 and I'm an associate dean in the College of Public Policy at UTSA and it is my pleasure to welcome you to San Antonio Central Library on this president's day. Now before we get to our important discussion of our new tax bill, it is my great honor to welcome and introduce our panel. I am going to start on our far right with Anne Beeson. Anne Beeson is the executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin. She is a renowned social justice lawyer, former philanthropy executive, and free from public speaker and writer. Ms. Beeson joined the Center in 2013. She was previously the executive director of U.S. programs at the Open Society Foundations where she promoted human rights justice and accountability nationwide. Ms. Beeson was the National Associate Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1995 to 2007. She argued twice before the U.S. Supreme Court and launch groundbreaking programs to stop the erosion of civil liberties in the name of national security and to protect free speech and privacy on the internet. Ms. Beeson has been recognized as one of the nation's top lawyers by American Lawyer Magazine and the National Law Journal. A proud Texan Ms. Beeson has embraced a wide range of innovative strategies to advance social change. She grew up in Dallas, received undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Texas and obtained her law degree from Amory University School of Law. The Texas 20th Congressional District inserts on both the House Armed Services Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. First elected to Congress in 2012, Congressman Castro was the 2013 co-president for the House Freshman Democrats and now serves in House Democratic leadership as Chief Deputy Whip. He has been called the rising star in his party by the Texas Tribune and one of the top 50 Politicos to watch by Politico. Congressman Castro, who of course is from San Antonio, graduated from Stanford University and from Harvard Law School. At the age of 28, Congressman Castro was elected to the Texas Legislature. While a state representative, he created the Trailblazers College Tour, raising money to send underprivileged students on college visits, exposing them to some of the nation's best institutions of higher education. He also founded SA Reads, San Antonio's largest literacy campaign and book drive. During his time in Congress, Congressman Castro has sought to build out what he calls the infrastructure of opportunity. Good public schools, great universities and a self-healthcare system to enable his fellow citizens to pursue the American dream. He's the Democratic leader of the U.S. House of Representatives for the 114th Congress. From 2007 to 2011, Congresswoman Pelosi served as Speaker of the House, the first woman to do so in American history. In Washington, DC, Leader Pelosi represents San Francisco, California's 12th District. In Congress, an area she has served for 30 years. She has led House Democrats for more than 12 years and previously served as House Democratic Whip. Under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, the 111th Congress was heralded as one of the most productive Congresses in history. By scholar Norm Ornstein, President Barack Obama called Speaker Pelosi an extraordinary leader for the American people and the Christian Science Monitor wrote, Make no mistake, Nancy Pelosi is the most powerful woman in American politics than the most powerful House speakers in Sam Rayburn a half century ago. In partnership with President Obama, Speaker Pelosi led House passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in early 2009 to create and save millions of American jobs and provide a tax cut to 95% of working Americans. Additional key accomplishments signed into law under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi include ethics reform legislation, an increase in the minimum wage, the largest college aid expansion since the GI Bill and a new GI Education Bill for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. With the House Democratic Caucus, Leader Pelosi continues to focus on the need to create jobs in America and prevent them from being shipped overseas and to fight for bigger paychecks and better infrastructure for America's families. The quick discussion of what has been called the most consequential tax legislation in three decades. We are going to begin with some start-up questions and then we will get to your audience questions. So Miss Beeson, we're going to start with you and go on down the line. Do you believe this bill is going to help people who are left behind in the economic recovery? Of course not. I don't think it's going to at all. And I think that to understand the impact here in Texas, it's very important to understand the challenges that we are already facing here in Texas. And that is due to decades of underinvestment in critical services by our state government. The concern that this tax bill is going to make the rest of the country look a lot like Texas. We hear a lot about the Texas miracle, but the question is, miracle for whom? Yes, we have a booming economy here in the state. But that is mainly benefiting people at the top and not people at the bottom. Despite the wealth of our state, we have entrenched poverty, one in four Texas children lives in poverty. We have the 10th highest rate of low wage jobs in the country. We are one of the top 10 states for income inequality. And we have 4.5 million Texans who still lack health insurance. Why do some Texans lack these things? Well, it's not because we don't have the resources. We know that. It's because of deliberate choices made by our leaders. And to the extent that we have any kind of safety net here in Texas, guess what? That is new to the federal government. That is new to federal spending here in Texas on programs that, unfortunately, are going to now be targeted. We know that from President Trump's budget and many things