people care deeply about their

privacy. they just don't know how to protect it. so aaron used a word, control. and i think consumer control has got to be sort of the primary part of any bill that's out there. so i agree with aaron 100%. consumers should be able to having a ses to all of the information that's collected about them, that is shared with other, and the ability to edit and delete it. and in addition, companies that collect this information should have an affirmative duty to tell consumers through very, very clear and persistent notice what they collect, and who they share it with, and what's done with their data. you know, there's starting to be a, you know, a negative about a notice and con segment agreement. i'm not quite sure i understand.

it it is a little bit paternalistic, people can't protect their own data so we need to ban certain uses of data. i don't think i'm there yet and certainly the fcc rules did not do that. they had a very similar structure to what your bill does, and thank you for that by the way. where if it is sensitive information and you had even a longer list than we had at the fcc, then it is opt-in and for other things it is opt-out. and i still believe that if you give people clear notice, and real transparency about what is being collected, and give them the opportunity, a real opportunity, meaningful opportunity to opt out, if they want to, then they should have that choice. i don't think we necessarily need to ban certain kinds of collection and use of data, so long as people have meaningful choice. i also think it is important that, take it our leave it deals need to be prohibited. so in other words, since i know a lot about telecom, your internet service provider shouldn't be able to say to you, well, either you give me access to all your data and let me allow, allow me to do whatever i want to do with it or you can't have my service. that should be prohibited, i think. i think that's important. second, aaron mentioned security. that's the second part.

it needs to be an affirmative duty that those who that hold data protect it. and sanders shot in the senate has a duet yeah of care building which i think is very, very interesting and deserves a good look at. those that hold data should only use data for as much as they need it. something called data minimization. and data retention needs to be limited as well. of course, it is going to be different based on context. the example i like to use is the starwood preferred data breach where starwood kept the passport numbers of people who had long left their hotel, there's got to be some sort of limit based on context for data retention. you don't have to keep that kind of data forever. and it just increases the chances that it will be used in the wrong way. this also needs to be data breach notification. right? so if there is a major data breach, consumers need to know about it and in certain instances law enforcement needs to know about it as well. finally, this is something that is also in sandra shots' bill, to the extent an entity is selling data to data brokers or sharing in some way, the responsibilities of the

affirmative duty of care need to go to those third parties as well. and i can give examples of, that but i will hold for now. finally, accountability. so pre-emption obviously is a big issue. i think you have to be careful, if the pre-emption is too broad, then you're going to be pre-empting state laws that, you know, protect the privacy with regard to medical personnel, accountants, and insurance companies, and so i think pre-emption really has to be only for those laws that really conflict with the federal law. secondly, there needs to be some sort of private redress for harms that are done if data is misused. and thirdly, again, i will agree with aaron, i like the idea of empowering the ftc with rule making authority and other things they need to enforce these rules because section five is not good enough. it is not clear enough. it is constantly challenged in

the courts. this is the law part of the federal trade commission act that prohibits unfair or deceptive trade practices. that's what the ftc has been using over the years to try to protect people's privacy and every time they try to do something strong, it gets taken to court. so really clear rule making authority for the ftc i think is real i had important. >> thank you. thanks for that feedback. we talked about consumers, about federal policy, and daniel, for you, i want to kind of get your feeling of how you think we need to look at both protecting consumers' privacy, and innovation, and how we balance those, or is it a question of balance, how we make sure we do a good job at both? >> a great question. and thanks so much for having me here and your leadership on this issue. i think the innovation question is sort of critical, because if you ask how can you protect consumer privacy, that question itself is actually really easy. you just prohibit data collection. you prohibit data sharing. we know how to do. that the question is how can you do it in a way that doesn't impact all of the innovation that we're seeing around data and that's where it gets really hard and it gets hard for a few reasons.

first of all, it is difficult because a lot of times we're talking about privacy, we're often thinking about this in the digital space. and we're thinking about facebook and google, and we talk about privacy legislation, this actually impacts every business in america. this impacts the grocery stores. it affects the local florist. it affects your day care provider. it affects your home real estate agent. all of these people that really depend on data. and their livelihood depends on access to data. and so we have to think about what the impact of regulation and compliance with all of this regulation will be on the small businesses, the medium businesses, and the large

businesses, in every sector of the economy. second, this really matters, because we actually want to encourage data sharing. so much of the innovation we've seen over the last decade has been from data sharing. and even when you ask consumers today, are you willing to share sensitive information like bio metric and location data, we did a survey in december asking consumers about this, the majority were willing to share under certain conditions. they wanted to have really good navigation services. they wanted to be able to log in quickly to their accounts using bio metrics. they saw the advantages of these technologies and we can't have privacy rules that make it too difficult for them and companies shy away from them. the third thing is we have to recognize any regulations on privacy in the space will have a significant impact on the digital economy. especially the advertising ecosystem that we see for the internet. and when you ask consumers again, do you want privacy, everyone says yes. if you ask them, are you willing to pay for privacy. everyone says no. they don't want to pay for privacy. they don't want to have any free service that is currently free, something they have to pay for in the future. they don't want to see more ads. if a company starts showing more

ads because ads are more less effective. they don't want to see less relevant ads. this he want the services today but more privacy guarantees. and a delicate balancing act for congress moving forward. i think three things, one can we streamline regulations to empower consumers and right now we have over a dozen privacy laws and it is confusing for businesses and consumers. if you try to ask the consumer, how does the federal government protect your data today, they can't name half of those privacy laws and that's a problem. it is a problem because those privacy laws all work differently. and so it is very hard, you know, one way requires a paper notice to be sent out every year. another law requires data to be protected a certain way and data a certain way. and it is really hard for companies to comply with. the second issue is we should get temperatures to really focus on protecting the most sensitive data, the data that people are really concerned about, and that when it is released, actual i

had harms consumers. so that can be, you know, very personal information, that you just want private, like your health information, it could be information that can cause financial fraud, like your bank information, or any kind of identifiers that can in used to open accounts. we need to make sure that companies are focused on securing that data and not wasting their time securing what is your favorite type of shoe, other do you like to watch football games on the weekend, and you're seeing ads for that. that's not where companies should be focused. and the third is of course, getting to strengthen enforcement and this is where i think we all agree that this is something that your bill does great and that we want to see more of. we want to see the ftc empowered to make more rule making and empowered to go after any bad actors in these narrow areas. >> thanks. i think this is part of the challenge of addressing this issue, is the world keeps changing and we aren't necessarily quick when it comes to policy. so making sure that there is policy in place that is current and maybe forward-looking, to make sure that there is a good foundation that can be built upon, is going to be very

important. so kind of for each of you, whoever wants to answer, what are the, what are the next steps that we think we need to take to get policy in place, federal policy in place, and what are some of the challenges you think that we face? >> well, i'll start with an optimistic note. we probably agree for 90%. the other 10% we could probably figure out and if we can do that from those two perspectives then i'm confidence that this is not need to be a partisan issue. >> that is one of the interesting things. it is complicated but not necessarily partisan. >> it is also, i think, a good

reason for optimism, it dunoesn matter if it is an election year or not, everybody cares about privacy. i think building trust within the try and public interest i think building trust within industry and public interest and capitol hill can really all come around trying to make sure we have strong privacy protections and let innovation continue. >> we're veterans of the copy right wars. i feel old. one of the things they did well at the time is they brought stakeholders in to have conversations about what should be in legislation. i don't think i've seen that happening here. i know that, you know, there are like groups like center for democracy and technology and mild organization of public knowledge or having their own kind of separate confab. sometimes just ngo community, sometimes with industry

included. i do think, you know, if the hill actually brought folks together, you could start to hammer out these things. i agree with aaron 100%, i think the basic, the type of stuff we talked about, control, security, enforcement, accountability, everybody agrees upon, right? it's about getting the details. the devil is always in the details. it's something perhaps you might think about, just bringing in the various parties and see if we can hammer out an agreement. we want to be a leader but, boy, there should be a comprehensive bill by now that's a consensus bill. perhaps it will be your bill. one can only hope. but you know, it seems to me it's tape so long with all the concerns and all the many hearings last year and this year, we still don't have a bill that's kind of moving forward with bipartisan consensus, i think it's pastime. >> i agree. >> i was going to say, one of the things i think is really interesting is we're trying to pass federal privacy legislation right after europe has already

passed their massive general data protection regulation, their big privacy framework, that they went through this big process of let's bring everybody together in the very european tradition of getting the stakeholders in the room and going through the review process. what they came up with is really bad. they are recognizing it hasn't worked well. it's a really good lesson for the united states and how we can do better, can we show leadership in this area. we've led the world in the digital economy for two decades and we did it through light touch regulation. we've done it through smart regulation. we've done it through focused enforcement. we've also recognized we can do it better the next time. it's our chance to do it better the next time and not copy europe. there's big lessons from europe. one, there was a massive

compliance cost. we saw upward $150 billion global for companies that were just trying to figure out how to deal with this law. they are still trying to figure out how to deal with the law. even though they responsibility billions they are spending billions to comply with it. that's one problem. the second is locked in with the incumbent. a lot of people thought privacy would increase competition in the space. that would be good for consumers. it turned out because of the high cost of compliance, coupled with the fact, that you know, you saw these companies that basically said not only can we not afford to comply, we had to block out consumers sometimes. you see companies in the united states saying if you're a european consumer, you can't access their website anymore because we don't want to deal with the regulations. you've seen the cost to consumers. third, there's all these intended consequences. because of the fact the policymakers at the time, even though the bill was passed this past year, they started writing it three years ago.

