Town Hall Meeting with Lamar Alexander on education and family at Dartmouth College (New Hampshire)

I'd like to do what I'm doing now. To answer your questions. I'm going to spend a day and a half at Dartmouth with the students and the faculty members this week talking about the new misery index. Most people remember the old misery index. Jimmy Carter came up with it. 1976 he ended up inflation and unemployment out when President Ford and then Ronald Reagan added it up again in 1980 and ask Are you better off today than you were four years ago when out when President Carter. Well that old economic misery index is pretty well under control today. But there's a new moral misery index that's out of control and these are the numbers in it 25 percent of high school seniors can barely read according to the nation's report card. Twenty six percent of high school seniors say they use drugs at least once a month. And 32 percent of babies are born in America to parents who haven't bothered

to marry. And those three numbers representing the inadequacy of our schools the epidemic of drugs and the absence of parents are a leading indicator of our prosperity and if we leave those numbers unintended. They represent a greater risk to our prosperity in the next generation than the old economic index did in the last generation. There is a lot that we can do about each of the three in terms of schools we we can set higher standards locally pay good teachers more get rid of the union rules and the government regulations and the tenure laws that keep us from having professional teaching and give parents more choices. The first step in the drug epidemic is to help employers create a drug free workforce by giving them permission to have random testing of employees and secondly to do what the state of Michigan has done

which is to randomly test people coming off welfare into the workforce a drug free workforce that only sends a message at the workplace it sends one home. But the most important of all is finding ways to help busy parents be better parents. Not only do we have a third of America's parents today who aren't married but one of four children are growing up in families where someone has the tough job of being a single parent. And 80 percent of the homes all the parents in the home work away from the home. And so we're in a situation where 80 percent of the schools let children out of school at about three o'clock and send them home to homes that are empty. What we can do about this is number first. Number one the government can can lower the tax rates so families can have a few more hours a week to spend with their children. And any new tax code ought to have a generous childcare

exemption that doesn't discriminate against stay at home moms. Second the government could stop paying people not to marry. We're stopping that with a welfare system. We can also stop that by eliminating the marriage penalty. Third for those parents who choose to work or have to work we need flex time at work and flex time at the schools flex time at work means that employees could choose to work a few more hours during the weekend and then have some time off the next week to go to a parent teacher conference. Flex time in schools means that public schools and private schools should open their doors before 8:00 a.m. and after 3:00 a.m. so that parents can can choose schools that fit the family's schedules. And finally Everyone's so busy working and with their own children that we've we don't have time to be scoutmasters and leaders of the boys club and the girls club. And I would recommend doubling the charitable deduction for contributions to churches and the schools and the charitable organizations that provide the environment

in which other adults get into the lives of children all of us have. Worries today about the culture of drugs and the epidemic of violence and the inadequacy of schools. But the real problem is with the parents I mean of Ozzie and Harriet were around today that have to work 36 hours a day to keep up with all of the threads to their children. And what we need to do is to find ways to help busy parents be better parents and then challenge every man and woman in America who creates a child in the new century first to marry and then to take full responsibility for that child from conception until adulthood. That would be the single most important thing we could do as a country. Sir. Write

worse. KURTZ Right. OK. The answer is yes and I believe that's a principal difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party With Me. Republicans believe you can have a national problem such as the drug epidemic and deal with it state by state family by family community my community the Democrats would want to pass a federal law. The steps I recommend to deal with the drug epidemic are to make a drug free workforce. The way to do that is for every state to pass Iowa's law giving employers permission to randomly drug test and for every state to pass Michigan's law testing people as they come off welfare. I would not recommend that the federal government do that. I would recommend that the president call

together all the governors and lead them in a five year crusade state by state family by family community by community because the president's leadership is is essential to this. But I don't believe America works from Washington on these cultural matters. I believe they can only be in the end handled community by community and family by family. It's frustrating but that's the way the country works. I don't know of the average American would approve it or not. But we need to do it. We need to give employers the permission to do it. The reason we should do it is because go to Boston go to Concord go to Nashville and every cop will tell you that 70 percent of the violent crime on the streets is drugs go to the largest women's hospital in in Detroit and a third of the babies are born already exposed to cocaine because their mothers are.

