McConnell Center for Distinguished Speaker Series
Senator Tim Scott
Gary Gregg: My name is Gary Gregg, and it is my privilege to be the director of the
McConnell Center here at the University of Louisville. In the few months ahead, we will
start a series of events and publications to commemorate our twenty-five years here at the
University of Louisville.
In the first twenty-four years, McConnell Center has given more than $3.5 million
in scholarships to outstanding young Kentucky students. More than 230 McConnell
Scholars have been nurtured to be leaders in fields from business and law to medicine
and the military. Our Scholars provide leadership on the campus of the University of
Louisville and go on to graduate programs that have included Harvard Law School,
Cambridge, Oxford, New York University, you name it.
In 2013, the McConnell Center was named an Oasis of Excellence in Higher
Education by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. And today you are here
with us for our forty-eighth distinguished speaker that we have been able to bring from
Washington to the University of Louisville and the Louisville community.
None of this great success would be possible without the vision, dedication, and
generosity of Kentucky’s senior senator. Mitch McConnell is Kentucky’s longestserving senator, having been elected in 1984, twenty years after graduating with honors
from the University of Louisville. He’s only the second Kentuckian ever to serve in the
position of Majority Leader of the United States Senate, and in that position he has been
part of major policy developments from national security to economics that will prove of
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historic importance. Time magazine recently named him one of the most 100 Most
Influential People in the World.
Ladies and gentlemen, would you please join me in standing and welcoming the
Majority Leader of the United States Senate, Mitch McConnell, and our special guest,
South Carolina’s Senator Tim Scott. [applause]
Senator Mitch McConnell: Well, welcome, everyone. As Gary indicated, next year will
be the twenty-fifth anniversary of this program. We’re happy to have you here.
In my time in Washington, I’ve certainly met a lot of ambitious people with
ambitious goals, congressmen, senators, presidents, all looking to leave their mark in one
way or another, but Senator Tim Scott might have been the most audacious goal I’ve
heard yet. He charted his life’s goal when he was a teenager by writing a personal
mission statement—a personal mission statement—as a teenager that he would positively
affect a billion people in the course of his lifetime. That’s a billion with a b. Now, few
people would make such a bold prediction and actually mean it, but Tim Scott has a
lifetime of accomplishment to back it up, and it looks like he’s well on his way.
Count me among the many who’ve been inspired by his life story. A rising star in
American politics, the senator from South Carolina comes from humble roots. He was
raised by a single mom, a nurse’s assistant who worked sixteen-hour days to provide for
her kids. From her, Tim learned the value of hard work. He got his first job when he was
thirteen. He wiped windshields at a gas station. He worked at a men’s clothing store.
He sold popcorn at a movie theater.
The only thing he didn’t do back then, it seems, it take his studies very seriously,
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because at one point he was at serious risk of flunking out of high school, and that’s when
he met a man who would literally change his life. He was the owner of a restaurant next
to the movie theater where Tim worked. He would bring Tim free sandwiches, and in the
process, impart life’s lessons that Tim would never forget. Tim learned the importance of
structure and of personal discipline. He learned basic principles of success, principles
drawn from both scripture and from the school of hard knocks. And he learned that
having a job is a good thing, but helping other people by creating jobs is even better.
Those values guide Tim still, and he knows that if they worked for him, they can
work for everyone else. That’s why after just three years in the Senate, I can tell you
firsthand that Tim Scott has proven himself to be a terrific senator with a bright future in
the Republican Party. He’s worked to enact legislation that can help unleash
opportunities for everyone, even those in the depths of poverty. He’s a strong advocate
for education reform, to expand opportunity and foster success by providing every
student with greater choice. He wants to grow the workforce and to see that those at the
margins of society are included. That’s why he’s championed job-training programs and
tax credits to employers to increase the number of registered apprenticeships and reduce
the number of job vacancies in the United States. And he’s worked to promote
conservative values in Washington by fighting out-of-control spending, burdensome
regulations and red tape, and our overly complicated tax code.
Throughout his career, Tim Scott has worked hard to prove the state motto of
South Carolina true for every South Carolinian and, for that matter, every American. The
motto simply says “While I breathe, I hope.” That’s another way of saying opportunity is
right around the corner. That’s the attitude that has propelled Tim to become the man he
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is today. It’s how he earned success in the private sector before entering public service
with a partnership in a successful real estate company and the leadership of his own
insurance firm, and it’s how he charted a course that led him from the Charleston County
Council to the U.S. Senate.
