 I want to thank the forum not only for hosting us today and pulling together such a terrific and diverse group of people to have this conversation about the outlook for the United States, but in this particular case, I think they've really nailed it with the framing of this panel, which is very short and sweet and simple. What can Washington actually get done in the next two years, the final two years of President Obama's tenure in Washington? I think that's a great starting point for this conversation, and I'm looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say and where we agree, and especially where we disagree. Just this week, of course, President Obama gave his State of the Union address, and he had a fairly ambitious agenda of proposals. Just as quickly, I think there was a conversation both in Washington and around the world about what's really possible in the context of a new Republican-controlled Congress, and what is that legislative agenda? So I'd like to start with that as our starting point. We have Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. I'll give you the right of first refusal, as they say. President Obama talked a big game. What do you think is gonna emerge as the most actionable items that were in that State of the Union address? Well, let me preface answering the question by saying where are we? And I think the first thing that the President was trying to communicate to all of us is that the American economy's in a good position. We ended up 2014 with GDP growing at about 5%, with job growth, 3 million new jobs. The most job creation since the late 1990s with the deficit down about two-thirds, with healthcare costs really moderating, with 10 million more Americans having healthcare coverage, and with record exports. 2013, about $2.3 trillion of exports, and it looks like in 2014 we'll beat that number. So the United States is sitting in a good position. From an economic standpoint, of course, the President pointed out to all of us that we don't, middle-class wages have not been rising, and that we need to really address that as a challenge, and obviously with unemployment coming down with opportunities rising, we can talk more about that as an agenda item. But in terms of a legislative agenda, the President laid out a number of things that I think are doable. First of all, trade agreements. We need to pass, and he was very explicit, asking for trade promotion authority from Congress. And I believe that is doable. And the reason I believe it's doable is that once it's really understood that we're not talking about trade agreements of 20 years ago, we're talking about the situation today in the 21st century. It's really imperative for us to create a fair and level playing field for American businesses globally. Importing into the, or selling, if you bring your goods into the United States from a foreign country, you face about on average about a 1.5% tariff. But if you want to sell your goods from the United States, let's say autos or chemicals or agriculture, you could face anywhere from 30% to 100% tariff. And so this is about fairness, market access level playing field. It's also about our values. How do we create trade around the world where our labor standards are more commensurate with the labor standards we have in the United States? Environmental standards are high where there's intellectual property protection. So this is an opportunity for America to lead in a place where I think there's common ground between the administration and the Republican Congress. Well, that's right. I was gonna bring in Congressman McHenry. This is one where you may have more trouble with Democrats in the president's own party than with Republicans. Are Republicans willing to give President Obama a win on something that may be supported by many Republicans, but nonetheless, this would count as a big legislative victory for him? Well, this is really about the American people and jobs and access to goods and services and be able to sell goods and services around the world. It's not a win for the president or a lose for this group or whatever else. It should be a win for the American people. Ambassador Froman's done a yeoman's task in working through the Trans-Pacific Partnership and so if you look, certainly the Senate, the votes are there to pass trade promotion authority as well as TPP, but in the House, it's gonna be really the duty for Republicans to carry the most weight on this. And the president's gonna have to do a major amount of lifting in order to bring even a portion of the Democrats in the House along. They're largely not free traders to any degree. I have worked on this issue with Ambassador Froman because of the nature of my district in the region and also as a matter of making sure we have votes there to pass this trade agreement. It's important. So you think you have the votes on your side? We're gonna work through that and we're committed to work through that and the speaker has said that to the president as well. So I think trade is an area where we can work together. I do think that's real. I do think that's significant. Unfortunately, for me, I heard the president talk through about half of his state of the union was about issues that he knows are dead on arrival. He brought up the same tax increase that he's been bringing up when he had supermajorities in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate with his party. He couldn't get it passed then. He's certainly not gonna get it passed with the Republican House. That's unfortunate. I wanted to hear him talk more about comprehensive tax reform and I think that's doable. I think we can do some rational things when it comes to immigration, when it comes to high skilled visas and making sure that those that come to the United States for education can stay and work and be a participate in our society. I think we can do some, maybe not all that the president desires on immigration, but we could probably get half of it done, two thirds of it done in a bipartisan way without much controversy. I think we need to do that. I think we need to start on that when it comes to doing the right things for border security, internal enforcement first, and then moving on to ag and high tech workers. Those are areas where I think we can work together. The other thing is infrastructure and tax reform can be a pay for to ensure that we have modern infrastructure and so we can be more competitive around the globe. I think that should be the agenda and the final piece of course is regulation. What we see is after this last election, 70% of the state legislative chambers in America are controlled by Republicans. A majority of governors are Republicans. You're seeing Democrat and Republican governors as incubators for ideas when it comes to regulation. Washington needs to catch up. Our securities laws