that have been said by Speaker Ryan. Many of those programs that are benefiting Texans here at home are very much at risk because of this tax bill. Thank you. That was a great summary. And thank you everybody for being here. We appreciate you all coming for this discussion and also to have Democratic Leader Pelosi here in San Antonio at this particular time after a major piece of legislation, a sweeping tax bill, was passed not too long ago. But before we get into that, I wanted to say there were just two pieces of legislation, significant ones that were left out of what she helped pass. First was the Affordable Care Act many years ago that helped ensure millions of Americans in Washington who passed the Dream Act back in 2010. I want to say I voted against the tax bill and I had big concerns with it. Most of all, that the concentration of benefits goes to people at the very top in terms of wealth in American society and really to big corporations. So 83% of the benefits basically go to the top 1%. Now the question is why you would be doing that in a time when income and equality has just been getting larger and larger when really the wealthier getting wealthier and the poorer getting poorer. It's not only that, but the middle class is also suffering. You know, our town, the city of San Antonio is a place where many individuals and families are still aspiring up the economic ladder in America. And so this bill is harmful for people who are still on their way up. We're still trying to make their way up that economic ladder. I think over the years we're going to see the pernicious effects that it has. We were speaking earlier about the fact that there's about 1.4 trillion dollar cut to Medicaid, which hurts the very poorest Americans who can't afford health care coverage, who often struggle to make payments on either, if there may be some home homes, but many are making rental payments, for example, who struggle often times even to put food on the table. So it's a significant cut to Medicaid. But also about a half a trillion dollar cut to Medicare, which our seniors are so dependent upon. So as we think about these things and the effects, the long lasting effects of this tax bill that won't pay for itself, by the way, this is something that's going to run up the deficit and the debt, which already stands at now over $20 trillion. When we think about these things I think we should, we don't have to even think about other people's lives. We think about our own lives and our family members, and I often think about my grandmother who after working for decades, she started working when she was a child, literally a child because she lived in a house where everybody had to go work to support each other. So after working for decades and decades when she could no longer work because she had type 2 diabetes the only thing that she had to her name, she never owned a car or a house as far as I know, I don't know that she ever had a bank account, maybe she did. But the only thing that she had coming in every month and the reason that she could never live by herself, that she always lived with my mom, is because she was relying on a $335 a month social security check. So that is what is at stake for many of our senior citizens, is they're basically their lifeblood and what they have to live on. And so we'll have a chance to talk some more about these issues, but I'm very concerned about the future of this administration. Thank you Francine, it was wonderful to be here with you and I appreciate your comments. Of course, I'm honored to be here with your distinguished member of Congress, Congressman Ken Castro. Thank you for sending him into Congress. I don't know if this works if I stand up, but I'm so honored to be with you and enough has been said about us, but you're the special one. You've taken time from a holiday to give of your time and come to share a conversation we can learn from you and you can hear some of the concerns we have about this tax bill which has a very serious impact on our prospects. I'm just reading from this one card, because we gathered here on George Washington's President's Day, for all of our President, but particularly George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. And on George Washington, I had the privilege of going last week to now very good bipartisan way of contributing to George Washington. I read this card to my colleagues. It said, as a young schoolgirl, George Washington transcribed 110 rules of civility and decent behavior. A list of Jesuit inspired moral maxims. And this is what the President said. Let me go ahead and keep them live in your breast. The little sparks celestial fire cloud conscience cloud conscience. Now, I bring that up on this day because of what it is, but also because of what this subject is. This tax bill is bad not only in itself, but for what it does to the budget. Our national budget should be a statement of our national values. What is important to us as a country should be how we invest in the education of our children and the health and well-being of the American people and the defense of our nation and the values that make our country great. But this bill, that the budget that the President just presented, it is not values based nor does it have that spark of conscience. And this is why this is one of the reasons why. That tax bill is a dark cloud that hangs over the Capitol. As the Congressman just said, 83% of the benefits of the bill went to the top 1%. We call the American tax cut 86 million income new income families will pay more under this bill. There isn't a 1.3 trillion dollar tax cut to corporate America, and with interest that goes over two trillion dollars added to the deficit. But if tax breaks to corporate America to send us overseas we want to set up a shop just to grow jobs overseas, no tax break compared to doing that here. So when this goes on and on I can answer some more specific