Of course, he didn’t make that journey without a few idiosyncrasies. For
instance, Tim has a penchant for wearing really wild socks. [audience laughter and
applause] And he likes to show those socks off by traipsing around his office without
any shoes. [audience laughter] Supposedly, he thinks better with his shoes off. So, Tim,
if you’d like, slip off your kicks, make yourself comfortable. But shoes or no shoes,
Senator Scott has touched the lives of many with his powerful personal story, and he’s
made life better for many with his work in public service.
So it’s with great pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, that I introduce to you the junior
senator from South Carolina, the Honorable Tim Scott. [applause]
Senator Tim Scott: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks so much. It’s a privilege
to be at the University of Louisville and it’s a privilege to be in Kentucky, and, certainly,
Senator McConnell, thank you for the opportunity to participate in the McConnell Center.
1991, twenty-four amazing years of success. I’m not sure how proud you are of your
Leader, but we’re proud to have Senator McConnell as our Leader. [applause]
As I think about leadership today, one of the things I want to do is talk about why
I think leadership is so important, because I think so often—how many high school
students do we have in here? All right. College students? Folks who’ve already
graduated from college? [audience laughter] I want to make sure everybody had a
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chance to raise your hand. This is wonderful.
One of the things I learned from my mother about leadership is that sometimes
leadership comes out of chaos, that opportunities are born out of chaos. And to our high
school students, our college students, I think it’s very important to realize that sometimes
the best opportunities you’ll ever see will come out of some of the challenges of your life.
So the way I like to say it is that your obstacles lead to your opportunities. Or if we were
in church, we’d say it this way, “God thinks you’re a mess, gives you a message.”
Someone say “Amen.”
Audience response: Amen!
Scott: Hallelujah! [audience laughter] See, I’m going to have a good time, because I’m
going back to Washington in a little while, so this is my best shot. So you guys might as
well have a good time too.
And if God thinks you’re a mess and makes it your message, then you become a
messenger. So I learned that lesson early on as high school student. One of my good
friends and leadership author named John Maxwell said, “When you find your why, you
find your way.” In leadership, when you find out why you should lead, you find the way
to lead.
I learned that lesson as a senior in high school. I grew up with a single mom. We
had to struggle a little bit. We had one car, so I’d drive my mother to work forty-five
minutes and then come back home and get ready for football practice in August, a long
time ago. This one morning I got sleepy, and on the way home I tried to stay awake
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while I was driving. Unfortunately, I didn’t do very well staying awake. I tried to roll
the windows down. Please note I said “roll” the windows down. [audience laughter] No
electric windows in this car. I rolled up them, I turned the AC on, the AC off in August
in South Carolina. I turned the heat on and turned the heat off. Next thing I knew, I
woke up driving 70 miles an hour on the interstate. I did what every sixteen-year-old
does: I panicked. I slammed on the brakes and I jerked the steering wheel at the same
time. Does anyone knows what happens when you slam on brakes? Yes, sir, your car
rolls into traffic, and I remember literally rolling into traffic.
I’m completely directionless, by the way, Senator. I was going this way down the
interstate, and I rolled through cars, went through the windshield, held on to my steering
wheel, and I yelled for hope. When you’re yelling for hope, sometimes it sounds like
“Jesus!” Came back in the car and I ended up in a ditch going the complete opposite
direction. So I’d crossed four lanes of traffic and I landed in the ditch on the side, glass
everywhere, blood everywhere.
They finally came, and one lady was coming at me, lots of folks were pulled over
to the side and were coming to help me out, and I heard one lady yell, “I think he’s dead!
I think he’s dead!”
Me not being the smartest kid said, “I’m dead! I’m dead! I’m dead!” [audience
laughter]
They got me out of the car and they lay me on the side of the highway because I
had glass in my back from hitting the windshield and glass other places we can’t talk
about. And the highway patrolman showed up. Thank God for our emergency
responders who run into danger when everybody else is running out. [applause] He saw
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me on the side of the road and he wanted to give me some words of encouragement, so he
kneeled down and said, “Son, your mama’s going to happy you’re alive.”
I thought about it for a moment, I looked up at him, I said, “Sir, you don’t know
my mama. She’s gonna kill me.” [audience laughter]
And then he taught me a lesson. He said, “Son, your mom’s going to care less
about the car than she does about her son.”