need to catch up. Our regulations and rules for businesses and need to catch up. And I think that can add more oomph to this nascent recovery we have. I wanna come back to the Republican Congress and how it's gonna be different than the last Congress was, but you've invoked a governor, a Democratic governor as the case may be here. Do you agree that the initiative has passed from Washington to the States in some way? Well, in certain places where we've had just dysfunction and log jams, immigration, I mean a lot of what now look we can be optimistic about and I haven't met a governor yet who's not incurably optimistic by nature, but governors are much less partisan and we generally do work together and I think are committed to trying within the governors, the National Governors Association is working towards trying to find, is there a place in immigration that governors can get behind? Can we support the Export-Import Bank? If you really wanna expand exports, how do we make sure that we governors come to a consensus and then we talk to our congressional representatives of both parties and say, this is gonna be long-term, help us be able to do more exports. So those kinds of things, governors also, we gotta get stuff done. So we sit with the cabinet members or with the president himself, I was out there a couple of weeks ago and he was very forthright that he would do everything he could to cut red tape and regulation, bureaucracy, that if we were willing to build infrastructure, one way to build more would be to be able to build it faster. Instead of having every permit process go in a sequential one after the other, do a whole series of permitting processes or parts of a permit process, do them parallel and cut what would take five years or seven years down to one and a half years, that saves you money, it makes the project go faster, gets you better pricing and you're able to build more infrastructure for the same money. I think if we do a few of these projects, I think that hopefully that'll stimulate Congress, although I think Congress, again, the optimist I am, I think Congress is gonna work together. You know, even immigration, I'm quite hopeful that there'll be some, a good compromise, nobody's really happy. So we're gonna come back next year and we're gonna have the conversation about how that optimism played out. I wanna get back to Colorado as a laboratory, arguably one of the most interesting laboratories right now in the United States for policy experience, but I wanna bring in first Andrew Livers, who is operating in the real economy as opposed to the Washington economy as the CEO of a huge multinational corporation. First of all, do you agree with these relatively rosy assessments of the US economy at this point and how much do you think that President Obama does or doesn't deserve credit for that? So I wanna pick up from where Penny was with her assessment of the US economy today. And if you think of the global economy in its various forms, the US economy is the strongest engine on our aircraft of the global economy. The other engines aren't as strong, some of them aren't actually even functioning at all, like in Europe and that's a whole other topic. That's not happened by accident. That's happened because of deliberate policies and I give President Obama due credit for that. I've been CEO for 11 years and six years of that has been under the Obama administration and I've been going to Washington to be a participant in the policy conversation. I think CEOs today of US global multinational in particular who are operating by different rules of the road around the world have to really bring the highest standard to the conversation wherever those conversations take place. We have to participate in the trade conversations. We have to participate in the immigration discussion on human capital. We have to bring the very best standards that we learn over decades of operating and in Dow's case 118 years young and to figure out how to bring those standards around the world so it's fair and fairness versus free. Fairness is because you've got dialogue in the policy setting process from the constituencies that matter, the regulators and the regulated. I mean, it's offset about Washington, it's not my quote, but I'll say it, it's funny. You know, you either go there because if you don't go there, you're not at the table, you're on the menu. And literally, okay, literally, Washington feels like that a lot. And I really like to say that where the tailwinds have occurred with due credit to the administration, where the tailwinds are occurring in the United States, it is a lot of the United States' inherent strengths, it's workforce, it's ability to have a mobile workforce, it's education system, it's entrepreneurialism, it's freedoms, it's immigration policies. These are its strengths. Now what has happened is we play to those strengths and energy has become a major competitive advantage and all of us with the economic crisis of 1809 have restructured because we've had the freedom to restructure. We've taken down our cost curves. We're globally competitive. We can export out of the United States. We've reskilled a lot of our workforce with a lot more work to do. That's all happening in the United States there which is why the US is ahead of the world in what the world currently needs, a lot more work to do. And I think the question of the next two years, the politics of uncertainty that we saw over these last few years with the dysfunctionality of Congress and the administration in all of its various facets. Look, I was Vice-Chair of the Business Roundtable, Chair of the Business Council. We'd get people in and we'd ask for the center to appear. That would start to go down from 20 people to 10 people with the various elections to no people. The center started to disappear in Congress and that became a problem. People would not take a stand on what compromise would look like. The politics of uncertainty leads to the economics of uncertainty. That's now behind us. I am full of hope that the business tax reform agenda, the present laid out, the trade agenda, the present laid out, immigration in its various forms can be done in this next year or two. That'll juice the American economy even further. We've got more headwinds and more work. I agree in the area of regulations. We're way over-regulated. So we need work in that area. Energy policy. I can't wait for the United States to finally put together an energy policy that works. But in the main, the United States is on the right track. And these next two years, with Congress and the way it is, in a strange sort of way, both houses being Republican, this is maybe the best chance we have to get the right outputs on policy. Cecilia, this is an oddly optimistic group. I'm quite amazed. Most Washington conversations are not. As the dean of