three years ago they weren't thinking about artificial intelligence, blockchain. it turns out they were things they should have been thinking about. they passed a law with certain provisions that said you have to be able to delete something, which is a great provision in theory. turns out in blockchain that's a permanent record. you can't delete things very easily. they created this law that was fundamentally incompatible with emerging technology. they recognize with artificial intelligence and machine learning, you want large data sets to learn from them. they released wait a second. they don't have large access to data sets, they held back, the core economy. on the u.s. side, we can look at what europe did and say there's a lot of good lessons about how to not make those mistakes, what worked well in the united states as we move forward with strong consumer friendly and regulation friendly legislation. >> doesn't dpr become a global standard in the absence of any leadership on this issue? >> that's a huge problem. in the sense there's this vacuum, other countries look to europe. they say europe seems to be doing something in this space and the united states doesn't do anything so we're going to copy these rules. one of the brilliant policy

decisions europe had with the gdpr, they developed something called inadequacy requirement. you are not allowed to send data to the another country unless it meets the same standards we have here. it's a way of basically forcing their laws on the rest of the world. that's something that's hugely problematic from the u.s. perspective and the u.s. should be pushing back on it saying, wait a second, this is bad for our consumers and bad for our companies. we believe in privacy, too, but we think there's a better way to do it and let's show you how to do it. >> japan just had an adequacy decision from the eu. they are creating a big data trading area. that's another place where without privacy policy on our side, it's harder for us to be engaged there. but also we have in the absence of federal legislation, we also have states moving forward.

california, my home state of washington. what do you see -- you talked about this a little bit about states moving forward. but also a need for federal law so that people understand in businesses and consumers understand what's happening versus 50 different policies. >> i'm less uncomfortable he with the notion of states having their own privacy laws. as i mentioned before in certain instances, when it comes to other professionals, there are state privacy laws. that's why i do emphasize, you know, if there is to be a preemption, as your bill has the provision, you've got to be careful you don't wipe out every single state privacy law that is been out there. i think that could be a recipe for disaster for consumers. however, i do think it's important to make sure that whatever federal privacy law we

come up with, that state laws don't conflict with it. i think that's really, really important. look, companies have 50 different tax -- state tax laws. they deal with the patchwork. but certainly what you don't want are state laws that undermine what we eventually pass. if i could just make one other comment about some of the stuff dan said, smart stuff you said. i do think the lack of flexibility in the gdpr demonstrates why you've got to give ftc rule making authority. you get the expert agency, even though they don't move quickly, they can be more nimble catching their rules up to changes in technology and changes in the economy. >> let me just pick up a little bit on the data issue. it's important to make sure if you're a consumer in the state of washington or in california or in new jersey where i'm from, you should have essentially the same rights. i think that's really important. the potential for conflict of laws is an important issue and

for confusion. both for businesses, small bits businesses with regulatory compliance matters, for consumers, making sure they know what their clear rights are. think about the data retention issue that gigi was talking about at the beginning. if you have one state that requires certain data to be retained and another that says it's not allowed to be retained, it's probably not a great system for consumers or businesses. i think instead of talking about federal legislation in terms of preemption, i think we should be looking at it from another direction. we should be establishing, congress should be establishing the high standard for customer privacy protection and control. a lot of the rights that are in the gdpr come from a u.s.-led process oecd, the right user

controls that we should permit. of course different jurisdictions would make sense, a different way of implementing that. i think making sure we have good strong consumer controls at the federal level is important. >> if i can just chime in, i think one of the interesting lessons from the gdpr, the motivation for gdpr wasn't privacy, 20 members states with different privacy laws. it was basically the patchwork we had here. they said, wait a second, this isn't working well for digital. that's why it's so important to emphasize. a lot have to deal with a lot of states. if you're a retailer in 50 different states, you have to deal with 50 different state laws. digit tal economy, what's innovative and powerful you can scale up. create one idea, put it on the

website, and you can serve the world. but that runs into problem when you can't serve the entire united states because you have to go and change how you work in every different state. that's where i think the offline rules of the past, you have 50 different state laws, that was acceptable. but in the digital space, that really doesn't work. you see this problem come up again and again, especially in a lot of these emerging areas where you see new businesses, for example, businesses trying to provide, uno, hr services. they realize they can't scale because there's all these state-based rules that prevent them from scaling. that's the challenge we see in the digital economy today. that's where congress and fkc and state lawmakers should be, working on erasing those barriers. that's how we're going to get more innovation in this country, more jobs, better opportunities for consumers. >> i helped co-found digit tal trade caucus, because when we talk about trade, talked about it a little earlier, when we talk about trade, we forget the issues of digital trade. these are newer issues.

but this really is a digital trade issue, how we deal with privacy. you talked about it with gdpr. you talk about a federal policy here but do you think this is also something we've got to think about with respect to trade policy going forward. >> i definitely do. i think digit tal trade caucus has been a really good way of communicating the importance. trade with japan, u.s. negotiating a free trade agreement with japan. we think one of the things that should be easy and on the table is makings sure digital trade is included, data can flow through the countries freely. two countries that value innovation, value digital trade, making sure that there's a strong digital trade chapter there i think is really important. >> i'm going to open it up for questions in just a second just to give folks a chance to think about questions they might want to ask for our panel. one of the things i talk about in my legislation is making sure consumers know for our purposes, plain english, what's happening. how do you think we do a good job of explaining consumers what will happen to their data and making sure when they check a box they really understand.

how do we make sure that we have a strong -- we have strong policy for consumers there? >> look, i think the duty has got to be on the companies. again, this is where the enforcement comes in. if the law is not enforceable, you're going to have the situation you have now, where basically, you know, some of the top privacy experts in this town and this country couldn't figure out and opt out of data collection and facebook. so that's just not acceptable. so we talked -- at the ftc we talked about clear, persistent notice. you used -- i can't recite the exact words, affirmative, clear, that sort of thing. you let the ftc, rule making fill in the blanks and have strong enforcement. but it's got to be with the guidance of rules. it's got to be on the companies to make sure that consumers actually know what they are doing. i would also, you know, sort of throw out a challenge to my friends in the privacy community that it's also their duty to

teach consumers how to protect their privacy. let's have tool kits. i'm on the board of electronic frontier foundation. i believe they actually have a toolkit that shows people how to protect their privacy. the mozilla foundation where i used to have a fellowship -- i'm very good at collecting fellowships, by the way. i'm a professional fellow. has a data detox kit. it says so in plain english. it should be on the companies. we have a non ngo working on privacy and they have a duty to educate consumers about privacy. >> at the end of the day it's not consumer control if the consumer doesn't know what it is they are signing up for. >> i think one of the challenges for companies in this space is they are often caught between two competing requirements. one, to be clear and transparent to consumers. two, to be comprehensive in details data arrangements. the reality is, a lot of companies are doing a lot of

different things with data. they are not necessarily bad things. but they are doing a lot of things and trying to detail that at one page is really difficult. what i really like about your legislation, it lays out specific guidelines for how the ftc should be setting rules for telling companies how they can be transparent. and then companies have guidelines to follow. that's what they need. i think most companies want to do the right thing if they can. what they don't want to do is tried to do the right thing and get in trouble for doing, which is the challenge there right now. >> questions? we have a quiet crowd today. yes. right back there. . inaudible question. yeah. i call it notice of consent, notice of choice.

i guess it's pretty much the same thing. i think the main critique, consumers -- companies will make it difference to exercise that choice, as i discussed before. i think that's why having, you know, clear roles and having enforcement might change that. i think that's the main critique. its ineffective because people don't exercise their rights. again, at a certain point, you know, there's got to be a little bit of personal responsibility there. obviously if the companies make it difficult then you can't do it. the alternative that i've seen is just, you know -- this is a viable alternative, a reasonable alternative, you no, i just haven't quite endorsed it yet is

the idea these are the things we never want to happen. so the data collector can never collect, the company can never collect such data. so one of the examples is geo location data. but the problem is if you're a cell phone company, a mobile company, you're going to need that if somebody wants to make a 911 call. you want public safety to be able to find you. so i worry about flat-out banning collection of certain data entirely, because there may be a use somewhere that, a, is necessary to provide the service. in fact, i don't think there should be any notice of consent. if you're the cable company, they have got to have the name and address. there's certain categories if that's what you need to provide the service, i don't think you need consent. i also think that banning certain categories of data from usage forever i think could be a pretty inflexible way of dealing with the problem.

if you make a broad category, like your bill does, we did the fcc opt in, then, you know, this the sensitive stuff that you're not likely to opt into. so you're protected. i worry about flat-out bans on collection. >> we also should work on kind of the basics of a warrant standard for digital information. strong bipartisan make sure warrant standard just like you would for a piece of paper in your file drawer. not all digital information is subject to that same warrant standard and we could update laws there, too, that could be helpful. >> yes, definitely. >> i was going to say, if i could give a specific example of how europe got that exactly wrong, europe passed a privacy law focused specifically on automatic notifications. the idea is when your car is in an accident what data is sent to emergency responders so they would be able to respond

quickly. we have location information, have some other information. they basically looked at this information. there's all these different data points, we're only going to allow this set. a year later there was some really interesting studies around the different data points in the car and the types of predictions they could make about the types of injuries and accident victim might have. it turned out that some of the data points they prohibited from being collected were the ones they would actually need to be able to respond in a more timely way to say this person has this type of injury. send that type of emt to the scene. i think that's the kind of risk we have especially in this fast moving environment where there's a lot of data we don't basically yet know it's value. we know it might have value. so we're still in the space, i think, where we want to say allow data to be collected. make sure consumers have choice, know what's happening, they can opt out of it in they want to.