questions about what's in there, but that's just some of it. So that when it comes time for the budget, they say we don't have any money because we're a two trillion dollar tax cut, but they just created that. It's a seven trillion dollar, but they're two trillion additional. Just think if they left 1.3 trillion dollars on infrastructure in our country instead of a tax cut to corporate America, does corporate America have a lower tax rate? Well let's sit down and discuss that because as the Dean of Merrill said earlier this is the most consequential tax bill of 30 years. The last one 30 years ago in 1908 in 1986, not that long ago in 1986 was done over a period of time in a wide open with expert testimony as to the replications of one approach or another and in a bipartisan way. Bipartisan, transparent, unifying that's what we think we do should be, but that's not what this tax bill is. The speed of light in the night, a bill that was practically being written as they were voting on it and a bill that is all about the high end and the expense of the progress through the middle class, and certainly those who aspire to it. So because of what it is in its unfairness because of what it adds to the deficit, it's bad enough but what it does to our opportunity for the budget is really what it's damaging, as the President Castro said exactly the same in that 1.3 trillion we're giving to corporate America they're cutting 1.4 trillion from Medicaid. And while Medicaid is for poor children, two-thirds of the people on Medicaid are poor children. Two-thirds of the money, but that's only against a one-third of the money. Two-thirds of the money is spent largely over 60% for seniors and assistive people at home or at home. So this is a middle-income benefit that affects many people in our country. And then, of course, kind of have a building dollars out of Medicare, with children that would be said they would like to take away the guarantee and look at a voucher. So this is a way the tax bill goes at the end itself, it lets triple down tax cuts at the high end and the expense of the middle class. But in addition to that, it gives them the predicate, the excuse they knew they were going to start the beast, and the beast is the money people, and middle class and those who aspire to it. So it's about the bill and it's unfairness, but it's also about the cost to the budget, making us, and the President's budget 200 billion dollars plus cuts from food steps. It's going to get people back to the process to food steps. So where is that spark of conscience that's supposed to fire a budget which is a statement about values? The combination of the two of them is really very detrimental to our investments in the future. And if you want, we can talk about what it does infrastructure as well, because Antonio's recently said the world can't have a big infrastructure because we have just added to the debt a really reason. And many of them, for these and other reasons it's important for people to understand it, because that's better than just 100 million dollars misrepresenting what this bill does out there. But it is really hard to exaggerate the damage that it does. But we don't have to analyze, we organize and we will continue to make the tribes of the public understand what they have done and educate the whole country, by this everybody, accountable for decisions that may as we go forward. I'm proud to say that 50% of the time it's going against this tax bill. But it's important for Republicans to know that people understand when they're paying attention and we deserve better as a country. I'm honored that I was a fan of yours on this weekend. I thank you for honoring us as your Presidents. You're very special people to spend this time. Thank you. Thanks. The next question I wanted to get to is, what do you think of companies giving bonuses in response to the savings that this bill represents but not increasing wages? And more broadly what do economists expect corporations to do with their big tax savings? Whoever would want to tackle this first? Well, no, it's like giving people, giving them a turkey at Thanksgiving saying I gave out all these turkeys. That's really nice. But it's no substitute for increasing people's wages. This tax bill has this budget, as they're saying, well, we gave bonuses. No, how about increasing people's wages? Democrats have a better idea. It's called a better deal. There are jobs, there are wages, there are future. How would you increase the paycheck of the American world? That's the most vital thing that we can do to grow our economy is to give consumer confidence to a middle class, and again, those who aspire to it so that they will have confidence, spend, inject demand into the economy, grow big, bring money to the treasury, grow the economy, and create more jobs. So when they say we're giving a bonus, well, we're just trying to give them a trillion and a half plus dollars. We're giving them a small percentage of these. But largely we'll see buybacks and the rest of that. That's not a bad thing. We're just saying it is what it is. Don't try to pass it off. It's a banquet at the high end. They criticize me for saying a banquet at the high end comes to the middle class doing something to our intelligence by saying that. So it's nice that they're getting a bonus. Some of those bonuses were probably not in contracts anyway so there was nothing additional. Some were additional. We just like to see better jobs, better pay, better future, and not less inflation, the contraception, someone got a tax act. Now in the past we have said to them we will be happy to work in lower tax rate if we can see a guarantee of jobs and bring your money from overseas, bring your overseas, but create jobs here. We just have to see evidence of that. But until we can see bigger paychecks it's just all about trickle down. We wanted to see a bubble up. I couldn't agree more of course with the