Mike Pence:                Thank you all for coming.  I want to share with you a couple of thoughts.  Kevin Brady is a senior member of the Ways & Means Committee and graciously joining us today.
 
                                    A couple of thoughts on where we are.  Our nation is in a serious recession.  American families are hurting, many people have lost their jobs, many millions more fear that they'll be next.  And Republicans in the House are unanimous in our support for a stimulus bill that will create jobs and put this economy back on track.
 
                                    Yesterday in Indiana we were honored to welcome the President of the United States to a town hall meeting in Elkhart.  I also hosted a town hall meeting in Columbus, Indiana, and I want to reflect on that before I yield to Mr. Brady and then, of course, we'll get to your questions and we'll have you out of here in time to stroll comfortably to your Pen & Pad with the Majority Leader.
 
                                    My town hall meetings usually draw about 40 people.  Maureen, you've covered them before, written about them, but yesterday we made no extraordinary effort at turn out.  We scheduled a town hall meeting across the hall at Donner Center in Columbus from the Rotary Club.
 
                                    Three hundred people in Columbus, Indiana, showed up for my town hall meeting at 12:30.  I would say judging from the remarks that are reported widely this morning in the Columbus Republic, and I hope our press staff will be printing off a copy of the story for you, the overwhelming majority of people that showed up at our town hall meeting were strongly opposed to the so-called stimulus bill that has passed the House and is about to pass the Senate.
 
                                    My perception in the room was that the Hoosiers with whom I spoke know that Congress needs to do something but there was a strong consensus that we need to take time to get it right.  I expressed our belief that history teaches that the fastest way to jump start an economy in a recession is to give working families and small business owners immediate and significant marginal tax relief.
 
                                    That when I recited that emphasis in the meeting I was met with applause repeatedly and I would commend the article to your attention and I wouldn't - I don't want to say everyone in the room agreed with my position but I would characterize it as overwhelming support in a spontaneous public setting also taking place in Indiana when the President was visiting us.
 
                                    Let me close by sharing one anecdote which was deeply meaningful to me.  Columbus, Indiana is not just in my District, it's my home town.  I grew up swimming at the swimming pool next to the Donner Center Recreational Facility.  And a girl maybe aged 13 or 14 who identified herself as Hillary stood up and she said to me, "Congressman, my dad is raising me and my sibling as a single parent and he just got word -," these are not her words, I can't remember if she said brother or sister, but she referred to her sibling.  She said her dad was a single parent raising two kids.
 
                                    She said, "My dad just got word that his job has reduced his hours from 40 hours to 24 hours and I want to know is there anything in this stimulus bill that's gonna help my dad go back to full-time and help our family."
 
                                    And I looked her right in the eye with no small amount of emotion and I said, "Hillary, that's precisely the right question.  I commend you for it."  And I said, "Because I cannot tell you that this bill will help your dad go back to full-time, I cannot support this bill" and the room erupted in applause.
 
                                    That's the issue here.  It's families like Hillary's dad that are hurting, that want to go back to work, that are making the sacrifices necessary to support their families and that's why Republicans are determined to continue to stand for the kind of stimulus that we know will create jobs.
 
                                    Last thought and I'll yield to Kevin for such comments as he may wish to make.  The President said repeatedly last night, and I want to be very respectful of the President of the United States of America, in this room and always, so I would commend you to the transcript but I believe I heard the President say several times that he quarreled with Republicans who wanted to do nothing.
 
                                    I know of no Republican in the Congress of the United States that wants to do nothing and I would respectfully commend the President to the proposals that Republicans have brought forward and to our earnest desire to return to that bipartisan challenge that he leveled to the Congress before.
 
                                    We've brought forward ideas, substantive ideas, but I want to say again, I am aware of no Republican in Congress who believes that Congress should not act and act swiftly to stimulate this economy with legislation.  And to suggest - I'll leave it there.  Kevin?
 
Kevin Brady:               Well, thanks for having me, Mike.  And I agree, we want the President to succeed.  We need more people back to work, we need the economy to recover in a big way and our difference is that our belief is that when the economy is drowning you throw it a life preserver; you don't build a 40 foot yacht.
 
                                    More and more economists and more and more Americans believe the stimulus is just too slow, it's too expensive and at the end of the day it's not gonna help rescue the economy.
 
                                    I think the President's been given a real stinker by the Congressional Democrats.  He wanted a bipartisan bill that focused on jobs.  He got a very partisan bill that focuses on frivolous spending and a lot of unrelated measures.
 
                                    And one of these that has surfaced in the last few days are the welfare reform issues.  You know, I recall President Clinton, I recall John Kerry, I recall Al Gore touting the reforms of 1996 and finally we were getting people back to work and doing it the right way insisting that they either get a GED, get job training, look for a job and that way we worked off those roles.
 