allow data to be collected, allow exploration around data. maybe 10, 15 years down the line, there's this huge swath of data nobody needs. maybe then we say we have the rules, but right now i think it's way too early. >> other questions? >> i could just clarify, i do think forceps tiff information for your bill should be opt in. again, pretty broad, and then everything else opt out. but the unintended consequences, i think dan gave a great example, are pretty clear. >> then we have the work to make sure we define sensitive information clearly. >> when you start talking about being able to access, view, edit, potentially delete your information, you're immediately faced with the information of how you authenticate yourself to know it is really you and not someone impersonating and stealing your information. other countries are well ahead of the united states. companies like estonia, korea and so on. in the absence of that, industry groups are coming together like better identity coalition and so on. but there is an essential

government role in this. i was wondering what your attitude or thoughts on the way forward of the u.s. provide secure digital id to citizens that want one. >> if i can take that. we've done a lot of work looking at electronic ids globally and the reasons countries -- i even had -- anyone can become digital estonian, 100 euros down at the embassy on dupont. i recommend you do it. it's powerful, have you a way to securely identify yourself online. united states has only slightly funding trust identity for cyberspace. we need to do so much more in that space. this is an area of privacy legislation where we're kind of not focusing on some of the right problems. if we focus on let's say social security numbers and replacing it with a secure digital id, that would be a huge step forward and getting rid of fraud. if there is a data breach, it doesn't matter anymore.

doesn't matter if they know my social security, my date of birth. weather watch can solve so many problems going down that route. some other issues we're concerned about, strengthen civil rights law, that gets to concerns of discrimination people are concerned about. i think we can tackle concerns about data privacy and data breach by getting to the heart of the problem. government is going to have to lead there. you can't do that with industry alone. >> i think you're also right. at the beginning of the question talk about what consumer controls should be. we have to be careful how they apply. we agree there needs to be exceptions for the first amendment, identity control. there need to be exceptions for cyber security purposes. with the appropriately tailored exceptions and those consumer control rights work really well. on the identification and authentication piece, i think it's also important that u.s. industry does have some of the best authentication tools out

there. i think we're still trying to figure out how do we make them all work together. >> well, thank you. we're just finishing -- are there any other questions? we could probably do one more quick one. yeah. >> just real quick, thank you guys. i had a real quick question about, it's interesting for me to think about this problem without thinking about big five. last year big five made $150 billion off consumer data. how do you all feel about working with them. frankly as a tech entrepreneur that stifles innovation to create a better version of facebook or linkedin or apple. how do we think about data portability in this situation and working with the big if i have to make data portability front and center issue. >> i love it. i didn't talk about it because to me it's more a competition issue than privacy issue,

although it obviously crosses bounds. the big five are not monolithic, neither is the tech industry. that's really, really important. there's really maybe two, three companies whose entire business model is based on selling ads. microsoft and amazon have a very different take -- i'm not sure who you're including in the big five, i'm just guessing. a very, very different take on privacy than perhaps google and facebook and maybe throw amazon in there as well. look, i think we could bring two or three of those companies to the table around all the principles that we just talked about. maybe now you saw mark zuckerberg put out a piece in the post that got mixed reviews. i thought it was a good, thoughtful -- it pushed them firth than where they have been before, particularly on data portability. the issue with data portability is how do you allow consumers to port their data in a way that -- in a read/write way.

not an xcel spreadsheet. i think those five companies could figure out a way i could take my data with me to competitors if i want. >> to be quick, we represent basically enterprise software community, microsoft, apple. the ability -- we think the ability to be able to get your data and move it somewhere else is something that should be -- it should be a right. part privacy, part competition. increasingly our industry is about inner operability. increasingly you'll see most of those companies move towards a place where they want to be able to share data provided the consumers know about how the data would be shared and ported, consumer right.

>> i can just end with saying i am a huge proponent of data portability. i think we should focus on sectors like banking where there's clear value to consumers. also flip side. data portability was the cause of the cambridge analytica problem. that was the action. we have to make sure it's done in a way i don't think we're going to regret later. i think focusing on those areas like banking or other areas where we can have a defined set of data and clear competitive value is how we move forward. >> we have gone over our time, so i want to ask you to please join me in thanking our panelists today. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. >> and i get the honor of introducing kathleen rice, who is part of our new dem leadership team from new york here to moderate our next panel. >> thank you so much, susan.

let's give a great hand to susan and the wonderful panel we just had up here. so i am kathleen rice, i represent fourth congressional district in new york and i'm incredibly to be part of the new dem leadership team. i am going to be introducing three other new dem members within the coalition to talk about our work on national to talk about national security, infrastructure, if the panel wants to come up now. first we have to my far left representative brad schneider, co-chairing coalition national security task force this congress. new democrats have long been strong advocates of tough and smart national security strategy and brad is going to tell you what we have planned this year. next to brad we have

representative darren soto, who is becoming a leading voice in the coalition and congress on technology issue. he's co-chairing the technology task force and he's going to tell you some areas of focus for the coalition. to my immediate left we have representative slotkin, one of our fabulous new members of congress. new to the coalition but already making an exact on many issues including infrastructure, where she serves as co-chair of the coalition's infrastructure task force. there are a few issues where president trump and congress are in alignment and infrastructure is one of them. so alisa is going to share with us how new dems are approaching the discussion. so let's start first with brad to give us an overview of the

national security task force. >> thanks, kathleen. welcome, everybody, to the new dem conference. either an honor to be here. the new dem task force. i'm one of four co-chairs, brian boyle, anthony brown and abigail spam berger, eight other members on the task force. how do we make sure we keep our message and focus front and center on the issue of protecting united states strategic interest, national interest around the world and keeping people safe. what we've seen from this administration is a lot of talk. a lot of strong talk, embrace of strong men as well. but the actions have been very different. in particular what we've been seeing across the board is diminishing of capabilities. i think this is true if you look at what's happened to the state department. our retrenching from supporting u.s. aid efforts around the globe as well as pulling back from our alliances and coalitions. particularly the conversation and threats against nato make a perfect example. other institutions. what we're looking for or what we see from the administration is a strategy that is at best rudderless. not real clear where we're

going. at worst, what we've seen is a strategy that is against our own national interest. this is a grave concern. it's a ceding of american leadership. it's contrary to what new dems would say are our interest, values, security goals. here in new dems, we're more than ready to step forward and rise up to this challenge. in particular what you see among the new dems is a group that brings a diversity of perspective, a broad range of expertise. in fact, within the new dems we have experience on the committees of jurisdiction on national security. we have veterans of our armed services of the different branches as well as national security organizations. it's that we're looking to bring forward to put together a statement of strategy that defines our interest, lays out our strategic goals and develops a plan to move us forward. i think that's what we're looking for from this group that we'll deal with, not just expanding and strengthening our international relationships. but from the standpoint of congress, making sure we

continue to invest in those institutions, in diplomacy, essentially the three pillars of national security which are diplomacy, development, and defense. if you recall secretary mattis in testimony last year was very clear. he said if you cut back on diplomacy and development, you'll have to invest more -- he said give me more money for bullets. we need to make sure we're maintaining proper balance of diplomacy, insurance and ensuring united states national security. >> thank you, broad. darren. >> thanks so much. i'm pleased to be part of the technology committee along with

sharice davids, kendra horn and harley ruda on three great new members. when we look at the speed of technology, for those in my lifetime. for those checking, born in 1978, just amazing the changes we've seen from the rise of personal computers to cell phones to gaming consoles. i started out on a nintendo, my brother had a commodore. he was a few years older than me. sharing music and movies, to social media accounts, things that did not exist when i was first growing up. then we saw those changes. they are all these different verbs that came bought to google it or tweet it or facebook it or i anything. put i in front of anything nowadays. or i need that in realtime. our whole even vernacular has changed. i come from a district where we

are right next temperature busiest base port in the world, cape canaveral. we're home to a huge simulation and virtual reality cluster over at university of central florida where we develop a lot of training exercises for the military as well as working on video games and even our theme parks take advantage of that technology. we have centers, aerospace, cyber security, cloud storage. all that got me interested in looking into this area. but it was when we had the founder of facebook mark zuckerberg at a hearing during house and senate hearings that really piqued my interest. i was watching a lot of those. i got home and my wife was like congress doesn't really under technology. it seemed so obvious at the time. when you see senators using cue cards developed from interns and house members asking questions that didn't have context, it was clear we needed folks, some of

the younger members from new dems and other caucuses to really start delving into these things, which was the main reason why it was important to get on energy and commercial. you just heard a discussion of internet privacy going through our committee as well as issues related to net neutrality and others. we're working on establishing first definitions and jurisdiction for cryptocurrency. some of you may be following that. we should have that out over the next couple of weeks, because right now it's kind of like the wild west. we're working with the educational work forward committee on artificial intelligence bill to not only see where we could help out private companies but also get in front of it. we saw the internet be both a boon and big disrupter of job. it's helpful to retrain folk who may see their jobs lost so they can go into new jobs in technologies and help where we can with tech companies.

