Boehner: “We have to show [Americans] that our ideas are better. And that’s where the work of the American Action Forum is so indispensable.”
 
Krauthammer: “It is persuasion that is the business of the AAF and it is succeeding in doing that.”
 
Krauthammer: “…[they’re] providing precisely the empirical evidence for what I think are the right ideas.”

The American Action Forum celebrated five years last night with a gala at the Newseum, emceed by Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, and featuring Speaker John Boehner and Charles Krauthammer.
 
You can watch Boehner’s full remarks here, Krauthammer’s remarks here, and Forum President Doug Holtz-Eakin’s remarks here.

You can also view The Forum at Five video here.
 
On AAF’s Growth:
 
“I commend you for half a decade of getting into the fight, starting from scratch and creating something quite remarkable.” – Charles Krauthammer
 
On AAF’s Role In National Policy Battles:
 
“But we just can’t say our ideas are better and expect them the American people to trust us. We have to show them that our ideas are better. And that’s where the work of the American Action Forum is so indispensable.” – Speaker John Boehner
 
“Every time there is a policy decision, or lack of, I turn to Doug [Holtz-Eakin] to explain it all to our audience and make sense of it.” – Maria Bartiromo
 
“It is a rare thing to find arguments which are not simply made in the abstract and are not made by appeal to ideology. Because if you do that you will be talking either to people who believe in what you do or to people who believe the opposite, and will remain unpersuaded. And it is persuasion that is the business of the AAF and it is succeeding in doing that.” – Charles Krauthammer
 
“Those ideas come from people who are willing to push, test, and debate the real issues in the public arena. It’s a heavy lift and even heavier when you have the challenges of big government and the bureaucracy in your way. But it’s exactly what the American Action Forum does. And tonight I want to say thank you to all of you. For working with Doug and the Forum to really help produce good ideas and promote those really good ideas that help us in a big way.” – Speaker John Boehner
 
The battle now is to make [government] work, to make it solvent, to make it help the people it’s trying to help. And that’s the work of this organization. –Charles Krauthammer
 
On AAF Cutting Through Debates with Facts:
 
“To me the wonderful thing that what Doug [Holtz-Eakin] and his colleagues are doing is providing precisely the empirical evidence for what I think are the right ideas.” – Charles Krauthammer
 
“In the end if you want to win in the real political world, you have to produce the facts. You have to produce the evidence. And that means above all, particularly in domestic policy, you have to produce the numbers. It is numbers that are persuasive. It is numbers that the other side is often unwilling to show. And that Doug and his colleagues are able to show on a prodigious variety of issues.” – Charles Krauthammer