the Wilson School at Princeton, you have a little bit of a remove. This gap between our collective policy aspirations that can do ethic that you often see in the states or in cities versus a sort of hopelessness that had set in around this pervasive sense of Washington gridlock. First of all, do you share this optimism that we're hearing today? And taking a longer view, what is your view as an academic about whether American politics has moved into some new phase of dysfunction where it's connected with the economy and the disruptions of recent years? So as I was thinking about the panel, I kept thinking, this must be the shortest panel at Davos because they're gonna get nothing done. But that was just a joke, right? I was just clipping to myself. I think more seriously, I think part of the reason why there's a little bit of optimism right now is because if you think about the incentives for the president, who obviously wants to be a president who got, he's accomplished a lot already. And he wants to be known as a president that got a lot done. And then you have a Republican-controlled Congress, which if they do nothing, will have been responsible for doing nothing and they can't blame it on something else. And the fact that they don't have a veto-proof majority in the Senate, it means that if in order for them both to get accomplished some goals, they have to work together and they're gonna have to find common ground somewhere. So I think because those incentives are aligned is part of the reason why there's some hope. And as we were talking about beforehand, it's also the last two Congresses have been the lowest-performing Congresses since what was at World War II. So the bar's pretty low, there's nowhere to go but up. Does it bother you, Congressman, when people say they do nothing, Congress? They do nothing, Congress? Does that bother you? I've been busy. Doing something. No, it's a frustration of our system. And in the House of Representatives, just as an example, the Keystone Pipeline. I know the President's already said he's gonna veto it, but we passed that in an afternoon in the House of Representatives, in an afternoon. The Senate took it up on the same day, which was their first week that they were in session. It will take them almost four weeks to pass that same bill, or a similar bill. And on their first vote, they had 63 members agree to have the discussion on Keystone Pipeline. And at the end of the day, they have 60 votes for the Keystone Pipeline. This is a widely agreed upon bill in the Senate, and this is moving quickly in the Senate. It's almost four weeks. So there's some frustration on that system. It is the system though, where we've had some of the greatest successes in American history. And to Cecilia's point, on the divided government opportunity here. We had welfare reform, a balanced budget, and the biggest rewrite and telecom policy in 50 years, done with a Republican House, Republican Senate and Democrat President in the 1990s. It is possible for us to do rational and good things for the American people, and it is incumbent upon us to act. That also means that instead of asking for 100%, whether it's the president, or whether it's House Republicans, or Senate Democrats, or whatever group, we're gonna have to work through to see what we can achieve and what we can agree upon. So I wanna bring Cecilia back to the question, but I must say having covered and lived through the Washington of President Clinton and divided government, I never thought that you would hear a Republican member of the leadership look back on nostalgia on those days as a legislative high watermark. Well, no, but look at the production, right? And then the president says, well, these Republicans are different than they were in the 1990s. I would remind you of what the Republicans in the House did with Bill Clinton in 1998, right? And we're not talking about that. It's not like there was some merry band of camaraderie in the 1990s, right? Clearly not. So, I mean, yeah, obviously not. No, but to your point that even people who violently disagree in the most personal of ways can pass legislation. And if you just read American History, we just love this fight in Washington. It's just part of the discussion. The frustration we have though, talking to the editor of Politico here, is that we know to the smallest degree to the microscopic level of what happens in debates. So if we didn't like Washington when we had only the evening news, imagine when you know, play by play, moment by moment, how that sausage is made, right? And the American people like it even less because they know even more. And so that's a telltale lesson for me that we have to get things done. I'm glad the lesson isn't that we should know less. Cecilia. I'm sorry, which part did you want to? No, I thought you wanted to jump back in on this question of the inherent gridlock in the system or not. I mean, I have to admit that when it comes to how we've set up between the House and the Senate, which I think the Senate was designed to be a little bit more deliberative than the House, and it seems to me the House is always working. But I think when we're thinking do nothing, we mean in terms of what actually gets passed. I do think that you're asked from the academic side. There is some concern that in the US that we, part of it, if you look at our media, it's gotten more polarized. And that there's a feeling that our population has gotten more polarized. And that there is less of an understanding. And not just in Washington, but that this is coming from the bottom up. And that that will have some consequences for our democracy. That's a little bit gloom and doom. And I'm not saying that I think that we're about to cave under the weight of Rome or something. But I think that there is some concern that that polarization is actually reflecting more of what's happening around the country. Governor Hickenlooper, you come from a state that obviously is a pretty contested state politically. It's voted Democratic in national elections. It's elected you. It just elected a new Republican senator as well. From the ground up, from the battleground state, if you will, do you see that gridlocked partisan outcomes in Washington are inevitable? Or how do you make policy that people can agree upon when they disagree about so much on their personal political views? Well, and part of it is the media is very polarizing. But I think go back and look at Lincoln's reelection. You couldn't be any more polarizing than that. There is a difference in the television, certainly, and all the visual media is a hot media. So and the attack ads, you know, I'm fond of Andrew's heard me say, I said this the other day, that you don't, Coca-Cola would never do an attack ad against Pepsi. Pepsi sales would go down. It works. Pepsi would have no choice but to attack