that's when you start your office is probably a good idea to coordinate with your boss to get here a little early make sure you bring your intern bad because we're going to be capitol security is going to be working the door not make sure you bring your bag and  guys one more thing we're recording all of these that we're going to be airing them on channel thirty three every friday so i'm just going nine to five all the different lectures we have taped the other thing for the recording if you could if you want to ask a question  a fifth generation arizona on a ranch and like arizona which the town was named after in part after his great great grandfather after serving a mormon mission in southern africa he graduated from brigham young university where he received an international relations and his master's and political fine after working as the executive director of the foundation for democracy in the southern african country of namibia in one thousand nine hundred two representative became executive director of the goldwater institute in this role the congress conservative philosophy of less government more freedom and individual responsibility in two thousand residents like was elected to congress and is known as one of the more libertarian republicans in the house he supports a guest worker program for legal immigrants as well as ending the cuba trade embargo like it's also known for its opposition to your mocking process is my privilege to introduce to you you thank you appreciate being here partly because i was once an intern here a long time ago as mentioned i grew up in the town of snowflake arizona who's heard of you here we have been there nobody made fun of us there but when i came here to do an internship it was early on i was at a reception and we didn't have name tags on and it came up in conversation that i was from snowflake that this person i was talking to didn't know my name was and it turned out he knew somebody from he just couldn't remember the name so he struggled for about ten minutes and i thought i'll narrow it down for and i said was this like seem pretty normal to does been downhill ever since for me and i figured that every flight belongs in politics here i am but the best preparation i received probably for congress was growing up with ten brothers and sisters in my bedroom there were three bunk beds six boys in one room i learned to sleep through anything now on the long flights between here in arizona every weekend i can sleep committee hearing i just woke up few minutes ago it comes in very handy to talk a little about the background and and how it may have helped or hurt as mentioned i went to brigham young university got a degree in that got here and went to work for the office of senator dennis de concini from arizona a democrat or republican like me i've been trying to purge that from my record ever since and follows me wherever i go now he was he was doing some things on africa in a very conservative manner and i had a great a great time there my supervisor the legislative assistant that i worked under happened to be tim roemer who later became a congressman himself and tim and i worked together on a number of things after i got here so it was a great experience now the interesting thing is senator de concini comes in to lobby me my old boss and i tell him go sort my mail i'll think about it what goes around comes around that we have a good relationship and it was a great great experience and had a great time while i was here when i here it was in my graduate school i was already married and my wife when i was out here doing the internship had our first child ryan who is now eighteen and started college just a week ago makes me feel really old but you may have seen it if you have a habit of reading u s news and world report two weeks ago they had a little note that who as heard of namibia who just learned  brangelina or whatever they call it had their baby there yeah that's how most of that pointed out there it was pointed out that their baby wasn't the first famous  but actually while he was there my wife still ticked off he didn't have a girl first entered drawing in a beauty contest anyone who was it was deemed new maybe a baby of the year and won over a thousand dollars in experience to be there i was here did the internship got a job downtown and went to namibia for a year came back represented some of the same clients from southern africa and then went to back to arizona goldwater institute and was there for seven years then decided to run and it was a it was a whole type person primary it was an open seat and i was actually quite lucky to get here and i figured if i knocked on enough doors if they split the vote enough ways then i could get lucky and i did so i came here in the year two thousand but i have to say that doing an internship here was just great preparation whetted my appetite i didn't think that i would be back here at this stage in life i thought maybe after the kids were grown that i had come back but things happened earlier than i expected and so i'm glad to be here i have five children they stay in mesa and go out on the first live on thursday and come back when we have votes on tuesday but  running for office is an interesting process as i mentioned i decide to knock on a lot of doors in arizona not the best prospect in the summertime for a primary that happens in september you are out there in the elements one hundred today will be one hundred eleven and it was like that seemed all summer when i was running i recall that one door knock on every door you only target your own republican area those republicans who voted in the last couple of primaries you know they're going to vote so i have a walking list and i have rented a golf cart and would drive it was about every ten and most neighborhoods that one particular house pull up in a golf cart went to the door usually if you knock on their door you've got their vote if they're there i came back to the golf cart and there was a woman red faced not too happy parked around the back of it and on my golf cart there was a s just like for congress she said are you associated with him i said what any politician would why because he's an idiot he went on for w that he is me and and she just turned completely