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Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20141114

the bipartisan policy center and the concord coalition all offering their views. live coverage on c-span2. the supreme court recently heard oral argument in the case balancing federal whistleblower protections against national security. the case involves robert maclean, a u.s. air marshal fired for telling a reporter that the tsa canceled missions on commercial flights that required marshals to stay overnight. his supervisor told him that the cancellations were to save money, believing the tsa action risk passenger safety can maclean leaked the information to a reporter prompting congressional criticism and leading to the tsa's reversal of his decision. next up, the oral arguments in homeland security department versus maclean. >> will hear arguments first this one in case 13-894 of the department of homeland security versus robert maclean. spent mr. chief justice, and may place a corporate in section 114(r), congress directed tsa to promulgate regulations prohibiting disclosures that would be detrimental to the security of transportation. the information covered in the tsa regulations ranges from a flight crews plans within with a hijacking attempt to bullet was in airport security systems to the kind of federal air marshal deployment information at issue in this case. under the federal circuit construction of the whistleblower statute, any one of tsa 60,000 employees may override tsa's expert judgment and publicly disclose sensitive security information and that employs possession based on that employs reasonable belief about what public safety requires. >> at what point was maclean told that this qualified as ssi? correct me if i'm wrong, about this, but as i understood he was fired, and it wasn't until the case was before the mspb that a determination was made that this information qualified as, what you call ssi. >> i think that's not quite correct, and let me see if i can work it through. the information about federal air marshal deployment has been prohibited by regulation for more than a decade. it was prohibited expressly prior to 9/11. it was and regulations that were promulgated by tsa after 9/11. 9/11. >> when was he first told? >> he was told that air marshal deployment information was ssi in the training and it's in the regs. he argued before the ministry of judge that he was unaware that this information was ssi and the judge rejected that contention. that's in the appendix. what the administrative judge found was his testimony that he did not know this was ssi was inconsistent with nuance and evasive, the judge rejected that contention. what happened in the tsa final order, is that tsa creates a final order determining something is ssi precisely so thathey can be appealed to the court of appeals under 49 usc 46110 which gives a person aggrieved by a tsa order six these two goes onto to the court of appeals. he did so and the ninth circuit rejected his argument that this was right to give classification of ssi. so i think as the case comes to this court, there really is no dispute that he understood that this was ssi. >> in many cases, it will be a close question. i was surprised in your reply brief the recognition that the employee can, choose to quote it, can tell the media that federal air marshals will be absent from important flights, but declined to specify which flights. i think will be very difficult to figure out what's ssi and what's not given the kind of fine line. cookie say, air marshal seven to 50% from transcontinental flights? >> there may be close cases. the administrative judge heard this contention from mr. mclean and rejected it. >> what contention? >> that he did not know that this was ssi. >> what about my question? could someone say the number of air marshals on transcontinental flights has been cut 50%? >> i think that without specifying, i don't know the answer to that. i met someone at tsa who was classification. >> how was mr. maclean supposed to no? >> because mr. maclean was trained to know, was trained in ssi, received training on that. and as i say, your honor, there is no dispute that he did know that this was ssi. >> i'm a little confused. like justice ginsburg, i thought from a briefing that that was done generally beforehand, that something would be distributed to people without a confidential notice on it so that people would be -- >> that would be mark ssi. >> that this was ssi. but this particular information wasn't so designated before the release. >> that's correct, your honor. but the best practice is to mark ssi. >> you wanted before it's going out. >> that's correct. whether or not it is marked that way. and against the regulations are clear on this, that details of federal marshal deployment are covered as ssi, and this issue was litigated before the administrative judge. >> if there were no regulations, just the statutes on the books, at that point are there any prohibitions on disclosure? or there can be no ssi with at least some regulation? >> that's correct, your honor. and if i could turn to that, what the federal circuit held, the federal circuit held that the whistleblower protections extended to this information. but properly read, 2302(b) 8-a squarely forecloses that result. what that section does is exempt from whistleblower protection information that is specifical specifically, disclosure which is specifically prohibited by law. the federal circuit on no specific prohibition here, indeed, no one at all. under the ssi regime, disclosure was prohibited both by the statute that mandated nondisclosure regulations and by the nondisclosure regulations -- >> it wasn't prohibited by the statute until the regulations, right? >> that's correct, your honor. >> so it is prohibited by regulations. let's not play games spent i think we would prevail even under that interpretation because it's prohibited by regulations. under this court decision in robertsons and then sends it to address the question specifically center from disclosure i statute and this court said in robertson, a regulation that gave to the ministry of 42 exempt from disclosure after public interest wayne and in sims with the court had the stature to get to the cia director and instruction to protect sources and methods. and the court said in both cases that was specifically exempted by statute. >> your reasoning is, it apparently came as a prize to the government lawyer in the court of appeals. he said, i will be as good as i can. specifically prohibited by law here means the statute. again, the maclean is posting something applicable to the court of appeals doesn't know. >> i think the lawyer did say that with over 100 explain a regulation promulgated pursuant to statutory mandate would control, and that's what the federal circuit understood. >> you seem to be arguing that it's not something mandated by statute. you use the two foia examples that you gave to authorize or permit. so what is your position today? before the federal circuit it seems to have been this is statute, not regulations. now it's some regulations, what we don't know whether regulations that are mandated or regulations that are merely authorized. what is it? >> so let me be as clear as i can. and we believe that it is specifically prohibited first by statute which was the argument goes made clearly below, and in the briefs here and that disqualifies. second, we think that it is prohibited by regulations that are prohibited pursuant to statutory mandate, obligated pursuant to statutory mandate. if i could point the court's attention -- >> excuse me, i must've misunderstood. i asked you whether or not the employee could be terminated if only the statutes were on the boat in a relationship that about you said no? >> because there would be no to ssi designated. the court found that those with specifically, there were specifically nondisclosure was possibly authorized by statute it if i did finish the answer to justice ginsburg and to the chief. to the chief justice. at page 15a, the federal circuit said was regulations plummeted% to congresses express instructions would qualify as specific legal prohibitions. both arguments -- >> what was that go to from? >> the federal circuit's decision. regulations promulgated pursuant to congresses express instructions would qualify. >> would you qualify, because congress disagreed with robertson, didn't? ended in the mid-foia. >> congress committed foia, yes. >> as soon that we read the statute more or less through the way that foia does. the amended foia. the meet the amended foia criteria? >> we do. >> which probably does but which from and why? >> the senate legislative history consider this question and said that if -- i'm sorry. can i step back one second, your honor? we don't think that you need to meet those amended, the amended foia. but taking that as a given, but the senate report said -- >> it seems the eminently reasonable despite robertson. i mean, expensive what you were arguing, one of the two foia exceptions. to me which one. >> it's the exception that establishes particular criteria for withholding or refers to particular types of matters withheld. we think in the legislative history what the senate report said was that the trend by statute, one of two d. three would qualify and that's a statute that said the direct of us that they shall be responsible for protecting intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure but that was hosted. that's no difference for our statute and we think that even can we think -- >> yours is a bit more specific. >> so we think it follows that if the court relies on the statute that we meet that statute and, of course, that makes perfect sense but if the chief justice -- >> i'm not sure. i mean when you have a cia statute. they say you cannot disclose agents, sources. what this is a? >> it says -- >> sources and methods. there's another one that refers to critical infrastructure information. if i except those as being sufficiently specific or having sufficient criteria, i look at yours. and your says, their shelby regulations prohibiting the disclosure of information obtained or developed in carrying out a security. and now here's the criterion, if the undersecretary decides disclosing information would be detrimental to the security of transportation. it seems to me that could include everything from a sparkplug that is deficient in the airplane to a terrorist. i don't know how i would judge that. telling cia you can't disclose sources seems a lot more narrow than telling the department of transportation or homeland, what is it, dot, but i put in charge of airplanes, you have a regulation, detrimental to the security of transportation. i don't know, how is it decided? it sounds to me like that's quite a lot of broader sense so much can be detrimental to the security of an airplane. airplane. >> a couple of points on the. first of all the court interpreted the statute in robertson these officials specific. in robertson what the statute said was that administrator shah order information withheld from public disclosure when, in the judgment of the administrator, the disclosure would adversely affect the interest of the person it is not required in the interest of the public. >> that's the one before. >> that's the one this court found sufficient. >> but subsequensubsequen t to that congress committed the act as was just pointed out in a way this is yet to have specific criteria. >> but if i may it committed foia, but strikingly congress did not amend and include that language when it passed the csr a. >> i will look at that. i can do without on my own. i do of the question that only you can deal with. the question i had that only you can deal with is this. obviously, it's a matter of concern that someone could go around and say there are no marshals on this airplane. that is a matter of concern. so if, in fact, that was a real worried about blowing up airplanes for that reason, could be president civil use the second prong and sin executive order will require that to be kept secret? >> and. >> the president could do that. >> in doing that, does it automatically fall into the 400,000 regulations that govern defense department security information, or could he say, for the purpose of this statute, what we're talking about now, i determined that it should be kept secret. therefore, there is no prohibition against people and getting that information with swedish people, british people, all kinds of airline officials, et cetera? you're saying yes, he could do that under this second prong, yes or no? >> yes, because there's an executive order -- >> okay. if he can do that, then there is no worry. am i right, there is no worry? because if, in fact, this is going to lead to blowing up airplanes, all he is the issues that second prong. you say i'm not right. why not? >> because that is fundamentally inconsistent with the judgment that congress made that the ssi system should coexist with the classified information and with executive orders. what your honor is saying is that it doesn't matter that the ssi system that congress set up wouldn't work and can't function because the president by executive order to fill in the gaps. >> i'm not seeing anything like the. i am worried about a practical matter. i am worried about the decision of the court against you and getting to somebody blowing up an airplane. i suddenly thought as a practical matter that is not a serious worry because the president can always use the second prong able from disclosing the information that you don't want disclosed. and so far you've said i'm right, and i got into illegal art and. i'm not talking about a legal argument. >> i think such a system could be devised but i think would be a very odd construction of the statutes the court has before it to say that we're going to undermine and eviscerate the ssi system that congress by statute -- >> no, no. i'm just worried -- look. let me ask my question. my question is, if for other reasons i decided you were wrong, which i still have to face the problem of airplanes being blown up? i'm focusing on this because it's very important to me. you have answered that question, if for other reasons, and you of course think you're right, but you for other reasons i thought you were wrong, i wouldn't have to worry about that ethical problem because there is a second prong. it's important to me that you answer yes or no editing to answer to be yes, you are right as a practical matter. >> i think it is possible the president couldn't have duplicate the ssi system that congress set up to help to prevent that practical problem. >> to follow up, if the president proceed along that path, what would be the consequences with respect to the class of people would be able to access to this information? this would be classified and that only people with certain security clearances would be -- no? >> the system couldn't work if it was a class or information system. justice breyer system, the answer is we would be in uncharted territory. idabel as a fact of the president, the president have to duplicate the ssi system. it doesn't work under the classified information system that already exist because this is information that is very sensitive, yet has to be shared among people who are operating our transit system so that flight attendants need to know -- >> yes. but what's so hard to duplicate the ssi system to he signed an executive order saying to put a the ssi system and lightweight the problem we have here of people like mr. mclean revealing information is not a problem anymore because it is in protected by executive order. >> i think that that would work, but i have to say i'm not sure of the ins and outs. but if you think it is -- >> it would have one good effect, and that is it would make sure that the matter is important enough to occupy the president's intention. and -- attention and is not so insignificant to an agency that does is what many whistleblower, doesn't want any criticism of what it's doing can pump out these regulations. it would have that effect, wouldn't? >> it might have that effect but it think that's the judgment that congress may. what congress did was set up this ssi system under the president had authority under the executive order. knowing that the classified information system was set. and knowing in fact what these regulations said, the very regulations in basically the same form that we have today. when congress moved tsa into dhs as part of the homeland security act, these regulations were already there and congress have been before. >> if i could, he for you get gt away from this, and i understand your statutory argument to me, but the way that the president would do this if you wanted to do it would be but a new executive order, or in fact with his old executive order 13556, which deals with controlled unclassified information, is that what the president would use? >> i'm not sure the ins and outs what the president would have to do. this is information shared outside of the government which is what makes it a little tricky. they are shared with flight attendants the they are shared with local -- >> but i thought that class of information, controlled unclassified information, as opposed to classified information, could be shared outside the government and executive order 13556 deals with that and the president could simply make clear that the executive order applies to this kind of information. >> so i just don't know the answer to the. my sense is that it would take a lot more than that to duplicate the kinds of ssi system that has been in place for over a decade and a half and that congress signed off on. and so the exact form of the executive order, it's not something that, quite frankly, i think we contemplated here because there is this regime that congress had set up. >> you talked about what congress meant and said that. but the conference report says the language does not refer to agency rules and regulations. >> i think this is a situation, i'll make initial point and step back if i could and make a series of points on this. i think this is a situation in which the court with the in which the court with the right to do that history with some skepticism and here's why. what congress had before was a bill that said from the senate side it said prohibited by statute. had congress passed it wouldn't be making our radio to argument. what congress adopted was a provision that said specific prohibited by law, a phrase -- >> yes, but elsewhere in the same legislation it refers to prohibited by law, rule or regulation. >> it does. >> here it just had by law. elsewhere in the same statute that says by law, rule or regulation. what am i supposed to conclude from that? >> i think what you need to conclude from that is that the term highligh isla has two x. cy some rules and relations, and we think that it does. it excludes those that are internal agency regulations and regulations relating to agency organization, practice or procedures. that is the result of this court up in chrysler. what chrysler did was interpret the phrase authorized by law. with the court said the authorized by law in how they will establish meaning and the well-established meaning was that regulations them at the three-part test in chrysler, they were substantive regulations of alleged that time, recently wit within the contemplation with congress and properly promulgated, regulations counted as by law. the cour court distinguished inl agency interpretive rules and agency rules of organization, order and practice and said those were different but we think that is the distinction that is in the statute. >> if that is true and if that is so obvious, congress would not have had to have said, by law, rule or regulation in the of the provision. it could just as set by law and which is it would automatically follow. >> no, your honor. it's the formulation of sweets and agency internal rules and regulations. and that is precisely that sanction that the court drew in chrysler and precisely the distinction that we drop in the statute. when the statute says by bob rule or regulation it includes all lawfully promulgated regulations, agencies rules, procedure and practice. it includes statute and includes regulatioregulatio ns that meet the chrysler three-part test. so that is precise distinction that this court drew in chrysler and it is embodied in the statute. >> but chrysler, it just had law. law was not juxtaposed in the same sentence as another phrase that said law, ruling the commission to that would seem that juxtaposition of the two very different terms would seem to defeat the chrysler presumption. >> the reason i don't think it does is because it is equally consistent with precisely the distinction that chrysler true between rules, regulations with the force and effect of law on the one hand and internal rules of agency -- >> boy, that is subtle. that is so subtle that congress is going to draw the distinction between substantive rules and procedure rules by saying law here and law, rule, or regulation there. you can spend out that argument but the notion that this is what congress had in mind when it enacted this thing or that any member of congress had in mind when he voted for it, i find that hard to believe. >> the reason why i don't think you should find that hard to please is the following. by going from by statute to by law, congress went from a narrow structure that would have plainly foreclosed riggs and instead moved to a much broader formulation that this court had given meaning in chrysler. second -- >> there was one view that by going to law other than statute what was meant was to include judicial decisions. >> it does say that in the legislative history but that's precisely why think this court should do that with some skepticism. would not have included construction of statute this court may. so to say we sweep in the courts and took the statute i think is a little hard to swallow. if i could reserve the balance of my time. >> thank you, counsel. mr. cadieux -- copy all -- mr. katyal. >> thank you, mr. chief justice. we are not in chevron situation in which the agency is getting any sort of deference. as justice breyer's line of questioning, i think points out, that is a red herring, because congress in the whistleblower act that with precisely that. they gave a mechanism for the president -- >> mr. katyal, if the statute read, disclosure of information detrimental to transportation seed is prohibited and the tsa shall promulgate regulations to that effect, would that be pursuant to law under the statute? >> i don't think so but i'll explain why in a moment spent that's why want to know. are we going to get to one or congress has to look at every category of information every agency deals with and make a law prohibiting the disclosure of that individual -- >> not at all. with respect to the back of argument of the government, 114(r), we have two different arguments. one is that it doesn't have and the other is that it is not specific to your hypothetical does with the first end of the second. the congress is doing the prohibiting unlike 114(r) doesn't do anything to you need regular ship with respect to specificity, i think congress has two different options. one is to pass a specific law. the opposite of specific is general and to think the words detrimental to transportation security are not specific enough. if you need any illustration of that just looked at my friend's argument in the reply brief that the chief justice pointed out where he said that you could release information about how important flights were not covered. ssi regulations flatly call that ssi material, this is 49 cfr 1520. .. notwithstanding. it is only acknowledged them. the congress is ready to do precisely that with respect to the whistleblower notwithstanding all walls or the whistleblower protection act and pass the most general statute imaginable. >> so you want us to the cup foia. it would be okay for foia to withhold this information. do you think it's that particular type of matter to be withheld to you agree with the government that includes this kind of material? >> it may satisfy foia because of the first clause which is notwithstanding so you don't have to deal with this but here the statute doesn't say anything like that and so for that reason it was on the statute of their them to foia exemption the language doesn't talk about when the matter is kept secret by statute as opposed to regulation was so given that it's all tied in together it's very tempting to say i will tell you when it's a statute rather than a regulation and then you go read the exemption three and save the statute when one at least no discretion on the issue or number two it establishes particular criteria or number three it refers to the particular types of matter so we look at the statute to see if it does matter. that's what i thought i was supposed to do to decide whether it is the statute that's doing it for the regulation. the one that gives me the most trouble on those three is the last one because it does seem to refer to a particular type of matter. so, in very general terms. it so what do you think of what i've just said? >> understanding the specifics as to think about the opposite and detrimental to the security transportation yes if it refers to a particular it does refer to a particular matter and the statute is going to refer to some sort of particular matter when we think of something deeper in mind. >> i see that it quite critical infrastructure on one side of the line is on the other what about the analysis i went through is that the correct legal analysis in your opinion? who >> i think you can pick any definition. my worry and about doing it is that justice scalia was pointing out to my friend. i think the congress is saying unlike foia, the rules and regulations do not do the prohibiting and it's only one. that's why the phrase is prohibited by law. it wasn't anything like that in foia and indeed foia has two purposes. robinson said one is to empower the agencies with nine different exemptions and follow that of the agencies. >> that is your position is that after the congress enacted statutes, anything that came within the definition could be disclosed until congress passed another statute. that's what you wanted? >> i think as long as neither has been notwithstanding clause they see them before the whistleblower protection did act or it has a specific prohibition about the specific matters to be disclosed on mike the general prohibition here the detrimental transportation that's enough but there's also a more fundamental. >> where can i look to find examples before the regulation there with the information pertaining to airline flights that could not be disclosed. >> i