quantum computing is another thing we've been encouraging through budget amendments, through other various means, knowing that this it's going to be able to help with everything from agriculture to marketing to defense to you name it. and then spaceflight. we're really laser focused on that. we'll finally have human spaceflight. spacex will be launching this summer. boeing may as well. we'll see how their launch goes. when you think about the future of the economy and tech, think about how a lot of the economy over the next 20, 30 years will literally be out of this world and how we need to continue to have a long-term vision to make sure in all these different areas that the united states maintains a dominant edge on both research, on market share, and on making sure that we have

trade that will advance a lot of these key technologies without them being stolen. we're really excited about a lot of the work we're doing on the tech task force and look forward to talking with all of you about that. >> thanks, darren. alisa. >> thanks. hi, everyone. elissa slotkin. i'm from michigan, and i'm really excited to be the co-chair of the infrastructure task force. jason crow, sue, stacy are also co-chairs with me. i'm from michigan, so we literally had a governor that was elected on a slogan that said fix the damn roads. it just gives a sense of how desperately in michigan and i know people across the country feel about infrastructure. one of the things that surprised me as a new freshmen when i got to washington and you meet all your new peers, it didn't matter if you were from iowa, new jersey, michigan, everyone was talking about infrastructure at home and everyone feels like we need once in a generation investment in our

infrastructure. so i was very happy to be involved in this. i think when we talk about infrastructure, we all know we talk about roads. in michigan we literally name our potholes. we have a hole catigorization. alcatraz is the worst one. because once you go in, you never come out. you pop a tire, you're done. i live 15 minutes from flint, michigan. so water infrastructure, our bridges, our tunnels. broadband, i have a rural district in areas. i'm broadening up the definition of infrastructure is very important. now, the president has said the right things about infrastructure. he's gotten a lot of play out of that. i think one of the thing the new dems can do well is have an honest conversation how we pay for it. we know last year, a year and a half ago the president put together a package that said the right thing but relied on private industry and infrastructure to fund the projects, so it didn't he said up happening. one of the things the new dems

is particularly good about is having practical ideas to really problematic issues. we all know it costs money to invest in our infrastructure. i'm really glad to be part of it. i think we have a great team. we will not move forward unless we're face front about the fact that there will be a cost and we will address it. thank you very much. >> please join me in thanking broad and darren and ellisa on their presentations. the next discussion on climate change which will be great. my new friend and vice chair scott peters cocoa up. he's going to moderate the panel. there are very few members of congress, first of all, this coalition but congress at large, more experience at policy change. a former economist appear epa, environmental lawyer and serves as senior member of the energy an commercial committee.

without any further ado, i'll hand the mic over to him and he will introduce the panel. >> thanks, everyone. i'll ask the panel to come up and join me and have a seat. >> all right. thank you for joining us to discuss the most po' issue in the world, the need to combat climate change, both to slow climate change and prepare for the changes that are already happening or inevitable that climate change will bring. i come from california where progress has been strong. we long ago under a republican governor, governor schwarzenegger enacted statewide standards for renewability.

that was an effort started by reagan, who thought the federal government wouldn't be tough enough so california's ability to set standards. now we require companies to reduce carbon emission. last year enacted sb 100 that will require energy producers carbon neutrality by 2025. personally if we could do that in d.c., sign me up. but i know that's not the situation here. we all welcome the new energy around climate that's come to d.c. with new elected experience and articulate with ideas like the green new deal. but d.c. is not sacramento. when it comes to climate action, how to make a policy in a setting that lacks consensus about whether or how to act in california. science warns us we can't wait. we have to figure out how to act even in this context. on our panel we'll talk about that, have a conversation about what we can accomplish right now despite political head winds. introduce my panelists, thank you all for being here.

tiernan, senior vice president of league of conservation voters. focused on advancing meaningful policy combat climate change and mobilize 2 million members across the country. the reverend mitch, pastor and ceo of evangelical environmental network. i urge you all to follow them on twitter. he's co-authored a book and published articles creation, care and the impact of climate change on all of god's creation. he also serves on the national association of evangelicals board of directors. josh freed is the founder and senior vice president of third ways clean energy program. he's focused on promoting policies and new alliances that combat climate change through innovation, advanced nuclear and carbon capture technologies. i'll start with you tiernan.

let me ask you, so what do you think -- here we are. we have a majority in the house of democrats, a divided government once again. what do you think are the biggest opportunities to make progress on climate change between now and january 2021. >> thanks for asking. thanks for the opportunity to be here. needless to say we are thrilled to have a pro n, pro climate action majority in the house of representatives. especially in the last eight years running the show. as you mentioned we're seeing devastating impact of climate change across the country. this change comes not a moment too soon. you noted there are so many members of this class, we actually put out a new member guide showing all the awesome new members that ran on climate change and new energy and are getting to work on that very hard with awesome returning members. 56 of the new democrats in the house have committed to 100 clean energy by 2050. that demonstrates what a priority it is.

for us in terms of what are opportunities to make progress, we are focused on defending this pro environment majority ensuring pro climate action majority in the senate and champion in the white house for 2021. we think we'll need to have all of that in place to have sweeping legislation signed into law, which is commensurate with the scale of the problem, which is obviously of epic proportions. but in the short-term we are really excited. we like to say election santa rosa consequences. just in the first couple of months the house of representatives has already held 20 years on the climate crisis, which is astounding which considering there were none in the years before that. we're excited to be calling attention to are have climate champions across the house calling attention to the scope of the problem and the urgent need for action and so many win-win win solutions good for our economy, good for creating jobs, good for addressing climate justice and of course

protecting the climate. we're very excited about the attention the climate is garnering right now. we were delighted speaker pelosi of the climate crisis introduced hr 9, climate action now bill to reassert united states leadership in meeting our paris climate agreement goals. we're very eager to see the house continue moving forward on badly needed oversight of administration's rollback of common sense efforts to combat climate change. we really see major opportunities in an infrastructure package, a green climate smart infrastructure package. i guess by wrapping up on the first question you talked about progress in california but we're seeing progress all across the country. already since january 6, new governors who got elected in november have joined the u.s. climate alliance. former congress webcam has signed the new bill into law to

get mexico to 100% carbon free by 2045. of course we are seeing a real race to the top in the 2020 presidential election where candidates are absolutely making climate change and climate solutions a top geo priority. there are challenges but we're feeling very optimistic. >> so we'll get back to specific things we might be able to accomplish in this conference. but pastor mitch, tiernan gives a blue sounding answer to that question. you hang out with a lot of republicans. i want to ask you about conservatives. why have conservatives and religious conservatives acted on

climate and is there hope? >> there's a lot of hope. we represent 3.5 million pro-life christians. probably a bad word in this number but who want 100% clean energy by 2030. i can tell you now i'm working with 18 republican senators who want to act on climate. they aren't ready to become public yet. they are working very closely. in fact one would make an announcement in the next two months who i never thought two months ago would do it. i think the reality is why climate change has not been embraced by especially conservative faith people like me. remember, let me give you some context of why this is so important. evangelicals represent 35% of the republican party. what's even more astounding is evangelicals in the past three presidential elections -- not just the last one -- represent

about 28% of the people that cast votes. another 19% of the people that cast votes are white roman catholics who have demographically a lot of the same profile and characteristics. and so if we're going to act on climate but it's too late, and i think that's one of the things we want to emphasize right now, is after we saw the last report coming out of the u.n. and our need to act, we have to come up with bipartisan action because it's the only way it's going to happen in time to save people on the earth. i don't know who said it first, katherine or me, but the earth will take care of itself. what we have to worry about are people. that's the problem we have to deal with. one of the things i really want to stress to this group is i can tell you one of the problems, and it's not the only problem, certainly money fed into this amplified it from the other side who wanted to get rid of it, there's no -- we're a long way

from 2008 when nancy pelosi and newt gingrich sat down and did a commercial together. a lot of that was money. that money played into some of the basic fears that are happening. in fact, scott has heard me say this before but it's very true. if we don't separate out climate change and clean energy and tackle them on their own without mixing in an awful lot of other progressive social values, or for that matter conservative social values, we're never going to get any place. my community thinks that everybody who is a democrat believes certain things, and that gets amplified. i can tell you i go to the green group ceo meetings and when they start out saying how can we get more progressives to vote for climate, i say that's not the question.

the question is how do we make i a bipartisan deal. i could talk forever about this but i'll stop there. the thing we have to appeal to is allow people to come to act on climate change using the values that they most hold dearly. those values might be different for you than me. and the analogy that i like to use is we're not going to bring up one big tent. we're going to bring up a lot of smaller tents that eventually will join together. that's how we have to start thinking about climate if we're going to act together. that's probably my three minutes. remember, i'm an evangelical preacher, so i don't get warmed up until a half hour into it, so i'll turn it back. >> thank you. that actually leads to josh. josh, that's fairly provocative for a democrat. what is third wave focused on

when you look at the climate debate. >> i think the remarks by tie rna n and pastor mitch play into what we're seeing in the climate state of pray. we see there are two real positive developments over the last three years. one is there is broad and growing demand in the public for action. the second is there are more and more diversion people in the political spectrum weighing in, making suggestion for action and recognizing that we need to act now. those are setting the stage for potential for real action over next three, five years and even in this congress. the challenges we see, and this is a risk that does have significant downside, is that if we lean too far in one direction on the activism that has gotten us to the place in the debate we are today, we may miss our opportunity. as was alluded to, the science is very clear. we need to get to net zero emissions by 2050. and the earth may take care of

itself but it won't take care of the rest of us, so we've got a very clear target of what we need though hit. the interesting things as we think about this is how far public opinion has shifted. it is in no small part thanks to the sunrise movement and representative ocasio-cortez on the left and americans are experiencing the impact of climate-fueled disasters on a season by season basis. we all know the litany of those disasters. we're living with one in the midwest with the aftermath of the flooding. in 2018, by the end of the year, 73% of americans believe climate change is happening, which is a 10% increase since 2015. 70% of those between 18 and 35 and 56% of people over 55 believe that and 64% of republicans believe that climate change is real. now, we're seeing how this is manifesting itself when while the trump administration, and particularly the president unfortunately continues to deny the realities of climate change and does not embody the urgency

any of the rest of us feel. others in the republican party, and this is a rare instance, are willing to take a break from the administration. a congressman, fear defender of the president, pretty stark, i don't think there's a scientific debate to be had on whether climate change is happening. history will judge harshly climate change deniers and i don't want to be one of them. senators alexander and barrasso recognize clean energy and innovation, which we don't think is sufficient on its own but a big step in the right direction from where we are rast year. we've seen a lot of legislation. bills you were involved in, carbon capture, advance nuclear, tax credits all start to move as well as clean energy and renewable energy at the state level, california, mexico and others. there are opportunities for hope. the thing we're concerned about is the urgency of climate get turned into a grab bag for every