red faced and stepped on the gas almost hit the golf are going out and i have a pretty confident i didn't that  but anyway it was it was an interesting race and i wouldn't advocate this is an election strategy but it seemed to work ok for me that the top two opponent that i had in the primary it came out in the election or it came out a couple of just a couple of weeks before the end of the primary that there was a woman and she had amassed a file she hired a private investigator to look at my finances and and the two of them were fighting it out and one week before the election the front page of the paper was a picture of them emerging from a lie detector test of them agreed to take the side who had collected the file on me and more fun that way and i didn't have a substantial the democratic challenger so i got here i was a sign the judiciary committee international relations committee and the resources committee and i have the same committees six years later and i enjoy those committees and don't want to change missing a markup in judiciary right now which i may get called away for but but i enjoy as i mentioned one of the issues that  feel pretty strongly about well let me mention immigration first immigration if you're from arizona is a big issue it's a big issue everywhere right now but particularly in arizona my own view on the topic is that we've got to have a comprehensive plan that we we've got to deal with border security obviously but if we really want to secure border you've got to have a legal framework for people to come and then go i mentioned i grew up on a ranch in northern arizona we employed illegal aliens when i was growing up i was glad we did i didn't have as many sprinkler pipes to move to brand when that was the case it was an illegal at that point to hire them it only became illegal in one hundred eighty six but those who did come would come and work for a season or for a month or sometimes two years but they would go home to mexico or wherever they came from or birthdays and anniversaries and everything else because there was virtually no barrier at the border they just had to worry about the border patrol once they were in snowflake or whatever their destination now there's very little interior enforcement but the border is pretty tough to cross expensive dangerous and deadly but anybody who really wants to cross if they try long enough pay enough to a smuggler they can get here the difference is they don't go home now the average day of a migrant worker used to be two years now it's over and they simply don't go home and if we have a legal framework for workers to come and go it will alleviate many of the costs in terms of health care education criminal justice that the states are disproportionately saddled with so i agree very much with the president on that topic couple of weeks ago flew with the president to arizona on when he travels he likes to exercise when he travels you know the president used to be an avid runner run three sub seven minute miles just about every day and now he's into biking and he takes a long on air force one to trea one somebody a neighbor of mine who had just had a heart attack and checking up on him and about eighty years old and managed to get him on the phone to pick up any phone on air force one they say would you want to call  with that on the on the left side of a calf on the upper ribs and part of the brand as well was an earmark which we call the swallow for basically of the out of left ear when i was too young to be of much use my dad marks were few and far between i'm reading right now a book called the job of a congressman long time democrats marathon to serve more than thirty years in congress ran for president but he got here in a special election and never had any kind of orientation at all so after a couple of years here he thought he'd write a book called the job of the congress instruct other young members on what they were supposed to do and what's striking about that book it's five hundred pages and there's not one reference to your more not one so it is a recent phenomenon typically the way we do earmarks today in one thousand nine hundred four when republicans took control there were fewer than a thousand fewer than twelve hundred earmarks in all appropriation bills last year there were fifteen thousand and i think if we don't curb the process will simply get twice as many in years to come and the way that earmarks come about  billion dollars that way and i think it's simply ripe for abuse that was the the method of corruption for him he actually had on his congressional letterhead apparently a wrong no member ought to have the expectation that they can write a check to any group in their district or elsewhere without it being scrutinized and i think that the lobby reform bill that we passed in the house needs to move through the process and intel it does i think that all their marks ought to be identified at least so at least i can go to the sponsor and say what is this facility west virginia what what's the purpose where's the oversight how do you ensure that the money is spent there where is the federal nexus if we can spend money this way what can't we spend money on those those kind of questions need to be asked and they can't be asked this point now at is a lot of fun and for all the supposed rancor and partisanship around this place if you if you play baseball and basketball and last year football and  do sports and whatnot you'll see i think the best of bipartisanship and i don't think the system is is as bad as in terms of members getting along with each other maybe i'm just naive on that  maybe i just like to have somebody pass me the ball but i but i think if you are involved in activities like that you see how congress can be and some of my best friends certainly here are on the other side of the aisle and four o'clock some days it's on my schedule always on my schedule four o'clock gym caucus that's basketball so that but let me leave it at that and go ahead and go to q and a i know that some may have questions or challenges just softballs please be nice and my intern right now isn't allowed to ask any question or actually i'll have her come up and answer some after anyway any questions a body has i'd be glad to