                                    But Democrats have put in two provisions in this bill that basically guts the 1996 reforms and gives states a pass on helping get people back to work.  They did this through two provisions, be glad to talk about them but the bottom-line is we know that more and more people don't have jobs.  We're paying states today as if there were 5 million people unemployed.  There's about 1.6 million and we have contingency fund for states when unemployment goes up and food stamps increase that they get more federal funding.  So we've got a way to address in large roles.  We shouldn't be subsidizing the larger case roles and we shouldn't be letting states get off the hook to get people back to work.
 
                                    And I'll finish with this, what we said in the welfare reform was that it's not enough that you're out of work, we're gonna help you get new skills, get an education, look for work, get a job and we gave states 12 ways they can help adults get off those welfare roles.  This provision basically guts that at a time when with the economy is tough , when you actually ought to be engaging adults in, "What new skills do you need?  What education do you need?"  And with so many of our welfare case load high school dropouts getting that GED, give them a chance to go back to work.
 
                                    These reforms gut that.  I still think where Republicans and Democrats agreed in 1996 was that compassion isn't measured by how many people are on the welfare rolls, it's measured by how many people we can get off them and into producing jobs.  I think that still ought to be - are the principals we share.  And this, the stimulus bill, for some unknown reason really reverses some things both parties worked together on.
 
Mike Pence:                Questions, and I'd love first names and employer.  Sir?
 
Question:                     I'm Bart Jansen from the Congressional Quarterly.
 
Mike Pence:                Hey, Bart.
 
Question:                     If the President is making calls, meeting with folks to try to recruit them to vote "Yes" for the bill, what are you guys doing to try to recruit Democrats to vote "No"?
 
Mike Pence:                Well, I would refer you to the leader in the Whip's office on that count but my answer would be we're gonna continue to do what we did when 11 Democrats voted "No" before.  But , I also want to say, you know, there's - I find myself - well, I find it interesting that people have been giving Republicans credit for messaging or for the spin on - you know, this is just a bad bill.
 
                                    I mean, you know, we're - all the Republicans have been doing is raising the curtain on what is a monstrous wish list of tired liberal spending priorities that have been rolled out under the guise of stimulus.  And the American people caught on to this, you know, and so we're gonna continue to take that case to the American people, we'll continue to take it to our Democrat colleagues and we hope as the eminent passage of the bill in the Senate approaches that as we go into the conference committee that we'll have the ability to carry Republican ideas into the conference report.  This ain't over.
 
Question:                     Mosheh with Fox News.
 
Mike Pence:                Hi, Mosheh.
 
Question:                     Good to be here.  You were discussing the sessions you had with your residents yesterday.  The Gallup Poll shows that the majority of Americans support the President on this and believe that a stimulus plan is critically important and support the current - the plan that came out of the Senate.
 
                                    One, what do you make out of that polling data, and two, going into whatever comes out of conference do you feel that you can keep your Republican caucus united again in opposition?  Can you guarantee that no Republicans will jump to the other side to vote for -
 
Mike Pence:                 Kevin, do you want to take a crack at that?  I want to alternate.
 
Kevin Brady:               Well, I would just say that I'm Whip team, Deputy Whip.  You know, our goal isn't to have every Republican vote against it.  Our goal is to have a bill that actually stimulates the economy.  This one falls so far short there hasn't been much of an effort to unite the conference.  Everyone's reached that agreement by simply reading the bill.
 
Mike Pence:                Well, I would commend also - I don't - the Gallup organization has been around an awful long time.  This is not about polls, it's not about politics, it's about creating jobs.  And we absolutely believe in our heart of hearts that this so-called stimulus bill will not work.  It will not put this country back on the road to recovery.
 
                                    And so we're gonna dig in, almost irrespective of the polls, although I will say there's some other intriguing polls out there.  The Rasmussen Poll, I think showed a decisive majority of Americans believe the bill should include more tax cuts and less spending.  You know, I've got 300 reasons why I'm returning to the Capitol even more emboldened today, 300 Hoosiers showed up for a very routine town hall on the middle of a Monday and the overwhelming majority said, "We can do better."  And House Republicans agree.
 
                                    Maureen?
 
Question:                     Development in the Gallup Poll found that there was only 38 percent of people who thought - who approved of the Republicans handling of the stimulus bill.  How do you square that low approval rating for your party's handing of the bill with that big turnout in Columbus or with your - you're saying the public's catching on?
 
Mike Pence:                Well, all I know, if we're gonna talk polls for a minute, and in the communications shop at a conference we occasionally look at polls, is support for the stimulus bill has been dropping ever week since it was first introduced.
 