other social issue which we at third way believe need to be addressed. these are tough issues and they need to be formulated. there need to be serious policies behind it and they need to be tackled on their own because they are hard enough without jumbling all together. >> can i give you a high five on that? >> i want pastor mitch to follow up. i've heard you talk about things that scare evangelicals about the way democrats talk about this. can you share with us, what is their reaction? how should we be talking about a climate in a way that invite people into these small tents. >> a small thing we can all agree on is people need to know there's hope first off. that's the number one thing i

talk about when i go out is hope. the number one story is it's not all about government action, it has to be government. what do you in central iowa but come out and hear the local preacher, the new preacher in co town come to speak for a little bit. this town of sioux center comes out. they fill the college auditorium. i said the first thing we can do is be energy efficient in our own households, blah, blah, blah, did the things we know about. a man came up to me afterwards with a genuine and sincere heart, you are the first person that ever said i could do something about climate on my own. by the way, i farm 3,000 acres of corn. i'm going to be reducing my fertilizer, my pesticides, and planting ground cover crops to restore the soil. that's one of the things. we have to make it about everybody. no, we're not going to solve

climate without the right kind of policies. i'm not naive. but we have to encourage people to take those kind of steps that will help them now be part of the solution. that's one of the places we can all start out and find common ground on. >> tiernan, thinking ahead, what do you think the priorities are in terms of policy? where you would you like to see us go over the next two years and beyond that? we know we can't assume results of any election. if we got to work today, what are your priorities to get to work on? >> first, i mentioned hr-9 to reassert united states leadership meeting and exceeding our goals under paris climate agreement. it's a very first step, a down payment on democrats showing they are now controlling, serious on climate change. we'd like to see early, swift action on that. as i mentioned broad support for 100% clean energy. we'd love to see legislation move on that front.

lcv is supportive of the green new deal. now is the time to challenge ourselves to be aspirational. congresswoman ocasio-cortez made it clear they welcome input. i think a lot of the solutions we've been talking about can be part of that. we also have talked a little about infrastructure. i think that's a huge opportunity. i think there's a lot we can do in terms of renewables, in terms of efficiency. i think at this point, let 1,000 flowers bloom. the problem is so massive and the need for solutions is so great, i don't necessarily think some to have these are mutually exclusive. we still have mitch mcconnell, who pulled an absolutely absurd stunt on the senate floor last week. it was great to see senator schumer on the floor day after day after day with so many of his colleagues calling out just how outrageous it was, the fact they have 47 democrats on the house side who are saying climate change is real, it's caused by human activity,

burning fossil fuels, congress needs to act immediately. that's progress. maybe it back fired a bit for him but we still have him on the senate, the most anti-environmental president we've ever had. we're all for making the incremental change that we can now while we continue to work on and envision the bigger, more transformational legislation that we need to move. >> let me ask josh as a pollster, how does that strike you? how is america going to take what tiernan said? >> i will not claim to be part of that brethren. but look -- >> well, somebody who watches polls. >> we have seen a real shift. to the point that was made earlier, people are experiencing the impacts of climate change now. it's real to them. it's not a theoretical problem anymore. it's harder to say they are going to wait and put off the solutions for another time. one of the things we found in

looking also, the more you explain what people get for the policies or the money, whether it's impacts positively on their time with infrastructure or cleaner air and cleaner water because of new policies that are implemented, the more they are likely to support it. if it is a theoretical or national policy that sounds like it's simply imposing cost, it becomes a much different challenge. >> the things happening now we could do, i think first off something we can all agree on, and the question is finding the money, we can talk about where to get the money at, we need to have a great investment in our national laboratories. that's something republicans can agree on and democrats can agree on. you guys in congress, men and women, have to find the money after the tax cut, which is a big problem. there's lots of things, nobody wants to give up any of their other items to have to pay for it. nobody is going to do anything

without a new pay for. i think that's a starting point. i think something everybody can agree on, get cbo to lower the scoring on it, is the reclaim act put out by republican hal rodgers last year and stymied in the senate with mitch mcconnell, even though he's in kai tentuck too, because he didn't want a certain democratic senator to get credit for it. joe manchin also put his own bill out and there was a political interest. i think putting the reclaim act, which if you don't know it, takes money out of the mine reclamation fund to actually retrain coal miners and put them to work reclaiming abandoned mine sites. those are two things that are very practical that we can do right now. certainly, excuse me, we have to work to building a national policy. we believe in some type of market-based system, whether -- i mean, we can talk forever about the various proposals

there, but we like market-based systems because we want the market to work. but i think that all has to be teed up that hopefully come 2021 that we will have new leadership and a new president that we can get something done. even with all of congress, it's not veto proof. and believe me, i don't know if you can see this from back there, but i wear a tie that's a faith tie. i freely admit i'm an evangelical christian, but it's not to advertise my faith. it's to remind me when i am on capitol hill and talking to the administration of who i'm supposed to be representing so that i don't blow my cool. i freely admit this is the worst administration ever for an environmental rollback. i'm fighting the mercury. when even the chamber of commerce says they should keep the role, you know something funny is going on. >> i want to just talk specifically about the green new deal because it's obviously very prominent. on one hand, it's pretty general. it's not that objectionable in

many respects. i think it's generality has a lot of people to define it mit brought it up, and not a democrat. what's your impression, tell me specifically about how you think the right might react to it. and maybe i'll ask josh to speak for the middle. >> there are parts of it that people could get involved with it. i think there's also an issue, i was talking at a meeting, with the people that proposed a green new deal. i asked them an interesting question, i represent 3 1/2 million prolife christians, would they be welcome to be part of your coalition, and they could not answer that question. i think that's something we need

to think about. and also, the idea of big government on its own is problematic besides that, having a just transition, moving to clean energy, energy investment, they're all goals that i think we can all get around on. but i think it's how we implement them, how we talk about them, and i think one of the things in a i admit, i bray for this every day, is that we could return to a much greater chance of civility in congress, in our dialogue and even here. i mean, i've gone to places where i've been booed because i said i'm a pro life person. and just having that common respect. yet you and i are good personal friends, sheldon whitehouse is another good close personal friend. you and i on 99% of the issues probably disagree. but we agree on climate or many of you. at least 90s, something like

that. we have more disagreement than commonality. in any event, i think the issue is, we have to get -- i could start right here, the idea of offering respectful dialogue to get some place is something that somebody has to stand up and do in this country and to get away from the tweets and the garbage that's out there. >> well said. josh, i'm going to ask you the same question, and we'll take some questions from the audience. >> what what we've seen to date is a shift in the conversation from, is climate change real, is it worth addressing to what we need to do something, what is it that we're doing? and we weren't there in 2016 even. the climate change barely got mentioned during the debates in the presidential chain, it was treated as a nonissue. i think the key thing now is to define what climate action means by putting real policies to the idea. and that is different from the green new deal, because we want

people to focus on, what is this congress? what do democrats, what do republicans believe it looks like when we start to address climate change and get to a place where there is net zero emissions in the united states by 200. again, that's where we need to be. it could be part of the green new deal, completely separate from it, the moment we're debating this idea, but not specifically how we're going to get there and what it means, we're in trouble. >> can i just add one quick thing? >> sure. >> the league of conservation vote irs works with pollsters, we did four polls in the early states. we found that support for both is extremely high, i think our pollster was startled by how high it was, literally at the same level of support for health care, it actually is quite popular, i think it's telling that even on the senate floor last week, most of the criticisms of the green new deal

were based on an erroneous fact sheet that was disavowed. >> i want to give you credit for one of the solutions. one of the things we have not thought of a whole lot in this country are natural climate solutions. we can get 17% carbon reductions by plantinging more trees and changing our farming practices, scott was able to get into the farm bill, a pilot 12uddy to do that. we need to do more than pilot studies, for those of you who live in the midwest or are big farming districts. that's something we need to talk to our farmers about, they can offer solutions, even if they're trump supporters and don't want to talk about climate change. they want to make their soil better. that's another thing we can work on now even stronger. >> offer the chance for -- do

you have a microphone? >> thank you very much for what it is you do. you talk about marketplaced solutions. among the 18 republican senators you speak with, how many do you think would be supportive of a carbon tax? >> i think most of them would be, but there has to be some things that we have to address going-forward. from my faith perspective, we have to make sure the bottom third income people are not most adversely affected, if not more. then we have to potentially look at some carve outs for people that live in extraordinary circumstances. places like alaska where you have people paying $15 for gas or something. i think there's some real challenges we have to look at. but i think that most of them see that as an opportunity to

going-forward. and whether we call it a fee or not, fee or tax or -- you mean, quite honestly, the more i'm around, i'd like to see it go to the poor and then the rest too infrastructure. that's the way i'm leaning right now. we don't have any place to get money. that's my idea. >> write that up. derek hoffman, one of the things we talk about is clean energy, and renewables. what wasn't mentioned in this panel is a zero emission energy form which would be nuclear. the national academy of sciences recently put out a report called plasma burning and others call fusion. if we think about the u.s. taking leadership in the development of these technologies, rather than unilaterally cutting emissions, maybe the silver buckshot

approach to this rather than the silver bullet. how do you think physician and fusion and other cutting edge technology plays into this. and our budget is tiny compared to what we spent in the 1960s going to the moon, which was $250 billion in today's dollars, seems like there's a lot of room. >> let me ask josh to respond to that. >> we are staunch advocates, in addition to developing the next generation of nuclear, it also means keeping the existing plants open for the length of their useful life. one of the challenges that we have is that in many instances, the markets because carbon is not priced in, have failed in considering all the zero carbon attributes of energy sources, you're seeing existing nuclear plants that have a long life left to provide zero carbon energy shutting down and being displaced by natural gas.

