 with Democratic incumbents and candidates at all levels, the federal and state levels. She's been instrumental in shaping how issue advocates understand how to pursue their advocacy through the innovative work, some of which you'll kind of see in action today. After Salinda speaks and answers a few questions, we'll then have a panel of the cream of the crop of people who are involved in regulatory efforts in our country who will give perspectives on what this research inspires and some of the ways in which it can be applied to current fights. I'll introduce them all once we finish with Salinda's presentation. So as not to take away from some very incredible, interesting and innovative work that Salinda's gonna present to us now. So ladies and gentlemen, Salinda Lake. Thank you very much. And I apologize for this cold. I am delighted to be here. Right now it is very rare to actually get to deliver good news. And this is unadulterated good news. And it is good news as EPI said that is absolutely contrary to conventional wisdom. So I wanna thank EPI so much for hosting this. I also wanna really acknowledge the Baumann Foundation, Gary Bass is here and the state innovation exchange for their visionary work here. This framing and this concept really came out of their work early on several years ago. The version that we're gonna show this work has been in evolution over the last two to three years. And what we did was originally focus groups. And in fact, frankly, after the first focus groups in Ohio among white working class people who have now become infamous. And I'm sure that most of the people in those groups voted for Trump. We were stunned. We thought there must be something wrong with these groups. There's like no way this is real America. This can't be true. And then, excuse me, we did a statewide survey of likely voters and we found overwhelming support for this new frame of increased tougher enforcement and for regulation and for case studies kind of the new secret sauce of messaging. Then the last stage of this project and the one I'm most excited about in some ways is we, and turned out to be absolutely clairvoyant, we did a dial project where we used a methodology of posing a fictitious debate between people on our side of the debate using the new messaging and people using language all taken at that point in time as it turned out to be clairvoyant from the chamber, from McConnell and from Trump. We did not think at the time was gonna win, actually. We just thought that he represented the best of that rhetoric. Without exception, by the way, the winning messages beat their messages and in one case, beat it even among Republicans. So let me share with you first off and can we, are we toggling a query between presentations or not showing anything first? Anyway, you don't really need to see the slides until down the road. So in terms of a kind of four key takeaways, first of all, what you'll see is a winning message in frame. And of course, we've always said, we would have said a while ago to you, you know, when the facts, the facts don't matter. That's killing us, right? And EPA, it's an odd place to say that, but facts don't matter. And when the facts don't fit the frame, people reject the facts, not the frame. So setting the frame is the most important thing. Really, this should have been served, this meeting should have had alcohol to begin with, right? Now, though, we're greatly liberated because we're in a post-factual world, so it really doesn't matter. The facts truly don't matter. When framed correctly, the regulation, and we didn't hide the ball here, we didn't use pseudonyms like safeguards and rules, we used the hardcore word regulation. And we also talked about state regulation, which is even more popular than federal regulation, but we talked about federal and national regulation. I mean, we deliberately wanted to head straight into the storm. The call for tougher, fairer, increased enforcement with penalties beats their message of killing jobs, increasing costs, and hurting small businesses. And again, we were not light on ourselves, and their message has a lot of appeal, but our message is even more appealing. The frame worked in the post-Trump year, this research is hot off the press, and we won two-thirds of Democrats, independents, and almost half of Republicans. And in fact, when we were talking about clean water, we actually won Republicans and beat their message. What you'll see here is our side of four debates, and in each of the cases of the debates, we presented our message and their message, an equal exposure to both. We'll also show you their best message, which we beat, but is a formidable message. And by the way, rising costs beats even job killing, and small business is the most dangerous opposition argument that they have. And in fact, as we've known for a while, and I think many of us work with Main Street Alliance and small business majority and others, the Coalition for Sustainable Business, having a small business voice is very, very important. Pro-enforcement messages win when we're focused on enforcing existing rules, penalizing violators, and tougher enforcement. Now, the great news is, you may think that wait, we're already constraining ourselves because we're only talking about tougher enforcement, we're only talking about existing regulations. It turns out for real people, tougher enforcement can mean modernizing the regulations, closing loopholes, adding things to make up for modern conditions. So this is a framing in a way that improves where we're at. It's not a reduction in terms of the ability to do new regulations, but frankly, enforcement, tougher enforcement, works much, much better than talking about new regulations, even though that tougher enforcement can include expansion, correction, remedying, et cetera. The strongest debate arguments focused, oh, there we go, great. The strongest debate arguments focused on safeguarding Americans from harm to public health and safety. Now, some on the progressive side have worried about using this health and safety frame, particularly the safety frame, and worried about it feeding, particularly among women voters, the whole security mom agenda. The thing I would say to you about it is the safety frame is set, and it's kind of like the 2004 election, where we saw the security moms in force. We could not get to the economic message if we didn't first pass through the security message. And I'll never forget a woman in Florida who said, I don't care what kind of job my husband has if he's in the World Trade Center. So the safety frame is there. We're either gonna be punished by it or we're gonna use it to our advantage. We also found that common sense enforcement, ensuring air and water are clean, and the clean water argument, by the way, particularly strong in the West and particularly strong among Republicans, inadequate penalties, and that was really, that is a central paradigm that people have. People think that corporations build into their bottom line now the fines, which are jokes, and then pass them straight on to either cutting the workers' wages or increasing the prices that we all pay. As it turns out, real people understand a lot about economics. People are overwhelmingly in favor of tougher penalties. And we try to strict economic argument, and you'll see in a moment that it wasn't our strongest argument, frankly, but it was an important one because our economic argument beat their economic argument. And more important, we are desperate right now as a progressive movement to establish an economic frame, and obviously, EPI has worked hard on that, and many in the room, AFR and others, and the labor unions have been working hard on that. We are desperate to set an economic frame. So having a regulatory message that can reinforce a populist economic frame is a very, very important part of our strategy. The next couple of slides I'm gonna skip just because they cover things that I'm gonna show you. So let's skip to the Trump effect, which is slide eight. And we did find a Trump effect, and it wasn't just the Democrats crying on the phone when we called them. There were other Trump effects. And one of the things we found, and it's a warning to us that people really do see current conversations through the prism of Donald Trump. So the Republicans were way more in favor of regulation than they had been in 2014 when we first saw them. And in part, that's because they're thinking of the regulations that they want, tougher trade immigration. The Democrats were more leery. They were still in favor of regulations, but they were more tentative. It's like, okay, well, which regulations are we talking about, and who's in charge of these regulations? Because I'm not committing until I hear a little more. Now, once we had had the debates, people right-sized themselves. The Democrats got that, oh, this is our guys. Okay, well, we're for this. And the Republicans, well, I didn't think you meant that. But it is an important reminder, and I think some of the first research that has demonstrated that it's something we have to consider in everything that we are doing that Trump so dominates the consciousness right now, that people are really putting everything through the Trump prism. The other thing we found that was very, very important was case studies. Now, we have all talked in the past about how we want to put a human face on our issues, and we always want to have the pathetic story. And what we found repeatedly is that when we have a pathetic story, what people do is they try to fix the person rather than fix the problem. It is very hard to find a pathetic story that has systemic consequences in people's minds. Too many Sally Struthers ads late at night on TV. My favorite example of this that some of you have heard about already was a minimum wage. We were talking about increase in the minimum wage, and we had the case study, or we had the example of a single mom with two kids, 12 and 13, working two jobs and still couldn't make it. And people said, well, she shouldn't have had those kids, she couldn't afford it. Well, a little late now, they're 12 and 13. Then people said, you know, she should have gone to college, blah, blah, blah. Then my favorite comment, I was moderating the focus group, someone said she shouldn't be on drugs. Well, first of all, fucking age, she's a minimum wage worker, she can't afford drugs, okay? But more to the point, nobody had said she was on drugs. So I'm moderating and trying to be a good moderator. When I said, well, what do other people think about this? Oh yeah, she shouldn't have been on drugs. Who said she was on drugs? She can't afford drugs, she's making minimum wage. Showing that people want to fix the people, not the problem. Well, with the help of OMB Watch and the Baumann Foundation, we came up with a really new secret sauce that I think applies to lots of situations. And that is the case study. And we tried two different case studies on regulation, the West Virginia Coal Slurry Dump, and the water problem, and the Texas chemical plant blowing up. And what we found is with case