Coke. Coke sales would go down. They'd attack Pepsi. Pepsi would attack Coke. You depress the entire product category of soft drinks. And what we're doing is depressing the product category of democracy in a certain funny way. And I think the way, at least on a state basis, you do that, you respond to that, is you try to persuade people. And I think this is what Cece, if I can be so bold, she said because she was called Cece growing up. Absolutely. But that trying to persuade people to see a broader self-interest for themselves, and they originally thought. And you were describing the president in Congress both having an overlapping self-interest and getting things done. And I think on a local level, that's when you're trying to persuade someone, you just have to listen harder and focus more on what their real concern is. Because often it's different than what you think. And this is yours in the restaurant business that all of a sudden you say, oh, that's your problem. Well, heck, I don't care that much about that. And maybe we can work on this, and you end up with, again, a compromise that's not perfect for everyone, but that where enough self-interest overlaps so that you can make real progress. Secretary Pritzker, what is it? Are you able to be in the solutions business while leading such a massive government agency right now? Absolutely. Remember, I come from the private sector. 27 years is my first government job. In the private sector, your job is to find solutions. Give me the facts, give me the lay of the land, and then your job is to figure out how to navigate. And I think the reason that I'm optimistic is I think that there are overlapping self-interest, but there are also overlapping policy positions at this point, and there's a desire to get things done. And I think there's a desire, and I think there's also a recognition that we should focus on where we can actually get things done. There's some discipline going on. Everyone's got their rhetoric and their political rhetoric, which is not my expertise. But in fact, if you listen carefully to where there's overlapping interests, you're seeing real progress happen. I think you'll see the trade agreement start to move in very short order. There's work going on to see if we can have business tax reform, and you don't hear the kind of negative conversation. There's realistic conversation. These are challenging issues to resolve, and they require people to stake out what's important to them. The presidents tried to do that on business tax reform. I think the Republican House and Senate are doing the same. Looking for ways, is there enough overlap that we can make a deal? Because the American people want to see progress. They want to see United States remain competitive, remain a leader in the global economy. Why? They want jobs. They want to do better. That's the number one. If you look at all the polling, what does it tell you? Americans want jobs. They want an opportunity. They want to believe that they can do better for their families. And that's our job, is to figure that out. And I think there's more listening that's going on as the governor said. And so you know what? Yes, there's rhetoric. And yes, there might be things that are said on either side that are being said for various political reasons. But there's also a lot of listening going on as to where the overlap is. That's why I'm hopeful. It's a window to it. We will get into ultimately the national elections. And that will change the landscape for the congressmen and for the administration. And so we have to take advantage of the window that we've got. And that's why I also think there's a sense of urgency that I hear from the congressmen, is let's take advantage of this moment. Let's focus on the things that we can actually get done. The patient is still not well. So this optimism point that you were at before, I think the US has gotten itself into a position to get well. 3% GDP growth we should not be celebrating. This economy's got a way more promise than that. The trade agreements and business tax reform will accelerate GDP. They have to be done. Unemployment rates coming down, but there's a lot of people who've never worked. We've got to re-school the workforce big time. There are open jobs. Penny and I were chatting in the corridor. Five million of them. I can't get a welder to build plants in the United States without paying them $200,000 a year. Maybe that's what I should be paying them. 20% wage inflation in the technician area on the US Gulf Coast last year. But we have unemployed people, so we've got to get re-skilling done. It is a major issue that'll create growth. We've got to get at that work. It is jobs. You get re-elected on jobs. You'll get elected on jobs. The states work because the states have had some... In fact, we've gone to the states preferentially the last three or four years, like Colorado. How much do you think that this inequality issue in the American economy, does that affect your business in some real way? It affects my business because I can't get workers. This is absolutely ludicrous. So to that point, this is not much ballyhoed last year, but a Republican House, a Democrat Senate, a Democrat president cut the number of worker training programs we had, took the money and threw it in more focused ways. It was a huge success. I know, Penny, that you were very engaged in that. And that's the type of success that doesn't make headlines, but that's the real work that we've got to do. And that's a matter of finding that little opening that you can do something small but significant. I think you're exactly right. It's very tangible. And focusing is really, I think, that the critical factor here. Let's not boil the ocean. Let's not try and get everything done. Let's focus where we can have the biggest impact. And the skilled workforce, I mean, you've got a group of people here who are very focused on skilled workforce. I mean, Cecilia and I got first met one another when we did a set of focus groups that ultimately led to creating Skills for America's Future, which really raised the awareness of the skills challenge that we're facing today. We have 5 million open jobs in America. That's crazy. We know today that in 2020, 35% of our workforce needs to have a BA in order to do the jobs that our business leadership is telling us they're going to have. We know another 30% need to have the technical skills and need to have at least some form of higher education. We're nowhere near meeting those needs. It's a real issue. The solutions, though, actually reside in the states and in the cities and in the regions. The federal government, what we can do together, which we did, was to really change the way grants work so that they're business led and job driven. So they're focused on it's not about we're just going to give out money for training