Growing Administrative Burden on doctors. That is why we said that doctors will now be able to report one set of results for dq. Rs prs we announced last week a bill estimated to Save Health Care providers in rural areas nearly 700 million a year. Finally, we remain committed to an sgr fix that would take americas doctors out of a permanent state of limbo. [laughter] [applause] long overdue. As you know, the recent fiscal cliff deal signed by the president extends the sgr through the end of the year. He and i have both said since the beginning of the term, temporary extensions are not good enough. We need to bring an end to the constant uncertainty for doctors and their patients. Ultimately, only congress can pass a permanent sgr fix. This administration continues to be committed to doing what we can to make that happen. Every deer that the president has been in office, his budget has included a longterm sgr fix. That is why i will continue to work with you in congress during this critical year for budget conversations that include the sgr fix. We also continue to believe that congress can and should take action to avoid the sequestration cuts that are scheduled to take effect in just a few weeks. The way those impact our Department Art that medicaid and chip programs are not affected by sequester cuts. They are held harmless. Other essential programs across the department will be cut. Everything from medical research to personnel and health clinics. Medicare cuts up to two percent are scheduled to take place beginning on april 1. That would cut provider rates across the country. That is why the president continues to call on congress to prevent these indiscriminate cuts that would harm families, patients, doctors and it certainly would do great harm to our economy. It is important to realize that preventing these devastating cuts is just a first step areas unless we come up with a credible plan to reducing Health Care Spending going forward, we will ultimately end up in the same place with other costs, equally blunt, and other approaches that do not make any sense. That is why more efforts to accelerate the transformation of care are needed. I know that the ama has put forward a plan to do just that. It is encouraging to see recommendations for reducing unnecessary care, advanced by specialty societies in choosing wisely. Physicians need to continue to play a major leadership role. Your leadership also goes, not only to the Health Transformation part of the new law, but the second part of the law. That is expanding access to affordable coverage so more individuals can access care from the outset. This is a goal that the ama and americas doctors have supported for decades. You, better than anyone, understand the consequences of going without Health Insurance. You see it in patients who do not fill the prescriptions you wrote, because they cannot afford it. You see it in the woman who shows up in the emergency room, consequences from a cancer that could have been and should have been caught early. You see it in families saddled with medical bills, they will spend their entire life trying to pay off. You see it in a burden that many of you take on, day in and day out, to provide care to the uninsured. The uninsured americans in this country have never been invisible to americas doctors. That is why you help in the fight that will finally bring america into the ranks of nations that make coverage affordable to all their citizens. Because of your efforts, beginning on october 1 of this year, millions of uninsured americans across the country will finally qualify for health plans that fit their budget. Either through a new state marketplace, or an expanded state medicaid program. About half of the states have already said they will expand medicaid. Many others are still deliberating. You can help make sure those debates are informed by fact. About what expanded coverage means for eagles health. About what it could mean to the local economy. And what the bottom line is for healthcare providers. No one has better credibility speaking about what is best for patients and doctors. Make sure your voices are heard. You can also help educate people about new Insurance Options that are coming. As you know all too well from personal experience, dealing with Health Insurers is not exactly a favorite thing to do. For many americans, Health Insurance is confusing, frustrating, something people want to avoid thinking about until they have to. Again, you and a lot of people around you and your teams can be messengers to help educate your parents, family members, friends, neighbors about new Coverage Options that are beginning this october. A great place to start is our website, it has some clear information about the law, about who is eligible for coverage, and how people will be able to get started. As i mentioned earlier, i hope you will continue to lend your voices to the important debate about how we can come together as a country. To prevent tragedies like the one we saw in newtown. We know there is no single solution to the problem of gun violence. We all can agree, as the president called it recently, that physicians should be able to talk to their patients about guns and health safety. We can also agree that we need to talk of a society about mental wellness. About what help may be available. As i said earlier, we will launch a National Dialogue about communities and their work to promote Better Emotional Health and creating environments for young people and their families where they feel comfortable asking for help. I am counting on americas doctors to help lead his conversations. The care you provide for your patience will always be your first job. Today, there are many other ways for doctors to make a difference in peoples lives