focus on wages being the only thing that's really going to get us out of this situation where we have entrenched poverty in the cities. We have seen wages stay stagnant for decades in this country and so I often like to tell the story. I'm not so young anymore. I know we have students, a lot of students in the audience. When I went to college I was actually able to put myself through college with the income of a part-time job and actually pay my rent and pay my tuition without a single dollar I've even spent by my parents. I don't know that you can't do that anymore and one of the reasons why is because wages have not gone up and the other reason why is because the cost of college is exploding. Why is the cost of college exploding? Because the federal and state government, especially here in Texas, have disinvested in public education in our universities. It's just such a challenge and again it's another way you see some of these bad ideas that we've had here in Texas for a while coming to the national level with things like this Sure, no, and I think it's been well said, but look, companies giving bonuses is a good thing. Somebody gets extra money and they print check. That is a good thing. But the fact is that a lot of those same companies when they announced the bonuses to employees, they also announced layoffs a week or two later. So there were a big round of layoffs and one of the constant battles that we've had in the Congress is about getting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others in the business community to join us in advocating for a higher minimum wage. Now to their credit, some companies have done that but the institutions that lobby in Washington, D.C. have been adamant against increasing the minimum wage that has not been increased since 2009, literally in nine years. Now a lot of people might think, well, you know, I don't work for the minimum wage or nobody in my family works for the minimum wage, so how does that really affect me? My job obviously pays more than the minimum wage to start. But once you increase the minimum wage, there's a good chance of also increasing the wages at other positions. So I think it's important that's why we push the raise everybody up. And unfortunately for years, many groups have been intransigent in not wanting to do that because in addition to one-time bonuses, we have to get to the place where we can raise wages for everybody. There are a lot of young people here today, a lot of students. Now this new tax bill will add two trillion additional dollars to the national debt. What does this mean in a practical sense for Americans in general and in particular young people across the country? Have you a question? Basically between the tax bill and this latest budget it was passed, we're looking potentially at having basically being adding two trillion dollars to the debt annually. Remember, we're at 20 trillion right now. So the folks that are going to be most affected are people that are even younger than myself. I'm 43. So you're going to have a generation of people who are basically saddled with a lot of debt. Now this is on top of the fact that you've already got a lot of college students who are drowning in debt right now. Sometimes struggling to adjust to the fact that the workplace is changing, that technology in many ways has come to dominate more often the types of jobs that are available. So for many years especially folks on the other side of the aisle spend time railing against President Obama and the fact that they didn't want to pass any spending bills or anything that would increase the debt or the deficit. When in fact this has not just the potential but will increase the debt substantially affecting all of us but I think possibly quickly in the younger generations. Well I would just add on to that just to kind of again share some Texas numbers. The federal government spends five billion dollars in providing aid to undergraduate students, financial aid here in Texas. And there's just no question of that. It's just the type of program that's going to be targeted for cuts. And again we've heard those conversations already. Here in Texas that's seven times the amount of money that the state government spends on financial aid. So when this disappears, the federal money disappears or is reduced substantially, you're going to have an even worse situation than you're currently facing with college debt and making it much, much more unlikely that a lot of people will be able to even give a college at all here in Texas. From the standpoint of the debt and the future, this is theft and stealing from young people's future. Because when you have debt and increased debt, you have increased interest on the debt. And that is like just burning money right in front of your very eyes. It buys nothing except pays interest on the debt. And I think it's important for me to say this because it's counterintuitive in people's minds that the Democrats are the debt reducers. But we are. When President Clinton was president, we instituted something we were waiting, you know, we needed a Democratic president to do. And even we did a little bit under President George Bush, when he agreed to the budget agreement. And that is pay as you go. You want something, you offset it and either cut something or you pay for it. And that includes tax cuts. The Republicans are very interested in making us pay for the food stamps, but they don't think you have to pay for tax cuts. But a tax cut is an expenditure. You're spending money. So we're spending young people's money into the future increasing the interest on the debt, which is an opportunity cost for other investment for them. So pay as you go is what we would like to see. When President Clinton, we had that. His last high debt budgets, four or five, if you want to argue one of them, they were either in balance or in surplus. Pay as you go we were on a path of reducing the