studies, unlike the personal examples, people think, well, 300,000 people later, you can't fix every single one of those individuals. People also thought with the case study, that that could be me. In the personal stories, they distance, so that's not me, that's you. I'm sympathetic, but only so much so. With the case study, it's like, that's all of us, geez, I could be in that. So the case study is a, it's a tough methodology because you can't go on and on and on, right? We got a, the average 30 second soundbite is now nine seconds. But the case study turned out to be far more effective and you'll see an effective usage of that. So here's our message triangle, and you have this on the handout. Protection of health and safety of Americans, protection, a very, very, very strong word as is prevention, particularly with women voters. Common sense, preventing economic disasters, and people think the regulations completely failed to prevent, and so they are wildly, this is where conventional wisdom is always wrong. And what I love is Beltway conventional wisdom is wrong about 105% of the time, plus or minus 5%. So people definitely want economic regulations and you can talk to Lisa and Gary and others about this. We have tons of research that shows this. 65% of Americans remember on election Eve thought that within four years we would have another recession. Two thirds of Americans thought the economy was not good or poor. 75% of Americans thought their kids were doing, could be worse off than they were. It's one of the reasons we lost the election and it's one of the reasons we lost up and down the ticket. So people really want regulations to protect them against a future economic disaster and then it helped to have examples of where enforcement worked. People still wanna be more positive and aspirational. They don't wanna buy a deck chair on the Titanic. They don't wanna hear about your problems. They wanna hear what we're gonna do about problems, what we're gonna solve them. And this is part of the secret of regulations. When people hear other things, they think, oh gosh, how are we gonna deal with something that big? In the regulatory arena, people think, well gosh, we could do that. We could pass that law. We could cover enforcement. We could have that change. Some of the language that was particularly strong on our side, we can't trust big business and corporations to police themselves, especially when penalties are so minimal. The populist argument really worked here. By the way, referring to big businesses and corporations is strong also, referring to the wealthy is strong, but don't just leave it at rich or wealthy because people think, well maybe you're coming down to get the middle class. Refer to them as very wealthy or super wealthy. Protect health and save lives. Big corporations promoting health above the health, promoting profits above the health and safety of Americans. Big corporations, not just ordinary Americans need to be held accountable for their actions. The system is out of balance. This language about being out of balance, and many of you may be familiar with Anachank or Osario's work who has told us that the language of gap does not test very well. People think gap is static, they're gonna fall through the middle. People think when things are out of balance, you can take action to put it back in balance. So the out of balance language tastes much, much better than the gap language by the way. Favoring the wealthy and powerful for ordinary Americans and small businesses. Industry lobbyists are easily able to buy politicians. The only people that people hate more than politicians, not pollsters, although they're close, but are lobbyists. People do not want their kids to grow up to be lobbyists or to marry one. Effective enforcement of regulations can create jobs and good wages. We should be much, much more aggressive on this economic front. We should be much bolder. Safeguarding Americans from another economic catastrophe, investment in water infrastructure will create hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs. The benefit of fair regulation far exceeds the cost. Some pain points because they either, language that works for them or language that doesn't work very well for us. Staggering costs of the federal deficit costing taxpayers and small businesses. Actually cost is worse for us than jobs. People aren't really convinced that regulations are always gonna create jobs. In fact, sometimes they think they can help with jobs. They do worry that they cost money. Regulations often put too much power in the hands of a few out-of-touch bureaucrats. People agree with that, but they don't hate bureaucrats as who will be glad to know this as much as they hate lobbyists and politicians. Isolated example is not indicative of a systemic problem. More government is not the answer. This is a fairly effective response, although people think it's more effective in responding to individual cases than to case studies because they tend to think 300,000 people isn't exactly isolated. That single mom who was on drugs, we all knew that already, that's an isolated case. 300,000 people who can't turn their water on, that's not that isolated. Small business, the backbone of our economy are crushed by the weight of bureaucratic red tape inverting some regulations. Small business is the single biggest thing we need to worry about. More so than cost and jobs. And having a small business voice very, very important in what we do. So you'll see here in the dials, and I'm gonna show you the moment-to-moment reactions. Three different audiences. And let's turn to slide 14. First, our base. These are people who are with us no matter what. 21% of the people, most of the people in this room, I assume are the base. We strongly believe in increased enforcement of national laws. We think in regulations is a good thing. We think that the enforcement of our laws and regulations succeeds more than fails. We have unanimous support for increased national regulation. We don't think that regulations cost jobs or taxpayers or consumers money. And these people are more likely, but not exclusively female Democrats and residents of the Northeast. So look at your neighbor, you're in the base. They are not all women nor all Democrats, but there are 21% of the population. The opposition, 16%. Now, oftentimes we think we wanna have everybody on our side. Well, when you have everybody on your side, then nobody's on your side. These are people who so fundamentally disagree with us. We don't want them at our party, okay? And moreover, if we go all the way to get them to agree, then we stand for nothing. These are people who think that regulation is bad, national laws are bad. They oppose increased enforcement. They think that they cost jobs, cost taxpayers money. They are male, Republicans, older, white, and from the Midwest sound familiar. But by the way, they are only 16% of the voters. They are not all Republicans, all men, all white people, but they are a proportion of them. And these are people we're fine to alienate. In fact, the best strategy and the strategy that the right uses is to isolate these voices so that they appear ridiculous. Let me give you an example of that. Remember in the whole abortion debate when some really infinitely wise people said, well, you can't get pregnant if you're raped? Well, those people, real people thought those people were so cracked, who cared what they thought? That was just ridiculous, their view. Not understanding people's attitudes, not understanding biology very well either, obviously. You want to isolate these opponents into that group. And then we have 63% of the population who are the persuasion. This is the vast majority of Americans. Tend to support increased enforcement, but worried about jobs and costs and small businesses. And really tend to believe that there is too little enforcement. The millennials are one of our base groups that is solidly in this persuasion audience. Millennials are very pro-government because they've never known anything but government, but they're actually pretty distrusting of government. They're suspicious of regulations. So the millennials are this interesting cohort that's an unusual combination, usually being pro-government and pro-regulation are highly correlated, much less so for the millennials than other groups. So let's look at our debate. Here are our four politicians. And we deliberately, neutrally picked four white guys. It's hard to tell the Republicans from the Democrats. And we wanted kind of a neutral effect. We also wanted every politician to be able to see themselves there. Next, you see the unconscious ratings. Now, first of all, you can see in each of these are debates. So you're gonna see our side and then you won't see their side for everyone just in the interest of time. But if you want to get that, you can easily get that. And you see, first of all, look at the total rating. Our rating is higher than their rating across the board. Every single debate we won. Notice those persuasion voters who are the last column. Every single debate we won among the persuasion audience. Now you'll see that our margin is slightly weaker on the jobs debate. But it's still, we're still winning the jobs debate, which we are desperately in need to do. These are the unconscious ratings. These are the moment to moment dials. You'll see this in a moment like you see on the debates. We then ask people, how do you, what do you think? Now normally, honestly, the unconscious ratings are higher than the conscious ratings. In this case, if we look at the next chart, the conscious ratings are higher than the unconscious ratings. And that's because, and it's a warning to us, that their constant anti-regulatory message has taken its toll. This is empirical, I mean, we didn't have to be convinced of this, right? But this is empirical validation of that. At a subconscious level, people are more actually hesitant about regulation than they are at a conscious level. We also show you the partisanship, and if we turn to the unconscious ratings by party, you can see here, Democrats and independents, we are winning across the board. Notice they win on their side, the Republicans, but we're very competitive with Republicans. Again, the opposition is 16%. Republicans in this country are about 42%. So we're not losing all Republicans. We're particularly not losing younger Republicans and female Republicans. And notice on the water debate, we actually win, we beat their message on water. So let's look at some of the messages. And what you're gonna see here is you're gonna see three lines. You're gonna see a base, opposition, and persuadable. Now these are messages that have been highly refined, right? These messages have all gone through focus groups and they've all gone through survey testing. So frankly, if we weren't able to write good messages by now, Gary would need a new pollster because we would hope we could have done this well. They are all juxtaposed against a Republican message taken again from Trump's language, McConnell's language, or the Chamber of Commerce language. You