good afternoon. welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. if you could all take your seats, we will get started with the next speaker. good afternoon to all of you attending in person as well as to all of those participating virtually. my name is katrina shaw and i am one of the interns at young

america's foundation, which is one of the principle outreach organizations of the conservative movement. younger americas foundation introduces thousands of america's youth to fundamental conservative values, individual freedom, free enterprise, a strong national defense and traditional american values through campus activism, campus lecture tours and conferences. thanks to young america's foundation, i have the great honor today to introduce my own senator, united states senator of florida, rick scott. [ applause ] >> senator scott was elected to the united states senate in 2018 and currently serving his first

term, representing the state of florida. prior to his election, senator scott served two terms as the 45th governor of florida. senator scott grew up in public housing in the midwest, as his adoptive father, a world war ii veteran and truck driver, and his mother, a store clerk, struggled to financially support their family. after marrying his high school sweetheart -- >> ah! [ applause ] scott joined the navy. [ applause ] where he served as an active duty radar man aboard the u.s. glover. he then used the g.i. bill to attend the university of missouri kansas city and eventually opened his first

business, a donut shop. [ applause ] >> from there, senator scott went on to run the world's largest healthcare company and continues to fight everyday so families across the state have the same opportunities he had to live the american dream. after florida's economic collapse 10 years ago, he made the decision to run for governor as a businessman with no prior political experience. during his term as governor, he successfully championed more than $10 billion in tax cuts and cut thousands of regulations that led florida businesses to create nearly 1.7 million new jobs and under his leadership -- [ applause ] >> the unemployment rate dropped from 11% to 3.3%.

[ applause ] >> florida paid down $10 billion in state debt and record investments were made in what matters most to floridians, education, the environment and public safety. rick scott and his wife, ann, have been married for 47 years and have two daughters, alison and jordan and six grandsons. please join me in welcoming the embodiment of the american dream, senator rick scott. [ applause ] >> very nice. you did a very good job. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you very much! thank you very much. usually, i do this in florida. close to the beach. when i go to these conferences in florida, the first thing i say is, spend your money.

>> yeah! >> i tell people to buy a second home because in florida our taxes are basically sales tax which tourists pay 25% of, and they buy homes and don't use them and pay property taxes, the best business model in the world. thanks for being here and thanks for being involved. you have to be involved in what happens to this country. this country is putting on debt all across this country they're expecting you to pay for, passing regulations they expect you to comply with, make it more difficult for you to get a job and expect you to get a job. you heard a little bit about my background. i am the luckiest, most blessed person out there. i had a very tough mom. my mom got devrced when i was born. i never met my natural father. he never helped my mom. my mom was the toughest person ever. if any of you lived in florida and remember ads in 2010, my mom seemed like this nice

grandmotherly figure, that's not how i thought of her growing up. she said, you are going to make straight as, you are going to be an eagle scout, you will go to church all the time and get out of the house and go make some money. so we did. we had jobs. i made 85 cents and hour as a fry cook. i delivered papers for a penny a paper and cleaned something you don't even know about anymore, telephone booths, they were filthy. my brothers and i and my sister, we all worked and it didn't kill us. i grew up in a time in this country where my mom told me, even though i lived in public housing, she said, you can be anything. there is no limitation what you can accomplished. and i believed it. i set out building companies, as you heard, the donut shop, so my mom could have a job when i got out of the navy and build the largest hospital company and variety of manufacturing companies because i wanted to live the dream of this country and you could.

go back to 2010. you probably don't remember it as much as your parents would, in 2010, this country was in deep financial trouble. today, everybody says look at the miracle of florida. the state of florida lost 32,000 jobs and home prices dropped by 50% in four years. they raised taxes, they increased regulation. they were raising tuition every year 15% plus inflation every year. you couldn't make this stuff up what they were doing to this state. i got into the race april of election year. i'm a business guy, never run for office. every poll and everybody said, you have no shot at winning. we shocked everybody and won the primary and then won the general election.