I called my aunt, because I didn’t believe him either. [audience laughter]
But it became the crystallization of the lesson of John Maxwell, who I heard
twenty-five years later. When you understand your why, you find your way. My
mother’s why—she worked sixteen hours a day—was not the car, it wasn’t a nicer place
to live; it was her kids. Leadership is about influence. Leadership is about taking a stand
because it has to happen, and there’s something in you that you believe if you apply your
best to a circumstance, to a situation, to a problem, amazing things might happen. And
my mother is, in fact, my American hero because she took a stand in a way that no one
else has ever done for me.
I want to just share with the students and some of the older students like me three
keys to being an effective leader. The first one is simply simple. Y’all ready? Are y’all
ready?
Audience response: Yes!
Scott: Are you sure?
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Audience response: Yes!
Scott: All right. This is great. Failure isn’t final if you don’t quit. Very important
leadership lesson. Failure is not final if you refuse to quit. Now, I learned this lesson as
a freshman in high school. Senator McConnell alluded to the fact that I didn’t always do
well in school. Well, as a freshman, I didn’t do well at all. I didn’t almost flunk out of
high school; I flunked out of high school. I failed world geography. I think I’m the only
senator to ever fail civics. [audience laughter] And then I went to the U.S. Senate and
realized I had lots of company, actually. [audience laughter] Lots of us had failed civics.
[applause] I’m glad you all got that joke. This is good.
I also failed Spanish and English. Now, when you fail Spanish and English, they
don’t call you bilingual; they call you “bi-ign’ant.” [audience laughter] You can’t speak
in any language.
That’s where I found my unhappy self, and my mother came to my rescue. I
learned a valuable lesson during those times, that sometimes your mama’s got to love you
at the end of a switch. I’m not sure if you know what a switch is, but a switch is a
southern apparatus of encouragement often applied from your belt buckle to your ankles.
[audience laughter] And my mama loved me a lot. [audience laughter] She encouraged
me to go to summer school. I said, “Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am.”
You see, in the midst of challenging times, someone has to take you sometimes to
the woodshed, to time out, whatever works, but, in fact, in order for us to overcome the
major obstacles in our life, sometimes we need an awakening. And for me as a freshman
in high school, that was my awakening, because I had blamed my dad being gone since I
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was seven years old for the reasons why I was drifting. I blamed my mother being at
work sixteen hours a day as the reason why I couldn’t concentrate. But my mother
encouraged me to concentrate, to focus, to believe in my future. She always taught me,
even when she was finding the switch. There’s a psychology that goes along with a
switch as well. Even when we were looking for the switch, she would teach me. There’s
an old saying, “If you shoot for the moon and you miss, you can be among the stars.” So
even when she was disciplining me, she was teaching me valuable lessons about my
future. I would encourage each of us that failure isn’t final if we refuse to quit.
The second lesson of leadership I want to share with you is this. If you want to
stand out in life, stand up for someone who cannot stand up for themselves. If you want
to stand out in life, stand up for someone who cannot stand up for themselves. Now, for
me, the classic example of that person is John Monese [phonetic], a Chick-fil-A operator
who caught my attention when I was a sophomore in high school, and he started teaching
me that you could think your way out of poverty. It doesn’t mean that if you’re in
poverty you’re not thinking. What it meant to me was as a kid who was struggling in
high school because I refused to focus in the classroom, though I had a pretty good focus
on the field, he was trying to teach me that there was an advantage to those kids who
would harness their energy and focus it on becoming academically successful and not just
significant in sports or entertainment.
John Monese’s lesson led me to his perfect statement, which was, “If you don’t
like where you are, Tim, blame yourself. Because if you see the promise of your future,
you must first discover the problem within yourself. If you want to find the
opportunities, figure out your obstacles.” In other words, wherever you can, take
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advantage of solving problems from the inside out and not looking for help from the
outside in.
Second example is a friend of mine, a couple, George and Molly Greene, who
started an organization called Water Missions International. They were very successful
business owners. They owned a company called General Engineering Labs. They did a
fabulous job of producing a world-class engineering company, and they had fabulous
vacations. Well, they went to Africa one time, and then they went to Africa a second
time, and they discovered that part of the challenges in Africa is the lack of access to
clean water. So they decided, because they felt like they heard something, a calling, that
they sold their company and went full-time and invested much of their resources into this
venture to provide water, clean water, to folks in Africa. Millions upon millions of
gallons later, they are standing up for those who cannot stand up for themselves.
But even here—. [microphone squeal] Wow. That must have been the Lord.