and pray that it's somehow it works, but instead it's focused. And that's where working together shows progress and the Congressman could go back to his district. I was in the Charlotte area in fact earlier this week and basically tout, hey look, this is how government can actually function and work well together. And the employers can look and say, hey look, this is working for me in the district. And this question of skills goes right back to what you raised in the opening, which is the middle class family, the median family in America has been left behind. The median wage in our country is the same last year as it was in 1989, right? So they've been left behind by the great advances of the 90s and the first decade of the 2000s. And what is that big differentiation in the workforce? Skills, skills. And I say this with all due respect as a history major in college. We can retrain you too. Yeah. No, you already know. So a welder, what is fascinating to me is somebody with skills, like welding. He's going to sign up for your welding job. That's higher paid than congressmen. Exactly. And that might be based on delivery, actually. So at that point, though, we need to focus on skills. And some of us, as Republicans, we see the workplace flexibility piece as very essential for middle class families. When the president brings up childcare, it is a big issue for me with a five month old, by the way, named Cecilia at home. And the struggles that families have, and my wife has a very good job and has done a fantastic, has a fantastic career. So we're very blessed, but it is a struggle. It's a real struggle for families. So there are opportunities where we can figure out this path forward to get at this major issue that is a societal problem and not a Republican or Democrat problem, just a family problem in a country problem. So I want to bring the audience into it, because I know you are going to have great contributions to make as well. I believe there's microphones around. So if you just raise your hands, do make it a question and make it quick so we can get as many people out, go behind me. Well, when you talk about trade, what? Can you identify yourself here? I'm Alberto Valle, I come from Mexico, Pupus Manción. When you talk about trade, what kind of, what are we going to be talking about? TPP, Europe, what is, when do you think that Congress would pass a trade agenda? Let's talk about the sequencing of the trade agenda. The first thing that needs to happen is trade promotion authority, which is the opportunity where Congress basically says, look, here's what's important to Congress that's in the trade agreements. That, I think, is going to, you're going to see action in Congress, I think, very quickly on that, meaning we'll see bills start to come out. And then you'll see TPP is the most ripe. And obviously, Mexico is participating in the TPP negotiations. Your minister of economy was here. Minister of trade is here, in fact. And we're working very closely together to get that completed. And obviously, our US trade rep is leading the charge in terms of those negotiations. But there's really political, I see, having traveled to most of the TPP countries in the last year, there's real political will to get them done. But there's real, also, economic necessity for all of these countries. They see what is going to happen if this doesn't come to fruition. And so there's a navigation that has to happen in terms of, one, get the deals completed, two, get them in a position where they can, in each of the countries, be ratified. And I think that's the next thing that you'll see. In the meantime, TPP is being negotiated. It's not as ripe a deal as, excuse me, TTIP as TPP. So the European negotiation will finish up later. And probably you'll see that in 2016. So that's the lineup of the trade agreements. What's really important to keep in mind, these agreements are part of the plan that will continue to keep America growing strong. The White House estimates TPP will produce about 650,000 jobs for America. And it has benefit for the other countries as well. So this is something that's not just about, it's a nice to have. This is a need to have for us to stay globally competitive. Let me get another question, right here, sir. My name is Drew Welton. I'm an American living in Switzerland. Tax reform on a personal level. Isn't that a big way to move the needle in the States in order to have equalization of tax from the rich and the poor and have enough revenue to move the programs in terms of education, in terms of retooling people? That's something, a topic that the taxes are so complicated. On the one hand, you said that you thought it was something that might be on the agenda. On the other hand, you said President Obama's tax statement in his State of the Union was dead on arrival. He's asked for it since he ran the first time. The president got the tax increases he desired out of the larger agreement two years ago. So to come back for an additional tax increase, I think it's not the right approach. But actually going back and taking out, well, we've got a very complicated, messy tax code, period. So we need to actually think of our tax code as a matter of competitiveness. But that isn't just business, question of corporations and their taxation and their top rate and all their littering of exclusions and loopholes. But it's also the personal level. The personal level actually affects my district more than the corporate tax rate, because small business folks largely files individuals. I think we need to do this in tandem. And that is my hope, and the administration will put force behind it. But if you look at the 1986 tax reform, it took the full weight of the White House and the presidency and a Herculean effort in a divided Congress. And it was able to get done, but it was very messy. It's going to take that type of level and engagement from the president all the way down to rank and file members of the House and Senate to get this done. The reality is, Bol Simpson, entitlement and tax, that package is not going to happen in the next two years. Would you agree with that? Well, those are so just doing tax reform alone is a generational but as a left-hand right-hand thing. But the question on entitlements, the president has already said he wouldn't go there. Speaker of the House, John Boehner offered the president a package three years ago, and the president rejected that. We've already seen that. We've read quite a bit about it in Politico. So the president has not been serious about entitlement reform. I was trying to focus on what we can achieve, but it seems to be the president is not interested in doing that. When I see this president is having a huge opportunity to fix a huge challenge for the next generation. My generation is the first that will have a bankrupt social security system. It