am not sure but for example notwithstanding any other provision of the law withholds the public information and so that is a notwithstanding -- >> that doesn't apply to this respondent. the code violation of the matter relating to the specific danger. people like mr. mclean. it's a responsible reporting about maintaining the close connections in the congress. suppose that instead he contacted a reporter working for a foreign state-controlled news agency and the information wasn't released to the public so that the information was out there and could have been obtained perhaps by terrorists before congress was aware of this and before the agency was aware and before it was able to take corrective action is there any reason that wouldn't fall under the statute as you understand? >> i don't belief that it deals with the fact of the congress could circumscribe the act in various ways. one thing they did they said not just can congress pass a specific exemption with the notwithstanding clause they said the president by executive order can deal with precisely this problem and it doesn't require classification and it doesn't require the systems. make in your view of the president would get involved because of the very specific statutes. >> but they don't even get into it because it was in the regulation and not the statute and if it isn't in the statute and you don't even get into that. >> in which you have the 60,000 people that lead to the the fore in media or something like that but if the government believes they can solve that problem today by walking in the boardroom having an executive order but says the time material like the material here that air marshal information is exempt from the whistleblower protection act and the congress passed that and as the justice says it is the way to promote accountability. they don't want the unelected agencies to guard the henhouse. >> that may be but i doubt that they thought about the situation and i'm positive that they would be content with the possibility of the disclosure that wasn't really a disclosure for the public. >> i think that they have dealt with this question about how do you need an exhaustion requirement and so on. every single time they've amended the act for times and every time they said the problem is not too many whistleblowers but it's too few. the congress recognized that it's hard for someone like other whistleblowers to go to the media because they put their job at risk committee get fired and then they have to spend years litigating as if the lid again have just to get the job back. so of course congress can prohibit the disclosure of the information in general and they have. the question before the court here is have they done so with respect to the whistleblower protection act have they done something specific and have to deal with the whistleblower protection act and the answer to that we think is now. >> i'm concerned about your acceptance of the hypothetical that the whistleblower doesn't blow the whistle to anybody except the soviet union. do you really think that that's what this means when it says to take a personal action with respect to any employee because of any disclosure of information in which the employee or the applicant reasonably believes evidence is a violation don't you think it's implicit in that but he's disclosing it to somebody that could remedy the problem as opposed to an enemy? >> our simple point is whatever that standard is it is a constant in this case and if the court is worried about it at all they would provide mechanisms to deal with it either specific or nonspecific and the executive order that doesn't require -- >> i am troubled because the facts are very much in your favor here because he disclosed publicly. but under your scenario or under your position if he published every day until the executive order came out, the schedule of which flights air marshals will be on and he would come out and just say i think we need more arab marshals that would not be a violation of. >> the congress has dealt with that various points asking the question is this to lose the standard and every time they concluded not because it is hard for whistleblowers to come forward. the officials briefed us before and there have been 203 cases that have gone to the federal circuit and a favorable overview of whistleblowers. there've been 56 cases that have gone and again they have won three of them. they put all the eggs in the basket of what the whistleblower wants to think is a good disclosure. >> congress has looked at the situation and assess every time we need more. >> people don't want to bring this up but the staff and congress do consider these problems the right thing they say what the answer is and the members are informed. now in this particular case if you happen to read the conference report, you get the answer. it says what does it mean not specifically prohibited by law and then in both the house report and the senate report, it tells you go back to what we passed two years ago, namely the exemption and that's what it means. and so, that's why i got the thought that's what it means. and once you have that, you then see that the country is not going to fall apart because they wrote in the presidential exemption as well. succumb reading with the staff actually wrote and perhaps i am biased in that respect be leaving that the members of congress do think about these problems through staff because we have the answer to the case leaving only open whether it is specific enough or not and you make an argument that it is general. now why shouldn't i follow that approach? to make the conference report and its quoted in the briefing on page 24 this is like almost any case i've seen before in recent years. >> one is foia at the conference report. the senate report is somewhat against you because it picks up the foia were the foia exemption and says that's what this means. even though you don't want to do that. i would read all of them. >> let me address the senate report. we think even under the standard we don't think that this is a particular matter. assuming that i follow the justices approach leading to the conclusion that the government request the need and have to disclose it because it, the statute isn't referring to a particular type of matter to be withheld, not particular enough for you. >> the language in the first notwithstanding is enough to basically just racquet with respect -- >> just answer my question, you are saying that the government couldn't withhold it under foia. it should be read with the reversal in mind. page 154 has the text of the senate bill and it doesn't even have specifics in it so that's why we would caution against using that as the template for deciding what specific is. can i ask you how that would work out. if there's a problem in the airport where the tsa employee isn't being remedied so they want to disclose it. it has to be disclosed to people associated in the airport to be remedied so how would that be dealt with in the executive order to say this can be disclosed to security people at the airport and the local police maintenance people how would that be dealt with. the president can pick up the system under the exemption and the foreign affairs and there are parts of the society that may not fall in it but parts like this would so the president could designate that information subject to the exception to the whistleblower protection act but it certainly could with respect to the classification regime. my friend on the other side says we can't share information with people. as page 52 points of the classification regime is that enough to provide that as long as it is the defense of the homeland is the hypothetical. it can be modified as well. so if they really bb that you need to do this and to share the classified information with the unclear authorities they can do that. so, we are not required from the specificity requirement either in the executive order or in the congressional solution so that it's every job or everything like that. if classified information. you are saying don't use the revised exemption standards. 14 r. is narrow in that. so all of the exemption cases eventually become irrelevant. is that right? and you're doing that based solely. >> i think that if you adopted the foia standard i still think that this language that is detrimental to the security transportation is so capacious heaven knows what it means and he thought that what he was doing was the motion of the national security not detrimental. >> in the general language it is absolutely true you might say that as a general language but we are not on a clean slate and all of the exemption cases seemed to suggest that the language can meet the bar. so i am looking at this statute that prohibited the disclosure if it wasn't fair in the circumstances and reasonably related to the purposes of the consumer product safety act and we said that was enough. you look at it and say why was that not enough. >> the context is a very different than here because it's something about and how warring agencies to restart disclosures that wanted to keep in place the disclosure. the act has the reverse idea. between the rule and the regulation and the law is prohibited and that the congress has has by that phrase in the context of the statute is about empowering the general language there are two boxes in the chairman told to the foundation sounds very much like the mission statement and not anything more than that. >> if the congress wanted to reach your position and the choice of the words that were used in the second part of the statute as a statute instead of law to come out the same way? and there would really be no difference. >> it would be a difference in a supported language that says we didn't use the statute for a particular reason because they wanted to sleep and not simply the statute in the u.s. code but also the judicial interpretation. >> i'm sure that's what they all had in mind. [laughter] >> i think it is with the congress said into the congress votes on. it's the chief justice pointed out. the whole house, each separate house? >> the answer to that is yes but i would also say the other thing about it is that i do think that the congress actually what they were saying in the report made sense because the language is specifically prohibited by law and i think that with the congress was trying to do is sweep things in like the trade secret act even if the language might look general to an observer the words have been fleshed out. >> maybe this doesn't make sense but you have been focusing on the material that is covered. can't it also refer to the prohibitions specifically prohibited in other words actually has to say you cannot disclosed this you think that it is just specifying what this is. couldn't it could it equally be well specified how direct it must be specifically prohibited? spank this is the argument that comes up for the first time and it's never been advanced by anyone there is no support for it in the undecided history or the text of the statute. i think it specifically refers to such disclosure that it's not specifically prohibited by law so i think specifically as it is best read is referred to such a disclosure. justice breyer, you are asking about when earlier. it's important that i say that the court when they passed to the whistleblower act rejected the idea that 102 -- >> i think i'm talking about the report on the whistleblower act and the report on the whistleblower act that came two years after, the senate committee said those disclosures which are specifically exempt from the disclosure by the statute which requires the matters are held from the public in such a matter as to leave no discretion on the issue or by the statute that establishes criteria or refers to the particular types of matter that were withheld. that is word for word. did they vote on the senate committee report? >> justice breyer, the bill that the language is interpreting doesn't even have the word specific in it so the bill of the senate is using page 154 in that report and it doesn't have it in that and that's why they don't think that it's the best guide for what it means. now the language as you say about 102 d. three meet the specific prohibition and section 2306 of the actual whistleblower act with justice scalia the congress voted on xm's 102 d. three. they didn't buy the argument that the government has come up with right now that says that the senate report means that 102 d. three because they added this language so no provision of the chapter shall be construed to the authorities and responsibilities set forth in section 102. so, the congress itself didn't believe the notion that it was the specific. >> you might be right about that but offering the general question of driving to the interpreted wage between the exemption into the whistleblower act that's going to get everybody good and mixed up i think. >> was in your opinion is the wise way to go about it? assuming this statute isn't specific enough which is a better way to go about it to say the whistleblower act as special or tuesday interpreter both alike. >> either is plausible because they are different statute and it is set that we have two goals and one is about the agencies here nobody has said that and it never refers to an power empowering the agencies that the justice said in the congress with respect to the whistleblower act is concerned about incentivizing them to come forward and that is what the members said as well as the office of the special counsel brief. there is no brief -- >> does that suggest that we take the same language and read it in two different ways depending on the sense of the purpose of the undermining statute is that right? >> i think that is available to the court but again you can use the standard and there is no way -- >> that if the decoupling argument is essentially based on the notion that these two statutes have very different purposes and therefore we can take those different purposes and read a very similar language differently. >> of course it bothers to specify notwithstanding and then it goes through the detriment of the security and it doesn't specify the whistleblower act. congress can deal with this by having a more general -- >> i thought you were relying on the difference of the law. >> absolutely. so, that is our primary argument. >> thank you. [laughter] >> if there is nothing else for -- >> thank you, counsel. >> thank you mr. chief justice i would like to make two points. first the principal quest and we would like the court to decide is whether it is best prohibited by statute. i think it's interesting today that the justice, you pointed out that the precedent seems to require that and justice breyer you pointed out the history in the senate report seems to require that result. justice alito and justice kennedy you pointed out the practical effect of the respondent's position would seem to be agreed and mr. chief justice you pointed out and we come playfully agreed it's critical to the argument and it could just as easily and properly be expressed which is what it means here and the justice asked about criminal penalties but the statute itself doesn't provide the penalties but it does provide civil penalties. we think in a situation where we had the prior case law, the practical effect and plaintext to say that a statute that mandates nondisclosure regulations does not specifically prohibit disclosure is a very odd construction. the principal practical arguments that we have heard today are we don't have to worry because congress could have had an executive order to make it work. we think there is no dispute the system doesn't work under the construction. the idea that with the congress expected was a duplicate of order to mimic this scheme seems very odd to us and like it very odd way to construe the congressional statutes. there is a concern that there is a fox guarding the henhouse and that may be a concern with the whistleblower protection act but it has no application here where the congress itself mandated the nondisclosure regulations and did so knowing precisely what those regulations were when it did so. finally, there've been some suggestions that the facts are in the theater here. i would only say this. what the tsa employee has before them is not a full picture of the threat. it isn't a full picture of the resource constrained constrained constrained and it isn't a full picture of the other means that the agency is taking. and it isn't possessed with the same experience that tsa has. >> you were -- i assume that if we look at the friend on the other side, the s. s. i regulations are not bowl and void. they would still apply to everybody except for whistleblowers isn't that right? they would be a violation for anybody to make those disclosures unless he is doing it in a whistleblower capacity. >> yes, your honor that the standard of whistleblowing is do you reasonably bb that there is a specific danger to the safety. it's readily ascertainable and it isn't a judgment made in the full picture of the security consequences of it i suggest to the court court as we step back the right way to think about the case is that in a situation where the statute mandates nondisclosure just as the chief justice were to tell the marshal to borrow me from the courtroom that it would be perfectly reasonable to say the chief justice had expressly prohibited by the president in the courtroom even if the marshal rule for understanding. .. >> he wasn't talking about you. >> thank you, counsel. the case is submitted. >> a live look at rayburn house office building on capitol hill where house foreign affairs subcommittee will be holding a hearing today on the future of energy in africa. we'll hear testimony from officials with the state and energy departments, as well as agency for international development. some 30% of global oil and gas discoveries over the past five years have been in sub-saharan after from. -- africa. the hearing was scheduled to start noon eastern time. it has been put off a bit. we expect it to get started in the next 15 or 20 minutes or so. right now subcommittee members are votings on the house floor on the first of a couple of votes on the keystone xl pipeline, a measure introduced by representative bill cassidy of louisiana, who is in the midst of that runoff race with senator mary landrieu, who also pushed for and got the senate to schedule a vote next week on the keystone xl pipeline. so, when house members get finished with those votes on the floor, we expect this hearing to get underway. the house foreign affairs subcommittee meeting on energy in africa today. while we wait for it to get started, a briefing from the pentagon today. defense secretary chuck hagel announced today that the pentagon will make upgrades to the nation's nuclear deterrents program following reviews that uncovered systemic problems in the system ranging from officer training to weapons security. we'll show you as much of this as we can until the house hearing on energy in africa gets underway. [inaudible conversations]. >> health of the nuclear enterprise focusing on personnel, training, testing, command, oversight, mission performance, and funding. this morning with me here on the stage are individuals who have played a particularly important role in these reviews but probably most importantly, they have the responsibility to carry out the recommendations that came from these reviews and i, i believe you know that, after i leave this morning the deputy secretary, bob work, and others here will stay on the stage and answer more specific questions. but i want to thank secretary work, admiral, thank you very, very much for what you have done as vice chief of naval operations because your component is critical to this. admiral haney, thank you for your continued leadership at stratcom. your component also is an integral element of our strategic forces. our secretary of the air force, secretary james, who will be leaving with me right after this news conference and we'll go to minot air force base in minority, north dakota, and spend the day, for your continued leadership. general wilson, thank you for what you do with your force, and with your team. these individuals as well as other leaders have all been integral as i said to what we're doing and, the internal review, part of this. our internal and external reviewers, visited all of our domestic operational nuclear bases and many of their key support facilities. they interviewed hundreds of personnel officers, civilians and contractors. the review team leaders, from the external review part of this, are with us this morning and i want to particularly thank admiral harvey and general larry welch, and madelyn kratin for your leadership. madelyn headed up internal review and general welch and admiral haney headed up the external review. the work they put into this, the dedication, literally hundreds of hours was pretty spectacular. to all of your teams and those that supported you, we're grateful, thank you. today i'm announcing the results of those reviews. the actions that dod has already taken to carry forward and carry out the recommendations of those reviews. and the actions we are in the process of taking, to address the reviews findings and insure the continued safety, security and effectiveness of america's nuclear deterrent. first i want to be clear about the importance of the defense department's nuclear mission and its role in defending our nation. our nuclear deterrent plays critical role in assuring our national security and dod's highest priority mission. no other capability we have is more important. our nuclear triad deters a nuclear attack on the united states and our allies and our partners. it prevents potential adversaries to try to escalate their way out of failed conventional aggression. it provides the means for effective response, should deterrents fail. consistent with president obama's guidance, our policy is to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our nation's security strategy. and, to seek the peace and security of a world, without nuclear weapons. we'll continue to do both. but that doesn't diminish our responsibilities. as the president has made clear, as long as we have clubbing clear weapons, we will, and we must, insure that they are safe, secure, and effective. dod senior leaders and i are in full agreement. we're in full agreement, that today america's nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure and effective. that is thanks to the heroic efforts of airmen, sailors and marines who, despite sometimes insufficient resources and manpower, stretch themselves to maintain and guard and protect and freight the nuclear enterprise every day. however the internal and externly r ternnal reviews i ordered show consistent lack of investment and support for our nuclear forces over far too many years has left us with too little margin to cope with mounting stresses. the reviews found evidence of systemic problems that, if not addressed, could undermine the safety, security and effectiveness of the elements of the force in the future. these problems include manning, infrastructure, and skill deficiencies, a culture of micromanagement, and overinspection and inadequate communication, follow-up, and accountability by senior department and nuclear enterprise leadership. the root cause has been a lack of sustained focus, attention and resources, resulting in a pervasive sense that a career in the nuclear enterprise offers too few opportunities for growth and advancement. i know this from my many conversations with personnel in the nuclear force. for the past several months dod has been taking action to resolve the key problems and implement more than 100 recommendations from the internal and external reviews. some of these recommendations involve changes in organization, policies, and culture. others require an increase in resources, allocated to the nuclear mission. we must address all of the underlying problems. let me begin with the many steps we've already taken, starting with improving oversight. first i establish ad nuclear deterrent enterprise group which brings together entire senior leadership of dod nuclear enterprise, not only from here at the pentagon and strategic command in nebraska and air force global strike command in louisiana. previous reviews of our nuclear enterprise lacked clear follow-up mechanisms. recommendations were implemented without the necessary follow-through to assess they were implemented effectively. there was a lack of accountability. to finks that i have directed our analysts in dod's office of cost assessment and program evaluation to track both the status of the actions we're taking, the progress we're making, and the impact on the health of our nuclear force of the we will need to know what's working, and what's not. each month they will report their findings to deputy second tar work, who i asked to help lead this effort as well as other members of the review group who will all report to me approximately every 90 days. i will hold our leaders accountable, up and down the chain of command. to insure that words matched with actions. we must change the cultural perception of the nuclear enterprise which has particularly suffered in the air force. we must restore the prestige that attracted the brightest mind of the cold war era. so our most talented young men and women see the nuclear pathway as promising in value. that's why i granted the air force authority to elevate global strike command to a four-star billet. and the air staff's head of strategic deterrent and nuclear integration to a three-star billet. they will no longer be outranked by their non-nuclear counterparts, giving the nuclear air force the second to none leadership it deserves. last year secretary james, who has been a tremendous leader on this issue, personally award the first 25 nuclear deterrents operations service medals, a new medal, created to recognize the critical contributions that our nuclear force airmen make to america's security. cultural change must permeate down to the individual. with every airman in the nuclear enterprise knowing how much we value them and their service. we already are starting to match needed leadership and oversight with much-needed investments. earlier this year the air force established a force improvement program for global strike command. and reallocated over $160 million in fiscal year 2014. and 150 million in fiscal year 2015, to address the most urgent short falls in equipment, facilities and manning. some of this will fund incentive pay for critical nuclear assignments. helping to retain our best airmen and keeping our focus on what matters most, our people. the air force has exempted 4,000 airmen from manpower