[audience laughter] Even here at the McConnell Center, you have folks who are willing
to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. Mary Elizabeth, a McConnell
Scholar, are you here, Mary Elizabeth? There you are, Mary Elizabeth. Stand up, Mary
Elizabeth. Let everybody look at your face there. Mary Elizabeth is now turning red like
a tomato. Mary Elizabeth wants to help young people, and she has a passion for the
elderly. You see, a part of the McConnell mission is to make sure that the Scholars have
this passion, this desire to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves, and
Mary Elizabeth has found her passion for the young and for the old.
Connor Tracy. Connor Tracy, are you here? Connor, how you doing buddy?
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Connor Allen: I’m doing all right. How are you?
Scott: I’m doing well. Thank you for asking. You’re so kind. I like that red tie. You
like my Lollapolooza tie? We got good taste, buddy.
Say, Connor, who is standing up—this is important. Folks who will stand up for
those who cannot stand up for themselves. Connor has a passion to stand up for the
homeless. You see, he understands—thank you, Connor. He understands the Matthew
25 Project, in verses 37 through 40, recognizes and delineates a group of people that we
should stand up for. One of the groups are the homeless. Because at the McConnell
Center, you learn leadership, and leadership says you stand up for those who cannot stand
up for themselves. Thank you, Mary Elizabeth, thank you, Connor, for being willing to
stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. [applause]
We’re heading into Thanksgiving and Christmas. Here’s an opportunity for
brilliant students, high school and college, wonderful adults, to think creatively about
ways to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. Some of my friends back
in South Carolina will go to Walmart and Target and buy $10 gift cards, and they’ll go to
the school cafeteria workers, they’ll go to hotels to the maids, they go to the workers who
are barely making it, and they’ll provide a gift of hope, a bridge of hope. Just $10. And
if you have ten friends or a hundred friends that will do $10 gift cards, you can impact
hundreds of people throughout Kentucky, throughout Louisville, and throughout the
nation.
Last lesson. If you want to walk on the water, you gotta get out the boat. Now,
this is a very important lesson, very important lesson. Now, we know the story from the
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Word. The Bible teaches us that Peter wanted to walk on the water. He saw Jesus, so he
asked for permission, “Bid me to come.”
Jesus said, as is the southern vernacular, “What’s up, man? Come on out here.”
This is funny in Kentucky in the first rows. This is great. [audience laughter] Anyways,
we’ll teach Bible later.
So what happened was he started walking on the water and he started to sing, and
Jesus reaches out his hand, pulls him up. In order for us to succeed in life, we have to do
something that is outside of our comfort zone. In order to walk on the water, you have to
leave your comfort zone. In order to be the most amazing leader you can be, you have to
leave your comfort zone, and if you do that, the most amazing things are possible. Let
me say it differently. Hold on to your dreams. Dreams motivate, they inspire, they
encourage, they give us the feel for life, and so often as we grow older we let go of our
dreams. We start to assume that things aren’t possible, but they are.
I think of a dreamer named Oprah Winfrey. Anyone ever heard of her? [audience
laughter] And the people of God said, “Amen!” Oprah was fired from her first job in TV
because she was not fit to be in front of the camera. I want to know who her producer
was. Anyone heard of Walt Disney? Old Walt was fired from his first job because he
lacked creativity. [audience laughter] Let us pray. [audience laughter] I don’t know
how you do that, but that’s pretty good. And, you see, in order for these guys and gals to
walk on the water, they had to get out the boat, and as soon as they got out, they started to
sink immediately: [snaps fingers] first job, first job.
My second race in politics I lost a miserable race, but I didn’t quit. I held on to
my dream of reaching a billion people. And when you’re mired in poverty, living in a
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single-parent household and you’re nineteen years old and you want to reach a billion
people, all your friends think you’re crazy. [audience laughter] But I held on to my
dream. I held on to the fact that a man who didn’t know me walked into my life because
the good Lord sent him there, and through four years he taught me the most valuable
lessons of leadership and opportunity. He taught me about the American Dream in a way
that I could not have learned any other way. He saw something in me that I could not see
in myself. I believe that’s true with each and every one of us. There’s something in you
that you have not yet discovered, and if you surround yourself with the right people,
they’ll help you extract it and you’ll do amazing things for this world, for your state, for
your family, and for yourself.