try to answer before i have to run back to the markup  years you've got a shortcut to a green card that was a true amnesty basically you've been here you get a green card i don't think we ought to do that i think we ought to have an amnesty and amnesty as defined by the dictionary as an unconditional pardon for breach of law and legislation that myself and jim colby john mccain and ted kennedy offered if you are here illegally and you wish to stay you have to pay back taxes you have to have no criminal record at all you have to serve basically two terms as a as a temporary worker and then i'll pay a thousand dollar fine as well then pay another thousand dollar fine the requirements for english that used to stand it citizenship would be moved ahead for a green card level so it's a multilingual by step process but the biggest mistake of the just as big a mistake in one thousand nine hundred six is doing the amnesty was a failure to recognize that we would need additional workers additional particularly low skilled workers we didn't increase the number of green cards other than taking care of those who are here illegally then and so the day the nine hundred eighty six law simpson was only act was signed into law it was out of date because guess what we needed additional workers and if we do the same thing today even if we took care of all twelve million and said you've got an amnesty or you can stay here and work we still are going to need additional workers just because of demographics and education levels like it or not there are a lot of jobs that americans don't want to do and there are a lot of jobs that i had that i didn't particularly like as a child i wouldn't do them today nor would i wish them on my children  but there are some who are anxious to do them so i think if we want to grow an economy we've got to ensure and if we want to in particular if we want to secure our borders we've got to do a comprehensive plan that takes into  account future labor needs as well good question hi my name's joshua bray from from representative berman's office discuss the process of earmarks and its problems i was wondering what caused the change are why before where earmarks so rare and why they become so common as a procedural change or what and what steps would need to be taken to stop it great question i think what prompted the biggest change was  that the bill that has the most earmarks we do every six years of the highway bill sixty three hundred earmarks when we passed it last year and the interstate highway system was started by eisenhower in the one nine hundred fifty s and we had a federal gas tax implemented at that time it's now eighteen the interstate highway system was completed nearly completed in one thousand nine hundred eighty and so you have this all this revenue coming to the federal government nine hundred eighty that the interstate highway system is finished how do we give that revenue back to the state and so now it's just back in the states by formula or by favor basically by earmarks and one hundred eighty there were ten earmarks in the highway bill hundred eighty seven president reagan vetoed the highway bill because there were one hundred fifty two earmarks his comment at the time was i haven't seen this much lard since i gave away ribbons of the county fair a veto to congress over hundred ninety two there were about five hundred earmarks in the highway bill nine hundred ninety four republicans took over and said we're going to change this process nine hundred ninety eight there were eight hundred we didn't do a very good job of changing it and then this last highway bill sixty three hundred so it i think the highway bill kind of was was one that kind of pushed earmarks to the fore and members saw how easy and how much curry you could favor at home with earmarks and so it spread to other bills as well there have been earmarked you know prior to the one nine hundred eighty s but few and far between and there was at least some scrutiny and now there's very little and i think that we just found out how easy it is and i've made it easier and ever since i've been elected members have been kind of conditioned to believe that that's how you get reelected is to bring home the bacon i don't think that's defy anybody to point to any race in the country and say that number one because he or she brought home the bacon but that myth persists and as long as it does i think you're going to have pressure to to bring home the bacon i should mention in my last race in two thousand and four my opponent the republican primary quickly lined up the support of three of the five mayors in my district and and many others by saying you know i'll bring home the bacon like won't he hasn't he's against earmarks and he raised quite a bit of money from sociate a general contractor some of the highway interest because we're debating the highway bill reauthorization and for others but then he quickly realized that while he was able to raise some money on that issue the voters would and i think that they remain if members will decide hey let me just say as well i just walking over here had a member that i don't believe i've ever met before come up and and say i don't agree with you always a democrat but i like what you're doing on the earmarks and i get that more than anyone  because i think a lot of members here are tired of the spoils system they had higher aspirations when running for office than groveling at the feet of appropriators when they got here and this system has become that way where you once you get an earmark in a spending bill you really can't vote against that bill or you might lose your earmarks and so it drives up spending everywhere else some will say earmarks are just two percent of the budget but earmarks are as my colleague tom coburn in the senate said they are the gateway drug to spending addiction because once you get them you can't vote against those bills and they're also used as will do so and threats on other legislation moves to usually spending legislation and so it is there much greater and more important than the sum of their parts yes yes and i guess my interest in the i was when i got home from south africa my brother was there in the on the runway when i got off and said welcome home