reductions. while adding over 1100 billets to forces under global strike command to fill gaps in operations, maintenance, security and other critical areas. our efforts must be sustained over the long term. which is why we are in the process of doing much more. dod will soon finish updating and standardizing how we conduct eninspections and elevate our personnel across the nuclear enterprise, eliminating micromanagement, redundancies and administrative burdens that overtax the force and ultimately harm the mission. the navy is reducing administrative distractions and is planning to hire more than 2500 workers and overall aging infrastructure at public shipyards. strategic weapons facilities and reactor training systems. meanwhile the air force is planning construction to improve weapons storage facilities. it will replace helicopters for the ballistic missile security forces and is in the midst of revamping how it trains, evaluates, and manages the nuclear force. both services are elevating and reinforcing the nuclear mission. including in the budget request they're preparing for fiscal year 2016. we will need to make billions of dollars of additional investments in the nuclear enterprise over the next five years. this new funding which will be detailed in our budget submission next year will be critical improving up keep and security while addressing short falls that undermine morale in the nuclear force. there isp more we need to do leading up to the nuclear modernization program in the next decade. over the last year i traveled to see missile areas at air force base in wyoming, and called launch control officers underground at melstrom air force base in montana. i visited the nuclear weapons maintenance in new mexico and officers at air force base in omaha. met with sailors on the ballistic missile submarine, uss tennessee in kings bay, georgia. right after this press conference as i noted. secretary of the air force james as i noted will leave for minority air force base in north dakota, to meet with missileers and bomber crews now stationed there. my message to them today and to their colleagues across the military is i am simple. other nuclear enterprise is foundational to america's national security and resources and attention we commit to the nuclear force must reflect. that we need our best people in this enterprise. i will now take a couple of questions before secretary james and i leave. and as i said, this team will stay behind and answer further questions that you may have. rita. >> mr. secretary you talked a little bit accountability. as you know several years ago secretary gates fired people and did similar reviews of the nuclear force, who, where is the accountability for the failure to, i guess improve and take the steps that were needed over this time? it has been quite a while, with steps that haven't been taken to do what was needed to improve the force. where is the accountability for those who didn't take those steps? just a quick question on the money. talking about billions of dollars. can you narrow that down a little bit, about how many billions of dollars and and is it being shifted in the air force budget or additional you will have to seek from congress? >> well, on the, on the budget issue let me address it this way. we'll get into obviously as i said the specifics on how much and where, and all that will be laid out in our budget that we present to the congress earlier this year. but over the next five years, future, the fiscal year is how we present our budgets, we're looking at 10% increase in the nuclear enterprise over each much those years. right now we spend about 15 to 16 billion on our nuclear enterprise. so if that gives you some kind of range. on the accountability eshoo, there are already has been accountability. in a number of instances in specific areas as we are holding people accountable. there will be more. as i said, here in my remarks and i think backgrounders most of you received yesterday, this is also a process as we work our way through. accountability as we restructure. again i go back to a comment i made. i know secretary james feels strongly about this, our air force chief of staff general mark welch does, all our leaders do, accountability is key to everything. it's critical. you can have the structure. you can have the process. you can have the resources. but if you don't have the accountability it will unwind. so everyone held who is holding today responsible positions -- by the way, this cuts across all lines. it is not just the nuclear enterprise, it is all this institution, who holds responsible positions is accountable and will be held accountable and. we will continue to make the adjustments where we need to make them. >> mr. secretary? >> david. >> we're told one of the things one of the panels found was there was a situation where there was one copy of a wrench needed to attach warheads to the missiles. one wrench, 450 missiles at three bases. is that true? and if so, how did the, how did the air crews manage with just one wrench? >> well it is true and i think it is indicative, david, of the depth and width of what, has happened over the last few years. as i said in my statement, a lack of focus. little attention to some of these specific areas. it wasn't just resources. partly it is cultural. as i have noted a number of things, people taking their eye off of the ball a little bit, recognizing, it is important i think, especially for the american people, that this did not affect safety, security and effectiveness of our nuclear weapons. as you know we're talking about delivery platforms be as opposed to nuclear warheads. but, your point is exactly right because it's reflective and indicative of a system been allowed to kind of slowly backdown hill that we have seen in the reviews as result of intense reviews internal and external, these kind of things which you mentioned about the wrench come out. now how did they do it? they did it by federal expressing the one wrench around to each base. they were creative and innovative and they made it work but that is not the way to do it. we now have a wrench for each location. we're going to have two wrenches for each location soon. so but that is one of many of the issues and -- issues and problems that we found. >> one follow-up question everybody is asking. what happened to your cheek? >> well i had an incident with a cabinet door in the kitchen. i know that is, i know that is not an exciting story but depends on the audience as to what i tell people. but, i have thought over the years always better to tell the truth. so that's what happened. i engaged a, the corner of a cabinet in my kitchen and, it didn't turn out well for me but it is going to be all right and no stitches and it all heals and but i have had more bandages than this on my face in my career and been in tougher spots. >> a bad cabinet meeting. >> you all are too clever. i wish i would have thought about that line but that's, i'm sorry not to make it more interesting but, actually general dempsey asked me when he came back what happened. and his response was, that is not very interesting, the explanation but -- i will take one more and then we've got to go. >> mr. secretary, over the years we heard very similar words from your predecessor. how do you convey to the american public that this time will be different? each time we've heard you know, we're going to make the nuclear enterprise -- is this because the nation's been at war and there hasn't been enough bandwidth and officials have been diverted in their attention? how can you explain that this will be different this time? >> well, i think it is, all of the things you mentioned and number of things that mentioned in my statement. let's start with what this enterprise has been focused on mainly, the last 13 years, two large ground wars. and when you have that situation, when america has been at war, and has had large numbers of troop commitments in those two wars, when a nation is at war, that's a focus. that isn't the only reason i think this nuclear enterprise has been kind of allowed to back downhill a little bit. it is that. it is, not paying attention where we should have in some areas. our young people we rely on, we rely own all of our people. the quality of the people of an institution is the institution. and, if, if career paths are blocked or seen as not conducive to promotions and young people with a lot of focus and commitment, where they want to go with their lives and commitments and, if they see that not as a very attractive way, that's going to get them to where they want to go. that is going to affect where we are. i think too, the good news about this is, there has been no nuclear exchange in the world and, that is the whole point of deterrents. that is the reason this triad system is so critical for our security. and i think, there has been, nationally a sense of just taking it for granted. so what? there is not going to be a nuclear exchange. the big problem is what is going on in the middle east, north africa, terrorism, al qaeda. the wars, that is the threat to america. yes, that's a threat to america. it still is. but, we have, just have kind of taken our eye off the ball here. so i think this is, this is the right time to have this reassessesment, this review. the seriousness of this issue has always been there. i don't think anybody, anybody has diminished the seriousness of a nuclear threat but i think it is those things and many other things. the good news is, there is nothing here that we can't fix. the good news is, that none of this is endangered america, americans, or put our security at risk. that is all good news. but, if we don't pay attention to this, if we don't fix this, eventually it will get to a point where there will be some questions about our, about our security. so that is all the good news. and, it is just, i think, it is not unlike institutions and in life and in the world. we've got so much going on in the world and so many new threats. there is convergence of challenges and threats in the world i don't know if my lifetime i have ever seen it. all you need to do is your business records it every moment of every day. and it is all coming at us at once. we have to manage this but we can't lose sight of a long-term either. at the same time, we manage through these crises and we lead through coalitions and other means but we've also can not take our eye off the ball -- >> let me begin by apologizing for the lateness of convening this hearing. we did have votes on the floor and members are making their way back and i appreciate the patience of our witnesses and guests n a 21st century energy has become vital to modern societies. we all know that. we no longer have to shop for food each day because refrigerators keep food cold and preserve longer. whether in homes and restaurants during the process of trade, cell phones, computers, television and other electronics require electrical power to allow us to lead more productive lives in the modern world. as we've seen even in the ebola crisis and epidemic it is necessary that medicines and plasma be kept cold so they don't lose their potency. both unfortunate and absolutely unnecessary that more than hatch a billion africans, especially in rural areas, live without electricity. perhaps the great irony is that africa has more than enough energy capacity to join the rest of the world in utilizing modern technologies that require energy supplies. pl 30% of global oil and gas discoveries of the past five years alone have been in sub-saharan africa yet currently only 290 million out of 914 million africans have access to electricity and the total number lacking such access continues to rise. bioenergy, mainly fuel, wood, charcoal is still a major source of fuel. hydropower accounts for 20% of total power supply in the region but less than 10% of its estimated potential has been utilized. this hearing today will examine the current and prospective impact of u.s. government programs, such as power africa and electrify africa as well as private and international energy project. i thank our very distinguished witnesses who i will introduce momentarily their leadership in the making dream of electrification of africa increasing reality. chairman royce and ranking member engle and i introduced hr 2548, the electrify africa act. this legislation seeks to build the african power sector from increased production to more effective provision of energy. 2548 passed the house this past may but has not had action yet in the senate. days after the act was introduced, the administration i'm very happy to say announced its power africa initiative and has committed up to $7.81 billion in various types of u.s. technical and credit assistance and other aid to build the capacity of the african power sector. . . that produce indoor pollution that all too often contributes to sickness and even death. the current situation cannot continue much longer. even with 13% of the world population to represent only 4% of the worlds energy demand for this situation thankfully is changing. according to the report by the international energy agency since 2,000 sub-saharan africa has a rapid growth and rising energy used by some 45% so that is a good trend. we often speak of the rise of the economy but for that to be truly realized it must match the growing demand for power. so cell phones that are transforming all forms must be charged. the consumer goods come in the growing african middle class purchasing needs come electricity. africans are increasingly unwilling to accept the blackouts and power surges that have made life so difficult for so long. they know that this doesn't have to be their life in fact perhaps they've heard about power available to be available to them just like everyone else. in the industrialization that must no longer be used for a reason why they are behind in the process of industrialization or power generation. today is more to an adequate or unrealistic regulation, lack of finance for 62nd projects, under investments even when financing is available. the power grids high-cost for energy and other factors. these obstacles can and must be overcome and they've require additional international collaboration, public-private partnerships and the will of government other citizens. we will not get to the point that we believe it is necessary over night but we will get there if we do it to take serious measures now and work to bring this down. with regular electricity, young students will be able to study under electrical lights but also use computers to advance their studies. filmmakers will keep food fresh or what refrigerators and stretching them further and hospitals i've been in, the chief of staff for the committee we've been in so many hospitals where the generator would keep the supplies cold as they must remain so. they will achieve power in africa in private projects in the supply and energy in africa is brighter and it has been with diligent efforts that we need to see today. so i now yield to my good friend for any comments he might have various >> thank you mr. chairman and your leadership when you say the prospect of energy in africa is brighter in large part because of the relentless leadership so i want to thank you and the reading number for your work and for the hearing and think the witnesses for being here today. it's obvious that the lack of power is able as many negative consequences and constrains economic growth and undermines the resource development and hinders the quality of life progress and in particular the quality of social service so the impact both on the economic prosperity as well as its ability to meet many of the urgent challenges by the lack of energy and this will give us an opportunity to really assess the perspective into the current impacts of the power and electrify. now to the ranking member. >> i tell you on several accounts and occasions in the public of congo i contracted and unwanted visitor in my body and had to go to the hospital and that's when i found out the need for refrigeration and the need for antibiotics and actually started my journey into trying to shift antibiotics and other medicine was my own personal experience having none and the importance of energy into the importance of having -- ironically here's a country the republic of congo producing quite a bit of illegal that they didn't have enough at the time i think someone donated lights to them and they didn't even have enough to generate electricity. they fill little coke bottles full of gasoline and kerosene. here is a country that is of great natural wealth and get its own people are very poor and restrictive in terms of what they can get and it is mind boggling and i know that a being from texas some refineries in my district have the gasoline in the united states and i was marveling at the lack of infrastructure for the ability to harvest their own oil for their own needs and so i've always been interested in what a country is in africa versus what it needs and the outcomes of when you don't have that infrastructure and you don't have that ability to refine and it's unfortunate. i know that there is a great deal of what people would call corruption but on the other hand the lack of knowledge and how to take the natural resources and make sure that it benefits their own people. and it's kind of sad to see that you have great wealth and great poverty and little electricity. the year that i went back i had the french had donated to these lights or solar powered lights so that when you drive down the road now at least you have street lights and their individually ironically powered by the sun. but the time before that i was driving down and there were lights from the car and you could see all these people walking down the streets and the only lights they had were a little bit alarming and i think that is why this hearing is important and that's why we need to use it in their own countries i would like to yield to the distinguished member of the committee. >> thank you very much especially on the leadership of calling this particular hearing. you and i have worked a long time on this issue and we are clear in our understanding that one of the most important needs on the content is building the infrastructure supports the type of trade that you and i would love to see happen can take place. i want to think that distinguished witnesses including the senior u.s. government officials from the state department, usaid and the u.s. doe as well as experts in the civil society. i look forward to hearing the perspectives on the challenges of energy resource development in africa including an assessment of the economic national security and human development aspects related to the energy sector. we know president obama doubled access to electricity and the duration of the power source to provide more than 10,000 megawatts of electricity and increase access to at least 20 million more households and businesses. additionally, during this historic u.s. africa leader summit in august of this year that you you like to vacation in africa was a central point of discussion with african heads of state. in the midst of peace talks president obama announced a further commitment of $300 million to the power africa initiative. in this new commitment it would increase the initial pledge of 10,000 megawatts to 30,000 megawatts and the hope is that this creates an opportunity to reach up to 60 million households and businesses. so, based on these early successes it is critical that we continue to invest in initiatives that bring increased electricity to the african continent. that's why i was proud to join the chairman as well as the ranking member to introduce the electrify africa act and we are hopeful that that will move forward in the senate so i look forward to today's testimonies and i'm interested in what's more congress can do. i would like to introduce the three distinguished experts all of whom have made major contributions in the past and present who can speak to the subject so we thank you for being here. having previously served as the principal deputy assistant secretary for the office of the policy and international affairs from nine to 2013 prior to joining the energy department he worked as a senior fellow at the brookings institution focusing on energy security and other foreign-policy issues. they served on the staff of the national security council and in a variety of other positions working in the united states at the u.s. department of energy and the council on environmental quality. we will then hear from eric began at the assistant administrator for the bureau of economic environment and in march of 2011. they asked the administrator to serve. he brings to the position more than 25 years of the private sector experience working in the emerging markets especially those in africa he is also founded an investment banking and consulting firm focused on emerging markets and served as a commissioner of the u.s. helping to enhance the likelihood and worked for citibank in tokyo. and we will hear from the doctor that serves as the deputy assistant secretary in the energy resource. he's responsible for voting on the transformation of energy systems to achieve greater efficiency and performance through the use of market forces and innovative financing that leads to the efforts to reform electricity power systems and develop more reliable national and regional electricity markets. he is a long history of u.s. government service in the energy field having worked for the energy research development agency, the u.s. department of energy and usaid. so thank you for being here today. >> good afternoon chairman, ranking member and members of the subcommittee i'm pleased to be here to testify on behalf of the u.s. department of energy on the energy in africa. the department of energy international affairs focuses on some of the world's most pressing global energy challenges from promoting energy security to foster international collaboration in science and technology from addressing the market volatility to facilitating long-term efforts to mitigate climate change. we work to leverage the expertise of the department of energy headquarters and the national laboratories in energy technologies, markets and policies so in that context i'm very pleased that the interest of the subcommittee and propose to sketch some of the major contours in those markets and the department activities. africa as the chairman noted has experienced rapid economic development, sub-saharan africa is the second greatest region. the world reports the growth rates in sub-saharan africa continue to rise and forecast of 5.2% for the current year. many african nations are positioned to become increasingly important both as energy consumers and producers. the international agency into the report estimates that the sub-saharan african economy will quadruple in size growing by 80% between now and 2040. even with robust economic energy development in the coming years they will meet the needs of the people unless they can find new policies, technologies and investments most importantly to spur sustained energy development. while 950 million people in africa will gain access to it over half a billion will still lack. if i turned to oil development in africa it has long been an important player in the global market and its role will only grow in the coming years. production in the region has doubled since 1990 and accounts for 6% of the production and sub-saharan africa accounted for almost 30% of the discoveries of the last five years. sub-saharan africa is projected to grow from 5.3 million in 2013 to approximately 6.2 per day by 2020. at present more than 80% of the production is exported that with economic growth, driving demand for oil we expect it will shift to greater domestic use. on the national gas front of major discoveries are generating excitement in the global markets and will provide fuel for africa's growing economies. among the countries with the most important emerging gas developments are tanzania, uganda and madagascar are where there've been major steps made towards commercial development of newly discovered resources in the recent years. in the power sector electrification rates in sub-saharan africa unfortunately they are among the lowest in the world as it has been noted. north africa has electrification rates of over 99% of meaning 620 million people lack access to the modern services. and as the chairman noted this translates into very concrete impacts on people's livelihoods and their lives. so with this context when president obama underscored the commitment by launching the initiative he also asked for the engagement and so in june of this year the secretary together with his ethiopian counterpart the minister of energy and water can be in a u.s. africa ministerial. it drew together 500 participants, 42 african countries, all of the relevant pieces of the government and 20 ministers from northern and sub-saharan africa and both african and u.s. companies along with civil society, academia and other organizations. we focused on clean energy focus on clean energy technologies, increased power generation, electrification and regional power poles and the requirements for finance. in the wake of the african ministerial the department of energy is working with the leading economies to help them meet their development goals our laboratory is working with the ministry of energy and water to deliver train the trainer programs which will help to make available more instructors and technicians to develop photovoltaic systems. into a rehab energy efficiency pr working with a number of countries through the economic community of west african states to develop an efficient policymakers to box. this will bring together information on standards and labeling and can help raise energy efficiency across that region in. in the natural gas arena in addition to working with the government of tanzania to develop natural gas training for university students and government officials by counterpart, the acting assistant secretary for fossil energy will travel to the series of sub-saharan african countries in early 2015 in order to engage on the policy environments that are taking shape in some of these critical frontier countries. the department of energy has a strong interest to forge closer links between and among the counterpart agencies and african governments and we also feel it absolutely essential in of the investment needs to work very closely with u.s. companies. we bring to the table particular expertise in regards to energy technology, markets and policies and we view this as a strategic opportunity for the united states come up with the companies come a companies, and also for our partners in