I typically don’t sing in public, because after telling The Voice no, American Idol
no, I decided that some talent should be kept to myself, but there are so many young high
school students in the room, that I want to sing to you the song that was powerful for me
when I was in high school. It was by a group called Wee Gee—interesting group name—
and it was called “Hold On To Your Dreams.” I’ve asked them to cue the music. Please
go ahead and cue the music.
Well, then, I guess you’ll just have to help me out. Let’s just do that. That’s all
you got to do. [snaps fingers] Come on. I can’t hear you. Come on. Can’t hear you.
[sings “Hold on to your dreams!”] Never mind. Never mind. [audience laughter] See, if
you could see your face, you would stop singing too. I thought y’all knew good singin’.
What happened to the ears that you have? You can’t hear the good singin’?
So let me just tell you the words. Put my talent back in the closet. [audience
laughter] The words are simple. They say “Hold on to your dreams. Believe in love and
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let love be the light to show you the way, because life will be hard and sometimes even
unfair, unless you believe that someone’s there, someone who cares, rain or shine, who
will share your dreams, your heart, and your mind.”
God bless.
[applause]
Gregg: Senator Scott, I feel like you made a dream of mine come true today. In fortyeight distinguished speakers, we never had one sing. [audience laughter] So we have
now done it. Thank you for that.
Scott: I apologize for that. [audience laughter]
Gregg: We’re also going to go out of our comfort zone now and turn the program over to
the audience and see what’s on their mind. Thank you for those inspiring words.
We have two senior McConnell Scholars that have collected questions from the
audience today, Natalie Smith, who is chair of the McConnell Scholars, and Victoria
Allen, who is currently serving as student body president. We’ll ask Natalie to ask the
first question, please.
Natalie Smith: Senator Scott, thank you for being here with us today.
Scott: Yes, ma’am.
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Smith: Our first question comes from a student group at Louisville Male High School. It
asks, describe your ideal economic system.
Scott: Well, I’m a big free-market kind of guy. My ideal economic system would be one
that would make being an entrepreneur—I spent fifteen years running my own business.
I had a real estate business, as Senator McConnell alluded to, as well as a fairly
successful insurance business. I own a couple of Allstate insurance agencies. “Are you
in good hands?” [audience laughter] “Like a neighbor, like a good neighbor.” Anyways,
someone’s there. Obviously, I don’t like State Farm that much.
Anyways, one of the things I would tell you is that if we could create a system
that has lower taxes, responsible regulations, and that encourages entrepreneurship, it
would be close to a perfect system. In order to encourage entrepreneurship, you have to
have the ability to access capital. When I started in business, I will tell you, back in
1998, I was making $30,000 a year if I was lucky, maybe $40,000 a year, and struggling.
So when I went to the bank to borrow the money, they looked at my assets, which was
the apartment that I didn’t own and my car that had 253,000 miles on it. I went to the
bank and said that this car was an asset. The banker laughed and laughed and laughed.
But what I learned through that process was that a good business plan with a
strong ability to repay the loan and having access to credit and capital changed not only
my life, my family’s life. So one of things that I would say are three key pieces to an
economic system that works are a tax system that is competitive globally. And today we
have the highest corporate tax rate, 35 percent, in the world. We have dollars trapped out
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of the country that could come back and help create millions of jobs. We call that
repatriation, the ability to bring home overseas profits, which we cannot do today, about
$2 trillion, which would create somewhere, in my estimation—I’m not an economist, but
my estimation, over two million jobs over time. If we could bring that home, you would
see amazing transformation in our employment opportunities.
Second, responsible regulations. I think we have to have a regulatory
environment that actually works. Today we have burdensome regulations that are
impacting the ability to create jobs in a tremendous way. And then, frankly, finally, as
I’ve said a couple times, access to capital.
Victoria Allen: Good morning, Senator Scott. Thank you again for being here. Our
second question comes from a student group from Villa Madonna Academy. As young
students, we look at the state of our nation and become easily discouraged. What makes
you think, as you have said, that America’s best days are ahead of us?
Scott: Certainly. So if I were young and looking at the state of our affairs, there’s a lot
of reasons to be hopeless, frankly. So you look at the $18 trillion worth of debt that we
have as a nation, you look at the bickering that you see in Washington, there are a lot of
signs that things aren’t working the way that they should.
I would tell you that there’s an absolutely alternative plan that’s available and a
very different picture that’s happening right now. For instance, when I go to
Washington, I work with one of the senators on the left—I’m considered a very
conservative senator, he’s considered a very liberal senator—Cory Booker, a great guy
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from New Jersey. He and I have worked together on the apprenticeship programs,
looking for ways to create tax credits so that we can attract more earning and learning at
the same time by giving employers an incentive to hire people that they would not
normally hire for themselves. So that is one example of a reason to be hopeful.