then, we set about doing exactly what we said. i said i have seven steps for 700,000 jobs in seven years. they said, you will never get to 700,000 jobs, we just lost 800,000 jobs. we chipped away going through the budget line by line, which is shocking. people don't do that. in florida, there are 4,000 lines to the budget. we said we will solve this issue in 10 different ways. in eight years as governor nobody came to my office and said, raise my taxes or cutting, nothing. every program we need to expand. i went line by line in the budget, there's 4,000 lines in the budget in florida. what do we get for this? if we don't get anything for it we won't do it. if they talked me into it the first year, i said, i will monitor it and if we don't get

what you said we will get i will cut it next year. there's a line-item veto for the governor in florida. in eight years we didn't do 700,000 jobs, we did 1.7 million jobs. [ applause ] we cut about 20% of the regulations in this state. by the way, when you go to school, here's what i thought about going to school, i was not there saying, i love sitting in a classroom all day. i actually liked working. when i thought about our higher education, what do students or the families care about? what will it cost me? do i get a job? do i make more money. that's what you think about. was there any measurement in the state? none. we changed the system to say we will move more and more of the money to a performance tied to those three things. do you get a job? how much money do you make? what's it cost to get a degree.

part of that was tuition and part was how fast you got out of school. now, for the last three years running we have the second lowest tuition in the united states. we stopped all the tuition increases. it took about three years for me to appoint enough people to do that. we stopped the tuition increases. we had the second lowe's -- according to u.s. news and report we are the number one higher education system in the country in all 50 states. it was all doable. [ applause ] >> we grew our economy so we could invest in things even though we cut -- you would love this. you know the stuff you read you have to balance the budget in states? that's not true, you just borrow more money. they say states have to balance the budget, they don't at all. how much money do you borrow? my state for 20 straight years they never balanced their budget, they borrowed another

billion dollars extra every year for 20 straight years. when i got elected they had cabinet meetings. i didn't even know they had cabinet meetings until after inauguration. i go to do my first one. they said, you will approve more debt. i said, i ran against that. i said, i won the election. so, i stopped it and i found out i took it off the agenda. but in the next eight years we cut $10.5 billion of debt, a third of the state debt. they had never done that and most states still don't do that. they keep borrowing more money. some generation, your kids or grandkids will pay for that, not the existing generation. all the problems where they say, you can't cut taxes, you can't balance the budget, you can't watch spending, we did all of it in florida. it's all doable but you have to have the mentality you will do it everyday. i'll give you an example. right now, we're competing with

china, right? they're trying to steal our jobs. they steal our technology, they don't open up our markets, they don't comply with world trade organization. by the way, your federal government is paying people to go over there and teach english. we're spending $4 million teaching people english in china. our money. last year, the general accounting office said at the federal level we wasted $150 billion in improper payments and didn't fix it. we have 20 federal organizations that do housing programs. we are wasting money and wasting money up here and expecting you to pay for it. here's the deal. we're collecting about $3 trillion a year in taxes. every year we're spending $4 trillion. how long could you do that as an individual? how long could a business do that? not for long. but we're doing it every year.

we have $22 trillion worth of debt. $22 trillion. somebody has to pay for that. think about that. we're collecting over $3 trillion in taxes. we're spending over $400 million in interest expense which ads no value. there's no services, we're not building our military, nothing. by 2028, that's going to be $900 billion a year. if we don't start paying down this debt. so, we just have the -- this budget deal today. i voted against it because you're going to pay for it. so if you stop and think -- here's what i thought about in my job as governor. there's three primary things the typical family cares about. number one, they want a job. they want to be self-sufficient. i don't meet people that say, oh, i want to be on another government program.

how many of you get up today and say, i'm looking forward to government housing? you don't. baint, let me give you a test. about 22 million people live in florida. how many people today, throw out a guess, how many people when i left office were on unemployment benefits? 10 million is one. anybody else? 61,000. [ applause ] how many people on welfare? 71,000 out of 22 million. now, let me tell you how these programs were run when i took office. so, i'm a business guy, i built a lot of businesses. so when i buy a business, i'd go start talking to the employees, the competitors, suppliers, what should we change? i start going to the agencies in

florida. i'll give you one story. i go to the agency that does unemployment. we're in deep financial trouble, we had lost all these jobs, very little job growth. i said, how's it work? they said, governor, we're open six days a week because unemployed floridians do not have enough time to apply for unemployment during the week. yeah? you say, really? i said, like, do you have to -- if you get on unemployment, do you have to apply for a job? they said, well, yeah, there is a law you have to apply for five jobs a week but we don't enforce it. i said i read this article you could be in jail and still get unemployment benefits. they said, yeah, sure. i said, give me the pitch. they said, governor, federal money is free, so this is federal -- we only pay 26 weeks of unemployment in our state and

barack obama personally gave us another 73 weeks, so we're trying to get all that free barack obama money. it will help grow our economy. said, why don't we enforce the law and go talk to everybody on unemployment and say, what do they need? if they need training, let's provide them training. if they have housing issues, do that. your federal government gives money to states to help people get a job. there's 24 agency in florida. guess how many jobs they knew about they filled a week? they had no idea. no measurement at all. we started measuring it, ranking it everyday, do you want to be last or first? they all kept getting better. you think about your government, all the problems we have, we dealt with most of them in florida, they're all fixable.