africa. so the bottom line is energy is the cornerstone of an african strategy for poverty reduction and economic growth where my colleagues on the panel are more expert. the doe recognizes economic growth is closely intimately linked to the availability of energy services to meet the needs of african companies and citizens. that is why we are working with private sector and public sector partners both in the united states and across africa to help them unleash its full energy potential for the benefit of african citizens and also for the benefit of the united states. thank you for the opportunity to be with you today. >> members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. president obama's initiative and the leadership of the congress including members of the subcommittee highlighted the extent to which we are all united in addressing one of the core obstacles to africa's development, the lack of access to electricity. as all of you have noted within enabling policy environment private sector will not invest in the african economies and without private sector investment, local economies, entrepreneurs and citizens cannot thrive. power africa, the whole of government effort by a dozen u.s. government agencies is working to address this obstacle more than 80 have committed to invest over $20 billion in the power sector development. power africa has already helped close deals that will generate more than 3,000 megawatts of energy providing power for more than 5 million african homes and businesses. for example with our support the nigerian government privatized five generations and ten distribution companies. these companies in addition to other planned investments and privatizations are expected to produce 8,000 additional megawatts of power in the coming years. at the same time another member of the power africa team committee overseas private investment corporation has already connected to the co- committed $410 million in financing and insurance to private sector partners projects. for example, it's $250 million financing for the windfarm in northern kenya will become the continent's largest wind project when it is complete. power africa focus countries committed to undertake tough policy reforms in their energy sectors. they have $498 million in the electricity sector. this includes the tough policy reforms needed to create a viable sustainable energy sector in order to stimulate private investment. africa has been able to cut a life commitment in excess of $4 billion for the development of their energy sector. power africa's success extends to u.s. companies as well. for example, general electric is one of the companies making commitment in the situation that i just described. as another example, during meetings in a nigerian trade mission to the united states that was hosted by the u.s. trade development agency these discussions enabled the company based in liberty lake washington for nearly $400,000 to nigerian distribution utilities and they are discussing right now and other order of upwards of $2.6 million. there is a sponsored follow-on activity plan expected to lead to more sales. power africa is also facilitating investment in the small-scale energy solutions that are so crucial to reaching the rural communities with no access to those national grid. the development foundation and its partners chose 22 winners of power africa is off grid challenge. a competition that promote innovative solutions for off grid energy. in another small-scale projects with an outside impact and an example of something that one of you mentioned, power africa is funding the procurement of generators for a treatment unit and other facilities in liberia that will power water pumps, lights and even the washing machines used to clean both workers and hospital scrubs. some of these basic building blocks that we need to help feed this epidemic at its source. at this year's african leaders summit as mentioned, president obama renewed a commitment to the commitment to the initiative and pledged to seek a new funding level of up to $300 million in annual assistance to expand the reach of power of africa across the continent and in pursuit of the new aggregate goals of 30,000 megawatts of additional capacity, thereby increasing access if we hit that goal by up to 60 million households and businesses. other partners also seize the opportunities in the summit to announce major new commitments to power africa. today as it is noted, $600 million have access to electricity. together with our partners in africa and other donor nations into private businesses, power africa is working to greatly increase access to reliable clean air energy. thank you mr. chairman, ranking member and members of the subcommittee for your report and your leadership of this very important initiative. i look forward to your questions today. >> i would like to now yield. >> think you transmit and subcommittee members. i appreciate the opportunity to discuss the energy future and how we are using our foreign policy tools to support stability and economic africa to increasing access to the groundwork for the stable energy sector. i'm here representing the bureau of energy resources at the state department that focuses on the energy equities around the world and seek to elevate and integrate. first i would like to thank the house for house for their intention to the issue of electrician power as demonstrated through the africa act. clearly africa is going through a historic transformation in the state department's bureau of resources is working hard to help african governments responsibly is a lot their convention a and renewable resources. and to accelerate the reform of their electricity systems. which will then encourage private investment, support economic growth and increased electricity access. within our interagency team and i should say we have a very strong energy agency team about one of the strongest in my 40 years of government working on these issues. within a framework of the energy bureau has focused on three main areas. one, promoting good governance as it relates to managing oil and gas resources, but this is also very important for the electrical sector as well. increasing access to electricity and increasing the use of renewable energy technologies. once returned to governance. governance and transparency are the key security as well as economic concerns. poorly managed resources can stifle development and the corruption. with the goal of helping the companies avoid these issues the energy governance capacity initiative offers them on the ground of technical assistance and training in the region and in the united states. on some of the most difficult issues facing the sector. for instance management of revenues and corporations and best practices into the law and regulations, protecting people from the sector impacts. another program we are engaged within liberia, sierra leone, so malia, tanzania. the large offshore gas discoveries in mozambique and tanzania which we are all aware of has global, regional and national significance and we have been working out ways that we can ensure the sound development as the resources are developed. transparency is a key component of good governance and we are actively involved in the extracted industry transparency initiative. to support transparency and management of natural resources. through the civil society they work together to produce reports that disclose information about a country's natural resources and it was allowing the citizens to see how much the natural resources are worth and how they are used. currently there are 18 countries in africa that are compliant and four of them are the candidates countries. we have heard about the extent of the poverty in africa and we are not only working through power africa that we are involved and the multilateral efforts such as sust

Transcripts For CSPAN3 Politics Public Policy Today 20150115

office as well. joe served in a number of different positions as bill has, ranging from committees and the house to the office of management and budget in the administration, and has served as chief economist, staff director and variety of those positions and served with bill on the bipartisan policy center's debt reduction task force which came out in 20 10, which came out with a plan to reduce the debt which is inherited some of the proposals and policies that bill has been talking about up here with tax reform, entitlement reform. so joe you're jumping in the middle here, but we were talking -- >> the question was -- >> in terms of priorities in the federal budget and the growth in the entitlement programs and interest payments and how that's crowding out some of the other pieces. and so what do you think of the federal budget in terms of how it addresses our priorities as a country and where you see it moving forward? >> well, i assume that bill probably used this word already three times, the budget is not sustainable. >> i didn't. that's first time. >> geez. >> i was getting ready to use that term, though. >> okay there you go. well, i beat you to it. the budget as it stands now is not sustainable. so is it meeting our needs? i think by definition, no. we have to make changes so that we are not, cue the slay piece piling up debt to the extent going forward that people like you are not going to be able to pay enough taxes to service that debt and also to do the things that the country needs to do. so that having been said, you look at what the budget does, and you come to the conclusion that there have got to be some changes. now, among those changes we will need to pay more taxes. there is no doubt about that. >> and right before you walked in, joe, bill made the point that we could do it all with taxes. i don't think knowing as his republican credentials that he's recommending that and knowing what he supported under -- but -- >> yeah i -- bill probably also got into this too, and i apologize for being late. that's mostly down to me i should have been watching e-mails instead of playing with my granddaughter. among the problems that we have on the spending side of the budget is an unsustainably rapid growth of health care costs. i know that there are folks who are saying you know hoe sana singing hoe sana and saying that we solved that problem. i don't believe we have. and i believe in a few years, you know, two, three four years down the road we'll see that what we have seen is a little blip in the growth curve and it is -- even with the most optimistic forecasts now it is still health care costs are still growing unsustainably. we have to do several things because of the growth of old folks like me, the growth of the number of old folks like me relative to the population even if we reduce the rate of growth of health care services per person, the number of persons is growing rapidly enough that health care costs will continue to rise. so we pay more in taxes, we face the reality of a growing population of people dependent upon health care, particularly through health care services particularly delivered through medicare. and that means that we will need to make adjustments in the other direction elsewhere on the spending side of the budget. so, you know, my usual one sentence answer is we're going to have to take every dollar that isn't nailed down and some that are if we're going to get out of this nest. and why don't i stop there and we can -- >> sure. a component that both of you touched on is -- we have a room full of millennials here, very relevant issue given the programs are so -- >> i'm a millennial too just a different millennium. >> that so many of these dollars that we're talking about do go towards the generation that you are in, and that all of us will eventually hopefully be in but not towards the -- us in our earlier years. what do you think of that discrepancy and how that can be adjusted? >> you look at -- i'm sorry, you were asking me? >> either yeah. whoever wants to jump in first. >> go ahead, joe. and then i'll -- >> i would say the following. we have a lot of problems in terms of the performance of our economy, people talk about the problem of growing inequality. that is a reality, which it seems to me is most painful when you look at the fact that standards of living are not growing as rapidly as we would like. in the very near term, we have -- we have recently had and looking forward for at least a little while job opportunities have simply not been as available as we would like. eventually i believe we will get past that but incomes have not been growing very rapidly. if our society is going to continue to have growing standards of living to which, you know, we all aspire we are going to have to make sure that as many of our population as possible are going to have skills that are necessary to advance in the workforce. that raises issues, all the way from preschool education where we are, even relative to some competitors around the world sadly deficient, just in terms of access. all the way through the quality of education going through secondary school and into college where interestingly enough the u.s. population overall continues to be doing relatively well with respect to post secondary attainment, with respect to -- in comparison with other countries, but that's because of people like me older people, who have degrees where as our younger people -- the rate at which we are conferring degrees on our younger population is falling behind other countries around the world. so we need to do a better job in post secondary education and that includes serving first generation, second generation americans, there are still a lot of kids out there and please don't be offended if i call you kids, i still call my 40-year-old grandchildren kids, we have kids out there who have not had anyone in their families get a post secondary degree or attend at all, which raises a lot of issues with respect to the support they need to get into school to have a path to paying for it and then to get themselves through. we have people in their 20s who started but didn't finish or didn't start but clearly are capable of attaining degrees. and we need to find ways to help them to complete degrees while they support their families, while they have multiple obligations in time, which makes it very hard for them to attend school. those challenges are going to cost money. we have complaints from some quarters that our elementary and secondary schools are extremely inefficient. and we could save money that could help us to pay the bills to do a better job there. to some extent that's true. but you can't make that argument with respect to preschool. we don't even have the classrooms, we don't have the teachers, we have to start that from the ground up. and that is not cheap. >> bill, joe mentioned in college education and something we have been working on a little bit at the bipartisan policy center as we have a commission on retirement security and personal savings that is co-chaired by former senator kent conrad and joe lockhart who is an official in the bush administration. they have been discussing personal savings and the first step of that often is student debt because many students exit college with a lot of debt some don't even finish and then have the debt carried over and it is sort of inhibiting their ability to save and pursue their career and so talking about some of the challenges that joe talked about, but also the savings issues and student loans what are your thoughts? >> at the risk of having the millennials out here throw things at me let me -- >> i hope you're accurate. >> let me be -- not disagree with joe entirely, but let me just -- i know you're all college students let me just say not everybody needs to go to college. some of the skills out there i asked purdue, lane grant college where i did my undergraduate work, mitch daniels the president of purdue university now who used to be omb director here governor of indiana had a major study that they conducted with the national academy of sciences i believe. and skilled worker ss, plumbers, pipe fitters making more than his college graduates long-term. all i'm suggesting and here is getting into student loans is that while i agree that those who want to go to college should go to college, need to go to college, there -- we shouldn't by creating certain incentives through a student loan program that makes it -- creates that debt on you out there, we shouldn't be incentivizing the creation of additional debt, which means that we shouldn't have -- should have other opportunities besides a four-year graduate degree and i'm not taking anything away from what you do and what you're being good students that you are, but just recognize they're out there, there are other people that do not need to go to college and what we should be focusing on from a long-term perspective is developing those skills skilled development is critical. i want to come back to one issue, though, broader, back to the tax issue, shai mentioned at the outset that another component of the federal budget that is fast growing and will continue to -- will grow fast depending upon something that is right now being controlled and almost by global economics and that is interest rates that(aai the fastest growing component of the federal budget will be if interest rates normalize back at 5% will be just paying the interest on the public debt. our public debt right now is close to about $17 trillion -- total gross debt $17 trillion. and one thing that that debt means to me it is a tax, it is a tax on future generations. it is not a -- it is, again, here, you're getting screwed doubly. your social security benefits are not going to be there, and more importantly you're going to have to pay for that debt that we're accumulating today. either pay the taxes today and now in fairness, i would say you can't get yourself out of this without increasing taxes today as well as -- or else the taxes -- you get the taxes in the future on paying that debt. and more importantly, and the one that really concerns me about the debt is that we're at something like about 74% of gdp on debt held by the public. and that historically has rounded up closer to 40% of gdp. current projections, even though the deficit the annual deficit is coming down, debt held by the public continues to grow in the near future. and that's with some optimistic assumptions about economic growth. and the real problem the real problem, joe heard me say this, shai heard me say this before, we have an old senator that tends to get himself in hot water a lot particularly with aarp aarp, senator simpson from wyoming likes to say that we have a treaty with taiwan and that treaty with taiwan says that should china attack taiwan we would have to go to war with china to protect our treaty with taiwan. and today we have to borrow from china to go to war with china. little bit embellished, but the truth of the matter is, of that debt, held by the public, not inirgovernmentin inner governmental debt, of that debt held by the public today, about 56% of it is not owned by americans. thank you very much. we're still a good place to invest. but we lost some of our sovereignty. we had debt held by the public after world war ii our generation, but we owed it to ourselves. war bonds. that's not the case today. it is a global economy. and so not only is your social security at risk not only is your taxes at risk, your sovereignty -- control of your sovereignty of the country we love is somewhat at risk because of the -- >> i want to add one thing to what bill said which i agree completely, including the point that not everybody needs to go to college. we need to do a better job of having those people prepare to go from high school out into the world, not doing a good job of that. >> i agree. >> i wanted to add one thing that bill remembers congressman john brad from south carolina for whom i worked for four years, wonderful gentleman, no longer in the congress, wish he were, he used to say if you want to erode public respect for government, the easiest way to do it is to build up a substantial public debt. because one of the complaints you hear from people is i pay all this money in taxes and i don't get anything back for it. and you get the national defense, you get your highways, you get food inspection you get lots of things that people don't think about. but to the extent that people are paying taxes, for the purpose of paying interest on the debt they're exactly right. they aren't getting anything back for that. i always used to say that the one thing you get for the taxes you pay to pay interest on the debt is you prevent the acme collection company from backing the truck up to the white house and repossessing the furniture. that's all you get. you don't get any highways. you don't any food inspection. you don't get any national -- >> mm-hmm. >> you also lose i mean we could go on for a long time. you lose a lot of flexibility with respect to making policy in the future. it would be nice if we didn't have to go to china to borrow money to go to war with china. one little point embellishing on that a little bit, the -- the share of our debt right now, which is held by foreigners by your number, 56%, go back 15 years and it was sufficiently lower than that. over the last 15 years of the money that we borrowed, $2 out of $3 was from foreigners. >> that's a good point. that's a good point. >> so we touched on a lot of different budgetary issues. i want to ask about one or two that are moving forward potentially in this congress today. trying to tie this back into the political reality and one of the issues that has been on the table over the last couple of years, might be again in this congress, is tax reform, specifically corporate tax reform. and just in the last couple of days, an issue that has gotten a decent amount of attention in the washington bubble is something called dynamic scoring. and it's something that is -- it is a complicated concept, but joe and bill being the budget experts they are, i thought it would be interesting if you could give a quick explanation, maybe joe of that means and the issues there and bill if you want to weigh in on what you think about that issue. >> i went to a luncheon in 2004 where dan crippen was speaking on the subject of dynamics -- the washington economist group. >> dan crippen former director of the -- >> former director of the congressional budget office. he was asked they score bills. so although there is also the joint committee on taxation which scores tax bills this topic comes up mostly with respect to that. and dan, for reasons known only to him as i was reaching for the water pitcher to refill my glass decided i raised my hand to ask a question. he called on me. and this is 2004. the question i asked him was if the congressional budget office had used dynamic scoring for the tax cuts in 2001 how much lower would the deficit be today? which is the best economist joke. people were rolling on the floor floor. >> we should fwakback up and tell the audience more about the subject, which is probably why they're not -- >> all right. the notion behind dynamic scoring is there are things that government can do that would be beneficial to economic growth and therefore would increase revenue. these policies, even though they would cost money up front would therefore have the effect of increaseing revenues later and possibly paying for themselves or more. there have been allegations, hopes, claims dating back to 1981, really in a formal sense that changes in policies, particularly tax cuts would so increase economic activity that you would make more money back than the tax cut costs you first instance. there are certain folks in washington who historically tend to be skeptical of these claims. i've been one of those people. we could get very fancy about it, but let me give outphysicfizz you the physics. we enacted tax cuts that came to 23%, reducing tax rates. so right off the top you take the amount of money that you earned, you reduced the rate on that that income by 23% across the board. and the allegation was at the time that we would get so much of an increase in income because people would be incented to work more to invest more. taxable income would go up enough to get the money back. here is the simple math is, you want to think of this in two pieces, tax rates have gone down by 23%. you need incomes to increase by 23% just to break even. if you think this thing is going to pay for itself, you need even more of an increase. basic fundamental point how many people in this economy are paid for 40 hours a week and cannot work longer than that unless their employer asks them to. >> good point. >> there are so many institutional constraints. there are so many people who are not particularly interested in working more than they do. they have children to take care of. they have other things. there are many people who have control over their hours, who, if you offered them a much lower tax rate might very well decide hey, i'm going to work less and still make as much money. i once testified before a congressional committee, worked out the math, and said okay, you have a doctor who plays golf three days a week and operates four days a week. you cut his taxes by 25%. his tax rate is by 25%. worked it out so it worked -- i'm not doing math on the fly here. he's got two choices. one of them is he could operate on three days a week play golf four days a week and still make as much money as he is already making. is he going to choose to work more? or is he going to choose play golf more? and there are a lot of -- there say lot of evidence that suggests that looking at the population as a whole more people choose to work less rather than more, on average it balances out. cut tax rates by 23%, you lose 23% of your revenue. >> so even i guess, sort of -- the question that is on the table today is as joe explained, i think there say pretty good consensus in the economic community that the tax cuts don't pay for themselves. you won't make back as much as you are by cutting the tax rates. there is a question as to whether there is some marginal effect on economic growth and on people working more in the labor force and so what dave camp, the chairman of the ways and means committee put together a tax reform proposal last year he had it scored by the joint committee on taxation and found a margin, but somewhere between 50 and $700 billion, which is not an insubstantial amount of money, that the -- would accrue because of that tax cut and lowering the tax rates due to a growth in the economy and people earning higher incomes. and so on that issue of whether cbo and the joint committee on taxation should be accounting for the macro economic impacts in their scores is what has become contentious, because