The other reason is, listen, when I grew up as a kid in the eighties, unemployment
in my neighborhoods were over 30 percent, over 30 percent. And I will tell you that with
the entrepreneurs in those neighborhoods, it’s hard to deal with poverty. I think we can
be hopeful, because coming from where I’ve come from and seeing the opportunities
unfold over time doesn’t suggest to me, it instructs me, that the best is yet to come if we
harness our potential.
It’s not easy. I won’t pretend that it’s easy, but it is simple. Simple to me is
defined as it can be done, it can be done by you. So for those folks looking for
opportunities, today we have more opportunities than we’ve ever known. We have 4.6
million vacant jobs in the country waiting for someone with the right skill set to take
those jobs. We have opportunities to watch folks go from poverty to prosperity [snaps
fingers] almost in the blink of an eye, in a way that has never happened before.
What we need is a strong vision of the future that we run into, and goal-setting is
a major part of seeing that come to fruition. I’ll close with this. Proverbs 29:18 says
“Without a vision, people cast off restraint. People perish.” In other words, if you don’t
have a vision for your future, the chances are you’ll look around and remain hopeless.
Smith: How do you as a politician win elections while staying true to your personal
beliefs?
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Scott: Live in South Carolina, that’s the first thing. [audience laughter] We’re
conservatives. It’s really easy there.
I think the reality of it is that if you know who you are before you enter into the
political process, you’re far better off, because the pressures to conform are amazing. So
one of the things I have done is I’ve drawn lines in the sand. I call it my LEM: legal,
ethical, and moral. I don’t ever cross those lines. If it’s not legal, it’s not ethical, and it’s
moral, I’m just not going to do it. And there’s always pressure to do something that’s in
someone else’s best interest. The key is to make sure that you run the race that you’re
willing to win, and you run in a way that you’re willing to lose if it doesn’t work out.
So I have always said that the promises that you make as a candidate should be
the promises you keep as an elected official, and if I can’t do that, I should be voted out
of office. I don’t always win. I don’t suggest that you’re going to always win, because
you won’t always win, but you should be very clear on where you stand and your
activities should be consistent with where you stood on the campaign trail.
One of the things that we as politicians have to do is we have to find this cool
word called integrity and live by it. My pastor teaches me I have the right to be wrong. I
think what he’s telling me is that sometimes I think I know what I’m doing and I know
that I’m right and not yet there. I’m not really right.
So the truth is that it’s okay, it’s okay to be wrong, but you have to be willing to
correct your course when you find that you are. But stick with your principles and be
very clear on who you are, what you stand for, and then govern consistent with your
campaign promises. If you do that, you’ll either be successful as an elected official or
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you will find a greater opportunity doing something else; i.e., they’ll kick you out.
[audience laughter]
Allen: What are your thoughts on the role of political correctness in today’s society in
politics?
Scott: Oh, man. Political correctness is a challenging concept today. As the previous
question suggests, we all cave in to some aspect of being politically correct. I have
learned that not being politically correct comes with scars and challenges. I am, if you
have not realized yet, I am a black guy who is a Republican. [audience laughter] Let me
explain to you that that is not politically correct. [audience laughter] I don’t even know
why! [applause]
So sometimes, as I said, you have to get out the boat if you want to walk on the
water, and sometimes you have to go to the wild side, and that’s where I live. So for me,
you have to challenge the definition of political correctness. You have to challenge the
paradigms that you see from, in order for us to make progress as a country.
One of the things I’ve tried to do is to think and believe and live in this concept
that America, we are better together. So what I try to do is align myself with my values,
even if it’s not correct in my community, even if people disagree with me. And I find
myself in conflict with Republicans who don’t see the world as I see, and I find myself in
conflict with Democrats who don’t believe that I should be on that side of the aisle. So
what I try to do is explain to people what I stand for and why I stand there. Sometimes it
works and other times they just dismiss me.
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The key to battling political correctness is understanding why you’re in the fight
from the first place, and if you do that, you’ll win more battles than you will lose, but
you’ll lose some significant ones. I’ve been called everything that you can imagine.
Uncle Tom. I try to remind people that my name is Tim. [audience laughter] I’m Uncle
Tim, not Tom. It was funny to me, anyways. [audience laughter] Not all this works in
Kentucky, I see. [audience laughter] But, anyways, that’s the way it works.