national debt, not adding to it. President Bush came in, but with pay as you go, gave tax cuts to a Rezi and two on paper wars that give a way to the pharmaceutical industry and how it caused the drugs and went in the opposite direction. A swing of $11 trillion from debt reduction to debt increase. So now President Obama went down again. President Obama when he came in, the debt is the ongoing. The deficit is the annual. The deficit was $1.4 trillion when he left it was $500 billion, like a 70% increase. And the deficit, that means lower what is added to the debt. They came in throughout pay as you go and now we're on this path again. So for kids, what is important is the investments that we make in broadband and net neutrality opportunities, all of the things that provide opportunity for jobs for the future. We don't see the cost of education. We don't see the cost of them payments. In other words, just the business of living, but there was just prescription drugs that they found underneath there, the cost of their communications, all of the rest of that. But if you don't have that shared purpose which is to make things affordable and have a good debt and interest on the debt, we're stealing from our children's future, just as if you just took money out of their pockets. And that is something that when we're at the table discussing the debt and the budget investments, we can't hear metals of debt on our children. It's what you are. And for example, if you want to, I'd say that if you want to let's find some places that we can reduce the debt. So I made one suggestion to them of a $38 billion expenditure. I said, we can take this out. This is not necessary. It's just not necessary. And they said, why don't we do that? Or we can save the same amount of money by cutting Pell brands. And I said, that type of where you said this, I said, well, it's in our proposal. That's what we are. But I understand this. That's one of their dumbest ideas. I mean, a stiff competition, but I thought because nothing brings more money to the treasury than investment and education. In the childhood case, in child higher education, we've got lifetime learning for our workers. And in the interest of the budget and their people of the budget, they are carrying a lot of that training and apprenticeship from the rest of that in their budget. And so those are in the here and now initiatives that affect young people, but in our right to do the appropriate, the unwillingness to do the appropriate, there are things about infrastructure that builds broadband across America, routines, available jobs for the future owner from many of our young people. I love to hear what young people have to say about that too. So at the table when they speak for young people, I said let's hear them speak for themselves. I won't really speak for young people. Okay. You've all alluded to this a little bit, but I want to get a little bit deeper into Medicare and Medicaid. So almost immediately after the bill passed, speaker Brian made public comments about the need to reduce spending on Medicare and Medicaid and tackle the debt in deficit. What does this mean for programs Americans rely on like Medicaid and Medicare? Well I think that it means that he's willing to trade or give up on programs like Medicaid and Medicare instead funnel that money to the wealthiest folks. That's basically if you look at the budget, if you look at some of the things they try to do with the budget, if you look at the tax bill, that's essentially what you have, is that you're trading the benefits to one set of Americans, Americans who are middle class and below, and basically funneling it up to the top to very wealthy corporations and the wealthiest among us. And again just to bring in some Texas numbers, you know we have 27 million people in our state so it's not surprising that we would have such high numbers on some of these federal programs. You know we have 3.9 million seniors in Texas who are on Medicare and you know that's just a huge number of people whose healthcare could be a risk if you see big cuts. Medicaid we have 4.2 million Texans on Medicaid, 3 million of those are children. Leader Pelosi referred to that, 50% of the births in Texas are paid for by Medicaid. Okay, who is going to pay for those births? Who is going to pay for the healthcare for those 3 million children if you see these massive cuts? And one other point about the Medicaid, Medicaid pays for 2 thirds of the nursing home stays in the country. So it's not only young people and folks can be birthed but also literally that's how my grandmother was able to stay in a nursing home because otherwise my family could never afford it. I think many of our families could never afford to have somebody day in and day out at a nursing home so that when you think about getting older, that's a daunting thing also that it's going to die off. And you know, it's like go back to when these programs were founded decades ago. They were founded specifically to reduce the number of elderly people living in poverty. There's no question that if you see cuts to these programs, you are going to see a rise in the number of Texas seniors living in poverty which is nowhere. And also basically you have seen your parents, more people that have to go and take care of their parents who are aging, have to quit jobs, have to work part-time, have to leave work early and obviously that has a significant effect on people's lives and their earning abilities too. But I just may add to that one thing I agree with everything that has been said. It's important to remember that our veterans of 1.1 million veterans take advantage of Medicaid a half a million veterans bootstains we really have to remember that this is part of what that is and the again social security Medicare and Medicaid, the affordable care app pillars of economic and health security for our seniors and our families. When I meet with the high