if those are allowed to be counted and find there is a benefit to the economy, that means you could potentially cut taxes more than you would otherwise be able to. and so, bill, do you want to -- with your experience talk a little bit -- >> this is -- this is rather sensitive because i've been apparently misquoted on the floor of the house yesterday about a comment i made. and, remember, i'm a republican. some people might question that. but -- and i -- i'm with joe on this a little bit. let's back up for just a second. what are we talking about here? when congress passes reports legislation, the -- they need to know what the impact is going to be on the things we talked about here earlier. level of spending, level of revenues, how that fits into a projection going forward on the level of debt and deficits going forward. so historically, the congressional budget office where i began my career in this town, was charged with under the law, you make cost estimates of the legislation. what does cbo do? they make an estimate that is thought of as conventional score ing ing, you change a tax rate that lowers the tax rate, you're taxing less than the revenues come down. you cut the reimbursement rate and the costs of medicare go down. the question has been raised particularly on the tax site i'll get to it on the other side, that well let's lower -- if we lower tax rates out there marginal tax rate ss, that will stimulate economic growth. let's be clear republicans and democrats, all of us, we want economic growth. part of this debate has been precipitated by a weak economy by the potential growth in our economy. there has been an intentive. why can't we get more growth in the economy and for members coming in to congress, on the republican side, and yesterday and the rules they adopted they had -- in the house they adopted a rule that says for score keeping purposes of major legislation, that being tax legislation, or spending legislation, cbo you can't do it the way you've done it in the past. you got to take into consideration the things that joe mentioned, which are the dynamic effects upon incomes, and in terms of investment, and all of that will create additional growth. and as shai said, economists disagree on this. i don't know how many of you are studying economics or majoring in economics, but i'll tell you right now there is a lot of disagreement, even in the economic profession as to what does a change in marginal tax rate do? as joe outlined, a perfect example, of where may not be the case and you're restricted mostly, controlled by it. long story short, this is extremely controversial. it is going to get more controversial as we go into this year. i believe that there are incent incentives to be created for growth on the tax side. i do not believe just lowering marginal tax rates without dealing with a lot of other issues in the tax code, credits deductions, exclusions, should have to be addressed also or else it is not the growth -- it is not going to offset the lost revenues from simply reducing. i'm not opposed to looking at alternative dynamic scoring and getting various estimates. my best example two things and i'll shut up shai, two things, this gives you -- because economics is the dismal science of uncertainty, there is no one single point estimate for accurateact accuracy accuracy. let's be fair. joe is a good economist. he would be the first one to admit there is uncertainty in every economic forecast even macro economic forecasts. the problem is that congress doesn't fund in ranges. when i was a very young, early out of graduate school economist at the congressional budget office, i had responsibility for the federal food nutrition service programs, which included at that time called it the food stamp program. and i had developed this wonderful model i thought was great about projecting food stamp participation and i had my standard there with the estimates and my t squares and r squares and all that good stuff and statistics. i came up with an estimate for participation. and it was a range. and i got called over to a chairman's office, chairman showing my age talmage to explain to my estimates. i said here they are, it is a range. and in between here and here. he looked down at me and said, son, we don't appropriate in ranges. we appropriate a number. the difficulty with this whole process is congress has to have a number. and the adding dynamic scoring creates greater uncertainty. at the end of the day, we shouldn't be slaves to economic models. they are the elected officials. they should take in all of the information they can get and they should mackke a decision but they should not be bound by a particular estimate that has such uncertainty involved in it. >> i fear i led us astray on a technical point, but it is something that many in washington and congress feel is important issue and that will impact how policy is made over the next couple of years. but one other policy question and then we'll get to some from the audience that we haven't spoken about yet, but was touched on, is tax expenditures. and those are all these provisions in the tax code that some call spending through the tax code because they work basically the same as spending programs. but there is over a trillion dollars in those every year that on priorities that range from charitable contributions to retirement incentives to nascar provisions that -- for building racetracks or so what do you think is necessary to look at those with a finer toothed comb and decide which ones should be in there and how that can help us increase revenue to improve our deficit position moving forward? >> okay. real quick joe. then i'll -- can i make one observation? >> sure. >> that is the things you've identified are i'll call tax expenditures, home mortgage deduction is an example or whether a deduction for contribution to your health insurance, or whether it is for charitable giving or for energy electric cars, why are those expenditures in the tax code? they're in there because somebody thought if we put them in there that will help economic growth. the same argument, and one -- and one point that we shouldn't forget is this isn't just on the tax side. the area i get very concerned about is that, listen, we already talked about it education, investment, instruction, infrastructure science technology, don't those things contribute to economic growth also? why should we only be looking at dynamic scoring only on the tax side if we're not looking and that worries me because then that incentivizes my friends open the -- joe and his party so say, well, good we'll spend more money on everything and it will pay for itself. >> right. so everybody can have their cake and eat it too where everybody pays for itself and spend more and tax less and everybody is happy. >> and we have growth. >> right. >> we have supply side tax cutters and we have supply side spenders. and many of the supply side spenders think that if dynamic scoring could be put to their use, they would be very happy. shai asked the $64 trillion question that is over ten years. >> ten years. >> and that is program review. there is a problem with the review of tax expenditures. bill asked the rhetorical question and answered it why are the provisions in the tax coat? the reason why the provisions exist is because the people put them forward and think they would advance economic growth. the reason why they're in the tax code very often, they think they're not going to be reviewed. and once you get them in there and they're part of permanent law, hey, we're home free and we can go and do that year after year. if you put them in an appropriations bill, they would have to be reappropriated every year. why is a program an entitlement program rather than an appropriations program and that's the same thing. entitlement programs tend to go into permanent law and appropriations have to be reappropriated every year. why are we not doing program review and we're not reviewing tax expenditures? we're also not reviewing entitlement programs. i'll give you one interpretation of why this is true and bill may agree or disagree or may have another reason why aren't we doing program review? members are too busy on the telephone trying to raise funds for their next election campaign, guys are elected to the house of representatives and the first thing you hear is you should be doing a minimum of x hours on the telephone, not in your office, because that's illegal, you go across the street where there is a building owned by the political party and we have the little booths where you can go and you can pick up a telephone and you can call people and raise money for your next campaign and you start that in january of the odd numbered year because if you collect enough money ahead of time, you might deter potential challengers and that's the best of all possible situations because then you can take that money and you can give it to your colleagues who are subject to challenges from the other party, and that makes them indebted to you so when you want to run for a leadership position, they're grateful to you, so they'll vote for you. >> there was a panel on monday with commissioner on political reform at the bipartisan policy center that probably touched on some of the campaign and political issues. why don't we -- while we're fin finishing up this conversation, invite student who want to ask questions up to the microphones. one quick question for both of you while they're getting set up is i think when i was in college before i came to washington i thought that what went on here was sort of 80% based on substantive policy and about 20% based on the politics of the situation. and since i've been here five or six years i've come to realize i think it is about the reverse that about 80% is made on the politics, and if we're lucky 20% actually gets made on the substance of the policy. and given that what do you think are the odds that we see some action this year on some of these important issues that everyone agrees needs to be done, whether tax reform or controlling health care costs but the political reality just is difficult. >> i'm going to be an optimist for a change. congress will pass a budget. it will be a difficult budget. congress and they haven't done a budget for the last five years, and so that budget will start the process of at least starting to engage the discussion on a number of these critical issues. now, will that lead to agreement particularly with the president? on legislation? maybe not in some areas. but in some areas, minor areas, i think there is hope that something -- some things can be done. i think that the idea that a few years ago that there be a grand bargain that will do the big tax increases and the big entitlement reductions and i think the grand bargain idea is off the table, but i think marginal improvement in policy and legislation at least until we get to about early -- later this year, later next year get to presidential politics, so the opportunity for moving forward on a few of these issues i think does exist for this year. >> joe? >> rather than prognosticating, let me just make one point and that is a lot of the big issues that we have been talking about and that bill just mentioned are of a nature where you are talking about the potential onset of a very big problem. in many of these instances, by the time you recognize that the problem is upon you it's too late. and you are incurring an enormous amount of damage. i hear very often people saying in effect if we're going to avoid a crisis in this country, we need to have a crisis to provoke action. well there is a circumstance later to that which goes beyond the obvious. and particularly with respect to the accumulation of debt, which bill talked about a few moments ago, somewhere out there you start getting into the quick sand and once you set foot there, the costs for the american people become very considerable, your options are much reduced. what i would urge all of you to do as you go out looking at your role as citizens is to talk to your elected officials to the extent you can, express your view that it is important in the spirit of the bipartisan policy center and with this reality of the consequences of inaction on some of these serious problems it is really important that we put our heads down and get our work done on a bipartisan basis. you need 60 votes to get anything done under almost all meaningful circumstances. if we wait until some party has 60 votes in the senate and controls the house of representatives and controls the white house we may very well already in the quick sand. >> great. we have a lot of eager students waiting to ask questions. we'll have you state your name and school and then ask your question and we'll try to get quick answers so we can get through as many as possible. let's start on the left. >> john graves, harvard university extension school. i really want to jump on the constant campaigning issue but i'll go a different way here. you mentioned the budget is not sustainable. you also mentioned that the entitlement program being the top of the list, as we move forward, that we cannot pull from that and we should look elsewhere at major impacts we can make. i'm a realist. i get that we probably need to audit defense spending. some of the major dents we could probably make are there. but do you foresee that on an ongoing basis entitlements will always be here and we have to prioritize down the list to make sure that entitlements are always there? will that change in 2033 when the fund are exhausted? how do we move forward and will the entitlement always be on top of the list? >> sounds like that's for me. well first of all the controlling point that i tried to make earlier we need to grab every dollar that isn't nailed down and many that are. we in the interest of being able to do the things that we need to do as a nation, we need to work on improving the delivery of health care in a fashion such that the cost per individual of delivering health care in our country, not just for the elderly through medicare, but really everybody is -- that the rate of growth of cost is reduced while we maintain quality. that is part of the overall picture. the problem with health care thus far, and i have my own ideas about what we ought to do for health care and you can look at www.ced.org and read about it the problem with the cost of health care is in significant part that technology enables us to do a lot of marvelous thing but the technology is expensive. and so part of what is going forward is how do we improve outcomes in our health care system including doing things that are just coming online that turn out to be very costly but can do very wonderful things for people. that's going to be very difficult, but we need to -- we need to work on every front and improving the efficiency of the delivery of health care is probably tops at the list of what we need to do. >> and just touching on your broader question, i think one answer i've heard a lot from people have done this for a number of years is that the entitlement programs go directly into people's pockets, especially something like social security and so it is much harder to reduce those on the priority list than it is for things like paving the roads and doing the scientific research that leads to discoveries 20 or 30 years down the line. so i think that's one of the dynamics that probably won't change anytime soon. but is inherent in the way the budget is made up. >> hello, gentlemen. my question to you is regarding the national debt. you discussed the national debt as if it is a burden and it is a burden to us and it will be for generations to come, i believe. but can't it also be used as a national security tool? because a country such as china, as you use in your example, would not want to go to war with us because of our economy and how that could drastically hurt their interests financially in us. what are your thoughts on that? >> i agree with you that that is the flip side of it that supposedly that the globalization of the economy out there makes us all more interdependent. but it also creates greater risk and uncertainty, still out there, and i think it creates the possibility of increasing financial crises out there as we're seeing already in europe, with the euro now, we're seeing with the global oil prices coming down, everybody says, the fact that this is wonderful, i like the fact too i filled up last night at $2.15 in northern virginia, but i tell you, i don't like big variabilities. and i'm not totally convinced that all -- that with big debt and without us having control over that debt that it may be true that china will be not interested in creating any problems with us because we're interdependent. but we don't control their government. and that's the risk i see. but i think your point is well taken. >> thank you very much. >> adding to that just one point. if you want to write a movie screenplay or a novel, the way you develop your plot is that some other country decides that it is going to use their holding of our public debt to try to crash our economy. the reality you mentioned that if they crash our economy they destroy the value of the debt that they hold is the argument against that. the real problem is not the movie screenplay. the real problem is you're in the movie theater, and somebody starts smelling smoke. in financial markets, it's like the smoke in the movie theater. you do not want to be the last person trying to get out the door. and so when people perceive, if people -- if and when people perceive that u.s. paper, particularly u.s. government paper is not a smart thing to own, that's when things come down in a very, very big way very quickly. that's the problem i worry about, not china trying to take down the u.s. economy. >> okay left. >> amy coleman from the harvard university extension school -- >> i'm sorry i picked on harvard earlier. >> a number of political analysts and i'm thinking particularly of shawn k. and andrew basavich talk about american -- and that public opinion needs to shift towards the reality of what is possible in budget reform. do you have any insights into the sort of roadblocks political or otherwise, in getting the public to acknowledge the limits of spending cuts and the necessity for additional tax revenue to get the budget under control and how we can get more candidates to run with the realities worked in their campaigns? >> just to add to that i think there is some additional basic public polling results that show that the average american has no idea what, you know, you all answered very well earlier, which is the major pieces of the budget there is the common refrain of you ask people how much they think we are spending on foreign aid they'll say 5% 10% of the budget. and then you ask them how much they think we should be spending and they'll say, 3% of the budget and then tell them we're spending less than 1% of the budget on it and they're often quite shocked. how do you think we can improve that public education aspect and translate that into the policy action that she's talking about? >> i have a quick response and that is that building upon what joe already mentioned earlier and that is the number one is to make it such that we have campaign finance reform, they're not spending all their time raising money. why do i say that? because this last midterm election i was struck by the lack of discussion about the budget. and the federal deficit came down, that was good news. but you never saw in any of these campaigns out there a discussion about the things we're discussing here today. you didn't hear a discussion about debt. you didn't hear a discussion about deficit. you didn't hear about that. why is it? because quite frankly i always remember some congressman tell meg one ing me one time at a town hall meeting, you got to cut government spending, i don't want you to -- i want you to get this deficit under control but keep your dirty hands off my medicare benefits or as an example. because to them that's their benefit. i paid into social security. that's my benefit. what are you talking about cutting or reducing social security benefits? i think we have a -- members of congress have a responsibility in terms of when they're running for office to try to use this as an opportunity to educate, but let's be honest. it is not a popular thing to go out and campaign for an office and say, you know, we have to look at medicare benefits or social security benefits because that, as shai said, that's in my pocket right now or raise taxes. it is a challenge. >> i used to work for congressman lee hamilton, who some people know from his role in this september 11th commission, but he was a very broad ranging guy and i was with him one time he was talking to a group of his constituents. and they were getting on him and this was the late 1980s, the budget was not the issue really that it is today though people were very worried about it. and somebody said, you know, why doesn't the congress do something about this problem? and he was trying to express himself and finally he found a point he wanted to make he said reducing the federal budget deficit is the second highest priority of every of every member of congress. the point being that after they take care of their highest priority you don't have a snowball's chance in haitis of doing anything about the budget deficit. one person comes from a location in the coastal community who needs the bridge by the federal government. the other wants to protect medicare. there are 535 first priorities and they're all different. every one of the members of congress can give you his program but we don't need 535 programs, we need one that the majority will agree with and that's the problem we've got. >> devon ryeman. both of you spoke before about the push for secondary education, and you both did mention that there needs to be more done with helping just entering the work force so my question is, why isn't there a government push on attending technical schools and receiving a technical education, and what would you both do to fix that? >> a push for what? >> a push for more of attending technical schools and technical education. >> listen, i think i give credit to the president for emphasizing two-year colleges technical colleges. he's tried to move in that. i partly say that because my wife teaches at a junior college out here in virginia. but at the same time i think the bottom line is -- here we go again -- where is the funding coming for that? it's coming out of that thing we call cap nondefense discretionary budget. there's very little for changing investment. i don't think there's a sense that we shouldn't be. it's the resources, once the first priorities are met, aren't there, unless you're willing to raise taxes or change those other two-thirds of the 50% that medicare, medicaid that reduces and then there would be an opportunity. the bottom line is the resources are restricted. also i think there's a sense here that this shouldn't only be a federal responsibility. there should be both state and private and local responsibility in getting the private sector involved in it which i realize is another whole discussion. >> hi i have a question. among the solutions that have been discussed to balance the debt and the budget is the balanced budget amendment. do you see this as a possible solution in the future as either practical or sustainable? >> great question. that was on my list to ask. joe? >> very briefly, i am not a big fan of a balanced budget amendment. the typical formulation that you come up with of the balanced budget amendment is okay. if you're not going to balance the budget you need two-thirds vote or both houses of congress, something like that. having observed two-thirds vote of the congress and what it takes to get the last votes and having seen directly or indirectly members of congress saying, okay, you want my vote here's what i want, by the time you get done bargaining with all these guys, in effect you say, okay, if we're not going to have a balanced budget this year let's have a party. i got my price, he's got his price. if you're not going to be able to comply with that, go ahead and really do it. as an economist there are times when the economy is doing well and a budget surplus is appropriate. there are times when the economy is not doing well and the budget will be in deficit no matter what you do. go back to 2008 2009, 2010 we didn't have a prayer of balancing the budget in those years. you need a two-thirds vote to get away with a budget deficit, you're going to have a party. or you write into the constitution of the united states that it's okay not to have a balanced budget if the gross domestic product has declined for two-quarters and is lower. i can't imagine writing a definition of the gross domestic product in the constitution of the united states. i cannot think of a better way to desecrate the primary document of the founding of our republic than to get into nonsense like that. economics jargon does not belong in the constitution. put me down as leaning no on the balanced budget amendment. i was on the floor of the house when a balanced budget amendment was being considered and a member of the house had the floor. i was sitting next to leon panetta who was the chair of the budget committee at that time and was managing the time against the balanced budget amendment. this member of the house said and so i ask the chairman of the budget committee, if we're not going to have a balanced budget amendment to the constitution, how are we going to solve our budget problems? and leon said, just do it. i wrote a letter to nike and i said you guys have got to do something for my boss and i never got a response. i was very disappointed. but that was the right answer just do it. >> with concerns to the military and military spending, a large portion of congress's budget does go towards military spending, and even with current cutbacks to military spending do you think that more cutbacks should be done towards the military in order to help reform the budget? >> very good question. let me drill down a little bit here because this will be coming up as an issue this spring with a review that the pensions and retirement security for the military commission comes out. what we're finding out and leon panetta, the former chairman and others and outgoing defense secretary, mr. hagel also recognizes, the same problems we have in the overall federal budget are the same problems in the military. the fastest growing components of the defense budget are not the tanks and weaponry. it is paying the benefits, the healthcare benefits the pension benefits, the benefits compensation to go with having a voluntary service out there. and so i believe that if you're