it's bad for climate, it's bad for jobs and it's a real challenge. i think with advanced nuclear in particular, we've seen some real bipartisan success on that, we've had two significant advanced nuclear innovation bills, pass congress with significant bipartisan support in the last congress, there's another bill that was introduced last week by senator booker and her cow ski that would continue to accelerate that. it's an opportunity we need to lean into a little more. >> we, is it something that's accepted or ambivalence about -- >> i'll speak for my organization only. i want to do more than that, we continue to have -- and have longstanding concerns about the incredible expense of nuclear power and the fact that it's been so heavily subsidized by taxpayer dollars for so long.

and have great concerns about the waste and the fact that it is not an acceptable way to store it. >> i think the idea of the next generation nuclear would not require so much subsidy. there wouldn't be so much left over. i'm hopeful about that. do we have another question? >> question for the reverend, i wonder if you could touch on the theological aspects of this debate. when you were talking with your fellow evangelicals who disagree with you on climate, can do they have logical arguments for not taking action? >> i'm a breacher, so don't get me wound up too much about talking about the bible. most of us believe the garden is the entire earth.

we're commanded by those of us who are crist yarns to care for the least of these. we have a moral responsibility to care for what belongs with leviticus 25. we are but tenants of the earth, we don't own it. we have a responsibility to be stewards. the debate comes in from those on the far right, sometimes -- you know, senator inhofe talks about, there will always be rains and seasons, he misses the boat by talking about weather and not climate. there are more people who are a bit more calvinous that hold to the view that nothing ever happens on the earth unless god allows it. somehow i say, earthquakes are there. come see me, if you really want to know, i'll give you my book. i'll be happy to talk about the biblical and theological basis with you in more detail. >> there is a book he wrote, and you read all about that.

do you have any more questions from the audience. >> can you talk a little bit about another renewable energy. this is something that touches on another renewable energy, it touches on forests, jobs and also in my home state of washington, it's something that now presidential candidate has spoken positively of. can you talk about that issue? >> i'm going to ask you about that, but i'm interested in this topic, we've had a lot of wildfires in california, and i know mike is also interested on this. we have a lot of opportunity here in terms of sustainably harvesting biomass and at the same time, getting benefit from forest management, that's one thing i'll be working on this year on my committee. >> yeah, and i think there's a lot more work that needs to be done on it. it's interesting when you look at the report, one of the things

that they really did focus in on was bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration. we're not there yet in terms of setting up the structures to develop it. if there's action congress can take this year, 45 q not on the bioenergy side, but in providing attacks for carbon capture is starting to help accelerate that component of it, but we need to do more. >> the president pulled the country oust of the paris accords, what is america doing right these days? >> that was such a subset of all the things going on with climate change. literally, it's just breathtaking, and i think so embarrassing to have the

president representing the world when we had made so much progress under the obama administration, thing that's encouraging, having so many senators who i believe seemingly wake up every day thinking, what are they going to do to call attention to the climate crisis, i agree with my colleagues that people have woken up, they look outside the window, they see the devastating impacts, the fires, the hurricanes, the flooding, this is no longer some distant threat, this is our reality today. i think the fact that we have regular people who are outraged by the situation, we have three climate hearings in the house this week. the city or town of georgetown texas, committed to 100% clean energy. we are seeing a little local

progress. nine of them when they were running, committed to 100% clean energy. we have janet mills, governor sisolack, all of these governors and many others are moving forward with whether it's renewable portfolio standards or recommitting to meeting the paris climate agreements, there's so much progress at the local level, at the state level, that makes me encouraged. and the fact that we're seeing, i think josh talked about the fact that there wasn't even a debate in the general election about -- a question in a debate about climate change, now we're seeing these candidates who are bringing up climate change and clean energy, and the opportunities and the solutions as much as they possibly can. all of that makes me optimistic. >> though, the federal government not much now. >> we have a question about

attitudes, we seem to have had a little bit of a change in discussion. in california we see phenomenal growth, despite renewable portfolio standards, everyone is worried that acquiring a certain amount of clean energy would slow us down, we're up to 50% goal now, sb-100, when i plug in my appliances at home, 45% of the power is from renewables in my house, which is the best in the country by the way. there's another 10% in our county from solar. from distributed solar. has the country softened on this notion that you can't have environmental prosperity, and economic quality. have people come around on that? >> i think you're seeing it both because they're living with the

opportunities that clean energy provide them. whether it's solar and wind or electric vehicles which are increasingly common on our streets, or education that's also made people more aware of the fact that nuclear in the context of climate change is zero emissions, and it's been interesting on that as an aside. we've seen polling among democrats, where renewables are extremely popular, when you add the question of every zero emissions resource, it jumps up even more. i think there are opportunities that people are recognizing, they're also recognizing that the option of not leading is much worse. the united states could lied and take demand for clean energy, or we're going to suffer the consequences. and so it's no longer a false choice, they recognize it's not a choice any more. >> let me tell us the story, i think that's happening.

springfield, missouri, i think renewable headquarters of the world. the city of springfield has pledged to be 100% renewable and they're already over 50%. probably one of the reddest bible belt places in the country. last september over 500 people showed up to hear me speak and others speak about this, but even more importantly, they're seeing their neighbors make money on this solar industry. big time. one young man mortgaged his house and got 5,000 from his grandparents and now has a $25 million a year business. you see that in the midwest, the people repairing and working on the behind mills. seeing lots of people -- takes a lot of guts to climb up one of those wind mills. it's a good paying job, the people running those organizations are doing well. it's turning the corner, it's not completely there yet, it's a lot more than it was 2 or 3

years ago. >> i think we've made huge progre progress. it's a lie that's been perpetuated. last year there were 40 states that had more clean energy jobs than fossil fuel jobs. even going back to the clean air act in 1970, our economy has tripled since then, while we cut air pollution by 70%. these are absolutely solutions that are good for the planet and good for our economy. >> let me close with one final question, because with respect to people who are in the extraction industry, what's the responsibility for those folks? folks like coal miners. coal is too expensive to get out of the ground for market purposes. but the movement away from fossil fuels is going to provide a lot of pain for folks in

oklahoma, texas and west virginia, whether it's driven by the market or consumer demand. that's our responsibility to those folks? >> i certainly believe, even though i am a lifetime physical conservative, i believe in justice, and i think we have a right to offer job retraining and ways to do it. things like i mentioned earlier, the reclaim act. i think there are a lot of things that have to be cognizant to help people be motivated to see they have new industries. west virginia has been trapped in a coal industry, doing more to work on their natural resources. i think we have the responsibility to work together for those people. >> we have to assure a just transition, we have to have workers at the table helping to

craft climate solutions. we have to ensure good sustaining jobs for workers. we have to ensure that the communities that are hurt first and worst, which include some of the workers you were talking about earlier, all communities across this country do not just have a seat at the table but are active participants in coming up with the solutions. >> can i throw one quick question in there, besides a just transition for workers, one of the things we need to do is have a just remediation for people that live in the areas where pollution has been dumped or still ranging. maybe love canal doesn't exist any more, but there's a lot of cole ash ponds. that influence a lot of people, especially of low income that we have to take the responsibility to remediate as we do a just transition. >> this captures the real challenge. we need to make sure that the

people who are on the front lines and have impacted, whether it's workers in the communities that have relied on fossil fuels for their economic viability for generation generations, including many union households, they're transferring from union jobs to. that's something we have to deal with. a lot of the technologies are either there, and we know how to innovate or develop them. whether it's on the electricity side, the transportation side or the industry. how do we make that transition in such a way that communities that right now are reliant upon natural gas or more immediately coal don't find themselves just completely bypassed in a clean energy society that otherwise is going to make it seem to them that we've said no thank you, we don't need you niz more.

that's our biggest issue to fight climate change in this country. >> i think that's the thing about new dems, we're committed to actually get results on this stuff, someone cited an editorial that said constructive and cognizant. for things of the past to last, that's the best way to go. i'll look forward to working with you all to save the planet and thanks everyone for coming. [ applause ] >> annie custer is going to come

up to be in the next panel. >> i'm a brand new member of the house energy committee. all of our colleagues on what we are -- for the new dems. that sums up where we are, and what our space is all about, we want to tackle these challenges. providing health care for all americans. saving the planet, and we share the goals of our caucus. and we're all about rolling up our sleeves and getting the job

done. i am here to introduce our next guest michael bennet, and i think the reason i've been chosen, i represent new hampshire, the second congressional zwrikt. we take the responsibility of choosing the next president of the united states seriously, it's been funny, some of the candidates have been surprised at the depp th and breadth of questions they're getting. and i say, these people work hard at this, this is not our first rodeo, we've been through this before a number of times. but it's been an exciting experience for democrats. we all feel very strongly about replacing the president with

someone that has bold ideas and innovative solutions to move our country forward. and what we're looking at is a broad range of candidates. everyone will acknowledge our bench is deep and strong. someone said to me recently, we're going to end up with a fantastic presidential candidate. a great vice presidential candidate, and an amazing cabinet. i think it's the way to look at it it, rather than the way the republicans went about voting people off the island in their primary last time around. michael bennet is with us, the senator from colorado, thank you. and we're going to be placing close attention to the discussion with him, our chairman is going to have a fire side chat, it's going to be an interesting time, we don't know whether he will make headlines

by announcing his candidacy right here, right now. we're looking forward to welcoming new hampshire. with that, i'll introduce and almost michael bennet and derek kilmer. [ applause ] >> this is our third fire side chat without a fire. >> i first got to meet and work with senator bennett on appropriation and process reform, or as we refer to it in my office the jsoc bepper. we should have known without a