you don't fix them by just doing nothing about it. you go line by line through a budget, like you have to do, your family has to do, look at the money, how will you spend then money? if you do that, eventually you can solve all these problems. i've been up here seven months. it's an interesting place. people don't talk to each other very well. it's pretty disfunctional. i'm very optimistic. there are a lot of good people up here trying to do the right thing. i believe if you stay involved and other people stay involved we will fix the budget problem and rebuild the military to defend the country and make sure china doesn't steal our jobs and technology. i'm very optimistic. you have to work hard and you have to be optimistic because we all have families. i have six grandsons and blessed with two daughters. grandsons are easier.

[ applause ] >> so, my oldest grandson is going to be a paratrooper and policeman. i took him to the kennedy space center and he's going to be the first person on mars. [ applause ] the way i think about this job is i want that young man to have the same opportunity i had when i was born and my mom said, i don't care that we live in public housing we have no money, you can be anything. if we do that, it's great for him and every other child and also great for society. thanks for being here. i hope all of you get involved in politics whether you run for office or not. you should run for office. if there is anything i can do, i am a full-service senator and tried to be a full-service governor, if there is anything i can do, please don't hesitate to reach out. i have time for a couple questions and love to answer any questions you have.

[ applause ] >> hi, senator rick scott. my name isna wa rosenburg and attend st. petersburg college in florida. >> congratulations. >> my mom andta dad are currently medical foster care parents in florida. me and my parents have seen a massive influx of children that parents have not taken very good care of them and they've been put into the foster care system, but they don't have any place to call home. >> any place to what? >> any place to call home. >> oh, yeah. >> my question is, how do we encourage families in the state of florida and the country to foster or adopt these children and help get involved? >> you feel so sorry for kids that are in the foster system. here's what we did in the eight

years. firstoff, one problem they had was the foster kids couldn't get driver's license. they didn't have any way to -- there was no system to help them. we solved that problem. the next thing is -- my wife did a lot of this work, we worked and got 20,000 foster kids adopted. [ applause ] then, when i got elected, the payments to go help the children to the parents only went to 18. we moved that to 21. so, and we dealt with some issues with regard to tuition benefits and things like that. let me tell you, your heart -- your heart goes out to people that abuse children, and, you know, we have -- you have story after story, children and families and department of children's and families in the state and the stories you hear

are devastating. the other side of it is there's wonderful families like yours willing to put the effort in to give these kids the same opportunities we had. in our state, we've tried to be -- we've tried to be helpful. i know there's always more an always additional kids because some of the parents don't do a very good job. >> thank you so much for all you do. thanks. [ applause ] >> i'm looking around the room and seeing a couple of my friends, oh, my god, not another balanced budget question. i'm working with madison coalition and have a project called don't bankrupt america. my question is, how would you want to see some sort of balanced budget or spending cut amendment passed in -- at the federal level? and if you don't like the idea

of an amendment, how do you think we can fix the issue? >> the right thing to do is have a balanced budget amendment that would be part of the constitution that would force us to do it except in time of emergency. that's the best thing to do. it's very difficult. in the meantime, what you have to do is incumbent upon what you do everyday. elect people saying i'm allege to take the budget and go line by line and fix it. we have to make choices and some are tough. i give this budget deal, the democrats and republicans both got what they wanted. more spending. we need to spend more money on defense, we needed to do, but then we spent more money on other programs, i question whether we needed to do all of those. the biggest thing, balanced budget amendment would be nice. that's hard. what you can do, if you elect people like we did in florida,

willing to make tough choices and go line by line in the budget, you can balance this budget. that's probably more realistic than getting the balanced budget done but that would be great. in florida, we have the opportunity, we can amend the constitution two ways, one so the legislature can do it. that's very difficult. you can do it through referendums. we have a constitution revision commission every 20 years. we just had one this last year. i got it passed with help from people, it takes a two-thirds majority between the house and senate to waive any tax or fee in the state. it makes it difficult. people have to put a lot into raising those, including tuition and all these things, should not be going up. thank you for the question. [ applause ] >> thank you. have a great conference. bye-bye.