Allen: Our next question comes from duPont Manual High School. As a student
planning on attending college in two years, I worry about the mounting debt I will face in
pursuing my higher education. What do you plan on doing specifically to encourage
more young adults to pursue a college education?
Scott: Well, the first thing we have to do is make sure that these young adults graduate
from high school. That’s a very important part of the conversation. And we need to
make sure that they graduate from high school in a way that allows them to go into
college and to start doing college courses and not remedial work, to get to a level that
actually goes along with their acceptance to that college.
So what I’m doing is I’m working on school choice as a part of the apparatus that
I think produces better results. For those areas where you have failing public schools or
underperforming public schools, I think parents deserve either a charter school, a private
school, a virtual school, some other alternative to the public school that’s not working.
I’m a product of public schools. I thank God that I was blessed to go to a good public
school in high school, but I did go to four different elementary schools by the fifth grade,
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because when you’re in poverty, you’re fairly transient.
So one of the things that we have to do in order to fix college is to fix public
education K through 12 as it relates to affordability. If you want to make your college
educational experience more affordable, the federal government provides up to a $5,700
Pell Grant. If you take your Pell Grant to at two-year technical school for the first two
years, you can essentially get out of the first two years of your education, no offense to
the University of Louisville that’s probably eyes are getting bigger as I say that. You can
get out of your first two years with no debt whatsoever, and then you can transfer to the
University of Louisville [audience laughter] and get a wonderful education and cut your
college debt in half.
Now, realize that the average student graduates with about $29,000 in college
debt. Twenty-nine thousand dollars over a lifetime, we should figure out the ROI on that
$29,000. So in a lifetime income, income over a lifetime with a college education versus
a high school education, I think is worth like $1.2 million. So the question is, is the
$29,000, if you have the college debt, worth the $1.2 million increase in your lifetime
income. I think the answer is yes.
But we also passed legislation last year. Leader McConnell helped us to put
together a student loan package that reduced the interest rate from—I think it was in the
5.75 down to the 3.7 range. So the fact of the matter, even the interest on the debt for the
average college student has gone down. It was a bipartisan coalition that got that
accomplished as well.
So I think if we, (a), remember the advantage of going to a two-year school that
can actually reduce your debt, if, in fact, you are eligible for the Pell Grant, which
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typically is a kid who’s borrowing money, and then looking at the fact that we’ve already
reduced the interest rate on your student loans, and then think of the return on the
investment, $29,000 versus $1.2 million.
Smith: Our next question is also from a student group. How can we get more collegeand high-school-aged students interested in politics?
Scott: Beg? [audience laughter] The one thing I did well in high school, I was pretty
good at football, but I was also really good at talking, typically in the middle of my
classes. It was in middle school when my eighth-grade teacher realized that she could
harness my extra energy and instructed—I should say encouraged, but she instructed me
to run for Student Council, so you could talk and not get in trouble.
I’m not sure if you guys are familiar with in-school detention. [audience laughter]
It is not where you want to be. I’ve did spend thirty or forty times in in-school detention.
[microphone squeals] The Lord is here, too, so I’ll go over here and sit. And what I
learned—I guess I should be where Lord is. Anyways, what I learned, however, was that
if you want to do well, you have to harness that potential, and I found that in Student
Council. So eighth grade, ninth grade, even when I was flunking out, I was VP of the
class. You can be popular and dumb at the same time. [audience laughter] This is what
I’ve learned in life. I was student government president, like yourself, in high school. I
couldn’t do what you’re doing in college.
So I found a way of harnessing my energy, but I also found a way of stoking or
encouraging my desires, encouraging my interests in politics. Through Boys State
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leadership programs, much like the McConnell Center, in high school I found myself on a
leadership track, unbeknownst to myself, and it really helped me become more interested
in politics. So I think if we spend more time teaching kids about their potential, that
they’ll find themselves more interested in global affairs and current issues, and that
sometimes put you in the path towards politics.
Allen: Congress has very low approval ratings.
Scott: No! [audience laughter]
Allen: What can be done in Congress to help the American people—
Scott: I want to see that question myself. Let me see that. [audience laughter] Hold on
a second here. My arms are not long enough, so I need glasses. I’ll be dag-blasted. You
were telling the truth. Okay. I thought we were at least at 10 percent now. [audience
laughter] Please continue. I apologize, I apologize.
Allen: The question is what can be done in Congress to help the American people regain
their respect for the institution?