going to talk about defense, controlling defense, you have to go back in and -- here we go. same issues. wait a minute, i signed up in a voluntary military because i wanted those benefits and now you're talking those benefits away from me. the same issue that's endemic to the overall federal budget is the same problem that's causing the defense budget to grow. as that grows then, our real fighting capabilities get strained and that's what worries me. so i do think there's room for improvement in the defense budget but it's in the areas which means us getting right back into the pockets of those people who have served. >> coming back to the just do it slogan, there's been a sequester or what we in washington call a sequester which are basically automatic cuts or squeezing the amount that you can spend on certain categories and defense is one of the pieces that's had those cuts and caps on it. i think that was put in place because congress couldn't come spending reductions that were necessary. if you look at both the defense and domestic discretionary accounts, those are the ones done on an annual basis and include infrastructure and education, both the defense part and the domestic part as a percentage of the economy are at all-time lows. i think a lot of people in one party or the other don't want to acknowledge that, for whenever one they care less about. the cutbacks have already been made either voluntary or involuntary. it's really the other pieces of the budget that we've been talking about the entitlement and interest payments that haven't been addressed and the interest payments are the result of the tax side and the spending side. bill do you want to add anything? >> for the mill len yals -- don't throw anything at me. i was the one drafted in the vietnam period. there are days when i'm wondering whether or not we ought not to bring back the draft. i'm sorry. go ahead. >> i'm sure that's a popular sentiment in this room. >> you guys mentioned that entitlement seems to be one of the biggest problems with the budget today yet we can't touch them due to the political ramifications. what does congress have to do to address some of these special interest groups like aarp and groups like that in order to bring about entitlement reform? >> i didn't suggest that they -- first of all, i'm not talking about cutting. this word you cut gets thrown around a lot. i'm simply talking about slowing the rate of growth. i also was saying at the outset for those who are in retirement or near retirement even paul ryan's budget of last year that was making changes did not affect people that were within ten years of retirement. what i'm talking about, i'm talking about you guys, i'm talking about changing the formula now, raising the age of full retirement now. i'm sorry if you're 20 -- you got 50 more years in my book before you can retire if you're 20. i think we should raise it to 70. those are things that do not affect current recipients but will affect, admittedly you in the future. you're not getting the benefit now. it's easier for me to calculate a benefit for you in the future that you don't know what it would have been had we not made the change i guess is what i'm trying to say. it's politically less risky. i do think we have to make changes and they can be made and they're phased in over time. so yeah i'm not saying we shouldn't make changes, and i'm not saying you can't make changes. >> things like raising the retirement age on social security, you could call that a cut, but society is living longer and certainly there are distribution issues there and generational issues but it's hard to keep letting people retire at the same age for decades upon decades when people spend more time in retirement. >> just to add, social security is actually the easy program to deal with. healthcare is both growing much more rapidly and it's a lot more complicated. in terms of social security, we can make small changes that take effect and grow over a longer period of time, that by the time you get to the years when this issue is likely to be critical will have made a significant contribution. i would just add, with respect to folks who are now in the retirement ages or close we could have those who are affluent pitch in a little bit and help as well. that, i think would be entirely appropriate. i'm more concerned about my grandchildren than i am about myself at this point. i'm willing to throw some money in the kitty. >> hello. i'm from harvard extension. i was wondering, i'm in environmental studies major and given that we only have one planet and a finite amount of resources, meaning that both human and economic growth is not infinite how do you think this should change our current growth-based market in the future? well, we have seen enormous improvements in technology historically. when i was your age, son every other day in los angeles i have been there very seldom but i remember seeing the photographs. you would have such smog that you could not see any distance whatsoever from the top of a building. we've cleaned that up. part of the reason why folks are ringing their hands, we have a fixed amount for gas lien, there's not as much money going into the kitty for doing the highway repairs that we need. now, we need to go a lot further. we will probably have to make some difficult choices, but we've got to look across all the tools that we have at our disposal. one of which is raising people's consciousness and getting them to conserve to the extent that they can do so. second is making the devices that we have more efficient and a lot of the consumption that we do is in buildings. that means to some extent going back and retrofitting, to some extent it means being a lot more conscious with what we build and there's a lot of that going on. also with respect to vehicles where we've achieved a great deal going forward. but one of the things that we could do that would improve our outcomes with respect to the environment, would give us a lot more headroom -- >> watch this event at c-span.org. we leave it now to take you live to the pentagon for a briefing by air force secretary deborah lee james and chief of staff mark welsh. joining us today is deborah james and chief of staff general welsh. they will open with a few remarks and then go through where we've been, where we are today and where we plan to go in 2015. business rules, please if you don't mind we have about 60 minutes total. again, the secretary will open with remarks. following that there will be on the record q and a. if you would please identify who you are, who you're affiliated with as you ask your questions. then at the end of this if there are any unanswered questions, followups please get with air force press desk or any of us in the blue uniform that are still out here. so again like i said we have about an hour so with that, ma'am, the floor is yours. >> thank you general. hello, everyone. happy new year and thank you very much for joining general welsh and me for about an hour this afternoon. since becoming the secretary of the air force about 13 months ago, our air force has dealt with many issues that are enormously critical to our national security. first, the united states air force remains fully engaged in combat operations against isil forces in iraq and syria. to date we have provided more than 60% of the 16,000-plus soaredies that have been flown. we also continue at the same time our enduring efforts to provide air and space superiority, intelligence, surveillance and recon assistancesense, our nuclear forces and command and control. these of course are five core missions and we deliver them through the air, space and cyber space domains. we have never waivered even with this operation ongoing in the middle east with our sizable and long-standing commitments in europe and throughout the pacific, and we certainly won't be wavering in the future. we have been navigating in our air force through some very challenging issues that are facing us as an institution, including short falls in our nuclear enterprise tackling sexual assault and the very tough decisions involving the downsizing. in order to increase our perspective, the chief and i have made a commitment to routinely get outside the beltway and ensure that we are getting some first hand feedback and first hand look at the missions that are being performed by our airmen and the issues affecting our airmen and their families. the chief and i have been on the road a good bit. we're staying connected with our sister services, with congress industry, our allies and international partners. we meet with them routinely to hear their needs and their concerns and so that they can hear ours as well. so the bottom line, if i step back and what's my key takeaway from all of this is everyone wants more air force and indeed we have never been busier around the world. demand for our services is way, way up but we are meeting those demands today with the smallest air force in our history. when you couple that smaller force against the backdrop of aus tier budgets and with the huge demand we have a total force that is under significant strain. by total force i mean our active duty, our national guard our reserve, our civilians and their families. indeed, general welsh and i saw this strain firsthand as we conducted our travels. fortunately, we have very dedicated and professional people who have been getting the job done despite all of these pressures. however it is taking a toll. let me talk about the fy-15 budget as well as a bit of an outlook for '16 and beyond and general welsh and i would be happy to take your questions. for those of you that were with us when we did our last update in july, you'll remember that we made a call you might say, we issued a call to congress and that basically was that obviously we understand it is the constitutional prerogative of the congress to rearrange our funding priorities, but please do not decriment our readiness accounts. readiness is too important and we have to get our levels back up. as you know, we cannot accomplish our duties without congressional support and in that spirit i want to step back and thank the congress particularly the defense committees for supporting our air force readiness and our modernization going forward. in fact the congress proep rated the overwhelming majority of the budget requests for fy-15. indeed, we ended up with a higher top line than our original request which i think is recognition of just how necessary and valuable our air force is in the world today. with that said of course we did not agree on everything. congress restricted our tough choices regarding the retiring or the reducing of aging force structure, but they did give us the funding that we needed to sustain the operations and to operate near current force structure levels for this year of fy-15. most importantly they did not pay for these add-backs for our readiness accounts. for this we are very grateful. our travels also showed us that when it comes to the downsizing that we have been undergoing, enough is enough. indeed, that is the number one source of strain for our airmen. it has been the downsizing. so general welsh and i agree that we have now downsized as much as we can in support of trying to balance our resources and capabilities, but we simply cannot do more. indeed we've already announced that there shall be no involuntary boards in 2015. we're actively now working toward an fy-15 goal of maintaining end strength around 350,000 for our active duty personnel, and that is where we intend to remain. if anything, we perhaps need to look about going up in terms of some of our numbers and that goes for the guard and reserve as well. turning to the future the air force will still face many challenges as we continue to restore readiness and take care of our airmen with an ongoing focus on ending sexual assault. the sexual assault response coordinators with whom i meet regularly on all of my base visits, they tell me that we are making progress in this fight. the information of course contained in the secretary of defense's recent report bears this out, but it's not good enough. we have to keep on it and the chief and i are committed to doing that. this past monday i kicked off our sexual assault prevention summit where we have brought together over 150 airmen from different ranks and backgrounds to have discussions and workshops and particularly to focus on the issue of prevention. this is just but one of the many ongoing efforts which is designed to demonstrate that we will give this persistent focus, persistent leadership and persistent action going forward. now, turning to fy-16 we are going to be asking the congress of course to eliminate see sequestration and allow us to get rid of excess base infrastructure and we will once again ask for the authority to divest some of our older aircraft in order to free up money to plow back into people, readiness and modernization. keeping in mind as we've said many, many times, if sequestration does return, it will have serious and devastating affects on some parts of our air force. we will of course ask congress to resource our manpower requirements to meet mission, structure and readiness needs to support the commanders. general welsh has coordinated very, very closely with our commanders as we assembled the budget and we are committed to meeting their needs. after the budget is submitted we certainly will have a lot more to say about what our key investments are and these will be investments in the nuclear enterprise and cyber space, our national guard and reserve forces. i do however have a few announcements today to share with you with regard to isr. last june i visited kreech air force base and saw our remotely piloted aircraft isr mission first hand. the chief has been there many, many times. the airmen who perform this essential mission do a phenomenal job. but talks with the rpa pilots and the sensor operators and their leaders certainly told me suggested to me, that this is a force that is under significant stress, significant stress from what is an unrelenting pace of operations. now, these pilots, just to give you a little color on this fly six days in a row. they are working 13, 14-hour days on average. to give you a contrast, an average pilot in one of our manned air force aircraft flies between 200 and 300 hours per year. again, these are averages. but in the rpa world, the pilots log four times that much ranging from 900 to 1100 flight hours per year. again, this is very stressful operations because mistakes can cost lives. finally, i learned that many of our experienced operators are nearing the end of their active duty service commitment, which means they will have a choice in the not too distant future to either stay with us or leave the air force. now, to start working on these problems and to remedy some of these issues i want to share with you some of the steps general welsh and i are talking now to address it. our plan is designed to immediately relieve some of the strain while still meeting the commander requirements, and then we of course recognize we'll have more work to do for the somewhat longer term to address the people side of this very important but nonetheless high demand weapon system. here are the near term steps. we will maximize the use of the national guard and reserve and indeed we will be redirecting some resources in order to provide the money to bring additional personnel on active duty. number two we will seek recently qualified active duty rpa pilot volunteers to deploy for six months to some of these distressed rpa units. so these are folks who have been rpa pilots but they've gone back into their original air frames perhaps. we will seek volunteers in that category to come back into the rpa world. number three we will delay the return of some of the rpa pilots who are on loan to the rpa world from other air frames. those are three items we are acting on now and we believe that that will provide some near term relief to the ops tempo and boost the quality of life for this force. we're also looking at pay. we think we need to get it changed and we're working to do so. what we can do right now is i will be utilizing my authority to compensate and incentivize career rpa-only pilots whose service obligations are expiring. in fact, i just signed the memo earlier today. as our experienced operators reach the end of their initial active duty service commitment, we will increase the monthly incentive pay from $650 a month to $1500 for those rpa pilots while we also explore more permanent incentive plans which will be a little bit more down the road. our commanders expect and demand the unique isr capabilities that only the air force can provide. airmen have delivered time-critical data. they've prosecuted targets and supported our combat ent commanders without fail but this pace has been unrelenting so it's critical that we address these problems now. we'll have more to say about this plan as we finalize the details in the next few months. let me wrap by saying this is the greatest air force anywhere in the world and primarily because of our airmen. the american people expect our air force will be able to fly fight, and win against any adversary and commanders obviously demand and expect the same. so it's important that we continue to afford our nation the air force capability it needs well into the future by appropriately investing in our people and in our platforms. so again, thank you so much for joining us today. now we will take your questions. jennifer? >> secretary james and general welsh, do you have regrets about attempting to retire the a-10? the decision came before the current war with isis. do you regret that at this point? >> no i do not. >> why? >> first of all, the current war against isis, the operation against isis, there are a number of strike platforms of course that are engaged in it. a-10 is one of it but there's also f-16s, f-15s and so forth. they're each contributing, i believe the statistic is 11% coming from the a-10 community? >> yes, ma'am. >> so my point is the a-10 is a great contributor but so are the other aircraft. even had the plan to retire the a-10s over five years which we submitted last year even if that had been agreed to we would have still had a-10s in our inventory so it makes sense to use them and we obviously will always use them. >> why do you think it's such an emotional issue for people on the hill? >> it's emotional inside the air force, too. i would be disappointed if the people who flew the a-10 and trained with the a-10 weren't emotional about this. they love their airplane. they should love their airplane. i would expect that. for the air force it's not an emotional issue. it's a sequestration-driven issue. we don't have the money this year or this coming year to fund all the things we currently have. the good news is last year, although we weren't allowed to move forward with the plan we recommended, we were funded to continue operating the a-10. if we can use it appropriately, we should absolutely use it. it's been intended to be around until 2019 and our intent would be to use that great platform and the great people who employ it anywhere we could. it's not about not liking or not wanting the a-10. it's been some very tough decisions we have to make for the threat ten years from now. >> barbara? >> general welsh,wníñ you've spoken here a lot about drones, rpas. the combat lessons that are being learned from the use of drones, whether it's the fight against isis or air strikes in yemen, operationally in combat, people seem to think air strikes are the thing that solves the problem out there. what are the limitations that you're seeing in terms of lessoned learned in combat from the use of drones and air strikes more broadly in terms of limitations of what they can and can't do on achieving military combat objectives? >> not speaking to specific operations but in general terms, we're predominantly the great great majority of the time used for isr not for strike activity. we have the capability to conduct strikes from some of our rpa platforms, so we've taken advantage of that but that's not the primary use that we use them for in most military operations. the limitations of using an rpa to conduct a strike are similar of using an aircraft to conduct a strike. you have to identify a target, clearly try and decon flikt friend from foe, minimize civilian collateral damage the same problems you have in a manned aircraft. some of the limitations in using rpas, you're trying to develop situational awareness through a very narrow view as opposed to having a pilot looking and using the human brain sensor to assist you in that effort. ideally you would have both tools available to you. having people on the ground assist because it helps you point at the most -- highest priority targets. it helps you decon flikt friend from foe easier if there are people on the ground with friendly forces. all those factors apply everywhere we're using rpas today as they would anyplace else we would use them in conflict. >> do you think there's too much emphasis at the moment on the air part of the equation that everyone thinks from the air you can defeat isis and al qaeda in yemen when defeat may not be what is possible from the air? >> i don't think speaking specifically to isis the dod approach is not to defeat isis from the air. the intent is to inhibit isis to slow isis down to give a ground force time to be trained because a ground force will be required. you don't dictate instates from the air. you can't control territory, influence people. you can't maintain lines of control after you've established them. that will take a ground force. in this case, a coalition ground force that's being trained now to try and make that effort and we'll support it from the air. >> amy butler. two-part question on the strike. first, with regard to the ioc, last year there was some discussion about when the air force's ioc could actually happen in part because of the maintainer issue coming from the a-10. can you give us your current thinking on when it is likely to be able to declare ioc and if you're looking at maybe changing the perimeters or how you're going to achieve that. then secondly bigger picture with the joint strike fighter whenever you do ioc, whether it's 2016 or '17 or whatever these jets are dribbling into the service. they're not going in at the rates you wanted. so this thing will not become wholly influential until years after you expected. there's a lot of talk among the technology people that stealth at that level will be at a risk of compromise because of the proliferation of high frequency radars and integrated defenses. so i'm wondering if you're looking at how to address that issue. obviously it's not an issue for today but probably five, ten years down the road. >> first of all, i believe that 35 ioc will be as scheduled between august and december of 2016. i've seen nothing that changes my opinion of that. i'll tell you this, i oc is an important term because it's initial operation capability. it means we will have the ability to employ a number of aircraft to conduct activity should we desire to do so. foc is when this airplane should be fully capable of doing the things that we put in our requirement set for it to do. so our development of capabilities that aren't available at ioc has been part of the plan the whole time. it's been the plan of every airplane we've ever bought as far as i know at least recently. you get the airplane you have initial capability. you continue to develop the capability through new software upgrades adjustments you find during initial operational tests. by the time you declare it fully operational capable, that means it now meets the requirements set that you defined. that's the ultimate goal and where we're focused. i'm fairly comfortable the 35 stands today. none of the things that are coming out from the j po are real surprises. this program has tracked rate much along the milestones set in 2011. i won't talk about before that but since then it's pretty consistently along the price curves and all the milestones since then and we must continue to do that. the big challenge for us is operationalizing maintenance for the airplane and that's what we're focused on right now. i feel pretty good about that. remember for me the focus is capability at ioc fully capable at foc. stealth is an interesting discussion because people tend to identify a piece of it and think someone will compromise that piece and therefore stealth is no longer valuable. stealth is a combination of things. it's also speed, low observability, different ways of collecting data, transmitting and protecting transitions. it's a way of breaking kill trains. while we may have a new radar developed that allows an acquisition radar to see an airplane, that doesn't mean it can pass the track off to a radar that will then guide a weapon that will be able to destroy an airplane. as long as we break a kill chain, you're successful at using stealth. i don't see anything that indicates that is not going to be true ten years from now. >> just to make sure to clarify general bokton said the maintainer issue could be a show stopper. >> i'm talking about the development of the aircraft. the maintainer issue is not an f-35 program issue. it's an air force program. >> but it is critical for ioc declaration. >> and we will look at -- you have to have enough to operate your initial detachment of airplanes but we will have enough for that. we have enough people to prioritize this to the point that we will be able to get to ioc. by the way we get some help from the congress on this as well that allow us to get there. aaron? >> i was wondering if you can speak just to clarify, you said you will attempt again in the next budget to retire some aircraft. is that the same groups of aircraft that you talked about in the last budget trying to retire? secondly, can you talk maybe generally about how the operation on isis has impacted the budget request certain areas you need to plus up or take away from? >> i would answer that question by saying we are constantly monitoring what is going on in the world. we're constantly making adjustments as a result. so i think it's safe to say that the budget submission when you see it in totality will reflect some of those changes. in terms of the retiring of the older aircraft and will the plan be identical to what it was, i doubt it will be identical, but there will be some similarities. yes? >> we're very interested in the new pay for rpa pilots. i just wanted to clarify is this for all pilots or just those nearing the end of their active service commitments? >> as you know right now, jeff rpa pilots get the same flight pay that a pilot on any other airplane gets. the