good ago row nim it was slated for failure. >> it was one of the safety valves the congress makes in its decision. >> that endeavor i got to see how the senator is a big thinker on meaty policy issues. if there's a big challenge facing our country, most likely senator bennett has a solution ready to roll. and i've been grateful for your work with the new democrat coalition i presume today -- >> we have to get it done before they museum. >> i want to start off, there's new dems like you and like senators like you, engage on big ideas. that's not always a viral

sensation. your most viral moment of the last year may have been during the government shutdown, when in the words of dwayne "the rock" johnson, you laid the smackdown on ted cruz. i'm curious to know why you thought that was so rez nant, and how do we make some of these meety policy issues. >> thanks for having me, it's wonderful to see all of you today. i'm the last person in america you should be talking to about how to make something go viral. beto o'rourke was able to raise $70 million in his senate race. maybe not the only reason, but certainly the reason. we have an obligation to talk about this stuff in ways that will resonate with the american

people so they can understand what's happening, and i think we have an obligation to make people understand how high the stakes really are. i view donald trump as a symptom of our problems. he's accelerated a lot of those problems, but he got here because our economy wasn't treating 90% of americans well over the last 40 years. and he got here because of the degradation of our institutions, that were brought to you mainly by the tyranny of people mass car aiding as something called the freedom caucus. i think the american people need to know what the stakes really are, and why elections matter, and when i think of that, the answer to that question, i think about the fact that we've spent $5 trillion in tax cuts mostly for wealthy people since 2001, and $5.6 trillion in the middle east. the president says it's 7

trillion. so that's 11, 12 or $13 trillion he with may as well have lit on fire. i think people are rightly frustrated about that, now, their plan is to do more of that, i think our plan needs to be the opposite of that. i think if we can make it clear, we cannot only prevail at elections, but also generate a sense among the american people that it's not enough to beat donald trump, we have to figure out how to govern the country again, we've completely forgotten how to do that. the politics never ends around this place. and, therefore, the governing never starts. thank god you did what you did in the house, but we need -- we either need the other chamber to be democratic. or we need another era of bipartisan work. we haven't seen that around here

for a long time. >> you talk about the stakes, something that comes up a lot when we're back home, fear that you'll see another four years of donald trump. >> in my travels around new hampshire, it is clear to me that democrats are unify ied in their desire to beat donald trump. i think that we -- in order to prevail, there are two things, we have to be focused on what people care about, which is this issue, for 40 years, 90% of the american people haven't shared in economic growth when our economy is growing. we've had basically a 40 year recession for the middle class and for people living in poverty in this country. we have to stand for something with regard to that. it's not enough for people to

say, don't you know there's a worldwide market for labor, or don't you know technology is compressing wages or china has made it impossible for us to build wealth here for the middle class. people want to get in the middle class. i don't think the american people are willing to accept those answers. when they look at washington it doesn't look to them like anybody is focused on those challenges at all. i guess the first thing i'd say is discipline on that question. how are we going to create an economy where when the economy grows, wages grow for most americans. how are we going to think about health care in that context, immigration, infrastructure, r&d, all of that stuff put against an agenda put against that, our unwillingness to accept as a continuing reality, and the second issue is, we can't disqualify ourselves. donald trump is on the lookout

for that. so when we make it easy for donald trump to accuse democrats of being socialists, that's an act of disqualifying us, that's what he's doing. when he says, we're for open borders, he's trying to disqualify us. when he says, we're against israel or jewish people, more offensively last week, he's trying to disqualify the democratic party. we need to pay attention to that and not walk into that. and that's not a call on my part for lazy moderation. i mean, we need big policy ideas like the american family act, a bill that i have that would increase the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3200. make it fully refundable pay it out on a monthly basis instead of annually. it would end the most extreme

hieldhood poverty now, that doesn't sound like some moderate position from my perspective, it's a good thing that it does all of that without adding one more federal bureaucrat -- the series of those kinds of policy responses are going to give people something worth choosing between and i think they'll choose us, and not them. >> anything you want to share with the group about the bro posal tomorrow. >> that's the best name for a brill i ever came up with, and the center for american progress took it and added three letters to the name. this is a bill we've had for several years now, a business

that should have been done in the affordable care act. medicare is a true public option, it's a medicare like plan administered by medicare. it's not medicare itself, i think that is -- this notion that seniors are not going to detect their whole lives to get into medicare when they're 65. they want to put everyone else in the program with them, the idea that they're going to accept that without a fight -- disqualified fight from donald trump worries me. it's not medicare, although it uses the medicare network. the medicare reimbursement. the scoring from cbo.

the most important thing to me is that we have to cover everybody, and we have to -- as we cover everybody, in this country, we're going to have to figure out how to bring down the cost of health care for our country and families as everybody here knows we're spending 18% of gdp on health care, when everyone else is spending half that or less than half that on health care. we have to maintain quality. those should be our objectives. how we get there is precisely how we get medicare figured out. >> why don't we welcome others into the conversation. if you have a question for the senator, raise your hand. >> i'm conscious this is the very end of your day. senator and congressman, both of you have dedicated a great deal of your careers to education in

the workforce to me a lot of those policy issues are geared toward an industrial economy. what should we be doing to modernize our education system, our workforce skills training to get more americans in all areas to participate in the knowledge based economy. >> this is for you. >> there's a lot we should do. i think it's the most important set of policy issues around how we lift that income line up. education is not sufficient, but it's essential to -- it's a necessary part of it. we have to figure out how to commit to preschool or early childhood education in america. we're not doing that. it's complicated because we have a federal system, we have a federalist system, but we have to figure out how to do it somehow together. i would say that our k-12 system is about three centuries out of

date for the economy that we're in today. your chances of succeeding are incredibly low. only 90% of poor kids in america graduate with a college degree or equivalent. don't you know not everyone's going to go to college? i say two things, yeah, i do know not everyone's going to go. i often hear people say that about other people's kids. not their own kids. and my view is, that if you are a high school senior. and you make a decision not to go to college but to do something else, that ought to be an affirmative choice you're thinking. we've been unable to adapt our system of k-12 education to the 21st century. the third point i would make, we've made college so expensive over the last 20 years, the people in my state and i'm sure

other states are drowning in college debt, which is just one more thing that young people have to indict our generation for having failed on, and it's ridiculous, if you go to the university of colorado, it's going to take you 22 years to pay back your student loans. those are years you could have been starting a small business or years not living with your mom and dad. off on your on. that's the result of not the hand of god, but of decisions we have made or failed to make that's crowdsed oed out public investment. by the way, it's not sufficient to say, students should be able to renegotiate their student loans, although i think they should. that's not the main problem, college costs too much. and we have to find ways of dealing with that, the final point i'll make is on workforce

training. almost all the money we spend on that is wasted. and it's billions and billions of dollars, if we thought about that workforce training money and we thought about the way we fund community colleges around the question of moving people from earning this wage and earning this wage, and evaluating it, based on that, taking it away from people who can't make that jump, the people who are allegedly training americans to make that jump. give more money to the people who are making that jump. it would be shocking how many more americans could support a family on what they are able to earn. i'm optimistic on that last point, we have so much low hanging fruit, and we're spending so much money in the wrong way, that there is a huge opportunity for us to spend it in the right way and make a massive difference. as i said, to millions of americans, but also to the way our economy works mother generally.

>> great conversation. senator, i wanted to ask you about government, and the very aggressive agenda that our fellow democrats are throwing out there this year. there is a desire to be bold, to go big, not to be tepid and incrementalist. at the same time, there's deep mistrust of the instrument many of our friends have chosen to advance their progressive agenda. do you think about this? how do you think about reconciling our desire to be ambitious and bold with this minimum to high regard the public seems to have in the federal government's capacity of responsiveness. >> thanks, will. i'm from western state colorado, we have a skepticism of the

federal government that goes back a long way, and we have it today. second i mentioned earlier the freedom caucus, and i meant the word i used, they have acted as tyrants here, their view is, they were going to inflict and thank you for beating them, they were going to inflict their outside of the mainstream ideological view on anybody in -- not just barack obama, but john boehner as well, destroyed his speakership, made it impossible for paul ryan to do anything. that guy left in the middle of a government shutdown because of what they were doing. and i believe very strongly, that they need to be closed over or beaten. they cannot be negotiated with, they will not allow themselves to be negotiated with, there is not a way to reach a bipartisan agreement with that subset of people. that's not all republicans, that is that group of people, now we have a bunch in the senate that's going to make life challenging there. i raise them, because they've

done such a good job in the name of that ideology, of degrading the american people's view of government. and our institutions, so much so that we now have a reality tv star occupying 1600 pennsylvania avenue. while i think there are a number of reasons why that's true, one is because we have such a diminished view of the federal government. and i do not think having said all of that, i do not think the democratic party needs to be the defenders of bad government. where it doesn't work well, we should stop doing it the way we're doing it, and we should do it differently, and we should be open to ideas of how to do it differently. maybe the most important point of all goes to something you said. people in my state are not going to respond well to something they think has been created by washington politicians in a petrie dish. they're not. they're going to want to know that they've been consulted,

that somebody has bothered to wander around in the middle of america, saying, tell us how you're thinking about the economy or tax policy or climate. climate is a great example. i think it's generally true for everything, we shouldn't be deciding it in two-year increments. we do damage to our economy and to america, with the tax code changes every two years or when regulations get put in, and pulled out again, climate, you cannot deal with climate in a successful way. in an aspirational way i would say even, unless the policy choices you make are durable. and can be sustained from congress to congress to congress. the only way you can do that is by building a real constituency for change outside of washington. and then bring that constituency for change to washington. and we haven't done that, you