Scott: I honestly think it begins with integrity. I don’t know that the average person in
our country wants politicians who always agree with them. I’m pretty convinced that
they don’t. I think what they want are politicians to tell the truth and not a part of the
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truth so we can sell something, but tell the truth as we see it. Now, I recommend
marketing the truth well, without any question, but have integrity in the process.
I’ve learned that in South Carolina a lot of voters don’t agree with me. Thank
God most of them do. But for those who don’t, I talk to them. Go to places where you’re
not encouraged to go. Go into communities where they disagree with you, and have a
conversation. That would improve our ratings very quickly, because when I go into
places where conservative Republicans do not go, they look at me like I have two heads
sometimes, and then after about an hour, they realize that I don’t have two heads; I just
don’t use the one that I have really well. [audience laughter] And then we have that
debate for a little while, and then we find we have more in common than we do not. And
that’s always good news for your approval ratings.
But what we should be concerned with is making sure that people understand
where we want to take the country and not how much we hate the other side. I disagree
with the other side on many issues. That’s okay. They disagree with me on many issues.
But am I willing to sit down with folks who don’t think like I think and have a
conversation about their future and learn to listen as well as speak? When that happens, I
think our approval ratings will go back up.
Smith: This question comes from a student from Jackson County High School. How did
being raised in the South influence your political beliefs?
Scott: Well, I was blessed to be born an American. It was a gift from God to be born in
the South. Yep. So it has a major impact on the way I see the world. I think we are in
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the Bible Belt, as they call it. We’re the buckle, we say in South Carolina, of the Bible
Belt. No offense to people in Kentucky. How many of y’all live in Kentucky? Perhaps I
should use that joke only in South Carolina. Good. [audience laughter] Joe, me and you
are gonna leave soon, real soon. Start the car. [audience laughter]
The fact of the matter is that your world view oftentimes comes from where you
live, how you are raised, and for me, I think being a southerner makes me more willing to
have a tussle when necessary. I was born in a place of the Civil War where the Civil War
had the first shot, Charleston, South Carolina, so I don’t mind fighting, don’t mind it at
all. But I also think that we also had a better world vie, because we have had to figure
out how to get along, and I’ve seen the manifestation of that at home.
Most of us are familiar with the church shooting at Emanuel Church, Emanuel
AME, the Emanuel 9 that passed away. One of the things that I learned about my home
state and about, frankly, southern pride and southern tradition as a very positive and
constructive force in my public life is that in the midst of challenges, in the worst of
times, we came together and we locked arms. We had lunch and we had dinner with
people who didn’t look like us. We worked on racial reconciliation in a way that I think
no other part of the country can do because of our provocative racial past. And it really
has helped tremendously bring our state together, and it’s one of the reasons why we
were able to solve in twenty-three days what our state could not solve in fifty-four years,
of taking the Confederate flag down from the Statehouse. That happened because we
figured out how to use our southern roots, as provocative and unique as they are, as a
force for good in bringing our state together.
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Allen: This will have to be our last question.
Scott: Oh, gosh darn. [audience laughter]
Allen: It comes from a student group at North Hardin High School and asks what are
some of the biggest obstacles you’ve been presented with as a senator, and how have you
overcome these obstacles?
Scott: I think it’s hard to look beyond where we are today. I think that one of the
greatest challenges that we have coming forward will be how we deal with ISIS and how
we deal with a radical group of people who believe that they’re anchored in their faith in
their violent activities. This is a tremendous challenge that we will face over the
upcoming weeks and probably years, to be honest with you. So I think our foreign policy
is going to be perhaps the most challenging opportunity that I have going forward.
I would tell you that other challenging opportunities have been the Iran deal,
working through that and understanding and appreciating what that means ten years from
now. If you unravel the Iranian deal, it is really, really tough to have confidence that Iran
will not have a nuclear weapon in ten to fifteen years, if not sooner, from my perspective.
I think back from a budget standpoint, when I arrived in Congress, we had $14.3
trillion of debt. In 2011 we had a Budget and Control Act deal that put caps in place so
that we would not spend as much as we were spending in the past, and that was a very
challenging time. It was a time when we had a lot of conflict and a lot of interests.
I think our nation will be better off because of the challenges that we face, and so
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we will continue to see a lot of challenges coming our way. But I would say that
probably the biggest one that I’m going to face is probably how we deal with ISIS going
forward.
Thank you.
[applause]
[End of presentation]
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