lives. Starting with contributing to the transformation of our health care system. We have made great progress in the last few years. I look forward to working on that progress and creating a Health System that patients vomit doctors, and this country deserve. Thank you all for what you do every day. [applause] today, rhode island senator sheldon whitehouse, author and former white house advisor, and representatives from the sierra club will be among the speakers at the forward on climate rally. Coverage beginning at noon eastern here on cspan. I think the women themselves in many cases, were interested in politics but had no vehicle to express that in their own lives. They were attracted to men who were going to become politically active or were already politically after if active. Each of them i find intriguing, probably half of them, precisely because they are so obscure. Half of these women would probably be totally unrecognizable to most men and women on the street. This president s day, cspan premieres its new series first ladies, influence and image. With historians, chief of staff, social secretaries, and curators exploring the lives of the women who served as first lady from Martha Washington to michelle obama. In a first of its kind project for television. Season one begins monday night at nine oclock eastern pacific on cspan and cspan. Org. Senate judiciary subcommittee chairman dick durbin of the commission on reducing gun violence. Witness included victims of gun violence and constitutional law attorneys. Congress is considering several proposals to curb on violence such as banning assault weapons and curbing cartridges. This is an hour and 20 minutes. This hearing will come to order. Todays hearing is entitled, proposals to reduce gun violence. Protecting our communities while respecting the Second Amendment. This is the first hearing of this constitutional subcommittee. I want to welcome my ranking republican member, senator ted cruz of texas. Thank you for joining us at this committee hearing, as well as my other colleagues. I also want to thank senator pat leahy for giving us the opportunity to have this hearing today. We are pleased to have such a large audience for the hearing. It demonstrates the importance of this issue. At the outset, i want to note that the rules of the senate prevent outbursts or clapping or demonstrations of any kind during these hearings. There was so much interest in todays hearings that we had to expand opportunity for the audience in an adjoining room. The overflow room is 226 of the dirksen building. I will make opening remarks and give Ranking Member cruz the same opportunity and then welcome our first witness. We are here to discuss a critically important issue, maybe a very basic question. We venerate in this country are committed to the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of those who live in america. We also guaranteed under our bill of rights the right to bear arms. Can we make these two consistent . Can we protect a persons right to own a firearm and still say to the rest of america we also need to protect your right to life, peace, freedom from violence from those same firearms . According to the centers for disease control, more than 11,000 americans 11,000 are murdered by guns each year. That is more each year than the lives lost in the tragedy of 9 11 and the wars in iraq and afghanistan combined. Each year. Every year, more than 30 men, women, and children are killed in violent shootings. 200 are shot and survived. Numbers dont capture the deeply personal impact of gun violence. There are too many families who face an empty seat at the dinner table, too many parents who walk past an empty bedroom, too many husbands and wives who have lost the love of their lives because of gunfire. It has become almost routine in this great nation. In park in chicago, in a nightclub in st. Louis, illinois, in a Movie Theater in aurora, colorado, a Shopping Center in tucson, arizona, a sikh temple in oak creek, wisconsin, and the College Lecture halls in illinois and blacksburg, virginia, and a first grade classroom in newtown, massachusetts, americans all over the country are saying enough. We need to act. We need to better protect our families, our kids, our schools, our loved ones from the epidemic of violence. Some say that we should just enforce the laws on the books, but that is not enough. There are so many gaps in these laws that we now they created the situation we face today. The senate will take up proposals to close those gaps and reduce gun violence. We will consider universal background checks for gun sales, tougher gun laws against illegal stock purchasing, stopping the flood of new militarystyle assault weapons on to our streets, limiting the capacity of new gun magazines to a level that allows for reasonable self defense but reduces the scope of carnage that a mass shooter can cause. All of these proposals are based on common sense. All of them have strong support among the american public. And all of them, i believe, are clearly consistent with the constitution, the Second Amendment, and the bill of rights. In the Landmark Supreme Court decision in heller in 2008, the court determined that americans have the individual right to possess firearms for lawful purposes such as selfdefense. But justice scalia, no liberal, writing for the courts conservative majority, made clear that the Second Amendment right is not unlimited, and like other rights, it is subject to reasonable regulation. The heller decision makes pays not to cast any doubt on common sense gun laws. Over and over, gun regulation is described as permissible, supported by historical tradition and presumptively lawful. When given the opportunity to retreat from those statements in the 