We've got five to seven tons of illegal drugs coming across our southwest border every day and we're Colombia to the south of us is about to be taken over by narco terrorists who have gotten fabulously wealthy because they produce 80 percent of the cocaine Americans consume. So we've got to start dealing with the drug epidemic on the on the demand side. We've got to stop using the drugs and the right place to start it seems to me is the workplace where there are issues of safety where employees can be helped if they have a drug problem where they can get a strong message and where they can then set a good example when they go home. I would say illegal drugs drugs that are illegal. Alcohol is a problem and tobacco is a problem but but we have 80 million Americans

today who have experimented with illegal drugs and 70 percent of our street crime is illegal drugs. And I think our drug free workforce policies ought to be aimed at drugs that are illegal illegally sold in this country. Do you believe that. Yes I can. The Governor Huckabee of Arkansas is he has spoken eloquently about the culture of violence in which our children live after especially after the Jonesborough schoolhouse shootings in his state. Bill Bennett former education secretary has talked about the violence on television which a report last week said is is twice as graphic and twice as violent as it was just five years ago. But there is another area. Computer games and video games. That leaves the television violence in the dust. So what parents need to do is

to be aware that these computer games which their children now buy aren't just games that they often incur clued ways for children to become deranged postman on a multi-state killing spree. They're not little soldiers lined up in the sand playing war and they are graphic violent vulgar pictures and images and examples. You can't say that one computer game was responsible for the schoolhouse killings in Jonesboro Arkansas. But you can say that that these computer games are ARV's seeds that helped create the culture of violence in this country. Well one specific suggestion is that we've done a little We've done some random research and discovered that

teachers pension funds are among the major investors in the companies that produce the most graphic and violent and vulgar computer games. I'm sure teachers in New Hampshire and across America would be outraged to know this. And what Governor Huckabee and I did last week along with Governor Branstad and Senator McConnell of Kentucky was to write to the managers of teacher pension funds and say to them tell these companies take the violence out of your computer games or we're going to take the teachers retirement money out of your companies. That is a marketplace solution that will get the attention of the of the makers of the violent games. The second thing to do though is for parents to be aware that these games are violent games and totally inappropriate for children and not allow their children to buy them and use. It.

Well the problem with President Clinton's child care tax credit is that it devalues the work of stay at home moms. I respect the right of an individual a mom or dad to choose to work but I don't think the government should create incentives for parents to work away from home. Therefore any child care exclusion in the tax code ought to be as available to moms and dads who stay home as moms who work. I favor a new tax code for our country with four or five major exclusions that represent our national priorities and our values and one of those should be a generous childcare tax credit especially for children of parents with children under the age of three. And it should not discriminate against stay at home moms. It should be just as available to them as it is to moms who elect to work away from home. Do you feel you are

excluded. Well no. I believe that's. Can you talk about that. Well you may be right about. You may be right about that Kevin what my concept of the new tax code in 1996 was that I did not favor Mr. Forbes flat tax because it was value neutral. It didn't have values in it. And there are several values and I think I said at the time there were several that ought to be included. One would be the home mortgage deduction encouraging homeownership. One would be the charitable deduction which I'd like to double. One would be a deduction for child care which does not discriminate against the stay at home mom. I plan to outline my views on what the new tax code ought to be like in a speech within the next several weeks.

And the. Senator said it does call on Congress a lot. You really want to get the funding for the election. Well that's that's a good idea except in the presidential race it would be hard to have different rules and different states wouldn't it. But she and I sound like we're on the same track. I think most people in so-called campaign finance reform are are plunging over the cliff going exactly the wrong direction. I believe in free speech and full disclosure which means that candidates should be permitted to raise and spend money as long as they disclose every dollar every day and let the voters make their own decisions about about the appropriateness of the

contributions. All of these Watergate rules which have been placed on campaigns over the last 25 years have discouraged the number of candidates limited the choices that the voting public have made it difficult for candidates to get their message out. They've actually in a perverse way increased the influence of money in politics because it's so difficult to raise enough money under the limits that you spend all your time raising money and is given tremendous advantages to the super rich who now are the only ones with the free speech because the candidates who don't who aren't super rich have to spend 60 70 percent of their time asking for money at a thousand dollars a person. So the the the Watergate inspired federal regulation of campaigns have squeezed the life out of campaigns and made it less attractive given voters less choices increase the influence of money without it. Ditch it. And we ought to go back to the all-American

idea of free speech and full disclosure. But talking about this very. Well the answer is yes to that. But I think I think our party some party in this country needs to learn to address the issues of inadequate schools the drug epidemic and the absence of parents in a way that persuades half the people were right. I mean we have to be able to say in this country that it's not good for America. If a third of the parents don't bother to marry and that it's very tough to be a single parent and that if 80 percent of the parents are working away from home then we've got to have flex time at work or flex time at schools. I think the biggest problem we have in the country today is we've gotten too busy to take care of our children. I mean we and we