is not responsible to the next generation to leave them indebted with a social safety net that is completely tattered. So I think it's a moral imperative. Well, certainly, just to finish the tax thing, I think what the president is looking at that he can do is some corporate reforming of tax and certainly making us more competitive with the rest of the world while at the same time allowing large multinationals to bring some of those, that $2 trillion back into the country and use the revenues from that to invest in infrastructure, whether you're talking about highways, physical infrastructure, or higher education, that's something that should be doable. Is there demand in the states? I mean, do you feel like people are saying to you, we wish Washington would get this tax? Absolutely. I mean, I think that there is a need for infrastructure in this country that cuts right across partisan divides. Republican governors, Democratic governors, we all need. We're getting congestion in our urban areas. Our broadband is not in every place that it should be. This is all stuff that allows states and therefore our country to be competitive with the rest of the world. There's two words that haven't been used in the business tax reform that everyone's going to remember makes this very hard. That's revenue neutral. So as soon as you go to any business community, and I'm a member, K Street kicks into gear. So all these. They already have. We had a story today that said that companies hiring tax lobbyists last year was a record boom year. So the business community is going to be unified in saying this is good overall. Because if the pie is just being re-divided and there's no expansion of the pie, there's no growth, then this will never happen. And this is the issue in Europe too. So this has got to be for the greater good. And that takes a lot of work. And that's why I think it's already a hard enough exercise to get revenue neutral business tax reform that then will lead to the benefit the governor was talking about. I know you want to jump in, Secretary Pritzker. And then I want to make sure we get some other questions. Well, I just want to. I think what you're hearing here is exactly kind of the situation that we're faced with, right? I think everyone wants to see this happen. But you've got the business community has really got to recognize that in the short run, there are going to be winners and losers. And if everybody and what the president has talked, I know, with Senator McConnell about is the fact look, if all the businesses gear up their lobbyists, then you can make sure that business tax reform doesn't happen. We have to, though, the congressman is absolutely right. This is about global competitiveness. And what the leadership, I think, both in the administration and on the Hill recognizes, and I've heard this from, I've been 18 months roughly in my job, I've probably talked to 1,500 or 1,600 business leaders around the United States. They all want business tax reform. The question is, can we find a way to navigate it where we don't end up, everybody tears it apart? And it becomes politically unfeasible. And that's gonna be the real trick. Question, yes. Greg Schiff, maybe be. Hello there. Question is around energy policy. We talked about getting things moving, being practical, finding compromise. For many years, there's been a big need for energy policy reform and having clear guidelines that allow for more investment, more jobs, building out the infrastructure that needs help, especially in the U.S. So any comments on where that fits on the agenda, what kind of priority, what we can expect? Well, I've already said- This is also your agenda- I've already said, I mean, this has been my holy grail for 11 years. I haven't succeeded. So I would say it's in the too hard basket for the next two years, but there are pieces of it getting into place. So natural gas and shale gas and how that gets not just extracted safely, but enhanced domestically and exported. That's a real big value chain I just described. That's a big chunk in Colorado, maybe you'll get there in a second. But the completeness of the question means you have to bring efficiency standards across the country into shape. That's a combination of federal and state and that's a big bucket, not just auto, housing, appliances, building. I mean, the BTU we burn is one thing. The BTU we don't use is the better one, right? That's emission control, everything. Alternatives and the right alternatives and a transition on fossil fuels. You can't go zero. So transition through shale gas, basically C1. I mean, that's the sort of energy policy we need. We haven't pulled it together as a country yet and that would be one of my aspirations. Politically, this has been very controversial in Colorado. Well, the innovations in how you get shale gas, so horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, has been controversial because these new innovations allow exploration and production to come much closer to where people live, especially in the West, but I mean, New York, Pennsylvania, they're all dealing with the issue. We've worked very hard to say, all right, our job is to make sure it's an industrial process, but we're gonna regulate it to make sure that people aren't put at a disadvantage, so that we were the first state to do methane regulation. But the key was we took the environmental community and the leaders, the environmental defense fund, some of the top environmental experts and got them in the room with the leadership of the oil and gas industry and we were the convener and sometimes the peacemaker, but that's how we got to regulations that no red tape, we tried to make sure every dollar that was spent would actually make the air cleaner and we had both sides at the end when we announced our methane regulation, we had the environmental community and the oil and gas industry side by side saying this is good policy. And I think that's the last step, at least on a state basis, is we need to get the sides together, put down their weapons and work at the, again, the compromise it doesn't, it's not perfect for anyone. And as Andrew said that there is, I mean, natural gas is inexpensive, it's much cleaner than many of the fuels that we're burning now. It allows us, I mean, in terms of retraining, it allows us a whole giant doorway of new jobs that we can train for. The question is, we just have to put in the effort and the work to get to those regulations on, you know, across the country. Well, it's not political poison is what you found as a Democrat to support. Well, I think we support it with, in Colorado we're trying to be as pro-business as we can, but with the highest standards. So we said we're gonna hold ourselves to cleaner air, cleaner water, we raise the fine for companies that polluted, you know, frack fluid or crude