difference in the two communities is that right now pilots of manned aircraft when they reach the end of their initial commitment, they're offered the aviator pay which tries to keep them in the service for a period of time after that up to $25,000 per year. that's not available to rpa pilots. as an interim measure, the secretary got approval for plussing up that monthly $650 flight pay for rpa pilots to $1500 a month. the next step is to pursue aviation continuation pay similar to what our manned aircraft pilots get for the rpa force. >> i just wanted to make sure, it's for all rpa pilots? >> this is for rpa pilots who are currently operating mq and mq 9. but the proposal for aviation continuation pay is going to be broader. we'll look at where it should apply across the community. >> this month? >> i'm not sure what the actual -- >> let us get back to you right after this on that. we'll double-check that. >> we can give you that answer. >> one way to tackle the shortage of rpa pilots which i don't think has been explored is allowing noncommissioned officers to fly them such as the army allows. is that something the air force is interested in looking at? >> actually we're looking at two things related to what you just said. one, yes, we should look at the enlisted force as a potential approach to move rpa pilots. there are pluses and minuses to the affects of that. we're looking at those now and i'll come to the boss with recommendations in the relative relativelyrelative relatively near future. the second step is to look at other services that may be divesting themselves of aviation assets and see if there's interest in moving into the rpa business. >> secretary james, you said you have delayed the return of rpa pilots on loan elsewhere. i wasn't quite sure what you meant by that. >> pilots who have been trained and who specialize in another air frame may spend some portion of their career in the rpa field. some portion. but then the idea is to go back to the original air frame. so we would delay that going back for some of those pilots. >> how long? >> right now, jeff, specifics to give you context. we have about 38 people who are on alpha tours from other airplanes and scheduled to go back this summer. of those 38 people we are talking to each one of them and asking them about staying. that's where we are right now. we know there are five of them who have already been matched for other jobs. they'll leave. the other 33 we're going to ask them if they would consider staying in light of having these other things that are going to try and help the schedule problem that they're facing. our crew tells us they're excited about the work they're just worn out. this has been going on since 2007. as the rekwiert increasing and the solutions to it keep lagging the requirement change. we have got to get ahead of this. the biggest problem is training. we can only train about 180 people a year and we need 300 a year. we're losing about 240 from the community each year. training 180 and losing 240 is not a winning proposition for us. the reason is because we're only 63% manned in our training unit for rpas because we can't release the people from the operational units who are flying the operational support to go be training instructors. even the people in the training units who are there about half of them daily are flying operational support missions. so we have got to get ahead of this training curve or the enterprise is going to have a major issue. that's what we are trying to get done right now. >> julian? >> thank you. julian barnes "wall street journal." has the pressure and the strain on the rpa pilots led to decline in the number of caps that you can put out there at any one time or a slowdown on any hope for growth that you have had? has there been an operational effect obviously on these individual pilots a lot of extra hours, but have you had to reduce what you can provide commanders in terms of -- >> no, we have not. we've met the operational demand signal, but we're doing it by putting people in position where they're not having to debate whether they want to continue doing this. >> just to follow up quickly do you think these initial steps that secretary james, you've outlined here, is this just a first step or are you going to need something more from congress, do you think, in order to build up the number of pilots you need? >> these are first steps. within the next few months we'll have a more robust plan so to speak, but these are the immediate actions with more to follow. yes, second row? >> sandra. i wanted to ask you about the deputy secretary of defense bob works, initiative to invest in invasion invasion innovation innovation. i was wondering if you can talk specifically what the air force expects to get from this. it sounds like it would be more centralized than the usual approach. so anything specific that you can say that you would want the department of6" that will tie very closely into this effort and we think we have a number of ideas that we will feed into this department of defense effort. it may assist us in moving faster in some of these areas or give the department ideas for how they can move forward in some of these other areas. >> can you talk about the ideas? >> some of the standard ones are hyper sonic technology, how would you use it, how quickly can it be developed. a great example of a place where we can maybe save 25% of field costs. if we can prove that we need to get that fuel on as many airplanes as we can, as we can afford. that's a game changer in cost with the number of hours that we fly airplanes around the world. directed energy and how you apply it i think there are great applications in the i.t. world, quantum computing springs to mind although i don't understand it completely, the possibilities of how it can be employed are kind of stunning. there are things in individual human capital development in terms of education, training how do you interest people how do you teach people as we go forward over the next 20 or 30 years. the possibilities here are just endless. >> when you say directed energy do you mean like the navy's laser gun, something comfortable to that? >> there are lots of applications you can use for the air force. we should piggyback on successful services like the navy, we should be exploring laser communications. there are a number of ways that we should be moving forward in a lot of these areas. this is exciting to us. this is a great opportunity in my mind. >> yes, sir, second row. >> hi. secretary james, why should a new entrant with eeov certification believe the air force is performing in good faith with its stunning six-month delay in certification for eelb? >> i think we were all disappointed that space ex was not certified by the end of december. we had high hopes. however, they have come a very long way. 80% of the criteria were met. 20% are still to go. this is real engineering work that needs to be demonstrated. this is not a paperwork shuffle. i hope space ex knows that we're operating in good faith. general grieves, the certifying official personally put a great deal of time and attention on this resources, people and money, to try to make sure that we were doing everything that we needed to do to get this over the finish line. as far as i'm concerned, this is not a question of if they will be certified it's a question of when. as you pointed out, it's still some months away, but i am certain that it will be there. the last point i will make is that this certification process is written down. it is contained in a proprietary document called a crda. it was signed by both parties, by the air force and space ex. this lays out in detail what needs to happen. it's important that all parties re-read that document and understand what needs to happen and i'm sure that that final 20% will be done and we will get there. it's in our national security interest to make sure that they get there. >> will you publicly release the crda? >> it is proprietary? >> what about a limited redemocraticry release? >> i guess we could consider that. let us look into that. >> i want to get your reaction to elon musk's statements to bloomberg business week in a recent interview. he said the people fighting the certification are really in the bureaucracy of the pentagon and the procurement officers who then go and lockheed the prime contractors which actually happened. it's easy to understand from a game series standpoint. essentially we're asking them to award a contract to a company where they're probably not going to get a job against a company where their friends are. so they've got to go against their friends and their future retirement program. this is a difficult thing to expect. kind of a slap at the integrity of your acquisitions program an observer would say. what's your reaction to that? >> i think those are rather unfortunate comments. i don't know who he means. i don't know who he's referring to. but the people that i know are working very, very hard on this certification process. so i think those are unfortunate remarks and i don't agree with them. the last point i'd like to make, if i might tony, is that after all is said and done, i am going to set up an independent review. that review is going to be led by the former chief of staff larry welch who you may recall very recently did an excellent job doing an independent review of our nuclear enterprise. so he has agreed that he will take this one on. we're finalizing the details of what the work plan will look like and so forth because i'm one who thinks that any process which we've now been operating under this process for about a year and a half with space ex, what have we learned from it are there ways that we can streamline, speed it up do things a little bit but still of course protecting what we call mission assurance. mission assurance means we want these satellites to be launched without failures without crashes and burns which by the way we had some spectacular failures in the late '90s and out of that the process and procedure and what we now call the certification process was born. so we don't want to sacrifice that but there could be lessoned learned. i want to be sure we have those implemented. >> these are unfortunate remarks but he did say them in a fairly deliberate manner. are you going to communicate your displeasure directly? and might this ripple effect through the air force certification process who might want to say the hell with him? >> i will not ripple through the acquisition air force professionals. i feel confident of that. i only wish that mr. musk would have said some of this to me directly when i called him to tell him that space ex had not quite made it, we were still working it, and so forth. i only wish he had said this to me directly. yes? >> air force times. going back to renewing the push to retire some of the older aircraft, what will be different this time around? general, you talked about the need for the air force to explain itself to congress to justify these cuts. what will change. recently there are a lot of changes now to air force structure in europe for the future of millen hall and the f-35 basing. is there any shift on that front? >> why don't i take the first one and if you wouldn't mind taking the one on europe. in terms of what will change, there's probably not a magic bullet answer to that. there's new members of congress. we have to educate we have to continue to explain the position about why we need to not only invest in today but also invest in tomorrow. if we had a lot more money i mean a lot more money, we could do it all, but of course we're not going to have a lot more money, so we have to make choices. that's what we're paid to do. we're paid to make some tough choices in this environment. so we will explain that story to the members who we have known for some time, as well as to the new ones. >> the infrastructure and consolidations in europe are just that. it's not giving up mission capability. there was an opportunity to save money over time in a fairly significant way by consolidating installations in the u.k. for example and getting rid of three bases and consolidating at one. also reduce is operating costs because they have the structure and everything required to continue the activity. so that was just a consolidation of capability. much more efficient over time and will pay for itself. millen hall is a base closure because the cost of updating over time with very old infrastructure that hasn't been maintained is excessive compared to the combat capability we get from the operations that go on at the base. we have other installations where that can be bedded down at much less operating cost over time. we can save the capitalization costs of rebuilding the infrastructure. the good news is that our partners in the u.k. have done a lot of downsizing and soul searching on how they're going to operate themselves in the last ten years in the defense business and we're very supportive, although neither one of us really likes giving things like this up. millen hall has been a great installation force for a long time and remains that way today but this is all about cost savings and efficiency. >> mark shants, air force magazine. force structure different aor, the air force has been pouring a lot of mill con into what used to be expedition naer wings especially over the last year. i don't know whether it's spiked in the after math of oar. my question to you is, is this part of an ongoing effort to normalize the air force's presence in that region, a la korea, u.k. et cetera, expanding of company tours, things like that? do you expect this to continue at other locations? what's the trend here? >> what we're trying to do mark, is support u.s. central command's desires in any way we can, in any way we can and we can afford. the long term footprint is their decision. we support it and let airmen do the jobs that we bring to their command. if they would like to establish a more permanent presence over time and are able to work out that agreement with the department of defense the state department, and the host nations, we figure out how to help them as the keepers of the installations of the facilities and provide that investment and capability for them, whether it's trying to expand family presence, so you can build stronger relationships with the community and the nations that are hosting you. we try and meet their requirement just like we try and meet their operational requirement. that's what this is all about. >> requirement is going up, correct? >> well, we are actually drawing down the number of installations in the greater middle east i think as we've come out of afghanistan. it will be necessary to identify which will be semipermanent to permanent. the responsibility is to lead that effort and then our job is to try and support them in making those facilities capable and credible in terms of the mission and support they're supposed to provide. >> madam secretary, going back to the question about force structure reductions since the congress told you we really don't like the idea of retiring the a-10 will you graduate to that second tier of items as places where you have to go to get the money to live within sequester? and also are you going to submit a budget that has one with and without sequester? >> i would suspect first of all that the president's budget proposal which will of course be revealed in february so i'm sorry we can't go into a lot more detail about the specifics in it, but i do suspect it will be above the sequestration level. i suspect we're going to be asking for a level which is much closer to what we think we need as opposed to what we might be forced to live under if sequestration hits. so that's kind of my best guess at the moment about that. assuming i'm right about that, we would also, of course just like we did last year, explain to congress that if we had to go to the sequestration level here would be the choices which, again, if the choices were considered tough and we certainly thought they were tough in the last year's go-around, sequestration will be much, much more severe and will do damage to a variety of areas within our air force. so we say again that will be bad for everyone and we need to lift sequestration. >> so not specifically a second tiered budget if you will for sequestration, but a list of probable alternatives if you do have to do it? >> that's what i suspect we'll do, yes. yes? >> i have two questions. the first is a followup to amy's question earlier about f-35 maintainers, not the labor but a few months ago there was urgency and concern about not having enough maintainers to achieve ioc, and now it found like you're saying that there will be enough. what has changed since then? is it simply the provisions or is there more that's happening there? >> so what we're doing and this is a very difficult problem to figure out but what we've been doing in the last, what, month or so, two months i guess since the final decisions were issued by the congress we have been trying to work our way through it. we think we're getting close to a solution which is anything but a perfect solution. it presumably would leverage a little bit of the flexibility we were allowed in congress a number of different factors to try to bring this together so as not to risk the ioc of the joint strike fighter, but as you point out there aren't enough of these experienced maintenance people to go around for all of our needs and that is why this is so difficult. >> if this -- if the proposals that we come forward with are not agreed to then ioc is correct. we are now to the second set of solutions beyond what we thought was the best military approach because we haven't been allowed to take that. we don't have a thousand extra maintenance people waiting for a job. they're doing other work. we have to get them into a new platform by taking them out of something else. it's the only way to develop them or hire contractors or delay ioc. those are the three and some combination of those things that have to happen. we don't like the option of jrj p r(t&háhp &hc% so we will do everything we can to come up with other creative solutions that will be painful in different ways to try not to do that. >> when will those solutions start to be implemented and is this something that is already happening? >> this is something that we've been working with folks on the hill for a while to come up with the solution to get things done and within the department and i think as the budget rolls out and we get into the discussions and the timelines of supporting the ioc it will become pretty clear. >> on the rocket engine development program congress provided an extra $220 million. how do you expect the air force will use that to speed up current processes or what is i guess, the status of that? >> so we are trying to work through those details right now. we don't have it fully flushed out, but we're appreciative of the money that will kick-start the effort so as we said, get off of the reliance of the russian engine but we don't have the details plushed out yet. yes? [ inaudible question ] >> the department announced the discussion to cut 10 predator and reaper combat air patrols and i was curious if the defense against centcom and the fight against the islamic state have forced them to reconsider that decision? how does that exacerbate the manning challenges that you're talking about? >> as far as i know, the numbers get confusing sometimes, but the number of caps is on the upward trend, not on the downward trend. >> the answer is yes. we had to reconsider the decision because of the new activity that was not projected at that time and it's exacerbated the problem. that's why we have got to do something right now to stabilize this workload issue. we thought we wereáj drawing down and had a plan in place to man this enterprise if we had actually drawn down we'd be fine right now. >> is that the plan? >> there's been a lot of discussion 45, 55 and we've been on a plan for 55. >> it's increasing. >> down to a number that you can share? >> no ma'am. i'm not real confident where it's going to but it is increasing. >> these numbers do get confusing. yes, in the back please. >> on that same issue how much money is there to train these 180 or so rpa pilots and how much money will it take to spend the 300 or so that you would need? >> that's a great question. i don't know the specific answer, but i'll get it for you. i don't know what the cost is per student. i would have to get that for you. >> how much do these measures, you just announced these initial measures cost or is there a cost to them. >> the only cost to the initial -- there is a very small cost in terms of the aviation bonus intended to keep a number of people in the career field. there aren't that many of them who are coming to the end of their tenure and that's not a very big number at all. there is a cost associated with expanding support from the garden reserve used to fire rpas today to expand their manpower so they can bring more people full time to be able to support more cap activity. that comes out of an mpa pot that we have in our budget already, but there will be a cost associated witv'>s it and if we continue it over time we would have to include it as part of an appropriation request. in the future it would be part of the appropriation. that would be the big cost right now. the funding up to 300 people in the training pipeline is in our budget. we had planned for being there right now so we had programmed for that. i just don't know what the amount is, but i can get that for you. >> we are at the five-minute mark. >> if i can follow on the solutions, the rpa mission is much broader with maintainers with the intelligence analyst that review this. what potential solutions are you looking at to ease the stress on that force and when you talk about potential, the damage that can be further sequestration cuts. at what number range personnelwise are we talking about that you could see operation alreadiness being affected in a severe way. if you're talking about 350 and you're talking about lower 320 or something like that. >> of raw strength? >> to the risks that we've been working the rpa retention issues for the entire force for a while now. there have been a number of initiatives and we can give you a list of things that have been done over time. the crisis right now is with the pilot force because of the way they're their tours of service are organized and we're reaching a point where some of them can go and it is the most stressed part because it is the lowest manned percentage wise part of the rpa fleet and that's why that's the focus, but as far as future discussions, it's about the entire enterprise and it has been for the last eight years. so i will tell you, we're,d(3x considering everybody in this and the specific items near-term are to keep the pilot force engaged. they have the longest and most expensive training pipeline in that community but there are many other people as you well know who are engaged in this enterprise. the other thing that you mentioned is the number, it's actually 315 not 350 so 315,000, and as the secretary mentioned to you we believe we're there. we can't go any lower. we are getting to small to succeed as opposed to too big to fail and so we're at a point now where we are undermanned in many career fields because we've taken people out of them to put in other areas to shore up those areas. rpas is a great example. we've green from 21 caps in 2008 to going to 55-plus now and those people have come out of other things like maintenance, security forces and other areas where we changed the ratio so we can build the rpa fleet on the fly and now we have to get our maintenance up above 84% because it's affecting readiness and capability, we have to get our intelligence business which underpins all of this rpa activity up to full manning in every different category. so that's why we think, even if we move hardware out of the air force and move it into the reserve, component, the software and the people have got to stay and let's bring in new people to operate the hardware and let's re-man the air force squadron. we can cut things out of staffs all we want, but if we break squadrons we're out of business. >> i'm sorry. >> that's okay, katherine. >> two more questions. >> two more. >> how much -- how many more people do you need to get the nuclear facility security fully manned? what are some of the things that you're going to be doing next year to continue the process? i know you said nuclear security and nuclear capability was one of your key investments and what will you be doing to keep that moving forward and about what is the percent of the budget that you will be using to invest in nuclear? >> so in terms of the manning we have redirected about 1100 people to plus up the nuclear forces. furthermore, there are eight what we consider critical specialties and we'll make sure that those are 100% manned. so as you heard the chief say earlier as we were talking about the broader air force and why we were so passionate about not going any lower in terms of overall numbers, one of the things that certainly i've discovered is still a relatively new secretary is that we are undermanned in lots of this point, but this will be an area of additional investment next year as well as over the five-year plan which, of course that will all be public in february. yes, sir? >> david from bloomberg. i just wonder if you can give us any update on the bomber program. is the competition still on track and any update for the timeline on the award for that and can you speak to the urgency of it and some sense of how urgent it is and if it is urgent, why is it better to spend all of this time and money designing a new aircraft instead of buying more b-2s? >> the competition. there's really nothing new. it's on track. best projection i would give you is some time in the late spring, early summer, and no real changes to the program so we're steady as she goes from things that we've explained before. do you want to talk about the operational and the meme and so forth? >> first of all, it will be -- compared to the b-52 it is pretty young and compared to most aircraft being able to operate in the environment 15 to 20 years from now, it's old. the timeline for the mid-20s, beginning delivery of the bomber allows us to start retiring the b-52 fleet over about a 15-year period so that by the time we get to 2040 we will still have b-2s in the inventory but the same limited number we have now and hopefully by the mid 2040s we'll have roughly 80 to 100 is the target number for long-range bomber and we've stuck with

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20130831