will also see what really works and doesn't work. So watch for some of this language and watch also for how fast the takeoff is. Because in a world where we're in a nine second sound bite, one of the things that often happens in our message is their messages engage their base faster than our messages do. We need to get to messages that not only work in 144 characters, but that also get people's attention faster. So one of the things we're striving to do is to grab people faster and that comes with setting the frame. So this is our top testing message and you'll see that it does very, very well with a base persuadable and opposition. The means are all in the 70s and 80s, which on a scale from zero to 100. Real intensity here generated and we don't alienate the opposition quite as much as we like to, but at least they're not loving the message. So watch and see what you think. Finally, let's hear from Representative Derek Gordon before we move on to questions. Enforcement of our laws is about safeguarding Americans. And when done properly, enforcement can prevent economic catastrophe, protect our health and save lives. When enforcement of public protections is neglected, the results can be disastrous. In 2013, an explosion at a small fertilizer facility in West Texas killed 15 people, including 12 first responders and destroyed three schools, a nursing facility and hundreds of homes. In 2014, an estimated 10,000 gallons of toxic chemical waste leaked from a private storage facility into a West Virginia River due to Lax enforcement. The leak contaminated the drinking water supply of over 300,000 residents, putting pregnant women, seniors and children at risk. The water system hadn't been tested in over a decade and warnings of contamination were ignored. We need strong and improved enforcement to prevent deadly situations like these from threatening American communities. Tough, but fair enforcement of our laws helps keep Americans safer from physical and economic harm. So a couple of things that we see here, first of all, very fast takeoff and that frame of enforcement in our laws is about safeguarding Americans. That is a core fundamental belief in this enforcement frame which you'd think of as a technical frame is actually a values oriented frame. When done properly. Interestingly, this word proper really tested well. Now God knows what proper means. I guess, you know, enforcement shouldn't have its skirts too short. Who knows? But this proper enforcement really tested well as well as tough and fair. Notice the power of the case studies. And it was actually the beginning of the case studies that really engaged people. Killing people, including the first responders, 10,000 gallons released really caught people's attention. Water was tough and you're gonna see throughout. Anytime you can get to water, it's very, very strong with people. And then tough, but fair enforcement of our laws helps keep Americans safer from physical and economic harm. We're ending on an aspirational goal and a clear values oriented statement that it tested very, very well. Here's our second strongest message and really our messages are very close. And you'll see this test very, very well. Some interesting comments. And I would like to talk more about some of the specific issues that have been raised. Representative Johnson, why don't you start off for us? When we are talking about the enforcement of regulation, we need to talk about water contamination. We've seen it in West Virginia and most recently in Flint, Michigan. It's a major problem, but it's fixable if we do our jobs and enforce existing standards to ensure clean water for all communities. While Flint's case appears extreme, lead contaminated tap water is a national problem. For the last two years, EPA data show that 18 million people used water systems that had lead levels that violate current standards. These figures don't even count our schools. And it's not just lead that threatens our water supplies. Remember, lax enforcement in 2014 led to an estimated 10,000 gallons of toxic chemical waste leaking into a West Virginia river. Corporate lobbyists in cash have persuaded politicians to weaken the enforcement of laws protecting our waterways. We need to ensure disasters like this don't happen again. Those who violate the rules should face tough penalties, including jail time. We need to prevent the actions of a wealthy few from threatening the health of entire communities. So a couple of things we notice here. First of all, a little bit of a slower takeoff because we went to the specifics as is always our want, right? We go to the law, we go to the example, rather than setting the frame. Even though this had occurred in the middle of the debate, so you would have thought the frame had been set, it's really an important reminder, set the frame. The person that sets the frame wins the debate. Secondly, again, we see the strong power of case studies. Interestingly, when we looked at the data, Flint worked well with our base. It did not improve the power of the message, unfortunately, with the swing. And in fact, when we exported in focus groups, people thought Flint is not an example of racism. They thought if you were right in Flint and deal with the fact that the whole point that Flint was chosen is because it is predominantly an African-American community. But if you said no, no, no, if you were in white in Flint, you were led poison to that. That's not right. So they did not see it as a good example of systemic racism. Notice also the response that people had to violate the rules should face tough penalties, including jail time. One of the things we found is that conventional wisdom says that hot language isn't testing very well. Well, actually, real people don't know they're not supposed to respond to hot language. So they actually responded very strongly to hot language. Here's our third strongest message, anchoring on the theme of common sense. And one of the things that's nice about this message is there were a variety of places where you will see the opposition line go down, but our line and the persuasion line continue up. So watch for those examples. Let's go back to Bedwards. Now we will hear from Representative Ted Johnson. Common sense enforcement of our rules and laws is good to ensuring that our air and water are clean, that the food we eat is safe, that the products we buy are free from harmful toxins and other dangers, and that big banks and Wall Street institutions do not take advantage of consumers or put the economy in jeopardy. Too often, we've seen big businesses and a wealthy few promote their profit interests above the health, safety, and welfare of ordinary people and our environment. We see the evidence every day, BP's Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast economy. Volkswagen's scheming to avoid air quality standards and Wells Fargo bank employees opening millions of phony accounts to meet sales goals. Fair and tough enforcement of regulation is critical to reducing pollution, protecting families from harmful business practices, preventing deadly mistakes that threaten entire communities, and holding Wall Street and big business accountable for their actions. So one of the things that's really interesting here is talking about enforcement in terms of real-lived experience. You'll notice that it's soaking up, but it's not as rapid as we would like. Part of the difference is this is, they're generating some gender differences. Women really responded pretty fast. Men were like, oh, okay, let's not whine about safe food and clean water, okay? Notice also that whenever you're talking about big businesses, wealthy few, deadly mistakes, you see the opposition dial down. It's like, let's not go that far, okay? Where the persuadables, and particularly those white blue collar persuadables are like, yeah, that's exactly what we're talking about. Glad somebody gets it right. Notice also the power of linking the economic to the other examples. This is a very, very important part of our strategy, and I think this is very, very important for us as a general strategy because we need an economic message and we need to start including economics in everything we're talking about, and that economic message, including the Wall Street regulation as a key component of economics for real people is a very, very powerful strategy. The last message we'll show you is our jobs message. Now our jobs message is not as strong as the other messages, although it's still pretty darn strong. It does alienate the opposition. This is the one where like, oh, now you got way too far. You're talking about the economy. And remember, we don't want these people at our party. We would like these people to be alienated and ranting and raving in their ridiculous way. Notice how close the persuasion and the base are here and notice that we have a pretty rapid takeoff. Mr. Gordon, how would you respond? The benefits of fair regulation far exceed the costs. Regulations that ensure things like clean water, clean air, and financial responsibility create good jobs and put money in the pockets of working families, not just shareholders. Investment in our water infrastructure will create hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs, save money in the long run, provide communities with a stable water supply, and protect our health. And let's talk clean energy. The solar industry has created one out of every 80 jobs in the United States since the Great Recession, and the industry pays well. Solar has hired more veterans than any other industry and retrained coal, oil, and gas workers who had lost their jobs. Official estimates indicate that the economic benefits of regulations are as much as nine and a half times the costs, and that's just the benefits we can measure in dollars. Regulations save lives, protect our health, and help build stronger, more resilient communities. So let's stop with the rhetoric and focus on the facts. We can hold businesses equally accountable by enforcing common-sense regulations while building our economy. So first of all, very fast takeoff. Benefits of fair regulation exceeding the cost. We can lean in here, which is one of my least favorite phrases, but it works here. Notice that the opposition goes, that fair regulation exceeds the cost, no it doesn't, and then when we go so far as to radically ask for clean air, clean water, and financial responsibility, they're like under 50%. Notice they also dip down on clean energy. This is a fight we want. America is in love with clean energy. When we say focus on the facts, they dial down. No surprise who these people voted for, and that we need to hold businesses accountable by enforcing common-sense regulations. They're under 50%. Let's show you the top opposition message. Now, again, remember, we beat this message, and remember the lines are gonna be reversed now. Our line, our base is gonna be the lowest ratings. Their opposition is gonna be the top one. Watch where the persuadables are. They have important things to say to persuadables. Their message works for persuadables, but not as well as ours works in