2010 macdonald case, the court instead reinforced the same statements and described them as assurances. In hundreds of cases following heller, lower courts have upheld commonsense gun laws as consistent with the Second Amendment. There are some who continue to challenge the constitutionality of reasonable gun regulation, even though history, president , and the Supreme Courts statements in heller and mcdonald way heavily against them. They do so hoping that judicial activism will advance their no compromise ideology when it comes to guns. I think we need to be careful. This is not some abstract legal debate. Guns have forever changed the lives of so many people. Let me mention just a few of them. Hadiya pendleton, and understood in an inspiration to our friends, all walking angel her cousin called her. She was taken from us two weeks ago. Her family is here today. A student at Northern Illinois university, with a warm heart and bright future, murdered in her classroom by a man with a history of Mental Illness. Her mother is here today. Blair holt, killed while shielding his friends from a gang members spraying fire on a city bus. His friend is here today. Marcus norris, hit in the face by a bullet that came through the wall of his house. Thank god he survived. We are glad to have him here today. A true American Hero who dedicated his life to serving his country and his community, killed by gang members with a straw purchase gun. I attended his funeral service. The officers family is here, and his sister will testify today. There are many more in this room today whose lives and families have been changed by gun violence. I would like to ask the friends and family of the victims of gun violence to please stand. Look about his room. Understand that the debate we have before us has affected so many lives. Thank you all for being here today. As we conduct this debate and honor your loved ones who are no longer with us, we know that we have to act. Thank you for joining us at this hearing. Senator cruz. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Let me say it is a particular honor to serve as Ranking Member on this committee with you and a particularly high honor to serve on the committee with two former Ranking Members and chairman of this committee, senator cornyn and senator hatch, as well as the Ranking Member of the entire committee, senator grassley. All of us were rightly horrified by the tragedy in newtown, connecticut. To see Young Children senselessly murdered takes your breath away. Let me say to each of you who has come here today that are the victims of crimes of violence, my heart goes out to you. Thank you for coming, thank you for standing for your lost loved ones. I will tell you that i have spent personally much of my professional career working in Law Enforcement to, number one, prevent these horrible crimes of violence, and number two, to ensure that anyone who carries them out is subject to the very strict as punishments. I am hopeful that the fervor that we see on this Judiciary Committee hearing for standing up for victims of crimes of violence will carry over to issues other than guncontrol. I am hopeful that that same fervor will be present when judicial nominees are here, who have a record in history of allowing those who have committed Violent Crimes to walk free. I hope that same fervor on a bipartisan basis will be present when were talking about how to ensure that the laws and resources are there to prevent violent criminals from carrying out their horrific crimes and to ensure that every one of them receives a fair and just punishment. In my view, the divide on this issue is fairly straightforward. The focus of Law Enforcement should be on criminals, and we should be unstinting in protecting communities, many of the communities that each of you have suffered losses in, communities that sadly, Law Enforcement has been failing. And we should be working to fix that problem. At the same time, i think that we should continue to respect and protect the Constitutional Rights of lawabiding citizens. It is often lost in the debate over guns that the Second Amendment is part of our constitution. It is part of the bill of rights, it is indeed, as Justice Joseph story put it, the palladium of liberty, a fundamental protection of every american. In my view, stripping the Constitutional Rights of law abiding citizens does nothing to prevent criminals from carrying out a Violent Crime. And indeed, the overwhelming weight of the empirical evidence demonstrates that when the rights of lawabiding citizens to protect themselves, protect their homes, protect their families are taken away, a Violent Crime increases, citizens defenseless are vulnerable to violent criminals. For that reason, the two cities with the strictest gun control policies, washington, d. C. And chicago, both of which for years had effectively total ban on firearms ownership, so it could not be possible to have a stricter policy, both of the sadly suffered from some of the highest crime rates and highest murder rates, notwithstanding those laws. I would suggest in significant part because of those laws. If you look in contrast to jurisdictions that have protected the constitutional right to bear arms, you have consistently seen a lower crime rates, lower murder rates, as individuals are able to protect their family. The Supreme Court decisions in heller and mcdonald were landmark decisions to they concern the question whether each of us is protected by the bill of rights, because the position of the cities of d. C. And chicago in that litigation was that no individual has any right whatsoever under the Second Amendment. The position of the litigants in those cases was quite extreme. Today we are discussing what are the limits on that r