[ applause ] >> keep it going for senator scott, everyone! all right. i will need you all to stay in your seats for just a moment. i have several announcements for you. first of all, has anybody lost rings, my gosh, your fingers are smaller than mine. rings in the bathroom. i have them for you. dinner is at 7:00 in this ballroom. dinner will be starting at 7:00. please be -- doors open around 6:45. please be on time. we will be letting our standby line at the same time so nobody will wait. if you don't make it on time you will not have a seat. you don't want to miss dana lash. you will get to hear her speak

tonight. it will be fantastic. several of you have asked me about checking out tomorrow or saturday. basically, how that's going to work, if you need to leave -- we have several students leaving tomorrow for religious reasons, of course, you are welcome to do that. just check out with kevin mcmahon. are you here? he's in the back, the tallest staff member we have. find kevin. he will help you get your deposit back and we have a conference evaluation for you. the rest of you who would like to check out saturday. if you want to leave before 6:00 a.m., please get with us saturday night so we don't have to get up at 4:00 a.m. you don't have to check out of the hotel but check out of the conference. we will have it in the foyer where you checked in. you can check out any point in time friday after the dinner if you're leaving saturday very early in the morning. you will get two pieces of

information tomorrow, when you come to our general session. you will get a conference evaluation and you get your deposit back to check out of the conference. for saturday, all you need to do is come to the grand ballroom firri foyer where you check in and it does end at 10:00. you have to be out of your hotel room by 10:00. the hotel will let me know who hasn't checked out and you do not want to see my face. please be back in time for dinner. thank you so much.

here's a look at our primetime schedule on the c-span networks. starting at 7:00 p.m. on c-span, president trump holds a campaign rally with voters and supporters in cincinnati. at 8:00 p.m. on c-span2, a hearing on legislation that aims to change the rules on asylum seekers, while establishing processing centers outside the u.s. at 8:00 eastern on c-span3, programs and events related to the civil war. friday, remarks from assistant secretary of state, christopher ford, on potential ways the u.s. can work towards eliminating weapons of mass destruction in the middle east. he'll speak live, starting at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. right after that, former leaders of the u.s. and japanese military discuss the

u.s.-japanese alliance and its strategy to respond to regional and security challenges. hosted by the center for regional and strike international studies, starts live at 2:30 eastern on c-span. friday night, campaign 2020 coverage, with remarks from acting white house chief of staff, milk mulvaney. he will speak at the annual silver elephant gala hosted by south carolina's republican party. that starts live at 8:15 eastern also on c-span. this weekend on book tv, saturday at 7:45 eastern, in his latest book "the public option," the former policy director for senator elizabeth warren talks about effectiveness of government and opportunity. >> broadband would go a long way for challenge of access while

introducing competition in some concentrated markets. this isn't pie the sky idea. chattanooga, tennessee had 1 gigabyte internet as a public option since 2010, very fast internet and more than 100,000 people in chattanooga takes advantage of the public option there. and sunday, lee edwards. and 9:00 p.m. eastern afterwards, author michael malice talks about his first hand account of the far right movement and its latest origin in the book, "the new right." >> there's no agreement in subculture what the enemy is and who the enemy is. there are those police bait and those complete anarchists and internationalists in the sense of i will be a citizen of the world not in the leftist sense but i don't owe alegion to a particular nation and those who

want to take our country back. >> watch book tv every weekend on c-span2. >> i live in a country where there is no public transportation, where there is no distances i can walk. i'm willing to leave the house, to do anything, she needs a car. to function and to drive this car. >> sunday night on q&a, saudi arabian women's activists writes a book "daring to drive" willing to challenge the ban. >> it is a act of civil disobedience because women are not supposed to drive. we show we are capable of driving our own life by an act

of disobedience. >> sunday night, c-span on q&a. next, legal experts debate president trump's preference to add a legal question to the 2020 census and discussed the supreme court's decision to stop those efforts. held by the first alertist society, this is an hour and a half. >> good afternoon and welcome. welcome to the federal society's event on citizenship and the census. i'm dean righter, vice president and general counsel at the federalist society. pleased to welcome you here today. i want to thank in advance our panel and moderator, stuart taylor. before we begin we did have a bit of medical emergency in the room and the gentleman received assistance. we're told he is going to be fine. if we get an update from the hospital we'll certainly let you