let's go to hawaii that sure why you have a campus on the north beach and there was a beautiful girl there from california when i got to the beach and i told her my name like if she last guess who got the last laugh she's now mrs flake that's why i love the beach so i love the island but seriously  fact it's worse than that when we went back seven years after we met went to this bar we met on the beach we drove up to the school and i told my wife i said that's a new building that change with this new building on the right isn't it no that's the library and that was here when we were i never saw  but i'm getting off the course to the pacific island the marshall islands but take it or i've been there now twice and the marshals are important because we did nuclear testing in the marshall islands sixty years ago and marshall it's called the compact of free association they're not a territory but they with a they get a u s passport and they can travel freely we have several marshallese serving in the military and some of them have that most of it is done by a small minority you would stop them would kind of stop the process good question there there probably you can probably count the members that don't get marks on one hand but in fact i'm quite sure you can but the bulk of the year marks and number and dollar value go to very few and  mean and i think that most rank and file members would like to change the way we do this it simply become the system where you are too beholden to leadership or a committee chair by getting the busy that you're not going to get any earmarks so i don't begrudge anybody who does i'm just saying that a lot of my colleagues would love to change the system it's just that they don't want to unilaterally disarm and be the first one to say no because as long as your neighbor though the congressman in the district next to you is getting your marks and you aren't that you know you really have some explaining to do for the folks at home and so i just think that that we all need to band together and change the system the average number of days in the normal summer to one hundred ten degrees and it took us less than a month to surpass that this year so i'm just curious as a congressman from arizona what it was that you would like to see start happening with you know the monsoon season moving up every year and everything it just seems to get a little bit warmer a little bit worse every single year so is there something you would like to see happen thanks i don't think there's any doubt among the scientific community that we are going through a period of increased or warming change if we cut back on our economy and and promote alternative fuels and other things is that going to make a substantial difference those are the questions we need to answer and i think that  answers there but i think that some of the steps we're taking we're certainly cars that are coming off the assembly line now are much better than they were years ago and if you want to change that we're doing it now just because of prices i think the market does a far better job than government regulation in regulating behavior and i can tell you i drive a suburban because i have five kids as soon as  another one goes off to college where downsizing because i'm tired of paying seventy five dollars to fill it and so consumer choice i think is going to do a lot to drive us in the right direction there that's why it is kind of befuddles me to have  those who are concerned about global warming going out and decrying high gas prices and going out and trying to get rebates and and cut the federal gas tax and pay it out of the general fund and do things to lower  the price of gas when that's what will drive the kind of innovation that we need to relieve our dependence on it that's a concern to those of us in arizona and just about everybody else  there i've pushed an amendment ever since i got here that would say in the highway bill that if you get an earmark in the highway bill for a bridge or museum or whatever else it ought to come out your state's formula  not everybody else's and i got laughed at them particularly my last campaign when i said that's my position they said well yeah but that it was generously referred to as the flight tilting at windmills amendment that you'll never get it is a nice thought well guess what we got it in the last highway bill so arizona whether or not in this last highway bill myself or mccain or shadegg none of us got any earmarks in the highway bill but arizona got the money anyway because that's the way it should be if it comes by formula arizona ought to get it and i just think that the folks at the arizona department of transportation are in a much better position than i am  determine what the needs are in terms of transportation because if you have a politician like me who says in all of us got an offer of fourteen million we got the call from the transportation committee is that you've got fourteen million how do you want to spend it's got to support the bill if i'm going to spend that fourteen million i'm going to say not you know what the biggest need in my district maybe it's a two o two interchange that would take all the fourteen million now politician i'm going to say i want to bike paths here i want a highway beautification here i want to list that's going to be two pages long and because once you assemble a list like that you've got some political  favors you can do and you you can cut a lot of ribbons and you can get a big list and unfortunately although we're spending much more money every six years with the highway bill as a percentage less and less money is going to transit for things that don't necessarily improve mobility or relieve congestion or improve air quality transportation museums we've funded probably hundreds of them in the last highway bill not exactly happy when they moved west valley in glendale and i was wondering if you knew of any negative effects with moving out there the cardinals and the super bowl if there is going to be any negative effects for the valley in my view but that's the market they want to offer more incentives over there some would say that glendale gave away too much we're getting very parochial here i know but anyway i just think that the market is the