school students and college students who come to tell me what they're thinking about the budget and the future, they include in their concern. First they say they want a good education, they want a genre aspect, they want libraries here we are and they want financial security for their grandparents because that enables their parents to take care of themselves as well as their children. So they see it as family but the Republicans did not support Medicare and Medicaid when it was instituted. Eventually they voted at some point but they opposed it all along because they bless their hearts. They don't believe in a public world and they are sincere in that regard, bless their hearts but that's not a blessing in the hearts of other people who really need to see our society be responsible for each other in a sense of community that really is not a safety net for these individuals, it's insurance that they paid into in most cases but it is a safety net for our capitalistic system. Our whole society will be able to have the agility and the ability to invest and to be entrepreneurial and the rest because we have these insurance initiatives in place Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. So they cut Social Security disability benefits in their budget I mean really? So they could give a tax cut the top 1% in the country I don't think that top 1% really even, well some of them maybe but by and large I think the enlightened self-interest of all is to say when our entire community succeeds, our country succeeds I want to start transitioning to our audience questions and we already talked a little bit about the people who are left behind but more specifically one of our background questions was how is the new tax bill going to affect the rising inequality we see across America and in Texas and then we had someone who didn't put their whole name but they said MPA student ETSA what are the Democratic Party's plans specifically the Democratic Party's plans to address growing income inequality so does the MPA student who submitted that question want to just raise their hand you don't have to call you up or anything so in general how will the new tax bill affect the rising inequality and what does the Democratic Party propose to do about that well let me just say this and I thank you for your question because every question is an opportunity so here's the thing and I just want to just give you this whole background because to then pivot to where I think we need to go one of the reasons we have the inequality in our and the disparity in income I put it that way the disparity in income in our country is something that happened a few decades ago three or four decades ago say three or four years ago and he looked at and don't take it from me this is from the then general board a senator of New Jersey you know a person of a private sector they do in those days the disparity between the CEO and the worker was about 40 times so when when a productivity increased worker increased CEO increased all appropriate 40 times around 30 years ago they changed and the way the CEO described it is he said in those days management decisions were made based on not only the shareholder which was the new share responsibility not only what was good for the shareholder the management the CEO etc but the employees the customers and the community at large so decisions were made based on a more comprehensive 40 times the activity increases wages increased everybody does better and so the CEO stayed about 40 times around 25 30 years ago it became shareholder capitalism before it was called stakeholder capitalism now it becomes shareholder the only thing that matters is productivity rises wages stagnate they don't raise the wages CEO pay increases because they must make this money while they're not raising wages so productivity gets no benefit to the worker all of it to the shareholder and the CEO pay goes like that the shareholder right angle going in the wrong direction and when you're not rewarding productivity well that's just that's part of the conscience that's it how can that be I mean if other countries do that would say that's an unfair trade practice but when we do it we say it's a market it's a free market so okay so that's how we got into some of this fix so what we're saying is really this isn't about any underserved this is the great middle class which is the backbone of democracy the middle class and I said well I'm inspired to it but that middle class that's a really human way around and I don't believe that that which is that when that came from the work of we worked with say all of us say to the workplace all those kinds of things and here's the thing we're always going to be in a fix unless we recognize the direct connection of consumer confidence to spending and therefore growth in our economy so what they're doing with that tax bill with that budget is to stop to find that very close and that's why we just had to say better to your question Democrats have a better that's a real deal we have a better deal better jobs better pay better wages and better future that are future for Texas that are future for winning that are future for rural America that are future for the Bronx see it in the world but it's a decision that a country has to make that this is just not about the survival of the food that are responsible to each other and recognizing the pragmatic the pragmatics of saying if people are confident in their spending the economy is growing rather than the trickle down economics of what their opponents have searched for not just to be so politically what their opponents have searched for they keep pride in it so they say it will pay for itself it never has and even some of their strongest components have said while we believe in the supply of economics we never said it would pay for it it's not true it's nonsense I wouldn't want to say it's BS but that's what we're dealing with this