oil good in the waterways, instead of a $500 a day fine, finally we went up to a $15,000 a day fine. And suddenly we had less issues of careless mistakes. I think that's what the public expects, right? Our job is not to harass or one industry or another, our job is to make sure that our environment, nothing stays the same. So we've got to be trying to make it a little cleaner every year. And in this way, this is the state's acting when the federal government has not had sort of wise longer term policies when it comes to energy policy. So you have energy policy being led by various different states that are trying to well regulate new technologies, but also use it, utilize it. And I think that's sort of the trade-off. We all acknowledge that regulations have expenses, but we also want to have clean air and clean water. And the choices we make, whether it's living in Colorado or in Western North Carolina, you're making a choice to be there based off the environment, largely. So we want to make sure we protect it, but also utilize the resources that we have. And obviously your state's benefiting greatly, Colorado's benefiting greatly from the revenue sources there. We're not going to get into discussion on marijuana, but- I'm amazed no one's brought it up here. But the resources you have- That's the new economy. In the ground. In the ground. Well, I think the key here, as states are the laboratory of innovation and each state is grappling with how do we make our air and our water cleaner? We are, I think, the governors, I mean, the National Governors Association, the Western Governors Association, are working towards a set of regulations around oil and gas that we can all adopt. And at that point, then we sit down with the federal government and say, here's what this kind of standard would look like. And I think that's a- But a national energy policy is missing. Exactly. It is desperately needed. It's desperately needed. So important, and we have real competitive challenges when you see China moving forward with nuclear, and yet it's a, you know, more than a decade long process and almost impossible to get new nuclear online in the United States. It is, I mean, functionally it is impossible. It hasn't happened in a decade. Okay, so you brought up the marijuana thing. I just have one question. I just have one question. Tell us about the economic effects of this. Has it been good for Colorado's economy to have been sort of leading the way in experimenting with a legal marijuana economy? Well, as I always say, I opposed it. Just so we're- No, I wanted to say that, too. And after the, it passed 55-45, so we said, that's the will of the voters. Our job is to implement that. I think tax revenue this year, 2014 was almost $70 million. No state should ever do it for the tax revenue. I think the challenge is to make sure, again, that we're creating a regulatory framework from scratch. It's no fun. Our evidence after now, we're one year into selling legal recreational marijuana, is that the people that were not smoking it before still aren't smoking it. People that were smoking it before still are smoking it, but they are paying taxes. We're still very worried about kids. I think that is a big question mark. Tourists come out. New York Times columnists, they get in trouble with it. Marine doubt, that was a funny column. Maybe not perfect for the brand of Colorado that I'm trying to create is this pro-business, high accountability, while high accountability gets interpreted in a different way. It's just in trouble. But anyway, it certainly is a steep hill in terms of how the world looks at Colorado. But it is, it's something that we're making progress on, and I think the regulatory framework, we have the foundation built and we'll see in a couple years we'll have enough evidence to, I think, make a much better assessment. Is this something, I mean, I always tell people it's gonna be one of the great social experiments of the 21st century, and we don't know what the outcome's gonna be. How's that revenue, that $70 million, was that more or less than was projected? Well, we took a guess. There's no one's ever done this before, so we thought, I think our projections were one time 120 million, but they were wild guesses. You know, our general fund budget is $11 billion, so $100 million is not a big deal. If you include all the federal revenues and the fees that people pay, I mean, all the stuff that comes through, we've got a $26 billion budget. Again, it's a small, you shouldn't do this because you think it's gonna be a windfall. It's not about money. And I don't think states or cities or anyone should be promoting gambling. If that's, if you get revenue off gambling, you know the gambling's not good for people. It doesn't go into a casino and see whether people are really joyful when they're pulling those slot machines, right? I mean, it's freedom, and I do believe that people should have their, if they want to gamble, they can go gamble. If they want to, in many things, and that's the fine line, people should have the freedom to pursue what their desires, but we should also be very clear and transparent about what the risks are and what the consequences can be. So we have time for a few more questions, I think, from the audience. Try to get to places we haven't been. Can I just go to this so that we get a newcomer to the questions? We'll come back to that marijuana question. Thank you. I'm Malila Alvarez. I'm a tax attorney from Mexico. So of course, we're very much interested in what's happening in Colorado. And I wanted to ask you, besides the income increase, have you seen any decrease in expenses? Around the marijuana. Exactly. We haven't. It's probably too early to tell. I think that's a trailing indicator. And we do recognize the impact and we've had a lot of visitors from Mexico who were very concerned. We're actually, next October, we're going to have the first, what we call the North American Summit. So we're gonna have all the governors of Mexico, all the governors of the United States, all the premiers of Canada meet in Colorado Springs and look at some of these issues, not just marijuana, obviously that'll be discussed, but it gets discussed always. But trade and immigration and a bunch of these issues that are common. And I think that is more regions. Again, it's all about creating relationships so that you can begin to broaden self-interest and as you broaden those self-interest, overlap occurs and then you have transactions, you have progress. And certainly Mexico is a neighbor that, and Canada are both neighbors, I think we haven't put enough energy into. So I wanna exercise the moderator's prerogative before we end too. You brought up this window that we have before we turn full-fledged into election politics in 2016 and the truth is, although it's only January of 2015, we're