know, we think that going on the cable at night is the same thing as doing the hard work of building political coalitions. and they're not the same thing. we've almost done none of it in a decade. we have a health care bill through largely on partisan terms. now they've passed their tax bill on partisan terms. that's basically our record for a decade. in the ordinary course of bri s business we're doing nothing here, it's because we don't take the time to build the coalitions that need to be built, and i think there's a deep deep skepticism about the federal government's ability to do anything well, i think in many cases, it's a well earned skepticism. the fact that the freedom caucus came here is a complicating and inconvenient fact that needs to be dealt with. but it doesn't answer the entire

question. >> just one person's opinion. >> thank you. thank you senator. thank you congressman. you did have a viral moment a couple months ago, when you think about, and talk about the possibility of running for president, you're unlikely to be the viral candidate. in some ways you're the anti-viral candidate. is there room in this race for the anti-viral candidate. >> i think we will have no idea who we're going to nominate for many months. i can imagine an argument, will we need someone who can go toe to toe with trump on trump's

terms. we're not going to have anyone like donald trump, which is good, but someone that looks like a fighter like donald trump. there might be people that argue we need somebody who's the opposite of donald trump, and then other people become possibilities. it's my view that nobody including myself is actually ready to win right now. not spezed to say that out loud. not necessarily ready to beat donald trump. that's what this process is about. and we'll see who gets forged in this crucible and is able to take him on. i do think there's room in this field to have candidates that really want to speak the truth to the american people. as i said, the congressman earlier, you know, i think that it's vital to beat donald trump, i feel as strongly about that as anybody in this room. but it is not sufficient, we have to govern as i said earlier, when i say that, it's

not about the people in this room, it's about the kids in the denver public schools and school districts just like them who aren't getting a chance to actually participate meaningfully in the economy or the democracy from the very start. and who feel and who are completely invisible to washington and often to our national candidates. this is going to be a long road, that's one thing i know, and i think that's good, because i'm not sure the democrats know what we stand for today. and i'm not sure we know exactly who it is we want to have lead us. the only way we're going to figure that out is with a vigorous nominating process. >> on the question of viral and not viral, i accept it that we

live in a world of social media, and we've -- and all of us need to benefit from that, and we all need to contend with that. but we should think about the fact that not even twitter runs itself with twitter. and here in washington, you know, if you look at what goes on on a daily basis here, how the agenda gets set it's often set by what happens on the cable the night before, and the number -- and the americans that participate with politics. on people's twitter feed. i think that's probably 12 or 13 americans. their equities are very well represented. in washington. very well represented. exceptionally well represented in washington. no one else's equities are, including the kids i was talking about earlier. including the 320 million americans who are not obsessed with politics all day long.

with respect to c-span3. it's true. it really is true. if we're going to do our jobs as elected officials well, and faithfully, we have to be able to understand that, and with stand the momentary twitter storm until we get to the other side and continue to work on stuff like, how do we lift working families incomes again in america. >> hi, my name is tizzy brown, you were talking earlier about my generation's debt, specifically as it relates to student loan debt. another one of the major problems that my generation is facing is housing cost, both rent and the cost of buying a home. i was wondering if there are are any solutions that you see that could actually be implemented in the next generation for this cost to be dissipated. >> i think that by the way, i'm going to come back to some other debts you're incurring.

but if you look -- colorado -- we have one of the most vibrant economies in america. we have one of the most vibrant economies in the world. the majority of people in my state, and young people in particular, but everybody cannot afford some combination of housing, that you just mentioned, health care, higher education and early childhood education. those things share some characteristics, which is that they are what is required if you're going to live a middle class life. the generation before you did not struggle in the same way that the generation out there is struggling with it now. i've been doing a lot of work around eviction policy, to see what the federal government can do to incentivize other outcomes when people are behind on their rent. the cost to society -- of course the cost to individuals is massive. the coast to society is huge. i think we're going to have to

think differently about building in urban places, more density. and think differently about zoning to be able to accomplish those tasks. even in rural parts of the state. we have housing issues that i don't have a good answer on. the other debt i would suggest coming your way is the federal debt as well it's become fashionable to say it doesn't matter. i don't know why we would say that when a republican house or senate -- gave us very low unemployment. their fiscal hypocrisy has been exposed in ways that should have happened earlier, going back to when they squandered the $5 trillion projected surplus that bill clinton left behind. but now it is on clear display,

people of your generation that are going to -- we'll quickly be at 30 trillion in terms of our national debt. we reduced our domestic discretionary spending by 30%. what we're saying to you is i lost you, not only are we not going to invest in you the way your parents, our parents and grandparents invested in us, not only are we not going to find a way for you to have affordable housing because of that, or be able to go to college without incurring massive debt. we're going to borrow a whole bunch of money on our way to not investing in you. none of which is benefiting you, but we're going to stick you with the bill. this is not an issue yet for young people in our country. i think it should be one, because we're con training your

choices ways that is -- i think deeply immoral and deeply unfair, and from a generational point of view, it is one more think on the list of things you're not going to want to thank us for when we're done. >> any other questions? >> yeah, yoour your mention is going to be better than that, we're not funding that either. there are different proposals about what should happen with teachers, in my city of denver, where we recently had a teacher's strike, when i was the superintendent many years ago, one of the things that everyone loved about denver public schools, if you're a teacher, you can afford to live there. people commonly rented

apartments, they own property in the city and county of denver, today they can't do that, 15 years later, they're unable to afford it, and teachers all over the country can't afford to live that middle class life in the country. and here's a reason why. the entire way we compensate teachers in america is based on a labor market that discriminated against women and said, you have two professional choices, one is being a teacher and one is being a nurse. if you don't like blood or being in an emergency room, maybe you should teach in the denver public schools. we imagine that you would -- we're going to make you get a master's degree that you're going to pay for. you're going to take out debt to get that master's degree, that's not going to teach you how to teach. and we're going to give you this really low current compensation that no one in your college class would ever accept for this really important job. but we're going to give you a

pension 30 years from now, that you know now we're not funding, and which in the old days sounded good to you because your spouse was likely to die before you. that subsidized our k-12 system. we got the best british literature student in our class to come teach. her only other offer was to be a nurse. that hasn't been true for decades that is our entire system today of how we attract, retain and pay, compensate teachers in america. it's a great illustration for where there is not an easy answer. the policy choices are challenging and profound, but we're not -- we're going to continue to get the same results we were talking about earlier, unless we're willing to confront it head on and try to figure out how to change it, so many issues that we're facing now i think are along those lines, they made

sense a century or two ago. they don't make sense any more. trying to figure out how we find our way through the inertia of washington, and the bureaucracy of washington, and the legislative log jams we have to begin building enduring policies that could deliver for the 21st century, this is not child's play, it's going to be hard for us to do, and if if our starting point is that we can never find an agreement with the other side we're doomed. and again, i'm not talking about splitting the difference between two parties open sew heat ideas. we do that all the time around here, that's called bipartisanship in washington. that's what it is. it's like, if we had gotten something on the committee. but what i'm talking about is the founding principle that we had in this country, which was that -- not that we would have agreement, it was that we would have disagreement. that was part of the whole

reason to live in a republic, in a democracy, because you would disagree. there was no tyrant to tell you what to think. and out of those disagreements, and this is the way congress is supposed to work, it doesn't. out of those disagreements we would forge more durable and imaginative solutions than any one person could ever come up with on their own. and that's what we have to find a way to do around here. and it is really hard between the goal lines that are stablished by the cable talk shows hosts at night. but it's something we're going to have to do. and the elected 4r50eders in this room are the ones that are going to have to do it. >> i think you just encapsulated what the new dem coalition is all about, which seems like a great way to wrap things up. how do we get at some of these old problems through a new lens. and i think -- can i say one

thing? >> i think. >> i'm so grateful that's what you guys are doing, and i don't want to lose the thought that it's both about the imagination of people here and tough coalition building in the country. i think that's the combination of things that puts us on the path of being able to work again. >> folks, if you'll join me and extending your gratitude to michael bennet. thank you, sir. and next time we'll get a fire or a fern. with that, let me invite up susan delbene to close us out. >> susan is the responsible in the house of the american family act which i mentioned earlier, so thank you. i should have mention that. >> this comes to the end of our next conference. i want to thank all of our speakers, our panelists, everyone who helped pull this together, all of the members of the new dem coalition who

participated. and all of you who engaged in this important discussion. we're going to take these ideas and information from today and move forward so we can continue to make this congress as well as going forward on some of these issues that are going to follow us long into the future. so thank you again for your time and have a great afternoon. . the house rules committee meets today to work on broadband internet and budget deficit legislation, live coverage of the meeting beginning at 5:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span 3. >> attorney general william barr is on capitol hill tomorrow taking questions on the robert mueller report and the justice department's budget request for 2020. he will be testifying at a house

appropriations sub committee hearing, that's live tuesday at 9:30 a.m. eastern. you can also watch online at c-span.org, or listen on the free c-span radio app. . the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. >> ask not what your country can do for you. ask what you can do for your country. >> and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon. >> c-span's newest book "the presidents" noted historians rank america's best and worst chief executives. provides insight into the lives of the 44 american presidents. through stories gathered by interviews, with noted presidential historians. explore the life events that shaped our leaders, challenges they faced, and the legacies they have left behind. published by public affairs,

c-span's "the presidents" will be on shelves april 23 but you can pre-order your copy as a hard cover or e book today. at c-span.org/the presidents. or wherever books are sold. next, coast guard commandant admiral karl schultz outlines some of the president's priorities for the president's budget request for 2020, fleet modernization, the polar security cutter program and drug prevention efforts at the senate commerce sub committee hearing. >> good morning, the sub committee on security will now come to order. i am pleased to welcome our distinguished panel of witnesses toda