                                    I expect there'll be more polls that come out that demonstrate that public support is continuing to drop using the same methods and the same research.  So - and again, I don't - Republicans don't take any credit for that, we don't take any relish in it.  Families are hurting, the American people need a stimulus bill that will work and the reason why more and more Americans are walking away from this spending bill is because they know you can't borrow and spend and bail your way back to a prosperous economy.
 
Question:                     Yeah, do you have any reason to think that in conference this bill will become more to your liking?
 
Mike Pence:                Yes.
 
Question:                     And what is that - why do you think that?  I mean, possibility or strong possibility?
 
Mike Pence:                Because this town never thinks about the impact of the American people on the legislative process.  And I mean that across the board, I mean no slam on members of the fourth estate, I'm saying the whole political class out here thinks we're the only people in this conversation and there are hundreds of millions of others, who I expect as we sit here today, are on the phone, on the Internet, sending emails and respectfully conveying their belief that we can do better to their members of the House and Senate.  If the American people choose to engage on this, anything's possible in the conference.
 
Question:                     Rich [inaudible]
 
Mike Pence:                Yeah, Rich.
 
Question:                     The President was not far from your District yesterday in Elkhart and seemed to be saying that people in Elkhart want this bill without necessarily getting to the details it seems to be commanding - it's hard to assess how much of a presence he is selling it Elkhart and elsewhere.
 
Mike Pence:                Hoosiers were delighted and honored to have the President of the United States return to our state but let me tell you something, you know, back before I started working wearing a suit everyday I was a radio talk show host and my show was carried in Elkhart, Indiana for more than five years.  I know that community, I talked to them everyday, I was on a pretty big station up there.  That's a very conservative area and I would love to see members of the national media take a stroll up to Elkhart and do an informal survey of whether or not the people of Elkhart, Indiana think that more government and more debt is gonna result in more prosperity in their county or beyond.
 
                                    Let me tell you, that the RV industry up there, it's a national pivot point for the RV industry, I expect there's an awful lot of people in Elkhart, Indiana that know that in a recession when you're looking at Congress, looking to add to deficits and debt and very likely plan to raise taxes on Americans, that probably depresses the average RV consumers decision to buy.
 
                                    And so cutting taxes on working families so they have more resources to buy an RV probably would resonate in Elkhart, Indiana a whole lot more than it might have looked like on TV yesterday.
 
                                    Kevin, any thoughts?
 
Kevin Brady:               You know, on the polling numbers, I think the President has two things going for him that is propping up the polling numbers on the stimulus.  One is that Americans are giving him a fair chance to show his leadership as President.  He's only been on the job three weeks.
 
Mike Pence:                Sure.
 
Kevin Brady:               People want him to succeed, including us.
 
Mike Pence:                You bet.
 
Kevin Brady:               And secondly, they want a stimulus to work.  I mean, they're seeing this feeding frenzy of lobbyist in Washington; they're seeing all this frivolously spending, they're seeing dollars just seemingly rain down across the country.  I think they're very skeptical it's going to work but I think they want it somehow to work.  And I think those reflected in those polls numbers because back home, again, everyone wants something to work but they look at this and they just have serious doubts, just my thoughts.
 
Mike Pence:                Over here.
 
Question:                     Mr. Pence, prior - both prior to inauguration and after the President and his administration estimated that their stimulus package would produce between 3 and 4 million jobs in the 4th Quarter 2010, before this bill was enacted, and assuming it is, do you believe that Congress owes the American people a systematic report of exactly how many jobs this legislation will create?
 
Mike Pence:                Well, in fairness to the President I think his promise has been to save or create that number of jobs.  And whether Congress requires it, I'm sure there will be a report about whether it works, whether we get this economy turned around.  And if history is a teacher both here at home and in the experience of Japan in the lost decade is massive government spending does not stimulate economy growth.
 
                                    That's one of the reasons why Martin Feldstein, after initially endorsing some sort of a spending stimulus bill last fall called this bill a week or so back, "An $800 billion mistake."  There is some spending that very likely encourages growth.  There can be infrastructure spending that can be appropriate but the centerpiece of any stimulus bill that has ever worked here or elsewhere in free society has been the kind of stimulus bill that gives working families and small businesses more of their hard earned tax dollars.
 
                                    And let me also - I'll yield to Kevin, he might reflect on the Ways & Means Committee that did some fascinating work, I hope you've seen it, on the number of jobs that would be created using the Republican alternative, using the very same econometric models that the administration uses.
 
Kevin Brady:               Well, two things, thanks, Mike, one, Ways & Means Republicans did add an amendment that would require government to measure the jobs created from this deal.  Whether that's still in there at the end of the day, we don't know.
 