is pivotal for our country because they kind of made easing by you so extreme and what they did with that tax bill at the cost of the world class and what that means for the budget and they're almost proud of it they're like see we put the predicate down but we can cut, medicare, medicate and the rest of that but it's not the right thing to do and if you will see in our future how we roll back jobs from the 21st century and how when Arthur was billed, billed, billed building infrastructure in a grand, big way building human infrastructure in America and how education has come well built within America and build our democracy by reducing the rate of women in politics and stopping Russians and others from the intro field and that's what is part of the debate we're engaged in now and that's what makes elections so important and if you wish at some point we'll talk about time of day today I don't know if anyone else wants to speak to that again this is another example where Texas is the canary in the coal mine because we've already done this, we've already disinvested in public services like healthcare and education and so it's no surprise that even though we're a wealthy state we have one of the highest rates of income inequality if you look at the numbers around the recession a lot of talk about how Texas created a lot of jobs they waived a magic wand and converted a bunch of middle class jobs to low wage shops which is why we have one of the highest rates of low wage jobs in the country and you're going to see that same kind of impact ripple beyond Texas with the impact of this tax bill, there's no question there's going to be rising income inequality. Okay we have a question from James Rivera James do you want to raise your hand? There he is. James asks when talk about wages comes up the subject of inflation is also brought up how can we raise wages but keep control of inflation we just had the new head of the Federal Reserve is there to there's a charge at the Federal Reserve to report to Congress on a regular basis on inflation and unemployment and the relationship and I was sitting as a new member of Congress in my seat by the Banking Committee which is what was called the National Service when Henry D. Gonzales was sitting on his chair and one of the heads of the Fed came in and said because some people at the Fed thought their so rude was only about inflation but we thought it was about employment and wages as well and this head of the Fed said unemployment is dangerously low I don't understand just say no oh my gosh and he's going to wear a pop because it's dangerous to know because for some people inflation is, we don't want big inflation but if the economy is doing better and wages are rising and people are spending and thriving and living their lives you will get some inflation but there's a whole element in our country and part of that had influence in this tax bill and the goal in life is to protect the value of their cash so that means if wages should be kept low and unemployment should be kept high that keeps their cash more valuable and they're very wealthy in my country and they invest in foundations and chairs and universities and all of that to fight the idea that we should have some balance here yes, if wages increase there may be some increase in inflation the Fed offers interest rates, how that works but we think that that has to be a balance between inflation and job creation and wages and not just about protecting the cash assets of the wealthiest people in our country so that's a responsible Federal Reserve I would say a good time wouldn't have but even for our seniors and people who live on fixed income or savings, a little more inflation, a little higher interest rate gives them income so it's about balance it's about balance but it's not about starting the interest rates of people to see that they live on in some cases and their seniors who are trying to be concerned that unemployment is dangerous for the world so that we sort of have no inflation but it's called harmful weapons here we come through, the best this happens they pass the word called harmful weapons and said to the Fed we're not just going to protect the assets of ensuring we're wealthy we're going to make sure that there's a balance between employment, wages and inflation as well so we'll see how it goes and again it's about balance is that a design issue question? do you have any questions? you all have a question if you want to answer your best questions at all the only thing I would add to that, I think you're right, I think you need strong monetary policy that's basically monitoring what is going on in the US economy which is happening all the time but also when I think about the need for wage growth, I think about the fact that you still have many Americans who are drowning in debt, you still have a lot of people that are living paycheck to paycheck so we have a lot of work to do in delivering higher wages to people, I mentioned the minimum wage but it's not just people working for minimum wage but that all the different many of the different wage classes in this country so I feel confident that we can do that without driving prices to the roof I'm trying to read through the question I just got because they're telling me we just have time for one more question I believe and so I want to combine this a little bit, I've gotten a lot of questions that talk about what will the Democratic party do if and when you retain some majority of the House, Senate both, so I did want to slip a quick question in the predecessor to this one is what impact do you see the tax bill having on the midterm elections or anything else on the midterm elections and then more specifically, this is from a graduate mental health counseling student at UTSA if you want to raise your hand as I read your question, thank you for this and they say there's a portion of the tax bill that designates funds for