direct competition. To let us begin with opening statements. Representative Tim Edwards, the size of federal government spending and the national debt is staggering, but so is the cost of federal regulations, which now exceeds half the amount the federal government spends annually. The federal register is now over 80,000 pages long, and regulations cost taxpayers and businesses roughly $2 trillion per year. If regulation were a country, it would be the ninth largest economy in the world, ranking behind India, but ahead of Russia. President Obama has issued more than 570 new major regulations since taking office, each with a cost to the economy of $100 million or more. Each is a hidden tax on American consumers and businesses and a massive lead weight on the American economy. Each is a blow to small businesses everywhere and an invasion of our privacy. Today, American free enterprise, indeed, the American dream is being overwhelmed by a tsunami of government regulations that is just a giant overreach by government. So first of all, when they hit government, the size of government, what's interesting here, their side bounces up right away. Okay, these are our folks, we love these folks. Notice our base, of course, is completely alienated, but the persuadables are like, oh come on, enough is enough. Costing taxpayers and small businesses $2 billion, that works with the persuadables. People are worried about money and they are worried about the cost to small business. Notice then at flat lines, when you're droning on and on about GDP of other countries and Obama, it's like people like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then when they get to free enterprise and American dream, that's a powerful combination for them. That matters. We're back to the values-oriented conversation, but people think it's too far to say that it's a lead weight on small businesses and our economy. And of course, our people are now completely alienated. Now we got who these people are. Forget it. That, the fact that we beat that message is one indication that we can win this debate. The next slide is the next indication. So after people had heard our side, their side, and I've only played one of the opposition messages for you, but remember they heard four. At every stage, they heard an opposition message. We then asked people, do you support or oppose increased enforcement of regulations at the national level? Now by the way, national does test better than federal. What we said, national level, 79% in favor, 37% strongly, only 21% opposed. Notice 68% of Republicans say they're in favor. Only Republican, older Republican men are opposed. Men in general are in favor as well as women. Role voters, 76% in favor. We also asked state regulation and that was very popular as well, even more popular than the federal regulation. I'm gonna stop there just in the interest of time and allowing some time for questions. We tested the individual increments of the messages and we can share that with you as well. And the debates scripts as well. But let me say just four big things to remind us. So first all, contrary to conventional wisdom and everything that you hear, you can be bold and right. And regulation is popular. Tougher enforcement, fair enforcement, proper enforcement, enforcement with penalties is a winning message. Not just winning at like 55%, winning at two thirds to three quarters. Winning Republican women, winning younger Republicans. The only people that doesn't win is that 16% that we don't want at our party anyway. We want to have a fight with them about whether clean energy is a good idea. We want to have a fight with them about whether you should have clean water or not. These are fights that we want to have. We want to marginalize their voice. Secondly, we have the new secret sauce besides the powerful frame case studies. And we've got to work still to get these case studies more simplified but they are very, very powerful way to make people think they're in the picture without making them try to fix the people as opposed to fix the frame. And thirdly, we have the ability here to include not only public safety and safeguarding health and safety which is wildly popular with the public but also economically messaging. And I'm not just saying this because I'm at EPI. We need to have a constant thread of economic messaging in everything we do. On the 10 days before the election, Democrats as a rough surrogate for progressives were 17 points behind the Republicans on who's better on the economy. We had deteriorated since September. Hillary Clinton on election day was six points behind Donald Trump on who was better on the economy. Untenable. We can't win races in that situation. We cannot win any elections when you are behind on the economy. So let me stop there and open up to a couple of questions. And I want to acknowledge Corey Teeter from our team and Daniel Garov who is the partner on this, Don Hoffman and Olivia who are all part of our team. We always believe in trying to have pollsters outnumber anyone else in the room. And questions, comments, thoughts? We'll do a few questions before we move into the panel. Anybody who's got any questions about methodology? Yes. Oh, well, actually the best case study the best thing we ever tested and this is really fascinating, I think, was the West Virginia case study. When we did that in focus groups, real people actually volunteered that the small businesses were hurt the worst because they said, and this was so smart, if you were a small business, if you were a small business, if you were a homeowner, okay, you could ship in bottled water and FEMA and several providing you with water. If you're a restaurant, you're closed and forget it. And so real people volunteered. Oh, yeah, the small businesses were hurt worse. So people believe overwhelmingly. They also think that small business owners drink water too. They want their food safe. They don't, you know, small businesses were killed in the economic disaster. I mean, maybe Goldman Sachs benefited but the neighborhood grocer didn't. So actually real people don't find it a stretch that the small businesses are helped by tougher enforcement. The other thing is they think, okay, the big guys build it into their budgets, have the lobbyists and have the lawyers to get them out from underneath. Small businesses, they have to pay all this stuff anyway. They're already subject to them. And they're the ones that are hurt by the big businesses who are breaking all the rules and just building it into their business model. All right, seeing none others, we're gonna transition to the panel. So Linda, are you leaving? Nope, I'm just moving to make room for the panel. Okay, well, we've got room for everybody. We are a big 10. So let me introduce the panel and they can all come up if they'd like. We'll start in my far left. That's Mr. Paul Booth, who is the executive president, executive to president Lee Saunders at AFSCME, an organization that Paul has served since 1974 and to everyone's chagrin, he will no longer serve after the early part of 2017. Mr. Booth is an organizing legend and has been a leader in promoting worker-centered movements even in an era of declining unionization and has had his strategic expertise in many fights, many successful fights at developing and winning worker-centered gains throughout the States and he will be sorely missed, but we'll deal with that later. We also have, next to Paul, we have Mr. Eric Olson, who is director of the health program at the National Resources Defense Council. Eric has worked, this is his second stint at NRDC and he is leading force in working on the intersection of public policy and consumer advocacy, focusing mostly on food and environmental health at NRDC. Next to Eric, we have Sam, excuse me, Sam Munger, who's the director of strategic engagement and senior advisor at the State Innovation Exchange. Sam has also been a founding member of ALICE, the American Legislative and Issues Campaign Exchange and he also was the managing director at the Center for State Innovation. Next to Eric, we have Rachel Weintraub, who is the legislative director and general counsel at the Consumer Federation of America. Previously, she was their director of product safety. She's been with CFA since 2002 and has represented CFA before Congress, state legislatures and works on also voluntary enforcement, the regulation or voluntary self-regulations in industries. Then we also have Lisa Donner, who is the president of Americans for Financial Reform. Is that the official title? I've never known, okay. It's a national coalition comprising 200 organizations who came about in the aftermath of the Great Recession to advocate for financial accountability and this is just the latest in what has been a career of organizing efforts for Lisa, working previously at Acorn, SEIU, as well as leading the half and 10 anti-poverty organization. So that is our panel. They will be sort of moderated and facilitated by Ross Eisenbray, EPI's vice president. Before Ross came to EPI in the early 2000s, he also worked at OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Ross is also the leader of EPI's labor policy as well as our regulatory programs. So with that, I am going to exit stage right, put the placards in front of everybody so you don't forget who they are and turn it over to Ross to kick it off and we'll probably just start in the order that I introduced everyone, right? No, no, definitely not. No, okay, never mind. No, we're gonna start with Rachel. Okay, red opposite of go. You know, it was really great to read this poll because given the endless numbers of incredibly depressing meetings in my professional and private life over the past few months, it was really productive to see this information and to see how so much of the work that we do, we are on the winning side and we need this now. So what I'm going to do, I work on product safety, financial services issues and my organization works on a wide array of consumer issues. I'm gonna focus on product safety, those issues before the Consumer Product Safety Commission and just a little bit of background about the agency. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission is an independent federal regulatory agency that was created in 1972 by Congress and the mission of the agency is to protect the public against unreasonable risks of injuries and deaths associated with consumer products. The CPSC has jurisdiction over thousands of types of consumer products from coffee makers to toys to cribs to window coverings to lawn mowers, not cars, drugs, alcohol, food. The CPSC works to reduce the risk of injuries and deaths from consumer products in a number of different ways. It develops voluntary standards and I'm involved in that, can talk about that later. Mandatory standards, recalls, research, civil and criminal penalties and consumer education. So the upcoming administration though has not actually specifically stated anything about product safety, certainly poses extensive challenges to us in this space. We do not yet have a chairman named as a nominee, was not a prominent issue in the presidential election, though the regulation enforcement frame directly impacts product safety. Also, historically, the Reagan administration almost decimated the CPSC. There are still not as many full-time employees today as there were before the Reagan administration took office. The CPSC's funding and staff were decimated and the new provisions were added to its authorizing statute that made it harder and in some case have proven almost impossible for the CPSC to regulate in terms of promulgating mandatory standards. And we're concerned about the CPSC's funding in this administration, which directly impacts all the work the agency can do from voluntary standards work to recalls to everything it does. So while we will push hard for the CPSC to continue its progress on mandatory rules, what seems more likely to be successful, especially given the results of the poll that we just heard about today, is for us to encourage the CPSC to enforce its existing laws. And many of us have worked hard for its existing laws to be as strong as possible. And to work aggressively on voluntary standards, which though not always ideal, are very much the moving mechanism for standards in this space. And ultimately, it's focusing on recalls as well and all of these things collectively will keep unsafe products out of consumers' hands and homes. So I wanna apply a few of the important high-level takeaways that we learn from this poll to product safety. So of particular relevance to product safety is seeing the language that across party lines voters strongly believe that there's a role for government to play in protecting Americans from harm as a result of unfair and unsafe business practices. Yes, yes, yes. Further, voters were responsive to pro-enforcement messaging with the most effective message frames emphasizing the importance of safeguarding Americans against harms to public safety. These directly correlate to messages about the role of the CPSC in protecting the public from unsafe products. Only a CPSC that has adequate funding can adequately safeguard consumers from product hazards. So in the fight that we will likely face in terms of the core essence of whether this agency can function, whether it can be in viable safety net, these messages are profoundly important and I think winning hopefully because all voters here want a government that protects their health and safety. Interestingly, a very controversial issue within the CPSC space right now is the amount of civil penalties that the CPSC has assessed recently. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act which passed in 2008 tried to, and it successfully did, increase the amount of civil penalties that CPSC could assess because it was really a very, very small amount. It really was a cost of doing business and the current CPSC chairman has been talking about and has been levying significant civil penalties. The highest of which occurred last March, March 25th, 2016. The name of the company is Gre-Electronic Appliances, civil penalty highest in history, $15.45 million for dehumidifiers that caused fires and relied consistently to CPSC about it. And the lawyers and the lobbyists who represent manufacturers have been very upset about the height, the level of these civil penalties, fighting hard saying it's unfair, it's not clear, it's really hard to figure out why these civil penalties are so high, when they're going to be high, when they aren't. And we say exactly. The point is it should not be a cost of doing business. You need to know that there are consequences for not complying with CPSC rules. So this is an incredibly useful frame here because this is a very ongoing, very controversial issue and one in which the current CPSC has really used its ability under the law to assess significant penalties. Additional messaging about business profit interests above health and safety are useful to framing messages, certainly. And also specific case examples. So in the product safety space, when there are articles that highlight a specific death or injury, often exactly what Ms. Lake documented occurs where people are attacking the victim. People say, oh, they draw all types of conclusions about the environment in which a child was killed or injured and you will almost always see criticism of the parents. Lack of supervision, poverty, drinking, whether there was any evidence of drug use or drink or anything. All of these things come into play. So we need to carefully craft the case examples but we have case examples and we have case examples of seven children being killed over 70 children being injured from IKEA dressers that follow them because they're not stable. We have fires of spontaneously combusting hoverboards. We have these concrete examples so this information is really useful because we experience this, that we need to stay high and not give examples of individuals that people could henpeck and criticize but stay high on the message of the numbers, the incidents. And I think this combination, as Ms. Lake said, is really hopefully a secret sauce that can help us protect the Consumer Product Safety Commission and enable it to fulfill its mission. Thank you. All right, thank you. Sam, do you wanna go next? Sure. If I can get the mic over here. Thanks, good afternoon everyone. So I'm thrilled to be part of this very distinguished panel and to be part of this project. Before I get started, I wanna just take a minute to thank Celinda and the Lake research team that worked on this. They did fantastic and Yeoman's work on a very, very short timeline. I will say to get all these things ready. This is actually the third briefing I think they've done in the last week for us. So kudos to them. I wanna thank Christian, Ross, EPI, and everyone for hosting this and for helping pull this together. And I also wanna thank Gary Bass, Rick Melberth and the Baumann Foundation for supporting this work and frankly getting it going and helping it and moving it along being one of the driving forces. So I'm part of a project called the State Innovation Exchange as you heard or six for short. Thank you, thank you for that acronym. We are a relatively new, we're about two years old, research and policy network. I should say resource and policy network for state legislators. You can think of us as something of a counterpoint or a counterweight to Alec on the right. So we work with progressive state legislators and lawmakers, the state level to advance progressive policy. And that's why I'm particularly excited about this project and wanna talk a little bit about the implications at the state level. So state legislators, I'm excited about this. State legislators are, by their nature, they are particularly vulnerable to some of the criticisms that come on the regulatory front. They are very, very susceptible to the voices of a particularly small business but businesses in their district, right? They work in very small districts. A single business speaks up. They immediately go into a defensive crouch and they've been hammered on this issue at the state level, right? And so they are particularly gun shy on this. And frankly, this project is in part, and the way we set it up with these debates and with candidates is in effort to show them that they have messages at work and to help stiffen their spines, frankly, on some of these debates. At the same time, there are particular opportunities at the state and local level. You know, some of the issues that this deal with, that some of these messages deal with and that this project took on and that are affected by regulatory enforcement, clean air and water, workplace safety, particular case studies of disasters, those are incredibly salient for state legislators and incredibly salient in their districts and at the state level where they work. So there are huge opportunities there as well, it taken correctly. And of course, as you heard Salinda say at the beginning of her presentation, people hate state government and state lawmakers slightly less than they hate the federal government, which is good news. And that means that, and they trust state government more than they trust the federal government and certainly as we know more than they trust corporations or corporate lobbyists or other scum of the earth to write these regulations to be in charge of this, right? So there are opportunities here. Coming out of the election, the opportunities, those opportunities still exist. The results at the state level were more of a mixed bag than the federal level if only because we were at such a depressingly low level of progressive power in the state level that there wasn't too much further down to go. But it is also true that it was pretty much a wash. Progressives picked up a few chambers, including in the Southwest. They lost a few chambers in the remaining, the last democratically controlled chamber in the South in Kentucky. But there was not a huge landslide at the state level as there was at the federal level. And that means there are states where good regulatory policy and good policy of other kinds can advance. And there's a lot of states at the state level where effective defensive coalitions can be cobbled together, including with local groups, with even with small businesses, as Salinda discussed a little bit, with moderate Republicans or moderate conservatives or other folks who are sort of sympathetic to a lot of these issues. And they're particularly salient in areas that have recently been hit. So for instance, while Flint may not have tested, while in the groups, it is an incredibly salient message in Michigan and for legislators in that area and state legislators found that really powerful. So let me think if there's any, well, I did, I wanted to mention one of the interesting things that's come out of this. So we've presented now, this is the third presentation, we've done two for, we've presented this research twice to sets of state lawmakers once at our national conference and once to a gathering of legislators talking about climate issues and environmental issues in Colorado. It has been rapturously received both times. We've gotten incredibly positive feedback about the utility of this. So I'm really excited about those possibilities of pushing this out further. Also one of the interesting things, we have had several legislators approach us and say that they thought that the pro messages in these videos were so well and so succinctly put and as Salinda noted, there's a lot of research that went into those and so they should be well put but that they saw them as basically a tutorial, that they wanted to take those videos and just like basically memorize them and repeat them because this is a difficult issue to talk about and it was really well put and so while the intent of these videos was as a research exercise, I think there's a lot of potential to use them as training frankly for state legislators in how to talk about this and I thought that was a really an interesting implication that we had not thought about in advance but that has come out of some of the interactions. So we have a lot of plans to