                                    The Republican alternative creates twice as many jobs, $6.2 million for half the cost using the President's own models.  And I opened up the paper to go to the issue of economic consensus, there is among economists,  that serve on a joint economic committee, that 2009 is the year to focus on.  So they're gonna see - we'll see maybe 6 percent contraction the first quarter.  It's gonna get equally ugly in the second, looks like the third we'll start working our way a little up, by the fourth quarter we have the chance, if the financial rescue plan works, of pulling out by the - at the end of this year but I opened the paper yesterday in the Houston Chronicle and there was a full page ad from economists who don't believe the stimulus will work.
 
                                    I think there is a growing consensus that the way this bill is put together might actually harm our economy.  And I appreciate the President asking for our ideas.  I'm with Mike; we hope some can be incorporated.
 
Mike Pence:                Right here.
 
Question:                     Congressman, Doug Sachtleben -
 
Mike Pence:                A couple more minutes if you're concerned about not -
 
Question:                     - SRN News.  At the beginning or even throughout the _____, the Republican conference has generally pointed its opposition at the Democrats in Congress and been pretty favorable toward the President in your comments and have talked about the President having that open door, wanting to hear your ideas.  What has the President done with Republican ideas, with Republican input?  Do you feel like he's actually taken anything and done anything with what you all have said?
 
Mike Pence:                Well, I mean, we're grateful for the outreach that the President's made to Republican leaders and I was especially grateful that the President accepted our invitation to speak before the House Republican Conference.  But bipartisanship means more than stopping by.  Bipartisanship requires an honest give-and-take in the development of legislation.
 
                                    And as I informed the President at our conference, House Republicans have been completely excluded from the development of this legislation to date.  We are, however, hopefully that as we go to a conference committee that that can change.  And I was pleased last night that while the President was somewhat critical of alternative ideas at the podium, he did renew his call for bipartisanship and he seemed to be moving away from the harsh partisan rhetoric of his speech of last Thursday and I was grateful for that.
 
                                    The American people want us to work together, they want us to figure out what will work, there is room for compromise in this building.  But Republicans will not compromise on our demand that this bill include the kind of fast acting tax relief that will now, and has always, been the cure for what ails an economy during a recession.  Last?
 
Question:                     David Lightman from McClatchy.  Give us two or three specific areas where there's room for compromise.
 
Mike Pence:                Well, I would point you to the motion to recommit that Republicans passed when the bill moved through the House.  There was - which I supported - there was, you know, reprioritization of funding for roads and bridges, infrastructure.  There was - Republicans are willing to support unemployment insurance in the bill.  But at the end of the day, you know, what this bill - and I think those kinds of investments are the kinds of things Republicans will be prepared to back.  But not this long, tired wish list of liberal spending priorities that is the sum total of the bill to date.
 
Question:                     But with all due respect, can we move away from this language about recommitting and so forth, give me three things  - Is that a place where you can compromise?  Give me three precise places where you might compromise.
 
Mike Pence:                Well, the motion to recommit was pretty specific.  I'll be happy to get you a copy of it.
 
Question:                     People in Columbus, Indiana, don't know what motion to recommit means.  Give me three precise areas where you would compromise.
 
Mike Pence:                Well, let me say that the - I do believe that Republicans would be willing to accept infrastructure funding as a part of this bill, roads and bridges.  We'd be willing to accept it at a more significant level than Democrats have included, I think less than 5 percent of this bill represents roads and bridges.
 
                                    I think you'd see Republicans be willing to accept an extension of unemployment insurance in this bill.  Very likely at the current level.
 
Question:                     [inaudible] Twenty to 33 weeks -
 
Mike Pence:                Well, you know, at levels that we put in our motion to recommit and I'll get you a copy of it.  You know, I do want to stay focused on, you know, when I was home yesterday, and you can read about it in the Columbus Republic, I mean, the support in that room was quite startling to me.  You know, usually you go to town hall meetings and it's not a room full of attaboys, usually people come to a town hall meeting to tell you that - what you're doing they don't agree with.
 
                                    And I was very struck, and will be really for the rest of my life, 300 people came out in a town where there have been layoffs, Cummins Engine Company, most notably, and other companies.  People came and said, "We want Congress to act, we want Congress to do something but we want Congress to do the right thing."  And when I described Republican proposals for tax relief this year for working families, when I described Republican proposals for small business tax relief, I was interrupted with applause and I left with a sense in that room that that group in Indiana, and I think - I will say boldly, I think a large majority of Americans know that the way forward now is to find compromise but not compromise on what we know works.  What we know works is tax relief in times of recession and Republicans will keep fighting for that.
 
                                    Closing thought, Kevin?
 
Kevin Brady:               That's good.
 
Mike Pence:                Thank you.