rapidly turning in that direction. So I wanna ask everybody on this panel to give this group some of your best educated guesses in both parties. Is it gonna be Hillary Clinton versus Hillary Clinton in the Democratic field? Do you think she'll get the nomination? Who do you think in this? Apparently, everyone is running for president in the Republican field. Are you gonna throw your hat in the ring too, Congressman? I will announce today. No, there's no chance, I'm kidding. Oh, come on. No, it's true that somebody said, well, you could field a football team with just the Republican candidates on both sides. Yeah, with a deep bend. Yes, a lot's yet to be seen. I mean, what's shaking out right now is just fascinating and it's great reading for us political junkies. But I think there are a few candidates that will be in the mix. Certainly, the tensions on Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, but I think you have another group of whether it's Rick Perry or Scott Walker. Governors coming forward. Or a Rand Paul, who is an interesting voice in his own right and has a very unique perspective. They're adding, I think that that will add a more interesting mix to this field that is substantive. And Hillary Clinton is the nominee or not? I think you'll have an enterprising liberal look at the opportunity to actually make this a little more interesting. And I don't, I'm hard pressed to think that she goes through this scot-free. Cecilia, what do you think? On the Hillary Clinton question. Yeah, and the Republicans, what's your forecast? Oh, gosh. So I think I agree on the Democratic side that I think it would be surprising if she went forward by herself. And I think it's actually not good for us to have a Democratic primary that goes unchallenged because I think a lot gets ironed out then. On the Republican side, it'll be interesting no matter who puts themselves forward. Although I think just sort of looping back around to the pressures and what might get done. I think that if Jeb Bush ends up being the nominee, immigration becomes a lot more interesting. And I think that there'll be a little more pressure to get that done. Secretary Pritzker. You know, the president gave us a card about that, you know, he's quite a sportsman, quite a competitor, and someone who enjoys watching sports. And as his cabinet is well aware and I'm well aware, we're in the fourth quarter of his presidency and a lot happens in the fourth quarter in most games. So we're stayed focused on what we can get done right now. You know, you're in the cabinet, so I'll let you go with that answer, but we'll have to come back to you when you're done for the real answer. I want the same pass before the same answer. No, no. I mean, no, I mean. You're just in pundit mode. It's okay. No, because there's something wrong with the way we think about the president we should have or want to have versus the one we do have. And business hates this. I mean, fourth quarter, I actually wish you would say, no one near the fourth quarter because we've got so much to get done. Yeah, here we are and the media just, yeah, I know, I get a penny. So I just, I hate the way that the Washington just moves and pivots immediately to this mode that, you know, sorry, Politico and others sort of get us in. And here we are talking about this future that we wish is going to be better and sort of through these candidate names and they're the same names. If you ask me, yeah, I don't know who to blame. I mean, I'm just saying, why do we keep talking this up when we realize that the very issues of the day, jobs and the income inequality issue, energy policy issue are not being tackled. And so I'd rather get the performance. I get judgment performance. I get voted in every day. If I don't perform, I'm out, okay. I think that accountability has to be there for our politicians. Perform, okay, deliver, and then you get reelected. Who wants the second term anyway? You know, literally, these jobs are not, I don't know, God bless you guys. I mean, second, you know, what you go through to get reelected, no one should have to go through. So we're gonna end up with Governor Hick and Luper and I think that's the end of our show. One little data point that's interesting. Actually, we're slower starting in this presidential campaign in 2008 when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ran against each other. It was actually the anniversary, it was this past week of when Hillary Clinton announced that she was exploring her candidacy. So in many ways, interestingly enough, some of the lessons have been learned. If you look at the calendar that Republicans are pushing for 2016, it's somewhat behind where it was in the past. Obviously, there's a lot of interest in this subject already, but I do think it's interesting that structurally there's an understanding that there were some problems with how it unfolded in the last two races. So we're left with you, Governor Hick and Luper, Hillary Clinton or somebody else. Are you threatening your hand in the ring? I think after my re-election, someone asked and I put the odds that I would run for president about one in 20,000 and I've had some time to reconsider that and I think it's more like one in 35,000. I think I've reconsidered. I do think that there will be other Democrats. I think, I know Martin O'Malley has spent a lot of time looking at it and he's gotten a lot accomplished as a governor. I think there'll be a number of people. The last thing, I agree with CeCe, I don't, the last thing that Hillary Clinton wants to be up on a stage by herself. She wants to have a forum to discuss ideas and certainly where she has that forum, she's been very impressive. A couple people here at Davos have talked about just how in question and answer situations, how adept and how thoughtful and how concise and engaging she was. On the Republican side, I think it's almost like Shakespeare. I wanna have him figure out which play and I'm not sure whether it's a tragedy or a comedy but there are so many... So those are the two choices? Yeah, Shakespeare, I don't know. Is there something I missed? Midsummer's nitrene. Yeah, Shakespeare didn't go deep into melodrama but it is so many strong personalities. Romeo and Juliet? So many strong personalities coming from different directions and it is in an interesting way a reflective tapestry of American politics and I've been that in a complementary way. I think the both parties now have, their extremes of both parties have voice and they are involved in the conversation and that adds a level of complexity and interest that for anyone, I think everyone's gonna look at the next 18 months with wonder. What a perfect note to end on with wonder. Thank you so much. What a terrific conversation and thank you to the audience. Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. That's it.