try to spread this further. We're going to try to work with state attorneys general who have a lot of the regulatory enforcement power at the state level with governors as well. Obviously you heard, we've done some talking to state legislators already and we plan to do more and in working with all the folks on this panel and NDPI and others in the audience, I think there's a lot of potential to get traction with these messages. So let me leave it at that and pass it on. Okay. Eric, do you want to come up next? Hi, I'm Eric Olson with Natural Resources Defense Council and I'm going to be succinct because I know we're running a little bit late but I wanted to talk about sort of what I see coming very soon. NRDC has been around since 1970 and we've fought off things like this when Reagan came in, when Gingrich took over the house, when W took over. We've seen these kinds of attacks before and I think what Celinda's work and her team's work has really shown us is that there are some, she calls them secret sauce, there are some keys that we're going to be facing very soon. I think first of all, we need to be proactive. We need to take the offense on some of these issues rather than constantly being reactive. I anticipate that on day one, we may see a freeze on regulation. We may see executive orders being repealed and new executive orders issued. I think we'll see proposals for Obamacare obviously to be repealed. We will see the so-called Rains Act introduced and start moving which would basically choke off all regulations which has already passed the house several times but there won't be much to stop at this time except for maybe a Senate filibuster. We're going to see the Clean Water Rule which was a rule that was supposed to protect our water supplies across the country, probably efforts to roll that back. We'll see massive budget cuts including especially for EPA enforcement and EPA implementation. We expect to see rollbacks of regulations at EPA, Interior and other agencies. So how do we go on the offense? I think one very salient example that I remember well from the, when we were fighting a previous rollback effort which was the Gingrich Revolution, you may remember. The way that, and there was a so-called dole bill which is very similar to the Rains Act which basically would have shut down the government from ever regulating anything. How was that stopped? Well, one way that it was stopped was a bunch of victims of foodborne illness came in to Washington and the messaging was to talk about how widespread foodborne illness is, how people die from it, how thousands of people are affected and how these rollbacks or the lack of enforcement of rules was going to choke off protections and harm real people in a kitchen table kind of way, literally. I think the enforcement frame is really critical here to talk about enforcing our current rules. I really liked what Celinda talked about where it's not just enforcing current rules but it's also fixing loopholes and fixing the rules so that they actually work. The more specific we are of giving case examples as in the case of the foodborne disease, the more successful we will be. And I think NRDC has worked on some of the examples that were mentioned including the West Virginia spill which caused 300,000 people's water to be contaminated, the Flint example and many other specifics and we'd be happy to work with anybody that wants to talk about those. But I think ultimately the frame of talking about not just enforcement but enforcement that protects people from things that people can relate to like the safety of their water supply, the safety of consumer products I think is really crucial and it's very interesting that the water issue tested so well. Finally, I wanna mention at the state level these same things as Sam just mentioned, at the state level these same things can work and we see in North Carolina that the governorship has switched hands and although the governor is now gonna be with a lot less power than the previous governor in light of these wonderful actions that were taken last week, there was a big debate on coal ash among other issues where coal ash had contaminated a lot of North Carolina's water supplies and there were some very specific issues that really resonated with the public and I think that's a state specific example that shows that what happened at what Solinda was showing at the federal level can really resonate at the state level Flint is one that works in Michigan. So ultimately I think the more we are specific of real world examples, kitchen table examples of how real enforcement works, the better off we're going to be. Thanks. Thank you, Eric. Lisa, you're up. Okay, thanks to everyone who has worked on this research over time. I think it really is an incredibly valuable piece of work and continuing work. I've been interested to learn more from each step that folks have taken further so I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it. So I'm going to take a second to talk about problems that I think we are facing in the financial regulatory space and then a second about some of the lessons and questions and challenges that this research suggests for us. One very, very broad thing to say I guess is that we have many opportunities to talk about regulation and enforcement in the financial regulatory space and those opportunities maybe stay more complicated and diverse as administrations change partially because we have so many independent agencies in this space. So while the leadership in some places turns over immediately with the new administration in other places it turns over more slowly or we have a commission with divided government and I think that provides kind of a special lot of opportunities to think about effective enforcement, fair and tough enforcement as a frame for describing what we want from these agencies and in order to make our economy safer as well as to protect individual families and individuals economic security and that that provides us with an important frame that we use and should use still more. In terms of what's coming I think what Rachel said about the Consumer Product Safety Commission and its inability to take effective action in many regards or its struggle to find tools that despite the shackles that have been put on its ability to take effective actions continuing to do is what we are trying to prevent is the future we are trying to prevent for the Consumer Bureau. The agency established really to act on Senator Warren and others vision that we needed a single regulator insisting that financial products needed to be safe and transparent and clear and not likely to blow up and that for whom our message as advocates has been from the start that the way to protect themselves because they have been under incredibly severe attack from day one is to be a tough and effective regulator not to be intimidated by that level of attack but to say this is a reason why we have to do our job because the only way that there's something to defend is if we do our job and I think that largely that a focus on mission largely has been the approach of the Bureau and a willingness to keep on doing that despite attacks and so our job or what we're worried about is that there will be efforts to dismantle the Bureau so that it cannot continue to be an effective regulator and we think those have been particularly fierce both because of the particular Wall Street and sort of predatory lender interests who wanna keep doing what they're doing and stealing from people in the ways that they do and also because as long as it does its job the way it does the Bureau is and will be actually a very good example on our side of what effective government looks like so it's important and vulnerable as a target of attack both because of the specific work it does and I think because it is such a convincing case study so we're worried about Director Cordray the Director of the Bureau's term runs through the summer of 2018 so the Bureau should be able to continue its work but we are worried that people will try to keep that from happening we're worried that there will be efforts to weaken the Bureau's structure move it from a single director to a commission that would be much less likely ever to take aggressive action to remove its independent funding or a characteristic that it shares with the other financial regulators a characteristic put in place to insulate these regulators from lobbyist interference and the interference by the money that the enormous sums of money that their regulated institutions have and all of which would be huge problems for the future as well as of course as efforts to mess with its particular rules or stop them like the rules it's working on to rein in the abuses of payday lending or the rules it's working on to stop the use of forced arbitration clauses to prevent consumers and citizens from enforcing the law when banks break it as for example Wells Fargo is when refusing to allow people to take legal action against them because of an arbitration clause people signed on their actual accounts Wells Fargo was saying you can't sue them for arguing a fake account which is unbelievable anyway problems and then we expect similarly and there's perhaps a somewhat different set of challenges enormous efforts to roll back the kind of more systemically focused rules of Dodd-Frank both by failing to enforce them at the agencies and by changing them through Congress or through the regulatory process so all right that was probably too long but on the problems in terms of lessons I'd say one is in part thanks to the work that Salinda and others have done with us over the years in part I think just because of the facts of the financial crisis while in some places it may be a surprise to hear that across the political spectrum people actually want more regulation not less they want tougher enforcement not less that's been a pretty consistent fact in the financial regulatory space and one that's been pretty basic I think to our ability and our colleagues ability to make any progress at all on this issue against the odds that we face but we need to know it even better and so the most simple lesson to me that you know sort of keeping on repeating the need to not be intimidated in some ways newly intimidating context by the it's a job regulation is a job killer argument not only is that not true in the case of financial regulation as it is not true in many other areas it's also in fact not a winning argument and so basically with the majorities of the public people knowing that and owning it I think is of fundamental importance I think the accountability message point the Wall Street banks who caused the crisis people who led the Wall Street banks who caused the crisis who made those decisions didn't go to jail they should have it's not fair is an argument that I think we know everyone knows resonates incredibly powerfully we need to figure out how to make sure we are engaging with it both in terms of having actions and solutions that address that concern and using it to mobilize people around a set of policies in a still more effective