this is something republicans have to live with with your treated that way because they allow the media to treat them this way. that is why the republican party has to stand up and applaud the chairman for having done. the candidates and party leaders have to stand up to the press. we are asking for fairness we are going to go make an issue out of you and if your corporate sponsors say goodbye we will be on the dhaka leaving goodbye. that needs to be the position that the republican party officials take on this or don't complain. thank you very much. i appreciate it. [applause] >> thank you come brent bozell. we have copies of the book available in the full year if he would like to purchase them. he will stay on the stage and talk further afterwards. i hope to see you again soon in the future. [inaudible conversations] when you write a book a lot can go wrong. that's the way that i approached. i'm somewhat neurotic in my riding of reporting and a lot can go wrong in 110,000 words. i have been shocked by i guess if there has been criticism from inside, it's been mostly held their he, meaning how dare and insider give away the secret handshake, healthcare and insider talk about other insiders in a way that perhaps might not be in keeping with the code we have in washington. people keep asking me why are people uncomfortable. i welcome discomfort but i also think it's journalism. this is what we do. we should invite the discomfort. book book tv continues with mac griswold on a mansion built in 1952 and owned by the same quaker family the silver esters for 11 generations. this is about 40 minutes. >> thank you for coming and many thanks to those of you suffering in the sun. soon the shade of the copper beech will shade you gently. i promised to speak long enough for that to happen. every endeavor like this that spans so many years is a collaborative effort. we are lucky here today to have richard come up and say a few words because it is he and linda kaplan both of the american history workshop who pioneered the story of northern slavery particularly in new york with the two great shows at the new york historical society. he's going to set the context and then i will come back on stage and tell you about the book. [applause] i am thrilled to be here with you today. this is a great day of convergence of a book that has been growing for 20 years and has brought so many people and so much knowledge and wisdom to get their. it's also of course a celebration. this is a site specific book and this is a great sight of convergence because all of you are sitting and standing on one of the most important historical places in north america. here just right on our crown, africans and europeans and american indian people came together and really begin to work together to create an american civilization in an american society. this is one of the very first times this happens and it's happening here under this ground the archaeological investigation has shown evidence of the way these three cultures can together. so it is a very exciting thing to be welcoming mac's book back to the site and of all of the historians and scholars that i have worked with over many years have such a profound sense of sight and place. as you heard she's gathered material from archives on the four continents and has brought together an extraordinary kind of learning but the thing that makes her unique is her ability to see to capture through her eyes the kind of sense of all the landscapes' work so it's a great pleasure for me to be here today and to share with you the convergence of this book and the site. thank you. [applause] thank you. that is great praise. he used the operative word to see. towards the end of my talk today i want you to see five of the people who walked here. after i finish talking and when you've got your book i bought you to walk around and have those shades go with you because they are here. it's the only place i can do this talk. can you hear me? on shelter island in new york what is visible to the 18th century house in the landscape whose owners played all honorable roles in the revolutionary war beckoned in the civil war. can you still hear me? am i doing all right? they built this will be the second of all the site. it's ephraim bling comfortable dwelling that was extended northward in the late 18th-century from the of original elegant house newport style which is the center block with the hip roof a the the big chesney is -- chesney. those were added as was over the front door. what do we know about what we see? the sylvesters raised their children who inherited property in 2006. the husbanded their crops in the fields that still belong to this place 43 acres. the port camels and planted gardens and they planted and cut down trees. they wound the great dhaka english grandfather clock that stands in the hall and it kept time for them through the years. the embroidered bed hangings and churned butter that they sold as far as the road toward -- newport rhode island. imagine eating a better that 86 week trip. they wove cloth and rode down their own the thrifty recipe for shoe polish. all the details of colonial life that we have come to appreciate as american. as the centuries passed they invested wisely in the new american ventures, the canal in the railroads and the minds off the coast of south america. they toasted each other from the silver tankard now and the metropolitan museum of art purchased with the money made from their successful economic it ventures. what is in visible was equally proud of our national history. sylvester is a cradle of the system of slavery as richard said that became an natural system throughout new england has throughout the south as far west as texas. in 1680 nathaniel sylvester in english man brought up in amsterdam and his english wife counted 24 people as their property, the largest number in the north at that time, 11 men and women and 13 children. many african names and others had creel names such as chiquero that tells you they had come from other places besides africa. they had been transported the west indies or to brazil chiquero could be name of french origin, jaque tells you it may have a spanish connotation. call it what you will. that's chiquero. the slave labor produced the first well for the sylvester's from the west indian sugar trade. on the shelter island the tended hogs and cattle to butcher for salt and meat. the bread and pro courses to power the sugar mills and cut trees to shape to make tasks which were really the shopping bags of the day. you couldn't do anything with sugar unless you had a barrel to put it. you couldn't do anything with rahm unless you had a barrel to put it. you couldn't do anything with molasses unless you had a barrel to put it. the staves that were cut here were shaken down which means that they were separated into all of the many parts and shipped aboard out of this tiny harbor off to a bigger herber where there are 47 feet of water and the big ships lead off to be loaded with all of the provisions to go out the west indies and to come back with all of the sugar product c and the sleeves that landed probably at that site at a water landing right there. go down there and take a look. >> is that mine? okay. it doesn't matter. >> so sugar, molasses and rum came back to the manner to new england and was also shipped to europe. sylvester was an experiment in early global capitalism and was a successful one. the first silvester's who bought the entire island as a business proposition and not as a home had credit in the market of amsterdam and london. he borrowed 400 pounds of sterling from nathaniel's brother who lived in london in 1661 pin the he was waiting for the royal patent that would give the colony of connecticut. what to us comes as a shock as it did to me when i first realized in the quiet of friends library in london it was the sylvester's faith. they were among the first handful in the world that believed in the inner life, the sanctity of the words of individual worship. how could they have held, bought and sold human beings as slaves? the answer is simple. after he received his first vision from the lord, the friends like everyone else who could do so held slaves. in 1758, the philadelphia meeting was the first to outlaw slavery among its own members. why did they were no longer squeakers that they were still slaveholders and they remained so until 1820 when london, was his name, the last person that held a perpetual bondage was monument to putative slavery ended in the 1827 only 34 years before the nation was split by the civil war in 1861. as a system it disappeared the huge shadows of prejudice, economic disparity and governmental and justice remained today. take a look at north carolina voting voted on thursday. in my years of research i have come across many who have walked on this ground in my research and i would like to conjure a few of them up this afternoon as i've got the book. they were coming here to witness a piece of land in oyster bay. they were wearing an amalgamation of european and native american costume. he was a tall man that carried himself well and he was coming up to meet nathaniel sylvester standing rather nervously right there. that is upstanding and outstanding native americans for him to meet on his own house will -- on his own soil. down there is married dyer, the english woman who was a quaker and a public friend. she came here and 59 when the quakers were being persecuted in boston by the puritans. and this place was a haven for the quakers. they held slaves coming yesterday also protected the quaker friends as they were hurried from the same on and on to boston. mary is down there thinking about whether she should go back to boston, from which she had been banished on the pain of death. eventually she climbed into a little boat. maybe the same boat that you see on the back cover of my book. .. which you may have seen as you came in walking through the garden, some big buildings, there is polk p.m. african name, young man, 154/6 years old, he is hearing the news that he at the division in 1680 of all the possessions of this, he will be shipped to boston away from his community and away from all his friends. he goes to boston and the only way because it is so hard to parse out, the only way that he tried to free himself, a dry know in an account. one pounds sterling, the horse that of the ran away with. and somebody is going to stop him. they captured him and took him to lloyd next, a survey, long island, and he met a woman called rose, and he died sometime after 1757, a long life, 1680, 1757, we are moving forward now. rose and 0 p.m.'s son, the first published african-american poet, and and the ties the stretch out from this place, not just back to africa or europe, pretty remarkable. mary sylvester -- be quiet for a minute. you will also hear the sound of mary bros sylvester. and underneath the until -- genteel facades and behind, and it is the figure of madness. and quite unusual before the age when most people would have stayed at home no matter how crazy they were, mary has taken up to westchester county and institutionalized. she came back home, the group was of no use, she died in 1750 and i found this out only income a sermon published about her husband, sylvester, a very loving and marvelous husband, you read the letters he wrote to his daughters who were then living on the island any longer and see how much he cared for this for madwoman, your poor mother is not well in you see from institutional records what that meant and we don't know what she suffered from. there she was in her silk dress, and in the house we are lucky to know about all the rooms in this house and what was in them and in one small space, twice the size of this carpet which is the dark room, and and given the treatment program for the time, could have been married sylvester's bed, there is no window there. speeding along here, thomas spending over the north peninsula, he was a free man and had a lasting, he had been freed after the death of his own in maryland and he was sold 21 acres of land on the north side of shelter island. ten days before the man who sell off the force and died. sometimes you are lucky. he paid this man who grew up in this house, he paid him $750, cute amount of money. we don't know how in his earnings as a hired slave which happens quite frequently in the north by 1800 which is when he would have started announcing all this money. we don't know how he made it. he had $750 at dyer's creek, who knows where second bridge is? raise your hands, raise your hands. just beyond it is a beautiful piece of land on the island, and where he landed, looking out at the hopper, and a reputable real estate dealership. $7.5 million. and thomas's daughter sold that land, did not have the learning or education or stature to realize she should hang on to that property and pass it to a member of her family. and you will find the frontispiece in your book. and also the image on this line. by the late nineteenth century the manner belonged to a man who would marry into the family not once but twice, he fathered four daughters, she died, and something that happened in nineteenth century life. he was a harvard professor, nutritional chemist, made several fortunes, one of them the guano mines that i mentioned off the coasts, guano is bird lenore omanure off the coast of america, over there and to the beach tree is the great short story writer sarah hewitt and her lover any seals and they are walking hand in hand and sarah is writing a poem. they were fond of celebrities. they even saved what they called queen victoriana's shoe. not too sure whether it was clean victoriana's shoes but any fields murmuring in the shade of the beach 3. and two of the daughters, cornelia who owned this house in 1903 and who made it into the house that she always imagined it should have been. henry helped richardson -- who is the architect of the lincoln memorial? henry bacon, thank you. henry bacon came and carefully recorded what the house was as built and those papers along with all the other papers are now at nyu where it they are part of the sylvester manner archives so that you can go there and see what the house was like, when it was built and you can also see what he did to with which included the peer ouiazza the front portico she should have a better education. she transformed at a time when single women, it was like having one leg. so this house more or less became her other leg and she became as she called herself the lord of the manner. the person that i prefer is her sister, lillian, who was a wonderful writer and made these incredibly lucid sketches including one of julia dodd havens in over their. million wrote a memoir of her grandfather, samuel smith's gardner of the gardner family who live here. those two sisters, cornelian dodd who died in 1944 and lillian who died in 1927 brought this place into the 20th century. i will read you what lillian had to say about the manner. in 1921. both cornelia and her sister lillian occasionally felt burdened by the weight of history, a disquieting suspicion that somethings might not have been exactly as they had imagined. they felt the sorrow of learning about the instability that lies in the heart of all things. such a motion may have boasted in stray remarks and slight gestures, the supernatural magnetic strangeness that every visitor to sylvester manner feels. lillian, who observed, recorded and recalled more objectively than her sister her lucid pencils catches contrasting markedly with cornelia's impressive water market colors of memoir she read aloud at a shelter island historical society meeting. she told of her fears as an 8 or 9-year-old conlan as real as childhood can make such fears. when she threw up against the glacial boulders in a field and a spark flashed and then she sniffed a slight smell, of what? she writes. we thought was brimstone. her memoir went on, we thought the flash was the fire of hell and we had discovered an entrance. we never played their game. we never spoke again. heaven or hell, sylvester, i hope you will read about it in the pages of my book. thank you so much. morrison will come back in here. one of my -- one of my hearing? oh yes, q&a. okay. anybody who has questions please come to the young lady in the striped shirt. i hope you have questions and speak into the microphone. here comes a question. i would be happy to try to answer them. high. can you all hear her? [inaudible] >> okay. >> my question is this. i have the book, and as i was going through the book i was kind of puzzles as to why you referred to native americans throughout the book as indians all low in your talk you say native americans, just curious. >> i looked at a lot of usages, and i used the new york times usage which changed five years ago. they began to call native americans indians. i spoke to many of the people out here who are indigenous and they say they like being called indians so i honor them. >> another question please. somebody -- have to go to the mic. >> hello. i also have your book. i haven't finished it yet but i am working on it. i am curious, this is an immense history and a lot of stories you can across. i am wondering why you chose to focus so much, why you chose to write about the slavery part of it? >> you actually put that on the cover of the book. given the immense history of it. >> wonderful question and thank you for asking it. when i first came to this house i met andrew fiske, and walked into the panel parlor, where does that door go? and he said to the slave staircase this was in 1984, long before richard shows. i certainly do know the pad of well-established in new england and throughout this nation was the work of many black hands. i thought that was a story worth telling about this place. when i look at the accounts and inventories where you would see people in that terrible shadowland of travel and person where they would be evaluated in one document, negro 35 pounds and another, in another document might be called hannah or opium, my point was to look to the history and beginnings of the many strands and particularly the african strands. yes? >> i know you did a lot of excavations here and they have probably been filled in. where were they? >> what is so extraordinary is in the vast circle which is the first place that steve, the head of the team, in fields schools. it wasn't a towel, it was square and out came this unbelievable richness and what it turned out to be was a hidden layer stretching underneath most of that front lawn. amsterdam was where nathaniel sylvester was raised and it seems very highly nucleated kind of life that he lived in amsterdam on a canal, i went to the canal where he lived, you could see these incredible vertical houses a you realize right here was probably pretty vertical. i don't want to make the too brand one of 30 houses in this country, in the porche tower. all of the richness that you find in documents went into the midden. steve said nothing was ever thrown away and that is with the archaeology really showed. does that answer your questions somewhat? >> could you address the relationship of this family to barbados, when it is that they did and what was the relationship that brought them here. >> in 1642, that is going back, constantly purchased his first plantation acres on barbados, in 1646 nathaniel silver estimated trips in august when the current was turning to take votes across to west africa and paid back with slaves. at that time in the 1640s barbados and the planters their were going through the sugar revolution when sugar began to turn barbados' into the most profitable of all the colonies, all the british colony's. so year after year, year after year, the people on barbados, africans died on barbados and they were replaced. they were never able until after 1838 there were never able to achieve a reproductive rate which meant that the people would reproduce on the island. so sylvester and nathaniel and their two partners, one a very well placed englishmen named thomas middleton who was on the committee reform plantation, very useful place to have your partner if you were over here on shelter island bought this place in 1651 for two reasons. when they bought it for political instability, because in 1651 the cavaliers were hard at work fighting each other on barbados even though he had his head chopped off in 1649, they were still at it. so it looked like maybe constant and thomas middleton were out of luck. so let's buy this island, doesn't cost much, it is only a quarter teaspoon of sugar per acre as opposed to land on barbados at the same time which was a cup and a half, you will find the right figure in my book so the first africans to arrive here, their daughter, polk, they came as the property of sylvester as part of her portion or dowry so they were termed her property. is this helpful? okay. that was a connection which only lasted -- i will wrap up here. it only lasted until the next generation so from 1646-1651 until 1680 when nathaniel died, there were a few other purchases of sugar, rum, africans after that, wasn't a continuous trade. i drank with her. if there are no more questions, okay. sorry. >> during your research do you find out all the instances of crossbreeding with slaves? >> i did not. i looked for it everywhere. i can say i am sure it occurred but given the likelihood of would say it may well have done. i did not find any. that is all i can say. anything else? all right. [applause] i would like to say special thanks to martha who fielded this whole adventure, you have done had marvelous job. give her a hand too. [applause] >> thank you for that. that was phenomenal and nice to see, beaten into submission and sufficiently moved, that was wonderful, thank you for being here today. there is the loss in that this property is no longer being handed down in the same way as vinson 1652. the advantage too is there is an organization here now that is dedicated to preserving down from 8,000 acres to the remaining 243 and making sure we don't lose another one. and there is an organic farm planted here, history programming, plans to preserve the house, plans to restore cornelia's garden. the history and the narrative sort of comes to a close, there is a loss in that, there's something exciting about the future that we expect to continue here for a very long time. i invite you all to come up, we are open until at is too cold to do that. there are so many things, but one in particular is there is the spiralling history here, goes off in all these incredible directions and we are looking forward to sharing stories with all of you in the future, generations to come. please sign up for the book signing which will be right over here, matt will graciously be sitting here at this table and look forward to signing books and theseus again. thank you. >> that was lovely. >> i will take my signing. >> for more information visit the author's web site mac griswold.com. here are the best-selling hardcover nonfiction books according to publishers weekly. this list reflects sales as of august 29th. at the top of the list in its debut week is the latest book from marc levin, the liberty amendment. he proposes amendments to the u.s. constitution. zealous is second, the book is a biography of jesus of nazareth. the dynasty, reality tv star phil roberts and is there with his autobiography happy happy happy followed by cheryl sandberg's been in. she is the chief operating officer of facebook, offers career advice to women. at number 5, willie and corley robertson look at the reality show the duck dynasty in the duck commander family. chief national correspondent for the new york times magazine mark leibowitz examined the inner workings of washington d.c. in his book this town. the booktv book club will be reading this book for the month of september. the discussion begins sept. third and an online question and answer session will take place later in the month. follow us on twitter at booktv for more details. number 7, scott anderson provides an in-depth look at the arab revolt in his book lorenz in arabia, war of deceit, imperial folly and the making of the modern middle east. elizabeth koch is eighth with her profile of american citizens, bargains in the real world. followed by let's explore diabetes, a collection of essays from david. at number 10, jerusalem:a cookbook, a collection of 120 recipes exploring the flavors of that key city in israel. for more information on these bestsellers go to publishersweekly.com. >> it doesn't bend on its own. to secure the game this country has made require constant vigilance, not complacency. whether it is by challenging those who erecting new barriers to the vote, when insuring the scales of justice work equally for all in the criminal-justice system and not simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails, it requires vigilance. >> from wednesday, the 50th anniversary of the march on washington. live sunday on c-span2 and your calls and comments for ben shapiro. at noon on booktv's in debt. on c-span2's american history tv, the group of war constellation, the last all sale worship the bill by the u.s. navy, sunday at 7:00 eastern and pacific. here is a look at the upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country, on september 7th the kansas book festival, and author panels inside the capitol building and dozens of books centers set up outside. 40 authors are presented including larry berman and larry welch. the same weekend the ninth annual bookmark festival of books will be in the downtown arts district of winston-salem, n.c. author presentations will be held in dorr galleries around the town and examiners line the streets as well. you'll surprise winner james mcpherson and former chair of the fdic sheila bair are scheduled to discuss their latest book. end in white plains, new york on sept. 14, children and young adult authors have headlined the festival, reading areas and performances. the borglum book festival, the largest free literary event in new york city will take place saturday, september 27th. the festival will feature 12 areas for presentations and panel discussions, topics include more reporting, feminism and self publishing. please let us know about the affairs and festivals in your area and add them to our list, e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. >> from the 2013 roosevelt reading festival, chistopher o'sullivan discusses his book "fdr and the end of empire: the origins of american power in the middle east". the annual festival is hosted by the franklin roosevelt presidential library museum in new york. this is about 45 minutes. >> good afternoon, welcome to the penultimate session of the roosevelt reading festival. i am bob clarke, supervisory artist at the roosevelt library

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