Summary

The National Urban League Candidate Forum in Fort Lauderdale FL 09:57:09 BERNIE SANDERS 09:29:25 JEB BUSH SANDERS SPEECH SANDERS: Thank you all very much for inviting me. I'm looking at the teleprompter. Unfortunately, there's nothing there. My speech is here. (LAUGHTER) I ain't a teleprompter guy. Let me congratulate the National Urban League and Marc and all of you for the enormous role you are playing in this country, fighting for social justice, and not only the ideas that you are bringing forth, but the day-to-day work that you are doing in terms of job training, in terms of helping small businesses secure financing and contracts and the help that you're providing families with counseling when they're trying to realize the American dream of home ownership. And that's just a few of the areas that you have excelled in. My views are a little bit different than others. I am the longest-serving independent in the history of the United States Congress, and I am running for president of the United States today within the Democratic primary and caucus process. It is my belief, from the bottom of my heart -- and I would not be running for president if I thought otherwise -- that given the enormous crises that this country faces is today, crises that may be more severe than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s, that frankly, it is too late for establishment policies. It is too late for establishment politics. It is too late for establishment economics. We need some new thinking, some bold thinking. (APPLAUSE) And most importantly -- and this may make some people nervous, and that's the way it is. I think when we have a nation today where a handful of billionaires have unbelievable influence over the economic and political life of this country, there is nothing significant that we will accomplish unless we have the courage to take them on, and that is what this campaign is about! (APPLAUSE) The themes that you have outlined for this conference are exactly right -- save our cities, education, jobs and justice. As I get into those themes, the first point that I'd like to make is perhaps the most important. And I do understand that for some people, this is uncomfortable, but I believe it has to be addressed. And that is that the United States of America today is the wealthiest country in the history of the world, but most people don't know that because much of that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. Today in America, we have more wealth an income inequality than any other major country on earth, and it is worse today than at any time since 1928. To me, it is not acceptable that the top 1 tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. It is not acceptable that one family, the family that owns Walmart, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people. It is not acceptable that in the last two years, the 14 wealthiest people saw their wealth increase by $157 billion, more wealth than is owned by the bottom 130 million Americans. The truth of the matter is that we cannot run away from that reality. Income and wealth inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time, it is the great social and political issue of our time, and together, we must address that issue. (APPLAUSE) Now, let me touch on another issue before I get to your theme of equal consequence. Some of you may have heard -- maybe you didn't. It didn't get a whole lot of press. A few days ago, former president Jimmy Carter described the American political system as corrupt. He described the United States as an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nomination for president or to elect the president. What he was talking about is the disastrous Supreme Court decision on citizens united, a decision which says to the wealthiest people in this country, You already own much of the economy, now we're going to give you the opportunity to buy the United States government. That decision is undermining the very foundations of American democracy, what men and women have fought and given their lives to defend. You tell me what it means when one family, the Koch brothers family, will spend more money on this election cycle than either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, spend almost a billion dollars to buy candidates who will make the rich richer and everyone else poorer. That, to me, is not democracy, that is oligarchy. That's why we've got to overturn this disastrous Citizens United decision! (APPLAUSE) And I guarantee you that all of the issues that candidates have talked about that you believe in will not take place when a handful of wealthy people are able to control our political system. Now, when we talk about education, I trust that all of you know -- as you do -- that we live in a highly competitive global economy. To my mind, it is insane -- and I use that word advisedly -- that we have hundreds of thousands of bright young people, often minorities, who have the desire, who have the ability to get a higher education and go to college, but they can't go to college for the simple reason their families cannot afford the tuition. That is absurd. We need to have the best educated workforce in the world and not tell hundreds of thousands of bright young people that they cannot make it into the middle class or they cannot contribute as engineers, as doctors, as scientists. (APPLAUSE) And that is why I have introduced legislation and will fight for as president to make every public college and university in America tuition-free. (CHEERS AND APPLAUSE) And what that means is that kids in the 4th grade and in the 6th grade will know that if they study hard, pay attention, do their schoolwork, even if their parents, like my parents, didn't go to college, even if kids in the neighborhood did not go to college, they will be able to go to college because the income of their families will not be a determining factor. This will revolutionize education, I think. (APPLAUSE) And when we talk about education, what we also have to understand and be frank is the world has changed since the 1940s and '50s. Mom is in the workplace. Dad is in the workplace. We need a first class child care pre-K system in this