way I think the enforcement frame in particular is obviously ready made in a bunch of ways for the consumer bureau's work and so remembering to use it the bureau has got something close to $12 billion back for consumers through its enforcement actions over the last five years and that includes enforcement actions against really big players and a willingness to take on bad practices by Bank of America and Wells Fargo and also egregious little stuff by little players that was outrageous and was $500,000 here and $500,000 there and so I think simply there's been so much to talk about that while we use that one figure we don't talk about the details of those actions very much and we need to do it more I think the fiduciary rule actually which was an incredibly important action by the Department of Labor to require that retirement investment advisors actually provide advice in people's best interests we had a fierce debate about it in some ways but in other ways it wasn't a very public debate and I think we need to look at protecting that rule as an opportunity because I think it's a perfect fit for some of the message lessons of this and the other research that's been done here so we just need people to be familiar enough with it to have the argument because it makes itself once you've made it I think the enforcement frame provides a bunch of ways to think about how to talk more simply about the systemic risk issues that we sometimes struggle to translate into plain English because they're so complicated and even when we're trying to tell ourselves to be more plain English you know the plain English is two layers up from that we're still not plain enough and so I think it's a very helpful kind of it's one of the ways to make ourselves be clear and then I guess I'd say a last thing is that in the ways in which this the fact that people want more not less financial regulation is not a surprise to us it's not a surprise to anyone and folks who oppose regulation in fact often mobilize that argument as well and so I think about sort of the case study some of the case study findings here is the more particular version of the general argument that we have to we A have to have an affirmative agenda and B that we have to connect the dots it's hard in a nine second sound bite world but that we have to actually tell a story that connects a set of insiders writing the rules in their own interest to actual economic pain if we are gonna be able to mobilize that widespread anger in support of policies that actually address it I'll stop there. All right Paul Booth he'll talk, okay I think I was supposed to be here to add to the panel by reference to the savagery that's about to be inflicted on regulation of labor standards but I'm not gonna do that I'll just say that it's a fact the title is a subtitle of Salinda's report is winning the debate winning the debate is about message but it's also about messenger in fact in this case it may be even more than half of it may be about messenger and the burden of communicating our message on this subject has fallen too heavily too nearly exclusively to advocates like my esteemed colleagues here we need more hands on deck sometimes advocates have been augmented by the occasional media breakthrough Aaron Brockovich as a case in point with a compelling story always I think if you look back over those cases their compelling story fit right into the framing that Salinda has offered today so who would I nominate and this is just gonna be suggestive I don't have a complete answer to this problem that I have just posed who would I nominate to step up to the mic and share in the work of communicating about this subject matter to be the debaters and I would say number one public officials if Democrats think they have to repeat the mantras about excessive regulation and have to start by promising to cut and simplify before promising to protect and enforce we're in a very deep hole I was just thinking with Sam talked about the recent election about deep holes sometimes you're in so deep a hole that sideways it looks like up Sam that is where they're at many many of them you go to YouTube and you click on the Democratic candidate forum that was held in Flint and you will see that both Clinton and Sanders defaulted to failure of government when asked to explain the roots of the Flint problem so I also want to nominate number two the workers and professionals who do protection and enforcement to get them up to the mic some of whom are my members if you also go to YouTube and you click on the speech at the state innovation exchange conference by Dr. Hannah Atisha, the pediatrician from Flint she went straight to how policy choice budget austerity preempted and prevented the protectors from protecting the people so I would take her approach any day of the week and the credibility that she gets from being involved in as one of the public protectors I could extend that to the professionals who do this work of all kinds so I'm putting the blame on government that is actually the underpinning of the calls to cut and simplify that will be the justification for the Rains Act and the other attacks that we're about to face and we have a very, very high bar to get over to get back to where we're able to win the argument about the common good being supported and the public health and safety being protected by this thing called government so I think the work here is a mobilization of resources to carry the persuasion argument first to democratic politicians and office holders so that they feel comfortable or at least are prepared to venture out and try to make the case in the terms that are suggested by the research and then secondly to build the brigade or the battalions of public protectors and public enforcers to step up and be heard. Thank you. All right, thank you. Salinda, do you have any first reaction to the panel before I turn to the audience? No, it's just family. Okay. I guess I have a general question for the panel which maybe Sam, I'm not sure who would be the best person to answer which is how do you get this in front of legislators because this is really a message to tell them they should have spine, they shouldn't be afraid of these issues, this is something where they will have the public with them if they speak loudly and clearly about the need for tough regulation. Can you get Salinda in front of enough people that they'll hear it? I mean, what's the way to get this in front of legislators? Sure, I'm happy to take a first crack. I'm also happy to take suggestions from anyone on how to do this. I mean, and that is because I don't think there is any particular silver bullet, right? There is, it's really about shoe leather. It's about both retail and wholesale outreach. Wholesale in the ways that we've done a little bit of already which is to say, you know, we have some big convenings of legislators at which you can put this message in front of them in mass, and I think that's quite effective and can lead to additional one-on-one follow-up, but it is also about individual outreach, talking to individual legislators and legislators' offices and staffers and caucuses in states, and that certainly is a big piece of what the State Innovation Exchange was founded to do and a big piece of what we spend our time doing. We certainly, you know, we have three or four maybe dedicated state outreach folks. We cannot do it all by ourselves. That much is certainly true. I think that another key, and this is, you know, again, one of the things I preach to state legislators when they're communicating to their constituents, but is repetition and consistency. You need to be saying this to state legislators and to others again and again and again, and we need to be saying it in the same way and using these effective messages because, you know, when I talk to state legislators, I say if you say something 100 times, the exact same words until you're just, it makes you almost physically ill to say them and you're just sick of saying, you know, protecting health and safety or, you know, closing corporate tax loopholes, your average constituent might have heard it once, but probably not because they're not paying, they're not inside, you know, the beltway, they're not inside the bubble, they're not paying attention in the way that we are, and so you need to say it a bazillion times in a bazillion different venues. Probably as an advocacy community, as concerned citizens, we need to be doing the same thing and we need to be doing it to, you know, that to public officials, and I'm thinking here particularly of state legislators because there are a lot of them and they are not, you know, they're decentralized and outreach has to get out to them and be repeated, but I think, you know, if you think of the, you know, the administrative agencies in charge, there are a lot of them too, there are a lot of workers at those agencies and they are not always easy to get a hold of, they are busy people who have, you know, a lot on their plates right now and I think communicating to them is a challenge too and of course we're working against history to some extent, right? I mean, as I said, a lot of, at least speaking for state legislators and I think speaking for democratic slash progressive, whether you prefer C3 or C4, public officials generally enter this in very much of a defensive crouch on this issue. Their pre-program, their predisposition is to say, oh, well, of course, you know, we need to simplify and cut in the way that Paul said and so you are, it is a persuasion activity, not a reinforcement activity, you need to convince them that they can do this and then you need to, you know, embolden them further. So like I said, I don't know if that amounts to secret sauce with regard to communication but it is I think a big piece of what we need to do and I'm happy to take suggestions from all in sundry in terms of how to do it better. Okay, any questions from the audience? Yes, sir. Run the chamber watch project. So it's great to hear that there's some winning messages against the Chamber of Commerce. In listening to this, it occurs to me that a lot of this could also be really useful in some of the upcoming nomination fights. You've got people like Pruitt who has done everything possible to go after regulations to protect our air and water and you know, Oklahoma is even a question of public safety I guess now with all the earthquakes. Got people like Puzder who, where you can make the economic argument on the overtime rule, Mnuchin who clearly has exploited the financial system to get rich. So just curious on your thoughts on that. You know, it seems like these are some strong arguments against some of these nominees. Go ahead, Eric. Yeah, I would agree with you. I think Pruitt is a good example where basically he's tried to tie EPA up in knots and shut EPA down as much as possible through his litigation. In the meantime, back home, there are all sorts of problems that have been occurring on his watch. He's, you know, what's gone on in Oklahoma. There's a long history. You mentioned the earthquakes. There's a long history of very serious