can't talk about that in a civil way. Our country's going to be greatly damaged over the next generation. I mean this is the misery index of the new century. It used to be inflation unemployment now schools drugs and absent parents. And we need to learn to talk about it and to accept a public conversation about it not to attack people because of their values or I mean single parents are often the parents of the year. They have a tough job but I've yet to meet many single parents who didn't agree that two loving parents are better than one loving parents because there's a lot of work to do in raising a child. And the numbers have increased dramatically I mean 30 years ago only about 7 percent of babies in America were born outside marriage. Today it's 32 percent. I mean if you start off that far behind it's going to be very hard to get back to the place in this country where you have parents deeply involved in the lives of children. And

everywhere I go I find government agencies trying to fill in the gaps and make up for what parents aren't able to do and they all know the truth which is they can't do it. And so the only way we can reduce the drug epidemic and limit the computer games and help children learn and raise good decent children is for us to spend more time with our own children. And there are ways the government can help to make that easier such as lowering taxes and flex time at work and flex time at schools. But in the end the responsibility is up to those who decide to have children. I think that's appropriate role for a party to talk about or act. Well President Reagan got the top tax rate down to 28 percent. Well it was raised back to 39 percent. So we don't it didn't get much of a chance. A more generous childcare exclusion might

help. The proposals that Senator Gregg and others are making in Congress today which would take some of the surplus and and use it to in effect lower the payroll tax might help. I guess I guess we have to try and see I mean incremental reductions in the tax rates a few dollars reductions in the tax rate might produce a few more minutes or a few more hours that parents could spend each week with their own children. And my experience is that 10 or 15 minute conversation a day where the child can work minor miracles. And there are lots of parents who work especially mothers who don't choose to but have to. And if if if they had if they're able to keep more of what they earn then they might be able to work less away from home while their children are young they might

work a few less hours every week if they're able to keep more of what they earned. So that would be the goal. I mean the tax rate on families with children has doubled since the 60s. It was 12 percent of the 60s is 24 percent of what they earn today. That added to the number of parents who don't marry and the number of children who live in families where one parent has all the work to do creates a very busy society with not very much time to take care of children. You can you can run into criticism on both sides of this. Some people don't like liberals don't like talking about these values some conservatives don't like talking about flex time at the schools. But if we've got 80 percent of the families at work and 80 percent of the kids going home at 3. Somebody better start talking about.

Well there are some federal the federal labor laws. There's debate in Congress now that over whether employees shall be permitted to work overtime and be paid in overtime or whether they could work overtime and take that and flex time. And that's a debate in Congress and that's a debate that should be resolved in favor of flex time. There are many employers who through their own initiative are creating work site schools and kindergartens and child development centers. The company that I'm helped found 11 years ago is in that business and that's a good idea. I don't think it needs the government's assistance but it does need enlightened employers who agree that if a parent can have a child close to the child at work that's also a pro-family step that makes being a busy parent. Easier. It helps busy parents be better parents.

If somebody is here. To make this country special. Well let's think about that. Let's say you have a child under the age of three infant child can cost 150 $180 a week so that's 600 a month that's seventy two hundred dollars a year at the tax rate you've got to make ten or eleven thousand dollars just to pay your childcare. So if your total income is twenty or twenty five thousand then the federal government comes in with a several thousand dollar childcare tax credit for you if you have a child who's 3 or under then it really barely

pays for you to go to work. So the closer you get the I don't know the answer to when the increment cuts in. I do know that for example when when when college students get a federal voucher that permits them to go to a community college or to the University of New Hampshire or Connecticut it increases their options by a little bit. So there are lots of reasons to lower the tax rates. This is just one more thing I've. Got to think. This. Well many many women and men work because they wish to. Many women especially work because they have to. And

if the government could make it easier for parents with young children to make their decisions about whether to work away from home based on whether they want to run they have to. I think that is that is one way to help parents stay at home or we can either spend the government money on creating substitutes for strong families or we can spend the government money helping strengthen families and I'd rather spend it to help it strengthen families because I think parents can do a better job of raising their own children than any substitute can and virtually all the cases. Be glad to have you go to Dartmouth. I'm sure I'll get some suggestions there. 330. Redneck Rampage of phantasmagoria. The

Post Postol is one of them. It's called Postol. Yeah it is. It is. It is off season. You know what I have given you is a is is my draft of this speech I'm going to be changing it. So I'm not in any significant way but I know some of you are very good students of all this. If I say something different. Kevin Kevin will catch me. All right. Well we DID YOU KNOW THAT WAS A new experience for us. We don't have those