country. (APPLAUSE) In my state and all over this country, working class families struggling to find affordable, quality child care. Child care workers are paid minimum wage. That is not how we should treat the most vulnerable children in America -- universal pre-K, well paid teachers! (APPLAUSE) Now, let me say a word about jobs. You read every month that unemployment is 5.3 percent. The government comes out with this statistic. Please know that that statistic is only one of many statistics the government releases on jobs. That statistic does not include those people who have given up looking for work and those people who are working part-time, millions, when they want to work full-time. Real unemployment is not 5.3 percent, it is 10.5 percent. It is a crisis. And now let me tell you what very few people are talking about, which is an even greater crisis. And that is youth unemployment, which we don't talk about at all. I asked for last month a study from the Economic Policy Institute, and they came up with the results that nobody is questioning. Listen to this. If you are a white kid between 17 and 20 who graduates high school, you have a 33 percent unemployment rate. If you are an Hispanic kid, you have a 36 percent unemployment rate. If you are an African-American kid 17 to 20, high school graduate, you have a 51 percent unemployment rate. That is unacceptable. That is turning our backs on an entire generation, and we must not allow that to continue! (APPLAUSE) Now, when people talk about the tragedy of the United States having more people in jail than any other country, including China, one of the contributing factors is that we've got five-and-a-half million young people in America, in my state, in your states, without jobs, without education, hanging around on street corners doing bad things. It is my very strong opinion that it makes a lot more sense for us to be investing in jobs and education, rather than jails and incarceration. (APPLAUSE) That is why, along with Representative John Conyers of Michigan, I introduced legislation that would create one million jobs over the next several years for unemployed kids. And that is why I have introduced legislation that calls for a trillion-dollar investment in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, creating 13 million decent-paying jobs. (APPLAUSE) And when we talk about jobs and income, let me be perfectly clear. The $7.25 minimum wage that exists nationally is, in my view, a starvation wage. (APPLAUSE) And that is why last week, alongside young people in the fast food industry who are standing up and fighting for dignity, I introduced the legislation that will move us to $15 an hour minimum wage over the next few years. (APPLAUSE) I strongly supported the Affordable Care Act. It has done a lot of good things. But we should understand that the United States today remains the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right. And that is why I will continue fighting and introduce legislation for a Medicare-for-all single-payer program guaranteeing health care to every man, woman and child. (APPLAUSE) Now, when we talk about justice, when we talk about the need for all people in America to be treated equally and with dignity, we've got to deal with some hard realities. And those realities include the fact that today, if you can believe it -- and I know you can -- one in four black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during their lifetime unless we change that dynamic. This is an unspeakable tragedy, and this country can no longer ignore that. Blacks are in prison at six times the rate of whites. A report by the Department of Justice found that blacks were three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop compared to white motorists. African-Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with police. Thirteen percent -- and this is an extraordinary figure, and I think not an accident -- 13 percent of African-American men have lost the right to vote due to felony convictions -- can't vote, can't participate in the democratic political process. Now, in my view, we need some major changes in criminal justice in America. And as president of the United States, I promise you my Justice Department will be vigorous in fighting all forms of discrimination in every area of our life, not only in police matters, but in housing, in credit, in every area that impacts minority populations. Across our nation -- as all of you know and we see almost every day -- too many African-Americans and other minorities find themselves subjected to a system that treats citizens who have not committed crimes as if they were criminals. A growing number of communities throughout this country do not trust the police, and police have become disconnected from the communities they are sworn to protect. When I was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, the largest city in the state, one of the things that we did -- and I believe this very strongly -- is we moved toward community policing. Community policing means that police are part of the community, not seen as oppressors in the community. And that is the direction that we have got to move. Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Samuel Dubose -- we know their names. Each of them died unarmed at the hands of police officers or in police custody. Let us all be very clear, violence and brutality of any kind, particularly at the hands of law enforcement sworn to protect and serve their communities, is unacceptable and must not be tolerated. (APPLAUSE) We must reform our criminal justice system. Black lives do matter, and we must value black lives! (APPLAUSE) We must move away from the militarization of police forces. You've all seen on TV this heavy-duty equipment. It looks like they're invading the cities. True. You know, it's like they're going to war, and that is not the signal that police departments should be sending around this country. Police should be part of the community, not an oppressor force. We need a Justice Department which takes the lead in working with states and localities to train police officers. Force should be the last resort, not the first resort. For people who have committed