mental health care but to my understanding it is limited to veterans, mental health is more than that, we need more licensed counselors and psychologists to help with issues such as depression, anxiety, suicide, the crisis that just happened in Florida, we are valuing things more than people, what can government do to start funding these initiatives and crucial services? On that point I would agree you're right that we need to take mental health as seriously as we treat physical health and one of the wonderful things that the Affordable Care Act did was to bring those two things closer to parity I remember in 2011 I believe I worked on just a small part bringing mental health to closer parity with physical health, I worked on a bill on serious emotional disturbances in children but you're right we have a lot of work to do in making sure that the resources are available to our veterans but also to the larger population so that they can intrude when they need it. Did you answer the first part of the question about the midterm elections? Yeah although this is an official event so I don't want to get too political but I think the millions will have a lot to say in November 2018 about what has been delivered by this Congress in terms of the resources to the very top at a time in our country when the top 1% already have a significant chunk of the wealth in this country and when I say that we don't begrudge anybody doing well, I don't think we should begrudge anybody's success in business or in their endeavors, we acknowledge that and we honor that in this country. At the same time we also believe that there should be a fair investment in what you all know I call infrastructure of opportunity in our nation for everybody who's coming up right, for everybody who hasn't made $10 million or $100 million yet, everybody that is working for themselves and their families and what happened with that tax bill is that it took the resources for that infrastructure of opportunity for things like great schools and universities, a strong healthcare system, a strong economy that pays good wages, it took that and diverted it to the people that are already doing so very well and the people that literally need at least in the country and that I think is part of the shame of that bill. So I would just say that the thing that has kept me going for the last year and however long it has been in this dark period for our state and our country, the groundswell of engagement and at all levels of government that I have witnessed and seen, we're seeing it today in this room with all of you who came out on a holiday to be here, I have never seen the halls of the capital in Austin as crowded as I did the last legislative session. We have marches in every city around the country and I would also say as the one up here that is representing the non-partisan, fiercely independent, same tank, that it is absolutely critical that we hold, that we support our values, that we elect candidates that stand for our values and that we hold them accountable to those values. I just may say that this tax bill and the budget implications of it are well beyond politics. This is so central to what we are as a country in terms of the security of people and their families, the security of our nation. Our national security leaders have told the administration that this national debt is a national security issue because it brings instability to our country. So I had this so far beyond Democrats and Republicans. It's about our nation. And again, as Lisa said, we have to hold two medications. One is who gets elected what it learns from what the people are thinking of who one gets elected has and the one who may be elected who doesn't share views but will listen and learn from people as to what they understand the impact of public policy on their lives. This being Black History Month or so, one with the kings said the ballot, the ballot, the ballot. Legislation, legislation, legislation. More life, more life. The connection between the ballot, what happens in legislation and people's lives is something that we have to make clear as we are trying to do for these tax learnings for us, teachings, hopefully which we love and learn from you. And this is a very big deal as to the statement of values and our budget priorities are, whether it's again infrastructure to build America, it was human infrastructure to grow our people, whether it's infrastructure of our democracy. So much of it is at stake. And not to be a fear monger, ever since is an opportunity. We don't agonize, we organize. And hopefully that is in the spirit of bipartisanship, transparency as well as in the spirit of unifying any part of this room. That was what our founders had as their motto from anyone that could never imagine how many would do or help differently the day. But they also knew that the success of our country was predicated on the fact that every generation would take responsibility to make the future better for the next. We came out as a community of flock to our shores and we're going to come in with no real streams, aspirations, power, capitalism, determination. All American traits make America more American and continue to do so. That's why we fight for our dreamers. I saw a sign coming in here in the library saying your dream can't, if you don't dream, your dream can't come true. And so these dreamers are dreaming not for the only for themselves but for America. And if I just may say a mom's demand action, thank you, thank you, thank you for what you are doing. As I said, it's the outside globalization and saving for the parent. We didn't win the fight on taxes but we wanted to be able to continue to win that debate. And mom's demand action, kids in Florida demand the action, people demand the action will make a difference in all of this. So know your power. The power of voice, the power of showing up, most importantly, the power to vote. So thank you.