problems as environmental problems as a result of the oil and gas industry contaminating huge swaths of the groundwater in the state and so on. So I think that it is true that the enforcement frame could really be a helpful frame. You know, he's chief law enforcement officer for Oklahoma as the attorney general and there have been a lot of problems that have gone on in his watch. Plus, I think it also feeds into the frame of special interests the oil and gas industry basically having its way with Oklahoma government, including Scott Pruitt. So I think those two mix together well. Actually, I want to reverse the tables just a little bit and ask Salinda a question, which is I'm wondering, in terms of the secret sauce that you talk about, the case examples, I think as Rachel mentioned, sometimes there's a blame the victim reaction from, and you mentioned this too. How do we get away from that? And what's the, you know, I think for everyone in this room, you've sat through an awful lot and your team has sat through an awful lot of these focus groups and talked to a lot of people. What seems to really, is it examples that affect a large number of people all at the same time? It's not a single person. As Rachel was suggesting using statistics, although I think sometimes real world examples, you know, where you have a real person sometimes seems to translate better. So I'm curious as to what your take is on that. So it's a really good question and we've done a lot of research on it. I would say, first of all, when you're using an individual example of personal story, one of the things we do now in our testing is we see whether people want to fix the individual or fix the system. So for example, in that minimum wage example I gave, we kept testing until we found a personal story where people did want to fix the system. And what it was honestly was two people married with two kids, both of them working minimum wage jobs and couldn't make it and particularly couldn't make it with housing and people thought, well, they've done everything right. I mean, they're both working, they've only got two kids. What's the deal here? Working full time. The thing about the case studies, so you're right to be, it isn't a statistics because you're right, statistics move you into your analytical side of your brain, not your empathetic side of your brain. So numbers don't work very well, but there are some numbers that work as metaphor. So for the best example I can give you is we did work on gun safety in California and we said, I can't even remember the exact number, I think it was 16. There's 16 times more gun dealers in California than McDonald's. Now, people got it all wrong. Some people said 60, some people said six. I mean, they kind of remembered six. But people thought, holy shit, on the way to get my big Mac, I'm passing 16 gun dealers, that's insane. And they're not licensed or regulated or anything, that's crazy. So that worked as a metaphor. People didn't even get the number right. The thing about the case studies is they are, and Gary, I would love to have you comment on this too, because we went back and forth and really had to work on them. And Catherine McFate was very, very helpful in helping develop the language because it's pretty easy to get them too complicated, too many numbers in them, too many facts. But what they do is they start out with a situation that anyone can imagine themselves in, which is not true for most personal stories. Most personal stories people think, well that's you, Sam, but I'm avoiding that by doing X, Y, and Z right. Or being a good parent and you're really right about the children and stuff, which is just insane. And you know, of course the Democrats feel like we want to protect the children no matter what their parents are like. Real people are like, are you kidding me? Absolutely not. Which is just something I can't even relate to and I don't even have kids. But I want to protect all of yours. So people, it's a global situation. It helps that it was known about. I don't know if you noticed, but in the dials people peaked up a little bit on Wells Fargo because it was current. So a situation they've heard about, we didn't just tell them as a surprise. Massive numbers, a big number. So like 300,000 people in West Virginia. Or a big, you know, or a really sympathetic group like first responders, 15 first responders or 12 first responders I think that were killed. People thought, wow, 12 first responders, that's a lot and like, you know, they really know what they're doing. So what about the rest of us? We'd be totally screwed. So a structure, a problem, a situation that people can imagine. And something where people feel they have no control. I mean, the cold dump happens overnight. You had no control over that. The chemical plant next to you blew up. You have no control over that. You didn't even know it was a problem. So those are some of the secrets. I don't know, Gary. Yes. You will see, that's a really good point. You will see on the message triangle that one of the things we need here is people think they already know the problems and they think, yeah, nothing works, nothing works. And it goes to Paul's point about government. The success stories were so important that we added it as the third branch of the triangle. So people really know, hey, is anything gonna work here? Does this ever work? We've also found, by the way, that people got lots of problems on their plate and they don't want yours. So the messages that work the best are one third problem, two third solution because people go, these liberals, they go on and on and on about the problems and nobody even wants to have Thanksgiving dinner with them. So. Are you making this slide deck available to the people who are watching on air? Okay, Christian Dorsey knows the answer to this question. Oh, sorry. Yes, it will be available to people. All you need to do if you're watching online is to email events EVNTS at epi.org and one will be sent to you. Thank you very much. In the back. Michael. So Linda made an interesting point. Say who you are. I'm Michael Lipsky, I'm a senior fellow at Demos. So Linda made the point that they didn't sugarcoat regulation, they just went into it. I think that was your point because you wanted to test these messages in battle. And I thought that was useful and interesting. But two of your messages use standard framing approaches in order to bypass the initial framing of the regulation as a negative thing. Enforcement of our laws is about safeguarding Americans. So you're already setting people up to be, you haven't triggered that negative frame on regulation. The same is the case for common sense enforcement of our rules and laws. You begin the discussion with a notion about what we aspire to, not what we are afraid of. And from old framing philosophy so to speak, I think we know that we're on better grounds when we don't trigger that negative perspective in the first instant when you're talking to respondents. Anyone else, any other questions? Yes, Emily. Emily Eisenhower, I'm doing a fellowship at the EPA, so not federal employee. I would love to share this around with folks in the agency and was wondering whether there's more publicly consumable formats of information or other planned events, public forums, et cetera, that we might be able to share with folks. Yep, it is a good question. It is a great idea. I have to think. I don't think there are any other public for a scheduled at the moment. There are some, we have some plans for specific groups in the works, but we could certainly arrange such, I think more easily probably via webcast or something than in person, just given where everyone is. I also, I think my understanding is that footage of this will be, this is being broadcast, correct, webcast, and that perhaps portions of it will be available on the EPI website, so it can be shared that way. And I think that, so we've been making things, some of the materials available to state legislators, that site however is behind a firewall, but I think there are lots of versions of this. There's the shorter handout that you guys saw today that I think we could, we'd be happy to post on the state innovation exchange website, and I assume that EPI would be equally happy to post. I think presuming that the full slide deck maybe doesn't make as much sense as a vehicle for this, but the short version I think does as well. I'm open to other ways of getting this out too if you have thoughts. Jenny Buckley at EPA, I'm a AAAS fellow like Emily here. I thank you, Salinda, and Panel, this has been a very encouraging discussion. I just wanted to add that it would be interesting to do this kind of study with small business perspectives because there is state level research on environmental regulations and work that I've done on food safety regulations that indicate that small businesses are better disposed toward regulation than popular discourse would think. Yeah, it was fascinating to see the Chamber of Commerce revealed, sort of leaked out that their own internal polling showed that their membership was in favor of the minimum wage and in favor of providing paid sick days, even as the Chamber is spending hundreds of millions of dollars across the country fighting those things. So it's true in the labor area as well as environmental areas. Yes, Gary. What I found remarkable about the data, the research is what wasn't in there, which is the historical context. You've had 30 to 40 years of a consistent message about burdensome regulation, of job killing regulation and this was a one off deal to tackle head on a different frame of enforcement against that and it not only held its own, it actually won in most of the, in all the cases actually. That to me, so shocking is the long term buildup of this was countered with a simple frame of enforcement and it suggests to me the defensive crouch that you were talking about earlier, if we could get this in the hands of electeds where they can see that they can tackle this head on and do fine, not only do fine, they can move forward. That's what's remarkable to me is an opportunity. It isn't just us as advocates, it's also putting this in a way that makes it understandable that if we stick to this mantra, time after time, we can win and it's really hard for us to stick to things. Oh, thank you. And one of the things that is really great is to take the video showing these politicians against each other and even for politicians who don't look like our side, like we didn't have women politicians for example, because we wanted to hold neutral the politicians stimulus that all the progressive politicians can readily imagine debating a guy who's playing the right wing role and to see it in juxtaposition really emboldened them because they go, yeah, that's exactly what I'm facing. Wow, they didn't take 30 minutes, they only took a couple and okay, I can imagine myself doing this, this is great. And we won, and of course every politician wants to see their line go up. That's right. All right, well it is three o'clock and I'd like to thank the panel and Celinda for the presentation.