crimes that have landed them in jail, there needs to be a path back from prison! The recidivism rate in this country is incredibly high. People go to jail, we send them out of jail, they have no jobs, they have no money, they have no housing, and then we are just shocked when they end up in jail. We must end the over-incarceration of non-violent young Americans who do not pose a serious threat to our society. It is an international embarrassment that we have more people in jail than any other country. It is an obscenity that we stigmatize so many young Americans with a criminal record for smoking marijuana, but oddly enough, not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy! (APPLAUSE) Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me! (APPLAUSE) We need to end prisons for profit. (APPLAUSE) I do not want corporations making money and more money based on how many people we lock up. (APPLAUSE) The measure of serious and effective law enforcement should not be how many people go to jail, but how many people we can keep out of jail. We need to invest in drug courts and medical and mental health interventions. Mental health -- what an issue. So many of our people in jail are dealing with mental health issues, and I can tell you as a senator, I get calls. I think others do, as well. Senator, my brother, I am worried what he is going to do to himself, to other people. We've searched desperately for affordable mental health care. We can't find it. That's a story going on all over America. That is a story that has to change. (APPLAUSE) Furthermore, we have to take a hard look -- and the tragedy last month in South Carolina reminds me of that so strongly -- that there are still those who seek to terrorize -- and they are terrorists -- the African-American community with violence and intimidation. Some of us thought that that had ended 50 years ago, but it hasn't. We need to make sure that federal resources are available to crack down on the illegal activities of hate groups. (APPLAUSE) There are hundreds of groups in this country whose sole reason for existence is hatred of African-Americans, hatred of immigrants, hatred of Jews, hatred of Catholics. That has got to end, and the federal government must be active in ending that. (APPLAUSE) So brothers and sisters, thank you very much for allowing me to be with you and to share some ideas. And let me conclude maybe in the tone that I began, and that is that these are very, very difficult days, no question about it. But I believe that if we stand together as a people, if we don't let people divide us by race, by gender, by sexual orientation, by what country we were born in -- if we stand together, if we have the courage to take on those people today whose greed is destroying America -- if we do that, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish. And I am confident that the Urban League will be in the forefront of that struggle. Thank you so much. (CHEERS AND APPLAUSE) MORIAL: Senator Bernie Sanders -- thank you very much, Senator. Three quick questions. And the National Urban League will promulgate a questionnaire which will seek your position on the specifics of our 21st Century Agenda. Can you commit to respond to that questionnaire? SANDERS: Absolutely. MORIAL: Number two, millennials, young people are a big part of this organization and an important part of the electorate today. Any word you'd like to say specifically about the role that they will play in your campaign, in your administration or in the future of the nation? SANDERS: Well, Marc, just the other day, on Wednesday night, some of you may know we did something that was unprecedented. We had 3,700 organizing meetings in every state in this country, bringing out more than 100,000 people. And you know what? Most of them were young people. And I believe very strongly not only in terms of my campaign, but in the future of this country, that we have got to mobilize the idealism and the energy of young people, and my campaign will do everything we can to make that happen. MORIAL: And an important part for the African-American community of the racial wealth gap, the income inequality gap has to do with the fact that our small entrepreneurs, African-American-owned businesses, are facing frozen credit markets and difficulty to grow. Talk about that in terms of how it fits into your thinking. SANDERS: Well, thank you for making that extremely important point. People can't succeed in small business unless they have accessible, affordable credit. On the broader level, one of the points that I'm making in this campaign is that Wall Street is an island unto itself, more concerned about their own profits than making affordable loans to small business and potential home owners. And that's why I have called for the breaking up of the major financial institutions in this country, which will, in fact, increase credit for small and medium-sized businesses. MORIAL: Senator Bernie Sanders -- let's thank him for being here with us... SANDERS: Thank you very much. MORIAL: ... at the National Urban League. END ****************** JEB BUSH SPEECH BUSH: Thank you all very much. I appreciate your hospitality and your excellent choice of the best date to hold your annual conference. (LAUGHTER) BUSH: I'm not biased or anything. The Urban League movement runs deep here with seven affiliates from Tallahassee to Broward County and Greater Miami. If you were all hoping to find the most diverse, dynamic, forward-looking site for your convention, you came to the right place and you all are always welcome in Florida. Marc, I especially thank you and the trustees for this really kind invitation. I'm honored to be your guest. I'm pleased to see other candidates here as well: Secretary Clinton, Governor O'Malley, Senator Sanders and a good man who's bringing a lot of wisdom to the Republican side, Dr. Ben Carson. By the way, I'm glad he'll make it into the top 10 for next week's debate. Before that thing's over, we might just need a doctor. (LAUGHTER) BUSH: Just saying. For my part, I'm working hard every day for the vote and in politics the best kind of support begins in friendship and fellowship. My Florida friends and partners in the Urban League include some of the most formidable people that any of us know. Among them, a national trustee, education leader and great woman, Julia Johnson. Give her a round of applause. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: And a man who basically built this movement from the ground up in South Florida, my dear friend, T. Willard Fair (ph). Tal Fair (ph) came to this state for a job interview with the Miami affiliate. As he tells the story -- and I quote -- "I didn't know if they intended to hire me, but I intended to be hired." That was 55 years ago and as we've all learned since, when Tal Fair (ph) intends for something to happen, don't be too surprised when it does. He's an unstoppable leader and I'm honored to call him my friend. After I lost my first election in 1994, I went through a period what some people might call self-reflection, but I referred to it as listening and learning. I converted to my wife's Catholic faith. I went to family courthouses, where there were cases of children abused and neglected, and parents trying, but unable, to meet their obligations because of barriers, language, skills or otherwise, that held them back. In my next campaign, I visited 250 schools across Florida, many of them in low income communities. I also partnered with the Urban League of Greater Miami and Tal Fair (ph) to do something that was totally new to me. Together we built the Liberty City Charter School and at that time there were no charters in Florida. So we said let's change the law, let's go build a charter school. Let's start something new and hopeful for people who shouldn't have to wait for a real opportunity. And together we got it done. That first year 90 black children in Liberty City began their journey toward success. And the day that school opened was one of the happiest, proudest moments of my life. Through that listening and learning, what I found were children who had the God-given ability to achieve, yet for reasons out of their hands -- structural, historical, economic -- they didn't have the same chance at success as their peers. I'm indebted to Tal (ph) and to many others around Florida for giving me that perspective. It made me a better person, a better candidate in 1998 and a better governor for eight years that followed. That experience still shapes the way I see the deep-seated challenges facing people in urban communities today. I know that there are unjust barriers to opportunity and upward mobility in this country. Some we can see, others are unseen but just as real. So many lives can come to nothing or come to grief when we ignore problems or fail to meet our own responsibilities. And so many people could do so much better in life if we could come together and get a few big things right in government. I acted on that belief as governor of Florida. It's a record I'll gladly compare with anybody else in the field. Just for starters, leaders know there are plenty of tough calls we have to make, so we should not be wasting time agonizing over the easy ones. So 14 years ago when the question was whether to keep the Confederate flag on the grounds of the Florida State capital, I said, no, and put it in a museum where it belongs. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: Another easy call was reaching out for talent wherever I found it for my cabinet and staff, state agencies and the courts. Look, you're not going to get good judgment in government when everybody comes from the same life experience. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: We increased the number of black Floridians serving in the judiciary by 43 percent. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: And I was particularly proud that during my governorship the state use of minority-owned businesses tripled. You can't serve all the people unless you represent all the people. And we did it. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: We did it with the most diverse appointments the state has ever seen. From my first day as governor until the last, respect was the rule and opportunity for all was the goal. In most lives, opportunity is a hollow word unless you've got the dignity of a job and a paycheck. It becomes real when people are hiring and the economy's growing and that's what we accomplished here in Florida. We got the state economy growing at 4.4 percent a year. Average family incomes went up in every income group. And we made Florida the number one job creating state in the whole nation. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: We applied conservative principles and applied them fairly without wavering. We found that when -- with fewer obstacles imposed by government, more people had the opportunity to achieve earned success. We gave more people the tools to move up in the world through adult education and workforce training. We expanded our community college system and made it more affordable for low income families. Florida, in those years, helped thousands more first-generation college students make it all the way to graduation. We didn't lose sight of the ones who had missed their chance at a better life or maybe even lost their way and landed in jail. In Florida, we didn't want to fill prisons with nonviolent offenders so we expanded drug courts. They started here in Florida and we expanded them all across the state and we created prevention programs. I took the view, as I would as president, that real justice in America has got to also include restorative justice. I opened the first state base prison in the United States and signed it into executive order to promote the hiring of ex-offenders. In this country, we shouldn't be writing people off, denying them a second chance of a life of meaning. Many only ask for a chance to start again, to get back in the game and to do it right. And as a country we should say yes whenever we can. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: We also went after the real enemy that afflicts our cities, the smugglers, the drug cartels and the violent criminals to profit from the undoing of so many lives. We passed tough sentencing laws for gun crimes and ensured that dangerous people were kept off our streets. As a result of all of this we brought violent crime in Florida down to a 27-year low and drug abuse way down as well. Social progress is always the story of widening the circle of opportunity. For that reason, I gave the challenge of school reform everything I had a governor because if we fail at that responsibility, it's a bitter loss. I believe in the right to rise in this country and a child is not rising if he's not reading. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: When I took office, Florida was down near the bottom in student achievement. Almost half of all 4th graders were functionally illiterate and half of all high school kids never even graduated. So we overhauled the whole system, set clear standards and brought out the best in our great teachers. We insisted on testing and accountability. We created the first statewide private school choice programs in America. We expanded high-performing charter schools and we ended the insidious policy of social promotion in 3rd grade, the practice of just passing unprepared kids along as if we didn't care because we did care and we should care. You don't show that by counting out anyone's child. You give them all a chance and that's what we did in Florida. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: A lot changed in those years. Graduation rates went up by 50 percent. The number of black and Hispanic students passing AP exams increased four times over. We also became the leader in early childhood education and we still are today. Among minority children, Florida saw the greatest gains anywhere in the United States. And what does that show? It shows that every child can learn, no matter their race, no matter their background, no matter where they live. I know this can be done. The debate is changing. Old orthodoxies are falling away, but we can never forget that long-term reform doesn't help a child right now. Years of learning are years that are lost forever. I think of the kids in Washington, D.C., who received opportunity scholarships. A couple thousand boys and girls, almost all of them black, have been given a chance to leave the worst schools and go to the best. Yet every year the unions and the politicians want to shut this program down because they don't like parental choice, period. Well, here's the deal. This is what I believe. I believe every parent should have choices. Every school should have high standards and high expectations and the federal government should have nothing to do with setting them. But Washington should support reform and provide resources especially where the need is greatest. But building knowledge and shaping character is the job of principals, teachers and most particularly parents. That's where -- that's where the power should belong. When President Obama says that, quote, "for too long we've been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present," he is speaking the truth. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: But we should be just as candid about our failures in addressing the injustices of a more recent origin. In our cities, we've got so many people who have never known anything but poverty, so many young adults with no vision of a life beyond the life they know. It's a tragedy for them and such a loss to our country because every one of them has a God-given purpose to live out and God-given talents that this world needs. Every one of them was also promised at least one big break in life in the form of a public school to help them learn who they are and what they can do. For millions it's a false promise. As technology advances, the first rung of the ladder is getting higher and higher and higher. If we don't create an education system that allows young people to reach it, we are setting them up for a lifetime of failure. So you and I have to call the situation what it is, the worst inequality in America today and the source of so many other inequalities. I want to work with the Urban League movement to end this injustice once and for all. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: For a half a century, this nation has pursued a war on poverty and massive government programs funded with trillions of taxpayer dollars. This decades-long effort, while well-intentioned, has been a losing one and the casualties can be counted in the millions who've never had a chance at work, whose families fellow victim to drugs and violence and the crushing of the spirit. One of the best antipoverty programs is a strong family, leaded by -- led by two committed parents. As the family breaks down, so does opportunity. Poverty among dual-parent families is about 7 percent. Among families with single mothers, it's about 35 percent. The reason is simple. It's a lot tougher to raise a family alone. Too many kids are growing up without their dad. Fathers who are absent in their child's life need to step up and take responsibility and it's incumbent on us -- (APPLAUSE) BUSH: -- it's incumbent on us to exert the positive societal pressures that can turn the tide in the breakdown of fatherhood in America. But for many that is not an option and there's no tougher job in the world than being a single mom. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: So as governor of Florida, I tried to do something about it. I doubled our efforts to collect child support payments and we increased collections by 90 percent and the children were better off because of that. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: Together with a quality education and a family support system ending the cycle of poverty requires access to jobs. I have set a goal that will define my economic agenda, should I become president. I do not for one moment accept the supposed new normal of anemic 2 percent growth. I believe we are ready in America to achieve annual economic growth of 4 percent and a lot rides on the difference and the difference is pretty simple to state. The new normal is more businesses going under rather than starting up; 4 percent growth is a true revival of the private sector and 19 million new jobs. The new normal is static -- is the static present for struggling cities; 4 percent growth is more enterprise in urban areas, more people moving in, a higher tax base and more revenues; in other words, a better chance to save our cities. We can do this as a country. We can grow at a pace that lifts up everybody and there's no excuse for not trying. Big, audacious goals are second nature to the men and women of the Urban League. That spirit is most needed when things break down as we know they do in anger and violence. We've seen that yet again this year when all these issues I've discussed make it harder and harder for people to imagine a hopeful future. Then it's easy to see why there's anger and disillusionment. Trust in our vital institutions is at historic lows. It's up to all of us to work diligently to rebuild that trust. That happens one person at a time, one politician at a time, one police officer at a time, one community leader at a time. It begins with respect, dialogue and the courage to reach out in peace. Those were the -- exactly the qualities we saw in two of your affiliate presidents, Michael McMillan (ph) of St. Louis and Jay Howard Henderson (ph) of Baltimore. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: These good men were tested and they showed us the way. Strength to love, as Martin Luther King called it, always shows the way. And sometimes, as is in Charleston last month, it shines as a true light in the darkness. In the community of that city, we found such grace, such purity of heart, such heroic goodness, such boundless mercy, all gathered up in one story. We like to think that Charleston's response to evil told the world something good and right about this nation and our people and it surely did. Yet even more that congregation of believers and that city gave witness to the character that built a movement and inspires it to this day. I will endeavor to live up to the goodness of Charleston and work with you to better our communities, whether as your neighbor or as your president. I know there are great and lasting things we can achieve together, maybe only together, to keep America faithful to its ideals of equality and justice for all. Your support in that effort is something I will work every day to earn. I welcome your friendship and I ask for your vote. God bless you all and thank you for the invitation. (APPLAUSE) BUSH: Oh, yes. MORIAL: Ladies and gentlemen, Governor Bush one more time. Governor, we at the National Urban League will promulgate -- Ladies and gentlemen, please keep your seats. I've got three questions and then an announcement about the schedule for today. We are going to promulgate a questionnaire. You're in. BUSH: I heard it from backstage. (LAUGHTER) MORIAL: And then the other two questions. One is about young people, the new generation and Millennials and then the next one is small business, African American-owned businesses, frozen credit markets, lack of opportunity and what you'd do about that. BUSH: Well, as it relates to the Millennials, if you think about it, people in their 20s have really not gotten a great deal in the last few years. College attainment rates are lower today than our generation -- well, you're younger than me -- my generation. MORIAL: Thank you. (LAUGHTER) BUSH: But it's remarkable. We basically flatlined the college attainment levels; we measure four-year degrees in the terms of attainment in six years. Student loans have grown exponentially but graduation rates haven't risen. And so young people are stuck with debt. The job market growing at 2 percent is not creating the first rung on the ladder for young people. We're -- our government is obsolete. And Millennials are frustrated with that because they -- they're much more tech savvy. And we're not growing at a rate, well, that lifts people up. In fact, ObamaCare is designed to be effective for young people to be mandated to be in the exchanges as healthy people to take care of people our age that may not be potentially as healthy. So they haven't gotten a great deal. You're a great fix (ph). But the point is we that we've got to create a high-growth strategy for people. You can't -- you can't have a society where the next generation has less opportunities than what we had. And one of the ways you do that -- (APPLAUSE) BUSH: -- one of the ways you do that as it relates to African American-owned businesses is to use the power of government. Look, I -- we had a -- we had a tough fight with a program called One Florida (ph), it was very controversial. But we ended up because we turned it into a leadership model instead of saying, you know, we're going to have a bunch of people counting -- certifying businesses, I mean, I pretty much know you're a black man. You pretty much know I'm a white guy, right? I don't need to spend a lot of quality time going through that. So we turn all of these bureaucrats and certifiers and compliance officers, we turned them into marketing arms for businesses. And the amount of increase in procurement for black-owned businesses and Hispanic-owned businesses and women-owned businesses grew exponentially, 400 percent. So government can play a really useful role in providing opportunities for people that otherwise it may -- it makes -- it maybe get possible than to sustain their business and then expand out. So I think that's a useful place for us to operate as well. The final thing I'd say is that the access to credit issue has been made worse by the most complicated financial regulatory system. And I will tell you, it's -- the too-big-to-fail challenge is read. And I think increasing capital requirements for banks that have accumulated more assets today post-crash than pre. But what's the problem is the same rules apply to small banks, community banks, banks that are embedded in the community, both urban and rural and the net result is they can't stay sustain their business because they have to hire the same compliance officers, lawyers and accountants as JPMorgan does and, trust me, JPMorgan -- (CROSSTALK) MORIAL: Has more money. BUSH: -- the scale. And so, if we're going to be serious about making sure that the next generation of entrepreneurs gets capital, we better protect our community banks from going out of business. Thank you, Governor. Ladies and gentlemen, Governor Jeb Bush. He is going to work the rope line. END